Dreischeibenhaus

The Dreischeibenhaus ( often three- disc Tower) is a 94 -meter-high office and administration buildings in the same street (until 2013 August -Thyssen -Straße) at the Hofgarten in Düsseldorf's city center. During its use by the Thyssen and Krupp Thyssen Group, it was also called Thyssen- house or Thyssen building. It is one of the most important examples of post-war modernism in the International style, symbolizing the so-called economic miracle. Together with the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus it forms at Gustaf - Gründgens place an antithetical building ensemble.

History

1955 emerged from a competition of the Phoenix Rheinrohr AG United metallurgical and pipe mills, who served as a curtain wall steel frame whose shape is reminiscent of parallel and upright slabs, in 1957 to 1960 by the Düsseldorf-based architect Helmut Hentrich and Hubert Petschnigg was built. At the beginning of the competitive process, the architects Hentrich and Petschnigg still had proposed a " variant of the Pirelli skyscraper ", but then they were after a joint trip to the U.S., also attended the Düsseldorf Councillor Friedrich Tamms had taken part, by the advice of their American colleagues come to believe that the office tower is entwurflich develop in the form of finally realized solution. Structural engineers was Kuno Boll. The builder was the Phoenix Rheinrohr AG United metallurgical and pipe mills with their illustrious General and the Economic Miracle model entrepreneur Fritz -Aurel Goergen (up to 1957) that there headquartered einrichtete (1964 takeover by Thyssen AG). Therefore, the building was initially known as Prince Aurelius pyramid '. On the ground floor the then state of the art data processing system IBM 7070 was installed in 1961. Since the merger of Thyssen and Krupp in 1999 a part of the headquarters of ThyssenKrupp AG was housed in the high-rise. In spring 2007, ThyssenKrupp announced his departure from Dusseldorf and sold the property for an estimated 100 million euros to the real estate fund subsidiary RREEF Deutsche Bank. Moving to the Essen ThyssenKrupp headquarters in June 2010. In June 2011 it was announced that the building for 72 million euros to the Momeni project development GmbH was sold. The new owner plans to remodel the building until 2013 landmark status. Behind the purchaser has the Black -Horse- Investment ( BGI) Family Schwarz-Schütte in Dusseldorf, the former owners of Schwarz Pharma, secured financing. After the conversion, including the tour operator allroute want to use from the spring of 2014 the building as headquarters.

The Dreischeibenhaus is one of the most famous and important high-rise buildings in Germany. In the immediate vicinity from 1961 to 1962 were the centipede (2013 demolished) and 1965 to 1969, the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus built right next door the project Ko - sheet is currently realized.

The architect Helmut Hentrich and his partner enjoyed since the construction of Dreischeibenhaus worldwide recognition. In 13 cities of West Germany and South Africa's her great office built a total of 40 high-rise buildings.

Construction and design

Its title comes from the Dreischeibenhaus the division into three staggered thin slices, of which the middle 96 meters is the highest and the number of floors climbed up on the 25th floor, which receive over their entire width of the office floor plans of a total of 30,000 square meters. The associated access corridors are located in the " gaps " between the discs and optically occur behind the facade. This gives the building on the one hand its significant optics, on the other hand had to suffer loss in functionality. Where to cover the windows, is the core of the building with elevators and sanitary facilities. By this arrangement the traffic area is greatly reduced. The free layout of the rooms, especially in the projecting end pieces and the top floors of the central disc, limited. Nevertheless, the system allows that the areas are combined into large offices, meeting rooms and common areas can be divided both to individual offices to corridors, as. Due to this property, the Dreischeibenhaus was considered a prototype of a new office building architecture. The house is a skeleton with stiff gable windows and a decidedly simple and clear curtain wall, stainless steel, aluminum and glass. As a special feature you may view that in the case of Thyssen offices of the builder was even the manufacturer of the need for the supporting structure of steel tubes. As steel and glass cube, the building represents the in the period after the Second World War in the City's of the Western world establishing itself issuing bank and administrative buildings on the basic ideas of the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Congrès International d' Architecture Moderne.

Steel sculpture

For the hundredth anniversary of the company Thyssen almost four meters high steel sculpture Monument by the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida was set up on 23 June 1971 in the green area on the west side of Dreischeibenhaus. The object of COR- TEN steel, showing the significant rust patina of this material, is a gift from Thyssen to the city of Dusseldorf.

Quotes

• Helmut Jahn: "This is so interesting and distinctive, that will never go out of fashion. "
• Daniel Libeskind: " Such buildings we already know, before visiting it. "
• Süddeutsche Zeitung of August 1, 1958: " In steel and glass, the exclamation of the economic miracle will be built at the southern gate of the Ruhr. "
• The world of 20 September 1958: " [ A ] kind of Manhattan in the open (...). A fantastic vision of the future! "

Cinematic playback

In the film, Cloud Atlas (2012 ), the glass facade of the east side of the Dreischeibenhaus was mounted with the main entrance in a movie scene which purports to be the San Francisco of the 1970s.