i live in the inner city of wiesbaden which is actually pretty convenient, because i have a lot of the most important facilities and main attractions just around the corner. in the past i didn't care so much about this fact, because i am actually the most lazy couch potato ever and only venture out of my flat when i crave nature ( or a breather from hiding too long inside my four walls ). since i started getting more interested in capturing my city's architecture , though, i've been out on the streets more, always looking out for interesting details, or overlooked buildings.
so let's have a few more glances at what my city looks like apart from the wilhelminian townhouses i captured mostly in the past.
the dern'sche höfe were realized a few years ago ( i believe it was 2011? ) by seidl und partner. it's a pretty interesting building, especially when you look into the details. for example, i like the tilted roof with the window opening at the side. the whole complex is much bigger than what you can see here, the old police headquarters were included in the new design as well ( you can see it on the left ). it's a nice mix of old and modern with a few surprising touches.
the city hall of wiesbaden and dern'sches gelände .
in front of the city palace the planting was pretty fancy.
the most common type of architecture in wiesbaden are the historism styles ( everything that's starting with neo and ends with classicism/baroque/gothic/renaissance etc ) and also art nouveau. wiesbaden really started growing around the turn of the millenium from 19th to 20th century, because of one simple reason: emperor wilhelm II discovered wiesbaden's curing spa-waters. he made wiesbaden one of his residences, which sparked a touristic boom, and people from all over germany ( mainly the rich and the famous ) moved to wiesbaden, because it became en vogue, so to speak, to 'take the waters'. and around that time wiesbaden's population grew from approximately 50.000 to over 100.000. ( nowadays we have about 270.000 inhabitants )
alex is a chain restaurant you can find all over germany. in the back you can see the very luxurious kaiser-friedrich-therme ( a historical thermal bath ). never been inside, i don't feel too decadent and deserving of such an extravagant bathing experience, haha.
more turn of the century architecture ( this feels very art nouveau ).
the friedenskirche ( peace church ). it is probably one of the very few decrepit church buildings in wiesbaden. i know it's a meeting place for the homeless/bored youth, and that's probably the reason why its facades are often smudged with tags and dirty graffitis. i don't know what it looks from the inside, but from the outside it's not very inviting. nonetheless, the day i visited there was practically nobody around, except of doves, and that kind of made the place a lot more peaceful than it actually is. it was nice to sit down for a bit and watch the doves pick stuff off the pavement.
a little bit sad that the dove in the front got so blurry ;_; i'm still including this picture, because i like it somehow.
brick-stone villas. always remind me of the north of germany, where clinker stone architecture is much more common.
the building in the back houses various establishments like a car corporation, fitness studio and several doctor's offices. it's actually not very appealing to me, but i thought i'd include it for its ugliness, haha. in the front there's a taekwondo parlour.
random cool car found in the streets.
in most bigger cities in germany you have a part of the city that has tiny streets and winding alleys. wiesbaden does not have too much of a coherent medieval core, at least it's not very visible anymore. the part of wiesbaden's inner city in which you can still guess there was once a medieval core is this one. even though the houses have been updated to showcase historism architecture, i'm pretty sure that underneath these structures you can find the oldest grounds of the city. this district is known for its restaurant scene. just around the corner there is a tiny alleyway full of italian restaurants ( which i secretly call 'fressgass' ( guzzle alley ) :D and in all other alleys there are more food-related shops and culinary pubs to be found.
the new ballsporthalle was finished in 2014 by georg scheel wetzel architekten and is one of my favourite buildings in the city to date. there's just something about it, that i really like. i guess its the windows and how they mirror the surrounding environment so well.
when i was walking around the building i noticed there was a community talk going on about the traffic situation in wiesbaden. i sat down for a while to listen to it, but it was mainly blabla and pinprickling against the city's officials, and it bored me, so i moved on soon.
i really love the side profile of the building.
oh, yeah, in case you didn't notice, i'm a sucker for window walls and glassy surfaces.
on the other side of the plaza is the elly-heuss-schule which has a piece of the berlin wall on its school grounds.
the luisenforum is another recently erected building ( from 2008 to be exact - not so recent anymore haha ) and it's basically a mall/registry office. it was planned by schröder schulte-ladbeck.
right next to the luisenforum is the high-rise kirchgasse ( by zaeske + partner architekten ) which was also erected in 2008. it's got a post-modern feeling - but it's lacking the freakiness of postmodernism architecture. i'd say it's pretty much docile in exectution ;)
there was a käthe kollwitz exhibition last year at the museum wiesbaden and i made that photo to remind myself to check it out BUT then i ended up not going D: stupid anxiety.
this is the biggest construction site currently in my neighborhood: the new construction of the rhein-main-hallen. it's going to be our biggest congress center/ concert hall venue when they open it in 2018 ( i can't believe that this is already next year ).
random office building i don't have any information on.
a part of the main building of wiesbadener volksbank. pretty brutalist if you ask me, but what do i know, haha. and so my second architecture walk came to a close.
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