During the early years of the 1920st Century, electrical industry was characterizing Berlin industrial development by enterprises settled in the city like AEG, Siemens and Osram. AEG Turbine Factory was one of the first companies that implement the changes that placed German industry on an international level.
Peter Behrens, mentor of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies, was working as design consultant for the company creating its image, shaping all the products from advertisements or lamps to workers housing. Behrens was this way not only starting corporate image for companies, but also, humanizing industrial design bringing together art and industrial objects.
Designed for Allgemeine Elektricitats-Gesellschaft in 1908 and constructed in 1910, it is located in North-West Berlin, in the district of Moabit, around 3 Kilometers far from Reichstag. It was conceived as a demonstration of the prosperity of the industrial development, and it ended up also being the most significant building of the protorracionalismus.Like shaping a diamond from carbon, daily life, industry and machinery can turn into a cultural piece through "Kunstwollen", he defeated. As well as the standard questions for this kind of projects like materials or functionality, he was working with industrial and art parameters. He was joining with no precedent in AEG Turbine Factory art and industrial processes.
The nave was intended for the manufacture of heavy machinery of the turbine generator for power. In fact there are two parallel spaces, as one smaller one gets attached to the main one. The main space originally set in a rectangular floor plan of a same high and wide of 25 meters and 207 meters long, with a body formed by a skeleton with 22 mainframes placed every 9 meters. This structure consists of steel columns frames that appear to the outside without coating and with bolts and joints in sight, between huge glass panels, bending slightly as they gain height.Behrens built a magnificent iron and glass hybrid combining elements and forms of classical temple traditions, the Greek and the Egyptian; and modern aesthetics.
