COLOGNE (KÖLN)
"The modern concept of the town hall developed with the rise of local or regional government. Cities administered by a group of elected or chosen representatives, rather than by a lord or princely ruler, required a place for their council to meet. The Cologne City Hall of 1135 is a prominent example for self-gained municipal autonomy of medieval cities." -- Wikipedia
Notes on the Cologne City Hall
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14th-19th century, multiple architects
Tower detail
Platzjabbeck, the grotesque face that sticks out his tongue on the hour
With Saints Evergisius, Severin, and Maternus (first bishop of Cologne)
Detail of the Saalbau, the oldest section on the Cologne city hall, constructed in 1330
Interior door
“The form of every city hall expresses the dominant local ideas of civic power and authority at the time it was built. All that is outside, also is inside [Was innen ist, ist außen], as Goethe observed of all forms.” — Bayard Coll
"The architecture and ornamentation of city halls and the activities they housed embodied the efforts of the citizens to set themselves apart from other dominant secular and religious institutions, such as royal dynasties and the Catholic and Protestant churches. City halls were the sites of local governance or administration and also sites of festivals and rituals that helped construct a sense of collective or shared identity while legitimizing the authority of those individuals or groups that actually exercised some measure of power in the cities. Sculptures on façades celebrated local notables alongside important dynastic or national figures. The buildings thus linked civic authority with the performance of civic pride."
— Jeffry M. Diefendorf, "Rebuilding City Halls in Postwar Germany: Architectural Form and Identity"
"We call events and occasions public when they are open to all, in contrast to closed or exclusive affairs as when we speak of public spaces or public buildings. But, as in the expression public building, the term need not refer to general accessibility; the building does not even have to be open to public traffic. Public buildings simply house state institutions and as such are public."
— Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
"Art was not morally neutral but worked in the service of virtue… Ornament was not crime, but the addition of beauty and instruction to the satisfaction of material needs. Art began precisely where utility broke off. Form was not to follow function, but to transcend it. Any evidence of restraint, understatement, or, worst of all, parsimony, will subvert its intention."
— Donald Olsen, The City as a Work of Art
"Not utility, but cultural self-projection"
— Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
