Humboldt substation

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Humboldt substation
Humboldt substation, view from the southeast. Recording: spring 2019.

The Humboldt substation is a monument in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg . It was built from 1924 to 1926 by the architects Hans Heinrich Müller and Felix Thümen for the Berliner Städtische Elektrizitätswerke Aktiengesellschaft (BEWAG) . It remained in operation until 1993. The building is one of the most significant architectural and historical evidence of Berlin's industrial history . It is located in the Gleimviertel at the intersection of Kopenhagener Strasse and Sonnenburger Strasse and is now used as a commercial building.

Establishment and function

The Humboldt substation was built as part of the nationwide expansion of Berlin's public electricity supply in the 1920s. In 1925 only about 25% of the city's private households had electricity, although the 'Elektropolis' Berlin was a leading center of the electrical engineering industry at the time. After BEWAG had received the order to expand the supply network in 1923, a construction program for the construction of switching stations and transformer stations in the urban area was implemented. The Humboldt substation was built as part of a network of 18 substations at the time. As a free-standing structure, it is one of the largest of these facilities. In addition, with the Klingenberg power plant (AEG) and the West power plant (Siemens), two large power plants were built, from which the substations obtained electricity.

The task of the substations (later often: substations) was to break the 30 kV three-phase current of the city power plants to 6 kV, with which industrial customers, the subway and tram as well as households, small businesses and street lighting were supplied via other intermediate stations. The tensioning was carried out using transformers that were cooled by oil and air.

architecture

Building parts

From an architectural point of view, the substation stands out clearly from the surrounding development, although the building complex is based on the structure of the perimeter block development of the district. The complex essentially consists of four, almost symmetrical wings arranged around a courtyard, while the street level gives the impression of a nested ensemble. The buildings are made of steel frame construction, filled in with masonry and clad in red clinker. In terms of materials, shapes and volumes, the factory buildings clearly borrow from castle complexes or church buildings from the brick Gothic . On the north side, along Kopenhagener Straße, there is the phase shift hall, which has a head building on the east and west sides. Both are raised by two floors and were intended for administration rooms. The capacitors were also housed in the east of the head buildings; to the right of the main entrance of the substation on Sonnenburger Strasse, high wooden gates reveal their former position. In addition to offices, the western end of the building also housed company apartments.

The south side of the plant (towards today's playground) is dominated by the parallel, significantly higher counter hall. Its structural structure resembles a basilica with a side aisle, transept and a recessed central nave. This recourse to historical designs conceals the functional order inside the hall, where the difference in height marks the two-story 30 kV and three-story 6 kV level of the system. Long, originally open rows of chambers for the oil switches are located at ground level on both sides of the counter hall.

The connection between the two halls is ensured by two high transitions to the east and west side, each of which is attached to the two stair / elevator towers of the counter hall and which have the eaves height of the two northern end buildings. The ogival passages open up the narrow inner courtyard, in which the oval waiting building is located in the middle. The control room is in turn connected to the two halls by two bridges and accessed through an adjoining stair tower. It has a glass roof and small semicircular outlets.

Building decorations and design

The facade structure of the substation appears extremely simple. Ornamentation is basically based on the shape and the dimensions of the clinker stone, but is only used sparsely for cornices, for the subdivision of the window strips or for horizontal arches in the window openings or doors that are deeply cut without cornices. A noticeable design element is the protruding cornice, which is executed in the tooth cut. The very narrow, one- to three-lane windows clearly set vertical accents; in the case of the towers and “transepts”, they measure almost the entire height of the building and are associated with Gothic window frames. The fence facing Sonnenburger Strasse, which, like some of the factory's railings, is made of narrow round steel, looks very delicate on the building and does not have any ornamentation.

In his role as chief architect of BEWAG, Hans Heinrich Müller built numerous other power distribution structures in the city area. On the nearby Arnimplatz , for example, there is a network station for further distribution of the electricity. The Kottbusser Ufer (today: Paul-Lincke-Ufer ) and Wilhelmsruh substations, which were built at the same time, are closely related to the Humboldt substation . The systems are very similar in terms of their structural design and architectural design. But if you compare the Humboldt substation with the buildings of Hans Hertlein , such as the Wernerwerk Hochbau , or Egon Eiermann's Steglitz substation , its sometimes modern effect is put into perspective. Müller's highly individual orientation towards historical, representative, functional and expressionistic design principles is ultimately still alien to the architecture of New Objectivity.

Reuse

After the plant was shut down in 1993, various phases of subsequent use followed. BEWAG used the factory's administration rooms for a few years. The phase shift hall was used from 2000 to 2004 as a branch of the Vitra Design Museum for temporary exhibitions. In 2007, BEWAG's successor Vattenfall sold the building for 5 million euros to the Canadian investor Tippin Corporation, who converted it and rented it to an online mail order company. At the end of 2014 it was sold again to the Irish investor Signature Capital for 22 million euros. It was sold on to the British investor Avignon Capital for EUR 43 million in 2016. The interior of the Humboldt substation is currently being rebuilt and rented out as office space and an event location.

Literary reception

Due to its location in Prenzlauer Berg, the substation has found its way into literature. In a short story by Durs Grünbein , a literary report from the evening the Berlin Wall came down , the author lets his protagonist look out the window of his apartment across the work towards West Berlin . In this context, he describes the characteristic operating noises of the "large transformer hall that hummed like a beehive at night".

literature

  • Thorsten Dame (ed.): Elektropolis Berlin. Architecture and monument guide. Petersberg: Michael Imhof, 2014, pp. 258–259.
  • Peter Güttler and Hilmar Bärthel: Systems and buildings for electricity distribution. In: Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Berlin and its buildings. Part X, Vol. A (2). Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verl., 2006, pp. 251-294.
  • Paul Kahlfeldt: Logic of Form. The Berlin brick buildings by Hans Heinrich Müller. Berlin: Jovis, 2004.
  • Paul Kahlfeldt: Hans Heinrich Müller, 1879–1951. Berlin industrial buildings. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel / Berlin / Boston 1992, pp. 46–49.
  • Hans Heinrich Müller: Berlin industrial buildings. Die Baugilde 20 (1938) 7, pp. 205-212.

Web links

Commons : Umspannwerk Humboldt  - collection of images, videos and audio files

proof

  1. ↑ The City of Electricity: Electricity and Electrification. In: Berlin Center for Industrial Culture (bzi). Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Ines Oberhollenzer: Public electricity supply . In: Thorsten Dame (ed.): Elektropolis Berlin. Architecture and monument guide . Landesdenkmalamt Berlin / Michael Imhof Verlag, Berlin 2014, p. 213 .
  3. ^ Paul Kahlfeldt: Hans Heinrich Müller, 1879–1951. Berlin industrial buildings . Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel / Berlin / Boston 1992, p. 46-49 .
  4. ↑ a b Peter Güttler and Hilmar Bärthel: Systems and buildings for electricity distribution . In: Architects and Engineers Association of Berlin (ed.): Berlin and its buildings . Part X, Vol. A (2). Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2006, p. 261 .
  5. ↑ a b Thorsten Dame: Humboldt substation . In: Thorsten Dame (ed.): Elektropolis Berlin. Architecture and monument guide . Michael Imhof / Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Petersberg 2014, p. 259 .
  6. ↑ BNP Paribas press release. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  7. ^ Charles Kingston: Avignon Capital adds to Berlin "tech-cluster" assets. August 12, 2016, accessed on September 19, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Avignon Capital Transaction Report 2016/17. Retrieved September 19, 2019 .
  9. ^ Durs Grünbein: The way to Bornholm . In: Renatus Deckert (ed.): The night in which the wall fell. Writers tell of November 9, 1989 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main 2009, p. 40 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 ′ 55 "  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 24.6"  E