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PolskiA Visit to the Birthplace of Prefabricated Wooden Buildings
From the perspective of timber construction, this city is notable for the fact that, in the last decade of the 19th century, the firm Christoph & Unmack built the world’s largest factory for the production of prefabricated timber buildings here.
At that time, in addition to prefabricated wooden buildings, the factory produced log cabins and rail vehicles. The factory employed 4,000 people. Starting in 1927, the factory began manufacturing cement-fiber boards under the brand name Lignát. From a Czech perspective, it is interesting to note that a branch of this company was established in what was then Austria-Hungary, in the village of Boleslav in the Frýdlant region and later in Černousy. Prefabricated wooden buildings were exported from these two factories all over the world.
The famous architect Konrad Wachsmann, who headed the design office at Christoph & Unmack from 1926 to 1929, also designed the building that now houses his museum, which we visited. His most famous building from this period is Albert Einstein’s summer residence in the village of Caputh near Potsdam. After emigrating to America, Wachsmann and Walter Gropius founded the General Panel Corporation, thereby bringing the production of prefabricated wooden buildings to the American continent.
During our visit to Niesky, we toured the preserved housing estate of wooden buildings by the firm Christoph & Unmack—including a Catholic church constructed as a prefabricated wooden structure—with expert commentary from the museum director, Konrad Wachsmann. All of the buildings remain fully functional to this day. We highly recommend a visit to Niesky to anyone interested in the history of prefabricated wooden buildings. Please consider the attached photos an invitation to visit.
If you’d like to learn even more about the history, read our series “History of Prefabricated Wooden Buildings,” which you can find in the news archive.
https://www.europanel.cz/cz/aktualne/archiv-clanku/serial-historie-panelovych-drevostaveb-1.html