engineering

Post Tower

Post Tower is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Post Tower rather than just read about it. In short: Post Tower is the headquarters of the logistic company DHL Group with the two brands: the Deutsche Post postal services and the DHL logistics service, located in Bonn, Germany. Standing at 162.5 metres (533 ft) and 42 stories, it is the sixteenth tallest skyscraper in Germany, and the second tallest in Germany outside of Frankfurt am Main.

Key takeaways

Post Tower belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Post Tower to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Post Tower from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Post Tower is the headquarters of the logistic company DHL Group with the two brands: the Deutsche Post postal services and the DHL logistics service, located in Bonn, Germany. Standing at 162.5 metres (533 ft) and 42 stories, it is the sixteenth tallest skyscraper in Germany, and the second tallest in Germany outside of Frankfurt am Main. Post Tower was designed by German-American architect Helmut Jahn and won the 2002 Silver Emporis Skyscraper Award.

Design The building is located at the river Rhine and in the center of the old parliament area of Bonn near the Deutsche Welle and has about 55,000 m2 (590,000 sq ft) of office surface. Construction took place from May 2000 to December 2002, with 80,000 m3 (2.8 million cubic feet) of concrete and 16,000 tons of structural steel used in the building's shell. The building dimensions are; height: 162.5 m (533 ft), width: 41 m (135 ft), length: 81.1 m (266 ft) (with ring walls 86.55 m (284.0 ft)), weight: 300,000 t. The building has the ground floor, 42 upper floors and 5 underground levels. The Tower has a surface area of 7,000 m2 (75,000 sq ft). The Tower is constructed as a steel-glass-building. The base of the Post Tower has the shape of two staggered semi-ellipses of two shifted circle segments. Most office walls, doors and the floors of skygardens and elevators are therefore made of 93,000 m2 (1,000,000 sq ft) glass used.

Climate control concept A double-skin glass façade with a 120 cm (47 in) cavity between the external skin and the primary façade offers natural ventilation regulated by venetian blinds. The north-facing windows at the front are smooth, the glass windows on the south-facing façade are gently sloping to allow a better flow of air (see picture). Via a decentralized underground convector, the external air is sucked in from the space between the façades, then it is conditioned and fed back into the offices. The air also reaches internal areas of the building through doors and corridors. The office air is filtered into the Sky Gardens, warms up those areas and then is filtered back outside via façade flaps on the east and west sides of the Sky Gardens. The double skin façade enables huge energy savings. The benefits gained by the Post Tower in using up to 130 litres (29 imp gal; 34 US gal) of groundwater per second to heat and cool the concrete core. The remaining energy requirement is covered by connection to the district heating system, refrigerating equipment and heat pumps.

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Post Tower

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Post Tower claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Post Tower before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Post Tower ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Post Tower

In research: Post Tower appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Post Tower in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Post Tower is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century architecture in Germany, Buildings and structures completed in 2002, Buildings and structures in Bonn, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Post Tower outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Post Tower in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Post Tower means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Post Tower out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Post Tower in simple terms?

Why does Post Tower matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Post Tower?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Post Tower.