Architecture | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Architecture’ category

Koblenz: 1st and 2nd Deutsches Eck (German Corner)

Above: West view to Deutsches Eck from Ehrenbreitstein. 2015 photo by Taxiarchos228 (Wladyslaw Sojka). I’ve added the following labels: (1) Seilbahn/Gondola, (2) St. Kastor Basilica, (3) Deutschherrenhaus, (4) first Deutsches Eck, (5) Memorial to German Unity (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial), (6) reclamation in the late 19th-century, (7) second Deutsches Eck.

Many will know, have seen, or have read about the Deutsches Eck (German Corner) in the German city of Koblenz. The river city has plenty to provide: visitors wander into the vineyards to sip on crisp white wine from local grapes, vacation on long cabin-boats to enjoy the river scenery, or explore the surrounding Upper Rhine River Valley.

But Koblenz is also well known by virtue of its name after the junction where the rivers Moselle and Rhine meet. By the first-century AD/CE, the Romans had built for strategic protection a fort¹ called “Castellum apud Confluentes“, Latin for “the castle at the confluence”. What most commonly acknowledge as the Deutsches Eck (German corner) is not the original location. Half concealed among the trees some 200 metres back near the Deutschherrenhaus is the first location of the Deutsches Eck.

What follows:

a map to the area and my photos from the present-day,
a short history of the “Deutsches Eck,” and
archival images from the mid-16th century to early 20th century.

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Dessau: The Bauhaus Building, UNESCO WHS

21st-century Modernity, from 1919 on

The chair or couch on which you sit.
The table on which you’re resting your mobile or pad.
The desk on which your laptop or desktop resides.
The light fixture on your desk or above your head.
The windows in your room, your house, or in the café where you’re reading this.

The “universal” idea of living in a house or apartment with the furnishings we all take for granted from bathroom to bedroom and kitchen to living room is a relatively young idea by historical standards. It’s easy to imagine a time where only the rich upper-class could afford and were allowed to have and live in heated furnished residences, and the poor lower-class lived in unheated homes under damp dirty squalid conditions. Past designs with its heavy stone, porcelain, and ornate decorative components gave way to steel, glass, lightness of space, to favouring function over form. Simpler designs were meant to provide universal access: to the home, and to the essentials which furnished the home.

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Dresden Semperoper: outside by day, inside at night

When I lived in Germany, I remembered the ads for Radeberger Pilsner, and I wondered about some of the venues shown. I realized the buildings were in the famous city of Dresden on the Elbe river in southeast Germany, and the city of Radeberg was only 15 kilometres from Dresden. Images of the Dresden’s landmarks have been an important part of Radeberger brewery’s advertising campaign to show the beer’s exceptional quality and to associate that very same quality by (physical) proximity with the symbolism of Dresden’s historic landmarks.

Dresdner Wahrzeichen (Dresden Landmark)

As one of the city’s most well-known landmarks, the Semperoper (Semper Opera House) appears in countless images representing Dresden. The Semperoper is the showpiece structure at Theaterplatz (Theater Square) looking over the river Elbe in the city’s Altstadt (Old Town). The first version of the building opened in 1841 with the design provided by Gottfried Semper. After destruction by fire in 1869, the second version of the building, also to Semper’s design, was completed in 1878. Only the Semperoper’s outer facade remained in 1945 during the final stages of the Second World War. Built once again to Semper’s original designs, the third and present version of the Semperoper opened to great acclaim on 13 February 1985. The interiors were reconstructed according to original plans and designs, whereas stage machinery and technical and engineering requirements are all updated to the best standards in audio quality.

With the leading title “Sächsische Staatstheater-Staatsoper und Staatsschauspiel Dresden”, the opera house is home to the Saxon State Opera, the Saxon State Theatre, the Semperoper Ballet, and one of the world’s oldest orchestras, the Staatskapelle Dresden, founded by Prince Elector Moritz von Sachsen in 1548.

The Semper Oper is a natural part of any walking tour of Dresden, as Theaterplatz is minutes from the Zwinger, Residenzschloss, and the Frauenkirche. I’m awed by the night tour, a chance to see up close the building’s Baroque style exterior and the classic ornate interior. Everybody speaks in calm hushed voices, the unspoken agreement to be mindful and respectful of this venue. Despite the presence of other people in other tour groups, it feels like I have the Opera House to myself at 11pm.

Semper Oper, Theaterplatz, Dresden, Sachsen, Germany, fotoeins.com

Classic shot of the front by day

Classic shot of the front at night; also featured on the “night watch”

Ceiling mural

Some columns real marble (cool to touch); some faux-marble plaster (warm to touch). Full replacements were too expensive for the GDR/DDR at the time

S. Kurpiers, one of the stage managers and our guide for the evening

Main stage & orchestra, from central box section in the 1st balcony (Loge, 1. Rang). Clock at top-centre reads “XI 5”, or 1105pm

“Box” seats normally reserved for representatives and guests of the German federal state of Saxony

Separate guided tour to our left; there are 4 balconies

Another tour to the right

Looking up; lip of the 2nd balcony appears at top

Massive central chandelier light-fixture overhead; clock reads “XI 20” (1120pm)

Dresden — Saxony Tourism — DW, architecture

Thanks to Semperoper for opening their facility to the public at night, and thanks to S. Kurpiers who kindly guided our tour of the venue. Thanks also to Germany Tourism, Saxony Tourism, and Dresden Tourism for their support and hospitality. I made all of the photos above on 22 April 2015 with the Canon EOS6D. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-7sx.

The following is an advertisement for Radeberger brewery from 2014. The advert for their Pilsener ends with an image of Dresden’s Semper Oper at night and the slogan “schon immer besonders” (always special).

Uni-Hauptgebäude, Bauhaus Universität, Weimar, Thüringen, Germany, UNESCO World Heritage, Weltkulturerbe, fotoeins.com

Weimar Bauhaus Old & New, UNESCO WHS

There’s a clear transition in time where architecture and design took a step from behind closed doors for the sole purview of the rich and royal and out into the open for public and general consumption. It’s no surprise the years from the end of the 19th-century into the 20th-century marked big changes, with Art Nouveau at the time as part of the Secession movement. Throughout Europe, rebellion and revolution were in the air, economically, politically, and culturally.

The Bauhaus movement also helped initiate a conversation, creating and fostering a relationship between industry’s machinery and artistic or cultural creativity. Bauhaus opened in Weimar in 1919, before moving to Dessau and Berlin. The rise of the National Socialists deemed Bauhaus “degenerate” and did all they could to eliminate a movement and her people deemed counter to National Socialist policy. With Bauhaus’ forced closure in 1933 by the Nazis, a number of practitioners escaped Germany to other parts of the world, including the United States and Argentina.

For their deep and wide-ranging influence on 20th-century art, architecture, and design, an incomplete list of names includes Martin Gropius, Lyonel Feininger, Gerhard Marcks, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Herbert Bayer, Irene Bayer (née Hecht), Karla Grosch, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, etc. In particular, László Moholy-Nagy would move to Chicago in the United States and established in 1937 the New Bauhaus which became the Institute of Design in 1944.

Tucked away on a university campus a few minutes south of the Weimar city centre, two important building lie across from each other: the Saxony Academy of Art¹ building and the Grand Ducal Saxony School of Arts and Crafts (College of Applied Arts)². The former is now the main building for the present-day Bauhaus University, and the latter now houses Bauhaus University’s Faculty of Design. In 1996, these two buildings formed a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) listing and designation for Bauhaus sites in Weimar and Dessau.

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Sprinkenhof, Kontorhausviertel, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Weltkulturerbe, Hamburg, Germany, fotoeins.com

My Hamburg: Speicherstadt & Kontorhausviertel, UNESCO WHS

On 5 July 2015, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee awarded new UNESCO World Heritage Site status to two historical districts in the north German port city of Hamburg: Speicherstadt (Warehouse District) and the Kontorhausviertel (Office District).

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