The two university high-rises K I and K II on the Stadtmitte campus were not without controversy. After the city center of Stuttgart was largely destroyed in 1944, the situation at the university painted a similar picture: institutes, lecture halls, and laboratories were destroyed, and the demand for rooms and space was high. In 1956, construction of the high-rise building K I in Keplerstrasse began.
After four years of construction, the Institute of Architecture and the Institute of Civil Engineering and Surveying could move in in June 1960. But the need for space remained. The planners designed a twin building, K II, which had the same 25-by-60-meter ground plan - and was no less controversial. Construction of the K II building began in the same year, based on the blueprints for the K I building and supplemented by the underground lecture halls and transformer buildings.
K III: planned but never built
Four years later, in 1964, this building too was completed. At first it housed the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, which later found a new home on the Vaihingen campus, making room for the Faculty of Humanities and for the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences. The idea of building a “K III” in the city center was finally dropped in 1971.
The high-rises were not the first university buildings in the city center. Prior to these, the Max-Kade-Heim (1953), the cafeteria (1956), and buildings in Azenbergstrasse were built. Elisabeth Szymczyk, honorary professor at the Institute of Architectural History, writes about the K I: “It is easy to see from which tradition the building originates: The teachings of the Bauhaus school are as alive and valid here as they were at the time when they were postulated.”
