Before the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, Frankfurt am Main was for a short time the favourite in the running to be nominated as the new seat of government. To give his city the best chance of securing that prize, Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor, Walter Kolb, designated an area in the north of the city as a government district, and even built a plenary hall there. However, the Parliamentary Council voted for Bonn instead, with 33 votes to 29. Frankfurt’s dreams of being the capital were dashed, the plenary hall was re-functioned as the broadcasting house (Funkhaus) of Hessischer Rundfunk. As compensation, in the post-war years Frankfurt did receive a number of federal authorities, among them a part of the Ministry of Agriculture – the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food, for which a new building was constructed in 1952 between Adickesallee and the Funkhaus. After this authority moved out in 2005 the complex of buildings stood empty for ten years until finally being replaced by the Adickesallee Apartment House and a residential estate.

The cubic volume and the dimensions of the new building result from an analysis of the immediate urban environment. Along Adickesallee, a very busy road that forms the northern section of the city’s Alleenring, the apartment block takes its place in a succession of large-scale buildings with strictly regular façades – from the Bundesbank and the Westend university campus to the police headquarters and the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Towards the south the structure of development is much smaller in scale and also features older buildings from the latter part of the 19th century; to the north are residential estates with a more open character. The U-shaped, up to nine-storey high building volume adopts the dimensions of the neighbouring solitaire and forms a clear spatial border to the Alleenring. With the right-angled wings at the ends, the building leaves scope for extension at a later date to complete the urban block. The strongly profiled façade derives its effect from the red clinker brick, and deliberately avoids reference to the function of the building. Tower-like corners – nine storeys high in the west, eight in the east – are a reaction to the neighbouring development and an immediately recognisable identifier in the urban landscape. Two strongly modelled cornices articulate the façade classically into a base section, a shaft and a “capital”, represented here by a recessed top storey. The rigour of the street face is relaxed at the back by alternately aligned balconies.