Großsiedlung Törten: a modernist suburban satellite

Near the tiny village of Törten a few miles south of Dessau a suburban satellite was planned in the 1920s. After the move of the Bauhaus School of Architecture and Applied Design from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, Walter Gropius decided to build model housing on modernist principles. The Groβsiedlung Törten was set up as an exhibition of prefabricated family housing.  

The Stahlhaus was designed by the architect Richard Paulick with Georg Muche, painter, graphic designer and an important teacher at Bauhaus. This construction in steel and precast concrete panels was finished in 1927 and is an elaboration on the ideas advocated by Gropius. The building is named after the innovative steel frame and translates as “steel house”. This 90 square meter detached house is located directly north of the Bauhaussiedlung.

The buildings of the Bauhaussiedlung were also built by joining precast reinforced concrete panels. The central join between panels is a narrow fluted concrete standard that is clearly visible in these row houses. The openings for the windows and doors were integrated into the panels.

The cubist white houses with darker trim accents line streets that are typical of 1920s suburban housing estates. The streets are lines by trees and grass verges that replace the front gardens that characterise standard garden city estates. Here the straight street called Doppelreihe (double row).

The houses in this estate are built in only three types that are all composed of similar standardised concrete building panels. By varying the building line, resulting in a castellated row, visual interest is created along the streets.

The streets of the Doppelreihe and Enkelreihe are straight with a setback section at the entrance conform Unwinesque principles. The other streets all curve, thus following the artistic principles advocated by the followers of Camillo Sitte. The houses in these streets have front gardens.

Some of the buildings show the original intentions. Many other buildings -yes even those listed as monuments of architecture- show unsympathetic alterations and improvements by the owners. The buildings were conceived as cubist compositions with the horizontal and vertical lines emphasised by coloured accents that were inspired by the Dutch Style Movement made famous by Piet Mondriaan.

These houses along the north side of the thoroughfare, that was built as part of the housing estate, show the construction manner with prefabricated elements with panels that were slid between. The elements that were placed first are higher and give the facade a lovely rhythm.

These brick faced blocks of flats were built in 1930 around a concrete frame with concrete floor slabs. These slabs show on the outside as horizontal bands that recall the banded renaissance architecture with banding in natural stone. At the front these floor slabs extend as external walkways or galleries.

The Laubenganghäuser don’t look very special, but these low blocks of flats are a prototype of the gallery flat buildings that were an important type of mass housing of post-WW2 international modernism. The flats are arranged in sequence on each floor. Access is provided by an outdoor walkway instead of an internal corridor.

The southern section of the housing satellite was built in the 1930s in a traditionalist style that was favoured by the regime of the day. This style is also known as the Stuttgarter Schule (Stuttgart School) and can be seen as the opposite of the modernist idiom of the Bauhaus.

The Meisterhäuser were built as model villas on the edge of Dessau to showcase Bauhaus principles. These cubist compositions are still viewed as the summit of modern architecture. The large windows connect outside and inside. The villas were built by the city of Dessau to be rented to the main teachers of Bauhaus, here the Haus Kandinsky/Klee.

All remaining examples of Bauhaus architecture in Dessau are part of the Unesco World Heritage site and are linked by a cycling tour: the Bauhaustour. This tour takes you through the whole of Dessau. One of the stops on the tour is the iconic Bauhaus building that is still used as a school and a centre for design.

A far outlier on the Bauhaustour is the Kornhaus Pavilion on the Elbe. This recreational pavilion on the dyke along the river was commissioned by the city and the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer Brauerei AG (a brewery). Carl Fieger a long-time assistant of Gropius was responsible for the design. It is still in use as a café.

Großsiedlung Törten: a Bauhaus model estate in Dessau

After 1900 the city of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt quickly grew into an important industrial centre on the Elbe. Expanding heavy industry lead to a sharp increase in demand for housing for both workers and personnel, especially from 1920 onwards. The first housing was provided by private developers and community groups (the Siedlerbewegung). The local authorities provided land especially for Siedlergesellschaften (Building Cooperatives), but also had small numbers of housing built. Improving infrastructure was part of the decision making process for allotting certain plots for development as new housing estates were used to realise important road infrastructure. After 1920 several estates with amenities were developed: Gartenstadt Askania (a true garden village), Siedlung Hohe Lache, Knarrberg-Siedlung, Reichsbahn-Siedlung, Neue Siedlung, two AGFA-Siedlungen and the Bauhaussiedlung.

After the Bauhaus school for Architecture and applied Arts had moved to Dessau from Weimar in 1925 the main teachers strived to realise buildings to better propagate their teachings. The Meisterhäuser (master houses) were built in 1926 on the edge of the city. These four villas -one detached, three semidetached- in a modernist idiom were designed with precast industrial concrete modules and sections by Walter Gropius with László Moholy-Nagy. The furniture and fittings were all designed by Marcel Breuer.

Near the village of Törten the new urban area of Dessau-Süd (Dessau South) was planned in the early 1920s. Between 1926 and ’28 the Bauhaussiedlung was built as a section of Dessau-Süd. The estate was never finished; the Laubenganghäuser (gallery flat buildings), finished in 1930 were the only part of the second building phase to be realised. The estate was conceived as a model estate of industrial construction at low cost with high comfort.

The houses and the layout were designed with changing seasons, influx of natural light, modern living for all ages and effective use of material and space. They have the typical cubist aesthetic with flat roofs. The back gardens are large in order to facilitate gardening and vegetable growing. The houses that were built come in a limited number of types. Most are low row houses that are arranged along 3 curved roads (Grossring, Mittelring and Kleinring). The middle-rise flat buildings were erected along the new thoroughfare to the village of Törten and further south on parallel streets. At the heart of the estate Gropius designed a Konsumgebäude -a cooperative supermarket and community hall in one. The estate also had several schools planned with the housing. Later a few shops sprang up in the 1930s section that was built in the traditionalist Stuttgarter Schule Style.

The Siedlung Törten has no iconic layout and is characterised by a considered piecemeal layout in several sections making the most of the sites available. The Bauhaus buildings that are listed monuments are shown in the lighter tone. At the centre, below the thoroughfare, the Konsum-building (K) stands, with a church (C) and a secondary school (S). The Laubenganghäuser (L) were built as a precursor to the planned southern section. At the north end of the first section two Bauhaus villas were built: Stahlhaus (SH) and Haus Fieger (HF).

Not all original Bauhaus buildings survive. The ones that do survive have sometimes been altered very unsympathetically. Only a few of the buildings have been restored. It is a real shame that this Unesco Heritage site looks so shabby and in places unsightly. All houses should be restored, including the front gardens as there are so few examples of early modernist housing estates.