Frankfurt Westside: excavator dismantles 70-metre-high chimney

The former industrial site in the Griesheim district of Frankfurt has a rich history. From the middle of the 19th century, it became known principally for the manufacture of chemical products. Over the course of the ensuing decades, several well-known chemical companies, including Hoechst, built their factories there. They developed new manufacturing processes and discovered previously unknown materials. And they left behind mountains of waste. The most famous, because it is the highest (up to 40 metres), is popularly referred to as the “Griesheim Alps”. In the early 1990s, these mounds were completely secured, covered and landscaped by order of the Hessian Ministry of the Environment.

Today, chemical products are no longer manufactured at the Griesheim site. Production has been gradually phased out since the 2010s. Consequently, more and more parts of the site lay fallow, while the entire area remained inaccessible to the general public, hidden behind high factory walls.

In 2020, Swiss Life Asset Managers and BEOS AG acquired the Griesheim industrial park, named it “Frankfurt Westside”, and have been developing the 73-hectare site into a modern, mixed-use commercial district ever since. The 1600-metre-long bank of the Main is also part of the development project and will be opened to the public. Where factories and production facilities once stood, space is being created for something new. Some historical buildings are to be preserved and revitalised to retain a sense of the place’s history. Conversely, there are also a number of buildings, primarily structural shells, and infrastructures which are dilapidated and unsuitable for further use. One of them was a reinforced concrete chimney, the demolition of which was a unique and vertigo-inducing challenge.

The imposing reinforced concrete chimney was built in the mid-1970s as part of the construction of a new furnace hall. Synthetic graphite and graphite electrodes were produced here, which are used, for example, to generate arcs to melt steel scrap. The flue gases produced during manufacture were discharged into the atmosphere through this chimney.

Although a relic of the industrial age, the building had to be removed to make room for the development of the new district. A controlled explosion would have been the fastest way, but this was out of the question because there are other buildings worthy of protection in the immediate vicinity, including a transformer station that is still in operation. An alternative solution was needed. This was found in the form of a remote-controlled demolition robot that would remove the chimney piece by piece from top to bottom.