Stadttor

The Stadttor is a striking office tower in Düsseldorf's Unterbilk district that served as the official seat of North Rhine-Westphalia's minister-presidents from 1999 to 2017. Built between 1992 and 1998, the 75-meter (246-foot), twenty-story building is distinguished by a parallelogram-shaped floor plan that follows the surrounding development and the Rhine Embankment Tunnel running beneath it. The name comes from the central hall, which rises roughly 56 meters (184 feet) and is surrounded by offices, giving the structure the character of a gatehouse. It marks the point where Federal Highway 1 enters the city center and uses the tunnel as its foundation. The double-skin glass facade, built with a beech wood and steel framework, allows for natural ventilation and houses a walk-in climate buffer zone. Today, besides large law firms, the building also contains shops and places to eat and drink on the lobby level.