Long Oskar

Long Oskar was the nickname, given by the citizens of the city Hagen in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, to the 101 meters high office building of the local resident municipal savings bank. The building was directly in the city centre of Hagen and was considered as a landmark of the region.

Construction

Construction began 1 August, 1972 and finished on 29 November, 1975. It was inaugurated on 29 November, 1975. It is named after the director of the savings bank at that time, Oskar Specht. The architect of the building is Karl-Heinz Zernikow from Hagen.

The cultivated surface amounted to 634 m², the effective area 12,634 m² (office surface: 7.621 m²). The building had 22 projectiles, of it 2 basements, the building height over the upper edge of the area was 98 meters, the building length of 37 meters, the building width approximately 18.5 meters.

The front consisted of a pre-hung aluminum construction with a surface of 10,300 square meters. The converted area amounted to 57,000 cubic meters. A characteristic was the constant reinforced concrete slab, which served the balance of the building for the elevator pits: 113 meters long, 9 meters wide and 1.72 meters thickly.

Water leakage penetrated, and damaged building insulation. Repairs would have required further measures (including improvements to the air conditioning system and installation of a second stairway for fire safety reasons). Repair costs were estimated at 42 million euro. It was estimated that demolition would cost 5 million euro and construction of a new building would cost 16.8 million euro. Therefore, it was decided to demolish the current building and construct a new one.

Demolition

The building was explosively imploded at 10:53 on 7 March, 2004, in the then largest and riskiest breakup of a multistoried building in Europe. 1450 explosive charges with a total mass of 250 kilograms were used in timed sequence to cause 26,000 tons concrete and steel to first fold and then collapse into a planned only 70 meters long bed, without damaging neighboring building. The successful breakup is considered as master achievement of the specialty firm from Thuringia and receives an entry in the Guinness World Records.

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