Hannes Meyer’s German Workers’ Seminar in Berlin as UNESCO Heritage Site

When we recently learned that Hannes Meyer’s Bundesschule ADGB  (German Workers’ Seminar in Berlin/Bernau) had been designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO, we felt it was an opportunity to toot our own horn. Back in 2007, when a renovation of the complex had just been completed, we were given a tour of the facility and subsequently did a feature article about it in our COMPETITIONS quarterly magazine (Vol. 17, #4). Hardly six months passed, and we learned that the site had received the initial award for the 2008 World Monuments Fund Modernism Prize. In most cases, we wouldn’t have made a case for any influence that may have resulted from our publication, except that a member of that jury happened to be on our distribution list. So when the UNESCO designation occurred, we also received congratulations from a member of the German committee responsible for the renovation for the small role we played in the matter.

M20 – Museum of 20th Century Extension Competition

This is not what we fought for!

by Wilfried Wang*

Winning design: ©Herzog & de Meuron

Wilfried Wang’s commentary on the competition results for the extension of Mies’s Museum of the 20^th Century (M20) was published in the German journal, Bauwelt (40.2016). The author is the founder of the Berlin architectural practice Hoidn Wang Partner with Barbara Hoidn and has been the O’Neil Ford Centennial Professor in Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin since 2002. The text, translated by the Editor, is a slightly modified version (by the author) that appeared in Bauwelt.

Both in architectural and urbanistic terms, the jury’s misguided selection of the Herzog de Meuron entry as the winner of the M20 competition is another missed opportunity for Berlin.

By extending the form of this introverted structure to cover the entire competition site, little or no value is added to the immediate environs. To the contrary, that and the immense surfaces of the facades, right up to the edge of the pedestrian walkways, only serve to diminish the importance of the surrounding buildings. All the trees to the south of the site will disappear, and 90% of the outer walls of the building, regardless of the suggested use of porous brick detailing, are completely closed off. Only the eastern entrance of the Herzog de Meuron plan faces the main entrance of Scharoun’s State Library; the other two main entrances lack any such connection with the urban context. Thus, the Cultural Forum gains nothing in urban quality, but rather the sense of desolation will increase.

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