“Rain was falling on Frankfurt’s Ostend neighborhood as financial managers and local officials drove past dark corner bars, betting offices and the Amor sex shop to the site of the future headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB).
It was May 19, 2010. Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB’s president at the time, had invited his guests to a dicey part of the city for the groundbreaking ceremony. They gathered in front of the building pit, from which a futuristic tower was to arise: an architecturally thrilling, 45-story skyscraper, a symbol of the power of Europe’s shared currency.
Three-and-a-half years later, in the fall of 2013, there is a different reality in Frankfurt’s Ostend district. Instead of the original estimated cost of €500 million ($690 million), the entire project will now cost at least €1.15 billion and could even eventually climb to €1.3 billion.
The demands of the project’s European managers were apparently as sky-high as the new tower. Vienna-based architect Wolf Prix and his firm, Coop Himmelb(l)au, had designed the building as two twisted towers connected by hanging gardens, made almost entirely of glass and steel. The skyscraper looks more like a giant sculpture than an office building.
When the monetary watchdogs move into their new home, their offices are likely to be among the most expensive in the euro zone. As the complex will house about 2,000 employees and cost more than €1 billion to build, each workspace will be worth about €600,000, or as much as a very comfortable single-family home. In commercial real estate, €30,000 per desk space is usually considered “upscale.””
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
From Der Spiegel:
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