Ground-breaking ceremony for future technical town hall
In the presence of Mayor Barbara Ludwig and Building Mayor Michael Stötzer, the Kellnberger Group today held a ground-breaking ceremony for the future Technical Town Hall of the City of Chemnitz. This means that the brownfield site, colloquially known as the "Contiloch", will finally disappear from the cityscape.
In December, the city of Chemnitz granted full planning permission and approval under redevelopment law for the new building on Bahnhofstrasse. The company is constructing a six-storey building complex to house numerous offices on the site between Bahnhofstrasse, Waisenstrasse and Dresdner Strasse.
From 2018, the building department with the urban planning office, surveying office, building permit office, civil engineering office, green spaces office and building management/building construction will be based there. In addition, parts of the Main Office, the Legal Office and the IT Office as well as the Property Office, the Environmental Office and the Education and Sports Office will be housed in the new Technical Town Hall.
Around 16,000 m² of floor space for city administration offices
According to current plans, the move will begin on 1 December 2017 and is expected to take six to eight weeks. The City of Chemnitz will occupy a total of 12,671 m², including all storage, consultation and archive rooms, as well as corridors, stairwells and operating rooms. In total, around 16,000 m² will be rented. As a result of a market exploration procedure in summer 2014, the administration concluded a 15-year lease agreement with the Kellnberger group of companies. The rent is contractually fixed at 8.90 euros/m².
Urban development situation
The construction project now underway, which links Sonnenberg with the city centre in terms of urban development, also marks the start of further tenders for space and future construction measures along Bahnhofstrasse. It is the result of the expert opinion process for the further development of the city centre and thus provides an urban planning outlook: The Technical Town Hall is just the first important building block in upgrading the area east of Bahnhofstrasse and giving it a new urban framework. This is to be supplemented in future by further buildings in construction sites E3 (currently the car park at Haus Tietz) and E4 (currently the An der Johanniskirche car park). Based on the appraisal process carried out in 2015 for the further development of the city centre, the city is currently drawing up the "Neue Johannisvorstadt" development plan, which includes the two construction sites E3 and E4 mentioned above.
The new buildings (Technisches Rathaus, Neue Johannisvorstadt), together with the planned boulevard-like green design, have the power to give Bahnhofstrasse as a whole a new urban face, which - it is justifiably hoped - will create a sense of identity and revitalise the attractiveness of Chemnitz city centre as a whole.
City councillors, the administration and the client discussed the design of the façade of the new Technical City Hall in an advisory board. As a result of the discussion of the most diverse design approaches, a multi-coloured solution prevailed. The parapets will be plastered smooth white, while the pillars between the windows will be coloured in shades of red and blue to create a dynamic, varied image. The red tones will run along Bahnhofstrasse and Waisenstrasse in a kind of wave-like movement across the façade. Along Dresdner Strasse, where the building is divided into several individual houses, there is a free mixture of blue and red window pillars. Horizontally structured façades were already used on the Schocken department stores' and the administrative buildings of the GDR era. The selected design thus represents a good, independent further development of this decades-old architectural approach.
Towards Bahnhofstrasse, Waisenstrasse and Dresdner Platz, the six-storey compact building, underpinned by an underground car park, will form a kind of perimeter block development, which will be interrupted by views into the inner courtyard, passageways and a sensible architectural structure. On Bahnhofstrasse and Waisenstrasse, a gateway situation is to be created by building over the gap on the top floor.
The listed arts and crafts building on Dresdner Strasse will be incorporated into the development by adding an extension to its firewall and creating a structural gap. Along Dresdner Strasse, the development of a single house character will be realised in accordance with the once historically existing buildings. This allows the development on Dresdner Strasse to act as a mediating element between the large-scale scale of the buildings on Bahnhofstrasse and the more articulated small-scale development structure on Sonnenberg.
A clearly recognisable spatial edge is to be created opposite the Chemnitz State Museum of Archaeology, which will form the representative forecourt and create a special link to the famous listed Mendelsohn building.
To ensure a modern architectural language, the upper storeys will be designed as perforated façades with upright window formats. This creates a clearly structured façade that lends the elongated, horizontal appearance of the building a vertical dimension and thus an interesting tension. Large areas of glazing will be used for the ground floors along Bahnhofstrasse and towards the forecourt. A lighting concept was developed to realise the building façade as an accentuated design element of the urban space and to emphasise the connecting function at night.
As an urban link between different parts of the city, the building meets special requirements such as a barrier-free pedestrian connection between Sonnenberg and the city centre. In addition, the open spaces will be spatially structured by a high-quality overall design in terms of planting, materials and design language, which will lend the future public use a special quality.