Hydrangea tile
The hydrangea tile is the building block of a special building facade , named after the Horten department store . It was designed around 1961 by Helmut Rhode as a door handle (a stylized "H") conducive to corporate identity for the Horten main administration building he was planning. Inside the company, people talked about the honeycomb facade , for example in the employee magazine The Insight .
A tile concept was used earlier in the Dutch department store De Bijenkorf by Marcel Breuer . The installation of the honeycomb facades was completed in the late 1970s; The trigger was increased resistance from the cities, for example during the renovation of the branch in Regensburg in 1972 and the construction of the branch in Nuremberg at the same time.
Formal layout
The basic dimensions of a tile are 50 × 50 cm, the depth is approx. 15–20 cm (there are at least two versions). Initially, the tiles were made of ceramic, later of aluminum. The shape corresponds to a stylized H for hoarding .
The ornamental facade, which covers the building almost completely, makes no reference to the urban context and makes the internal structure and scale of the building impossible to read. Since the building floor plans can be designed very flexibly with this facade system and with a maximum of floor space by avoiding windows, this facade system was very popular in the construction of new department stores. This was also an advantage when converting or expanding existing buildings, since planning no longer had to take into account any existing facade structures or adapt extensions to the existing building if the entire building was then clad with the tile. Since the tiles offer nesting opportunities for pigeons, they were mostly covered with a wire mesh.
literature
- Hocquél, Wolfgang; Kellermann, Friedel, Pfeifer, Hans-Georg; Schreiber, Mathias; White, Klaus-Dieter; Zeidler, Eberhard: Architecture for the trade. Department stores, shopping malls, galleries. History and Current Trends . Basel / Boston / Berlin 1996.
- Irrgang, Thomas: German department store buildings. Development and current status of their operating, construction and appearance . Dissertation. Berlin 1980.
- Jaeggi, Annemarie (ed.): Egon Eiermann (1904–1970). The continuity of modernity . Ostfildern-Ruit. 2004. Catalog for the exhibition of the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe from September 18, 2004 to January 9, 2005.
- Langenberg, Silke: Buildings of the boom years. Architectural concepts and planning theories from the 1960s and 1970s. Diss. Dortmund 2006.
- Schramm, Christian: German department store buildings. Origin, typology and development tendencies. Aachen 1995.
- The insight (magazine for employees of Horten companies) issue 53 page 12: "Our photo shows the imposing honeycomb facade of the Horten department store being built in Duisburg-Hamborn"
- The insight (magazine for employees of the hoarding companies) Issue 1/67 page 16: "At the end of this restructuring phase, our company will only have state-of-the-art hoarding full department stores whose common feature will be, with a few exceptions, the ceramic honeycomb facade ."
swell
- ^ Architecture for commerce: department stores, shopping centers, galleries; History and current trends; with a work report by the architects RKW, Rhode, Kellermann, Wawrowsky + Partner: Architecture for retail . Ed .: Birkhäuser. Birkhäuser, Basel 1996, ISBN 3-7643-5268-X , p. 80 .
- ↑ Silke Langenberg: Buildings of the boom years. Architectural concepts and planning theories from the 1960s and 1970s. Diss. Dortmund 2006. p. 51.
- ↑ Last battle . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1980 ( online ).
- ↑ https://www.nordbayern.de/region/nuernberg/karstadt-schliesst-in-nurnberg-was-passiert-mit-dem-gebaude-1.10202463