 |
 |
 |
 |
After an apprenticeship as a bricklayer, Otto Apel (30.12.1906 - 19.03.1966) started to work in an architect's office and studied in Kassel from 1925 to 1927.
He then worked as a technical employee for the city of Kassel, before he started his studies at the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1929.
During period of National Socialism Otto Apel worked as an architect for the so-called Generalbauinspektion Berlin as an assistant of Heinrich Tessenow,
belonging to an architects crew of Albert Speer. In the last years of the war, he was called to military service as a soldier.
In the postwar period Otto Apel was appointed as a senior architect in the Frankfurter Aufbau AG (responsible for reconstructions) with numerous reconstruction projects
for office buildings and apartments for federal civil servants. In 1949 he started to work as a self-employed architect in consortium with Rudolf Letocha, Rohrer, Herdt and Sep Ruf,
working on the extensions and the settlements of the US High Commission (HICOG) in Bonn and Bad Godesberg (Muffendorf, Plittersdorf and Tannenbusch). In 1953 he started his
own architectural office in Frankfurt. At times he also colaborated with Eberhard Brandl and with the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Typical for the buildings by
Otto Apel, which belong to the transition period from Nazi architecture to the 1950s modernist style and aspired to belong to the international architectural movements,
are far projecting cornices and delicate aluminum window frames with gold anodized surface. In 1961 Otto Apel founded the architectural firm ABB together with
Hannsgeorg Beckert and the engineer Gilbert Becker.
1953 - 1955 US Consulate General - Frankfurt
1956 House of the Book - Frankfurt
1957 America House - Frankfurt
1961 - 1963 Hotel Intercontinental - Frankfurt
1974 - 1980 Silver Tower - Frankfurt
1978 - 1984 Greentowers - Frankfurt