Testimony of New Building

1927: Weißenhof Colony Stuttgart

Situation

In 1907 twelve artists and twelve industrialists proclaimed the Deutscher Werkbund (German Working Coalition). By the cooperation of art, industry and craft they planned to enhance the quality of German products and their prestige in foreign countries. With a claim to universal validity “from the design of a cushion to urban planning” the Deutsche Werkbund became a cultural authority that pursued to support and influence the development of taste in all spheres. Building exhibitions belonged to the operating range of the Deutsche Werkbund.

Modernism as Program

The Weißenhof Colony in Stuttgart ist one of the most important testimonies of this New Building. As a building exhibition titled “The Residence” (“Die Wohnung”) in 1927 the Colony presented new forms of residing, which were required and supported by the Deutscher Werkbund, to a national and international audience. Then the 17 participating architects like Le Corbusier, Gropius, Scharoun and others were only known in avant-garde circles of that time – today they belong to the most important masters of modern architecture. Under the artistic guidance of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe they created an exemplary residing program for the modern man in the big city. Twelve model houses were developed.

The Architecture of Modernism

Like through a looking glass the Building Exhibition Weißenhof Colony presented the then contemporary development in architecture and housing. A minimum of formal coherence was acquired by the basically similar architectural conceptions of the participating architects and the set parameter of only using the “revolutionary” flat roofs. Without any decoration or ornaments the cubic architecture of the Weißenhof Colony represented the architecture of modernism.
The works of the 17 architects coming from five European countries in one colony intended to demonstrate that New Building necessarily was regarded as an “international architecture”. 50 thousand visitors came. Their supporters celebrated the colony as a vision of the future. Critics defamed the colony as “Arabian Village” (“Araberdorf”). The colony polarized: open-minded contra conservative, flat roof contra gable roof, modernism contra patriotism.

A Model with Impact

The Weißenhof Colony – as well as other Werkbund colonies – still dominates the building exhibitions of the 20th century as an extraordinary milestone. Especially the Weißenhof colony is considered as a “built manifest” of a modern and open-minded concept of life. It also shows how deeply architecture, politics and society have always been interwoven.

More Information

The publication of text and picture is based on the exhibition flyer "IBA meets IBA" by kindly courtesy of M:AI museum for architecture and und engeneering art in Nordrhein-Westfalen and of IBA Hamburg.
Photo: K. Kirsch