AMCO factory expansion building

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East view with the three-storey main building, on the right the originally single-storey porch with a subsequent addition, in front of it the rails of the former railway line (2019)

The AMCO factory expansion building is a factory building of the wood processing company August Müller & Co. (AMCO) erected in Kirchbrak in Lower Saxony in 1925 . It was designed by the architects Walter Gropius and Ernst Neufert and was their first commission after the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau .

description

Floor plan of the factory building on the ground floor
West view of the factory building with tower (2019)

The three-storey factory building with partial basement is 26 meters long and 16 meters wide in its original form and represents a so-called “stepped head building”. It is over 14 meters high and has a flat roof made of hollow blocks that can be walked on . The building extends in a north-south direction. A single-storey porch 20 meters long and five meters wide is attached to the north side. The building is a steel frame construction with storey heights of 4 meters each. The floor plan has a grid of 7.6 meters × 5 meters and is structured by six columns. The non-load-bearing gable walls are made of masonry . The eastern building line with a total length of 46 meters lies along the disused railway line of the former Vorwohle-Emmerthaler Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft .

On the western side of the building there is a tower with a staircase and elevator. On the west and east sides, each of the three storeys is illuminated on the entire front through a 3.3 meter high ribbon of windows, which form three rows of tall rectangular and iron-framed windows painted in blue. Originally the factory extension building had a white facade typical of classical modernism , which is now painted yellow.

Apart from the front to the former railway line, the building is surrounded on the other three sides by other existing buildings belonging to the company. The later additions and modifications did not change the basic character of the building significantly. In the 1930s, the single-storey front building was increased by one storey and an extension to the south with a factory building of the same style.

The three floors of the factory extension building originally served the wood processing plant. Today the building is used as a warehouse.

history

AMCO company history

AMCO premises in Kirchbrak, in the background the yellow AMCO factory extension building (2019)

The company August Müller & Co. (AMCO) emerged from the Oberen Mühle in Kirchbrak, which August Müller, from neighboring Breitenkamp, ​​leased in 1849. His nephew of the same name, August Müller, took over the watermill on the Lenne in 1878 and used it to drive circular saws for woodworking. This resulted in a woodworks with 250 employees, which contributed significantly to the prosperity of the Kirchbrak community and its residents. In the mid-1920s, the company participated in the upturn in the German economy through the Dawes Plan . As a result, the order situation improved to such an extent that there was an urgent need to expand the production facilities, which in 1925 led to the construction of the factory extension building. In 1987 the company was realigned and in 2016 it was taken over by a wood processing company from Süderbrarup , with the Kirchbrak location continuing to operate under the name AMCO.

Factory expansion

In 1925, the entrepreneur August Müller, as the owner of AMCO, commissioned the Walter Gropius construction studio to build an extension, which the increased production made necessary. The contact came about through the mediation of Carl Benscheidt from nearby Alfeld , for whom Gropius had built the Fagus factory as a modern industrial building in 1911 . It is assumed that August Müller, as a supporter of the Mazdaznan movement, chose Gropius as the architect, as the movement through Johannes Itten briefly shaped the Bauhaus. The construction studio Walter Gropius worked out a detailed cost estimate and wrote out the construction work, whereupon five local and foreign companies applied. The offers amounted to sums between 70,000 and 100,000  Reichsmarks and a construction time between 54 and 80 days.

Construction work

The contract for the construction work was awarded to the reinforced concrete construction company Robert Grastorf GmbH in Hanover - Wülfel , which carried out the work with around 50 employees and was also responsible for the static calculations. She had indicated the shortest construction time and appeared to the construction studio Walter Gropius to be sufficiently experienced in dealing with reinforced concrete construction , since she had built the gatehouse of the Fagus factory. The cost of the new building was estimated at 75,870.61 Reichsmarks. The time schedule for the construction was initially set for July 9, 1925, when construction started and completion by September 9 of the same year (“unless strikes, force majeure, fire, etc. prevent work [...] in the event of late completion the construction management is authorized to levy a contractual penalty of mk 100 marks (…) for every day […] ”). On July 18, 1925, Walter Gropius' studio submitted an application to the Holzminden building authority for an “immediate, provisional building permit” for the “August Müller & Co. Kirchbraack new factory building”. The additional plastering and masonry work was carried out by the master mason Ferdinand Lieben in Scharfoldendorf . The result was a three-storey solid building with a clear passage height of 4 meters as well as a single-storey porch and a basement of the stairwell including the elevator shaft. Architecturally, the complex should adhere to the following specifications: “simple shapes according to the purpose, external plaster as an adaptation to the surrounding farmhouses, windows made of iron, painted in color”. The shell was completed on October 26th, 1925, and the building inspection by the Holzminden building authority took place on October 31st, 1925. After the operating license was granted on April 20th, 1926, after 10 months of planning and construction, the production of individual furniture parts in the extension building could begin become.

Construction defects

Shortly before the end of the two-year guarantee period, serious construction defects occurred in early 1928 due to cracks in the factory extension building; it was shifted a few centimeters horizontally. The architect Ernst Neufert had his Weimar colleague Max Weber draw up an expert report on the cause of the damage. He came to the conclusion that the cause was to be found in the improper installation of iron girders in the roof structure. According to Neufert, the construction company employed inexperienced local craftsmen to make up for the cost reduction in the quotation. The construction company, in turn, blamed the construction defects on the architects Gropius and Neufert because of insufficient construction management. They completed the construction over the phone and letters and were only there every 30 days. In fact, Gropius and Neufert were involved in countless construction projects during the construction phase and were busy with reorganizing the Bauhaus in Dessau, so that the factory construction in Kirchbrak was only marginal. Ultimately, the construction company fixed the construction defects.

Monument protection

The factory extension building is one of the few factory buildings designed by Walter Gropius in what is now Lower Saxony. Other buildings of this type include the Fagus factory in Alfeld, which has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a storage building for an agricultural machinery factory in Alfeld from 1924 and a paper factory in Gronau from 1923. As a Gropius building, the AMCO factory expansion building was only made public through a press report by NDR announced in March 2019. The report was in connection with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in 1919. As early as 2009, wants a citizen of Kirchbrak the factory building of the monument authority of the district Holzminden reported as a possible legitimate structure. The district did not respond. The Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation did not include the building as a monument in the Lower Saxony list of monuments in 2019 . The Authority aims since a protected status , which had not yet been 2020th

Architectural-historical classification

Detail of a ribbon of upright rectangular and iron-framed windows
Ribbons of windows on the east side

Architectural historians rate the AMCO factory extension building as follows: "... its exterior still demonstrates the clear language of an ostensibly functional industrial architecture, which, however, could not write architectural history." Furthermore, the factory building was developed from the same spirit as the Bauhaus building in Dessau , which can be seen on the basis of this the construction principles show. This applies in particular to the dissolution of the longitudinal walls by means of horizontal ribbon windows in glass. This continuous glazing of the building resembles the Bauhaus building in Dessau that was erected at the same time and is characteristic of Gropius' architectural style. The artistic exaggeration of factory architecture that he called for is not recognizable here. According to Reiner Zittlau from the Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, Gropius put his stamp on industrial construction, but it was not a key building of the time.

literature

  • Karin Wilhelm: Walter Gropius industrial architect (=  writings on the history of architecture and architectural theory ). Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-322-93810-7 , p. 107–115 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-322-93810-7 ( limited preview in the Google book search - plans for the building with floor plan from p. 270, limited view, also dissertation at the University of Marburg).
  • Hartmut Probst, Christian Schädlich : Walter Gropius. The architect and theorist, catalog raisonné. Berlin, 1986, part 1, p. 286.
  • Bernd Krämer: The architect Walter Gropius in the Leine and Weserbergland. In: Yearbook of the district of Holzminden. Volume 10/11, 1992/1993, pp. 75-87.
  • Ulf Meyer, Hans Engels: Walter Gropius, Ernst Neufert. Factory expansion August Müller & Co. / August Müller & Co. Production Hall, Kirchbrak. In: Bauhaus: 1919–1933. Prestel, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7913-3613-4 , pp. 38-39.
  • Wilhelm Klauser: BEL - "There is a Gropius" in: Bauwelt 16 from August 7, 2018 ( online )

Web links

Commons : AMCO Factory Extension Building  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sensation: Gropius-Bau discovered in Kirchbrak In: Deister- und Weserzeitung of March 28, 2019.
  2. ↑ Factory history of August Müller & Co.
  3. ↑ Amco Möbelindustrie from Kirchbrak at Wer zu Whom company database.
  4. ↑ Martina Fuchs: Amco has a new owner. In: Deister and Weser newspaper from July 4, 2016.
  5. ^ Karin Wilhelm: Walter Gropius. Industrial architect . Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-322-93810-7 , p. 107–115 , here pp. 108–109 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  6. ↑ Website NDR.de/Kultur , accessed on April 4, 2019
  7. ↑ Long forgotten: Gropius building discovered in Kirchbrak. In: Daily Anzeiger Holzminden of March 27, 2019
  8. ↑ Monument protection should save Gropius-Bau in Kirchbrak on ndr.de from July 9th, 2020
  9. ↑ See literature: Bernd Krämer: The architect Walter Gropius in the Leine and Weserbergland. Pp. 84-85.
  10. ^ Karin Wilhelm: Walter Gropius industrial architect. P. 115.
  11. ↑ Ulf Meyer: Bauhaus 1919–1933. Prestel, Munich / Berlin / London / New York 2006, ISBN 3-7913-3613-4 , p. 38.

Coordinates: 51 ° 57 ′ 46.8 "  N , 9 ° 34 ′ 47"  E