ABSTRACT
The city development of Frankfurt after 1945 can be described as a success story. Heavily destroyed during the Second World War, the city was reinvented rather than reconstructed, forming it into one of today’s leading financial centres in the world. The urban expression of this economic boom is reflected in the construction of high-rise buildings. While high-rise construction has been examined predominantly from an architectural and structural engineering perspective, this chapter complements the discourse with an analysis of the economic, political and social preconditions and effects of high-rise development from 1945 to 1986, examining tertiarisation as an intertwined process between economic, cultural and social policies.
