Gartenstadt Luginsland: a garden village in the Swabian vernacular

The garden village Luginsland was built in the Swabian vernacular with hipped roofs with red tiles, dormers, low chimneys and rendered walls in off-white, cream, yellow and ochre. The curved streets are lined with spacious semidetached and detached houses in the northern part of the garden village. The streets lack trees but are lined with large front gardens with originally privet hedges.

These more simple houses with gabled roofs and no dormers (although some were added later) are of a later date and were built around 1930. The large semidetached properties are setback further from the road, providing for larger front gardens with room for a separate small garage.

Only two of the closes are designed in a classic Unwinesque style with a building foreshortening the line of sight from the entrance, most however are short cul-de-sacs with houses on either side of the dead-end street. In the background we see the modernist church building. This Neuen Gartenstadtkirche was consecrated in 1968 to replace the old church which was converted to a community centre.

The old church was built in 1931 to replace an older chapel built in 1911. The building was destroyed by allied bombs and rebuilt between 1945 and '48. The new church in stark concrete designed by the Stuttgart architect Rall is a clear break from the Swabian vernacular of the surrounding garden village.

The Gartenstadtkirche was consecrated in 1931 and was a multi-use building with a large church hall on the ground floor and with an apartment for the parish priest and a health centre (community nurse) above. The present building was rebuilt after 1945, but quickly became too small, so a new church was built behind it, a kindergarten was built next to it and the church itself was converted into a community centre. The building was modelled on the historic village churches of the area.

The Gaststätte Luginsland stands at the entrance to the garden village an comprises of a pub and a guesthouse with small apartments let out to single factory workers. Around the corner within the same building some shops were located. These stand mostly empty now. Behind the Gaststätte a garden square is located at the heart of the garden village with small but vary detailed houses around it.

The garden square is a large rectangular space encircled with trees and mostly laid to grass. Part of the space has been made into a playground. The low houses around are very detailed in their architecture. This central section of Luginsland was the first to be built between 1911 and '14.

Regardless of the building period the houses were fitted with functional window shutters in a few types. The type of shutter is simplified over the years. Where the older houses have a very detailed architecture with compound roofs and lots of small details (as shown on the right) the later buildings were simplified with only basic facades.

The streets south of the Goldbergstrasse are lined with small properties in short terraces. These buildings only have small garden at the front and are built so close to one another that they seem to form a continuous building line. The architects have employed varying the direction of the roofline to break up the length of the roof surfaces and create visual interest.