Haus des Rundfunks

The Haus des Rundfunks, located in the Westend district of Berlin, Germany, is the oldest self-contained broadcasting house in the world. It was designed by Hans Poelzig in 1929 after winning an architectural competition. The building vis-à-vis the Funkturm contains three large broadcasting rooms located in the centre, shielded from street noise by the surrounding office wings. It is now used by the local ARD broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg and produces radio programs for the channels radioBerlin, Kulturradio, and Inforadio. The building's broadcasting rooms are occasionally also used to host concerts.HistoryThe building, designed with a plan shape of a rounded triangle with a 150m long façade of ceramic tiles, was constructed from 1929-1930 and inaugurated on 22 January 1931 as the seat of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft. The large, central broadcasting room was finished in 1933. On the 22 March 1935 the first regular television service in Germany Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow was started 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 to broadcasting. Some radio programming continued during the war, notably the Wunschkonzert für die Wehrmacht ("Request Concert for the Armed Forces"), broadcast from the Haus des Rundfunks on Sunday afternoons from 1939 to 1941.