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Architects & Architectural Designers Designers, Décorators & Architects Jan 21, 2017

NRW Archive: History Preserved In A Tower Of Face Brick

Peering over across the Duisburg harbor in Germany, the NRW Archive instantly draws you in with its unapologetically bold presence.

But its prominent and monolithic-like form is not the only thing that pricks your interest. Upon closer inspection, one discovers something rather odd: the absence of windows. Like a face with no eyes, the NRW Archive’s appearance is hard to ignore. Though this intriguing mystery soon makes sense when one thinks about the building’s purpose.

German and Austrian architects, Ortner and Ortner, designed this building with one main aim in mind. And that was to protect its fragile contents. With the original warehouse dating back to the 1930’s, it was only fitting to preserve the initial structure and the history embedded within its face brick walls. So in order to achieve the purpose of protecting the sacred archives, Ortner and Ortner decided to fill in the original warehouse windows with a material as enduring as its contents.

Dark red bricks were used to create a solid, airtight enclosure. And from this sealed up section, the architects augmented the warehouse with a 76-metre-high face brick tower. Built to accommodate 148km of shelving, one feels completely dwarfed by the NRW Archive’s colossal size. As the largest purpose-built archive in Europe, Ortner and Ortner have certainly created a building that’s worthy of admiration. But more importantly, their aim to safeguard the combined records of the State of North Rhine Westphalia will ensure that the state’s past is not forgotten, and that it lives on in its proud and distinctive frame of face brick.

Contact: Corobrik