ICE - long distance railway station
The long distance railway station in Frankfurt/Main, which was built by Wayss & Freytag in a joint venture for Deutsche Bahn AG, with approx. 20,000 passengers per day, is the largest airport railway station in Germany. The station connects the ICE high-speed train Cologne – Rhine/Main to the airport. The foundation stone ceremony took place on October 1, 1997 and on May 30, 1999 the long distance railway station was opened by the arrival of the first train, the ICE „Moritzburg“, at 5:37 am.
The long distance railway station is 660 m long and 60 m wide. Construction was carried out under complicated conditions in between the ongoing traffic of the A3 motorway and the parallel national road B43. The design is planned for a nine-floor superstructure, so that a 30 cm thick structural roof slab which supports the building (= structural slab for a possible superstructure) had to be carried out with an extremely high degree of reinforcement. The 10,000 m³ of concrete for the slab were carried out monolithically and cooled down with nitrogen because of the high temperatures in summer.
The fully glazed outer shell which gives the structure transparency, width and comfortable room temperatures is considered to be a highlight of the construction, which was designed by the Hamburg group of architects Bothe, Richter and Teherani. The glass dome is situated 15 m above the platform level, the insulation glass of the facades is held at punctiform points of contact.