Onkel Toms Hütte, an example of expressive modernism

The first three building phases by the architects Bruno Taut, Otto Rudolf Salvisberg and Hugo Häring, are of a noticeable unity of design and together form the oldest part of the Onkel Toms Hütte Estate. This part has a layout akin to Unwinesque spatial design in the garden city tradition. The architecture, however, is not the vernacular design so often associated with garden city inspired suburban satellites, but an example of expressive modernism that was utilised by progressive continental architects in the 1920s and 30s.

The housing in the oldest phases of the suburban satellite is a mix of family houses in long and medium length terraces, semidetached properties and apartment blocks. The rows of family houses are placed along residential streets planted with trees. All have a front garden and a -larger- back garden. Every house has a flat roof!

In contrast the traditionalist design of the Fischtalgrundsiedlung places a strong emphasis on double pitched roofs. Here no ribbon-like windows are used, instead the windows are relatively small openings in the facade. The facade is broken up in the same way as in the modernist housing by colour-blocking.

A typical streetscape in the oldest part of Onkel Toms Hütte shows a garden city type arrangement of terraced housing oriented at the street lined with trees. In contrast to the usual species planted in garden villages such as fruit trees and small blossom trees, large forest species were introduced as a reference to the forest that once stood here. The use of bright colour in blocks breaks up the facade of the terraces.

The housing is of a typical unified modernist design, with a strong emphasis on standardisation and repetition. This is clear on the garden side of the terraces (on the left) where all houses are similar. Colour-blocking is mostly used on the facades visible from the street. Only in the detached self-built houses along the main street towards Zehlendorf the well known cubist style of white modernism is evident as the picture on the right shows.

Onkle Toms Hütte is well known for its expressive use of colour on the facades. This was something Taut used in many of his designs. It also lead to sneers from architects like Le Corbusier who considered themselves true modernist as they denounced colour all together. The combination of coloured facades and the tall pine trees that were kept in situ as a reminder of the Grunewald forest gives the area a distinct quality.

Taut uses white, off-white, yellow, green, red and blue. Often these blocks of colour are combined with brick or concrete details, like for instance the vertical courses on the right. This use of colour inspired post-modern architect to do similar things, but without the spatial quality of Taut's design thus resulting in rather gimmicky neighbourhoods. The so-called Regenboogbuurt (Rainbow Neighbourhood) in Almere is an example of this.

Other architects also used colour-blocking but in a more restrained manner. Her a design by Hugo Häring with ochre blocks of colour on the otherwise white facade with the red window frames and doors used as an extra ornamental element.

Especially on the corners Taut uses colour to emphasise and embellish these parts of the streetscape. In the oldest section of Onkel Toms Hütte this change in colour is linked to separate building masses -especially the semidetached houses on the corner of the long terraced. In the section north of Argentine Avenue the colours chance on the corners of buildings with the side elevation treated in a contrasting colour.

These flat-roofed blocks in natural hues are set amongst the trees. This type of suburban environment is a reference to the Waldsiedlung, a German type of housing project that was developed in per-existing woodland.

The apartment blocks have no use for front gardens an can therefore better emulate the Waldsiedlung type by having wide expanses of grass with pines and oaks. In the apartment blocks the building is treated as a sculpture for living in. Some have the Taut colours and brick details.

This long apartment building is part of the formal edge of the oldest part of Onkel Toms Hütte, separating this garden village inspired section from the railway tracks of the U--bahn. Here the many trees retained from the original forest and the newly planted birch trees break the long facades of the buildings.