Altes Loeblager

The Loeblager is a unique place for artistic, artisanal and cultural experimentation and production. The industrial architecture and urban location allow around 50 tenants to work in an extraordinarily concentrated manner. And thanks to the Burgergemeinde, the owner of the site, the conditions are affordable. The location close to the HKB University of the Arts and Cabanne B is ideal. The city-wide network of artists' residences is usefully supplemented here in Bümpliz/Bethlehem.

Old Loeblager

"The architectural firm M. & O. Lutstorf planned a complex of three similar warehouse and haulage buildings for Warlo Immobilien AG in 1951, differing only in length, which were to be connected to each other by single-storey hall wings - gable-fronted to what was then Murtenstrasse. In the end, only two of the five planned stages were realised: A four-storey warehouse with a caretaker's flat and a forwarding hall attached on the east side. The warehouse is a rendered building with a gently sloping pitched roof. The ground floor is a concrete frame structure filled with moulded cement bricks and visually separated from the upper floors by a three-sided canopy. The façades are fenestrated in bands of three. The exception is the south façade, where a vertical band of glass blocks illuminates the integrated staircase. Attached to the east side is a remarkable forwarding hall - a concrete skeleton structure with seven parallel, arched barrel roofs (also made of concrete). The building is a characteristic representative of the large-volume buildings of the early 1950s with their restrained commitment to modernism. It is also one of the first warehouses to be built in solid construction."
© Building Inventory 2017, Monument Preservation of the City of Bern