Dammerstock, Bauhaus in Karlsruhe

The city of Karlsruhe (literally: Charles' Rest) issues a design competition in 1928 for the development of a new suburban satellite to be built on a number of fields along the river Alb. The area is known locally as Dammerstock and was part of Beiertsheim until this settlement was incorporated by Karlsruhe in 1907. Subsequently, plans were drawn up to create a large industrial area on the relatively flat land. This changes with the Generalbebauungsplan (a regional urban plan) of 1926, that was commissioned by the mayor Hermann Schneider. The explicit aim was to create a new garden village type settlement in between the so-called Südstadt (South City) and the Gartenstadt Rüppurr (Rüppurr Garden Village). The site lies along the Albtalbahn, a railway line running south from the city.

The new urban quarter was an ambitious project within modernism, a style advocated by the city council. Several famous architects are asked to participate in the design competition. The choice of architects reflects the modernist inclination. The same can be said of the jury consisting of Erst May, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Paul Schmitthenner. The design competition centred around the usability of modern housing for families with average to low incomes. For realisation of the development a non-profit building society (gemeinnützige städtische Baugenossenschaft Volkswohnung) was founded.

Walter Gropius was proclaimed the winner of the design competition. He had been the director of Bauhaus from 1918 onwards after taking over from the Belgian Henry van de Velde. He is also the person who fused the Polytechnic of Saxony with the Academy for the Arts to form the Staatliches Bauhaus (State School for Building) in 1919.In 1925 the Bauhaus is moved from Weimar to Dessau where the famous school buildings by Gropius still stand. The aim of the Bauhaus is to provide both technical and practical schooling in which all the creative disciplines contribute to a Gesamtkunstwerk (or: total work of art). In 1928 Gropius was succeeded by another famous modernist Hannes Meyer, who in turn was succeeded in 1930 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, another famous modernist architect.

The winning design is textbook Bauhaus. The central motif is formed by parallel strips of row housing. The square buildings with flat roofs and light rendered facades were set in green gardens on paths that connected to trough streets. The buildings were all designed by Gropius and students of his in a similar style. Only the first building phase was ever completed as after 1933 the Bauhaus was closed and modernist architecture was declared entartet (degenerate) by the NSDAP. The northern section of Dammerstock was subsequently completed in the style of the so-called Stuttgarter Schule which focussed on recreating vernacular design. The layout was, however, not altered.

The original design for Dammerstock redrawn from original poster for the 1929 Model Homes exhibition (Ausstellung Dammerstock-Siedlung, die Gebrauchswohnung). The graphic concept for this exhibition of the Neues Bauen (literally: the new way of building) was by the designer Kurt Schwitters.  On the right the actual situation with in red the traditionalist buildings in the Stuttgarter Schule and in yellow the original buildings of 1929 and parts that were completed in the same style by the architect van den Kerkhof in 1949. Although what still stands is impressive, it would have been quite something this suburb of Karlsruhe if it had been completed as originally intended.