Changing season, changing colours

Autumn is rapidly advancing with the leaves of deciduous plants changing from green to a rainbow of red orange and yellow before they fall to the ground. Although, many leaves are hanging on with the sunny weather of the past week and their changing colours can be observed close-up.

This vine against the garden wall (left) shows the green pigments being withdrawn from the leaves revealing the underlying red and yellow pigments. The result is varying combinations of greens, yellows and reds, especially showing the veins. Not only leaves are changing colour, as they ripen berries turn bright red colours to attract birds. In the middle the glossy drupes of a Hawthorn. This cherry tree is almost ablaze as the leaves have all turned a bright orange-red.

The leaves that have fallen are starting to carpet the ground. These yellow leaves of the Common Ash obscure the park path. The grass underneath the trees in the park are sprinkled with fallen leaves. The leaves of ornamental cherries (middle) show a range of colours, ranging from yellow via peach to deep red. The fallen leaves of this red-leaved Norway Maple show how the leaves actually become softer in colour, changing from a deep plum purple to a wine red and eventually a deep bronze.

This Oak-leaved Hydrangea, a coarse woodland shrub from the U.S., turns wine red and purple in autumn. The leaves sometimes don’t drop of but dry on the stalks, only to be pushed aside by the fresh leaves emerging in spring. In the middle the leaves of Persian Ironwood (Parrotia) showing all shades between yellow and deep red, often in a single leaf. In contrast the leaves of the Spindle bush (right) all turn a uniform candy pink, which contrasts sharply with the last deep orange berries.

Gartenstadt Dahlhauserheide: a vernacular garden city satellite

The first garden city in Germany, Hellerau, was built after the Dahlhauserheide Colony was built as a garden city satellite by the Krupp Housing Department. As such this settlement isn’t a garden city as the German Garden City Society wasn’t involved in its inception. Also Dahlhauserheide in Hordel near Bochum was designed prior to Raymond Unwins book Town Planning in Practice (1909), the German version of this book was published in 1922, based on Sitte-esque spatial design principles. The whole garden city presents itself as a built-up example of typical Unwinesque garden city design, but in actual fact shows the deep influence of the German tradition of artistic urban planning.

A typical street with semidetached houses and small front gardens gives Dahlhauserheide a village-like feel. The straight streets are always short in length, longer streets all have a gentle curve. The houses are simple with high gable roofs , rendered walls and wooden window shutters on the ground floor.

Some of the houses have sections of the facade half-timbered in several patterns. Most of the timber-framing is used on the upper storey and the gable end. This curved street shows how visual interest is created with the same basic house repeated several times, but with different details (placement, shape and size of windows, colour of render and use of timber frame panels).

Visual interest is also created by positioning the blocks at a 45 degree angle at corners. Here the angled house is also given extra emphasis by the use of half-timbering on the front facade.

In some places at tactical junctions green verges and a set-back of the building line is used to widen the street space. The very low gutter line of the semidetached block at the end of this widened space emphasises this special point.

 

One of the long lightly curved streets. The end of the street can’t be viewed from the beginning of it. The houses are all fairly similar again with variations in the details. In some places the orientation of a building is changed or the building line is set back or pushed forward.

The past of this garden city as a colony for miners can be seen in some places. A wrought iron miner on the wall and an old, restored coal cart on display in the front garden, or the hammer and pick underneath the house number are evidence of this.

In some places a large green is created by a setback of a long section of street. The semidetached houses are all linked by additions. These used to be outbuildings like stables and sheds, now they are part of the building. These houses show gable ends with weatherboarding in wood.

This weatherboarding can take several shapes. It can be classic weatherboarding of slightly overlapping horizontal planks, as shown above, but the planks can also be used vertically. Vertical weatherboarding is used to great effect in some buildings, especially where horizontal trim ledges are used (on the right) instead of the plane plank surface (left).

The park is a large green space that was included to provide the residence with a communal green space and bring nature closer. This was of great importance for people in the Reform Movement. The park isn’t flat and therefore not really usable for outdoor sports; a separate sporting ground with football pitches was built on the northern edge of Dahlhauserheide.

The architect Schmohl designed the houses in a restrained vernacular style . He used few materials and found expressing in the detailing, the different use of materials and scarce ornament like for instance the horizontal trim ledges, small awnings over the front door and wooden shutters on the ground floor.

Within the sea of semidetached and detached properties with high roofs, the two storey blocks around the Beamtenplatz . This name translates as Clerks Square and here at the heart of the garden city an informal ensemble was built to house the Krupp Company clerks that worked in the nearby collieries Hannibal and Hannover.

Arched gateways demarcate the entrances to the square. The buildings are higher and therefore more imposing than the regular housing for miners with lower roofs, that can be seen in the front framing the view.

Some buildings on the square are even higher with three storeys and living space under the roof making four storeys and an attic. These blocks were not intended for clerks or foreman -most of the foremen lived in detached houses spread around the settlement so they could keep an eye on the workers- but for the widows of miners that had perished in the pits.

The architecture is very expressive with sgrafito panels, small roofs over the entrances, standing gale ends and protruding sections creating visual interest and the idea of several buildings organically grown around the small square with trees, lawns and a fountain.

These large semidetached houses are based on Mulhouse-Quadragles. They had extra space for older parents to live in with their relatives or rooms to let to a young man with no family of his own. The mines attracted many immigrants and this meant an influx of mainly young men.

Gartenstadt Dahlhauserheide, Bochum: a garden city for miners

Bochum, located between Essen and Dortmund,  in the heart of the Ruhr Area is situated between the rivers Ruhr and Emscher on the border of the northern and southern sections of the Ruhrrevier. The city of Bochum incorporated many smaller villages at the end of the 19^th century, thus gaining many collieries and other industrial sites with the workers colonies built especially for these. Many more settlements were incorporated between 1904 and 1929. In 1975 the city of Wattenscheid was merged with Bochum. The village of Hordel, near Wattenscheid was incorporated by Bochum in 1926. Heavy industry developed quickly after 1830 and peaked around 1929 with over 70 pits on 59 collieries. Well-known collieries are Zeche Prinz-Regent, Zeche Hannover, Zeche Hannibal, Zeche Constantin and Zeche Hasenwinkel.

In 1890 the Krupp Company bought the Manor of Dahlhausen (Rittergut Dahlhausen) located near their coal mines Hannibal and Hannover and the Zeche Carolinenglück further south that was owned by the Bochum Mining Union. The manor comprised of a large expanse of heathland (Dahlhauserheide), a manor house on a brook, a watermill and a few farms and fields. Robert Schmohl, who had lead the Krupp Building Department since 1892 was asked in 1905 to design a large new colony for the miners and workers of the two collieries. The Krupp family was by that time on board with the Reform Movement and instructed Schmohl to create a garden city instead of the typical colony that were built for instance around Eickel and Heβler.

Siedlung Dahlhauserheide was built on the heath below the manor house. The manor house is still standing. The watermill on the Hüllerbach was eventually torn down as most of the old cottages. Incidentally, the village of Dahlhausen is not located near this manor, but 8 km further south on the river Ruhr. The garden city was a true suburban satellite located between the existing urban areas of Bochum, Gelsenkirchen and Wattenscheid.

As per usual the housing was divided in classes. All housing was designed in a Westphalian vernacular resembling farm houses and cottages. The streets show the influence of park design from the period and Sitte-esque aesthetic with curved or short straight streets with variable building line. There are no true closes, that staple of English garden city design, but rather kinked streets behind main streets. Amenities were also included, especially schools and sports and leisure facilities. Two Konsumanstalten (Cooperative Shops) and a Bierhalle (Beer Hall) were also included. Each house had a garden, many had a small stable or outbuilding as the Reform Movement advocated a return to living in tune with nature and growing your own food. As a result of the many vegetable gardens Siedlung Dahlhauserheide was colloquially known as Kappeskolonie (Cabbage Colony).

The outline of this garden village is rounded giving it a natural feel especially in combination with the curved streets. The central axis is formed by the street “Hordeler Heide”. This is not a formal axis and a new line. Some old dirt tracks were transformed into residential streets linking the suburban satellite to its surroundings. The amenities and green public spaces are located on pivotal points in the layout; these include primary schools (ps), a kindergarten (kg), a chapel (c), Konsumanstalt (ka), park, beer hall (bh) and sports hall (sh). Sitte-esque or Unwinesque design principles (in orange) are employed to create spatial end visual interest at intersections and along streets. Illustration based on Jansen/Wetterau 2002.

In total 339 semidetached houses were built in 40 types on 8 different floor plans with a further 37 detached houses for the foremen, making 715 units in total. The streets are mostly named after the surrounding coal fields. The whole does feel like a village, as was the intention of Schmohl and Krupp. To preserve the character of the garden city -or better garden village- a Gestaltungssatzung (design regulations framework) was agreed in 1980. Most of the buildings have thus maintained their original appearance. The housing has however not officially been listed.