PROJECT DETAILS

Ingeborg Spengelin / Friedrich Spengelin: Postamt 60, 1970C–1974

  • Hamburg, Germany, Show on map
  • #COM #Western Europe
  • Postamt 60 in Hamburg's City Nord once was with 320 employees the largest of all post offices in Hamburg. The architects Prof. Friedrich und Ingeborg Spengelin developed a differentiated building, optimally adapted to the functions and operational processes, with a counter hall, letter distribution and delivery hall, administration, lecture room, company restaurant, service apartments and a "postal school" with twelve classrooms. The interior (now unfortunately altered by renovations), especially the counter hall, was spacious, light and bright. The complex interior can be read in the differentiated design of the exterior. The structure has a richly varied design with projections, incisions, protrusions and recesses, as well as a lively roofscape with shed roofs that direct a great deal of daylight into the interior. The exposed aggregate concrete façade with horizontal window bands is characteristic. Particularly striking are the vertical sunshade louvers in front of the windows of the former postal school on the eighth floor. The building complex is not only one of the few surviving Hamburg examples of Brutalism, but also an important testimony to the well-known architect couple Prof. Friedrich and Ingeborg Spengelin, whose work is currently being rediscovered.

  • The monument protection office regrettably decided in 2015 not to list the building as a monument. The building was sold and is now in acute danger of being demolished and replaced by a new building. Demolition of the building would be a great loss for Hamburg's architectural heritage from the 1960s/70s. Special thanks to Denkmalverein Hamburg!