Osram-Höfe, Industrial architectural complex in Wedding, Berlin.
The Osram-Höfe is a former light bulb factory complex in Berlin-Wedding, not Mitte. It consists of several five-storey factory buildings erected between 1904 and 1910, with later additions from 1912 to 1914. The buildings have a steel skeleton frame that allowed pillar-free factory halls with large windows, and a uniform yellow clinker brick facade. They follow the street line and eaves height of the surrounding residential buildings, forming a closed block along Oudenarder, Groninger and Liebenwalder streets.
Sigmund Bergmann founded his lamp factory on this site in 1904, producing 16,000 metal-filament lamps a day by 1910 and employing up to 5,500 people. OSRAM took over the Bergmann works in 1935, naming it Werk B, and expanded it in 1936–1937. Lamp production ended in 1988 when most output moved to Siemensstadt.
Locals still call the complex "Osram-Höfe" although it has been officially named Carrée Seestraße since its conversion. Around 3,000 people now work in roughly 60 businesses and institutions on the site, among them the Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin and Police Section 17. The name Osram itself is a portmanteau of osmium and tungsten, the two metals once used for filaments.
The complex lies between Liebenwalder Straße and Oudenarder Straße in Wedding, with the factory buildings forming a closed block edge along Oudenarder, Groninger and Liebenwalder Straße. The courtyards are publicly accessible and today house around 60 businesses and institutions, including the Beuth University of Applied Sciences and Police Section 17.
The five-storey factory buildings were designed by architect Hermann Enders, who used a steel skeleton frame to create pillar-free production halls with large windows. The yellow clinker brick cladding, added between 1904 and 1910, gives the separate construction phases a single uniform appearance.
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