Großsiedlung Törten: a Bauhaus model estate in Dessau

After 1900 the city of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt quickly grew into an important industrial centre on the Elbe. Expanding heavy industry lead to a sharp increase in demand for housing for both workers and personnel, especially from 1920 onwards. The first housing was provided by private developers and community groups (the Siedlerbewegung). The local authorities provided land especially for Siedlergesellschaften (Building Cooperatives), but also had small numbers of housing built. Improving infrastructure was part of the decision making process for allotting certain plots for development as new housing estates were used to realise important road infrastructure. After 1920 several estates with amenities were developed: Gartenstadt Askania (a true garden village), Siedlung Hohe Lache, Knarrberg-Siedlung, Reichsbahn-Siedlung, Neue Siedlung, two AGFA-Siedlungen and the Bauhaussiedlung.

After the Bauhaus school for Architecture and applied Arts had moved to Dessau from Weimar in 1925 the main teachers strived to realise buildings to better propagate their teachings. The Meisterhäuser (master houses) were built in 1926 on the edge of the city. These four villas -one detached, three semidetached- in a modernist idiom were designed with precast industrial concrete modules and sections by Walter Gropius with László Moholy-Nagy. The furniture and fittings were all designed by Marcel Breuer.

Near the village of Törten the new urban area of Dessau-Süd (Dessau South) was planned in the early 1920s. Between 1926 and ’28 the Bauhaussiedlung was built as a section of Dessau-Süd. The estate was never finished; the Laubenganghäuser (gallery flat buildings), finished in 1930 were the only part of the second building phase to be realised. The estate was conceived as a model estate of industrial construction at low cost with high comfort.

The houses and the layout were designed with changing seasons, influx of natural light, modern living for all ages and effective use of material and space. They have the typical cubist aesthetic with flat roofs. The back gardens are large in order to facilitate gardening and vegetable growing. The houses that were built come in a limited number of types. Most are low row houses that are arranged along 3 curved roads (Grossring, Mittelring and Kleinring). The middle-rise flat buildings were erected along the new thoroughfare to the village of Törten and further south on parallel streets. At the heart of the estate Gropius designed a Konsumgebäude -a cooperative supermarket and community hall in one. The estate also had several schools planned with the housing. Later a few shops sprang up in the 1930s section that was built in the traditionalist Stuttgarter Schule Style.

The Siedlung Törten has no iconic layout and is characterised by a considered piecemeal layout in several sections making the most of the sites available. The Bauhaus buildings that are listed monuments are shown in the lighter tone. At the centre, below the thoroughfare, the Konsum-building (K) stands, with a church (C) and a secondary school (S). The Laubenganghäuser (L) were built as a precursor to the planned southern section. At the north end of the first section two Bauhaus villas were built: Stahlhaus (SH) and Haus Fieger (HF).

Not all original Bauhaus buildings survive. The ones that do survive have sometimes been altered very unsympathetically. Only a few of the buildings have been restored. It is a real shame that this Unesco Heritage site looks so shabby and in places unsightly. All houses should be restored, including the front gardens as there are so few examples of early modernist housing estates.  

Getting around: Frankfurt

Frankfurt is one of the major cities in Europe. The fifth-largest city in Germany with over 700,000 residents is at the heart of the Rhine-Main-Metropolis with over 5.5 million residents. It is no wonder that the roads are extremely congested in the busy inner-city areas. The metropolitan region also boasts a well-developed public transport network. This is handy as cycling is quite dangerous with few segregated cycle lanes and a rather haphazard cycle planning regime within Greater-Frankfurt. The Frankfurt Metro (U-Bahn) has nine lines and over 100 stations and halts. There is also a tram network of 9 lines extending to the city limits. S-Bahn light rail provides connections to neighbouring towns and villages and is used by commuters.

Frankfurt is well-known as the city of the European Central Bank. This Iconic Euro statue on the Willy-Brandt=Platz in front of the many banking towers is often used in the media. Between the banks that are all located around a park and the city theatre trams come and go as this is an important interchange with the U-Bahn. Signs, lights and lights warn pedestrians for the trams (right).

The metro is in part above ground, with underground trains in the city centre. The U-Bahn was started in 1968. The design is functional and sturdy, except for some recent stations that look a bit over-designed. The rains are like most such metro trains. Off-peak the journey is pleasant enough. Frankfurt still has a ticket system and no electronic ticketing or chip cards. Once you resurface it is easy to get to where you need to be on foot or change for bus or tram.

The tram halts all have the same basic design. Some halts also serve as bus stops. The trams have a design similar to the U-Bahn carriages, with the same blue and yellow combination. The trams -like the busses- are generally turquoise in colour. Here the tram is coming round on a turning circle at the edge of the city near Neu-Isenburg. This makes the trams also suitable for commuting as there are large parking facilities near these end-of-line halts. 

Siedlung Praunheim and Westerhausen: scenic and orthogonal modernism

The housing estates of the New Frankfurt Initiative called Siedlung Praunheim and Siedlung Westerhausen for two suburban satellites on the fringes of the more densely built up central part of the city of Frankfurt. Both housing estates date from the 1920s and are examples of early modernism along the lines of New Objectivity.

The first phase of the development was designed as a village street with a modernist idiom. In strategic places blocks of flats are placed at right angles to the street. This way a shift in direction is emphasised and simultaneously deflected by the change in  changing the building line and opening up the long facades that line this street.

The long facades are composed of identical terraced houses with flat roofs and a narrow roof trim. The buildings have a playful regularity by the use of centrally supported awnings above the doors that are grouped together per two. Most buildings have been restored in the original bright colours (left). The blocks behind the "village street" (right) are more uniform with an almost white light gray render.

The village street even has an "Anger" (German for a village green). This feature is used to announce and anchor the amenities (shops, church, pub), create a sense of space and place and also negotiate the slope of the terrain. In its simplicity it is brilliant!

Simplicity also characterises the church. It is set back from the "Anger" sort of opposite the pub, an arrangement seen in many German villages. The building is a simple box rendered red with a slender bell tower rising above the entrance in bright white. A work of art (a crowned fish) further communicates the use as a Christian church through effective symbolism.

Directly around the corner from the "village green" is a small square with the pub and shops, The building line is staggered adding to the sense of place and creating visual interest. The whole setup is Sitte-esque in nature. Where  it not for the modernist architecture this could be an old village indeed.

The residents have all chosen one of 7 colours to use on the facade. This creates a sense of unity although the distribution of the colours is not controlled, as it was in Onkel Toms Hütte. The apartment blocks of the third phase also use colour in blocks. Here the colour of the facade is part of the overall design.

In accordance with New Objectivity practices modes of traffic were separated with long streets connected by shorter footpaths. These run in-between the terraced housing Here the situation in phase two of the development.  The houses in this section are mostly off white, soft yellow or pastel pink.

A wide street - now with a U-Bahn halt- was built on the edge of the third building phase as a new centre of the expanding housing estate. This street was planned as a new thoroughfare to the centre of Frankfurt. Improvements in infrastructure are planned with urbanisation (not as an afterthought as is so often the case in Britain). Two long low-rise blocks with so-called "Laubenhauser" -gallery flats- line the wide street. Beneath the flats there are business premises and shops.

Phase three was built with the same houses as phase two, again a riot of colour greats the visitor, although the muted colours create a pleasant streetscape. Note that the houses lack front gardens, as these were seen as cumbersome and difficult in upkeep by Ernst May (and indeed many other modernist planners).The houses on one side of the street have small porches.

Many porches have been remodelled by the occupants, as can be seen on the right. In some places examples of original porches with coloured glazing panels can still be seen. Although the estate is a listed monument sadly no efforts are made to restore the porches.

At the centre of this section of the suburb a grid cell was left undeveloped and was planted as a small park with a playground.

The east-west lines of the grid are in use as footpaths in-between the houses. These paths give access to the long paths between the back gardens.

The north-south grid lines are narrow streets. These are lined with terraced family housing with the typical flat roofs. The gray plinth on the building on the left is not original. Note that there is no planting in the street. This sets these housing estates apart from other modernist development that are inspired by the garden city movement that typically do have narrow green verges and streets planted with (fruit) trees.

Gate features lead the footpath through the terraced housing. The houses are simple in design. The colour on the facade makes up for this and was planned as being individually chosen.

The layout of the Siedlung Westerhausen is similar to that of Siedlung Praunheim with a basic grid differentiated in residential streets with car access and residential paths with pedestrian access only. Here a view down a residential street with the residential paths running of it at right angles creating a staggered effect with all the ends-of-terraces providing a rhythm.

East-west a few bands of greenery were inserted, these are in use as public gardens and feature several playgrounds (left). The residential paths are all running east-west. The houses are all the same, although again the colour of the individual dwelling can be marked by a different colour on the facade. The houses are the same as in phase 3 of Praunheim, but have different awnings over the front door.

The houses are built directly on the residential path with no front garden. On the other side a strip of lawn provides room to dry clothes on washing lines. The garden lies behind the house. Behind the hedge lining the grass with washing lines are the gardens of the residents of the row of houses south of this one.

Neues Frankfurt: Siedlung Praunheim - Westhausen

To relieve the housing need after World War 1 the Frankfurt Initiative was set up with the aim of providing affordable rented housing at a large scale. Ernst May the city official for planning and housing created several suburban housing estates In 1925 May started planning a suburban estate directly west of the village of Praunheim. The estate was expanded twice, with a neighbouring estate developed along the same principles at Westerhausen. Like all other housing projects of Neues Frankfurt these estates were a Reichsheimstättensiedlung (Governmental Guaranteed Home Housing Scheme). Frankfurt shares this approach with other  major German cities -like Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg- that didn't developed social housing via a non-profit housing association (like in Vienna) but instead saw house building by the municipal authority. These dwellings, mostly apartments, could then be rented out by the city authorities via a housing department under conditions set by them.

Praunheim the largest of all the housing built under this Reichsheimstätten-scheme. In only three years almost 1500 dwellings were completed. Praunheim was actually developed in three separate building campaigns between 1926-29 and saw a shift in approach, both in planning, layout and building type. The Siedling Westerhausen (literally west of the village of Hausen) was developed south of the westernmost section of the Siedlung Praunheim as a spatially separate unit.

The shift in approach in the Praunheim Estate is distinct and therefore very visible. The first section has a kinked diagonal street as its main motif. This section is a modernist interpretation of Sitte-esque urban design and evokes the sense of a village street. The street fits with spatial expectation with a church and shops at the point where another street connects and the line of the street is bayoneted. The street is, however, lined by colourful modernist housing in long rows with flat roofs and blocks of flats placed at right angles to it. The second building phase connects to the "village street" west of the "centre" and is best characterised as a grid with some shifts in building line to create open corners with small greens. The third building phase was built within the boundaries of Rödelheim and is a strict grid of streets with the residential streets running north-south. In the middle one grid cell was kept free and was planted as a small park. Between phase 2 and 3 two long apartment blocks flank the new main road. At street level shops and other business premises were included in these blocks that became the new central focus of the housing estate.

The Praunheim Estate with the three building phases (1-3). The public greenery is shown in green, with allotments in yellow. At the heart of the first section stand a Church (c), primary school (p) and shops (s). In phase two a kindergarten (k) and a block of shops appeared. On the edge of the third phase two long apartment blocks (a) now dominate the housing estate.

All houses were built in Bauhaus style or in an early modernist style. Ernst May was responsible for planning the estate and setting out clear guidelines for the architectural design of the buildings and public spaces. The buildings were designed by the architects Wolfgang Bangert, Eugen Blanck, Herbert Boehm, Eugen Kaufmann and Ferdinand Kramer. The head of Parks and Horticulture (Gartenbaudirektor) Max Bromme was responsible for the design and planting of communal spaces, public gardens and streets. Each house (dwelling) featured a standardised Frankfurt Kitchen and many other industrially produces fittings and fixtures.

The Westerhausen Estate was the last of the large housing estates to be completed. With 1116 rental homes it was slightly smaller than the neighbouring Praunheim Estate. This estate was constructed south of phase 3 of the Siedlung Prainheim, and is thus also located in Rödelheim. A sporting ground and a clay pit separated both. Now the latter site has been redeveloped for housing. All the original housing of the Siedlung Westerhausen was constructed using prefabricated building components. The houses are very similer to thate in phase 3 of the neighbouring Praunheim Estate. Work started in 1929 and all the houses were occupied by 1931. This streets are on a rational orthogonal layout with the Zeilenbau -so typical of Neues Bauen or New Objectivity- and longs strips of greenery permeating the estate. As such this housing estate forebodes international modernism in Corbusian style.

The Westerhausen Estate relied on neighbouring urban areas for its amenities. A collective laundry (L) was built on the edge of the estate but it no longer exists. The spatial counter structure of greenery is a very striking feature of this estate.

Urban animal: black birds

Many birds have been named "black bird" as a result of their predominantly black colouration. Most of these birds are unrelated to each other and certainly not related to the Common blackbird found throughout Europe and West-Asia. Originally a shy forest dweller these songbirds have become more widespread in the urban environment from the 1950s onwards as parks and large gardens started to mature. Like rabbits, blackbirds are especially common in modernist (Corbusian) housing estates with apartment blocks set amongst parkland and greenery.

Only the males deserve the name black birds, the females are a duller dark brown. They can be seen foraging for worms, snails and insects in the undergrowth, under hedges and on lawns and other short grassland. They like to make nests in hedges, dense bushes or ivy. Sometimes a young chick falls out and is fed on the ground by the parents until it can fly.