NINO administration building
NINO administration building is the name of two buildings erected at different locations in Nordhorn by NINO AG, founded in 1897 as Niehues & Dütting (N&D) . Between 1950 and 1970 it developed into one of Europe's leading textile companies .
The original administration building was built in 1921 according to the plans of the Stuttgart industrial architect Philipp Jakob Manz . In 1963 a new administration building - called Administration Building II - was built according to the plans of the architect and graduate engineer Werner Zobel.
Both buildings - the original together with the attached ball store and the war memorial - are now listed as historical monuments . Administration building II is the youngest cultural monument in Nordhorn because it is the first consistently planned open-plan office in Germany.
The former administration building
The first administration building with an adjoining bale warehouse was built in 1921 on the corner of Prollstrasse and Bernhard-Niehues-Strasse according to the plans of the Stuttgart industrial architect Philipp Jakob Manz . It is one of the most important industrial monuments in the city. Together with the former raw fabric store opposite, also designed by Manz and used today by the adult education center and the Protestant grammar school , it forms the entrance gate to the former textile site, which has been expanded into the NINO business park since 2007 . In fact, the former factory gate 1 was located between these two buildings . The most important visual axis of the area runs along the former Fabrikstrasse, which began there, directing the view of the massive spinning mill building, which forms a building ensemble that defines the cityscape.
At the end of 2004, the NINO redevelopment company sold the former administration building including the bale warehouse and together with 5,400 square meters of land to a Dutch investor, with the condition that the building be completely renovated by 2007. The listed facade should be preserved as well as essential parts of the interior design. In addition, around 80 parking spaces should be created around the building.
Since its completion, which was delayed by contractual disputes and legal proceedings, the administration building has been used as a representative office center, with the ground floor alone having around 700 square meters of usable space.
Ball bearing
The former bale warehouse attached to the administration building was built at the same time as the administration building and also according to plans by Philipp Jakob Manz.
In contrast to the main building, the outer facade is clinkered and, thanks to its brick pilaster strips (wall panels), offers an optical structure in which the large window areas are embedded, which provide plenty of light inside the building.
After a thorough renovation, the building is currently (mid-2013) empty; there are considerations to accommodate the municipal archives of the county of Bentheim there.
War memorial
On the outside of the bale warehouse facing the administration building, there is a memorial for the NINO AG workers who fell in World War I , which the owner of the textile company, Bernhard Niehues , had built in 1928.
The memorial bears the inscription:
"OUR HEROES FALLEN IN THE WORLD WAR
1914-1918
"
and lists 68 fallen by name to whom the stone soldier standing on a pedestal pays his respects with his steel helmet removed in his left hand and a wreath of honor in his right hand .
Almost at the same time, further memorials for the fallen of the First World War were erected in and around Nordhorn, such as the memorial in the area of Völlinkhoff and Van-Delden-Strasse in the center of Nordhorn, in Altendorf am Heseper , which was formerly known as the Langemarck Monument and is now known as the Black Garden Weg, in Hesepe on Dorfstraße or the memorial in Bookholt on Veldhauser Straße.
Administration building II
Between 1961 and 1963, a new administration building was built on Bentheimer Strasse according to the plans of the architect and graduate engineer Werner Zobel (1916–2004) to accommodate all of the company's commercial departments and data center .
The site is separated from the original factory site by the Nordhorn-Almelo Canal , but was needed for the company's extensive factory expansions and already had a spacious factory hall (which now houses a large supermarket and electronics store).
The architectural architecture of the building caused a national sensation in the 1960s. The then "office building of the future", internally pragmatically called Administration II , is today an expression of the Second Post-War Modernism and is seen as a pioneer of modern office architecture due to its first consistent implementation of an open-plan office in Western Europe.
The building is also considered the main work of Zobel, who came to Nordhorn in 1956 and designed a number of distinctive buildings for the city between 1957 and 1979, in addition to various administrative buildings, such as the concert and theater hall , the ice rink and the school building for the commercial vocational schools in in the immediate vicinity of the Nordhorn train station.
As early as 1959, Zobel was commissioned to plan a new administration building in close collaboration with the then NINO company boss Bernhard Niehues Jr. To this end, Niehues and Zobel visited the new Brazilian capital Brasília , which is currently being built according to the plans of the visionary architect Oscar Niemeyer , in order to be inspired and inspired by the most advanced architectural architecture of the time.
Zobel opted for flexible and openly designed large-scale cells and opted for a honeycomb-shaped floor plan instead of the rectangular one that was usual up to that point . With this honeycomb shape, which was seldom built until then, rooms could be arranged more optimally and freely and expanded as required. After extensive profitability calculations and intensive functional studies, the architect finally decided on a five-storey solitary building made of reinforced concrete with a total area of 8,000 square meters and 38,776 cubic meters of enclosed space. This created a total of 1304 square meters of net office space per floor and 10.8 square meters of floor space per workstation.
The outer skin of the building complex consists of prefabricated parts in exposed concrete , the white exterior of which has been subjected to a special surface treatment. Horizontal parapet elements and ribbon windows define a floor ; A flat roof construction forms the end of the house . In addition to the internal staircase , the building has a free-standing reinforced concrete external staircase on the western corner of the building .
The inside of the building was determined by specially developed light fittings, flexible, sound-absorbing partition walls and sensitive room colors right through to color-coordinated furniture.
The Nino administration building II was designated as an individual monument in 2001 in accordance with Section 3 (2) of the Lower Saxony Monument Protection Act (NDSchG) for local and architectural reasons as well as for artistic reasons. The monument designation includes the external appearance, the internal construction and the equipment of the administrative building. The rarity and the recognizability of the innovative architectural language of the 1960s also substantiate the scientific importance of the building, which is still used as an office building today.
The honeycomb-shaped floor plan became the model for office architecture based on the functional modernity of the 1960s. The building, which has a timeless aesthetic made of steel, concrete and lots of glass, was visited by more than 100 delegations from companies from all over the world in search of progressive office architecture. The entire board of the “Ford Motor Company” traveled from the USA to get to know the possibilities of the new open-plan office in Nordhorn.
This former Nino administration building is now owned by the Horstmann Group.
literature
- Christina Teufer, Katrin Barthmann: Between pane and honeycomb: administrative buildings from the sixties as memorials. Michael Imhof Verlag, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86568-800-2 .
Web links
- Nino administration building in the Lower Saxony Monument Atlas
- Nino administration building (Building II) in the Lower Saxony Monument Atlas
- Grafschafter Nachrichten of November 16, 2004: NINO administration becomes office center
Individual evidence
- ↑ Grafschafter Nachrichten of October 26, 2012: Three locations for district archives in discussion
- ↑ Preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony: Between pane and honeycomb - administrative buildings from the sixties as monuments.
- ↑ Grafschafter Nachrichten of April 20, 2013: An “Office Building of the Future”. Architect Werner Zobel and his buildings in Nordhorn ( Memento of the original dated May 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
