Dom-Römer Project


The New Frankfurt Old Town is the centre of the old town of Frankfurt am Main, which was reconstructed from 2012 to 2018 as part of a major urban development project called the Dom-Römer Project. The project redesigned and developed a 7,000 square meter property between Römerberg in the west and Domplatz in the east, delimited by Braubachstrasse in the north and the Schirn Kunsthalle in the south, in an effort to remake the old city centre, the Altstadt of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, which was severely damaged during World War II, in the style of the pre-war architecture.
It aims to give the old town quarter between the Römerberg square and the Cathedral new life. The old city had already been thoroughly changed in 1904 by hewing several aisles for wide streets into the medieval cluster of insalubrious houses and small alley ways, clearing the way for a tramway line through the historic centre.
Due to the heavy bombing of Frankfurt am Main in World War II with many timber-framed buildings, most of the city's old town was destroyed. The efforts to rebuild parts of it began in the 1950s with the Römer city hall, which was built as a modern office building behind the old façade still standing after the war, and parts of the surrounding Römerberg square, building an underground multi-storey car park, and on top of that the modern Technisches Rathaus, whose façade paid homage to the historic context of the city with the timber frame design of the pre-war architecture, but within the context of "Brutalist architecture". The Historisches Museum was also built, including a cinema. In its entrance way, the museum displayed a model of the old centre as it looked at the end of World War II; in ruins.
The anti-brutalist movement continued in a public campaign to demolish the Technische Rathaus and to make the old city look like before the war. This did finally succeed, the Technisches Rathaus and the Museum of City History were demolished in 2010/2011, and the reconstruction of the old town core began.
The project is being built on top of a 1970s underground multi-storey car park and the U-Bahn Line B station underneath. Because of the demolition of the Technisches Rathaus, the underground moved and the tunnel had to be monitored closely and corrected several times.
Civic engagement in particular led to the old-town-oriented planning of the Dom-Römer project. The 35 designs of new buildings were 2010/11 in several architectural competitions determined with more than 170 participants. The foundation stone was laid at the end of January 2012. At the end of 2017, all of the houses were largely completed from the outside. On May 9, 2018, the fences were removed and the new district was made fully accessible to the public. From September 28 to 30, 2018, a three-day old town festival was held for the opening. Between 250,000 and 300,000 people came to the civic festival in Frankfurt. In March 2019, the Frankfurt Cathedral Romans project received the prestigious international MIPIM award.

History

During the Second World War, the medieval old town of Frankfurt am Main, until then one of the best preserved in Central Europe, was almost completely destroyed by bombing. Only a few historical buildings remained, and in the post-war period, other damaged buildings were also demolished, mostly in favour of "car-friendly" traffic planning. There were very few external reconstructions of buildings and the majority of the former old town was rebuilt in the style of the 1950s, largely leaving the historic street network behind.
Only the area between Römerberg and the cathedral remained after the rubble clearance wasteland, over whose development has long been debated. In the meantime, from 1953, archaeologists were able to uncover the remains of a Roman settlement, but also recent traces, especially from the Carolingian period, beneath the area of the high medieval layers. A centuries-long search for the origin of the city was therefore over, although the Royal Palatinate Frankfurt, which had previously only been handed down through documents, was not built by the legendary founder of Frankfurt, Charlemagne, but, according to findings, only by his son, Ludwig the Pious.
In 1966 construction began on the B section of the Frankfurt subway between the main train station and the Konstablerwache. The line of the new underground also led through the old town, with a station under the previously undeveloped area used as a parking lot between the cathedral and the Roman. When the Dom/Römer underground station was built in 1970/71, due to the open construction method, it was accepted to destroy a large part of the oldest settlement floor in Frankfurt, which had not yet been archaeologically examined.
Subsequently, after years of discussion on the site, the Technical City Hall was created in 1972–1974 as the seat of the technical offices of the city administration. Five old town houses on Braubachstrasse that had survived the war were demolished to excavate the construction pit. The building, built in the brutalist architectural style, represented with its enormous dimensions, dominated the former old town, not taking into account of the small-scale buildings in the area. The construction costs totalled DM 93 million.
In addition to the underground, a two-storey underground car park was built under the Dom-Römer area, which extends east-west from Domstrasse to the Römer facade and north-south from Braubachstrasse to Saalgasse moves there. After the construction work was completed, the ceiling of the underground car park formed the new level, which was now about two meters above the historical floor level. The archaeological finds of the old town excavation from 1953, dating from the early days of Frankfurt, also initially removed, were preserved and made accessible to the public as an archaeological garden.
In 1994 the city of Frankfurt sold the Technical City Hall for DM 148 million to Deutsche Immobilien Leasing, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank. At the same time, the building was leased back to the city with the option that the city could buy back the town hall for DM 135 million after the lease expired in 2006, a so-called sale-lease-back agreement.

Planning History

2004–2006

In 2004, the project developers Max Baum Immobilien and Groß & Partner, on behalf of the owner DIL, presented plans for a renovation of the 30-year-old technical town hall. According to plans by the Frankfurt office of Stefan Forster Architects, the building complex was to be divided into two houses by an alley from Braubachstrasse to the roundel of the Schirn Kunsthallebe to be created. For the concrete facades, a completely new design with a perforated facade made of natural stone was planned, for future use in the four-story base the city library as well as shops and restaurants. In addition, around 160 apartments were to be created in the three towers. The leasing contract with the city could have been extended to 20 years, subject to the modified use of the building.
The city council then decided in December 2004 to carry out an urban planning ideas competition in which both variants were to be run through. In this context, voices could also be heard, "based on the small-scale Gothic structure of the old town, there to achieve a small-scale structure." If this was already an unusual procedure, it was made more difficult that no specifications were made for the future use of the area. The Chamber of Architects in Wiesbaden opposed this approachwho considered the obligation to submit two drafts impractical and called for a clear decision by politicians. The competition, originally announced for January 2005, ultimately did not take place.
In May 2005, the Alliance of Four in the Romans, consisting of the CDU, SPD, FDP and the Greens, decided not to pursue the conversion variant any further. The following requirements were then set for the urban planning competition: small-scale buildings with facades and roofs that fit harmoniously into the old town, housing 20,000 m² of gross floor space within the property boundaries of the Technical City Hall, overbuilding of the archaeological garden with 7,000 m², continued use of the archaeological site Garden with the remains of the Royal Palatinate and the restoration of the old "coronation path" between the cathedral and the Roman. The name "Coronation Trail", an alternative name for the alley market, which existed until 1945, arose from the fact that a total of 16 coronation ceremonies for Roman-German kings were held in Frankfurt from the 14th to the 18th century. 20 offices took part in the urban planning competition.
In July 2005, the city and DIL agreed on new contract modalities after the demolition of the technical town hall. These provided that the city would not buy back the property, but that the leasing model would continue.
In August 2005, the Free Voters in the Römer submitted an application for the planned Dom-Römer area to approach the historic streets and squares and to reconstruct some important buildings in terms of urban planning, such as the Haus zur Goldenen Waage or the Haus zum Esslinger. However, the winning design chosen by the Frankfurt office KSP Engel and Zimmermann in September 2005 met only a few of these requirements. The "Coronation Trail" was not laid out along the course of the market, which was even largely respected by the construction of the Technical Town Hall in 1972, but in a straight diagonal fromStone house to the cathedral tower. The overplanned areas of the technical town hall and the archaeological garden were once again occupied by large buildings; a residential complex with three courtyards was to be built on Braubachstrasse. In addition to a narrow building, a trapezoidal square was planned at the level of the archaeological garden, which, like the diagonal to the cathedral tower, had never existed in a similar form in Frankfurt's urban history.
At the presentation of the draft, however, Edwin Schwarz, head of the planning department, emphasised that it was only a suggestion of how the required building dimensions should be distributed: "What can be seen here will not be built this way". Other architectural competitions would decide on the final design. Schwarz also spoke out against the reconstruction of individual historical buildings, since these would then stand next to modern buildings. A decision has not yet been made as to whether the city will extend the leasing model with DIL or use the option to buy back, says Schwarz.
The winning design was discussed controversially, in particular the laying of the "Coronation Trail", the buildings felt to be too massive and their flat roofs, which do not harmonise with the gable roofs of the old town, were criticized. The city council also voiced voices to revise the draft significantly and to lean more closely on the historical model. In September 2005, the Frankfurt SPD proposed to leave the decision on the design of the Dom-Römer-area citizens and a referendum to organize. According to the SPD, two or three competing designs with historical or historicizing and modern buildings should be developed.
In October 2005, the free voters presented their concept for a historically accurate reconstruction of old houses, alleys and squares under the title "An old town for Frankfurt's soul". In November 2005, the CDU presented their program for the local election campaign the following year before and pleaded in a building that adapting itself "as accurately as possible" to the historical circumstances.
In December 2005 the CDU tried to set up a special committee for the old town development, a similar committee had already been in the planning for the reconstruction of the Römerberg-Ostzeile in the early 1980s. It became clear that the factions in the Romans were largely able to agree on a common line: the most exact possible restoration of the historical floor plan with its alleys, squares and courtyards, as well as the reconstruction of individual, significant houses.
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mayor Petra Roth suggested that four buildings, including the Haus zur Goldenen Waage and the Neue Rote Haus, be reconstructed, but Roth believed that these could not be found in their original locations rebuild. It should therefore be considered whether these buildings should be arranged side by side or in other places. In May 2006, hired by the German Federal Government architect Workshop organized architectural models based on the KSP winning design. A total of 50 architects drafted proposals for 20 plots to be built, with the spectrum of designs ranging from modern buildings with a high proportion of glass to modern interpretations of half-timbered houses.
In June 2006 it was announced that the demolition of the technical town hall could not begin until 2008 at the earliest, as the relocation of the offices located there would be delayed due to renovations in the new branch. At the beginning of September 2006, the black-green coalition in the Römer, contrary to previous announcements, decided to buy back the Technical Town Hall on April 1, 2007 and thus terminate the leasing contract with DIL. A working group was also set up to present a usage concept for the site.
In order to involve the citizens in the planning, a planning workshop with around 60 participants was carried out by the city in autumn 2006. The first weekend event in October was attended by one third of citizens who came from initiatives and associations proposed by the factions of the city council and which were selected by lot. After the introduction with lectures and tours, groups worked on the topics of the use of the building plots and their subdivision, overbuilding of the archaeological garden, reconstruction of old town houses and design guidelines for the buildings. In the second event in December, the same participants discussed the revised urban planning concept. The recommendations of the groups were incorporated into the following key points.
In November 2006, the black-green coalition presented key points for the future development of the old town: extensive restoration of the historical city plan, reconstruction of four buildings at the historical location by the city itself, as well as design guidelines for the other houses. The aim was to use a high proportion of housing; the archaeological garden was to be built over in small parts and remain open to the public.

2007–2010

On April 1, 2007, the site of the Technical City Hall returned to urban ownership for around 72 million euros. In May 2007 it became known that the coalition had increased the number of buildings to be reconstructed to six to seven: In addition, the houses in Klein-Nürnberg and Alter Esslinger were to be rebuilt, and with them the entire row of houses north of Gasse Hinter dem Lämmchen. In addition, the possibility of initially reconstructing the Rebstock house was determined.
In September 2007, the city council approved a corresponding municipal bill, which also provides for the reconstruction of additional buildings, provided that private investors can be found for them. Five years were scheduled for the construction, although the demolition of the technical town hall could not begin before mid-2009. A separate architectural competition was sought for the development of the archaeological garden. The development should be carried out from a single source, because the underground car park underneath the site and the Dom/Römer underground station require complicated construction site logistics.
In November 2008, it became known that the contract for the construction of the Dom-Römer area was to be put out to tender across Europe after the city initially favored a direct award to Frankfurter Aufbau AG and OFB Projektentwicklung. The planned invitation to tender was stopped, however, when it became known that technical problems were to be expected when the Technical Town Hall was demolished: Only if it was demolished down to the ground floor would it be ensured that the underground tunnel under the building would not be flooded by groundwater If there is a total demolition, there is a danger if the new building is not started at the same time. Central problems such as relocating the entrances to the subway in the new building are still unsolved.
In March 2009, the city of Frankfurt announced that it would refrain from a Europe-wide tender and instead look after an urban project company with the new building project. According to the city, the legal requirements, which stipulate a Europe-wide tender, are not applicable to the award route chosen now, since the project company that is still to be founded will be fully owned by the city. The move of the city offices from the Technical City Hall is now planned for autumn 2009, and the demolition should begin in 2010.
In July 2009, an architecture competition for the development of the archaeological garden, called "Stadthaus am Markt", was launched. In addition, the Dom-Römer GmbH was founded as an urban company for the development of the Dom-Römer area. According to an initial estimate by Dom-Römer GmbH, the cost of building the old town was € 95 million, of which € 20 million was due to the demolition of the town hall.
In December 2009, the design by the architecture firm Prof. Bernd Winking Architects for the “Stadthaus am Markt” was awarded 1st prize. This provided for a compact building above the archaeological garden, but the draft was to be revised in consultation with the planning office of the city of Frankfurt. The four winners of the competition for the “Stadthaus am Markt” were asked by the city to revise their designs. This made it clear that the design that won the first prize will not necessarily be implemented.
In March 2010, the city announced that the review of a reconstruction of the Rebstock house had given a positive result that it would also reconstruct the neighboring building at Braubachstrasse 21. This brought the number of reconstructions financed by the city to eight, namely Markt 5 , Markt 17 , Hinter dem Lämmchen 2 , Hinter dem Lämmchen 4 , Behind the Lämmchen 6 , Behind the Lämmchen 8, Braubachstrasse 19 and Braubachstrasse 21.
For 15 other buildings, Dom-Römer GmbH initially considered a reconstruction based on the available documentation to be feasible, provided that private investors were found., the number of additional reconstructions was later reduced to nine, namely Hühnermarkt 18 , Hühnermarkt 20 , Hühnermarkt 22 ', Hühnermarkt 24 , Hühnermarkt 26 , Markt 13 , Markt 15 ,'' Markt 28 ' and Braubachstrasse 27. The deadline for interested parties to purchase a property in the Dom-Römer area ended on July 31, 2010.

2010–2012

On June 12, 2010, the statutes for the Dom-Römer area came into force. This described guidelines for the structure and design of facades and roofs as well as the use of materials. Basically, only steeply pitched gable roofs with a minimum of 55 degrees were permitted.
In August 2010 an open architecture competition for the new buildings on the Dom-Römer area was announced. A total of 56 architectural firms were selected to participate and were to develop new building designs for a total of 27 plots. Together with the eight plots that were planned for urban reconstructions, a total of 35 buildings were to be built on the site.
In September 2010, after a round of revisions, the fourth-placed architectural firm Meurer Architects was selected with a revised design for the “Stadthaus am Markt”. The design envisaged building almost the entire archaeological garden and moved the building close to the cathedral. In order to maintain a small appearance, the building dimensions were designed as an ensemble of five buildings.
In March 2011, the results of the architecture competition for the new buildings on the Dom-Römer area were presented. A total of 24 first and 12 second prizes were awarded, plus 13 recognition's. Parcels where more than one prize was awarded were reassessed. No prices were awarded for two plots, Markt 7 and Markt 40. In April 2011, the designs were publicly exhibited in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, while the planning services for the eight urban and nine optional reconstructions were put out to tender. In July 2011, Dom-Römer GmbH announced another competition for the two plots Markt 7 and Markt 40, which resulted in first and three second prizes in October 2011, plus two recognition's.
On January 24, 2012, Dom-Römer GmbH presented the results of which architects were selected for the development of the Dom-Römer area and thus for the first time an overview of the future shape of the old town. In addition to the eight urban reconstructions, buyers were found for seven of the nine optional reconstructions. Only the builders of the Hühnermarkt 18 plots and Braubachstraße 27 opted for new buildings. In total, 15 reconstructions and 20 new buildings were to be built. The chicken market as the central square of the new old town was reconstructed on three sides. The architects, who were awarded first prizes in 2011, prevailed over the new buildings, which fit harmoniously into the ensemble of the old town, but should nevertheless be recognizable as 21st century buildings. A citizens' initiative formed against the competition results in 2013 and unsuccessfully attempted to implement more reconstructions with the help of a citizens' decision.
In February 2012, the budget coalition of the black and green city government submitted a list of savings proposals, which included a preliminary waiver of the construction of the “town house on the market”. The proposal triggered mixed reactions: the citizens' initiative SOS Dompanorama, which is committed to maintaining a clear view from the Römerberg to the cathedral, welcomed the decision, while others, such as Michael Guntersdorf, managing director of Dom-Römer GmbH, thereby welcomed the old town project as a whole saw in danger. Because of the necessary expenditure for indispensable technical buildings and outdoor facilities, a waiver of the town house would have resulted in a budget saving of only a maximum of 8 million euros.

Architectural History

At the beginning of April 2010, the demolition of the technical town hall officially started with the first excavator bite. By November 2010, the building was initially removed only to the ground floor, then prepared the two-storey underground car park for demolition, the entire building services has been removed. From May 2011 to early 2012, the rest of the building was demolished.
The foundation stone for the development of the Dom-Römer area was laid symbolically on January 23, 2012. With the laying of the foundation stone, work began on the floor slab for the future old town development. The buildings are on the ceiling of the 1970 to 1972 built, two-storey underground subway station and parking garage Dom-Romans. For logistical reasons, the Dom-Römer area was built from south to north; the southernmost building was the town house on the market. In May 2012, the Monument Office examined whether there are other important ground monuments in the eastern area of the archaeological garden. Further parts of the Carolingian royal palatinate were discovered, which were included in the planning for the town house. In August 2012, the so-called Schirn table, an extension to the Schirn art gallery, was demolished in order to create more space for the new old town. During the foundation work for the town house and the southern row of houses on the market of the archaeological garden was geotextile packed, filled with a gravel-like material and covered with a layer of concrete.
The foundation work on the town house was completed in spring 2013 and the archaeological garden was uncovered again. The shell of the town house began in May 2013. The completion of the town house, which was originally planned for 2014, was delayed until the end of 2015; the completion of the entire Dom-Römer area was planned for 2017. In December 2015, it was announced that the construction costs of the project would not be around 170 million euros, but would again amount to 185.7 million euros, according to a new estimate. The townhouse was finally opened in June 2016.
On October 15, 2016 the city of Frankfurt celebrated the topping-out ceremony and opened parts of the construction site for citizens. A virtual project film gave an impression of what the old town will look like after completion.
On December 12, 2016, the managing director of the GmbH reported to the Dom-Römer special committee that the current calculation was 196 million euros. As the head of planning stated, the additional costs would arise from non-project costs, such as the renovation of the underground car park. At the same time bring only the 65 apartments on the site of a 90 million euro for the city.
In December 2017, the externally completed reconstructions were presented at a press appointment. Originally, the Coronation Trail and Dom-Römer area were to be open to the public from the end of March 2018; ultimately happened on May 9th. From September 28 to 30, 2018, the new old town district was officially opened with an old town festival, in which more than 250,000 visitors took part.
The actual total cost of the project will be available in spring 2020 when all buildings are occupied and identified deficiencies are resolved. According to the current economic plan, DomRömer GmbH anticipates total costs of “around 200, maximum 210 million euros”. The city of Frankfurt raised around 75 million euros from the sale of the apartments. Over € 80 million was also transferred to the city's fixed assets, including the Stadthaus am Markt, the refurbished underground car park, the Goldene Waage and Neues Rotes Haus. The value of the shops and restaurants from which the city generates ongoing rental income is around 12 million euros. About 15 to 20 percent of the additional costs incurred during the construction period are due to changes in the plan and interventions in the construction process.

Streets

In terms of approval, the Dom-Römer project comprised a single construction project - "Reconstruction of the underground car park and the construction of a new building with residential and business use, museum, bar and restaurant business, accommodation, sales and meeting facilities" - on parcel 199/41.
following buildings and ensembles, sorted by streets, were created:

Braubachstraße - South Side

Five houses and a rear building with access from Neugasse were built on Braubachstrasse, one of them as a reconstruction. The house at Braubachstrasse 21, formerly Im Rebstock 3 is a three-storey residential and farm building, which originally came from the 16th century and was externally changed in the Baroque period. In the typical Frankfurt style of construction, two cantilevered half-timbered floors rise above a stone ground floor. The house shows the reconstructed quarry stone firewall on Braubachstrasse, which was uncovered when the street was breached in 1905. The eaves side to the Hof Rebstock on the market is with a dwelling housearticulated with a baroque wave gable and several dormer windows. The reconstruction is a design by the Frankfurt office Jourdan & Müller. The ground floor is used by the administration of the Katharinen- and Weißfrauenstift, a non-profit foundation of the Frankfurt patrician and cleric Wicker Frosch dating back to 1353. On the north-east corner of the house, as has been the case since 1935, the preserved spolia of the winegrower monument is embedded.
To the west of this is the new building at Braubachstrasse 23, designed by Einartner Khorrami Architects, Leipzig. The four-storey house with a mansard roof is completely clad with the red Mainsandstein, typical of Frankfurt. The cider drinker is mounted on the northwest corner of the building on Neugasse, a spolie from the previous building built by Hermann Senf in 1940. The Golden Cross house by Bernd Albers, Berlin, is a rear building to Braubachstraße 23 and connected to it by three archways based on the historical model. Like its predecessor from the 18th century, the three-story house has a gnome on the northern eaves. The two gable sides face the Neugasse and the courtyard to the vine.
The neighboring house on the western side of Neugasse is also made of red sandstone. The three-storey building Braubachstrasse 27 with a two-storey classicist gable was designed by Eckert Neebger Suselbeek, Berlin. The house Braubachstrasse 29 by Bernd Albers has two facades: The front of Braubachstrasse consists of a ground floor with five arcades, three horizontally structured upper floors, the top one of which is set off by a cornice. The recessed top floor is divided by a five-axis dwelling house, next to it two attics each. The main portal is additionally emphasized by a semi-reliefexecuted figure of Mary. It leads into the courtyard of the Golden Lamb. The rear facade of the Lämmchenhof is an exact reconstruction of the previous building from 1911, which in turn was a reconstruction of the state from 1693.
The house at the Glauburger Hof was based on the Art Nouveau building from 1913, which was demolished in 1970 for the Technical City Hall. The design comes from Knerer and Lang Architects, Dresden. The lettering Das Neue tumbles down and old life blooms from the ruins, the parody of a sentence from Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, was inserted into its facade.

Market "coronation" - north side

The north side of the market comprises four new buildings between the cathedral and the chicken market. The first, separated from the Haus am Dom by a narrow passage to the Rebstock courtyard on the market, is the Großer Rebstock, first mentioned in 1342, a design by Jordi Keller Architects, Berlin. The five-story house is directly opposite the golden scales. The two arcades on the ground floor form the eastern entrance to the Dom / Römer underground station. Reinforced concrete foils from the Technical Town Hall are inserted into the facade. Like the new building, its classicist predecessor, built around 1800, was a stone building. The narrow house to the westSchönau is a design by Ey's Berlin office. With its sandstone base and the four projecting, slated upper floors, it is reminiscent of the Gothic predecessor Schildknecht / pharmacy. The originally three-storey half-timbered house, first mentioned in 1472, was extended in the 17th century with a wave gable. The Vorderer Schildknecht house comes from Dreibund architects from Bochum and is very similar to the Goldenes Haupt house designed by the same office. On the sandstone ground floor with its two high, a bob floorsuggestive arched windows, there is a bar. Its two cantilevered, plastered upper floors are reminiscent of the townhouses on Saalgasse that were built in the 1980s. A three-axis loggia is embedded in the gable floor, above which a Frankfurt nose is indicated in the roof gable, as in the Gothic predecessor building first mentioned in 1339. A particularly striking slate facade in old German covering carries the corner house to the chicken market, New Paradise by Johannes Götz and Guido Lohmann from Cologne. The predecessor was a five-storey classicist building with a flat pent roof built around 1800. It was considered to be of little importance and was accordingly poorly documented.
To the west of the chicken market, two reconstructions followed, followed by six new buildings. The southwestern corner house on Hühnermarkt is called Schlegel. The replica of a predecessor built around 1830 in the strict formal language of the classicist building code issued by city architect Johann Georg Christian Hess in 1809 comes from Hans Kollhoff, Berlin and Jourdan & Müller, Frankfurt am Main. Its entrance emphasizes the corner house function. The western neighbor Würzgarten was first mentioned in 1292. The reconstruction comes from the monument concept, Bad Nauheim. It is a plastered half-timbered house from the 16th century with a two-storey slated gable, which has a characteristic overhang directly below the ridge, the Frankfurt nose.
The old department store is a design by Morger and Dettli from Basel. The three-story building with a pointed gable is formally reduced to the outermost and is strictly limited to the basic elements specified by the design statutes. To the west are the new buildings Goldene Schachtel by Tillmann Wagner Architects from Berlin and Alter Burggraf by Francesco Collotti, Milan. Like the old department store, they are each connected to their rear buildings via a back yard, the facades of which lead to the narrow alley behind the lamb demonstrate.
The Golden Head by Dreibund Architekten occupies one of the narrowest plots in the Dom-Römer district. The towering ground floor is reminiscent of the bob flooring of the previous building. There is a shop of the Höchst Porcelain Manufactory in the house. The House of Milan by Michael A. Landes, Frankfurt, is unlike its baroque predecessor, gable-independent, but takes up the design elements in the form of the windows. The western end of the new development area is the House of the Three Romans by Jordi Keller Architects with its three sides to the market, to Römerberg and to Gasse Hinter dem Lämmchen. Various spolia are installed on the ground floor and on the gable side. One of them is reminiscent of Dieter Bartetzko, who was a member of the design advisory board for the reconstruction of the old town. Also show the sandstone arcades on the ground floor used clear traces of war damage. They come from the ground floor of the Zum Saal house, which was built in 1636 and demolished in 1950 at Saalgasse 29. The all-round three-sided banner bears the engraved and gilded inscriptions “Thorn and thistle sting very. False tongues much more. But I would rather bathe through thistle and thorn than be loaded with false tongues. And if envy made fires like fire, the wood would not be half as expensive and if the envious were so much, what God has will happen want". They come from the novel The Man from the Romans by the Frankfurt dialect poet Georg Wilhelm Pfeiffer.

Market "coronation" - south side

Seven houses were built on the south side of the market, four of which were reconstructions. The House of the Golden Scales of Jourdan & Müller was the most elaborate reconstruction of the Dom-Römer project. As before the destruction, it will in future be used as a branch of the Historical Museum, and a coffee house and the Stoltze Museum will also move in. The following three plots, Market 7 to Market 11, are of very shallow depth, as their backs meet the back of the Golden Libra. The house Weißer Bock is a new building by Helmut Riemann, Lübeck. It is used for the barrier-free access to the Golden Libra, which does not have its own staircase, and is also used by the Stoltze Museum. The predecessor building, first mentioned in 1467, was a three-storey, gabled, half-timbered house with two attics, which had been rebuilt in the 18th and late 19th centuries. The three-storey new building has a simple sandstone facade with six windows per floor, as with the predecessor. The neighboring building Kleiner Vogelsang is a semi-detached house by Dreibund Architekten. The previous buildings from the 16th century were four-storey half-timbered buildings, plastered to the gable. The two plots are extremely narrow and used to be one of the smallest plots in the old town. The baroque gable of the Markt 11 house transitions into the reconstructed green linden tree. The first time in 1439 mentioned building was rebuilt in the 18th century baroque. Before it was destroyed, it housed a well-known inn, and today there is a wine bar here. With its eaves-like baroque façade, the green linden is characteristicthe southern edge of the chicken market. Two plastered half-timbered upper floors, each with six window axes, rise above a high sandstone ground floor with a bobble covering. The mansard roof has a broad dwelling with four windows and a triangular gable. The design comes from Claus Giel, Dieburg.
West of the green lime tree follow two other replicas of important models, the Red House and the New Red House, both from monument concept, Bad Nauheim and Jourdan & Müller, Frankfurt am Main. The New Red House, first mentioned in 1322, probably dates back to the 14th century, the neighbor from the 16th century. The two houses were previously connected to each other inside, the New Red House had no separate entrance. With its ground floor structure consisting essentially of only three oak columns, which bore the entire weight of the three-story building above it, the New Red House was unique in the entire German half-timbered landscape and a well-known attraction far beyond the city. It was considered an outstanding example of medieval town planning and community spirit in the lively center of the old town. The Red House formed the passage to Tuchgaden and stood at the entrance to the butcher's quarter on the Lange Schirn, at which the Frankfurter sausages have been sold since ancient times. The new building is also used by a butcher, which also has a sales stand in the Kleinmarkthalle.
South of the new row of houses on the market, the town house consisting of five building parts was built on the market from 2013 to 2016. The design comes from Meurer Architects, Frankfurt, with cba architectes, Luxembourg. The town house serves on the one hand to permanently preserve and make accessible the archaeological excavations of the Roman settlement on the cathedral hill and the imperial palace Franconofurd; on the other hand as a meeting and event building. The end of the building complex to the west to the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is House 5, a residential building. It is based on the course of the historic alley of Tuchgaden.
There is a height difference of more than two meters between the street level of the reconstructed Old Market and today's Bendergasse along the Schirn. It is made clear in the section between the New Red House and the western entrance to the Dom / Römer underground station by a wall and pergola made of sandstone. Due to the protruding rotunda of the Schirn, there was not enough space in this section for a southern row of houses opposite the Markt 26 to Markt 40 houses. Before the destruction narrow alleys chain in this section three Goldhutgasse, Drachengasse and sword-alley to the south, the south of it at the Five Finger Square met again.

Rebstock-Hof

The east side of the Rebstock-Hof is the Haus am Dom, which was built from 2001 to 2004 through the renovation and expansion of the main customs office built by Werner Hebebrand in 1927. Even though it was built as part of the New Frankfurt project, the main customs office already received a steep, curved gable roof as a tribute to the surrounding old town development, which was retained during the renovation. The house at the cathedral was extended at the southern end during the renovation, so that it protrudes a few meters from the historic building of the old market and comes closer to the reconstructed golden scales. The neighboring house Großer Rebstock, however, keeps the original parcel. The northern entrance to the Rebstock-Hof lies between the two buildings. The north side of it is the new building Rebstock-Hof 2, a residential and commercial building by Meurer, Frankfurt. With a sand-colored plastered facade and slate roof, it looks like an extension to the house on the cathedral. At the western edge of the courtyard, the reconstruction Hof zum Rebstock. The building was built in the middle of the 18th century, using older components from the Gothic predecessor, first mentioned in 1392. Instead of the usual overhangs, the two half-timbered upper floors were given wooden arcades in front, also on the back to the inner courtyard on Neugasse. The gable roof is divided by a dwarf house with a Rhenish wave gable and two rows of dormer windows. The non-profit Frankfurt association runs a senior café on the ground floor of the courtyard facing the vine. The northern neighboring building Braubachstrasse 21 already belongs to Braubachstrasse.
The famous Frankfurt writer and local poet Friedrich Stoltze was born on November 21, 1816 in the Rebstock ensemble.

Hühnermarkt

The chicken market is the center of the new old town. All houses on Hühnermarkt have the address Markt, except for the Haus zum Esslinger, which already belongs to the street behind the lamb. Eight of the eleven houses around the chicken market are reconstructions. Five of them are on the south side or at the corners of the market and are described in the course of the street there. These are the houses Green Lime Tree, New Paradise, Red House, New Red House and Schlegel. The corner house Markt 22 Goldene Schere, by Hans Kollhoff, Berlin, and Jourdan & Müller, Frankfurt is a baroque four-story building with an octagonal roof lantern. Markt 24 Eichhorn, also by Kollhof and Jourdan & Müller, like its southern neighbor Markt 26, is an example of the strict classicism of the building code of 1807 by city architect Johann Georg Christian Hess.
The north side is formed by the reconstructed houses Zum Esslinger and Markt 20 Zur Flechte, between which the narrow Neugasse runs to Braubachstrasse. Both houses are of Gothic origin, with clear overhangs on the upper floors, which were later rebuilt in the Baroque style. They both received a mansard roof with a dwarf house with a triangular gable and an oculus window to the chicken market. The Haus zum Esslinger is one of the Goethe sites in Frankfurt: it belonged to Goethe's aunt Johanna Melber and her husband, the dealer Georg Adolf Melber. The poet lived with his aunt in 1755/56 and put her in From my life. Poetry and truth a literary monument. In 1841, Johann Matthias Andreae bought the house, including the "material and dye goods store" inside. The pharmaceutical wholesaler Andreae-Noris Zahn later developed from this. The Struwwelpeter Museum will use the house from May 2019.
The three-storey Schildknecht / Spiegel, which was built around 1405 and was last built in the 17th century, formed the northeast corner building of the Hühnermarkt. With almost two meters, it had the largest overhang of all Frankfurt half-timbered houses. It was the building of the shoemaker's guild and had a rich painting on the facade. Stylistically it belonged to the Renaissance. The new building by dreibund architekten, ballerstedt, helms, koblank, Bochum takes up the typical style elements of the tapered wave gables.
His southern neighbor, the Kleine Seligeneck by Van den Valentyn-Architektur, Cologne, is strongly stylistically based on its predecessor, a classicist building from around 1830.

Hinter dem Lämmchen

The neighboring house to the Haus zum Esslinger, Alter Esslinger is the reconstruction of a powerful three-storey Renaissance half-timbered house built by Dreysse Architects, Frankfurt am Main, in the 17th century. Above a stone ground floor there are two cantilevered half-timbered upper floors with a remarkably large storey height compared to the neighboring buildings. The eaves saddle roof carries a two-storey slated gnome with a wave gable. The "Old Esslinger" will also be used by the Struwwelpeter Museum from May 2019.
The front building of the Golden Lämmchen was reconstructed by Macholz - Kummer Architects, Darmstadt for architect Claus Giel, Dieburg. The half-timbering on the two upper floors is plastered, as has been common in Frankfurt since the 18th century. The neighboring house Klein Nürnberg stood on the corner of the Nürnberger Hofgäßchens, the southern entrance to the Nürnberger Hof. The three-storey Renaissance building from the 16th century was designed by Dreysse Architects, Frankfurt am Main and Jourdan & Müller, Frankfurt am Main, reconstructed. The vaulted hall, whose six cross vaults rest on two central pillars, is a reminder of its former importance as a trade fair building. The new building is used by the Evangelical Regional Association Frankfurt am Main as the parish hall of the Paulsgemeinde and the Indonesian community.
The only reconstruction on the south side of the alley is the house Goldene Schere by the architects Hans Kollhoff, Berlin and Jourdan & Müller, Frankfurt am Main. The four-story building in classicist forms was created in the 18th century by conversion from two older predecessor buildings. The overhangs of the two upper floors were still preserved on their facade to the alley behind the lamb. The neighboring building to the west is the rear building of the old department store. The baroque sandstone portal built into the back is the largest film used in the Dom-Römer project with a width of around five meters and a height of 3.50 meters. This is followed by the back of the golden box. At Alten Burggraf the alley runs in two right angles around the extension of the stone house. It is therefore designed as a corner house with an additional gable. This is followed by the two narrow houses Goldenes Haupt and the city of Milan.

Spolia

60 spoles were installed throughout the project. These are mostly original parts of the building structure destroyed in the war, some of which had not been used in the post-war construction and have therefore been stored in different locations up to now. The largest spolia is a baroque portal five meters wide and three and a half meters high. It originally belonged to a garden house behind the Kleine Taubenhof in northwestern Neustadt, which had already been demolished in 1872 for the construction of the new stock exchange. Fried Lübbecke had the portal moved to the garden of the Liebieghaus in 1914, where it was used for 100 years in the house behind the lamb 5 remained. Other striking spolia are the winegrower monument on the corner of the house at Braubachstrasse 21 / Rebstock-Hof and the cider drinker on the corner of the house at Braubachstrasse 23 / Neugasse.

Reception

Public criticism and approval accompanied the project from the start. The lines of argumentation often followed the same pattern as since the beginning of the reconstruction debate immediately after the destruction. Dieter Bartetzko compares the old town with an unfathomably deep fountain that draws on the myths of the past and gives life in the present. He recalls that the fountain on the chicken market was drilled as early as Roman times and that the Carolingian people were probably already aware that they lived on historical ground. This explains why Frankfurt was referred to in its first documentary mention in 794 as a locus celeber, a celebrated site. He describes the old town with Nietzsche as an architectural palimpsest that always keeps the memory of the past in the minds of city dwellers, no matter how often it is overwritten. He explains this thesis using the example of the new building at Großer Rebstock and the reconstruction at Braubachstraße 21. In contrast, the Technical City Hall, "rammed as a concrete juggernaut in the middle of the previously closed row of houses on Braubachstrasse", had remained a provocative and ignorant foreign body in the urban fabric for decades. In spite of its architectural quality, this was his doom.
Dankwart Guratzsch points to the broad consensus in which the reconstruction was decided. "It is the will of a committed citizenry... It is a piece of civic pride that manifests itself in these houses, and the best craftsmen, artists, monument experts and architects contribute to it... The citizen of the almost digitally located society insures the lost anchor of its origin and provides it with rock solid reinforcement made of cement".
Jürgen Tietz doubts that the new old town will make a contribution to the future of the city. It is a fairytale world, the danger is great that “only a dollhouse will be created, a backdrop for photographing tourists, selfie stick drawn and thumbs up. What characterizes historic old towns cannot be ordered and also not simply built”. The creative replicas are “fake architecture”, “between the concrete structure and the exposed stone wall, the insulation wool peels out and proves that history is even possible in the face of today's building regulations cannot be reproduced true to the original”.
Philipp Oswalt said similarly. It is absurd to build so few apartments for 200 million. The city stopped social housing, subsidized luxury apartments and thus privatized public goods. The entire Dom-Römer project is an expression of a conservative zeitgeist that hides the disintegration of public cohesion through symbolic-media replacement. "It's not a question of how you can build a city that is useful today - it's about generating an image of a city".
Stephan Trüby criticized the entire project. The New Old Town was initiated by Claus Wolfschlagback, a "right-wing radical with links to the extremist milieu". This is no coincidence, "the reconstruction architecture in Germany is currently developing into a key medium of authoritarian, ethnic, historical revisionist rights". It was "scandalous that the initiative of a right-wing radical without any significant civil society resistance led to a slick neighborhood with seemingly seamless repeat architectures". The new old town is "a sub-complex heal-world building that reduces history to a one-dimensional concert of your dreams... A history in which National Socialism, the German wars of aggression and the Holocaust still survive as anecdotes of an otherwise unbroken national history". Trüby's theses also received international attention, for example in the Observe.
The architecture journalist Enrico Santifaller contradicts this. The debate about the old town has historical roots, since 1880 the design has always been struggling anew, with opponents and advocates of reconstructions not fitting in a right-left scheme. The reconstruction of the Römerberg-Ostzeile was based on an idea by the SPD Mayor Rudi Arndt. At the same time, Linke and Spontis had instigated the Frankfurt house fight, “sociologists see today as the beginning of a second homeland security movement”. Te "storm of indignation", which was triggered by the "remarkably mediocre facade views" of the winning design from the 2005 competition, was decisive for the reconstruction project of the new old town. "Unlike the second-place design... which u. a. Paying tribute to the place with a multi-angle roof landscape, in the historical center of Frankfurt the "architectural sin" of the Technical Town Hall was to be replaced by the usual dreary cough of the real estate industry. "Only then did a dynamic develop," in which the idea, tallest skyscrapers in continental Europe, building an "old" and "cozy" city suddenly became consensual". Santifaller advocates avoiding ideological blinkers and "risking a second look". Only through this was it possible to see, in addition to all banal re-creations and new creations, as well as detailed errors, the “subtle and not always legible references to breaks and discontinuity”, for example in the house of the three Romans or the building in Braubachstrasse 21.
In his reply to Trüby's polemic, Matthias Alexander also points out that “reconstructions cannot be classified politically either on the right or on the left. They obtain their legitimation primarily from two sources: their craft quality and their civic acceptance. Both are given in Frankfurt“.
Hanno Rauterberg contradicts the thesis that the reconstruction of the old town goes hand in hand with the erasure of history and guilt. The debate alone leads to more people thinking about the destruction and its background. On the other hand, “no one in Frankfurt felt reminded of the bomb war and Shoah when they saw the now demolished Technical Town Hall”. Most critics mocked questions of taste. "It is often said that this type of architecture is just a backdrop, untrue, inauthentic... But architecture is always illusory... Only in some residential and commercial areas, where every design claim is sacrificed, is the architecture really true".
Even Laura Weißmüller emphasizes the quality and attention to detail with which the New Old Town was built. Starting with the planning and the careful construction, all parties involved, builders, architects, planners and construction companies pulled together in Frankfurt. "One would wish that so much attention to detail and care would be put into a construction project that did not pretend that the Second World War had never existed".
Michael Guntersdorf talks to Matthias Alexander about his experiences with the Dom-Römer project. The project was essentially about city repair. One of the main benefits of the project is the recovery of Braubachstrasse. In the past 70 years, practically no urban space has emerged that has the quality of the new old town. The ensemble effect is even better than originally thought. Suddenly the architects are on the defensive and have a professional discussion about their health. One could learn from the project for future new building projects “that one needs more depth in dealing with architecture. It can no longer be about creating volume. You have to provide identification with special design elements. You have to put more effort into the details”. He opposes criticism that you could have built many social housing for the same money; this thinking is "totally limited". “It was a sensible investment, it brings the city forward. The foreigners in particular, who we led over the construction site, were of the opinion that the people of Frankfurt should have remembered their history as a European metropolis much earlier". He personally likes the two new buildings. Best with the Three Romans and Großer Rebstock ; the least successful are the Goldene Schachtel and her neighbor Alter Burggraf.
Andreas Maier describes the New Old Town for the travel journal of the FAZ from the "most beautiful and useless place in Frankfurt", the Belvedere of the Golden Libra, "face to face with the cathedral tower".He knew Belvederchen, which was destroyed in 1944, from "illustrated books about old Frankfurt", which he studied as a young man, "the invocation of an era that is no longer imaginable,... pure history... Frankfurt as a possibility of total idyll". He then sits down First of all, basically with architectural reconstructions, using the example of the Dresden Zwinger, the Knochenhaueramtshaus and the Warsaw Old Town who kept the memory of their destruction in different ways. He recalls an earlier article that he wrote about the planned demolition of the Technical Town Hall and reconstructions in the old town for Die Zeit, and in which he made fun of the “half-timbered longing”, the “longing for a city like this looks like the cities that Frankfurt might like to visit as tourists”. After a tour of the construction site, however, he was impressed by the quality of the construction and also the architecture, and the enthusiasm of the craftsmen. He states: “Valuable materials, traditional craftsmanship, everything at its finest. With its new old town, which is also in the Manufactum Catalog, Frankfurt makes itself a gift. And there is the Belvederchen as praline on top". In addition to the Belvederchen, he is particularly impressed by the Schönau house “a very narrow thing with a slate facade pulled down deep… and a slightly convex curvature of the elegantly stepped front. Probably an absolutely unique piece".

Literature

Summaries