Q3A Panel house

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Q3A-frontal view Q3A Plattenbau Vorderseite.jpg
Q3A-frontal view
Rear view Q3A Plattenbau Rueckseite.jpg
Rear view

Q3A is an abbreviation for a type of three, four and five storey prefabricated buildings constructed in the GDR in the 1950s and 1960s. The letter "Q" in the word stands for "Querwandbau" (cross wall construction).

Prefabricated building

A prefabricated building, informally a prefab, is a building that is manufactured and constructed using prefabrication. It consists of factory-made components or units that are transported and assembled on-site to form the complete building.

East Germany Former communist country, 1949-1990

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was a country that existed from 1949 to 1990, when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. It described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state", and the territory was administered and occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II — the Soviet Occupation Zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it; as a result, West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.

Contents

Description

In a Q3A panel house, the walls are constructed entirely from concrete blocks, while the ceiling consists of multiple concrete plates that were placed perpendicular to, and on top of the wall elements. This explains the source of the "cross wall construction" name. The flat roof construction is the most visible difference between the Q3A series and other East Germany buildings of its time. Q3A homes are equipped with a furnace for heating, and a balcony for use by tenants was also provided in approximately half the cases. In later years (after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German Reunification), most houses were retrofitted with additional balconies.

Berlin Wall barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic, enclosing West Berlin

The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic, starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany.

The concrete blocks and ceiling elements of the first houses were manufactured at an industrial plant in the Ostseestrasse in Berlin. Other types of panel construction used for Q3A houses were the IW57- and IW58-types. These were produced in much smaller numbers, with some even lacking the signature flat roof, being built with a more classic Hip Roof.

Hip roof type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls

A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus a hipped roof house has no gables or other vertical sides to the roof.

Shortly after the first houses were erected in 1957 in the eight quarters of East Berlin, further series utilizing cross wall construction were developed. The QX-series, which were mostly 4-storey buildings, were not constructed from blocks, but from cheaper concrete strips. Most buildings of this series can be found in the "Hans-Loch" quarter, which was the first, newly constructed, large-scale settlement in East Berlin after the end of the Second World War. It is worth noting, that while Q3A block buildings were used in most areas of the GDR, the QX-series was constructed on a relatively limited basis. It is therefore regarded as an experimental series.

East Berlin Soviet sector of Berlin between 1949 and 1990

East Berlin was the de facto capital city of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 until 9 November 1989, East Berlin was separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall. The Western Allied powers did not recognise East Berlin as the GDR's capital, nor the GDR's authority to govern East Berlin.

Further developments of cross-wall panel buildings happened from 1959 to 1983. These, even more frequently built homes, had the building type designation QP or QP64, for those mainly built in 1964. They were built with five, eight or ten storeys and in contrast to the two previous Q-series buildings, fulfilled the existing building codes by being furnished with a lift. The QP-series was the first type of house utilizing larger, industrial-sized panels. Each individual plate forms a complete wall of a room. The most striking and visible feature of many houses in the QP series is the colouring of the exterior walls, usually consisting of white or yellow tiles. The first buildings of this series originated in Berlin, between Strausberg and the Alexanderplatz, in the western half of the former Stalin Avenue as well as the Hans-Loch Quarter.

Strausberg Place in Brandenburg, Germany

Strausberg is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located 30 km east of Berlin. With a population of 25,594 it is the largest town in the district of Märkisch-Oderland.

Alexanderplatz square in Berlin, Germany

Alexanderplatz is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I and is often referred to simply as Alex, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from Mollstraße in the northeast to Spandauer Straße and the Rotes Rathaus in the southwest.

The early 1970s were marked by the arrival of by far the most common series -- the WBS70 (Wohnungsbauserie 70). Approximately 900,000 apartment units of this type were constructed -- consisting of five-, six- and eleven-storey buildings. Other large-panel series were the P2 and WHH GT 18 series. These were constructed as part of the "Sonderbauprogramm Berlin" (special construction program Berlin), which allocated special funds to improving the housing of what was then, the capital of the GDR -- East Berlin.

P2 (panel building) building type

P2 is the abbreviation for a type of residential panel building found in former East Germany. The P stands for parallel and refers to load-bearing walls arranged parallel to wall surfaces. 2 denotes the arrangement of two stairways in a building.

WHH GT 18

WHH GT 18 is a standard residential high-rise building type in East Berlin. It was developed by architects Helmut Stingl and Joachim Seifert between 1969 and 1971 using large panel construction for mixed-use housing in Berlin.

Specifications

Q3A

QX

QP

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