AfE tower
| AfE tower | |
|---|---|
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| AfE tower, seen from the exhibition tower, May 2013 | |
| Basic data | |
| Place: | Frankfurt-Westend |
| Construction time : | 1970-1972 |
| Abort : | 2013-2014 |
| Status : | blown up |
| Architectural style : | brutalism |
| Architects : | State new building department of the state of Hesse , S. Werner, H. Nitschke |
| Use / legal | |
| Usage : | University building of the Goethe University |
| Jobs : | 300 jobs 2500 students |
| Owner : | ABG Frankfurt Holding |
| Technical specifications | |
| Height : | 116.4 m |
| Floors : | 32 office floors, 24 library floors |
| Elevators : | 7th |
| Usable area : | 12,304 m² |
| Construction: | Reinforced concrete skeleton construction |
| Building-costs: | 60,000,000 DM |
| Height comparison | |
| Frankfurt am Main : | 23. ( list ) |
| Germany : | 42. ( list ) |
| address | |
| Address: | Robert-Mayer-Strasse 5–7, Senckenberganlage 13–17 |
| Post Code: | 60325 |
| City: | Frankfurt am Main |
| Country: | Germany |
The AfE tower was a 116 meter high- rise in Frankfurt am Main . It belonged to the Bockenheim campus of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University and until March 2013 housed the offices and seminar rooms of the social sciences , educational sciences and psychology departments . The abbreviation AfE means Department of Educational Science , but this department never moved into the high-rise because it was closed again before the building opened. The building had stood empty since May 2013 and was blown up on February 2, 2014. The One Forty West residential and hotel building will be erected in its place by 2020 .
history
At the beginning of the 1960s, planning and construction of the AfE tower began by two architects from the construction department of the State of Hesse. The construction had become necessary after the University of Education had been attached to the university in 1961 and the old Bettinaschule in Frankfurt's Westend had proven to be insufficient even as a temporary measure. The building lacked the planned functionality from the start. The AfE tower was completed in 1972.
The fact that education and social sciences moved into what was then the tallest building in Frankfurt was symbolic: The position of social science subjects in Frankfurt was underlined in this way. The move accompanied the upheavals in society and within the university that accompanied the 1970s.
The Fernuniversität Hagen had a distance learning center in the building, so that many external students also visited the building. It is estimated that up to 300 people, mainly scientific and administrative staff, worked in the building.
For reasons of inadequate fire protection, the seminar rooms from the 11th floor onwards were closed to events by University President Rudolf Steinberg in 2000 . After the modernization of fire protection, which included in particular the installation of a fire alarm system and electroacoustic systems for emergency alarms and the upgrading of an existing elevator to a fire brigade elevator , the ban on use was lifted. The costs for this modernization amounted to 1.1 million D-Marks , of which 700,000 Marks were raised by the State of Hesse .
On August 9, 2005, a university employee had a fatal accident in one of the elevators. After getting stuck she had alerted the porter via the emergency button, who came to her and opened both the door to the shaft and the inner cabin door. However, the cabin was already raised too high to get out. The porter asked the stuck person to wait until he had lowered the cabin from the engine room. However, since the woman was stuck a long time before the porter reached her, she may have panicked and tried to crawl out through the small opening between the ceiling and the elevator floor. Instead of reaching the floor of the floor, it slid under the cabin and fell into the shaft. The subsequent criminal proceedings against the porter were initially discontinued because he had asked the woman several times to stay in the cabin. In response to the complaint of the relatives of the casualty, the porter was charged with negligent homicide and sentenced to a fine of 1500 EUR. He was accused of not having opened the inner door as long as the cabin was not on the floor.
The building has been repeatedly targeted by vandalism . At the beginning of February 2013, unknown persons caused the largest vandalism damage in the building in the history of the tower, with damage of € 40,000.
The area around the AfE tower was sold to ABG Frankfurt Holding in 2011 . The move of the departments of the AfE tower to the Westend campus, originally planned for 2011 , has been postponed several times.
In the run-up to the 2011 International Motor Show , the automobile manufacturer Mercedes-Benz proposed to the university management that the Mercedes star should be attached to the building for advertising purposes for an amount of more than 100,000 euros , since the AfE tower is clearly visible from the trade fair. However, the city refused.
At the end of the 2012/2013 winter semester, the individual departments of the tower finally moved to the Westend campus.
In the run-up to the evacuation of the occupied former institute building of the Institute for English and American Studies, known since 2003 as the Institute for Comparative Irrelevance , which took place on April 22, 2013 , the AfE tower was secured preventively and has not been open to the public since then. At the end of April 2013, the last remaining department moved out.
building
The north side of the tower, which was for a short time the tallest building in Frankfurt, housed the library of social sciences and only seminar rooms with a floor height of one and a half. The south side consisted of offices at one floor height, which meant that there was a complicated system of staircases and mezzanines between the two halves of the tower, which made orientation much more difficult. Furthermore, many of the office floors with even numbers were not barrier-free . On the first floor of the building there were central lecture halls with daylight through large windows that could be reached directly from the ground floor via stairs. After construction, a cafeteria was set up on the top floor, but it was closed again due to lack of approval (this floor could not be reached with all elevators). The student-run TuCa (tower café) on the ground floor was cleared by the police at the instigation of the university administration in order to open a student union café ("C'AfE"). Since the beginning of 2007 the "TuCa [in exile]" has been on the 5th floor.
Seen from the fair
Interior staircase
Seminar room
As part of the skyline (2013)
The tower was originally designed for 2500 students. However, since the opening of the building, the number of students was many times higher, so that waiting times of more than 15 minutes had to be expected at the seven elevators. Most of the seven elevators only worked five, and the elevators regularly got stuck. The elevators of the group of 5 on the east side of the building, which switched to a very slow, jerky driving style before stopping at one floor, were recently in particularly poor condition. Unscheduled stops on floors that were actually shut down occurred as well as incorrect floor displays.
The tower was a target for student protests because, unlike most other university buildings, it could be completely cordoned off with relatively few helpers. The study conditions inside the tower, which have deteriorated dramatically in recent years, formed a further motive and the resulting tower blockades were an integral part of the regularly recurring protests at Goethe University.
construction
The 116 meter high reinforced concrete building had 165,000 cubic meters of enclosed space . There were two basement floors and 32 upper floors. The structure was founded on a square reinforced concrete floor slab with an edge length of 42.5 meters and a thickness of 3.6 meters. The upper standard floors with a storey height of 3.4 meters had square floor plans with an edge length of 33.4 meters. The facade consisted of precast lightweight concrete parts .
Demolition and demolition
The demolition began on July 8, 2013 and should take ten to twelve months. First of all, a complete evacuation and gutting should take place over two months . Then the gradual excavation should take place up to a height of 30 meters using a small excavator . The remainder of the construction was eventually to be demolished from the ground using long-front excavators .
In December 2013 it became known that the owner, ABG Frankfurt Holding , was aiming for a demolition , contrary to the original announcements , after the gutting and the pollution control had been completed. The reason for this change in planning were complaints from residents about the lengthy demolition. At the beginning of January 2014, an application for demolition was submitted to the municipal building inspectorate . The building supervision approved the demolition a few weeks later. It was scheduled for February 2, 2014, and February 16 as an alternative date.
A protection zone with a radius of 135 meters was designated around the building for the blast , which was cleared by the police and the THW on the day of the blast . The streets were blocked within a radius of 250 meters. Residents outside the protection zone in the cordoned-off area were asked to go to internal rooms. Adjacent structures were scaffolded in advance and covered with tarpaulin. The traffic on parts of the underground line D and the adjacent tram line was stopped during the demolition. The police expected around 40,000 onlookers.
Originally, the demolition of the roof of the nearby Westend Gate hotel was supposed to be triggered, but this procedure failed due to the expense allowance demanded by the owner Marriott . The demolition was finally carried out from the Senckenberg facility.
For the demolition, 950 kg of explosives were laid, which were filled into 1400 boreholes. The blasting company was supported by those authorized to blast from the THW and the Bundeswehr .
During the demolition, the concrete skeleton around the building core was first brought down. A few seconds later, the building core was separated by two blasts on the 5th and 17th floors, so that the upper, larger part fell towards the south, the lower towards the north. Water tanks with a total of 25,000 liters of water reduced the development of dust. The AfE tower was the tallest building to be blown up in Europe .
The television stations hr-fernsehen , n-tv and N24 broadcast the demolition live .
On March 19, 2014, a non-ignited explosive charge exploded on the site, which was triggered during demolition work. No one was injured in the incident, but the excavator operator and another worker suffered a shock. Three cars driving on the Senckenberganlage and the excavator itself were damaged by the concrete parts flying around.
- Pictures from the demolition
Before the blast, the splinter protection mats can be seen on the 17th floor.
Shortly after the explosive charge was detonated on the 17th floor. You can also see how the water fountains shoot up on the roof.
The outer skeleton and floors fall, the inner core is still there, 3 seconds after the previous image.
The inner core falls 2 seconds after the previous picture.
1 second after the previous picture.
View from WestendGate .
Seen from the north.
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See also
literature
- Krsto Lazarevic: Bye, bye ivory tower. After 40 years of existence, the AfE tower of Frankfurt's Goethe University is being torn down. Some students mourn the ugly reinforced concrete monster. Why actually? . In: Jungle World. No. 36, September 5, 2013. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
- Günter Burkart / Nikolaus Meyer (2013): Living and Studying in the Faculty of Education. Farewell to the Bockenheim campus. Frankfurt am Main: Dean's Office of the Faculty of Education.
- Minna-Kristiina Ruokonen-Engler / Lucas Pohl / Anna Dichtl / Jessica Lütgens / David Schommer (2015): Tower stories: Spatial experience and appropriation in the AfE tower . Münster (Westphalian steam boat).
Web links
- AfE tower in the SKYLINE ATLAS including numerous photos
- Blasting to the AfE tower artistically staged as a video
- AfE tower. In: Structurae
- AfE tower at thehighrisepages
- Pictures from the tower from the student photo competition 2008 ( Memento from September 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Photos from the 2006 tower blockade
- AfE tower at SkylineFFM.de
- Video of the demolition from the Marriott Hotel and from the Informatikhof of the Goethe University
- Mountain of rubble after blasting
- High-rise construction on the AfE site
Individual evidence
- ↑ AfE tower at CTBUH
- ↑ Article page no longer available , search in web archives: Turm adé in the January / February 2009 issue of the magazine of the "Turm-Fachschaften" (PDF file)
- ↑ Fire Protection Historical Museum could be closed from November 23, 2005 on faz.net
- ↑ a b UniReport 8 , from November 14, 2001, volume 34 PDF file, accessed on March 31, 2013
- ↑ fr-online: Death in the elevator shaft
- ^ Goethe University - Nazi comparisons outraged students by Hanning Voigts on fr-online.de on February 21, 2013
- ↑ See interactive map on archived copy ( memento of March 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ move the tower branches ... (information and discussion event) on 3 February 2009 Tuca (AfE Tower 501) Campus Bockenheim
- ^ Frankfurt and the companies - The star in front of the tower by Claus-Jürgen Göpfert on FR-Online from July 1, 2011
- ↑ Mercedes advertising rejected - No advertising on the AfE tower on FR-Online from July 5, 2011
- ↑ BSP ( Memento from January 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ University registration in Frankfurt: Student counseling behind barbed wire on spiegel-online.de from May 2, 2013
- ↑ Campus caretaker helper in need by Marek Fritzen on FR-Online from March 6, 2012
- ↑ Gert König , Andreas Berneiser: Structural solutions and building materials in high-rise construction using the example of the development of high-rise buildings in Frankfurt / Main . In: Josef Hegger, Wilfried Führer, Ulrich Knaack: Skyscrapers - Design, Plan, Construct . RWTH Aachen 1995, conference volume, ISBN 3-00-000193-X , p. 131
- ↑ Welcome to ABG FRANKFURT HOLDING ( memento from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 10, 2013
- ↑ Campus Bockenheim Demolition of the AfE tower begins By Claus-Jürgen Göpfert on fr-online from July 5, 2013
- ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: video in the Hessenschau from July 9, 2013 , accessed on July 10, 2013.
- ↑ ABG wants to blow up AfE tower and examines requirements In: Die Welt Kompakt from December 18, 2013
- ↑ "One blow and then there is peace" - AfE tower is to be blown up ( memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on hr-online.de from January 3, 2014
- ↑ The university tower is to be blown up ( memento from January 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) by Julia Lorenz on fnp.de, accessed on January 4, 2014
- ↑ POL-F: 140130 - 84 Bockenheim: Information from the police about the demolition of the AfE tower on February 2, 2014 . Police headquarters in Frankfurt am Main from January 30, 2014
- ↑ Former university tower in Frankfurt 40,000 onlookers expected to be blown up By Katharina Iskandar and Rainer Schulze on faz.net on January 6, 2014
- ^ AfE tower detonation from the street by Rainer Schulze on faz.net from January 30, 2014
- ^ Rainer Schulze: High-rise demolition This is how the Frankfurt University Tower is blown up. In: FAZ: NET . January 30, 2014, accessed February 9, 2014 .
- ^ Goethe University AfE tower AfE tower is to be blown up by Johannes Vetter on fr-online.de on January 8, 2014
- ↑ Late honors - AfE tower breaks European record by Stefan Röttele on welt.de on January 8, 2014
- ↑ Countdown to the demolition - The last hours of the AfE tower . ( Memento from January 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on hr-online, online on the Internet: January 31, 2014
- ↑ hessen extra Frankfurt holds its breath - the university tower is blown up . ( Memento from June 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on YouTube, online on the Internet: February 2, 2014
- ↑ - POL-F: 140319 - 202 Westend: Explosive devices detonated on the site of the former AfE tower - no injuries , March 19, 2014
Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 58 ″ N , 8 ° 39 ′ 5 ″ E