Between the end of March and the middle of November 1909, the Allgemeine Elektrizitätsgesellschaft (AEG) built a new assembly hall on the premises of their turbine factory in Berlin-Moabit, which made the headlines because the building designed by Peter Behrens in the modern building materials of iron, glass and concrete on the corner of Huttenstraße and Berlichingenstraße was a milestone in the history of modern industrial architecture, which was celebrated at the time as the “iron church” “cathedral of labor” and machine cathedral;” 100 years later in 2009 it is once again front-page news because the hall, which for over 50 years has been a listed building, is still serving its original purpose, the construction of turbines.

To mark the anniversary, on November 18 the Gasturbinenwerk Berlin, which has belonged to Siemens AG since 1977, organized a symposium together with the Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (Berlin State Office for the Protection of Historical Monuments) which was attended by around 40 architects, civil engineers, historians, and technical and business archivists from various academic and municipal institutions, as well as representatives of the company. The opening of the event and introduction by the head of the Landesdenkmalamtes Berlin, Prof. Jörg Haspel, was followed by a guided tour of the assembly hall (which has been extended twice during its history), where today the mechanical processing of gas turbine components and the manufacture of gas turbine blades takes place. The tour concentrated not only on architectural and historical aspects, but also on building projects for the assembly hall to render it suitable for producing the next generation of gas turbines.

The afternoon was reserved for specialized lectures, with the first block looking at the importance of the assembly hall as an example of European industrial architecture between the mid-19th and early 20th centuries (Rolf Höhmann, Büro für Industriearchitektur [Industrial Architecture Office]) and as part of the heritage of the “electropolis” Berlin (Dr. Hubert Staroste, Landesdenkmalamt Berlin) and also featuring the structural engineer of the building, the government architect Karl Bernhard (Prof. Cengiz Dicleli). The second block of lectures dealt with the reactions to the assembly hall and – as an extension of this – with the role of the location in the arts (Dr. Claudia Salchow, Historisches Archiv des Gasturbinenwerks Berlin [Historical Archives of the Gasturbinenwerk Berlin]),  as well as with the architecture of the Siemensstadt (Dr. Frank Wittendorfer, head of the Siemens Archives).

  

 

December 2, 2009 | Claudia Salchow, Berlin