Bosch area (facades)

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Bosch factory building, Stuttgart, Forststrasse 7–9, corner of Seidenstrasse, 1913.

The facade of the former factory building of the Robert Bosch GmbH in the Bosch Areal in Stuttgart are partially preserved in original condition. The buildings were built between 1909 and 1913 by the architects Heim & Früh in reinforced concrete, initially in the Art Nouveau style with glaze clinker brick, from 1912 with exposed concrete facades in the neoclassical style.

The listed building ensemble of the Bosch area was renovated, modernized and supplemented between 1998 and 2001 by the architects Roland Ostertag and Johannes Vornholt while retaining the historical facades.

Bosch area

  • Site plan of the Bosch area, 2017.

Note: For the year of construction, see #Location plan 1919 .

Robert Bosch founded his "workshop for precision mechanics and electrical engineering" in a rear building at Rotebühlstrasse 75 B in 1886 . The invention of the magneto for combustion engines gave the young company a stormy development, so that Bosch was forced to expand its manufacturing capacities. In 1901 he had his first factory built by the architects Beisbarth & Früh at Hoppenlaustraße 11 on the site of today's Liederhalle congress center . This factory was the first reinforced concrete building in Stuttgart. All other factories were also built in reinforced concrete. In 1906 Robert Bosch had his second factory, a “simple back building”, built by the architects Heim & Früh on Breitscheidstrasse 4a on the site of today's CinemaxX cinema.

Between 1909 and 1913 Heim & Früh built six more reinforced concrete buildings in the Bosch area:

  • Between 1909 and 1913 three buildings were built on the corner of Forststrasse and Seidenstrasse, the facades of which were clad with glazed bricks.
  • The three buildings at Breitscheidstrasse 4-8 were erected between 1910 and 1913, the outer walls of which were designed as fair-faced concrete facades for reasons of material justice.

Facades

Glaze clinker

  • Forststraße 7 building, elevation, 1909.

In 1909 the buildings Forststraße 7 and Forststraße 9 were built, in 1911 the building Seidenstraße 20 . The three buildings show the influences of Art Nouveau and the “slowly emerging neoclassicism ”. The facades of the four-storey buildings are characterized by a symmetrical and factually strict basic structure. The continuous, profiled wall pillars extend to the cornice and enclose 3 to 7 axes of multiple coupled windows. The windows are equipped with recessed parapets and are flanked by continuous pillars. The single or double central axes end with an additional storey or a roof house.

For aesthetic reasons, the bare concrete facades were clad with glaze bricks and grouted in white. The stones were sourced from what is now Ullersdorf am Queis , Poland , and are characterized by a shiny surface and a play of colors that changes from dark red to purple. The wall pillars were designed as semicircular, profiled blinding pillars with a base and a capitol-like finish using geometric ornamental shapes or women's head reliefs. The parapet fields were decorated with area-filling geometric decorative reliefs.

During the reconstruction of the Forststraße 9 building, which was badly damaged in World War II, the restoration of architectural details was dispensed with and the glazed stone facade was replaced with simple white plaster. The facades of the buildings Forststraße 7 and Seidenstraße 20 were repaired during the renovation of the Bosch area by “carefully repairing damaged stones and replacing destroyed stones”.

Exposed concrete

  • From left: Breitscheidstrasse 8, 6 and 4 building, 2017.

From 1910 to 1913, the three buildings at Breitscheidstrasse 4–8 were built in the neoclassical style. Originally, these buildings on the street side were also to be clad with glaze bricks. The architects and the client were "not completely" satisfied with this exterior wall treatment:

“Part of the construction is covered by the bricks, which are used to simulate something that does not correspond to the facts; the viewer has the impression that he is looking at a building made of bricks, while in reality it is a reinforced concrete structure that has only been clad with bricks. "

  • Breitscheidstrasse 4 building, 1912.

The architects and builders therefore decided to avoid this “false pretense” in the new houses and to “build them entirely in reinforced concrete” in order to preserve the fairness of materials. The facades of the five-story buildings have a symmetrical and strictly factual basic structure like the glaze-clad houses. The structure is determined in the vertical by continuous wall and window pillars and in the horizontal by the wide bands of the window parapets. The 3–4 window axes include three to five-part windows. Two of the houses have a two-story hipped roof with wide dormer windows, and the former administration building at Breitscheidstrasse 4 is crowned by three one-story roof houses.

The three buildings were equipped with the first exposed concrete façades in Württemberg, but not without concessions to conventional aesthetic traditions. After the concrete had hardened, the surfaces of the facades were worked on by stonemasons so that they were given a stone-like appearance. Houses 4 and 6 were artistically decorated with this in mind:

  • The outer wall pillars are finished with geometric decorative shapes and were fluted in building 6 .
  • The recessed window parapets of House 4 are decorated with small rectangular or oval medallions.

The facade of the recently built house at Breitscheidstrasse 8 was not decorated with any decoration.

literature

Older literature

  • Robert Bosch factory building in Stuttgart. In: Architektonische Rundschau, Volume 27, 1911, Issue 1, Plate 5, Page VI.
  • Pictures from the past. In: Der Bosch-Zünder: Werkzeitschrift der Robert Bosch AG, volume 1, 1919, pages 57–62, 174–179 (company history).
  • Jakob Früh: The buildings of Robert Bosch A.-G. in Stuttgart and Feuerbach. In: Der Bosch-Zünder: Werkzeitschrift der Robert Bosch AG, Volume 2, 1920, pages 46–54.
  • Site plan and floor plan of the main factory of Robert Bosch A.-G. In: Der Bosch-Zünder: Werkzeitschrift der Robert Bosch AG, volume 1, 1919, page 51.
  • Fridolin Rimmele: New Bosch factory building in Stuttgart: Architects: K. Bauräte Heim & Früh. In: Baumeister: Zeitschrift für Architektur, Volume 10, 1912, Issue 1, Pages 8-11.
  • Alfred Widmaier: Robert Bosch's electrical engineering factory in Stuttgart. In: Journal of the Association of German Engineers, year 56, 1912, pages 986–995.

Newer literature

  • Christine Breig: The construction of villas and country houses in Stuttgart 1830-1930. An overview of the various implementations and changes in the villa building type in Stuttgart. Stuttgart 2004, pages 523-524, 526 (short biographies of the architects Heim & Früh).
  • Christa von Buchwald-Hallinan; Sonja Folscheid: The Bosch area. Stuttgart: Association for the Promotion and Preservation of Historic Buildings, 1998, pdf .
  • Gabriele Kreuzberger: Factory buildings in Stuttgart: their development from the middle of the 19th century to the First World War. Stuttgart 1993, pages 253-269.
  • Rüdiger Krisch: The Bosch site. In: Bauwelt. Gütersloh, year 93, 2002, issue 9, pages 30–35.
  • Roland Ostertag (editor): The Bosch area. Stuttgart: Krämer, 2004.
  • Werner Skrentny (editor): Stuttgart on foot. 20 district forays through history and the present , Tübingen: Silberburg, 2011, pages 111–113.
  • Martin Woerner; Gilbert Lupfer; Ute Schulz: Architectural Guide Stuttgart. Berlin 2006, number 26.

Web links

Commons : Bosch-Areal Stuttgart  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ #Ostertag 2004 , pp. 52–73.
  2. ↑ The architectural community of Karl Heim (1859–1944) and Jakob Früh (1867–1937) existed between 1902 and 1913 ( #Breig 2004 ).
  3. ↑ # Kreuzberger 1993 , pages 253-258.
  4. ↑ #Kreuzberger 1993 , page 258th
  5. ↑ # Kreuzberger 1993 , pages 258-264, 268-269, #Ostertag 2004 , pages 77-78, # Buchwald-Hallinan 1998 , pages 18-21, 27.
  6. ↑ # Buchwald-Hallinan 1998 , page 21.
  7. ↑ #Ostertag 2004 , page 62.
  8. ↑ # Early 1920 , page 48.
  9. ↑ # Kreuzberger 1993 , pages 264-267, #Ostertag 2004 , pages 78-79, # Buchwald-Hallinan 1998 , pages 24-26.

Coordinates: 48 ° 46 ′ 47.2 "  N , 9 ° 10 ′ 2.1"  E