Schürmann building

The Schürmann building (front) with Tall Eugen (back right)

The Schürmann building with the Post Tower in the background

The Schürmann-Bau is an office building in the Gronau district of Bonn , which was completed in 2002. It is named after its architect Joachim Schürmann . The building now houses the headquarters of Deutsche Welle , after it was originally planned as a parliamentary office and was badly damaged by a flood of the Rhine in 1993 . With an estimated 700 million euros, the Schürmann building is one of the most expensive buildings in German post-war history.

location

The Schürmann building extends over a length of about 300 m on the east side of the Kurt-Schumacher-Strasse opposite, which is occupied by villas , between the Post Tower in the southeast and Hermann-Ehlers-Strasse in the northwest. The Bundeshaus is adjacent to the north and the former Langer Eugen high-rise building to the northeast .

history

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Bundestag decided to remedy the cramped space conditions in the high-rise " Langer Eugen ". In 1983, in one of the largest architectural competitions of the German post-war period, the design by the Cologne architects Schürmann prevailed. Construction work began in 1989 and the move-in date was planned for 1995. For the Schürmann building, the sports facilities on the property, including the Gronaustadion , had to be closed and demolished until the opening of the North Sports Park (1970), the center of Bonn's sports.

Flood

In December 1993 the Rhine rose to a flood of unprecedented proportions. The flood reached Bonn on December 22, 1993, and the groundwater level rose . The shell of the Schürmann building floated up and the building rose up to 70 centimeters in places. Days before, a large part of the ventilation system had been delivered and stored in the underground car park. Competence disputes on the part of the construction management prevented the underground car park from flooding in good time, which could have prevented the structure from floating up. Large parts of the ventilation components supplied would have been flooded. The flood caused the building to float up and then sat down unevenly, "tilting" it. As a result, the building structure was badly damaged.

As a result, a violent political and legal dispute broke out over the question of guilt. On November 16, 2007, fourteen years after the flood, a ten-year legal dispute between the Federal Republic of Germany as the client and the three construction companies ended. A settlement was agreed before the 1st civil chamber of the Bonn regional court . Of the original 73.7 million euros that the federal government demanded, 55 million will now be paid. Originally, in 1997, the federal government demanded a total of 300 million DM from the architect who was in charge of building supervision (not Schürmann) and the construction companies. An out-of-court settlement was reached with the architect.

Further construction

In July 1997 the decision was made to renovate the building. In June 2000 - in the meantime the Bundestag had moved to Berlin - the topping-out ceremony was celebrated and on June 27, 2002 the Schürmann building was officially opened. Since July 2003 it has been used as the headquarters and broadcasting house of Deutsche Welle . The management of the property was initially the responsibility of the Federal and State Property Management of North Rhine-Westphalia, in 2007 it was transferred to the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning . When the building was being erected, individual works had been poorly executed; The resulting deficiencies are to be remedied after lengthy legal disputes have been concluded in 2019 and 2020, including a renovation of the water basin and a thorough renovation of the steel-and-glass roof of the entrance hall.

Architecture award

In 2004, Schürmann received one of five prizes awarded every three years for his building, Good Buildings 2003, from the regional BDA Bonn-Rhein-Sieg.

architectural art

Since September 2004, a number of art objects by international artists have been located outside the building. These include Feast for Neptune by Sokari Douglas Camp , Ich und der Hahn von Babak Saed and Comunicación cruzada by Manuel Marin .

Sokari Douglas Camp : Feast for Neptune
Babak Saed: Me and the rooster
Manuel Marin : Comunicación cruzada