Centipede (Düsseldorf)
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The term millipede is a nickname given by the population for a high road in the North Rhine-Westphalian capital of Düsseldorf that was removed in April 2013 .
The millipede was built by the city of Düsseldorf from 1961 to 1962 as part of the extensive renovation work in the city center (1954–1962). Since then, it has been an important link in the north-south route through the city center and part of Landesstraße 55. It was characterized by its filigree architecture despite the heavy traffic - a comparatively thin street slab that was supported in its center on stilt-like pillars. On December 13, 1993, it was entered in the city's list of monuments in the category of technical monuments, systems and structures for road traffic .
Nevertheless, there has been discussion since 2001 about tearing down the millipede in order to obtain a larger area that has to be redesigned for the Kö-Bogen project . On June 11, 2012, the responsible North Rhine-Westphalian Transport Minister Harry Voigtsberger approved the demolition. After more than 50 years of existence, the millipede became history in April 2013.
Location and surroundings
The traffic flowing into the city from the north is routed through Kaiserstraße and Hofgartenstraße. At the level of the theater museum ( Hofgärtnerhaus ) a street branches off to Heinrich-Heine-Allee , the rest of the traffic was led to the Hochstraße (today the traffic is picked up by a tunnel). This began to rise shortly after the junction and reached its maximum height at Jan-Wellem-Platz .
To the east, the view opened up behind the Thyssen-Haus onto Gustaf-Gründgens-Platz with the theater . In the west you could see the Steigenberger Parkhotel and the northern end of the Königsallee in the background . In the foreground was Jan-Wellem-Platz, which was the central junction of Düsseldorf's local transport network before the city-center tunnel was opened. Later, the space appeared to be rather oversized and empty due to the decreased use. In the west as well as in the east there were glimpses of the most frequented shopping street in Düsseldorf, Schadowstraße . Behind this the elevated road branched in two directions. The eastern branch led into Immermannstrasse in the direction of the main station . The branch leading to the south directed the traffic back down onto Berliner Allee . Here the road passed the evangelical center of Düsseldorf, the Johanneskirche, in the west, and in the east the financial, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the stock exchange and the branch of the Deutsche Bundesbank .
Several tram lines of the Rheinbahn drove in places below the millipede . Some of them crossed in an east-west direction, but line 701 accompanied the full length of the Hochstraße and stopped at the Jan-Wellem-Platz stop at the level of Schadowstraße.
The other space directly below was used by pedestrians and stationary and flowing traffic.
Construction and data
The millipede had a total length of 536 meters. These were divided into the main arm (Hofgartenstrasse - Berliner Allee) with 391 meters and a width of 12.9 meters and the side arm (junction Immermannstrasse) with 145 meters and a width of 9.9 meters. It had a maximum width of 25 meters.
Ten Y-shaped supports made of steel under the three-lane area and 5 + 5 standard supports under the divided, each two-lane downhill area supported the superstructure made of prestressed concrete . With an overall height of 1.0 meters, the full panel construction had a standard support width of 25 meters, which can be described as very slim. In the cross-section you can see a double wave in the lower part of the construction. This was made possible by narrow, white-colored cheeks , which, when viewed from the side, gave an elegant, almost weightless impression.
The architect in charge of the centipede was Prof. Friedrich Tamms , who was then the city councilor for urban planning and previously head of the planning office. He also designed the so-called Düsseldorf bridge family, consisting of the Rheinknie- , Oberkasseler and Theodor-Heuss bridges .
Emergence
The time after the Second World War was marked by the reconstruction of German cities. In many places this was only partly done on the old floor plans, as the city planners took the opportunity to make changes to the urban structure despite great effort. So the long-discussed parallel street to Königsallee could finally be realized. It was part of an overall plan for the future traffic routing through Düsseldorf city center. To the north of the future Berliner Allee there was an elevated street, which, together with Thyssen-Haus, Schauspielhaus and Gustaf-Gründgens-Platz, would form an ensemble of business, culture and traffic and shape Jan-Wellem-Platz as a new hub in the city center.
However, the plans called substantial civil protest on the plan, since a larger part of the Jan-Wellem-Platz Hofgarten -Weihers filled in and at the Landskrone the traffic should be struck. The first objections to the Hochstraße were raised as early as the spring of 1958 when Tamms gave a lecture in which he presented his thoughts on the renovations. After the plans for the court garden became known, the objections intensified. The discussion culminated on January 15, 1961 with a demonstration of 10,000 people in front of the town hall , followed by a march to the Hofgarten. The protest was organized by the Vaterstadt Arbeitsgemeinschaft. These and other actions resulted in a change in the planning: a part of the courtyard garden was included in the construction work, but not to the extent originally planned.
Between 1954 and 1962, large parts of today's Berliner Allee and the adjacent buildings as well as the Thyssen House were built. Some houses that had not been damaged by the war had to give way to the Berliner Allee route. A demolition of the Johanneskirche was also planned; However, interventions by the Protestant Church prevented this. The millipede was built in 1961 and 1962. Construction began from all three ends at the same time, thus achieving a relatively short construction period.
demolition
The desire to redesign Jan-Wellem-Platz and Gustaf-Gründgens-Platz led to the area being redesigned with the so-called Kö-Bogen project , an idea by the Düsseldorf architects Ingenhoven Architects . After an architectural competition, the design by New York architect Daniel Libeskind was realized by 2013 , the area was redesigned according to an urban design by Molestina Architects and the landscape architects FSWLA.
A central concern of the new planning was to relocate car traffic to another level in order to obtain more attractive rooms and spaces. The existing road connections between Schadowstrasse and Elberfelder Strasse as well as Berliner Allee and Hofgartenstrasse should now be led through tunnels. The previous elevated road should also be relocated underground in the final phase of the project. In 2006, this measure was discussed controversially in the city's mass media .
The demolition of the listed millipede was permitted under monument law by a majority decision in the Düsseldorf city council . In this case, however, the state curator from the preservation office of the Rhineland Regional Council has raised technical concerns and applied to the North Rhine-Westphalian building ministry for a so-called ministerial decision. The building minister could now have forbidden the city to allow the building to be demolished if, after examining all the reasons presented, he had come to the conclusion that the conservation of the millipede did not conflict with predominant public interests. Such a decision can, however, be reviewed by an administrative court. The city of Düsseldorf should explain to the building minister by September 30th, 2011 why a public interest in the demolition of the centipede outweighs the interest of the monument protection. Two expert opinions were commissioned for this. The first was made by the expert for assessing the monumental worthiness of buildings by Geerd Dahm for the city of Düsseldorf. The second expert opinion was written by the engineering office Leonhardt, Andrä und Partner on behalf of the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Energy, Building, Housing and Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Dahms saw that the structure was not worthy of protection and Leonhardt, Andrä and Partners could not recommend that the bridge structure be preserved due to its condition.
The demolition was approved by the building ministry in June 2012, awarded by the city of Düsseldorf by the end of November at the latest and carried out between February 25 and April 2013.
Centipede farewell visit 2013
Millipede demolition with St. John's Church, April 7, 2013
Millipede demolition with Dreischeibenhaus, April 7, 2013
The area around the former millipede has been virtually free of traffic since February 2016. The elevated road and all of the surrounding streets were replaced by a tunnel system on almost the same route. Since the east-west route of the tram runs underground as the Wehrhahn line , only the trams in the north-south direction run here. This gives space for a traffic-calmed design in the middle of the city center.
A similar fate befell Bundesstraße 1 , which was laid out as an elevated road with a similar architecture and which was laid underground as a Rhine bank tunnel. With the Studienhaus Düsseldorf , another style icon of Düsseldorf sixties architecture that was listed in 1990 was demolished seven years later.
On November 26, 2010, a funnel-shaped hole with a volume of around 30 cubic meters was created under the elevated road in connection with the construction of the subway . It was feared that this could cause the millipede to sag, but this was not confirmed. The elevated road was closed as a precaution, but reopened in the late evening after the hole was filled with concrete.
Quotes
The following quotes document the way of thinking at the time of the creation of the millipede and the reasons for the associated interference with the old structure of the inner city:
"That is why it is important, when rebuilding our cities that were destroyed in the last war, to seize the (hopefully not recurring) opportunity to take account of a new development that cannot be stopped by anyone."
“It would therefore be unforgivable, especially with regard to the coming generations, not to use the few advantages that the destruction offers the cities for general recovery. Order has never been a disadvantage. It is the prerequisite for economic success and advancement. Taken as a whole, it increases the value of land by promoting business life and bringing it to greater development. "
Additional information
See also
- bridge
- Millipede (Bonn) - a structure in Bonn, which is also nicknamed millipede and is to be demolished in the medium term
- Bundesstraße 3 - In the Marburg area, this is also run through the inner city area as an elevated road
literature
- Roland Kanz and Jürgen Wiener: Architecture Guide Düsseldorf . Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-496-01232-3 .
Web links
- Page at brueckenweb.de
- Planning of the Kö-Bogen at duesseldorf.de
- On the pros and cons of the demolition
- Hochstrasse Jan-Wellem-Platz. In: Structurae
- The demolition as a time-lapse video
- Report on the demolition video
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.rp-online.de/region-duesseldorf/duesseldorf/nachrichten/unfaelle-baektiven-stadt-erstickt-im-stau-1.3358227
- ↑ Minutes "budget counseling 2002" - Minutes of the 24th public meeting of the Council of the 13th legislative period of the city of Dusseldorf , 13 December 2001
- ↑ Millipede may be demolished ; RP-Online from June 12, 2012
- ↑ RP-online: “Farewell to the millipede: symbol of the economic miracle disappears” , accessed on February 24, 2013
- ↑ Kemper's City-Makler GmbH Investigation of pedestrian frequency on Germany's shopping streets http://www.kempers.de/index.php?spath=627 (different content)
- ↑ Grassl Consulting Engineers Construction The Hochstraße Centipede project in the Grassl company archive ( Memento from March 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) , as of November 18, 2006
- ^ Fritz Leonhardt: Bridges - Aesthetics and Design . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-421-02590-8 , p. 135
- ↑ Diploma thesis on "Political actions against housing shortages and restructuring and the squatter movement in Düsseldorf from 1972 to today" Chapter 2.2 The "Tammsche Urban Planning" , November 17, 1995
- ↑ a b Düsseldorf archive portal | Düsseldorf city history The new construction of the city after the Second World War , as of November 17, 2006
- ^ NRZ-Online: Millipedes have no chance among politicians, September 20, 2006
- ^ Rheinische Post online: "City has a deadline of September 30th" , accessed on August 20, 2011
- ↑ Geerd Dahms: Report Düsseldorf Hochstrasse Jan-Wellem-Platz - Berliner Allee / Immermannstrasse, so-called "Centipede" , May 17, 2011 ( Memento from September 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 6.7 MB)
- ↑ Leonhardt, Andrä und Partner GmbH: Expert examination of the “Centipede” in Düsseldorf for its preservability and continued usability as a high car bridge and monument . May 31, 2012
- ↑ From January 7th, cars will drive through tunnels. Rheinische Post , December 18, 2012, accessed on December 18, 2012 .
- ↑ Millipede: Blocking lifted ( Memento of the original from November 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , November 26, 2010
Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 33 ″ N , 6 ° 46 ′ 58 ″ E
