Petersen House
The Petersen house in Berlin-Dahlem was built by the architect Ernst Petersen as a home for his family. The property includes an atelier section intended for Petersen's wife and a component separated from the residential building with the former workrooms for Petersen and his employees.
Location and building
The property is in Berlin-Dahlem , Im Schwarzen Grund 27; Thielpark is on the opposite side of the street . The two-storey residential building, oriented in north-south direction, stands on an elongated rectangular floor plan with the eaves facing the street and has a gable roof that is lowered on the eastern side to the first storey and is therefore asymmetrical. The most striking feature of the street-side facade is the different number and arrangement of the windows on the ground floor and first floor.
To the south of the house is a wing for the sculptor's studio of Petersen's wife, Henkel's daughter Elisabeth. The narrow, rectangular studio wing is connected to the residential building by a covered seating area. Doors in both components enable the transition. The studio building has windows on the east and west sides; it is one-story, but ends in a small two-story tower in the south. The connection to the turret with the stairs to the upper floor is unusual for the time with its asymmetrical solution and anticipates later post-war ideas of the 1950s.
The main entrance to the house is on the eastern side, at the rear as seen from the street; It can be reached by a narrow path at the southern end of the property. Separated from the residential building by a narrow courtyard, to the east is the one-story building for Petersen's architecture office, which extends to the east, with an entrance on the south side. On the north side, two covered corridors and a wall add to the office building to form a patio . Petersen's former office is the only window in the office building with a view of the patio with the water lily pond. The former work rooms of his employees are on the opposite, southern, side of the building.
The garden was designed by Heinrich Wiepking-Jürgensmann . The garden is laid out on a plateau raised against the road and separated from it by a high wall. This resulted in a wide view from the house over the front garden and the Thielpark opposite, without the street - actually separating them - becoming visible.
History and meaning
The Petersen house was built in 1936 and 1937. With his house, the only thirty-year-old successful architect Ernst Petersen built one of the most elaborate contemporary residential buildings in Berlin.
The house combines features of the Stuttgart school with other design elements brought in by Petersen. At the time, it was unusual for an architect's house to accommodate living and working areas in separate components. The arrangement of the windows in the house, which contemporaries interpreted as being functionally determined, was unusual for the Stuttgart school and also for the time. The patio, which was also unusual as a design element in Europe at the time, was popular in California at the same time , but had already been used in a similar form by Holzmeister.
The Petersen house was renovated around the turn of the millennium. The landscape architecture firm Katrin Lesser restored the garden to its historical state.
The building and gardens are under monument protection.
literature
- Architect dr. Ernst Petersen, winner of the “Great State Prize 1937”. In: The beautiful home. 9th year, issue 7, April 1938, pp. 193–199.
- Frank Schmitz: Country houses in Berlin 1933–1945. Gebrüder Mann Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-7861-2543-3 , pp. 164-167, p. 336.
Web links
- Petersen garden monument, Katrin Lesser garden and landscape architect, Berlin (with photo series and bird's eye view of the property)
- Entries in the Berlin State Monument List:
Coordinates: 52 ° 27 ′ 18.1 ″ N , 13 ° 16 ′ 59.1 ″ E