House Ruhrort

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House Ruhrort (thousand-window house) in April 2014

The Ruhrort house , popularly known as the thousand- window house, was built from 1922 as an administrative building for the coal and steel company Rheinische Stahlwerke in Duisburg - Ruhrort , Ruhrorter Straße 187, on the filled-in part of the shipyard . The uniform rows of windows gave the house its nickname, in fact it has 510 windows in total.

Building history

As early as 1920 the planning for the new building of the headquarters of the Rheinische Stahlwerke AG started because the workforce had grown considerably. After the architect Heinrich Blecken, as the company's construction director, had drawn up a structural concept and the property in Ruhrort had been purchased, a preliminary building permit was applied for and granted in October 1921. A short time later, the company launched a limited architecture competition to design the facade of the new building, to which the then prominent architects Peter Behrens , German Bestelmeyer , Paul Bonatz , Wilhelm Kreis and Emil Fahrenkamp were invited for a fixed fee. Since not all of the drafts submitted are known, it remains unclear whether the implementation plans drawn up by Blecken in 1922 were based on this or whether they represented a completely independent draft. In terms of style, the architecture belongs to Brick Expressionism .

The earthworks began in January 1922, and the laying of the foundation stone was celebrated in December 1922 . Due to inflation and the occupation of the Ruhr there were considerable difficulties, and various changes to the plan during the construction are also documented. The shell of the building was not completed until September 1925 . This was followed by the expansion of the main entrance, the vestibule and the skylight hall. When the Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG was founded in 1926, the Rheinische Stahlwerke AG brought a large part of its operations and facilities into this new group, including the not yet completed administration building. Due to the rationalization associated with the merger, Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG had no use for the new building. The construction work for the internal expansion of the office space therefore only began two years later when there was a need for more space, but was initially limited to a small part of the building. The interior was not completed until 1936, when most of the office space was rented to external companies and public institutions.

Renovation and use

In 1992 the vacant building, now a listed building, was acquired by the Haus-Ruhrort-Gesellschaft, whose sponsors are the Duisburg housing association Gebag and the Haniel company . By 1993 it was completely renovated and modernized according to plans by the architect Harald Deilmann . The steel frame construction made it possible to remove all interior walls and to install office space according to modern standards. The two originally open courtyards were provided with glass roofs in 1996; the resulting atria are planted with greenery and have artificial watercourses or games.

For many years the tax office and local radio were the tenants. The rooms were then rented to various companies, restaurants and an eye clinic.

literature

  • Brigitte Ingeborg Schlüter: Administrative buildings of the Rheinisch-Westfälische steel industry 1900–1930. Dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , Bonn 1991, pp. 300–319. (with dates and other details of the building history)
  • Working group Arch Ruhrgebiet, City of Duisburg (Hrsg.): Architecture in Duisburg. Wohlfarth-Verlag, Duisburg 1994, ISBN 3-874-63214-8 , p. 72 f. (with reference to planning by Harald Deilmann)

Web links

Commons : Thousand Window House  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 27 ′ 1.9 ″  N , 6 ° 44 ′ 20.5 ″  E