Glass Palace Augsburg
The Glass Palace is an industrial monument in Augsburg , which was put into operation in 1910 as the fourth and final stage of expansion (Plant IV: Aumühle) of the Mechanical Cotton Spinning and Weaving Mill (SWA) . It is located on Otto-Lindenmeyer- Strasse (formerly Gabenstrasse), named after the first major SWA company director . Production ended in 1988 when the company went bankrupt. The building was temporarily owned by the city of Augsburg and was sold to Ignaz Walter in 1999 . In order to refinance the renovation, the demolition of the weaving shed halls of the plant was permitted. This new building area is known today as Aumühle, which means that the former work name lives on.
Today the glass palace is mainly used for cultural purposes. It houses the Walter Art Museum , the H2 - Center for Contemporary Art and a branch of the State Gallery of Modern Art . There are also a large number of companies from various industries as tenants, such as baramundi software AG, Team23 GmbH, Dance Center No.1 and the Magnolia restaurant.
Building
Plant IV (Aumühle) was built in just nine months by the construction company Thormann & Stiefel AG, which later became part of Walter-Bau , according to plans by the Stuttgart architect Philipp Jakob Manz . It is an early German steel frame building . The spinning mill storey consists of five storeys with 13 window axes each. This large-scale facade with windows on all sides gave the spinning mill its name. Manz implemented the principle of the daylight factory in a multi-storey building. Extensive calculations by the architect on the incidence of light and light scattering preceded the design, after all, room depths of 45 meters were to be illuminated.
Several risalits are characteristic : the eastern staircase as a corner risalit, the dust tower to the south of it (not visible in the picture on the right) and the staircase dividing the northern front as the main accent with the three-storey sprinkler tower with bell dome and flagpole. This side appears asymmetrical, as there is no tower end on the right and the stairwell does not divide the building in the middle. The almost windowless western front is also striking. Both are the consequences of a structural expansion of the plant, which was already planned in the draft, but which was never carried out due to the economic development of the SWA.
In contrast to its predecessors (Works I – III), the Glass Palace is not located on any of the numerous canals . Hydropower was completely avoided here. The energy was supplied by a steam engine (built by MAN ) of initially 2500 HP (1850 kW), then 5000 HP (3700 kW). The machine drove the floor transmissions through the rope passage . In the 1950s, the system switched to individual electric drives.
The city of Augsburg contributed around 1 million euros to the cost of the renovation of the industrial monument, which was completed in 2006, and the Free State of Bavaria around 900,000 euros. The museum rooms are rented from the owner of the complex, the building contractor Ignaz Walter.
history
After its completion in 1910, the glass palace served as a cotton mill . At the end of the 1980s, the SWA did not react to the changes in the textile industry and did not realize that production abroad could be more cost-effective. In 1987 the city of Augsburg attempted to stabilize the company's economic situation and thus save jobs by purchasing the building for 14 million DM. However, bankruptcy in 1988 could not be prevented.
The building was sold to a real estate agent in 1989, but was taken back by the city after disagreements about how it was to be developed for retail purposes. Then there were various usage concepts for the industrial monument. An attempt by Mayor Peter Menacher to offer the building to Lothar-Günther Buchheim as a location for the Museum of Fantasy he was planning failed . In 1997, an association was founded in Augsburg to set up a textile museum, which brought the Glass Palace into discussion for this purpose.
In 1999 the building contractor Ignaz Walter bought the building from the city for 10.3 million DM. He wanted to design the property as a center for culture and media, although the ground floor for the textile museum remained under discussion for a long time until the city decided to set it up on the former site of the Augsburg worsted spinning mill (AKS). In 2002 the owner opened his private art collection in the new Walter Museum and the Noah Gallery moved into the building. The current usage concept was implemented in 2006.
literature
- Renz, Kerstin: Industrial architecture in the early 20th century. The office of Philipp Jakob Manz. Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-421-03492-3 .
- Wilhelm Ruckdeschel: Industrial culture in Augsburg. Settele, Augsburg 2004, ISBN 3-932939-44-1 .
- Günther Grünsteudel , Günter Hägele, Rudolf Frankenberger (eds.): Augsburger Stadtlexikon. 2nd Edition. Perlach, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-922769-28-4 .
- Bernd von Hagen, Angelika Wegener-Hüssen: Monuments in Bavaria. Volume VII.83. City of Augsburg. Lipp, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-87490-572-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of tenants , accessed on November 21, 2019
- ^ Renz: Industrial architecture in the early 20th century . P. 84
- ^ Ruckdeschel: Industrial culture in Augsburg . P. 97f
- ^ State Gallery of Modern Art - Glaspalast Augsburg. Bavarian State Ministry for Science, Research and the Arts, May 22, 2006, archived from the original on October 13, 2006 ; Retrieved December 28, 2012 .
- ↑ Million project in the Glaspalast , Welt am Sonntag, Munich, May 21, 2006
- ↑ Glaspalast - a chronicle , Augsburger Allgemeine, May 24, 2006
Coordinates: 48 ° 22 ′ 3.2 ″ N , 10 ° 55 ′ 10.7 ″ E