New GIZ building in the federal district of Bonn "This is a clear commitment to this city"
Bonn · The celebration came late due to the Corona crisis: The Society for International Cooperation officially inaugurated its new building at the Trajektkreisel on Wednesday. The number of GIZ supporters in Bonn has increased from 721 to 1641 within ten years.
Working at the Trajektkreisel, making an impact worldwide: This is possible in the "GIZ Campus Bonn", which has now also been officially inaugurated on Wednesday. Although the six-story building at Friedrich-Ebert-Allee 32, which complements the neighboring Mäanderbau, has been completed since the end of 2019, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH was only able to celebrate it with a time delay due to the Corona crisis.
"It is important to us to strengthen Bonn as a center of international cooperation," emphasized Tanja Gönner, spokeswoman of the GIZ board, at a reception with 50 invited guests. In addition to the ecological equipment, she praised above all the "innovative space concept" of the new building with its transparent glass fronts. There are 28,000 square meters of classic offices as well as plenty of open space with collaborative workstations, "arenas" for smaller meetings and presentations, casually designed break areas, video conference rooms and an auditorium for large-scale events. The campus is home to 1484 men and women who work for GIZ.
Like the Meander Building, developer Ten Brinke built the Campus Forum according to plans by architects CLP GmbH in line with the "Sustainable Building" specifications, which earned the project a gold certificate from the German Sustainable Building Council. The sustainable concept includes, for example, a parquet floor made of bamboo, cooling and heating via geothermal energy, the use of waste heat from the data center, the collection of rain as service water and a photovoltaic system that is to provide 15 percent of the electricity requirements.
The building was completed within three years "on budget and on time," as Martin Jäger pointed out with a smile. "Where else can you find something like this these days?" said the state secretary at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Company boss Albert Ten Brinke, who was among the guests, will have been pleased to hear it. Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner, NRW Minister for International Affairs, conveyed the thanks of the state government to GIZ. The Mayor of Bonn, Ursula Sautter, conveyed greetings from Lord Mayor Katja Dörner, who was represented "for scheduling reasons“.
According to GIZ, it purchased the new building for 165 million Euro. Both campus buildings and the Academy for International Cooperation in Röttgen, which was inaugurated in 2018, represent an investment of more than 267 million Euro, according to the state-owned company based in Eschborn and Bonn. A total of 1641 employees are active in Bonn. "The many colleagues on site as well as three new buildings in eight years are a clear commitment of GIZ to this city," Gönner said. Incidentally, GIZ is celebrating its tenth birthday: it had emerged in 2011 from the merger of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), the Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH (InWEnt) and the German Development Service (DED). At that time, it had 721 employees in Bonn.
Original text: Andreas Baumann
Translation: Mareike Graepel
