Unwinesque artistic urban design, some examples

Examples of so-called Unwinesque garden cities (Gartenstadt), garden suburbs (Gartenstadt, Cité Jardin), garden villages (Gartensiedlung, Tuindorp) and garden estates (Gartensiedlung, Tuinwijk) will also include developments designed on Sitte-esque artistic principles. As I've explained Unwinesque design and planning is the Anglo-Saxon elaboration on Sitte-esque principles.

With the beginnings of most cottage estates built as a model village in garden design, the layout of the roads emulates those used in parks and gardens. Sitte-esque artistic design favoured the curded and irregular lines, even though Sitte himself is not dismissive of axial and formal compositions in his book. At the heart of both Letchworth Garden City, Hampstead Garden Suburb and Welwyn Garden City Unwin included a formal axial composition. Other example include Tuindorp Watergraafsmeer (Betondorp), Genk-Zwartberg (Cité Sud) and Genk-Winterslag (Cité 1).

The LCC garden suburb known as Tower Gardens Estate also has a strong axial component at the centre of the layout. To the south the first building phase with parallel streets is typical of a model dwellings estate. A north south axis reminiscent of a "vue de vert" (used in baroque gardens) runs up through this development linking the several building phases.

A central axial composition is rare and in most cases any formal ensembles included in the design structure streets and small squares or greens within an overall layout.  These formal sparial ensembles are either orthogonal, or -more often- directional with a clear focal point or strong symmetry.

Within the garden village of Buiksloterham-Noord several formal ensembles are used to delineate separate neighbourhoods, all developed by a different Housing Association. The formal ensembles all focus on a public space. There is often great symmetry in the layout of streets and the arrangement of the buildings.

Unwin favours short streets much as Sitte does. A site, especially when it is on sloping terrain, might call for long streets. Another reason for using few short streets can be the shape of the site available for development. Unwinesque design uses several devices to break the perceived length of streets. The most important are to design curved streets and to play with the building line thus creating a flow of places along a route emulating Sitte's progression of spaces.

The streets in Tuindorp De Riet are mostly of great length due to the elongated site. This is counteracted by creating strong beginnings of streets and by spatially and visually subdividing the street into sections. For this special architectural shapes are introduced, greens are inserted and there is a play with the relative building line, thus squeezing and widening the streets space.

A staple of Unwinesque and of Sitte-esque urban design is to create a clear beginning and end of a street. This is used in many garden villages and garden suburbs as part of the total layout. Especially in smaller examples that are only one or a few streets this device is employed to structure the development and make it recognisable as a separate development.

The first phase of Tuindorp Vooruit in Ede is a curved street with a gate (G) at one end and gate-like narrowing of the streets (N) and a semicircular green at the other. Halfway a small enclosed unit or "hofje" (H) is included inspired by a Court Beguinage.

A method for creating variable space along a street is to emphasise the junctions by opening them up. This can be enhanced by the use of angled corners where a corner is cut off at an 45 degree angle. This also aids road safety as it produces better visibility at junctions. These angled blocks can become a feature on their own and are sometimes used in a formal way to create visual interest within a garden village layout.

The suburb of Genk-Waterschei connects a regular workers colony on an orthogonal layout to a garden village  known as Cité Jardin André Dumont. Within this exemplary Unwinesque garden village angled blocks are used on most street junctions. There is a distinction between regular blocks placed at an angle (in orange) and winged corners blocks (in red). Especially these winged corner blocks are very typical of Unwinesque developments.

To achieve the desired informal effect Unwin advocates the use of closes and greens to group the buildings around. As part of Unwinesque design houses are grouped around greens or where buildings are set back to create a place (for instance at a junction) or to create space (to break the length of the street) the space is often designed as a green laid to lawn. If these clusters of houses around a green are set back from the street at the end of a cul-de-sac they form closes. Such a close is often used in Unwinesque design, but not so often in the Netherlands where police didn't approve of dead-end streets. 

The garden village of Am Freihof has many Unwinesque design features. It is an excellent example of the use of closes and greens to better parcel the site and use all available land for development. The closes are shown in red, the greens are shown in green.

A design feature of most German garden villages is the Sitte-eque use of height differences and gates or gateways under buildings to create visual interest and define spaces. This design device is especially effective in creating a sequence of well defined public places with closed or long facades. This makes them rather different from Unwinesque examples that rely mostly on (semi)detached cottages and short terraces of 3, 4 or 5. There are quite some hybrids of the two approaches (e.g. Hermeswiese, Lockerwiesesiedlung, Ratingsee-Siedlung).

Am Schmalen Rain has little in common with core Unwinesque garden villages. Yet this strong spatial ensemble fits neatly within the more urban German tradition which focuses on a sequence of spaces, often separated physically by buildings and a clear overall shape. This garden village comprises of several spaces from street via square to large green, all within an ever present built-up envelop. The central square can only be reached by passing underneath higher buildings with an arched gateway at every corner.  

There are quite a few non-Unwinesque and non-Sitte-esque garden villages. Some are factory villages (Batadorp, Philipsdorp, Heveadorp). Other belong to a different style than retrospective vernacular. These are mostly designed in a modernist idiom (New Objectivity, Bauhaus, Brick Cubism), like for instance Batadorp, Tuindorp De Burgh, Onkel Toms Hütte. La Cité Moderne, Siedlung Dammerstock, Siedlung Törten, Siedlung Pottgieserhof and Siedlung Dickelsbach. A special category are the Gartenhöfe, these urban blocks of apartments with communal facilities and amenities  wrapped around a large garden or small park (e.g. Luisenhof, Carl Seitz Hof, Appel Hof, Karl Marx Hof, Ussulston Estate, Elm Park Court and Spaarndammerbuurt).