Gartenstadt Hellerau, a progressive planned community

North of the city of Dresden near the tiny village of Klotzsche the first official garden city in Germany was built from 1909 onwards. In actual fact the first real Garden City was built by the Krupp Housing Department, but this was a company initiative and not a project backed by the German Garden City Association. The location on the Heller brook fell under the jurisdiction of the villages of Klotzsche and Rähnitz. The fields on the sloping terrain were bought by businessman Karl Schmidt. The garden city (actually rather a garden village) Hellerau was developed together the Dresdner Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst, set up by Schmidt. This factory later became the collectively run Deutscher Werkstätten.

The idea(l) was to create a planned community that could grow organically from the initiatives of the community. Community building was an important impetus to creating this rather isolated satellite. Many of the early garden villages in Germany are closely associated with progressive thinking and the social reform movement (Lebensreform). The factory and workshops are located at the bottom of the slope along a pre-existing road linking Dresden and Moritzburg.

The garden village of Hellerau was built next to the furniture factory of the Deutscher Werkstätten (1). The cultural hub of the Festspielhaus (2) is located to the north. On the west side the cemetery (3) is located. The functional central focus is the Market Square (M) with shops around is and on the corner the Gaststätte (G). Other amenities are a kids playgrounds (k), a public park (p) and football pitches (f) next to the well pool.

The layout of the garden village of Hellerau follows the underlying landscape with a series of curvilinear streets going up the slope. A pool was created at a natural well. The centre of the garden village is a market laid out on Sitte-esque principles of artistic urban design. There are three distinct spatial sections. Several well-known architects worked on the buildings in Hellerau, including Richard Riemerschmid, Heinrich Tessenow, Hermann Muthesius, Kurt Frick, George Metzendorf, Wilhelm Kreis and Bruno Paul. The buildings were designed in a German vernacular style, with cream rendered walls or wood planking, red tile roofs and window shutters. Buildings are generally one storey, normally with an attic with bedrooms. Around the market and near the old village of Klotzsche buildings are higher, up to 3 storeys. The factory is -in part- also higher, the same goes for the former water tower.

The garden village was designed as an organic unit with a clear centre around the market. Spatially and stylistically this garden village can be divided into three sections: the central section (a) with a mix of apartments, terraced housing and (semi)detached houses; the western section (b) with (semi)detached cottages, partly constructed in wood; and a northern section (c) with terraced housing. Especially section a shows Unwinesque design devices (in yellow and red).

Hellerau was built as a unit of living, working, culture and education, and attracted many cultural visionaries from all over Europe. Among them were many architects and teatchers and creative types including Émile-Jaques Dalcroze (composer) and Mary Wigman (choreographer). Annual festivals were organised here. For this a large festival hall was built on the edge of Hellerau (the Festspielhalle Hellerau). Hellerau was a centre for creativity, experiment and expressive dance until 1933 when regime change meant an end to the progressive community here.

Urban animal: curious corvids

The Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of passerine birds that contains some of the most intelligent birds known to man that display self-awareness, spatial memory and the ability to use tools. In English this bird family is usually known as the crow family after one of its most common members the Carrion crow. Together they are known as corvids after the Latin name for the crow Corvus. These birds with black plumes are not closely related to Black birds.

The Magpie (Pica pica) is now more common in the urban landscape than in its natural half open habitat of hedgerows and scattered trees. These striking bird with black and white plumage- although in the right light the black feathers reveal themselves to be iridescent green and blue- are highly intelligent. The same sheen can be seen on the Carrion crow (Corvus corone). These birds are the same size as the Magpie, they differ in the overall colouration and the long tail. The Common raven (Corvus corax) is another “black” corvid. This bird with a blue sheen is larger than the other two species of corvids. All are opportunistic, omnivorous and intelligent birds.

The Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) is quickly becoming one of the most common birds in urban areas. These gregarious, very intelligent birds have excellent spatial memory and will even recognise human faces. They are not truly black but rather darker and lighter shades of grey. They will often operate in groups. In autumn these family groups merge into larger flocks. It is the smallest corvid size wise.

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.