WDR Arcades

Son, grandson, husband, and father of architects, Gottfried Böhm knows the profession of architects well, which, after all, as in all art, represents a traditional approach and sense of architecture. Throughout his more than forty-year career, he ensured that the elements of his work reflecting previous experiences simultaneously testified to his readiness to accept - whether in the designs of churches, town halls, public buildings, or office buildings - the best and latest from contemporary technology. His skill combines what we have inherited from our ancestors with knowledge that we have only recently acquired - a mysterious and exemplary marriage to which PAP joyfully contributes to the household.

The building of the former WDR (West German Public Radio) is located in the center of the historic part of Cologne. The result of a competition called by the investor was one of the boldest buildings in the inner city of Cologne and a work of Böhm's architectural office. The north-south traffic artery (Tunisstrasse) determined a light arch of mass and a literally calculated internal pedestrian colonnade that revitalizes the pre-war urban structure and life. From the fourth to the seventh floors, individual levels protrude outward like in the old workshops of craftsmen, stepping out in colorful surfaces before the bay windows of the third floor. At the southeast corner, these elements rotate. Rectangular boxes begin to mutate, prompted by pink columns that uncompromisingly set a structure and do not forgive even slight disorder in the composition. The lower three floors also abound with various variations. Their glazed offices have partially star-shaped and partially circular floor plans. Motivated by various neighbors of the urban district and also in reaction to the demands of city officials, Böhm reduced the height, setbacks, and façades on each side of the complex; shiny façades on the north and south, the side of Breitestrasse is five stories high with cantilevered glass roofs serving as protection for shop windows from rain; freely set-back columns of the terraced western wing. Blue neon tubes, symbolizing radio waves, add a sense of restlessness to the heterogeneous collage.
The internal arrangement is also complicated. The ground floor and first floor of the complex intersect with public passageways, whose three branches converge in a central rotunda filled with more than twenty shops, restaurants, and a post office. In the seven-story section on Tunisstrasse, under a roof shaped like a bird's wing, a five-story hall was left, where individual editorial offices, a library, and a cafeteria belonging to WDR are located. From the southwest corner, one of three access points to the public passageways is through the tower, beneath which is a conference hall and spaces for the internal needs of WDR. Openness and transparency have explained the goals for WDR's working environment, which also includes management offices and a glazed radio studio on the ground floor of the interior courtyard. Thus, the offices on the individual floors have been divided into enclosed cells (combo-offices) and open workspaces (combo-zones). Long walkways, cross bridges, a fine mesh of glass parts, railings, and bridges create numerous optical connections, which instead of suggesting a communicative working environment implies a labyrinth of media ambiguity. The new WDR building presents a radically different program compared to the adjacent old WDR (Vierscheibenhaus and archive). However, the first sketches showed a similarly statically imposing concept as the old WDR.