Utopian living

When legendary Bauhaus architect Bruno Taut conceived the airy, sun-filled "horseshoe" housing estate (Hufeisensiedlung) in Berlin in the mid-1920s, he used modernist design to conflate the barrier between the chaotic, industrial city and a rural arcadia.

Taut was a utopian socialist who believed that workers living in dark, crowded tenements deserved something better. Inspired by the "garden city" movement, he created functional domestic spaces across Berlin that enjoyed light, openness, color and easy access to green zones. While the press derided him as an architect of "little people's happiness," Taut built 10,000 groundbreaking homes in the German capital before the Nazis drove him out.

Taut never returned to Berlin, but his housing legacy lives on after the iconic, U-shaped estate was conferred UNESCO World Heritage status in 2008 - one of six listed housing estates in Berlin chosen for representing "a new type of social housing from the period of classical modernity."

The opening of an information center in January, the release of a guidebook this month (also in English), and the gradual restoration of the horseshoe complex with improved public access - part of the Berlin Modernism project funded by UNESCO and the federal and state governments - means that Berlin can now flaunt a modernist architectural marvel that has been submerged in suburbia.

Utopian architecture

"We do not want to build any more joyless houses," declared the Bauhaus architects at the end of World War 1. They were seeking to revive a Berlin which, as the fastest growing city in Europe at the time, was suffering an acute housing shortage and deplorable living conditions.

The social-democratic Weimar Republic responded with a massive public housing program. This blooded not-for-profit public housing unions that were manna to Bauhaus architects with utopian designs. Some 140,000 apartments and houses of high aesthetic and design value were built in about seven years during the 1920s, a rate of construction unequalled since.

Taut - along with Walter Gropius and Berlin's chief city planner, Martin Wagner, who had initiated the Hufeisensiedlung - believed amid the progressive euphoria of the Weimar Republic that with high-quality design resources could be harnessed for good instead of war.

"If the one succeeded in directing these forces into another, more beautiful channel, then the earth would really be a 'good apartment,'" Taut once wrote. But Hitler preferred to build guns and Taut died in exile in 1938; the Berlin Modernism movement effectively died with him.

Form, function, and color

"This is Berlin classical modern; it's absolutely unique," said Manuela Damianakis, communications manager for Deutsche Wohnen, which manages the horseshoe estate. The company is a privatized cousin of the GEHAG public building union which constructed the nearly 2,000 residences that fan out from the central U-shaped apartment block.

Damianakis is showing off an apartment just restored to its original glory, complete with bright painted walls, bathroom with private toilet and modular kitchen - rare amenities at the time - plus a mandatory balcony and access to a ground floor garden.

Taut's signature element here was color - the brilliant blue, rusted red and mustard yellow walls of both the three-level U-block and the surrounding detached single-family homes are a startling counterpoint to the grey uniformity of later public housing estates.

"The Hufeisensiedlung played a model role in the reform movement of social housing after World War I, not only in Germany but also abroad," noted Jörg Haspel, chief conservator in Berlin's State Monument Protection Office and author of several works on Berlin Modernism. "It was frequently published and visited by experts and politicians. It can be seen as the flagship of both a social-democratic urban planning and housing policy, as well as Bruno Taut's masterpiece."

The pioneering horseshoe complex is undoubtedly the most iconic Berlin Modernism estate, not only because of its striking U-form, with each balconied apartment enjoying views of a small lake and public park, but also because it is so well preserved.

At Siemansstadt in the North of Berlin - another of the UNESCO-listed estates designed by Bauhaus prodigy Walter Gropius - you can see some cheap renovations from the 1980s, said Damianakis. But the horseshoe estate emerged from the post-war years largely unscathed, due in part to the ardent preservation work of architects who lived there.

"It's also the biggest, and the most beautiful estate," Damianakis added.

World Heritage

In association with one of Germany's top architecture publishing houses, Stadtwandel Verlag, Deutsche Wohnen is publishing a pocket guide to the horseshoe estate this month. It will be available at the information center and in some bookstores. A joint tourist guide and information system for all six UNESCO-listed housing estates will link with the Bauhaus Archive Berlin and other Berlin Modernism heritage sites.

Taut's "built socialism," an urban design vision based on a healthy and communal living environment, is as relevant and inspiring as it ever was.

"We currently have no vacancies. People don't want to move out," said Damianakis. "It's chic, it's modern; people know this is high quality. It's Bruno Taut. Plus you're close to the city center, and it's quiet and green."

Author: Stuart Braun
Editor: Kate Bowen