Gerd Hänska

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Gerd Hänska (* 1927 in Berlin ; † 1996 in Berlin) was a German architect .

Gerd Hänska studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin . One of the professors who shaped Hänska was Peter Poelzig , in whose office he worked before he went freelance as an architect.

plant

The Hänskas plant comprises a large number of residential and public buildings for science and utilities. His best-known design is the building of the central animal laboratories of the Free University of Berlin , today a research facility for experimental medicine, called the mouse bunker (design 1967–1970, execution with interruptions in two construction phases 1971–1975 and 1978–1981). Two other science buildings by Hänska are also prominent: the Ernst Ruska building for electron microscopy at the Fritz Haber Institute (1972–1974) and the synchrotron facility BESSY 1 in Berlin-Schmargendorf (1980–1982). BESSY was the largest particle accelerator in Berlin - until operations there ceased. Thanks to the radical design of the mouse bunker, Hänska is considered a prominent representative of brutalism .

Overall, however, the work is varied and ranges from cautious planning in the early 1960s to postmodern, eclectic designs in the 1980s to building in existing buildings. However, Hänska's designs are particularly important in terms of expressive geometries. Cylindrical components, basic geometric shapes such as pyramids, inclined facades, acute angles and other dynamic shapes characterize Hänska's buildings from the 1970s. Typical features of his designs are beveled and staggered storeys.

Hänska was part of the planning group for the redevelopment area Kreuzberg Süd (SKS), together with Klaus H. Ernst, Bodo Fleischer , Herbert Stranz and Hans Wolff-Grohmann . Following the urban planning (1969–1975), the individual members of the SKS planning group built different areas of the planning area. Hänska and Fleischer's (1975–1977) row of houses stands along Böcklerstrasse, clearly visible from Böcklerpark and Urbanhafen .

As an employee in the Poelzig office, Hänska worked on the residential area Hansaviertel-Nord Lessingstrasse / Flensburger Strasse in Berlin-Tiergarten from 1960 . As a freelancer, he worked with his wife Magdalena until the design of the central animal laboratories. The Bruno Lösche Library in Moabit (1963–1964) and the State College for Medical-Technical Assistants in Berlin-Steglitz , Leonorenstrasse (1963–1965) , for example, fall into this phase . The Hänska architectural office was run by father Gerd and son Thomas for a long time. Gerd & Thomas Hänska were the authors of the designs in the 1980s and 1990s. Kurt Schmersow and Bernd Johae worked on the projects in the 1970s.

Hänska and Schmersow realized the residential development at Böcklerpark in collaboration with Bodo Fleischer's architectural office. A large area of ​​activity for the Hänska office was building supply and social facilities. Between 1966 and 1982, Hänska planned and built a total of eleven buildings on the site of the Karl Bonhoeffer Psychiatric Clinic . The office also planned several day care centers and teaching facilities. Outside Berlin, Hänska realized the animal laboratories of the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg (1979–1982). The information about the work comes from a list of works that Thomas Hänska submitted to the BDA-Berlin .

The controversial history of reception is typical of the work of a post-war modernist architect. The mouse bunker was already polarizing when it was completed. This is still the case today - although in addition to the radical design of the building, its use for animal experiments may also have contributed to this. Some buildings have already been demolished, such as the so-called small mouse bunker and the educational institution on Leonorenstrasse. However, only a few of Hänska's projects are really controversial. One example of the consistently positive response is the listed Ernst Ruska building. There rooms for technical equipment are placed separately as hermetic, windowless cylinders next to a slim building block. The buildings by Hänska that are most prominent in the Berlin cityscape include the residential buildings at Böcklerpark in Kreuzberg - they are a spatially complex mega-structure. Despite their location on the outskirts of the city, BESSY, Mäusebunker and Ernst-Ruska-Bau are important buildings of post-war Berlin modernism. In Wittenau, too - in the Rollberge settlement (1966–1968) and the Karl Bonhoeffer Nervenklinik (1966–1982) - Hänska realized a considerable number of buildings and made a substantial contribution to post-war Berlin architecture.

The Charité plans to demolish the mouse bunker in autumn 2020. The Berlin State Monuments Office recommends that the building be preserved.

Executed drafts (selection)

gallery

  • Animal research laboratory FU-Berlin, so-called mouse bunker

  • Housing estate at Böcklerpark

  • Ward block of the Karl Bonhoeffer Psychiatric Clinic

  • Ernst Ruska Building

  • BESSY I Berlin-Wilmersdorf

Web links

Commons : Gerd Hänska  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Oliver Elser, Philip Kurz, Peter Cachola Schmal (eds.): SOS Brutalism - An international inventory . Park Books, Zurich 1997, ISBN 978-3-03860-074-9 .
  • Rolf Rave, Hans-Joachim Knöfel, Jan Rave: Building in the 1970s in Berlin. G + H, Berlin 1994, ISBN 978-3-920597-40-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Personal communication from Thomas Hänska on March 14, 2017 in Berlin
  2. ↑ District Office Mitte of Berlin, Department of Urban Development, Building, Economy and Order, Urban Development Office Department of Urban Planning: Ordinance on the preservation of the urban character due to the urban design for the area "HANSAVIERTEL" in the Mitte district of Berlin. (PDF) Retrieved March 7, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Sunday, April 19, 2020, p. 5.
  4. ↑ Sunday, April 19, 2020, p. 5.
  5. ↑ Entry in the Berlin monument list
  6. ↑ Thorkit Treichel: The researchers go, the rats stay. The Charité mouse bunker is cleared due to asbestos contamination and then dismantled. In: Berliner Zeitung . June 2, 2010, accessed February 18, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Entry in the Berlin monument list
personal data
SURNAME Hänska, Gerd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect
DATE OF BIRTH 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 1996
Place of death Berlin