In an issue of Domus devoted to the subject of tall buildings, the film “High-Rise” deserves mention. This movie based on a novel illustrates the advantages of towers in vivid images, but also the fears that they evoke. Numerous services such as swimming pools and garbage disposal chutes are contrasted with severe social disparities that are manifested in vertical “layering”: the residents of the lower floors never see daylight, whereas those at the top enjoy a view and the sun. The high-rises that we present in this issue of Domus Germany are generally addressed to only one social class – people with a good income. This is because the image of the high-rise has been transformed from that of an anonymous concrete block, a solution to the post-war housing shortage, to an exclusive owner-occupied home and an investment.
The 17-storey Garden Tower near Bern stages the experience of height. The architects Buchner Bründler integrate the balcony fronts into a large surface of stainless-steel netting that is suspended across the whole building. This can easily convey the feeling of stepping unsecured on to a projecting platform. This will soon change, however, as the net serves as a climbing frame for plants.
In Cologne the Gerling Quarter is currently being refurbished. Since the insurance company Gerling moved out, the transformation of this area, close to the city centre and previously closed in on itself, to an attractive residential and business quarter is proceeding according to a masterplan by Kister Scheithauer Gross. Part of the neighbourhood and the heart of the complex is a high-rise, the Gerling-Hochhaus. This building formerly accommodated offices of the insurer. Now it has been renovated by Kister Scheithauer Gross and converted to purely residential use.
Domus Germany also presents a particularly exciting high-rise project – with six residential towers in a harbour district to the north of Antwerp. Three renowned architecture practices have each designed two similar but not identical high-rises here. A completely different kind of tower, by contrast, is Observatorium in the small French town of Carrières sous Poissy. Here, house-like structures are stacked up and afford a panoramic view of a park-like landscape.
Finally, our author Kristina Jaspers has discovered a genuine treasure, an architectural competition from the 1920s that has never been published in its entirety: the father of the production designer Ken Adam held a competition for his store in Berlin and invited architects such as Peter Behrens, Hans Poelzig and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to take part. Although a winner was chosen, due to the delicate political and economic situation the project was never carried out. The designs that were entered are published on this issue.
