Werner Baecker (architect)

Werner Baecker (born March 22, 1928 in Oberhausen ; † January 18, 2019 in Cologne ) was a German architect and urban planner . From 1968 to 1980 he was an alderman for building construction in Cologne. In this role he was responsible for the development of the first city-wide building concept in Cologne.

Life

Werner Baecker was born in Oberhausen and passed his Abitur in Mülheim an der Ruhr in 1947 after the end of the Second World War . He then completed his architecture studies at the TH Karlsruhe in 1953 as a graduate engineer. From 1953 to 1956 he worked as a research assistant at the chair for urban building construction and settlement at Otto Ernst Schweizer . During this time he was involved in the planning for the Indian steel city of Rourkela as an architect, whereby he was based heavily on the theoretical ideal city of his teacher Otto Ernst Schweizer from 1931.

From 1957 to 1961 he headed the Rheinhausen town planning office as a building officer , and from 1961 to 1966 as senior building officer in Offenbach am Main . In Cologne he then headed the building supervision and urban planning office as senior building director for two years, before he was appointed as an alderman for building construction under senior city director Heinz Mohnen . He held the office until 1980 and then worked as a freelance architect.

From 1983 to 1984 he held a teaching position at the University of Karlsruhe .

He was married and had three children. Baecker died in January 2019 at the age of 90 in Cologne.

Work in Cologne

At the beginning of his tenure as head of building department in 1969, Baecker proposed a (not implemented) redesign of the cathedral area, which provided for an extension of the cathedral plate with overbuilding of the tracks as far as Deutz. Historical forms should be "overcome".

As part of the Cologne city center concept in 1973 with the so-called “bowl principle”, Baecker developed the first city-wide high-rise concept. Accordingly, the city center with its historic buildings and the panorama of the Rhine on the left bank of the Rhine should be kept free of other high-rise buildings as far as possible. Instead, a limited number of high-rise buildings - “high-density intensive rooms” - should take on the function of “landmarks” on the arteries or interfaces of local transport.

During Baecker's term of office, the planning and construction of the Colonia high-rise , a residential park in Bayenthal in the south of Cologne, the Uni-Center , the Herkules high-rise , the Deutschlandfunk high-rise with the Deutsche Welle radio station on the Raderberggürtel , the justice center , the The Lufthansa building in Deutz, the headquarters of DKV on Aachener Straße, the Ringturm and a few other high-rise residential buildings , which have since been converted into the Lanxess Tower .

Baecker's concept was a conscious alternative to the "Frankfurt solution" that was emerging at the time with its concentration of high-rise buildings in the city center . It was "a social concern for him to let many people live in valuable parts of the landscape". Looking back, u. a. an expert report by RWTH Aachen to the judgment that, before Baecker's work, there was no urban planning concept at all for high-rise buildings in the city center, but the “desired planning effect of the legibility of the city structure” did not materialize and “the high-rise buildings had no connection with the cityscape [showed] that their arrangement seems to be more arbitrary than following a concept ”. The concept was abandoned in the early 1980s. From a later point of view, the strengthening of public transport and the reduction of cars in city centers, which Baecker is striving for, appears more sustainable.

Memberships

• German Academy for Urban Development and Regional Planning
• Association of German Architects

Essays

• New living in Cologne. In: Verkehrsamt der Stadt Köln (Ed.): Cologne. Quarterly for the friends of the city. 4/1973, pp. 2-7.
• City of Cologne (ed.): The Domplätze and the Roman-Germanic Museum; Editing by Werner Baecker and others, Cologne 1974.
• The art of preserving our cities is illustrated by the example of Cologne. The downtown concept. In: Hiltrud Kier (ed.): The art of maintaining our cities. Forum Verlag, Stuttgart 1976, pp. 249-263.
• Urban planning and urban development 1966 to 1980. Guiding principles for the urban development of Cologne. In: Architects and Engineers Association Cologne e. V. von 1875 (Hrsg.): Cologne - his buildings. 1928-1988. edited and compiled by Heribert Hall . Bachem-Verlag, Cologne 1991.
• Cologne - city in development. Planning systems - planning reality. Urban development from 1966 to 1980. (Lecture given on June 24, 2004) in: Architektur Forum Rheinland e. V. (Hrsg.), Wolfram Hagspiel (editor): Kölner Stadtbaumeister and the development of the city building authorities since 1821. (= publications of the Cologne City Museum. Volume 9). Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-940042-03-3 , pp. 169-186.
• Herbert Dörr, the architectural work: the influence of OES on his architectural work. In: Klaus Richrath (Ed.): Assistants and employees of Professor Dr.-Ing. Eh Otto Ernst Swiss. Memories, episodes, interpretations, own work. Karlsruhe 2005.
• Karl Selg, landscape and development: ecologically oriented further development of the “Basics of Architectural Creation” written by Otto Ernst Schweizer. In: Klaus Richrath (Ed.): Assistants and employees of Professor Dr.-Ing. Eh Otto Ernst Swiss. Memories, episodes, interpretations, own work. Karlsruhe 2005.

Web links

• Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger from February 24, 2019: Cologne's skyscrapers. How Werner Baecker shaped the city - and was attacked by Uli Kreikebaum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dipl.-Ing. Werner Baecker (obituary) . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger (supplement mourning and commemoration) . No. 22 . Cologne January 26, 2019, p. 3 .
2. ↑ Christian Hümmeler: Former building department head Baecker has died . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . Cologne January 23, 2019, p. 24 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Architektur Forum Rheinland e. V. (Hrsg.), Wolfram Hagspiel (editor): Kölner Stadtbaumeister and the development of the city building authorities since 1821. (= publications of the Cologne City Museum. Volume 9). Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-940042-03-3 , p. 286.
4. ^ Ali Saad: Rourkela. The double life of an Indian new town. In: archhplus. Magazine for architecture and town planning. Edition 185, November 2007, pp. 30–33.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Urban planning and urban development 1966 to 1980. Guiding principles for the urban development of Cologne. In: Architects and Engineers Association Cologne e. V. von 1875 (Hrsg.): Cologne - his buildings. 1928-1988; edited and compiled by Heribert Hall . Bachem-Verlag, Cologne 1991, pp. 124-126.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Chair and Institute for Urban Development and State Planning RWTH Aachen: Independent expert opinion on the “Cityscape compatibility study for high-rise planning in Cologne” on behalf of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia; May 2005, p. 13.
7. ^ ^{A b c} Werner Baecker: Cologne - city in development. Planning systems - planning reality. Urban development from 1966 to 1980. (Lecture given on June 24, 2004) in: Architektur Forum Rheinland e. V. (Hrsg.), Wolfram Hagspiel (editor): Cologne city building master and the development of the city building authorities since 1821 p. 183/184.
8. ↑ Barbara Precht von Taboritzki : Will the cathedral remain the Cologne high-rise complex par excellence? In: Marianne Rodenstein , Harald Bodenschatz : Skyscrapers in Germany: Future or Ruin of Cities? Kohlhammer, 2000, ISBN 3-322-99951-3 , pp. 157-158. Cf. also Felix Feldhofer, "It must be tall, every inch of it tall": Studies on Cologne high-rise buildings from the sixties and seventies , master's thesis at the Art History Institute of the University of Cologne, September 2016.
9. ↑ Peer Alexander Kantzow: Chances of urban repair - Investigated on the plans of Gottfried Böhm for the Cologne WDR arcades and their urban environment. Dissertation . 2007.