Aalto-Hochhaus

The by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed, 65 -meter high residential tower in the district of Bremen New Vahr was built in the years 1959-1961. The client was New home (now GEWOBA ). The tower is the landmark of the district and is a listed building.

Aalto's objectives

The objectives, which are reflected in Aalto's design and its implementation, can be described with the following words: individuality of the house and the flats ( each flat floor have their own plan ), orientation of the house to celebrate the evening sun, communication between the residents and community activities ( generous floor corridors, common rooms on the ground floor ), at the same retreat into privacy ( no one can see the neighbors in his apartment ). Vandalism as well as typical social decline over time could thus be prevented.

History

In the 1940s and 1950s design from Scandinavia was considered exemplary. Encouraged by the Building Exhibition Interbau in Berlin in 1957, planned in May 1958, the new home as the center of the New Vahr a shopping center ( Berliner Freiheit ) with authorities skyscraper and commissioned by the planning changes in June 1958 the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto to design a residential tower.

On October 21, 1958 Aalto presented his design. Construction began with the laying of the cornerstone on September 18, 1959. Towards the end of the same year, the first leases were already closed. It was completed in the last weeks of the year 1961. Between 1 and 24 December 1961, the first twelve floors were purchased. In 1962, the last work was completed. The last free apartment in 1963 related.

Until the 1970s, the Aalto -Hochhaus was the tallest residential building in Germany.

In 1995 the house was restored and declared a national monument in 1998.

The building

The foundation has a floor area of 650 m². The total floor area of the building is 7,860 m².

The lower four floors have been built in reinforced concrete construction. The load-bearing walls of the floors above were constructed in so-called Feidner construction. The non -structural partition walls have been thrown out of a mixture of crushed brick and plaster.

The building consists of 189 apartments ( one and two bedroom apartments ) that are fan-shaped spread over 21 floors. The size of the apartments is 34.4 to 59.5 m².

The front of the building is the west side. Seven of the nine apartments per floor only on the west side window. As the apartments should have a west-east orientation, the problem of limited lighting each apartment made up in the rear part. This sparked by Aalto funnel-shaped floor plans of the apartments, which will be admitted to the wider west side lots of light. The individual funnel-shaped floor plans of the apartments had a fanning out of the building plan and various window sizes of each apartment result. With the exception of the narrow window next to the loggias no window can be opened. To clean the window from the outside, a rail system is built on the roof. By means of a movable boom it is lowered with a gondola cleaning companies.

The west facade has a lining of pale, smooth stone and a slightly wavy shape. All of the living room a view to the west and thus toward downtown Bremen and Weser Stadium. Each apartment has a small balcony. A teak bar divides each loggia opening.

The east facade consists of a medium-gray Eternit cladding and curtain metal rods in grid form. Each floor has only the two outer, larger apartments also have views to the east. Here are bathroom, kitchen and bedroom. The east side of the building is characterized by large panoramic window of her upstairs corridors and through the typical Aalto economy balconies ( with carpet rod knock ).

The problem of economic balconies appeared later in the 1970s and 1980s, when regularly suicides from other parts of the city of Bremen and the Bremen area procured access to high-rise building, and then jump from the 21st floor balcony economy to a certain death.

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