Big, huge, vast, impressive, intimidating, monumental, majestic, colossal. It's these terms that start spinning through my head when looking at the unfinished tons of brick and granite of the Congress Hall (German Kongresshalle) in Nuremberg. The often so called Coliseum has been designed by Franz and Ludwig Ruff in 1935 as part of Hitler's fantasy of a thousand year Reich. It's part of the Nazi Party Rally Ground (German Reichparteitagsgelände), a huge, only partly finished area at the outskirts of the city and was meant to house 50000 members of the Nazi Party during their annual Congresses. The advent of Word War II brought the construction to a halt in 1939. read more…
blog: architecture
Zermatt's youth hostel lies on a hill, which seems to be quite the norm for almost any youth hostel in the world. In a mountain village like Zermatt this might be even more understandable as simply there's not enough room in the mostly flat areas of the valley for all the houses, restaurants, hotels and yes, youth hostels. The youth hostel in Zermatt was built in the 1950s and over time was clearly showing its age. Especially inside the big bedrooms for many people felt rather outdated. Even in a youth hostel today's guests request some minimal standards like smaller rooms with their own bathrooms, some more space to store their luggage and at least some amount of privacy. To achieve all of these new demands within the old building was simple not possible without significantly reducing the number of available beds. So the youth hostel in Zermatt went right in the other direction and in 2002 started planning and building two new addons, two separate buildings right and left in front of the old, existing one forming a new reception, a new courtyard which opens up to frame the view of the Matterhorn. read more…
Ellingen is quite a small town in the heart of Central Franconia in the northern parts of Bavaria. There‘s a lovely medieval city centre, a nice city gate but first and foremost there‘s a real palace. Wow, a real palace in such a small town. But yes, a tiny bit east of the city centre there‘s a whole district of facilities belonging to the old residence of the town. read more…
After a long break I'm back with some new photos I took during the course of this ongoing pandemic. I hope you all are doing well so far. Let's hope we're getting through all of this soon. The order of these photos is not chronological anymore, I just start with those images that start to tell a little story almost by themselves. read more…