engineering

Haus des Rundfunks

Haus des Rundfunks is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Haus des Rundfunks rather than just read about it. In short: The Haus des Rundfunks (transl. Broadcasting House), located in the Westend district of Berlin, the capital city of Germany, is the world's oldest self-contained broadcasting centre.

Key takeaways

Haus des Rundfunks belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Haus des Rundfunks to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Haus des Rundfunks from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Haus des Rundfunks (transl. Broadcasting House), located in the Westend district of Berlin, the capital city of Germany, is the world's oldest self-contained broadcasting centre. Designed by Hans Poelzig in 1929 after he won an architectural competition, the building contains three large centrally located broadcasting spaces, which are shielded from street noise by the surrounding office wings. It is used today by local ARD broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) to make programmes carried by its Inforadio, Kulturradio, and Radio Berlin 88,8 channels. The building's large broadcasting spaces are occasionally also used to host concerts.

History The building, the ground plan of which is a triangle with two curved sides and a 150 m long (490 ft) straight façade clad with ceramic tiles, was constructed between 1929 and 1930 and inaugurated on 22 January 1931 as the seat of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft. The large, central broadcasting space was finished in 1933. On 22 March 1935 the first regular television service in Germany Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow was begun here, but moved to a separate building on nearby Theodor-Heuss-Platz in 1937. The Haus des Rundfunks also had an important influence on the development of stereophonic sound and its adoption by radio broadcasting. Some radio programming continued during the war, notably the Wunschkonzert für die Wehrmacht (lit. 'Request Concert for the Armed Forces'), broadcast from the Haus des Rundfunks on Sunday afternoons from 1939 to 1941. After World War II, the Haus des Rundfunks became something of a Cold War issue: although situated in the British Sector of West Berlin, it was used by the Berliner Rundfunk radio station, which was controlled by the Soviet occupation forces, until the station moved to East Berlin in 1952. The building was not handed over to the West Berlin mayor Otto Suhr by the Soviet military command until 5 July 1956. After considerable renovation work, it was used from the end of 1957 as the home of Sender Freies Berlins, which merged on 1 May 2003 with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg.

The building The Haus des Rundfunks was one of the first buildings in Europe dedicated solely to broadcasting and is exceeded in age only by the Funkhaus München. It is thus especially noteworthy that the building still offers ideal conditions for broadcast production today. At the time, Hans Poelzig had almost no examples to emulate but he developed ideas which are still valid today: the office and editorial rooms are located in the outer areas of the building, thereby surrounding the three large studio complexes. The largest broadcasting space is the heart of the building, and as well as this there is also a smaller broadcasting room and an area which, with its diversity of acoustic characteristics, is used for the production of radio drama. Poelzig put a great deal of thought into the acoustic properties of the studios. The chairs in the large broadcasting space were specially designed so that seats had the same sound-absorbing qualities whether occupied or not. In the smaller broadcasting room a hundred wall panels could be flipped. One side of the panels absorbed sound, the other reflected it. In this way very different reverberation effects could be achieved.

References

External links

Haus des Rundfunks Broadcasting House, Berlin, Goethe-Institut, Washington, D.C. Haus des Rundfunks, rbb-online.de (in German) Haus des Rundfunks, berlin.de (in German)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Haus des Rundfunks

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Haus des Rundfunks claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Haus des Rundfunks before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Haus des Rundfunks ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Haus des Rundfunks

In research: Haus des Rundfunks appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Haus des Rundfunks in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Haus des Rundfunks is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics ARD (broadcaster), Buildings and structures completed in 1930, Buildings and structures in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Haus des Rundfunks outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Haus des Rundfunks in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Haus des Rundfunks means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Haus des Rundfunks out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Haus des Rundfunks in simple terms?

The Haus des Rundfunks (transl. Broadcasting House), located in the Westend district of Berlin, the capital city of Germany, is the world's oldest self-contained broadcasting centre.

Why does Haus des Rundfunks matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Haus des Rundfunks?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Haus des Rundfunks.