4. Ministry of Aviation
Aviation ministry house, also Detlev-Rohwedder Haus stood out as the largest office space on the planet when it was erected in 1936. It housed the Ministry of Aviation of The Third Reich, for which it is most famous to date.
The Ministry of Aviation building was designed by the same architect who oversaw the reconstruction plan of the Tempelhof airport, Ernst Sagebiel. Due to its enormous size, the building was described as being in the characteristic style of “National Socialist intimidation architecture”.
The Detlev-Rohwedder Haus was seven storied and featured a total floor area of 112,000 square meters, 7 kilometers of corridors, a total of 2,800 rooms, more than 4,000 windows and 17 stairways. Its structure was made up of a concrete skeleton reinforced to the exterior with limestone and travertine. Travertine is a form of marble. It amassed stone drawn from at least 50 quarries.
The building was truly vast and as such, it served effectively the growing Luftwaffe bureaucracy in addition to being home to Germany’s civil aviation authority at the time.
The most surprising fact is that despite the immenseness of the structure, it took only 18 months to construct. This short-time completion was possible as construction personnel worked double shifts, throughout the week, and single shifts on Sundays. After just eight months of construction in October 1935, the building’s first 1,000 rooms were submitted for use. Upon its completion, it housed about 4,000 bureaucrats together with their clerks. The building is used by the Federal German Ministry of Finance.