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Architecture

The contemporary building complex Haus der WIssenschaft Braunschweig was built between 1935 and 1937. The design of architect Emil Herzog provided for a division in three main buildings: the lecture building, the Naturhistorisches Museum and the gym building. The three buildings enclose an open atrium on the north side which was only converted into its present shape when the north wing was built in the mid-sixties.

The building is reminiscent of the Northern German brick expressionism, even though this architectural style was ten years past its heyday at the time of construction. Some parts of the building still show a strong symbolic reference to the Nazi ideology.
The most outstanding building of the grounds is the six-floor high, tower like central block that comprises the entrance hall, the lecture halls, seminar rooms and office spaces as well as the assembly hall.
The wide-stretching roofs, especially those of the Naturhistorisches Museum and the so-called “Hall of Honour” within the tower, are reminiscent of the Northern German ecclesiastical architecture of the brick Gothic era.
The Hall of Honour (arch hall), placed on top of the tower, was once decorated with a hemispherical clerestory that was used as a public observatory. Unfortunately it was destroyed during WWII.
With the vertical columns of the central block, the whole complex is designed to make the best impression possible even from a distance. However, the skyward effect which is caused by the vertical elements is lessened by the building’s monumentality. The seeming monolithic massiveness gains an expressive appeal due to the brick slip cladding, although the expressionist architecture already belonged to the past for almost ten years at construction time. By the way: Behind the massive and conservative brick front there is a quite modern structure of armored concrete.
On designing the interior Emil Herzog orientated himself by the classical monumental representational buildings of his time. Within the whole building complex symbols of the Nazi ideology could be found: scones designed as torch holders, runes symbolizing struggle and death, and railings and heating element coverings decorated with wrought-iron crosses that resemble swastikas.