Modern, soulless architecture is often blamed on the Bauhaus movement, founded in 1919 at Weimar by Walter Gropius. There is some truth to that, but it should not be forgotten that the original idea of the Bauhaus was a very humanistic one: To provide the working class with affordable and healthy housing.
This was(?) an enormous challenge at the beginning of the last century. The industrial revolution had brought millions into the big cities, where entire families often lived in dark one-bedroom flats with coal ovens for heating.
At the same time, power and wealth was expressed by monumental buildings with heavy ornaments.
People like Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier were (rightly) abhorred by both and aimed to use (then) modern technologies and materials to create better private and public spaces under the principle:
Form follows function
This was revolutionary at the time and inspired many architects and urbanists. Among them Bruno Taut, who built several city quarters, mainly in Berlin.
Let’s have a look at one of them: The Waldsiedlung in Berlin-Zehlendorf, built from 1926-1932, which is still pretty much intact and conserves a lot of the original ideas.
The quarter has small blocks of flats and family homes.
We see Bauhaus typical square forms and the total lack of ornaments, but also the very humane small scale, the presence of green space, trees and colours, as well structure in the front. The street is purposely built with a slight curvature and the buildings on the left are set in an angle against it.
As you can see, the very same building principles as for the blocks of flats were applied to the family homes.
It can easily be seen that this neighbourhood wasn’t designed with mass car ownership in mind. In fact, like other similar neighbourhoods, it is all built around the (then) new Underground line, built to take workers quickly to their workplaces in the inner city.
However: The station was not meant to be a mere place to rush off and back, but also as a small centre, with restaurants and a church beside it and shopping galleries at both sides of the tracks.
Where you can see the “Aldi” in the photo, until the 1960s, there used to be a cinema. The idea was to create a small village within the bigger city. The concept still works, although many of the small and independent shops are struggling for survival as people’s shopping habits are switching more and more towards online.
Small seasonal markets like the one at the other entrance still do attract people, though.
I reckon, this neighbourhood fully achieved the principles of providing good housing for people living in a city, and I don’t think, the rectangular forms make the area look soulless and uniform.
What has been less of a success, was the idea of providing affordable housing for the working class. Whilst initially true, when the housing units were still in public ownership, successive rounds of privatisations in the last third of the XXth century, put flats and especially family homes economically far out of reach for people depending on affordable homes.
What housing projects like this one show, is that, in my opinion, applying Bauhaus principles can indeed create very liveable neighbourhoods.
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