Post town
The Nuremberg Poststadt is an extensive site under monument protection of the former Reichspost with company apartments for postal workers in the Nuremberg Südstadt , along the Allersberger Straße. The Poststadt was built between 1928 and 1931 according to plans by the Reichspost architect Georg Kohl .
Buildings and urban planning
The Poststadt consists of the former five-storey telegraph office that dominates the line of sight of Allersberger Strasse from the north, smaller vehicle halls, a two-legged curved office and garage wing facing the rear of Gudrunstrasse, a workshop building with a steep, prismatic glass gable roof and a flat, wide-span vehicle hall, which is cantilevered in the Zeiss- Dywidag shell construction, has shed roofs and is of engineering-historical importance. Nine three-storey residential buildings are arranged in rows in a rhythmic sequence at the front facing Allersberger Straße, which is the first time that the administratively prescribed block construction has been deviated from in favor of the linear construction in Nuremberg .
Architectural language
The five-storey cubic telegraph building in particular shows the typical design patterns of the New Building in the style of the southern German Post Building School . The residential buildings show a strictly modern design in terms of the facade structure, but then do not receive flat roofs - like the non-residential buildings - but gable roofs . Kohl does not design the facades of the buildings in the sense of the design maxims of the Post Building School as white plastered facades, but uses hard-fired bricks and clinker , which gives the buildings an appearance reminiscent of North German brick expressionism . With this, Kohl is taking a similar path as the Nuremberg construction consultant Walter Brugmann , who also includes elements of the Bauhaus style for urban buildings but tries to materially fit the building into the Nuremberg cityscape with brick surfaces. In terms of materiality, the Poststadt corresponds to the modern and expressive Gustav Adolf Memorial Church, which was also built around the same time according to the plans of German Bestelmeyer in brick construction, in the city below the Poststadt.
The Poststadt is one of the important new building complexes from the time of the Weimar Republic in Nuremberg. The clear differentiation of the individual buildings in the design according to their purpose is exemplary. Nevertheless, a coherent and uniform overall picture emerged. The exterior of the buildings is largely unchanged; the overall character of the facility has been retained even after the redesign as a result of the closure of operations by Post and Telecom. As one of the first modern objects, the ensemble has been a listed building since the early 1980s.
Conversion of "Postlofts"
The former vehicle hall located in the center of the site had been empty since the 1990s. Plans to set up a postal museum and other changes in use failed because of the demanding shell construction, which is worth preserving, and the large building depth of 47 meters. The first plans for residential use for the building located close to the city center were discussed around the year 2000 and worked out by the Nuremberg architects GP Wirth. However, this project initially failed when the Lidl retailer bought the middle section of the post office. However, since Lidl only used the northwest hall for a branch, the vehicle hall was up for sale again shortly afterwards.
In this sales round, the architects' office took up their residential designs again and won the Fürth-based construction and real estate company P + P as a financier (own funds as well as outside capital) and property developer. In 2004 the vehicle hall with around 11,500 square meters of gross floor space and a plot of around 15,000 square meters was purchased.
Special challenges in the planning phase were the preservation of the outer building envelope and the special self-supporting engineering construction with simultaneous division into residential units and their adequate supply of daylight. However, the monument authority initially rejected the proposed interventions in the supporting structure, so that the project came to a standstill. However, after the planners had proven that the structure was no longer in its original condition due to a renovation in the 1960s, the authorities returned their rejection.
From 2006 to 2008 P + P carried out the renovations, which enabled apartments on the ground floor and maisonettes above by lowering the floor and largely preserved the facade of the hall. The former vehicle gates have been replaced by windows of the same size. These contain the entrance doors and contribute to the lighting of the apartments. Several round exhaust air openings were converted into windows and additional round windows were added. The most profound external change was the removal of a central strip in the hall roof, creating an inner courtyard that serves as a garden area and provides daylight for the apartments. In addition, the maisonette apartments there have roof terraces on extensions that protrude into the courtyard. A single central, continuous hall element was retained in order to make the previous building status visible.
The building parts of the former turning and locksmith's shop in the north-west, which are less valuable for monument protection, have been converted into commercial space and contain a few more apartments, the similarly low-quality wing in the south-east of the hall has been divided into storage rooms for the residents.
After the renovation, the former vehicle hall houses 55 units with 6,800 square meters of living space, the former locksmith's shop houses another eight apartments. Some of the apartments in the hall are laid out over two floors, like terraced houses, and some are separated as ground floor and maisonette apartments. The sizes range from 70 to 200 square meters of living space.
P + P marketed the apartments under the name "Postlofts" as sales properties. Initially around 40 percent of the properties were occupied by owner-occupiers, while 60 percent were sublet. The proportion of owner-occupiers has now risen. The company specifies the original purchase price as EUR 2,600 to EUR 2,800 per square meter. According to the owner, these have now risen significantly. The total sales volume is said to be 21 million euros.
literature
- Center for Industrial Culture (Ed.): Architecture in Nuremberg: 1904 - 1994. Tümmels, Nuremberg 1994, ISBN 3-921590-21-3 , pages 92 to 97.
- Nuremberg, Postlofts . in: Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research (ed.): Conversion of non-residential buildings into residential properties - Documentation of the case studies, 2015, pages 58 to 69. PDF version
Web links
- Poststadt Nürnberg on the website of the North Bavarian Industriestrasse
- Post city on architecture Nuremberg
Coordinates: 49 ° 26 '9.2 " N , 11 ° 5' 29.2" E