Archinect - News

Nuremberg plans to convert monumental Nazi-era relic into a concert venue

2021-12-17T17:53:00-05:00

One of the most significant pieces to the architectural history of Hitler’s reign is now set to be converted into a concert venue in a controversial decision currently making waves in the second-largest city in Bavaria.

DW is reporting that the infamous Nuremberg Congress Hall building, which is part of Hitler’s planned Nazi party rally grounds complex, will serve as the new temporary home of the Nuremberg State Theater following a city council decision Wednesday.

The cultural venture would join another recent adaptive reuse plan from MVRDV that will transform a portion of Berlin’s erstwhile Tempelhof Airport into a local film academy campus.

The Ludwig and Franz Ruff-designed building’s construction was never completed as Nazi officials struggled to finance it and other ambitious construction projects in the build up of armaments for World War II. The building is currently administered by the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds (Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelä...

Nazi bunker to become new hotel in Hamburg

2019-10-22T18:30:00-04:00

"A former Nazi bunker in Hamburg, built by forced laborers to shelter tens of thousands of Germans during Allied air raids in World War II, will soon house hotel guests," reports The New York Times (NYT). Fit with a five-story terraced roof garden, the hotel will house 136 rooms, and is due to open in mid-2021.

The bunker was one of thousands built by the Nazi's during the war. A spokeswoman for NH Hotel Group, the organization designing the new space, told NYT that the group is "aware of the history of the building" and that they "would like to send a positive signal to the city of Hamburg.

Thomas L. Doughton also spoke to NYT, expressing how "part of the concern with some people in Hamburg, as well as in other locations in Europe and elsewhere is that the real significance of some of these sites will become lost."

The hotel will include a 560 square foot exhibition space to commemorate the structure's past, seeking not to "hide the history," but instead "to make it more visible."

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Nuremberg will stop Nazi rally grounds from further decay but won't restore them

2019-05-20T13:39:00-04:00

Should a modern democracy preserve an architecture and landscape designed to glorify the 20th century’s most infamous dictator? And, if the answer is yes, how? The city of Nuremberg has grappled with these questions for years. It is now about to embark on an €85m plan to conserve the vast Nazi party rally grounds designed by Adolf Hitler’s architect Albert Speer.

The enormous former Nazi party rally complex, with its Zeppelin Grandstand centerpiece, has been decaying for decades but—preserved and presented in the appropriate manner—could serve as a highly relevant educational landmark.

"We won’t rebuild, we won’t restore, but we will conserve," The Art Newspaper quotes Nuremberg’s chief culture official, Julia Lehner, saying. "It is an important witness to an era—it allows us to see how dictatorial regimes stage-manage themselves."

Austria flip-flops over future of Hitler's birth house

2016-10-19T13:13:00-04:00

A day after the Austrian government said it was planning to tear down the house where Adolf Hitler was born, the interior minister now says it is likely to be redesigned. The idea is to prevent the property from being a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. [...] "the new plan comes after members of a government-appointed commission on the future of the house suggested that erasing the house would give the impression Austria was trying to erase its past."

The tricky business of architectural preservation:

"Hitler at Home" by Despina Stratigakos

2015-09-28T17:42:00-04:00

Adolf Hitler was an extreme anti-Semite, convicted traitor, and leader of a violent paramilitary force. In a remarkable press campaign, the Nazis reinvented him as a genial Bavarian gentleman.

How did the Nazis reinvent Adolf Hitler — an extreme anti-Semite, convicted traitor, and leader of a violent paramilitary force — as a genial Bavarian gentleman?

Controversy over Hitler's Prora beach resort continues

2015-05-26T15:15:00-04:00

Axel Bering and Michael Jacobi, the main investors behind the Prora project, claim they could not care less about a building once being dedicated to Hitler. [...] He and his partner, Michael Jacobi, both confess that because they had to comply with German regulations, their investment carries some Third Reich architecture qualities. They did, however, add a balcony, but otherwise they see Prora as a nice beach town and a solid investment.

Artist impressions of various sections of the Prora colossus and their new make-up (source: Seebad Prora):

Previously

Le Corbusier "militant fascist" claims overshadow 50th death anniversary

2015-04-20T14:55:00-04:00

France's best-known 20th century architect, Le Corbusier, was a "militant fascist" who was far more anti-Semitic and a fan of Hitler than previously thought, two new books reveal. [...] the latest, far more damning, revelations have shocked admirers and threaten to cast a shadow over commemorations of the 50th anniversary of his death. [...] "Hitler can crown his life with a great work: the planned layout of Europe."

Nuremberg to spend €70 million on re-building Nazi rally grounds

2013-09-05T18:50:00-04:00

Nuremberg plans to spend up to 70 million euro restoring the sprawling complex used by Adolf Hitler for his mass rallies, as debate continues in Germany over what to do with Nazi-era architecture. “This is a job of national importance, we cannot take it on alone,” said Ulrich Maly, the Social Democrat mayor of the Bavarian city, who added he would ask for federal funds to complete the project.

Hitler's Words Into Stone. Can architecture itself be fascist?

2013-04-28T00:06:00-04:00

Rather elegant," intoned the white-haired figure at the podium. He was speaking of Adolf Hitler's Reich Chancellery, designed in 1938 by Albert Speer. Up next on the screen was the Nuremberg Party Rally Grounds where brown-shirted Nazis paraded en masse. "I think it is really great architecture," said the lecturer. "You take off the swastikas, and you can admire it without feeling guilty."

As you might expect, "Audience members shifted awkwardly in their seats, and a few walked out to protest the remarks by Léon Krier, opening a conference on Berlin at the Yale School of Architecture in February." Anyone manage to actually be there for this, or have any follow-up?

Talk about adaptive re-use: Baltic style

2011-07-07T21:08:00-04:00

Prora was designed to accommodate 20,000 people in one go. Hitler was convinced Germany lost World War I because its population lost its nerve. His idea was to create cheap package holidays to wed the nation to Nazism and to shape happy, strong, well-rested new generations capable of winning the next war.

Germany's newest youth hostel offers access to one of the best beaches the Baltic has to offer. Sunseekers are flocking to the place, which is booked out for the summer season and is already receiving bookings for summer 2012. The hostel stands just meters away from one of the best beaches the Baltic Sea has to offer, but is located in a building with a deeply troubled past. The 400-bed hostel, which calls itself "the longest youth hostel in the world," was opened on July 1 in a gigantic former Nazi holiday hotel that stretches for 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) along the coast of the island of Rügen at the resort of Prora.