Town house (Krefeld)
| Townhouse | |
|---|---|
| use | Municipal administration building |
| location | |
| city | Krefeld |
| address | Konrad-Adenauer-Platz 17 / Girmesgath 120 47803 Krefeld |
| 51 ° 20 '24.6 " N , 6 ° 32' 42.7" E | |
| Structural data | |
| architect | Egon Eiermann |
| Construction year | 1953-1956 |
| Architectural style | Modern |
| Monument protection | Yes |
The town house is a listed office building in the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Krefeld . It is located on Konrad-Adenauer-Platz in the Kempener Feld district, northwest of the nearby city center. The complex, which consists of ten building parts, was built by Egon Eiermann in two construction phases in the 1950s . The southern three-story low-rise building and the high-rise building are particularly striking. The town house is considered a nationally important work of German post-war architecture .
Originally built as an administration and storage building for the silk weaving company VerSeidAG , it now houses several departments of the city of Krefeld. The town house is now in dire need of renovation and partially no longer usable. A modernization was decided, but not yet started.
history
The town house was originally built as an administration and storage building for the Vereinigte Seidenweberei Aktiengellschaft , or VerSeidAG for short . This was founded in 1920 after various Krefeld textile companies found themselves in economic difficulties due to the First World War . Before that, silk fabric production was the most important economic factor in Krefeld, especially in the 19th century, which is also known as the “Velvet and Silk City”. The industrialists Hermann Lange and Josef Esters took over the management of VerSeidAG. They had the company headquarters built between 1931 and 1939 by the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the Bauhaus style a few hundred meters north of the town hall on Girmesgath (previously Johannes-Blum-Straße). The building complex, which is architecturally significant today, was badly damaged in the Second World War and only rebuilt in the 1960s.
The new administration building was erected in the north of Konrad-Adenauer-Platz (previously Bissingplatz) and to the east on Girmesgath. The former hussar barracks borders the building in the southeast and southwest . At this point, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe planned an administration building for VerSeidAG parallel to the construction of the VerSeidAG company headquarters between 1937 and 1938. However, this project was not implemented. The design for the new administration building was presented by Egon Eiermann, one of the most important architects of the German post-war period . The planning phase began around 1950/1951. It is a ten-part building complex that was executed in two construction phases. From 1953 to 1954, the low-rise building was the southernmost part of the complex, and the high-rise was built in the following two years. These two buildings are the central and distinctive parts of today's townhouse. In 1970 VerSeidAG got into economic difficulties and left the building by 1977. It was acquired by the city of Krefeld and converted into a municipal administration building by 1982.
In the 2000s, the town house was registered as an architectural monument in the city of Krefeld's list of monuments under number 836 . The perimeter of the monument includes the low-rise building, the glass corridor, the stair tower, the high-rise and the ramp, the five southernmost contiguous parts of the building. In the justification, the supra-regional significance of the Eiermann building was emphasized. The continuation of modern architecture after the Second World War, which was impressively implemented several times in the form of the New Building in Krefeld in the 1920s and 1930s, is remarkable.
In the absence of fundamental renovations, the building is now in need of renovation, so that demolition was also discussed. In 2011, the city council decided to keep the town house as a municipal office building for cost reasons. Due to technical problems, the building construction had to be completely freed and the low building partially cleared in 2014. In addition, the substance of the building envelope, the windows and the interior fittings as well as the entire fire protection are inadequate. The city of Krefeld submitted plans for a modern, listed building complex by 2016. She planned costs of 63.15 million euros for the basic renovation. The start of the work has been delayed again and again to this day. Most recently, in 2018, a conflict between the city of Krefeld, which wants to restore the building true to the original, and the LVR Office for Monument Preservation in the Rhineland , which wants to preserve the original substance and the corresponding documents from the city are missing. This conflict jeopardizes the start of construction work, which is now estimated for 2019.
description
The building ensemble of the town house consists of ten building parts. It has a total of around 24,000 m² of gross floor space and work space for around 700 employees. Facing Konrad-Adenauer-Platz is the three-story, 125-meter-wide low-rise building with its distinctive canopy. It has 376 windows in steel frames, all of which are in their original condition and in need of renovation. They include the eye-catching wooden, hinged roller shutters . A glass connecting corridor is built to the north of the low-rise building, which leads to the stair tower of the eight-story or nine-story high-rise building with the roof structures. The high-rise also has around 400 windows. In the northeast, the single-storey so-called ramp , also known as the messenger service , is built on. These buildings form the listed part of the town house.
A connecting corridor and the technical services building are connected to the ramp . These are to be demolished in the course of modernization and replaced by a new building, the technology and service center , which will be located in the east . The city archive of the city of Krefeld connects to the north of the technical services . There are also two free-standing structures: a garbage can bunker is located north of the ramp and a bicycle shed to the east of the low-rise building. These two parts have been classified as worthy of monument, but not part of the architectural monument.
Many parts of the building have been preserved in their original state to this day. In addition to the windows, these include the floor coverings, the banisters, around 300 doors and the glazed elevator systems .
literature
- Hildner, Claudia: “Arithmetic artist at work” - Egon Eiermann's town house in Krefeld rots away. In: db deutsche bauzeitung , September 9, 2019.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Denise Hesselmann, Henning Bleul: The VerSeidAG in Krefeld. Rheinische Industriekultur e. V., 2009, accessed on July 28, 2018 .
- ↑ Administration building of Verseidag AG, Krefeld. In: arch INFORM ; accessed on July 29, 2018.
- ↑ a b c d e Modernization of the town house. (PDF) City of Krefeld, September 29, 2016, accessed on July 29, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Sebastian Peters: Fascination Town House. Rheinische Post , July 14, 2011, accessed on July 29, 2018 .
- ↑ List of monuments of the city of Krefeld. (PDF) City of Krefeld, May 2018, p. 21 , accessed on July 29, 2018 .
- ↑ a b Will Eiermann stay? Krefeld wants to get the town house. BauNetz , November 10, 2011, accessed on July 29, 2018 .
- ↑ a b c town house in Krefeld: The cross with the monument protection. WDR , local time from Düsseldorf , May 9, 2018, accessed on July 29, 2018 .
- ↑ Jens Voss: Fronts in the town house dispute hardened. Rheinische Post , July 3, 2018, accessed on July 29, 2018 .
- ↑ Jens Voss: "Rip" - renovation of the town house before the end. Rheinische Post , May 1, 2018, accessed on July 29, 2018 .