Last week I visited a fairly new shopping mall in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The mall "myZeil" is located at the main shopping street in Frankfurt, the Zeil - hence the name. It opened end of February this year, and its quite spectacular architecture - it was built by the Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas - attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors, 120.000 of them on its first opening day!

So what is so spectacular about that mall that it draws so many people? Well, you're about to see. All pictures taken with K20D and DA10-17, and quite lot of panos among those ...

First a view from the outside - at first glance a normal glass façade, fairly common with modern buildings. But a second glance shows that something unusual has happened here: did someone throw an extra large ball at the façade? There is a big hole in it, and through it you can actually see the sky!

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524874/original.jpg

Okay, let's go indoors to find more about that damaged façade. Entering the building we're confronted with a set of Colani-style escalators, and looking upwards we see a set of elliptical shaped openings - and we catch a glimpse of a glass funnel that must belong to that opening in the façade we saw at the outside:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524871/original.jpg

So let's jump on the longest elevator starting from the ground level, promising us a 46 meter ride up to the top level of the mall:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524862/original.jpg

Looking down see the elliptical openings and the different levels of the mall give an impressive view:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524865/original.jpg

But that's nothing compared to the view we get once we've reached the top level:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524867/original.jpg

Now let's step back a bit to see more of the top level, giving a quite spectacular view of the whole roof construction - which is made out of 3.200 large glass triangles, BTW. We now see - looking towards the front of the building - that the glass funnel coming from the outside is connected to second one diving deep into the mall - on the far right you see the escalator we just came up with:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524855/original.jpg

Another view of the top level, this time nearer the front of the building:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524851/original.jpg

And moving back towards the restaurant area of the mall we get this nice backlit view of the construction:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524853/original.jpg

Now our tour comes to its end with two final views of the mall - this one from the top level:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118525772/original.jpg

… and this one from a middle level:

http://www.pbase.com/phsan/image/118524868/original.jpg

BTW: The second funnel - the one that "dives" into the mall and is seen in this last pic - is used for collecting rain water. The collected water is not discarded, but used for sanitary functions of the building, e.g. flushing toilets.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

And happy shopping next time in Frankfurt … ;-)

Phil

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http://www.pbase.com/phsan