Bauhaus architecture in Cologne

In the late 1920s the architects Franz Weber and Bruno Paul won the competition organised by the owners, Disch Hotel und Verkehrs AG (Disch Hotel and Transport Company), for the erection of a landmark urban administrative and business complex to replace its existing hotel building. Stylistically, the architects followed the Neue Sachlichkeit (‘new objectivity’) movement as exemplified in contemporary department stores. Throughout its various facelifts and adaptations, Disch-House has remained one of Cologne’s prime examples of Bauhaus architecture. It also contains one of the city’s few remaining Paternoster lifts.