Between thehistoric warehouse district and the River Elbe, the city of Hamburg currently reinvents itself: Built up on a gigantic area of 157 hectares, the HafenCity Hamburg is to be the largest urban development project in Europe. The start of the development of HafenCity Hamburg was marked by a decision made in 1997, paving the way for the realization of the project. Yet it took until 2001 before the first excavators could roll into action. Prior to this politicians and urban planners worked on a master plan. The demand on the designcompetition made in 1999 was to develop a design for a sustainable district, which also should be a "model for the European city of the 21st Century ". Following this credo, the architects developed numerous real estate and buildings that graduallybring to life thenewdistrict of Hamburg: Elbphilharmonie, Marco Polo Tower, the futuristic Unilever House or the promenade "Am Kaiserkai" - the HafenCity has some eye-catching architecture. It is very interesting to observe the contrastto the adjacent warehouse district. Its neo-Gothic brick buildings dominated the townscape of Hamburg for a long time. Now they stand vis-à-vis to the modern HafenCity. Despite differences in architecture and history, one thing unites HafenCity and port city: the ubiquitous reference to the water, which constitutesthe specialspirit of the hanseatic city.
