Test bed for Siemen’s tech will include corporate offices, residences and more
Not to be outdone by swanky and stylish corporate campuses of America’s Silicon Valley tech firms, the biggest tech company in Europe and perhaps the oldest tech company in the world, Siemens AG, is building
an entire city within a city, expanding its current headquarters in Spandau, a
borough of Berlin.
Siemensstadt, or Siemens City, was established in the early 1900s as the company outgrew its original site in the heart of Berlin. Half of its buildings were demolished by Allied air raids during WWII and what
remained was ransacked by the Russian army. Siemens is expanding Siemensstadt to
73 hectares (180 acres) from its present size.
Siemensstadt will offer residence to employees and Berliners.
“We want it be an open city,” says a Siemens employee giving us a tour, perhaps making a reference to a time the city was not so open and the Berlin Wall that Berliners demolished in 1989.
Siemens intends to create a “highly livable urban district where people can live, work, learn and research.”
The current and planned buildings will enclose one million square meters of space. The site will include research institutes, universities and start-ups, as well as at least one hotels and restaurants.
A residential population will be served by an elementary school, daycare centers, youth recreation centers and areas for community use and cultural events.
“We don’t like to call it a ‘smart city,’” says a Siemens representative, perhaps because the term suffers from overuse, but it seems to fit the description of a modern planned connected city.
It wouldn’t be a Siemens event without mention of a digital twin, and we don’t have too long into our tour to hear it.
“With the help of a digital twin of an urban environment, Siemensstadt Square is being planned and implemented in a multidimensional approach. In addition to replicating individual buildings, the digital twin also maps the area’s complete infrastructure, with streets, open spaces, media connections and energy supplies. A holistic model is being created for the first time, with all project and real-time data incorporated on one platform. All project stakeholders can access this data and seamlessly collaborate on the platform. The digital twin enables planners to simulate and further optimize the buildings and infrastructure before they are constructed. The digital planning also provides the basis for operating, maintaining and further optimizing the urban quarter for a high level of sustainability over the long term.”
Siemensstadt will serve as a test bed for the company’s technology for another initiative, digital transformation in all manner of life and work. And so Siemensstadt will have “high-performance, stable broadband” throughout.
Sustainability has also been a Siemens initiative of late and the company promises Siemensstadt will be energy-efficient, sustainable, and operate CO2-neutral[i].
New buildings in Siemensstadt promise to have energy efficiencies beyond current regulations, employing wastewater heat exchangers and all-electric heating and cooling from heat pumps that draw 100% renewable heat from the environment and geothermal sources. Electricity will be generated from solar arrays. There will be plenty of charging stations for EVs as Siemens is committed to electromobility (on road and rail) and, indeed, has been for the last hundred years. Siemensstadt will also feature electric scooters and autonomous vehicles,
AKA robotaxis.
Current buildings will be converted to smart buildings with technology from Siemens Smart Infrastructure division, including intelligent heating, ventilation and air conditioning technology and sensors for controlling lighting and shading. When outfitted with this technology, a building will be able to adjust its energy use to match daily and seasonal conditions of occupancy and climate.
LowEx, a local low temperature heating network, will make use of heat from wastewater and groundwater.
Energy barriers between floors of a building will be reduced with a “barrier-free” concept. For example, waste disposal will available on all floors. Workers will be less bound by what floor they are on and will have increased accessibility to all levels “from ground floors to the roof terraces.”
Siemensstadt is being designed as a “sponge city,” able to absorb water from precipitation for local use, rather than have it
flow off the land in sewer drains and rivers.
With a high density of people, there will be less need for motorized vehicles. The local S-bahn metro stop will be brought back online to tie Siemensstadt to the rest of Berlin.
[i] This is said against a backdrop of
national energy insecurity and a coal-fired powerplant is belching smoke visible
visible at a distance as our tour of Siemensstadt took to a rooftop terrace. Germany is in a bit of a panic after Russia cut off cheap oil and gas to Europe
and has resorted to using coal to get through what could otherwise be a cold
winter..
