GIZ house

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The GIZ house on Reichpietschufer

The GIZ-Haus is a building at Reichpietschufer  20 in the Berlin district of Tiergarten , which was built in 1912/1913 as a business and residential building for the Transatlantic Goods Insurance Company based on a design by the architect Paul Karchow . From 1939 the defense of the Wehrmacht under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris used the building, which is why it is known today as the Canaris House . But there is no evidence that Canaris himself resided in the house.

After renovation by the architect Elisabeth Rüthnick , the building was the seat of the capital city representative of the German Society for Technical Cooperation from 2001 and has been used by the successor company, the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) since 2011 . The GIZ building is listed as a monument .

Location and surroundings

The building, which is isolated on the Uferstrasse, is the only remaining building in the old business district between Potsdamer Bahnhof and Landwehrkanal , along with the Huth wine house . It was built as a corner house at the confluence of Schellingstrasse, which today runs further east, into what was then Königin-Augusta-Strasse (from 1933 to 1947: Tirpitzufer , since then: Reichpietschufer).

The house is surrounded on three sides by Urban Waters , a rainwater biotope covered with reeds , which was created according to plans by the architect Renzo Piano in 1997/1998 during the redesign of Potsdamer Platz as its southern end. To the east of the building is the southern entrance to the Tiergarten Spreebogen (TTS) tunnel . The Potsdamer Strasse building of the Berlin State Library , the Theater am Potsdamer Platz and the Debis House are also nearby .

architecture

Paul Karchow's design for the representative building dates back to 1910. The client was the Transatlantische Güterversicherungs-Gesellschaft, a company that specialized in the insurance of goods for overseas trade.

Bay window with reliefs on the corner bevel

The facade of the four-storey house with a fully developed, steep hipped roof is clad as stone and has a strong rustication on the ground floor . On the right of the facade facing the Reichpietschufer, a chiseled plaque commemorates the year of construction and the master: “Built in 1913 by architect Paul Karchow”.

On the street front there is a prominent central projection, which opens onto an arcade loggia on the third floor. The main entrance is flanked by two large pillars with composite capitals. The simple entablature on top of them used to carry a group of sculptures, but these have not been preserved. Another risalit is located on the eastern facade, which was formerly on Schellingstrasse. Both risalites are crowned by volute gables in the style of the North German Renaissance of the early 17th century.

The sloping corner of the house is marked on the 1st and 2nd floors by a two-story bay window , over which there is a loggia on the 3rd floor . The bay window is richly decorated with reliefs. Among other things, they show the heads of an Asian, an American and an African - a reference to the global business interests of the builders.

In the interior of the building, the entrance hall clad with green-brown ceramic tiles is particularly well preserved. On the left side there is a wall fountain, the ceramic figure of which, however, has not survived. Floral paintings in the wall panels were reconstructed after 1945. In addition, an elevator with a classically designed grille has been preserved.

Conversions

Damage from the Second World War was repaired in 1949. The southern gable was restored in a simplified manner. In the post-war decades , the house had different users. A renovation took place in 1960. At the beginning of the 1990s, the two-storey roof area was expanded.

Between 1999 and 2001, the building was renovated and converted for the new owner, the German Society for Technical Cooperation. The renovation, carried out according to plans by the architect Elisabeth Rüthnick, was carried out in compliance with the requirements of the monument protection. In addition to the two historical street facades, it was primarily the entrance hall and staircase that were reconstructed. In this way, the walls of the stairwell, which lay over dark wooden panels, were given their original strong yellow color.

In contrast, a large part of the interior of the building was redesigned and modernized. The ground floor can be variably divided for meetings with different numbers of participants by means of sliding walls made of maple wood. Rüthnick designed the inner courtyard of the house as a roofed, four- story atrium that opens onto Potsdamer Platz and is also used as a conference room. On the first floor, a gallery with a glass parapet runs around the atrium.

Wind mirror wall

Wind mirror wall by Olafur Eliasson on the north facade as seen from Lake Piano

Since 2001, a wind mirror wall by the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has adorned the north and west firewalls of the building. The installation consists of reflective stainless steel plates that are attached to a metal construction. The arrangement of the mirrors follows the floors and - at the back - staircases of the house. When the wind blows, the mirrors move and create dynamic reflections that connect the isolated building from the imperial era with its modern surroundings.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jürgen Tietz: GTZ House Potsdamer Platz Berlin. Stadtwandel-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-933743-72-9 , p. 3.
  2. ^ A b Jürgen Tietz: Dance of the fire walls. In: Der Tagesspiegel . September 5, 2001.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 20.46 "  N , 13 ° 22 ′ 16.68"  E