Brockhouse system
The Brockhouse system was originally a British, so-called modular system , with which over 80 schools, two universities as well as numerous town houses and smaller administrative buildings were built in Europe.
The system
It was a small-scale steel construction system originally developed by the British Brockhouse Steel Company. This founded a German branch in Dortmund in 1966. Its head, George Teller, commissioned the Dortmund architect Otto-Heinz Groth to develop a system variant for German statics , building law and fire protection requirements. In 1967, a separate German development department was set up and managed by the architect Günther Moewes . By 1976, over 50 schools and other buildings had been built using the system in Germany and Switzerland .
The idea was not to achieve the industrial series effect by constantly repeating the same buildings and floor plans as in prefabricated houses and type buildings (e.g. the Hamburg “Kreuzschulen”), but to develop a modular system that every architect can use to create every conceivable right-angled building up to could be realized on four floors. This high level of design flexibility was to be achieved through relatively small-scale design and differentiated size gradations, which at the same time wanted to reduce high transport weights and large lifting equipment costs and to overcome the monotony of the panel construction customary at the time . In order not to have to transport parts weighing tons over hundreds of kilometers over the highways like other building systems, the production of the series parts was done decentrally by local manufacturers. These goals should later be assessed as an early ecological approach and lead to the concept of the "gentle" building system.
Well-known buildings
Buildings that have become particularly well-known in Great Britain are the University of York and the University of Bath and, with the German system, the German School in Brussels (architect Karl Otto , Berlin), the “Barkenberg School” in Wulfen (architect Otto Groth, Dortmund) and the community center Weiskirchen (architects Novotny and Mähner , Frankfurt).
Modular systems had to struggle with various difficulties in Germany. In schools at that time z. B. moveable partitions required in order to be able to meet constantly changing space requirements. The permissible ceiling loads, however, did not allow the variable walls to weigh sufficiently to ensure adequate airborne sound insulation.
development
At the end of the seventies, the order situation for modular systems collapsed for various reasons. There was a certain saturation in the school building. The large-scale comprehensive schools, which had temporarily come into fashion, ran counter to the idea of lightness, small-scale design and low transport weights and sizes. Individual bad systems from city and state building authorities had brought system construction into disrepute. Above all, however, architectural fashion developed back in the direction of restoration, “artist architect”, postmodernism and deconstructivism. The rational, science-based solution of pending, generally applicable problems took a back seat. This also applied to the first beginnings of ecological building in the early 1980s. Only towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century can a return to systematics and rationality be observed in some areas of architecture.
literature
- G. Moewes: The Brockhouse System . In: db 2/68 (Deutsche Bauzeitung), Stuttgart. DBZ 3/69 (German construction magazine), Gütersloh
Individual evidence
- ^ The time of January 22, 1965. Retrieved May 24, 2012