Augsburg, Proviantbachstraße 30, DEU

1896

The third factory of the Augsburg Mechanical Cotton Spinning and Weaving Mill company (Spinnerei-Weberei Augsburg, SWA) was designed by Séquin's office in February and March 1896 and the detailed plans were signed by Hilarius Knobel. The textile manufacturing operation was divided into a multi-storey spinning mill of the Lancashire type, designed for 42,000 spindles, and a single-storey weaving shed containing 640 power looms; a blowroom involving dust-producing processes and a boiler house were designed as separate buildings. The spinning mill building (ground plan: 69.7 × 36 m) is formed by a steel riveted frame (spans: 4.2–5.8 × 7 m) containing three storeys with cellars and inserted concrete filler-joist floors lined with brick pillars; the weaving shed (ground plan: 95.6 × 61.1 m) has a flat cement-wood roof with saddle skylights following the patented Séquin-Bonner construction (spans: 5 × 6 m). The buildings were constructed by the local construction company of Alfred Thormann and Jean Stiefel and were fully functional for almost ninety years. The spinning mill was included in the list of Augsburg construction sights, created between 1973 and 1986, by Astrid Debold-Kritter, together with nine more buildings and complexes of the Textile quarter and the whole spinning mill complex – including the factories, worker apartment blocks and director residences connected by channels and railway sidings – was characterised by her as an important cultivated landscape of the industrial revolution era. In 1988 the factory was closed down and the complex was obtained as the SWA bankruptcy estate by a real estate company. The weaving shed was demolished and replaced with a standardized hardware store, eliminating also the boiler house with a chimney and the cotton warehouse built in the second phase of construction. The Fabrikschloß was then rented to the city which used it to house an asylum shelter. Ten years later it was bought by a real estate trader Anton Lotter who thoroughly but respectfully reconstructed the building as designed by architect Dieter Rehberger and rented it for commercial purposes. Today the total of 45,000 m2 of the former spinning mill and weaving shed surface is occupied by loft offices in the top storeys, with wholesale and retail stores situated in lower floors (the whole of the spinning mill ground floor is used by an art supplies store). The blowroom building houses a wine shop, with gyms situated in upper floors.