Zdjęcie: Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam

- Organiczne - tak ocenił ulokowane na przedmieściach Poczdamu obserwatorium astronomiczne swego imienia Albert Einstein. Twórcą tego arcydzieła ekspresjonistycznej architektury jest Erich Mendelsohn, Niemiec żydowskiego pochodzenia. Obserwatorium zaprojektował dla współpracownika Einsteina astronoma Erwina Finlaya-Freundlicha, który miał w nim prowadzić obserwacje związane z weryfikowaniem teorii względności. Wieżę zbudowano w latach 1920-21, a obserwatorium zaczęło pracę w 1924 r. Od końca drugiej wojny światowej było w stanie ruiny. Wyremontowano je dopiero w 1999 r.

Gorąco polecam animację wyjaśniającą działanie tego obserwatorium.

Today we're pretty used to the idea of putting modernist (usually high-tech) elements into buildings from previous eras; Foster at the Reichstag, I M Pei at the Deutsche Historical Museum, to name a couple of Berlin examples.

But in the early twentieth century the idea would have been almost unheard of. So how groundbreaking must Mendelsohn's Mossehaus have been?

The original building of 1900-1903, by Cremer & Wolffenstein, was a neoclassical sandstone affair, the corner of which was badly damaged by post first world war rioting (it must have been pretty extreme rioting, but such were the conditions in Germany at the time, I guess).

Mendelsohn retained most of the building's main facades, but completely rebuilt the corner, and added two/three additional stories, in a totally original, streamlined expressionist style.

What was also radical for its time was the focus on the corner of the building, seen by Mendelsohn as the focus of movement; at the junction of streets, as opposed to a 'static' entrance in the middle of a facade.

Oddly, section of 'original' facade on the southern elevation which should date from 1903 has been replaced by a recent, bland, office curtain wall. Perhaps this part was lost in WWII and the whole elevation rebuilt, including the Mendelsohn additional stories?

Elevation on Jerusalemer Strasse

Elevation on Schützenstrasse - more recent, but why?

Following the Einsteinturm, (see other post on this) Mendelsohn became hugely successful, running Germany's largest architectural practice between the wars, with commissions including department stores in Stuttgart, Chemnitz and Berlin (Potsdamer Platz, demolished after the war).

It's interesting that the Mossehaus was Mendelsohn's first major commission following the Einsteinturm, and the expressionist ideas are evident. But by the time he was forced to flee Germany in the 1930s (he was a Jewish, successful, modernist architect, so not exactly popular with the Third Reich) he was producing buildings that we would recognise as entirely modernist. The Metal Workers Union building (Industriegewerkschaft Metall), at the southern end of Alte Jakobstrasse, is one of these.

Unlike the Mossehaus, which is currently occupied by Total, who don't like you even peering into the entrance area, reception staff at the Union building allow access to the entrance area and main staircase (if you ask nicely).

Annoyingly, the staircase was completely scaffolded when I went; I'll drop in again soon and replace the images with better ones.

The original commission was for a substantially larger building over two blocks, linked by a bridge; someone at Manchester Uni has done a quite cool video for the building.

The building has just been completely refurbished, and is classic ‘streamline moderne’ – long, long brass handrails, strip windows and expanses of white render. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lobby bears a striking resemblance to the interiors of his pavilion at Bexhill-on-Sea – Mendelsohn’s only major building in England. The spiral staircase, with its sweeping handrails and vertical lighting system suspended throughout its height, seems near identical.

Bexhill

And then Berlin...

Rear elevation, which fittingly enough looks out over Libeskind's Jewish museum directly to the north.

Alte Jakobstrasse elevation. An unsettling image on show in the atrium shows the Union symbol replaced with a swastika in the same circle design during the 1930s.

Oddly, the atrium information boards also describe Mendelsohn's Bexhill pavilion erroneously as being in Bexley (a part of south east London, in which it definitely isn't).

When you actually see them ‘in the flesh’ for the first time, most seminal modern buildings are a disappointment. Buildings hardly ever look like they do in photos, and the sun's not always shining (especially here in Berlin).

Not so with the Einsteinturm (Einstein tower), probably the best known work by architect Erich Mendelsohn. The tower, actually a solar observatory, forms part of a cluster of other observatories and related research buildings on a wooded hill on the edge of Potsdam. The Mendelsohn building is the last one you reach, after passing the various much larger Victorian structures (Wilhelmisch, in Germany?). When you finally catch site of it, it seems tiny; an effect magnified by the fact that it's lower down the hill, and that the lowest level is set into the ground. Small but perfectly formed though. It's as if the rest of the site was built for the use of 'great men of science' and the Einsteinturm for tiny fairy folk.

The telescope itself has a vertical and a horizontal component; the vertical part is housed in the tower, with the horizontal part running the length of the whole building. This lower section of the building is partly buried, with its windows poking out of the turf, adding to its hobbit-like qualities. No need to describe its technical aspects further, as there's an excellent simulation here (what did we all do before Youtube?).

The structure is actually brick with a cement render covering, rather than the solid concrete which Mendelsohn claims was his original intention. The overall effect though is quite unearthly, in an early sci-fi, Flash Gordon kind of way. It's also a surprisingly pretty building, which is not something you'd say about most of our built environment.

The tower was completely refurbished in the late 1990s and is now once again in use as a solar observatory. Access to the interior is therefore limited – you can visit by appointment on certain Saturdays in winter only, but can walk up to and around it pretty much anytime during the day (staff at the gatehouse to the site were friendly and obviously used to archi-tourists).

Like Hans Poelzig, Mendelsohn’s career spanned from early expressionism to international modernism. As well as the Einsteinturm, his key surviving buildings in Berlin are the Kino Universum (now the Schaubühne), the alteration of the Mossehaus, and most notably the Metal Workers Union Building - see my other post for these last two.