Congress garage
The congress garage is a domed structure built in 1924 at Kongressstrasse No. 23 in Aachen .
history
The congress garage was built in 1924 as a "truck hall" for the coal wholesaler Hubert once. The original plans provided for an expansion of the entire area with garages, coach houses, stables and a residential building on the street front. In the end, only single-storey garages were built alongside the dome along the property line. As early as 1927 the coal trading company was known as the Congress-Groß-Garage ; this use, including various workshops, continued through several changes of ownership until the early 1970s. Since the rest of the property was rebuilt in the mid-1970s with a condominium complex, the large garage has served as a private parking garage.
architecture
The core of the congress garage consists of a nine-sided dome structure with a span of approx. 24 m. Another flat and glazed dome is raised on top of the exposed dome ribs. The central pressure rings of the two domes continue upwards in a lantern. The concrete structure, the ribs of which were prefabricated not far from the construction site and then joined using simple means, was carried out by the Düsseldorf branch of the construction company Wayss & Freytag . Its director, Karl Walter Mautner, was also a lecturer in reinforced concrete construction at the Technical University of Aachen .
The facade, which is largely invisible today, consists of two round stair towers that flank the original driveways and should open up the wing structures that were never erected. The Aachen architect and university professor Theodor Veil designed the facades together with Otto Nauhardt, alternating between brickwork and exposed concrete structures to create an expressionist overall impression. Inside the proximity to is Centennial Hall in Wroclaw (1912/1913) and the "Glass House" by Bruno Taut on the Werkbund Exhibition (1914) overlooked.
monument
As early as the early 1970s, the former congress garage was viewed as worthy of monument and later placed under monument protection. It not only reminds of the first decades of reinforced concrete construction, but also of the not insignificant automotive history of Aachen, with which it is connected as an early form of a parking garage. Unfortunately, neither use nor awareness currently corresponds to its historical significance.
literature
- Hartwig Schmidt : The automobile hall of the coal wholesaler once in Aachen. In: Concrete and reinforced concrete construction. 101st year 2006, issue 1, pp. 61–64.
Web links
- Dates and location on structurae.de
- Brief description on the pages of the Open Monument Day on September 13, 2015, page 55
Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 19.9 ″ N , 6 ° 6 ′ 15.7 ″ E