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A C - A r c h i t e c t u r e C o m m i s s i o n
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AC Meeting October 23. – 25. 2010 Berlin Visited Projects
Schaubühne Lehniner Platz The Schaubühne has been housed since 1981 in a building originally designed by the Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn, who is among the most important German architects of the 20th century. Other noteworthy structures built by Mendelsohn are the Einstein Tower in Potsdam and the »Mossehaus« on Berlin’s Jerusalemer Straße. The architect died in 1953 in America.
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Building History: 1928 On the southern end of Lehniner Platz a group of structures was built which was intended to contain a microcosm of city functions. An early example of multi-use urban construction, the so-called WOGA
Complex contained apartment buildings, a shopping street, a café restaurant and a cabaret theater. The most distinctive structure of the group was the »Universum« Cinema, designed for the screen premiere of films by Ufa (Universum Film AG), with a broad, cantilevered horseshoe-shaped hall containing 1800 seats, and the façade’s massive ventilation tower which juts out over the Kurfürstendamm boulevard like a ship’s keel. 1937-45 In 1937 a cinema operator named Willy Hein took over the »Universum.« Shortly before the end of the war the building was severely damaged by bombing, so that Mendelsohn’s interior was destroyed by fire and forever lost.
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1946-1952 The architect Hermann Fehling was hired to do the building’s reconstruction. After two years of work, the »Studio« cinema was opened in the former front-of-house space; in 1950 the »Capitol« cinema was added in the former main hall, which had been downsized. The surrounding area between the Halensee and the Tauentzien became known as the »Broadway of Berlin.« 1968-1973 In 1968 the »Capitol« was converted to an oversized Beatnik meeting space, and just one year later to a musical-theater stage. In 1973 the »Studio« discontinued its operation as a movie house with Stanley Kubrick’s »A Clockwork Orange.« 1978-1981 From 1978-81 the architect Jürgen Sawade transformed the former »Universum« building, while also restoring its original exterior, into one of the most technically advanced theaters in Germany.
The newly designed building on Lehniner Platz, developed under the aegis of the Berlin Senate, was to become the new home of the »Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer.« The Schaubühne had suffered a lack of space which made a move necessary. It was perhaps the first time in the modern history of theater design that a theater space was constructed in accordance with the needs of the theater’s experienced practitioners, under constant dialogue in planning and construction between the theater and the architect. Decorative elements were sacrificed during this process in favour of functionality, resulting in a sober but purposeful configuration. The cost of the conversion process totaled approximately 81 million German marks. The Mendelsohn building was placed under landmark protection in 1979.
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Grid level after 1981 conversion
The architect of the origin building Erich Mendelsohn * 21.03.1887 in Allenstein, Ostpreußen † 15.09.1953 in San Francisco, USA Erich Mendelsohn was a German Jewish architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas. From 1912 to 1914 he worked as an independent architect in Munich. In 1915 he married cellist Luise Maas. Through her, he met the cello-playing astrophysicist Erwin Finlay Freundlich.
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Freundlich was the brother of Herbert Freundlich, the deputy director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (now the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in the Dahlem district of Berlin. Freundlich wished to build an astronomical observatory suitable to experimentally confirm Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Hat Factory in Luckenwalde Through his relationship with Freundlich, Mendelsohn had the opportunity to design and build the Einsteinturm ("Einstein Tower"). This relationship and also the family friendship with the Luckenwalde hat manufacturers Salomon and Gustav Herrmann helped Mendelsohn to an early success. As a Jew, seeing the rise of antisemitic tendencies in Germany, he emigrated in the spring of 1933 to England. His not inconsiderable fortune was later seized by the Nazis, his name was struck from the list of the German Architects' Union, and he was excluded from the Prussian Academy of Arts. In England he began a business partnership with Serge Chermayeff, which continued until the end of 1936. Mendelsohn had long known Chaim Weizmann, later President of Israel. At the start of 1934 he began planning a series of projects on Weizmann's behalf in Mandate Israel under British rule and in 1935 opened a bureau in Jerusalem, where he greatly influenced the local Jerusalem International Style, all facades fashioned in limestone. In 1938, having already dissolved his London office, he took UK citizenship and shortening his English forename to "Eric". From 1941 until his death Mendelsohn lived in the United States and taught at the University of California, Berkeley. Until the end of World War II his activities were limited by his immigration status to lectures and publications. He also served as an advisor to the U.S. government. For instance, in 1943 he collaborated with the U.S. Army and the Standard Oil in order to build "German Village", a set of replicas of typical German working class housing estates, which would be of key importance in acquiring the know-how and experience necessary to carry out the firebombings on Berlin.[1] In 1945 he established himself in San Francisco.
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From then until his death in 1953 he undertook various projects, mostly for Jewish communities.
Sketch for the universal cinema which is now the Schaubuehne.
Schaubuehne in 1981
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Technical concept: In the show stage on the Lehniner place there is no more separation between to the spectator and stages area like in conventional theatres: The acting space is able at every place, as a spectator or stages surface are used. There are up to three stage performances in one, or in different ones two evenings take place side by side. Alternatively the rooms also are able to each other are added, up to a metropolitan area for a great production. There are 3 single rooms, called A, B, C. The space floor of the single halls exists of 76 hydraulic scissor type elevators with a base of 7.00 x 3.00 m and Oregon-Pine-flooring. They allow to be lowered max. 3.00 m below the entrance level with a concurrent dynamic loading capacity of 2500 N / m². The whole interior area of the single halls has in 9.00 m or 6.00 m height about street level a steel construction, with in the central nave to removable ones to gratings, as a working cover and as a point of suspension for floodlight during of the play company it is used.
The division of the whole area in the halls A, B and C occurs by galvanized steel duplicate rolling gates from fire-resistant (rated F 90) to components with a sound proof rate from mind. 60 dB, according to the demands of the sound insulation and fire prevention. The seats are from folding and stackable, black painted steel pipe armchairs with a ground and rows connection. Beside the theatrical main building several workshop buildings, separated by a private street belong to the complex.
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Theatrical Layouts:
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All 3 halls A,B,C
Hall C
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Hydraulic elevators
Longitudinal section
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Main level with 76 elevators
Stage risers to be positioned on main elevators 3 x 7 m
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Construction time : 1978 till 1981 Costs: (1981) 81.000.000,-- DM (approx. 40 Million Euro) Address: Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz Theaterbetriebs GmbH Kurfürstendamm 153 10709 Berlin Telefon (030) 89002-0 www.schaubuehne.de
