Peek & Cloppenburg Department Store, Lübeck
On our way back to UK from Sweden in the summer, we stopped off in Lubeck, a city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany. The city is situated on the Trave River which flows into the Bay of Lubeck and the Baltic Sea at Travemünde.
In the early middle ages, Lübeck lay on the trade routes between the North Sea and the Baltic and became a centre of long-distance commerce and the leading city of the Hanseatic League. The League was a powerful medieval commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns across central and northern Europe that dominated trade in the region from the 13th to the 17th centuries. It encompassed nearly 200 towns and trading posts from the Baltic Sea to Cologne with outposts in London, Kings Lynn, Bruges, Bergen, Novgorod and other European and Russian towns and cities.
The League traded in timber, furs, beeswax, grain and salt from eastern Europe and Russia in exchange for manufactured goods and fine cloth from western Europe. The League’s influence waned with the rise of national monarchies and shifting maritime trading routes in the 17th century. The city’s European Hansemuseum which is dedicated to the history of the Hanseatic League is well worth a visit as is the Willy Brandt museum. I had no knowledge of his very interesting history both before and during the Second World War and I had forgotten what an important figure he was in Europe after the War.
Lübeck’s medieval old town is located on a densely built up island in the Trave River and is the largest UNESCO World Heritage site in Germany. The city has a skyline dominated by the seven towers (six of which are higher than 100 metres) of its five main Protestant churches; St Mary’s, St James’s, St Peter’s, St Giles’s and Lubeck Cathedral. The cathedral, constructed between 1173 and 1335 was the first large church constructed of brick in the Baltic region and St Mary’s Church, built between 1265 and 1351, is considered to be the model on which most of the other brick, Gothic churches in the cities of the Hanseatic League were based. Other notable buildings include the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, one of the oldest social institutions in the world (built in 1268), the City Hall, one of the largest brick Gothic town halls in Germany (completed in 1308) and the Salzspeicher, medieval warehouses built to store salt from Lüneburg before it was distributed around the Baltic.
During the Second World War almost 20% of the city was destroyed but fortunately most of the medieval structure of the old town survived and two of the city’s medieval gates, the Burgtor and the Holstentor, both built in the 15th century, also survive.
One of the few notable modern buildings that I came across in the old town is the Peek and Cloppenburg department store. This is a mixed-use building containing a department store, offices, a cafe and retail spaces that was completed in 2005. The building is located on a gently sloping site (part of the UNESCO World Heritage site) on the eastern side of the historic marketplace behind the Town Hall. It was part of a development plan aimed at rectifying some of the damage caused by an inappropriate post-war building programme. The architects were Ingenhoven, Overdiek, Kahlen and Partners.
The main tenant is the department store of Peek & Cloppenburg which is entered off Kohlmarkt and which occupies most of the ground, first and second floors with offices on the third floor. The entrance to the offices together with a café and two shops are at the rear of the building accessed from the market square.
The building is divided into eight equal bays supported by three lines of structural columns, one in the centre and two set inside the main facades of the building. The bays are expressed externally by double round columns with glazing in-between that appear to support the roof structure (which is actually supported by the internal columns). The roof was designed as an open shell structure that consists of self-supporting, arched biaxial shells made of 15 centimetre thick reinforced concrete (covered with aluminium) spanning the whole width of the building with large curved, overhanging eaves externally.
The three main facades are fully glazed with all of the glazing at first and second floor levels and some at ground floor level, protected from the sun by vertical terracotta louvres (supported internally by stainless steel tubes; see below) that also provide privacy to the internal spaces.
The building was designed in close collaboration with the city’s planning office and the heritage preservation authorities and the construction materials and methods were carefully selected to complement the historically important surrounding buildings.
I think that it is an important building that shows that it is possible to design an uncompromisingly modern building that can be successfully integrated into the fabric of a historic city. It is really most impressive!
Architecture in Developing Countries: A Resource
The design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health in rural areas of the developing world.
Nigel Wakeham worked as an architect for 23 years in Southern and West Africa and the SW Pacific working on education, health and other projects. He has since worked for over 20 years as a consultant for national governments and agencies such as the World Bank, DFID, ADB and AfDB on the implementation of the construction components of education and health projects in many countries in the developing world.
The objective of this website will be to provide the benefit of more than 45 years of experience of working in developing countries to architects and other construction professionals involved in the design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health. It will provide reference material from the projects that Nigel has worked on and technical information on the design, construction and maintenance of educational and health facilities and other relevant topics and these will be added to from time to time.
I am happy to be contacted by anyone requiring further information on any of the projects or resources referred to in this website or by anyone wishing to discuss work possibilities.
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