Lindencorso

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The original Lindencorso, seen from the central promenade of the " Linden ", November 1972

The Lindencorso is a building at the intersection of Unter den Linden / Friedrichstrasse in Berlin district of Mitte .

history

The Café Bauer was originally located at the intersection. It was destroyed in World War II. During the GDR era, plans from 1961 gave rise to the idea of ​​expanding Friedrichstrasse to a 60-meter-wide pedestrian zone .

By 1966, the Unter den Linden hotel was built on the boulevard Unter den Linden at the corner of Friedrichstrasse, and the Lindencorso restaurant complex opposite , based on plans by an architects' collective under Werner Strassenmeier . Then the widening of Friedrichstrasse was dropped. With this, the boulevard Unter den Linden on Friedrichstrasse had inadvertently been given a square square and the two buildings appeared like its peripheral development.

In 1993, with the demolition of the Lindencorso, the restoration to the historical street layout began, which was completed after 2006 with the demolition of the hotel "Unter den Linden" and the construction of the Upper Eastside Berlin . The new building built between 1994 and 1997 according to plans by the architect Christoph Mäckler was named after its predecessor. The new building cost around 500 million DM. The builders were the French investor SGE and the Berliners David Katz and Klaus Marks.

The facade consists of natural stone plinths that were built using traditional craft methods. This makes the building one of the few new buildings in Germany that does not have a stone slab facade. Mäckler even assumes that it will be the first traditionally manufactured building since the Second World War. Elm limestone from the Elm was used for the facade .

For the opening of the building, works of art by Stefan Szczesny were furnished. For this purpose, 9 German and 8 French artists designed motifs for flags that were installed on the facade of the building. Among the artists were Jean-Michel Alberola, J.-Ch. Blais, Fr. Boisrond, R. Combas, H. Delprat, G. Garouste, J. LeGac, Fr. Rouan, B. Vautier and HP Adamski, Elvira Bach , W. Dahn, G. Dokoupil, Rainer Fetting , D. Hacker , A. Schulze, St. Szczesny and Bernd Zimmer .

On the ground floor of the building located since May 2, 1999 Automobile Forum of Volkswagen AG .

Evaluation of the construction

The building is considered a prime example of the architecture of the Senate Building Director Hans Stimmann . Stimmann praised the building as a "resumption of our urban building tradition, which was demolished by the war and the division". Critics described the building as "New Teutonia". Critics like Wolfgang Kil also criticized the fact that the Lindencorso from GDR times was a popular meeting place, but that the new Lindencorso was primarily a “dead” commercial building. The connection to the traditional street width was also judged controversially .

Awards

  • 2nd place in the German Natural Stone Prize 1997

literature

  • Christian Bahr: The new Berlin. Changes in the cityscape. Jaron-Verlag, 1999, pp. 61-62.
  • Wolfgang Kil : The actual change in the city is invisible In: Founders' Paradise On building in times of transition. Verlag Bauwesen, Berlin 2000, pp. 59–62.
  • Wolfgang Schächen: Is reconstruction immoral? Lindencorso. In: The building center. 3/1997.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the planning from 1961/1962 see: Hans Gericke: Berlin - Unter den Linden , in: Deutsche Bauakademie und Bund Deutscher Architekten (ed.): Deutsche Architektur , XI. Year, Berlin, November 1962, pp. 635 to 640
  2. ↑ Final preparations in the Automobil Forum - VW will open a representative office on Sunday. In: Berliner Zeitung , April 28, 1999

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '0 "  N , 13 ° 23' 22.4"  E