Metropolisarchitecture - Ludwig Hilberseimer.pdf

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Ludwig Hilberseimer M etropolisarchitecture and Selected Essays

Ludwig Hilberseimer Metropolisarchitecture and Selected Essays

Ed. Richard Anderson

A Columbia University GSAPP Sourcebook Craig Buckley, Series Editor In the same series: John McHale, 77ie Expendable Reader: Articles on Art, Architecture, Design, and Media (1951-79), Ed. AIqx Kitnick

GSAPP SOURCEBOOKS The last decades have witnessed a rapid expan sion o f the field o f architecture. If the con tem porary panoram a appears increasingly vast and accelerated, it is sim ultaneously populated by a num ber o f openings, holes, and gaps. The Colum bia U niversity G SA PP Sourcebooks se ries addresses itself to overlooked writings on architecture and the city. Em phasizing the spe cificity and nuance o f a single writer, each Sourcebook is guest edited and introduced by a different scholar, critic, or architect, and concen trates on assem bling texts previously scattered in disparate sources and on translating works cur rently unavailable to English-speaking readers. While refusing to conform to a com m on ideolog ical outlook or specific institutional agenda, the desire to put these w ritings back into circulation is nevertheless m otivated by a sense o f urgency and a com m itm ent to discourse and debate.

This edition first published by GSAPP BOOKS 2012 ©The Trustees o f Columbia University in the City of New York. Essays ©the authors. All images © their respective owners. All rights reserved GSAPP BOOKS An im print of The G raduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation Columbia University 1172 Amsterdam Ave., 409 Avery Hall, New York, NY 10027 Visit our website at www.arch.coltunbia.edu/publications No part o f this book may be used or reproduced in any manner with out the written permission of the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Every reasonable attempt has been made in order to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. The editors would like to thank the Office of the Dean, Mark Wigley, for supporting the Sourcebooks series. GSAPP Sourcebooks Series 2 Editor: Richard Anderson Series Editor: Craig Buckley Graphic Design: Geoff Han Translators: Metropolisarchitecture translated by Richard Anderson; appendices translated by Julie Dawson Copy Editor: Stephanie Salomon Printed in Belgium by Die Keure Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hilberseimer, Ludwig. [Works. Selections. English] M etropolisarchitecture and selected essays / Ludwig Hilber seimer; ed. Richard Anderson. pages cm .—(Columbia University GSAPP sourcebooks; 2) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-883584-75-7 1. Architecture, M odern—20th century. 2. City planning— H istory—20th century. I. Anderson, Richard, 1980- editor of compilation, translator. II. Aureli, Pier Vittorio, writer of added commentary. III. Hilberseimer, Ludwig. Grossstadtarchitektur. English. IV. Title. NA680.H4513 2012 724’.6—dc23

Contents 9 12

A cknow ledgm ents T ra n slato rs’ N otes

Introduction 15

A n End to Speculation By R ichard A nderson

M etropolisarchitecture 84 91 135 191 201 218 231 250 261 264

T he M etropolis U rban P lanning R esidential Buildings Com m ercial Buildings H igh-rises H alls and T heaters T ra n sp o rtatio n Buildings In d u stria l Buildings Building Trades and the Building Industry M etropolisarchitecture

Selected Essays 282 290

T he Will to A rchitecture Proposal for C ity-C enter D evelopm ent

Visual Documents 306 322 326

M etropolisarchitecture The Will to Architecture Proposal for City-Center Development

Afterword 333

In Hilberseim er’s Footsteps By Pier Vittorio Aureli

365

Contributors

Acknowledgments During this book’s long gestation period it bene fited from the support o f many institutions and individuals. T he idea for the project was conceived at the Technical U niversity in Berlin, where I had the opportunity to study under the auspices of a Fulbright Fellowship in 2002-03. The initial translation o f Grofistadtarchitektur was com pleted in the sum m er o f 2005 in Rome, where I was able to work w ith the generous support o f Patricia A nderson, who has provided extraordinary assis tance in all o f my m etropolitan endeavors. A sem inar led by Jean-Louis Cohen and Robert L ubar at N ew York U niversity’s Institute o f Fine A rts deepened my understanding of the visual and architectural cultures o f the twentiethcentury m etropolis. T he M oscow A rchitecture Institute deserves special recognition here: the staff o f the bookshop in the In stitu te’s vestibule let me purchase a copy o f H ilberseim er’s book for next to nothing. This exem plar served as the m as ter copy for the m ajority o f the images reproduced in the present volume. R esearch for this p roject was m ade possible by C olum bia U niversity’s D epartm ent o f A rt H istory and Archaeology. I thank Barry Bergdoll and V ittoria D i P alm a for their continued sup port. Caleb Sm ith, G abriel Rodriguez, and Emily Shaw o f C olum bia’s M edia C enter for A rt H is tory provided invaluable technical assistance

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throughout the production of the book. The staff of Columbia University’s Avery Architec tural and Fine Arts Library facilitated research and production for this project. I thank Carolyn Yerkes and Brooke Baldeschwiler of the Avery Classics Collection for responding to my requests with generosity and expedition. Discussions with colleagues currently and formerly at Columbia have been invaluable. I thank in particular A lbert N arath, who gener ously shared research he conducted at the Art Institute of Chicago. Insights gained from dis cussions with Albert, Cesare Birignani, and John Harwood contributed to a shared enthusiasm for the metropolis that propelled this project forward. I thank Julie Dawson for her superb transla tions and for accommodating my editorial hand in rendering Hilberseimer’s at-times cryptic texts into English. Craig Buckley deserves special thanks for initiating this series, steering this vol ume through its many stages, and providing insightful criticism on the introduction. I am grateful to Pier Vittorio Aureli, who generously agreed to contribute his trenchant afterword to this volume. G eoff H an’s meticulous design has enhanced the book’s intelligibility and visual appeal. I would also like to thank Columbia University’s G raduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation for making the publi cation of this book possible. As always, Tara Lynch’s untiring support was indispensable to me and to this project.

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Finally, I thank G reta, w hose presence helps me see the m etropolis w ith younger, fresher eyes and to w hom this book is dedicated.

Translators’ N otes The challenge of translating Ludwig Hilber seimer’s G rofistadtarchitektur begins with the book’s title. H ilberseim er’s decision to connect its two term s— G rofistadt (metropolis), and A rchite ktu r (architecture)—placed the book in a polemical relationship to a constellation of other Germ an theories of the city. Prominent books he addressed include August Endell’s D ie Schdnheit der grofien S ta d t (The Beauty of the Big City), 1908, and Karl Scheffler’s D ie A rch itektu r der G rofistadt (The Architecture of the Metropolis), 1913. Their titles suggest a mediated relationship between architecture and the city, implying that the terms belong to distinct orders of creation; Hilberseim er’s is an argument for their immedi ate unity. To capture this immediacy, we have departed from the pattern established by the book’s Spanish and Italian editions (L a arquitectura de la gran ciudad; L ’architettura della grande c itta ), the titles of which may be translated as

“The Architecture of the Big City.” We have adopted the unfamiliar compound word “metro polisarchitecture” as our title. We hope the novelty of this articulation will at once defamiliarize its elements and convey the originality of Hilberseim er’s conceptual categories. In his early writing, much of which is syn thesized in G rofistadtarchitektur , Hilberseimer drew on the concept of G estaltung in a variety of

TRANSLATORS’ NOTES ways. A w ord notoriously rich in connotation, Gestaltung, as D etlef M ertins and M ichael Jen nings have described, was a polem ical term in the early 1920s because it could describe (and thus unify) b oth artistic and industrial creation.' It is a nom inalization o f the verb gestalten, which encom passes a range o f m eanings: to shape, form , produce, construct, design, config ure, and organize, am ong others. N otably, the term was used in the title o f the avant-garde magazine G: M aterial zur elementaren Gestaltung (G: M aterial fo r Elementary Form-Creation), to which H ilberseim er contributed; and from 1926 the Bauhaus, w here H ilberseim er would teach, was officially recognized as a H ochschule fur G estaltung (college o f design). We have departed slightly from the tra n slatio n o f Gestaltung as “form -creation,” w hich M ertins and Jennings have ad opted in the scholarly edition o f G. Gestaltung is rendered here predom inantly as “design” or as “organization” when appropriate. We feel the creative, non-m im etic connotations of these E nglish term s com m unicate the sense of H ilberseim er’s discourse. H ilb erseim er’s personal style is character ized by a staccato rhythm o f short, declarative 1 See D e tle f M ertins and M ichael Jennings, “ In tro duction: T h e G -G ro u p and the E uropean A vant-G arde,” in G: An Avant-Garde Journal o f Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923-1926, eds. D e tle f M ertins and M ichael Jennings, trans. Steven L indberg and M argareta Ingrid C hristian (Los A ngeles: G e tty R esearch Institute, 2010), 4-5.

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phrases. At times his sentences are deliberately incomplete. We have resisted the urge to natural ize his style in English, and opted instead for approximations of his telegraphic cadence. And like most critics who write as much and as fre quently as Hilberseimer did, his essays and books are marked by the repetition and refinement of key concepts and passages. We hope this pre sentation conveys the correspondence between H ilberseim er’s idiosyncratic approach to writing and his architectural projects for the metropolis. R ich a rd A nd erso n Ju lie D aw son

Introduction

LUDWIG

HILBERSEIMER

GROSS STADT ARCHITEKTUR

Fig. 1 Ludwig Hilberseimer, GroBstadtarchitektur, Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, 1927

An End to Speculation Introduction by R ichard A nderson It is impossible nowadays fo r any contractor to get along without speculative building, and on a large scale at that.1 — K arl M arx, Capital, Volume II Ludwig H ilberseim er’s Grofistadtarchitektur (1927) offers one o f the m ost cogent analyses undertaken between the tw o w orld w ars o f arch itectu re’s relationship to the city. In this w ork, H ilber seimer approached the m etropolis as the fundam ental condition for ratio n al architecture and planning. W hile others found escape from the city in the u to p ian archipelago o f suburban settlem ents, the Siedlungen th a t represent the finest achievem ents o f the W eim ar R epublic’s social housing policy, H ilberseim er, in both words and projects, confronted the dynam ics of the m etropolis directly. “T he present form of the m etropolis,” he m aintained, “ owes its appear ance prim arily to the econom ic form o f capitalist im perialism .” H e recognized th a t the principles that m anage and regulate industrial operations and trade cartels failed to m ake the m etropolis 1 Karl M arx, Capital, trans. D avid F ernbach, 3 vols. (London: Penguin B ooks in association w ith N ew Left Review, 1978), 2: 312.

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an object of organization. He described the reign of disorganization in capitalist cities: housing districts are built next to noisy, smoking factories; the concentration of the city center is reproduced in residential quarters; building codes are applied haphazardly; “the various forces that compose metropolises run rampant, working against each other instead of collaborating, so energy is lost rather than gained.” Speculative development, which Marx had already identified as a driving force in the capitalist city, produces “a misuse and consumption of people without result.”2 Although Hilberseim er’s views were shared by many, his response to the city was unique. The chaos and lack of regulation in the metropolis aroused an anti-urban ideology among Germ a ny’s leading architects and planners: Bruno T aut’s call for the “dissolution of cities” is emblematic of this position.3 Despite its defi ciencies, Hilberseim er asserted the necessity of the metropolis in a world defined by global eco nomic interdependencies on the grounds that “the metropolis itself accelerates economic pro duction processes by drawing economic control ever faster and more consciously to itself.”4 The rational organization of production and 2 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grofistadtarchitektur, Die Baubiicher, Bd. 3 (Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, 1927), 1; 2; 2; see this volume, pp. 86; 89; 89. 3 Bruno Taut, Die Aufldsung der Stadte, oder, Die Erde, eine gute Wohnung oder auch: Der Weg zur alpinen Architektur (Hagen: Folkwang-Verlag, 1920).

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rep ro d u ctio n — o f labor, leisure, and everyday life—required no t an end to the m etropolis but, in H ilberseim er’s words: an end to the metropolis that is based on the principle o f speculation and whose very organ ism cannotfree itself from the model o f the city o f the past despite all the modifications it has experienced— an end to the metropolis that has yet to discover its own laws.5 W ith this, H ilberseim er advanced one o f the principal theses contained in Grofistadtarchitek tur: the coordination o f the relationships that govern the m etropolis requires an end to spe culation as a category o f both econom ic and aesthetic activity. T he challenge th a t H ilberseim er presented in Grofistadtarchitektur, however, has been inter preted largely through the images that the book contains. T he gray, single-point perspective ren derings o f his Hochhausstadt (H igh-rise City), 1924, that figure prom inently in the boo k ’s sec ond chapter have evoked a variety o f extrem e reactions, m ost o f them negative. Standard texts on the history o f m odern architecture use these 4 H ilberseim er, Grofistadtarchitektur, 2; see this volum e, p. 87. 5 Ibid., 3; see this volum e, p. 90. T his statem en t first appeared in G 4: Ludwig H ilberseim er, “A m erikanische A rchitektur: A usstellung in d er A kadem ie der B ildenden K iinste,” G 4 (1926): 8.

Figs. 17-18

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M ETROPO LISARCHITECTU RE

images of “eerie, uniform blocks” to illustrate the dangers of functionalism.6Richard Pommer, one of the m ost astute commentators on H ilber seimer’s work, counted these images “among the standard illustrations of the horrors of modern housing and city planning.”7 But Hilberseimer himself offered the most damning assessment of the High-rise City and its conceptual underpin ning. In 1963 he described the project as “more a necropolis than a metropolis, a sterile landscape of asphalt and cement; inhuman in every respect.”8 W hat is more, H ilberseim er’s retro spective commentary was part of his effort, intentionally or unintentionally, to expunge the radical propositions set forth in Grofistadtarchi tektur from his record. The exclusion of these images from Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre (Berlin A rchitecture of the 1920s), 1967, the final text in his long bibliography, marked the culmination of an extended process that has hitherto impeded research on Hilberseimer’s radical projects for the city.9 6 William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 3rd ed. (London: Phaidon, 1996), 251. 7 Richard Pommer, “‘More a Necropolis than a M etrop olis’: Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Highrise City and Modern City Planning,” in In the Shadow o f Mies: Ludwig Hilber seimer: Architect, Educator, and Urban Planner, eds. Richard Pommer, David Spaeth, and Kevin Harrington (Chicago: The A rt Institute of Chicago, 1988), 17. 8 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Entfaltung einer Planungsidee (Berlin: Ullstein, 1963), 22. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

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Grofistadtarchitektur, however, offers much more than a com m entary on the images o f the High-rise City. T he b o o k ’s theoretical im port has been recognized by a diverse group o f schol ars and architects: G iorgio G rassi, M anfredo Tafuri, M arco D e M ichelis, C hristine M engin, Juan Jose L ahuerta, K. M ichael Hays, and m ost recently P ier V ittorio A ureli.10 T heir work has situated H ilberseim er’s w riting w ithin the architectural culture o f W eim ar G erm any and 9 Ludwig H ilberseim er, Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre (M ainz: K upferberg, 1967). 10 G iorgio G rassi, “ In tro d u z io n e,” in Ludwig H ilb er seimer, Un'idea di piano (P adua: M arsilio, 1967), 7-22; G iorgio G rassi, “A rch ite ttu ra e form alism o,” in Ludwig H ilberseim er, Architettura a Berlino negli anni venti (M ilan: Franco A ngeli, 1979), 7-29; M anfredo Tafuri, Architec ture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (C am bridge: T he M IT Press, 1976); M anfredo T afuri, “Sozialpolitik and the C ity in W eim ar G erm any,” in The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s (C am bridge: T he M IT Press, 1987), 197-233; M arco D e M ichelis, “ R itratto di un arch itetto com e giovane a rtis ta ,” Rassegna 27 (1986): 6-25; C hristine M engin, “ M odelle fiir eine m oderne G roB stadt: Ludw ig M ies van der R ohe und Ludwig H il berseim er,” in Moderne Architektur in Deutschland 1900 bis 1950: Expressionismus und Neue Sachlichkeit, eds. V ittorio M agnago L am pugnani and R om ana S chneider (S tuttgart: G. H atje, 1994), 184-203; Ju an Jo sć L ahuerta, 1927, la abstraccidn necesaria en el arte y la arquitectura europeos d ’entreguerras (B arcelona: A nthropos, 1989); K. M ichael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject: The Archi tecture o f Hannes M eyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (C am bridge: T h e M IT P ress, 1992); P ier V ittorio Aureli, “A rch ite ctu re for B arbarians: Ludwig H ilberseim er and

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dem onstrated its singularity. That much of the critical work on Hilberseim er has been undertaken in languages other than English cor responds in part to the availability of his texts in translation. Large portions of Grofistadtarchitek tur appeared in Russian translation in 1932.11 The entire text appeared in Spanish in 1979, with a second edition in 1999, and in Italian in 1981, with a second edition in 1998.12 The book’s first and final chapters appeared in English translation in the journal Australian Planner in the Rise of the Generic City,” AA files 63 (2011): 3-18; see also Markus Kilian, “Grofistadtarchitektur und New City: Eine planungsmethodische Untersuchung der Stadtplanungsmodelle Ludwig Hilberseimers” (Dr.-Ing. diss., Universitat Karlsruhe, 2002); Francesco Bruno, Ludwig Hilberseimer: la costruzione di un’idea di citta: il periodo tedesco (Milan: Libraccio, 2008). 11 Significant portions of Grofistadtarchitektur appeared in David Arkin’s anthology of contemporary architecture of the capitalist West: David Arkin, ed., Arkhitektura sovremennogo zapada (Moscow: IZOGIZ, 1932). The portionof Hilberseimer’schapter“HallenundTheaterbauten” (translated in this volume as “Halls and Theaters”) that had previously appeared as “A ttrappenarchitektur” in the journal Qualitat in 1925 appeared as “Protiv maskirovochnoi arkhitektury” (“Against Mask-like Architecture”), 115-117; most of Hilberseimer’s chapter “Stadtebau” (translated in this volume as “Urban Planning”) appeared as “Problemy gradostroitel’stva” (“Problems of Urban Planning”), 150-59. Both excerpts were translated from German to Russian by Arkin. 12 Ludwig Hilberseimer, La arquitectura de la gran ciudad, trans. Pedro Madrigal Devesa (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1979), 2nd ed., Gustavo Gili, 1999; Ludwig Hilberseimer,

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1998.13This volum e presents a first, and belated, translation o f the com plete text of Grofistadt architektur, offering an opportunity to reconsider one o f the m ost im portant contributions to urban and architectural thought o f the 1920s. Grofistadtarchitektur was unlike contem po rary books on architecture and urban planning. It was the third num ber in a series, the Baubiicher (Building Books), p ublished by Julius H offm ann in S tuttgart. It followed R ichard N e u tra ’s expo sition o f A m erican building practices, Wie baut Am erika?(H ow D oes A m erica Build?), 1927, and H ilberseim er’s own panoram ic view o f in tern a tional m odernism , Internationale neue Baukunst (New In te rn atio n a l Building A rt), also 1927, which was published on the opening o f the Werkbund’s W eissenhofsiedlung in S tu ttg art.14W hile N eu tra felt it necessary to plead w ith the reader to endure the abundance o f technical detail that he hastily recorded during his practical w ork in the U nited States, Internationale neue Baukunst is prim arily a picture book. Grofistadtarchitektur, in contrast, was the result o f extended theoretical Groszstadt Architektur: L ’architettura della grande citta, trans. B ianca Spagnuolo V igorita (N aples: C LEA N , 1981), 2nd ed., C L E A N , 1998. 15 Ludwig H ilberseim er, “ G ro sz stad tarc h ite k tu r,” ed. Kim H alik, trans. H einz A rn d t, Australian Planner 35, no. 3(1998): 147-57. 14 R ichard N e u tra , Wie baut Amerika?, D ie Baubiicher, Bd. 1 (S tuttgart: J. H offm ann, 1927); Ludwig H ilbersei mer, Internationale neue Baukunst, D ie B aubiicher, Bd. 2 (S tuttgart: J. H offm ann, 1927).

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reflection. At the same time, it offers a broad cross section of modern architectural achieve ments in Europe and N orth America. It nevertheless has a more definite focus on urban architecture than such contem porary texts as Walter Curt Behrendt’s Der Sieg des neuen Baustils (The Victory o f the New Building Style) or Gustav A dolf Platz’s Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit (Building-Art of the Most Recent Era), both published in 1927.15 Hilberseimer would have compared his book to Le Corbusier’s Urbanisme ( The City o f Tomorrow and its Planning), 1925, the contents of which influenced significant ele ments of his own thinking.16 And yet Grofistadtarchitektur is neither a manual on urban planning nor an outline of modern architecture’s origins. Rather, it is a m editation on the relationship between the two term s of its compound title: “m etropolis” and 15 Walter Curt Behrendt, Der Sieg des Neuen Baustils (Stuttgart: Fr. Wedekind, 1927); Walter Curt Behrendt, The Victory o f the New Building Style, ed. D etlef Mertins, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2000); Gustav Adolf Platz, Die Bau kunst der neuesten Zeit (Berlin: Propylaen-Verlag in association with “Bauwelt,” 1927). 16 Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, Collection de “L’espirit nouveau” (Paris: Les Editions G. Cres & Co., 1925); Le Corbusier, The City o f Tomorrow and its Planning, trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Payson & Clarke, 1929). Hans Hildebrandt’s translation of Urbanisme into G er man, Stadtebau, was published in 1929 by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt in Stuttgart.

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“architecture.” It is as m uch an analysis o f the conditions for architecture in the m etropolis as it is a prescriptive theory of form. W ritten from a distinctly socialist perspective, H ilberseim er’s text com bines a critique o f the social, techno logical, and econom ic factors th a t have shaped the capitalist city w ith a N ietzschean “will to architecture.” C oupling analysis w ith advocacy, H ilberseim er articulated a program for the lib eration o f architecture from the speculative regim e o f the capitalist m arketplace and the sub ordination o f the city to the elem entary laws of art. “ M etro p o lisarch itectu re” was the nam e he gave to the unity o f p art and whole that would be achieved w hen his prop ositions w ere fulfilled. T he present volum e takes this unity for its title and assem bles a range o f texts and images that offers a definitive representation o f H ilber seim er’s theory o f the m etropolis. N ot a facsim ile of Grofistadtarchitektur, this volum e presents a selection o f the m ore than 200 im ages in the 1927 edition. H ilb e rse im er’s argum ent inform ed this selection, and each o f his own designs included in the first edition is illustrated. An im age-based dossier o f visual docum ents rep ro duces select pages from Grofistadtarchitektur and H ilb erseim er’s oth e r w ritings. T hese docum ents facilitate a fuller understanding o f the graphic dim ension o f H ilberseim er’s theory o f the m etropolis. Two additional texts, “D er W ille zur A rch itek tu r” (The W ill to A rchitecture, 1923) and “V orschlag zur C ity-B ebauung” (P roposal

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for City-Center Development, 1930), are trans lated here for the first time and appear as appendices. These essays supplement Grofistadt architektur and reconstruct the genealogy of Hilberseim er’s theory of the metropolis from its origins in the avant-gardes of the 1920s through its m ost concrete formalization at the end of the decade. But the texts and images presented here have not been compiled merely as documents for the archive of urban and architectural thought. For to read this book today—in the midst of an economic and urban crisis whose origins lie in the speculative housing market; surrounded by a variety of speculative theories of architecture, be they iconic, parametric, or affect-based—is to see that Hilberseimer’s call for an end to speculation, in both its economic and aesthetic modes, has acquired a surplus value, one derived not from the patina of age but from the force of urgency. Dionysian Origins Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer was born on Septem ber 14,1885, in Karlsruhe. The geometric rigor of the city’s radial-concentric street system surely influenced him during his childhood and student years. He enrolled in the Grand Ducal Technical University in 1906 and would complete his ar chitectural training in 1911.17 Among his most 17 For an excellent account of Hilberseimer’s biography see De Michelis, “Ritratto di un architetto come giovane artista,” 6-25.

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significant professors were F riedrich O stendorf and R einhard Baum eister. O stendorf is prim arily rem em bered today for his polem ical criticism of the work o f H erm ann M uthesius. O stendorf believed that an arbitrary approach to form lurked behind both the picturesque asym m etry o f Muthesius’s country houses and his rhetoric of Sachlichkeit (objectivity). A lthough H ilberseim er made little reference to O sten d o rf’s influence, it is hard to im agine that his teacher’s oft-repeated dictum failed to leave a m ark on his thinking: “to design is to find the sim plest form o f appearance for a building program .” 18 B aum eister’s landm ark treatise Stadt-Erweiterungen (City Extensions) of 1876 inform ed a generation o f planners on the technical basis o f urban expansion.19 Like Bau meister, H ilberseim er w ould em phasize the param ount im portance o f housing and circula tion in planning. In 1911 H ilberseim er m oved to Berlin, where he w ould live and w ork until he moved to the U nited States in 1938. D uring W orld W ar I he d irected an in stitu te o f aeronautical research, and he flourished in the atm osphere o f postw ar Berlin. T he city’s intellectual and artistic culture allow ed him to exercise his philosophical and 18 F riedrich O stendorf, Sechs Bucher vom Bauen, enthaltend eine Theorie des architektonischen Entwerfens, 3rd ed., (Berlin: W. E rn st & S ohn, 1918), 1:3. 19 R einhard B aum eister, Stadt-Erweiterungen in technischer baupolizeilicher und wirthschaftlicher Beziehung (Berlin: E rn st & K orn, 1876).

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Figs. 46-47


literary talents in a variety of venues. During his time in Berlin he wrote for numerous journals, published several books, and secured his reputa tion as an authority on architecture and urban planning. Hilberseim er’s professional stature was reflected in his membership in the Ring of modern architects, his invitation to build a house at the W eissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart in 1927, and his appointm ent as a professor at Hannes Meyer’s Bauhaus.20Grofistadtarchitektur grew out of Hilberseim er’s intensive engagement with the complex and varied intellectual currents that coursed through the metropolis. W ritten before he turned his attention exclusively to the decen tralization of cities—the topic that would occupy 20 The nature of Hilberseimer’s relationship to Hannes Meyer lacks precise definition despite K. Michael Hays’s study of the two as representatives of a shared “post humanist” position within the history of modern architecture. In a letter explaining his removal from the Bauhaus in Dessau, Meyer noted that his appointment of the “socialist architect L. Hilberseimer” was part of the pedagogical changes undertaken during his tenure as director. After Meyer moved to the USSR in 1930, Hil berseimer continued to teach at the Bauhaus, which was relocated to Berlin under Mies van der Rohe’s leadership. Both Meyer and Hilberseimer were associated with the “Kollektiv fur sozialistisches Bauen” (Collective for Socialist Building), which was organized by a group of young, left-leaning architects in Berlin in 1930. The Kollektiv sponsored the “Proletarian Building Exhibi tion” of 1931, during which Meyer lectured while traveling through Western Europe on leave from his responsibilities in the Soviet Union. Hilberseimer

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him from the early 1930s through the rest o f his career— the book represents a synthesis o f his reflections on the m etropolitan condition.21 In 1919, H ilberseim er w orked closely w ith a group o f intellectuals gathered around the magazine Der Einzige (The Singularity).22 Edited by the literary h istorian E rnst Sam uel (also known as A nselm Ruest) and the philosopher Salom o F riedlander, the publication was dedi cated to M ax S tirn e r’s individualist legacy and to participated in sem inars on urb an planning held by the K ollektiv at the M arxistische A rbeiterschule (M arxist W orkers’ School, M A SC H ) in Berlin in 1932. See Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 4-6; H annes M eyer, “ M ein H in au sw u rf aus dem B auhaus,” in Bauen und Gesellschaft: Schriften, Briefe, Projekte, eds. Lena M eyer-B ergner and K laus-Jiirgen W inkler (D resden: Verlag d er K unst, 1980), 69; K ollektiv fiir sozialistisches B auen, “J ah resb eric h t fiir das J a h r 1931,” 28 January 1932, Erw in G ra ff Papers, B auhaus A rchive, Berlin. 21 F rom ab o u t 1930, H ilb erse im e r developed an approach to d ecentralized settlem en t he called Mischbebauung, or m ixed-height developm ent, in which residential highrises and single-story row h ouses w ould becom e the basic elem ents o f the resid e n tia l city. H e would p ursue this avenue o f research in num erous projects and studies com pleted in the U n ited States. See Ludwig H ilb er seim er, “ F la ch b a u und S ta d trau m ,” Zentralblatt fiir Bauverwaltung 51, 23 D ecem ber 1931, 773-78; H ilb er seim er, Entfaltung einer Planungsidee, 24-26. 22 T here is very little work on this im p o rtan t jo u rn al and its editors. See C o n sta n tin Parvelescu, “A fter the R evolution: T h e In d iv id u alist A narchist Jo u rn a l Der Einzige and th e M aking o f the R adical Left in the Early Post-W orld W ar I G e rm an y ” (Ph.D . diss., U niversity o f M innesota, 2006).

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the development of Nietzschean philosophical themes. The magazine’s first issue contained Hil berseim er’s essay “Schopfung und Entwicklung” (Creation and Development)—his first attempt to articulate the value of “the primitive.”23 “Primitive artworks are the most pure,” he wrote, “because they have not yet fallen to the civilizing urge for beauty.” In his cultural genealogy, the Renaissance marked a critical turning point at which culture became primarily interested in the imitation and reproduction of ancient culture: “One wanted to appear just as others were.” Hil berseimer identified the first signs of a way out of this reproductive culture in the early work of Nietzsche, particularly his Die Geburtder Tragodie (The Birth o f Tragedy) of 1872: “Then the young Nietzsche discovered the polarity (DionysianApollonian) of Greek art. The entirety of allegedly well-grounded Aesthetics collapsed.” The world, Hilberseimer wrote, was shocked by the barbarism that Nietzsche revealed to be pres ent in every aspect of Greek culture. “One finally recognized the high value of the primitive in con trast to the reproductive.”24 Hilberseim er’s concept of the primitive and its relationship to architecture acquired further definition throughout 1919. That year saw the 23 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Schopfung und Entwicklung,” Der Einzige 1, no. 1 (1919): 5-6. This essay was excerpted from a much longer text. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the manuscript in its entirety. 24 Ibid., 5; 5; 6.

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founding o f the Arbeitsrat fu r Kunst (W ork C oun cil for A rt) under the leadership o f W alter G ropius and Bruno Taut. T he group’s “ Exhibi tion o f U nknow n A rchitects,” which was held in April, was a defining event in the advent of archi tectural Expressionism . A lthough H ilberseim er signed the Arbeitsrat's proclam ation, his work, along w ith Ludwig M ies van der R ohe’s, was not accepted by the show ’s jury. H e later noted that it was probably the “architectural clarity” o f their work th a t contradicted the “rom antic nature of the exhibition.”25 H ilberseim er responded with an article in Das Kunstblatt (The A rt Journal) about Paul S cheerbart, the poetic inspiration for Taut and m any o ther Expressionists, and archi tecture.26 W ithout identifying specific architects, he charged the Expressionists w ith a “naturalis tic m isunderstanding o f C ubist im agery” and claim ed th at in their w ork a “lack o f creative power is replaced by a search for originality.” “An artw ork,” H ilberseim er wrote, “is a unity; the unfolding and revelation of an idea; it is inde pendent o f the accidental.”27 We find the prim itive, productive architec ture th a t H ilberseim er offered in response to Expressionism in the first m ajor publication of 25 H ilberseim er, Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre, 30. M ies’s unrealized K roller-M iiller Villa P roject was also rejected by the jury. 26 Ludwig H ilberseim er, “ Paul S cheerbart und die A rchitek ten ,” Das Kunstblatt 3 (1919): 271-74. 27 Ibid., 273.

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Fig. 2 Ludwig Hilberseimer, early projects: above, depart ment store; below, office building; from Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration. 1919

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his architectural designs in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (G erm an A rt and D ecoration).28 Pub lished in June 1919, this series includes projects for an urban theater, urban and suburban villas, a train station, a covered m arket, an embassy, a departm ent store, and an office building. As M arco D e M ichelis has pointed out, these proj ects bear the marks o f O sten d o rf’s and H einrich Tessenow’s influence, and they were probably exe cuted before 1919.29 They were nevertheless em bedded within H ilberseim er’s discourse on the primitive by the tim e o f their publication. U nder the definite sway o f H ilberseim er’s conceptual categories, the critic Max W agenfuhr wrote: Reconstruction means starting over from the beginning. The primitive also applies to art. Thus Hilberseimer returns to the basic form s (U rfo rm en ): rectangle; square and right angle; the triangle; the circle, semi-circle, and arc define surface— cube, pyramid, prism, and sphere form mass.30 T he prim itive is thus productive, no t re productive, in its elem ental, geom etric rigor. 28 M ax W agenfuhr, “A rch ite k to n isc h e Entw urfe von L. H ilberseim er,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 22, no. 6 (1919): 208-16. 29 D e M ichelis, “ R itra tto di un a rch itetto com e giovane artis ta ,” 8-10. 30 W agenfuhr, “A rch ite k to n isc h e Entw urfe von L. H il berseim er,” 211-12.

Fig. 2

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Hilberseim er would later identify an im portant source for his primitive geometries: “Cezanne spoke of the sphere, cone, and cylinder accord ing to which one much formatively realize nature.”31 Hilberseim er also detected the pri mitive force of geometric forms in the Pre-Columbian monuments of Mesoamerica; his analysis of the “pure cubic elements” and “ sustained effects” of simple linear arrange ments at Palenque and Chichen Itza read like descriptions of his own architectural projects.32 Hilberseimer’s engagement with the arts landed him a job as the art critic for Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly), a journal closely associated with the German Social Democratic Party. He occupied this post from 1920 until 1933, when the publication was banned. In this position he commented on topics including African Art, experimental film, contemporary architecture, and avant-garde artistic movements. His friend ship with the Dadaist and filmmaker Hans Richter, whom he had met in 1912, brought him particularly close to Hannah Hoch, Raoul Hausmann, and other Berlin Dadaists.33In his criticism, Hilberseimer was remarkably optimistic about Dada, a movement that made destructive irony a 31 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Cezanne,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 28, nos. 1-2 (1922): 64. 32 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Mexikanische Baukunst,” Das Kunstblatt 6 (1922): 163-71. 33 Hans Richter, Kopfe und Hinterkdpfe (Zurich: Der Arche, 1967), 75-76.

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principle o f artistic work. He warned that “the immediate future will dem onstrate the essential seriousness that is concealed in the apparent flip pancy o f D ada.” Significantly, his characterization of D ada’s aims prefigured his interest in integrat ing the part and the w hole— the room and the city—in the capitalist m etropolis and revealed a new political charge to his formal aspirations: “Dada w ants to free the ego from inoperative sys tems; let it merge with the cosmos; make it autonomously active; restore the total unity (Alleinheit) that has been crushed by bourgeois morality.”34 T he M etropolis If H ilb e rse im er view ed D ad a as an attem p t to destroy th e m echanism s th a t iso la ted the in d i vidual subject from th e totality, the m etropolis itse lf was am ong th e m ost pow erful “ in o p e ra tive system s” th a t cru sh ed “to ta l unity.” In 1903 the sociologist G eorg Sim m el had id e n ti fied the specific psychological ch a ra cte r o f the big city in his essay “T he M etropolis and M ental L ife.” 35 M e tro p o lita n individuality was characterized above all by th e “ in ten sific atio n 34 Ludwig H ilberseim er, “ D adaism us,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 26, nos. 25-26 (1920): 1120. 35 G eorg Sim m el, “ D ie G roB stadte und das G eistesleb en,” in Die Grofistadt: Vortrdge und Aufsatze zur Stadteausstellung, ed. T h. P eterm ann (D resden: V. Z ahn & Jaensch, 1903), 185-206; see G eorg Sim m el, “The M etropolis and M ental Life,” in The Sociology o f Georg Simmel (N ew York: F ree Press, 1950), 409-24.

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of nervous stim ulation” produced by rapidly changing images, discontinuous impressions, and the constant flow of people, goods, and money. The subjective response to these condi tions was to develop a “protective organ” to guard against the forces that threaten to uproot the individual. This organ produced a blase atti tude toward the shocks of everyday life in the m etropolis. This attitude freed the individual from the deleterious effects of the “intensifica tion of consciousness,” but it also m ani fested itself as extreme social alienation in the crowd, where “bodily proximity and narrow ness of space make the m ental distance only the more visible.”36 W hat is more, the blase attitude toward the shocks of the metropolis, in Simmel’s analysis, corresponds to a sub jective internalization of the abstraction—the leveling of all difference—on which exchange value depends: The mood is the faithful subjective reflection o f a completely internalized money economy.... A ll thingsfloat with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream o f money. A ll things lie on the same level and differfrom one another in the size o f the area which they cover31

36 Simmel, “The M etropolis and Mental Life,” 418. 37 Ibid., 414. On this line of argumentation see in par ticular Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, 84-89.

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The problem taken up by both urban avantgardes and m etropolitan theorists was thus how to respond to the neutralization o f both m ental life and the w orld o f objects in cities born of the “principle o f speculation.” H ilberseim er’s first response to this prob lem appeared in 1914 in a m anuscript for a study titled “ D ie A rchitektur der G rofistadt” (The A rchitecture o f the M etropolis), which constitutes the theoretical kernel of Grofistadtar chitektur .38 H is w riting coincided w ith the high point o f a period m arked by intense urban thought. In 1908, A ugust E ndell identified the “beauty o f the big city” in the ugly buildings and noise that “ surrounds us in the total force o f the 38 Ludwig H ilberseim er, “ D ie A rch ite k tu r der G roB stadt,” Ludw ig K arl H ilb erse im e r P apers, Series 8/3, Box 1, 1914, T he A rt In s titu te o f Chicago. As R ich ard Pom m er has p o in ted o ut, H ilb erse im e r developed his m anuscript in two later drafts, w ritten betw een 1916 and 1918, in co llab o ratio n w ith his friend U do Rusker. See Pommer, “ ‘M ore a N ecropolis than a M etropolis,’” 27. Although H ilberseim er called this w ork “ D ie A rch ite k tur der G roB stadt,” he did use the com pound term Grofistadtarchitektur in the first draft. T he w ord was som e thing o f a neologism , b u t H ilb erse im e r was n o t the first to use it in this sense. W alter C u rt B ehrendt had used the term in passing in his m o n ograph on A lfred M essel pu b lished by B runo C assirer in 1911. Jo seph A ugust Lux had used the term to g re ater effect in his m onograph on O tto Wagner o f 1914, stating th at “ D ie neue G roB stadtarchitektur beginnt ihre Z eitrechnung m it O tto W agner....” (The new m etro p o lisarc h ite ctu re starts its clock w ith O tto W agner....); see Jo seph A ugust Lux, Otto Wagner: Eine Monographic (M unich: D elphin, 1914), 43.

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present.”39 Others sought to regulate the m etro polis with new forms of organization. The com petition for the design of G reater Berlin of 1910 captured the attention of the Germ an Reich and stim ulated such innovative urban proposals as Rudolf Eberstadt and Bruno Mohring’s plan for wedge-shaped “green lungs” that would con nect Berlin to its hinterland. Hilberseimer wrote that “the task of the architect is to bring order and clarity to the chaos.”40 Hilberseimer’s text engaged with the most recent literature on architecture and urban plan ning. It was particularly indebted to Karl Scheffler’s Die Architektur der Grofistadt (The Architecture of the Metropolis) of 1913.41 Scheffler explicitly identified the metropolis as the site where a new form of architecture would come into being. Employing a mode of analysis Hilber seimer would later apply in Grofistadtarchitektur, Scheffler reduced the metropolis to its typological elements: the apartment building, the commercial building, and the suburban villa. The first of these three was most important for both Scheffler and Hilberseimer because the apartment building expressed the uniformity of the big city, and, in Scheffler’s words, “the typical is the first prerequi site of a new style.”42 Hilberseimer turned to 39 August Endell, Die Schdnheit der grofien Stadt (Stutt gart: Strecker & Schroder, 1908), 23. 40 Hilberseimer, “Die A rchitektur der GroBstadt.” 41 Karl Scheffler, Die Architektur der Grofistadt (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1913).

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W alter C urt B ehrendt’s Die einheitliche Blockfront als Raumelement im Stadtbau (The U nified Block as a Spatial Elem ent in City Building), 1911, for an analysis o f the positive value of uniform blocks of apartm ent buildings for m etropolitan form. The harsh criticism that H ilberseim er directed at Camillo Sitte’s “artistic principles” of urban plan ning in this early text would be repeated in Grofistadtarchitektur. Significantly, H ilberseim er discussed O tto W agner’s plans for an expanding metropolis in this early text; W agner’s project would not be included in H ilberseim er’s later analysis of urban planning proposals.43 T he econom ic basis o f urban form was already am ong H ilberseim er’s concerns in 1914: “today it is capital above all else th at forces con centrated settlem ents.”44 H ilberseim er a ttri buted the “lack o f planning in the total organ ism” o f the m etropolis to the m otors o f urban developm ent. In this he followed Scheffler’s cri tique o f the Mietskaserne (rental barrack), the derogatory designation for the tow ering, densely built ap artm en t buildings th a t had radically transform ed G erm an cities since the building boom o f the 1870s th a t followed G erm an unification and the co u n try ’s victory in the F ranco-P russian W ar.45 “T he m ulti-story

42 Ibid., 33. 45 O tto W agner, Die Grofistadt: Eine Studie iiber diese (Vienna: A. S chroll u. Kom p., 1911). 44 H ilberseim er, “ D ie A rch ite k tu r d er G roB stadt.”

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dwelling,” Scheffler wrote, “exists in its present form as the result of an immense entrepreneurial will but also as an effect of an irresponsible and unplanned speculative instinct.”46 Scheffler, in turn, based his analysis on the work of Rudolf Eberstadt, who, in addition to preparing such practical urban proposals as his entry to the 1910 competition for Greater Berlin and his project for the development of Berlin-Treptow, was a preem inent theorist and advocate for housing reform. His Handbuch des Wohnungswesens und der Wohnungsfrage (Handbook for Housing and the Housing Question), 1909, went through many editions and was widely read by students and practitioners.47 Eberstadt analyzed the eco nomics of housing and urban planning with perhaps more rigor than anyone else and emerged as a staunch opponent of speculation’s role in the development of the metropolis. In 1907 he devoted an entire book to the subject, Die Spekulation im neuzeitlichen Stadtebau (Speculation in M odern U rban Planning). He described the hegemony of speculation as follows: Among the phenomena that characterize the most recent period o f urban planning in Ger 45 On the development of the Berlin apartment building see Johann Friedrich Geist and Klaus Kiirvers, Das Ber liner Mietshaus, 3 vols. (Munich: Prestel, 1980). 46 Scheffler, Die Architektur der Grofistadt, 29. 47 Rudolf Eberstadt, Handbuch des Wohnungswesens und der Wohnungsfrage (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1909).

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many one stands out with particular clarity: the development and ultimately complete reign o f speculation in all spheres o f housing. From the preparation and partitioning o f building sites to the ownership o f finished apartments, specu lation determines the organization o f urban planning and the traffic in land values. The par celing o f building sites is a speculative affair. Construction, housing form , and housing pro duction are determined by speculation. In its hands lie land and building ownership; it has mortgages and land registries at its disposal.** Speculation, E b erstad t wrote, was nothing o ther than “oppo rtu n istic acquisition o f the lowest, least valuable k in d .” H e adm itted that the solu tion to the problem o f speculation w ould not be easily found. Sweeping reform s in planning regu lation and housing finance were needed, and his call for a radical reform o f the m etropolis prefig ures the argum ents m ade by H ilberseim er after W orld W ar I. E berstadt: “Every isolated inter vention th at leaves the foundations unchanged m ust in this case be understood as an evil.”49 H ilberseim er’s first published response to the m e tro p o lis ap p eared in 1923 in Sozialisti sche M onatshefte. H is essay “Vom stadtebaulichen P roblem der G rofistadt” (On the U rban48 R u d o lf E b ersta d t, Die Spekulation im neuzeitlichen Stadtebau (Jena: G ustav F ischer, 1907), 1. 49 Ibid., 2; 208.

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Planning Problem of the Metropolis) contains much of the text of the first chapter of Grofi stadtarchitektur. Hilberseimer described the design of the environment as one of the princi pal tasks of humanity and distinguished between the metropolis and the city of the past: the metropolis is “the natural and necessary conse quence of the industrialization of the world.”50 But there are crucial differences between the position Hilberseim er articulated here and the arguments he presented in his later book; the most im portant concerns decentralization. In his 1923 text, Hilberseim er identified one of the most im portant sources for his thinking: the architect, planner, and polymath Martin Machler. Machler’s activities were wide-rang ing: he developed a plan for a new north-south axis for Berlin in 1908 that would become an idee fixe for a generation of planners that included A lbert Speer; he advised Lenin on the impor tance of energy networks in Zurich in 1917; and he developed the theory of the Weltstadt (WorldCity) and the Grofisiedlung (Great-Settlement) that Hilberseim er would expand.51 Also a con tributor to Sozialistische Monatshefte, Machler articulated his theory of the metropolis in a 50 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Vom stadtebaulichen Problem der GroBstadt,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 29, no. 6 (1923): 352. 51 On Machler see Ilse Balg, ed., Martin Machler, Weltstadt Berlin, Wannseer Hefte 13 (Berlin: Galerie Wannsee, 1986).

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series o f articles in 1921-22. M achler w rote that “if urban planners and speculators had ... con sidered the settlem ent th at they created as ... a cell in a total-state (Gesamtstaat); if they had learned to see it as an organic elem ent in a large organism ... they w ould have seen how narrow, lim ited, and w ithout insight or foresight their behavior w as.” S2 H ilberseim er m ade M achler’s analysis the basis o f his response to the problem o f the m etropolis and called for a strict separa tion o f places o f w ork from places o f dwelling. The city was to expand in the horizontal dim en sion. Invoking the w ork o f Raym ond Unwin, Erw in G utkind, and E rnst May, H ilberseim er here advocated for the construction o f “satellite cities,” to use M ay’s term inology.53 H is design for a Wohnstadt (R esidential City) of 1923 follows the satellite-city principle and en forces a strict separation o f functional zones.54 52 M artin M achler, “ D as S iedelungsproblem ,” Sozialisti sche Monatshefte 27, no. 4 (1921): 185. 53 R aym ond U nw in, Town Planning in Practice: A n Intro duction to the A rt o f Designing Cities and Suburbs (London: T. F. U nw in, 1909); first G erm an edition, 1910; Erw in G utkind, Vom stadtebaulichen Problem der Einheitsgemeinde Berlin (B erlin: H ans R obert Engelm ann, 1922); E rn st May, “ S tadterw eiterung m ittels T ra b an ten ,” Der Stadtebau 19, nos. 5-6(1922): 51-55. 54 A lthough H ilb erseim er included a diagram for a sys tem o f satellite cities in several publications, this d ecentralized m odel o f urban developm ent w ould not ap p e ar in Grofistadtarchitektur. See Ludwig H ilberseim er, “ S tadt- und W ohnungsbau,” Soziale Bauwirtschaft 5, no. 14(1925): 185-88.

Figs. 25-27

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Hilberseim er described how this form of growth would radically alter the very concept of the city: A t present our concept o f the city is based on an ideology that is tied to the past. Although walls and towers have long sincefallen, they haunt our memories even today. Urban structures, such as those that are designed to provide spacefor nine million people in Tokyo and as many as thirtyfive million in New York, are based on premises entirely different from those we are accustomed to. They will thus produce an entirely new type o f city that dispenses with spatial cohesion— the concept that we have until now used to imagine the city. Their enormous expansion necessarily forces decentralization. The traffic question will become the Alpha and Omega o f the entire urban organism.55 Thus, in 1923, Hilberseimer considered disag gregation to be the most appropriate response to the problem of the metropolis. Spatial cohesion, which had been intensified by the speculative development of German cities since the late nineteenth century, gave way to the principle of spatial dispersal. Following Machler, Hilber seimer envisioned this new form of expansion constituting new regional patterns, eventually encompassing an economically unified Euro 55 Hilberseimer, “Vom stadtebaulichen Problem der GroBstadt,” 357; compare to this volume, p. 133

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pean continent. F o rth e tim e being, H ilberseim er’s response to speculation was articulated in the horizontal dim ension; by the end o f 1924 he would turn to a vertical solution. A esthetic Speculation Speculation is not only a m ode of economic activ ity; it is also a category o f artistic practice. Reviewing the developm ent o f the arts in France since the beginning o f W orld War I, H ilberseim er noted that “the epoch of speculation is not yet past.”56 H e referred to the persistent desire for verisim ilitude am ong French artists and accused them of cultivating a decorative sensibility. To this speculative trend H ilberseim er opposed the work o f the Parisian avant-garde. “ Picasso, Braque, Gris, M etzinger, Leger are attem pting to reach the absolute in painting; seeking to replace the naturalistic illusion of the perspectival m ech anism with an architectonic rhythm o f the image (Bildrhythmus).”57 H ilberseim er would later de scribe the architectonic o f the visual arts as pre paratory work for architectural and urban design.

56 Ludw ig H ilberseim er, “ Von d er K unst des jungen F ran k reich s,” Sozialistische M onatshefte 26, no. 11 (1920): 673. Paul W estheim w ould later link the ra m p a n t m one tary inflation o f the early years o f the W eim ar R epublic to the practice o f “ a rt-sp ecu la tio n .” See Paul W estheim , “ D ie to te K unst d er G egenw art,” Das Kunstblatt 8 (1924): 141-49. 57 H ilberseim er, “Von d er K unst des jungen F ran k reichs,” 673.

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The importance of Hilberseimer’s sus tained engagement with Constructivism cannot be underestim ated. Born in the Soviet Union, Constructivism spread rapidly throughout East ern and Western Europe as artists sought to transform practice from the production of images to the design of objects.58 Berlin was the epicenter of International Constructivism, which was distinct from its Soviet counterpart in both its goals and political commitments. Hilberseim er described the development of Constructivism in an article of 1922. He viewed the movement as a response to the exhaustion of the recent experiments of Kazimir Malevich and Aleksandr Rodchenko, whose monochromatic paintings of 1919 had pushed Suprematism to its final consequences. After this, a new decisive phase had been reached: Either one clung to abstraction and lost oneself in individualistic speculations. Or one began to renounce composition and turn to construction: to the construction o f new objects.59 Hilberseim er referred to a series of debates that took place in Moscow’s Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhU K) in the winter of 1921 at 58 Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 59 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Konstruktivismus,” Sozialisti sche Monatshefte 28, nos. 19-20 (1922): 831.

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which sharp d istinctions were m ade between com position and construction: the form er came to be seen as a rem nant o f illusionistic art, the latter as a m ode o f artistic practice th at m ight transform everyday life.60 Recalling his earlier essay “ S chopfung und Entw icklung,” he defined C onstructivism as an attem p t to break w ith the illusionism o f R enaissance art and initiate a “creative design o f the w orld.” “T he laws of artistic fo rm a tio n ,” he w rote, “ should also be applied to space as an object and no longer to the pictorial illusion o f space.” Significantly, H ilberseim er identified the m ost successful attem pt at C onstructivist creation in Viking Eggeling’s a b stra ct films, w hat H ilberseim er called his Bewegungskunst (M ovem ent-A rt). In such a w ork as E ggeling’s Diagonal-Symphonie (D iagonal Symphony) o f 1921, “the final rem ains o f illusionism have been elim inated, and a truly new object has been created and form ed w ith the u tm o st p recisio n .”61T he values H ilberseim er associated w ith the prim itive thus reappear in his reading o f C onstructivism and experim ental cinem a. In his 1922 essay on Constructivism , H ilberseim er identified a num ber o f international publications that supported the movement: the

60 O n these d eb ates see M aria G ough, The A rtist as Pro ducer: Russian Constructivism in Revolution (Berkeley: U niversity o f C alifornia Press, 2005). 61 H ilberseim er, “ K on stru k tiv ism u s,” 832.

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Netherlands had De Stijl; France, L ’esprit nouveau; Hungary, Ma; and Russia, Veshch’/Objet/Gegenstand. “Germany,” he noted parenthetically, “does not possess such a publication.” Despite the fact that the trilingual journal Veshch ' was published in Berlin by Il’ia Ehrenburg and El Lissitzky, he was right. But this would change the following year with the publication of the first issue of G: Mate rial zur elementaren Gestaltung (G: Material for Elementary Form-Creation), which would appear at irregular intervals until 1926.62 Hilberseimer was deeply involved with the journal and its contribu tors from the beginning, and some of the essays he contributed to G would feature in Grofistadtarchi tektur. The so-called G-Group consisted of prominent members of the European avant-garde. It included Richter, the journal’s chief editor, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe, Theo van Doesburg, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, and Kurt Schwitters, among others. As Detlef Mertins has described, the journal’s commitment to “elementare Gestaltung,” which may be trans lated as “elementary design” or “elementary form-creation,” grew out of a cultural position that can be traced back to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoon of 1766. Like Lessing, the 62 See the recent translation of the journal by Steven Lindberg and M argareta Ingrid Christian: Detlef Mer tins and Michael Jennings, eds., G: An Avant-Garde Journal o f Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923-1926 (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2010); hereafter referred to as G: An Avant-Garde Journal.

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G -G roup sought to uncover the structural logic of each respective m ode o f artistic expression; the group sought to reduce art to its elements in order to shape them anew.63 W hile the G -G roup was com m itted to exploring the intrinsic laws o f art, it was equally opposed to aesthetic speculation in all its forms. Van D oesburg established this conjunction of values in two essays from 1923. In “On Elem en tal F o rm -C reatio n ,” which was published in the first issue o f G, van D oesburg distinguished between decorative and m onum ental approaches to expression. H e associated the decora tive approach w ith personal taste and in tu itio n — qualities th a t failed to m eet the m odern dem and for precision. Elsew here he w rote that “the speculative m ethod, a childish disease, has arrested the healthy developm ent o f construc tion according to universal and objective laws.”64 In G he w rote th a t w ithout “precise distinction (sculpture from painting, p ainting from architec ture, etc.) it is im possible to create order from chaos and to becom e acquainted w ith elem ental m eans o f form -creatio n.”65 F or van D oesburg 63 D e tle f M ertins, “A rchitecture, W orldview, and W orld Im age in G,” in G: A n Avant-Garde Journal, 77. 64 T h eo van D oesburg and C ornelius van E esteren, “T ow ard a C ollective C o n stru ctio n [1923],” in The Tradi tion o f Constructivism, ed. Steven Bann (N ew York: Viking Press, 1974), 118. 65 T heo van D oesburg, “ O n E lem ental F orm -C reation [1923],” in G: A n Avant-Garde Journal, 101-02.

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the “speculative m ethod” corresponds to a mode of practice that is based on caprice and sub jective individuality—qualities diametrically opposed to the G -G roup’s commitment to econ omy, order, regularity, and collectivity. Certain members of the G-Group under stood aesthetic speculation and speculative building to be fundamentally linked. Mies made this clear in the first two issues of G. He juxta posed his project for a concrete office building with a powerful statement of purpose in G’s debut issue: “We reject: every aesthetic specula tion; every doctrine; and every formalism... create the form from the nature of the task with the means of our time. That is our task.”66 In the following issue Mies articulated aesthetic and economic modes of speculation in his statement titled “Building”: “Our task is precisely to liber ate building activity from the aesthetic spe culation of developers and to make it once again the only thing it should be, namely, BUILD IN G .”67 The alleged contradiction between aesthetic speculation and elemental design was made forcefully apparent in 1924 in an unsigned, two-page spread that was published between M ies’s article “Industrial Building” and Hilber seimer’s article “Construction and Form ” in the 66 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, ‘“We reject...’ [1923],” in G: An Avant-Garde Journal, 103. 67 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Building [1923],” in G: An Avant-Garde Journal, 105.

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Die B a u u n te rn e h m e r w a rd e n s lc h e n tsc h e ld e n m O ssen. o b s ie wirklich rationell b a u e n w ollen o d e r o b die in E u ro p a n o c h im m er v o rh e r rs c h e n d e a sth e tis c h e S p e k u la tlo n (In w e lc h e m G e w a n d e a u c h Immer) Ihre P ro d u k tio n b e s tlm m e n wlrd. Die O rg a n isa tio n d e r B a u b e trieb e , d a s Prinzip, in d e m sie a u fg e b a u t sind, e n ts c h e id e t a u c h letzthin u b e r die Art Ihrer Entw icklung. GroBzCiglge A rbeit la s t s ic h n u r d a e rre ic h e n , w o d e r B etrieb groBz ugig ist. E ine In dustrlalisierung d e s B a u e n s se lb st 1st s e in e r N atur n a c h g e b u n d e n a n e in en industrlellen B etrieb.

In den nSichsten Heften werden wir Projekte der Firma Sommerfeld verbffentlichen und besprechen, die auf rationelles und Bkonomlsches Bauen hlnzlelen.

Fig. 3 Page from G 3, 1924; top parag ra p h : "Building con tractors will have to decide whether they really want to build rationally or whether the aesthetic speculation that is still dom inant in Europe (in whatever guise that may be) will determine their production."

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Fig. 3


third issue of G. At left, bold red text states: “We consider a fundamental change to our form of housing necessary.” At right, a photograph of a neo-baroque urban villa is crossed out by a large red “X .” The text above the photograph reads: “ Building contractors will have to decide whether they really want to build rationally or whether the aesthetic speculation that is still dominant in Europe (in whatever guise that may be) will determ ine their production.”68 The editorial lauds the “rational and economical building practices” of A dolf Sommerfeld’s firm, which was responsible for several large settlements in Berlin.69 This spread places aesthetic specula tion in opposition to rationality—individualist caprice is identified with the arbitrary (and profit-driven) inflation of architectural values, while building appears as a self-evident activity that is governed by immanent laws. Aesthetic speculation thus forms the antithesis to elemen tal design because it distorts both the economy of form and the economy of the building indus try. This position buttressed H ilberseim er’s call for “the end to the m etropolis based on the prin ciple of speculation ... the metropolis ... that has not found its own laws,” which first appeared in 68 “‘We consider a fundamental change...’ [1924],” in G: An Avant-Garde Journal, 124-25. 69 On the Sommerfeld firm ’s rationalization of building production see Celina Kress, Adolf Sommerfeld/ Andrew Sommerfield: Bauen fiir Berlin 1910-1970 (Berlin: Lukas, 2011).

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the fourth issue o f G in 1926 in a review o f an exhibition o f A m erican architecture that was on view at B erlin’s A cadem y o f Fine A rts.70 H ilberseim er’s interest in A m erican archi tecture proved to be o f vital im portance to both his relationship to C onstructivism and his approach to the m etropolis. Late in life he recalled that his 1920 essay “A m erikanische A rchitektur” (A m erican A rchitecture), w hich he w rote w ith his friend and collaborator U do Rusker, attracted the attention o f the H ungarian critic E rno (E rnst) K allai, who invited H ilber seim er into a circle o f young H ungarian artists and architects.71 K allai was deeply invested in the cause o f C onstructivism , and it was through him th at H ilberseim er was introduced to Laszlo Peri. P eri’s arrival on the Berlin art scene was marked by the publication o f a portfolio of reductive, geom etrical linoleum prints by H erw arth W alden’s D er Sturm gallery in 1922. The critic A lfred K em eny praised the spatial quali ties o f P eri’s black, white, and gray im ages for their “econom y o f m inim al forms; spatial ten sion produced by the extrem e opposition of minim al form s; massive strength; [and] sharp, objective determ inacy w ithout any possible association w ith natu re.”72 T hese w ords could 70 H ilberseim er, “A m erikanische A rchitektur: A usstellung in d er A kadem ie d er B ildenden K iinste,” 4-8. 71 H ilberseim er, Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre, 39; Ludwig H ilb erse im e r and U do Rusker, “A m erikanische A rch ite k tu r,” Kunst und Kiinstler 18, no. 12(1920): 537-39.

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apply to many contemporary projects Hilber seimer executed, and it is no accident that he was impressed by an exhibition of Peri’s work at the Sturm gallery in early 1923. Hilberseimer was particularly interested in Peri’s space-constructions—painted canvases that defied the planarity and rectangular shape of traditional paintings. He wrote that “Peri’s elementary architectonic explodes the narrow concept of the picture, forms space, and turns his pictures into func tional spatial parts.” “Thus,” Hilberseimer continued, “his constructions become elemen tary spatial figures of vital intensity.” Most im portant, H ilberseim er wrote that “in Peri’s spatial constructions the latent will to architec ture of the new artistic movements is manifest in elementary fashion.”73 The Nietzschean qualities that Hilber seimer found in Peri’s work would form the basis for Hilberseim er’s essay “Der Wille zur Ar chitektur” (The Will to Architecture), which was published in Das Kunstblatt in 1923.74 Influ enced by the immanent logic demonstrated by 72 Alfred Kemeny, “Die konstruktive Kunst und Peris Raumkonstruktionen [1922],” in Wechselwirkungen: Ungarische Avantgarde in der Weimarer Republik, ed. Hubertus Gassner (Marburg: Jonas, 1986), 246. 73 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Peri,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 29, no. 4 (1923): 257. 74 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” Das Kunstblatt 7 (1923): 133-40; see this volume, pp. 28289. “Der Wille zur A rchitektur” develops themes Hilberseimer had introduced in his im portant essay

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C onstructivist artifacts and van D oesburg’s lec ture “D er Wille zum S til” (The Will to Style), this essay presents H ilberseim er’s view o f the relationship betw een artistic experim ent and the laws o f architectural form .75 H e recapitulated his criticism o f the “subjective speculation” of Expressionism and praised the valuable w ork of the C onstructivists: Their provisional, as yet non-utilitarian con structions reveal the unmistakable will to possess reality. The world itself became the material o f their design; every object was drawn into their domain. From the construc tion o f painting, the Constructivists transitioned to the construction o f objects, to architecture in the most all-encompassing sense o f the word. The Constructivists most lucidly recognized the “A nm erkungen zu r neuen K unst” (O bservations on the New A rt) o f 1923. “A nm erkungen zur neuen K unst” would be republished in G erm an in 1928, and it exists in two English translations. See Ludw ig H ilberseim er, “A nm erkungen zur neuen K unst,” in Sammlung Gabrielson (G othenburg, 1923), unpaginated; “A nm erkungen zur neuen K unst,” Kunst der Z eit 3, nos. 1-3 (1928): 52-57; “O bservations on the N ew A rt,” trans. H ow ard D earstyne, College A rt Journal 18, no. 4 (1959): 349-51; “[O bservations on the N ew A rt],” in M anfredo T afuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth, 336-38. 75 T heo van D oesburg, “ D er W ille zum Stil [1922],” in De Stijl: Schriften und Manifeste zu einem theoretischen Konzept dsthetischer Umweltgestaltung, ed. H agen B achler and H e rb ert L etsch (Leipzig: G ustav K iepenhauer Verlag, 1984), 163-79.

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M ETROPOLISARCHITECTU RE new aim, putting their entire creative power at its disposal.16

While he acknowledged that the work of the Constructivists represented only experiments, he asserted that their work had revealed immanent laws of material and form. “These newly discov ered laws of form ,” he stated, “will achieve an all-encompassing influence on m odern architec ture.” The task was to articulate such laws at the scale of the metropolis, where “the most hetero geneous material masses require a law of form applicable for every element in equal measure.”77 Hilberseim er presented his first major statem ent of the architectural laws of the metropolis in 1924. In fall of that year the Sturm gallery m ounted an exhibition of H ilberseim er’s and Peri’s architectural work, and Herwarth Walden invited Hilberseimer to publish an accompanying essay in the September issue of Der Sturm (The Storm). His essay “GroBstadtarchitektur” (Metropolisarchitecture) constitutes much o f the final chapter of Grofistadt architektur and offers a critical gloss on the work featured in the exhibition.78 Although we do not have an exhibition checklist, it appears that Hilberseimer presented drawings for his 76 Hilberseimer, “Der Wille zur Architektur,” 134; see this volume, p. 284. 77 Ibid., 134; 135; see this volume, pp. 285; 286. 78 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Grofistadtarchitektur,” Der Sturm 15, no. 4 (1924): 177-89.

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Residential City, a series of row houses, and perhaps his design for the Chicago Tribune compe tition; Peri presented designs for an apartm ent building with com munal services, a row-house dis trict, and a m onum ent to Lenin in the form of a hammer and sickle. Reviewing the show in Die Rote Fahne (The Red Banner), the organ of the G erm an Communist Party, Alfred Kemeny em phasized the political nature H ilberseim er’s and Peri’s work: With the severe structure o f their blocks o f houses, Hilberseimer and Peri fig h t not only form ally against the lack o f structure in m et ropolitan architecture; they at the same time lead an ideological fight against the anarchic production processes o f capitalism, whose cor responding expression is found in the current, chaotic form o f the metropolis.19 K em eny’s assertion o f the anti-capitalist con tent o f the w ork presented at the Sturm gallery may have co ntributed to the sym pathetic review H ilb erseim er’s and P eri’s w ork received from the R ussian architect G rigorii B arkhin after their designs w ere exhibited in M oscow in late 1924.80 79 A lfred Kemeny, “ N e u e V ersuche in d er A rchitekturA usstellung von H ilb erse im e r und P ćri im ‘S turm ’ [1924],” in Wechselwirkungen, ed. H u b e rtu s G assner (M arburg: Jonas, 1986), 249. 80 G. B arkhin, “A rk h itek tu ra na vystavke nem etskikh khudozhnikov v M oskve,” Stroitel’naiapromyshlennost' 2, no. 11 (1924): 736-38.

Figs. 25-27. 40-41. 4

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“G rofistadtarchitektur” lacks the sharp political edge that Kemeny identified in H il berseim er’s work. Instead, it supports Hilber seim er’s assertion that “m etropolisarchitecture is a new type of architecture with its own forms and laws.” Although H ilberseim er comments on space, style, color, and m aterial in this essay, his statem ents concerning mass, unity, and orga nization carry the m ost weight in his attem pt to reduce architecture to its basic elements.81 Painting served as a model of elementarization. He wrote that every discipline needs a clear understanding of its means and argued that painting was “the first to call attention to the basic forms of all art: geometric and cubic elements that resist any further objectifica tio n .”82 Recalling Wagenfiihr’s comments on the “prim itivism ” of his early work, Hilberseimer

81 H ilberseimer’s discussion of style and will ( Wollen) in this essay is related to the interest he expressed in Alois Riegl’s concept of Kunstwollen, or artistic volition. Already in his 1914 draft for “Die Architektur der GroBstadt,” Hilberseimer had opposed Riegl’s concept of art to the allegedly “materialistic” theory of Gottfried Semper. In his creative misreading of Semper’s thoughts on style, Hilberseimer adopted a position framed by Riegl himself and propagated by such leaders of the mod ern movement as Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius. On Riegl’s reception of Semper, see Harry Francis Mallgrave, Gottfried Semper: Architect o f the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 355-82. 82 Hilberseimer, “G rofistadtarchitektur,” 180; compare to this volume, p. 268.

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enum erated the “basic elem ents o f every architecture” : cube and sphere, prism and cylin der, pyram id and cone. H e defined arch itec tu re’s fundam ental task as follows: The problem o f architecture, apart from the practicality o f materials and their appropriate use, is the spatial design o f masses, which encompasses the organization, visualization, realization, and form ation o f a vision.83 H ilberseim er was certainly aw are o f Le C orbus ier’s definition o f architecture as “the m asterful, correct, and m agnificent play o f volum es brought together in lig h t,” but he carefully avoided any reference to the Franco-Sw iss archi te ct’s influential ideas.84 Instead, H ilberseim er invoked A uguste R odin’s w riting on architec ture. In his Les cathedrales de France ( The Cathedrals o f France), 1914, R odin had w ritten that “in ord er to use light and shadow according to their essential p roperties and intentions, the architect has only certain geom etrical com bina tions at his d isp o sal.”85 H ilberseim er shared 83 Ibid., 180; com pare to this volum e, p. 268. 84 Le C orbusier, Toward an Architecture, ed. Jean-L ouis C ohen, trans. Jo h n G o o d m an (Los Angeles: G etty R esearch In stitu te , 2007), 102. H ans H ild eb ra n d t’s tra n s lation o f this book into G erm an , Kommende Baukunst, was published in 1926 in S tu ttg art by the D eutsche Verlags-A nstalt, b u t H ilb erse im e r evidently worked w ith the original F rench edition. H e later recalled the privilege of

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Rodin’s wonder at the powerful effects achieved with reduced means and called for the architect to limit his work to the use of “fundamental architectural elem ents”: body, surface, color, window and door openings, balconies, loggias, and chimneys. “Working with these elements he will arrive at an architecture which emerges from its own principles,” he wrote.86 For Hilberseim er the emergence of an architecture proper to the metropolis depends on the application of these principles across multiple scales: Metropolisarchitecture is considerably depen dent on solving two factors: the individual cell o f the room and the collective urban organism. The solution will be determined by the manner in which the room is manifested as an element o f buildings linked together in one street block, thus becoming a designing factor o f the city structure, which is the actual objective o f architecture. Inversely, the constructive design o f the urban plan will gain considerable influhaving received a copy of Vers une architecture from a friend immediately after World War I. See Hilberseimer, Berliner A rchitektur der 20er Jahre, 20. 85 Auguste Rodin, Les cathidrales de France (Paris: Armand Colin, 1914); cited from the German edition of 1917: Die Kathedralen Frankreichs (Leipzig: K. Wolff, 1917), 4. An English translation of this book was pub lished in 1981. 86 Hilberseimer, “Grofistadtarchitektur,” 182; compare to this volume, p. 269.


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ence on the form ation o f the room and the building as such*1 The relationship betw een cell and organism , part and whole, is thus the central problem o f m etro polisarchitecture. A lthough many architects had called for an organic architecture by the tim e H il berseim er w rote these lines, H ilberseim er had very specific sources in mind. H is language of urban cells and organism s was derived from his close reading o f M artin M achler’s w riting on the city. H ilberseim er’s interest in articulating small and large scales in an unbroken continuum was first expressed in an analysis o f the experim ental films of his friends and colleagues Viking Eggeling and H ans R ichter: The works o f Eggeling and Richter demon strate a clear path. The principles according to which they are ordered are the constructive principles o f our own nature, a creative synthe sis— a great condensation and seamless inte gration from the smallest to the largest, from the largest to the smallest.** Thus the principle of unity according to which H il berseim er sought to shape the m etropolis appeared in exemplary form in avant-garde cinema, suggesting 87 Ibid., 182; com pare to this volum e, p. 270. 88 Ludwig H ilberseim er, “ B ew egungskunst,” Sozialisti sche Monatshefte 27, no. 10 (1921): 468.

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that Hilberseimer’s interest in integration across scales was coupled with an interest in conceptual integration across disciplines. In this way the laws of art might have an impact on the laws of archi tecture in the metropolis. In Hilberseim er’s theory, the individual building is no longer a basic element of architec ture. Instead, buildings are either aggregations of rooms or units of larger urban blocks. The task of m etropolisarchitecture is thus not the design of singular monuments; it is the shaping of “an often m onstrous and heterogeneous mass of m aterial.” As M anfredo Tafuri long ago rec ognized, H ilberseim er’s theory rejects the unique architectural object as a possible basis for practice: “Hilberseimer did not offer ‘mod els’ for designing, but rather established, at the most abstract and therefore most general level possible, the coordinates and dimensions of design itself.”89 For Hilberseimer it was not the formal model but the law of form that mattered; he displaced architectural design from an aes thetic of speculation to one based on the architect’s “organizational ability.” H ilber seimer summarized this position by recalling his own philosophical roots: To form great masses by suppressing ram pant multiplicity according to a general law is Nietzsche’s definition o f style: the general case, 89 Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia, 106.


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the law is respected and emphasized; the excep tion, however, is put aside, nuance is swept away; measure becomes master, chaos is forced to become form : logical, unambiguous, mathe matics, law.90 T he V ertical D im ension In O ctober 1924, soon after the exhibition of his work in the Sturm gallery, H ilberseim er em barked on a to u r o f W estern Europe. H e trav eled to the N etherland s w here he visited A m sterdam , U trecht, R otterdam , and T he H ague and m et G errit R ietveld, Jan Wils, J. J. R Oud, and others. H ilberseim er then traveled to Paris, and with the help o f a le tte r o f introduction from Paul W estheim , the ed ito r o f Das Kunstblatt, m et Le C orbusier.91 H ilberseim er was already fam il iar with Le C orbusier’s w ork, but the m eeting o f the two in P aris seem s to have been decisive for 90 H ilberseim er, “ G ro B stad tarch itek tu r,” 188-89; com pare to this volum e, pp. 279-80. F ritz N eum eyer has located the source o f H ilb erse im e r’s statem ent in one o f N ietzsche’s posth u m o u sly published fragm ents o f 1888: F ritz N eum eyer, “ N ietzsche and M odern A rch ite ctu re ,” in Nietzsche and "An Architecture o f our M inds," ed. A lex andre K ostka and Irving W ohlfarth (Los Angeles: G etty Research In stitu te , 1999), 303; F riedrich W ilhelm N ietzsche, Sdmtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, eds. G iorgio C olli and M azzino M ontinari, 15 vols. (M unich: D eutscher T aschenbuch Verlag and de G ruyter, 1980), 13: 246. H ilb erse im e r w ould use this p arap h ra se o f N ietzsche’s thoughts on style in m any texts, including the final lines o f Grofistadtarchitektur. 91 M engin, “ M odelle fiir eine m o derne G roB stadt,” 203.

64 Figs. 77-79 Figs.

14-16


Hilberseimer’s urban thinking. After his return to Berlin, Hilberseimer developed his schema for a High-rise City, which represented both a depar ture from his earlier interest in the decentralized programs of Ernst May and a response to Le Corbusier’s Ville Contemporaine for three million inhabitants (1922). First published in his pamphlet Grofistadtbauten (Metropolis buildings) of 1925, the High-rise City lent Hilberseimer’s conceptual program visual form and presented a synthesis of his critique of the capitalist metropolis.92 Hilberseim er’s response to Le Corbusier notwithstanding, the High-rise City also repre sents a condensation of Germ an thought on the tall building and urban density. Already in 1899, the industrialist, politician, and writer Walter Rathenau had recommended the introduction of the “City principle” into German urban planning to accommodate the fact that Berlin was trans forming from “Athens on the Spree” to “Chicago on the Spree.”93 Rathenau used the English word “City,” shorthand for the City of London, to dis tinguish the central business district from the rest of the Stadt, or city. And as Rathenau’s identification of Berlin with Chicago suggests, the City also referred to what Americans might call downtown or the city center. Following 92 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grofistadtbauten (Hannover: Aposs-Verlag, 1925). 93 Walther Rathenau, “Die schonste Stadt der Welt,” Die Zukunft 26, no. 1 (1899): 36-48.


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R athenau’s recom m endations on urban form, Karl Scheffler offered a program for an ideal metropolis based on the City principle in his 1913 book Die Architektur der Grofistadt: In the center is a logically form ed City, a com mercial city, which constitutes the core o f the metropolitan form and accommodates nothing but the form s that serve commerce and the his torically valuable parts o f the old city. A t many essential points in this City, i f not entirely, tall buildings will predominate, pri marily office buildings composed o f many equally valuable stories.9* The City was im agined as a zone o f increased vertical dim ensions th a t was to be devoted entirely to com m erce. As Scheffler m ade his rec om m endations, the tall building becam e a topic of popular interest. T he daily new spaper Ber liner Morgenpost (Berlin M orning Post) published a pam phlet on Berlins dritte Dimension (B erlin’s Third D im ension) in 1912, w hich featured an affirm ative co n trib u tio n from P eter Behrens and a cover illustrating a city o f tow ers by the artist Kurt Szafranski. In 1913 the architect-artist K. Paul A ndrae initiated his series o f views o f Ber lin as a city o f skyscrapers, som e o f which would be featured in the “ E xhibition o f U nknow n A rchitects” in 1919. 94 Scheffler, Die Architektur der Grofistadt, 14.

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Hilberseim er’s first serious consideration of the tall building appeared in the essay “Ameri kanische A rchitektur” of 1920. In the firm grip of Amerikanismus—a particular mix of enthusi asm and apprehension for all things American that spread throughout Europe between the w ars— Hilberseim er focused on the new formal problems presented by the skyscraper.95 He praised John Root’s M onadnock Building in Chicago for having dem onstrated and inter preted anew the “cubic-rhythmic” basis of architecture. For Hilberseimer, Root’s “reinterpretation of the window” was a major achievement. In the M onadnock Building the window lacks formal accentuation; it appears, in Hilberseim er’s words, as a “positive function” that represents an “element in a pattern that is stretched around the entire building.”96 In Hil berseim er’s interpretation, this simple, repetitive articulation based on the alternation of surface and aperture represented a “new unifying archi tectural m om ent.” While Hilberseim er criticized many later skyscraper designs for their typical “Palladian misunderstandings a la Parisienne,” he celebrated the strong “vertical-cubic” masses of Ernest G raham ’s Equitable Building in New York. H ilberseim er refined his thinking on the 95 On Amerikanismus see Jean-Louis Cohen, Scenes o f the World to Come: European Architecture and the American Challenge, 1893-1960 (Paris: Flammarion, 1995). 96 Hilberseimer and Rusker, “Amerikanische Architek tur,” 541.


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tall building two years later in Das Kunstblatt. His essay “D as H ochhaus” (The High-rise) of 1922 reiterated m any o f the points he had already m ade and expressed his w onder at the tall build ings o f A m erican cities: In New York’s high mountain ranges o f houses, the material ethos o f our time found its most powerful expression. L ike everything authentic that seeks formation (G estaltung), material ism found its form here. While in Europe this hypertrophy remained limited, the uninhibited drive fo r speculation with the high-rises o f American metropolises has produced something almost fantastical. Only in the East are there urban form s o f similar, uninhibited fantasy.91 H ilb erseim er no te d th a t the high-rises o f New York appear as m ountains because the tall building in A m erica had generally been tre ated as a row house, w hich “despite the m asquerade o f styles relinquishes any individual effect.” T he situ a tio n in G erm any was different, he claim ed, w here high-rises were being planned as the d o m inant features o f individual streets and squares. H ilberseim er was w riting in the m idst of G erm any’s Hochhausfieber (H igh-rise fever).98 Prew ar enthusiasm for the building type grew 97 Ludwig H ilberseim er, “ D as H o c hhaus,” Das Kunst blatt 6 (1922): 525.

Fig. 10

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into a variety of speculative proposals, the most widely publicized of which was the competition, announced in 1921, for a high-rise on a triangu lar site next to the Friedrichstrasse station in Berlin. With more than 140 projects submitted, the com petition offered a panoram a of German interpretations of the tall building. Reviewing the com petition, Hilberseimer identified Hans Poelzig’s brick-clad, tri-corner project and the Luckhardt brothers’ horizontally articulated high-rise as the best of the competition. Echoing his critique of the extravagances of Expression ism, he noted that m ost architects had turned the event into an opportunity to “lose oneself in rom anticism .” Hilberseim er described Hans Scharoun’s project as “more original than resolved.”99 While he failed to mention Mies’s submission to the competition, in Grofistadtar chitektur H ilberseim er offered an affirmative review of Mies’s projects for tall buildings, calling his high-rise in iron and glass an attem pt to “design the object from the very essence of the new task.”100 Hilberseim er’s praise for M ies’s project could describe his own approach to highrise design, the first examples of which date from 1922-23. His project for the competition 98 Dietrich Neumann, Die Wolkenkratzer kommen!: Deutsche Hochhauser der Zwanziger Jahre: Debatten, Pro jekte, Bauten (Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1995). 99 Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Architektur,” Das Kunstblatt 6 (1922): 132. 100 Hilberseimer, Grofistadtarchitektur, 68.


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: ^ S § Fig. 4 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Tribune Tower project, 1922

70 Fig. 4

Fig. 56


for the Chicago Tribune headquarters of 1922, which was never actually subm itted to the jury, dem onstrated his interest in reducing architec tural form to its most elemental state, confirming his statem ent that architecture had become “alm ost pure construction.” 101 Its tight grid of windows recalls both the minimal articulation of R oot’s M onadnock Building and the abstract buildings featured in George Grosz’s paintings. H ilberseim er’s celebration of the formal achievements of certain American skyscrapers did not blind him to the tension between the high-rise and urban structure. In addition to lim iting formal expression, the treatm ent of the high-rise as a row house exacerbated the traffic problem, which Hilberseim er considered the “Alpha and Omega of the entire urban organ ism .” In formulating his solution to the traffic problem in the High-rise City, Hilberseimer drew on contem porary critiques of the sky scraper. Raymond Unwin’s paper “Higher building in relation to town planning” was par ticularly im portant. Unwin dem onstrated that the concentration of workers in a skyscraper like the Woolworth Building in M anhattan produced congested sidewalks and sluggish circulation at rush hours. He argued that “you do not dispense with transportation by going up; you merely change the horizontally moving omnibus for the vertically travelling lift, and incidentally make 101 Hilberseimer, “Das Hochhaus,” 526.


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walking for even short journeys far more diffi cu lt.” 102 U nw in’s conclusion that nothing was to be gained from crowding was echoed by W erner H egem ann in his book Amerikanische Architektur und Stadtbaukunst (A m erican A rchitecture and U rban Building-A rt) o f 1925.103 A resum e o f the in ternational urban planning exhibition held in G othenburg in 1923, H egem ann’s book cele brated neo-R enaissance and other traditionalist trends then active in the U nited States. It also presented prelim inary studies by the Regional Plan A ssociation o f N ew York. H arvey Wiley C o rb ett’s proposal for the superim position of multiple types o f circulation was extensively illustrated. C orbett had explored the vertical stacking o f transportation already in 1913, when his provocative im age o f a city o f elevated side walks was featured in Scientific American In 1924 he published a proposal for ‘‘different levels for foot, wheel, and rail” that was illustrated in a series o f draw ings by H ugh F erriss.105 These images featured prom inently in both H ege m ann’s book and Grofistadtarchitektur. C o rb ett’s

.l04

102 Raym ond U nw in, “ H igher b uilding in rela tio n to town planning,” RIBA Jo u rn a l'll, no. 5 (1924): 126. 103 W erner H egem ann, Amerikanische Architektur und Stadtbaukunst: Ein Uberblick iiber den heutigen Stand der amerikanischen Baukunst in ihrer Beziehung zum Stadtebau (Berlin: E. W asm uth, 1925). 104 H enry H a rriso n Suplee, “T he Elevated Sidew alk,” Scientific American 69, no. 4(1913): 67. 105 H arvey W iley C orbett, “ D ifferent Levels for F oot, W heel, and R ail,” American City 31, no. 7 (1924): 2-6.

Fig. 5

Figs. 11-12

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SflENTIFicA MERIČAN1

... Fig. 5 Harvey Wiley Corbett, Future New York, 1913; from Scientific American, 26 July 1913


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proposal for the subm ersion o f rail traffic below grade and the elevation o f pedestrian traffic above the street undoubtedly appeared to H il berseim er as an exem plary solution to the circulation problem s created by the high-rise. H ilberseim er’s critique of Le C orbusier’s Ville C ontem poraine echoed U nw in’s and C or b ett’s critique o f the skyscraper. H e m aintained that Le C orbusier’s plan, for all its geom etric elegance, was based on a faulty circulation p at tern. Specifically, H ilberseim er questioned the arithm etic th at allow ed Le C orbusier to claim that he had increased the density o f his city cen ter and preserved 95 percent o f the area as green space by concentrating w orkplaces in sixty-story skyscrapers. T hrough a calculation o f the space required for the m ovem ent o f pedestrians and autom obiles, H ilberseim er determ ined th a t the dem ands o f circulation w ould reduce the am ount of green space available to each person in the central city to a m inim al tw o to three square meters. T his reduction effectively neutralized the value o f open space in Le C orbusier’s city center. “ F u rth erm o re,” H ilberseim er w rote, “the vertical traffic will becom e dow nright catastrophic in these enorm ous sixty-story com m ercial buildings during rush-hour pe riods or in an em ergency situation because, in eradicating the horizontal congestion of streets by im posing great spaciousness, Le C or busier did nothing oth e r than shift this h ori zontal congestion into a vertical congestion o f

Figs.

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Figs.

17-19


high-rises.”106A lthough he appreciated the strict order of Le Corbusier’s geometric system, Hil berseimer understood it as only a relative solution to the traffic problem. An absolute solution would have to render traffic superfluous. Despite Le Corbusier’s emphatic applica tion of the skyscraper, Hilberseim er viewed the Ville Contem poraine as an essentially horizon tal urban form. H ilberseim er’s High-rise City, on the other hand, depends on the superimposition of functional zones. It is, in his words, “two cities stacked vertically, as it were.” 107 Hilber seim er’s plan for a city of one million inhabitants is based on a series of long, slender slabs. In each block, five lower stories serve commercial functions; fifteen upper stories contain resi dences. As in C orbett’s proposal for New York, elevated footpaths link residential zones; auto mobile traffic travels on grade; and rail traffic is submerged below ground. Because city dwellers are to live above their places of work, horizontal circulation within the city is reduced to a mini mum. A lthough H ilberseim er’s High-rise City has often been criticized for its lack of green space, he considered access to the natural world to be among the advantages offered by con centration: “in contrast to today’s urban frag mentation, which results in hours of travel in 106 Hilberseimer, Grofistadtarchitektur, 16; see this vol ume, p. 121. 107 Ibid., 17; see this volume, p. 123.


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order to reach the countryside, the spatial con centration o f this city enables one to reach the countryside quickly w ith the help o f a corre sponding w ell-developed rail system .” 108 The H igh-rise City thus appears as a dense, orga nized, city center th a t integrates spaces of habitation and spaces o f labor through vertical concentration— a site o f m etropolitan intensity situated w ithin a bro ad er regional landscape. H ilberseim er’s H igh-rise City was one of several projects for the reform o f the m etropolis produced in the early 1920s. T he proposal could be com pared to R ichard N e u tra ’s Rush City or Farkas M olnar’s so-called K U R I City.109 H ilber seim er’s contem poraries m ost often considered the H igh-rise C ity in relatio n to Le C o rb u sier’s Ville C ontem poraine. H ugo H aring offered a trenchant critique o f each o f th eir proposals in his essay “Zwei S tad te” (Two C ities) o f 1926.

108 Ibid., 20; see this volum e, p. 131. 109 On N e u tra ’s Rush C ity see T hom as S. H ines, Richard Neutra and the Search fo r Modern Architecture: A Biography and History (Berkeley: U niversity o f C alifornia Press, 1994); on M o ln ar’s K U R I C ity see R enate BanikSchweitzer, “ U rban Visions, P lans, and Projects, 18901937,” in Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe 1890-1937, ed. Eve Blau and M onika Platzer (M unich: P restel, 1999), 58-72. H ilb erse im e r’s High-rise C ity should also be com pared to his relatively u ndocum ented p roject for a Wohlfahrtsstadt (W elfare City), which sought to synthesize the seem ingly c o u n te r vailing tendencies o f c o n c en tra tio n and d ecentralization and was exhibited as a large m odel in S uttg a rt in 1928.

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H aring saw the basic problem of urban planning as the creation of a “non-geom etric concept of planning” that could accommodate human indi viduality. He opposed the subordination of hum an developm ent to the “principles of orga nization of a mechanistic world” and noted that “man is entirely banished from Hilberseim er’s city; in Le C orbusier’s city he is only a guest, passing through.” 110 Despite Hilberseim er’s intentions, the Czech critic Karel Teige wrote in his essay “ K sociologii architektury” (Toward a Sociology of A rchitecture) that Hilberseim er’s city was based on the fundamentally Corbusian principles of maximum centralization.111 H ilberseim er’s High-rise City, and Grofistadtar chitektur as a whole, found perhaps its strongest and m ost sustained resonance in the Soviet Union. In 1928, as the USSR was preparing for a wave of urbanization foreseen by the First Five-year Plan, H ilberseim er’s High-rise City became the center o f a debate in the pages of Stroitel’stvo Moskvy (Construction of Moscow). One com m entator compared the project to Le C orbusier’s ideas, which Soviet architects knew well, and praised it as a “rational attem pt at solving the m ost pressing questions posed by the contem porary science of urban planning.” 112 110 Hugo Haring, “Zwei Stadte,” Die Form 1, no. 8 (1926): 172-73. 111 Karel Teige, “K sociologii architektury,” ReD 3, nos. 6-7(1930): 191.


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In response, an o th er critic anticipated H ilber seim er’s later description o f the H igh-rise City as a necropolis: “W hat is the vertical city? It is a cemetery! A row o f houses shaped like grave stones enclosed by a green fence.” 113 In 1932 significant po rtio n s o f Grofistadtarchitektur appeared in R ussian tra n slatio n in D avid A rkin’s anthology o f recent architecture o f E urope and A m erica Arkhitektura sovremennogo zapada (A rchitecture o f the C ontem porary W est).114 And the H igh-rise City w ould be featured, albeit with critical com m entary, in A leksei Shchusev and L. E. Z agorskii’s Arkhitekturnaia organizatsiia goroda (A rchitectural O rganization o f the City) o f 1934.115 H ilberseim er offered a final proposal for the vertical organization o f the city in his “Vorschlag zur C ity-B ebauung” (P roposal for City-Center D evelopm ent), 1929-30.116 C reated in response the Berlin City C ouncil’s decision to 112 Vit. L-v, “ V ertikal’nyi g o ro d ,” Stroitel’stvo M oskvy 5, no. 7 (1928): 21-23. 113 Iu. G., “O tv e tn a s ta t’iu Vit. L -v a ‘V ertikal’nyi go ro d ’,” Stroitel’stvo M oskvy 5, no. 12 (1928): 18. 114 See note 11, p. 22. 115 A. V. Shchusev and L. E. Z agorskii, Arkhitekturnaia organizatsiia goroda (M oscow : G o sstro iizd at, 1934). 1,6 The project was first published in Das Kunstblatt and subsequently expanded in Die Form. T he essay p u b lished in Die Form was re p rin ted in M oderne Bauformen and is included in this volum e: Ludw ig H ilberseim er, “Vorschlag zu r C ity-B ebauung,” Das Kunstblatt 13(1929): 93-95; “V orschlag zur C ity-B ebauung,” Die Form 5, nos.

Figs. 78-86

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institute new guidelines for high-rise con struction in the city center, Hilberseimer’s pro posal represents a further development of the High-rise City.1,7The project retains the superimposition transportation networks but removes dwellings from the city center. This was to be a city of work; specifically, Kopfarbeit, intellectual work of the kind Siegfried Kracauer documented in his study of the “intellectually homeless” salaried masses of Germany’s new class of white-collar workers.118 Underground parking garages and subway platforms connect directly to the lower floors of long, narrow blocks. The first two floors of each block contain spaces for commerce: vast 23-24 (1930): 608-11; “Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung,” Moderne Bauformen 30, no. 3 (1931): 55-59; see this vol ume, pp. 290-305. 117 H ilberseimer’s project was one of several responses to this policy change that the Berliner City-Ausschuss (Ber lin City Committee) had promoted since its founding in 1926. The Committee was a nongovernmental interest group of Berlin-based businessmen. It was chaired by Alexander Flinsch and received intellectual direction from M artin Machler. Hilberseimer’s proposal can be compared to Hugo Haring’s studies for Berlin’s city cen ter. See Balg, ed., Martin Machler, 169-172; Matthias Schirren and Sylvia Claus, eds., Hugo Haring: Architekt des neuen Bauens 1882-1958 (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2001), 184-85. 118 On H ilberseimer’s city and the problem of intellectual labor see Aureli, “Architecture for Barbarians,” 6. On Germany’s white-collar workers see Siegfried Kracauer, Die Angestellten (Frankfurt: Societats-Verlag, 1930); Sieg fried Kracauer, The Salaried Masses, trans. Quintin Hoare (London: Verso, 1998).


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halls, storage spaces, sales floors, and so on. Above, two narrow, six-story slabs rise from the broad base. Separated by a courtyard that runs the length of the block, the slabs are devoted exclusively to office space. Their interiors are entirely open, constituting generic surfaces that can be reconfigured at will. H ilberseim er pre sented his proposal in refined plans and sections and a striking axonom etric line drawing, which has been interpreted as an image in which “all dissonances and disjunctions are absorbed, all differences canceled.” 119 H ilberseim er also pre sented his proposal in an iconic photom ontage dem onstrating the im plem entation of his plan on a m ulti-block site in a rectangle bordered by U nter den Linden and the G endarm enm arkt in the center o f historical Berlin. The tension betw een the axonom etric purity and the photographic concreteness that H ilberseim er deployed in his proposal corre sponds to the tension th at anim ates the relationship betw een the general and the partic ular in H ilberseim er’s theory o f the m etropolis. If his P roposal for C ity-C enter D evelopm ent sought to address the questions raised by the city of intellectual w ork, H ilberseim er approached these questions from two extrem es: These very important and incisive questions require detailed clarification, which can only be 119 Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 182.

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M ETRO PO LISA RC H ITECTU RE accomplished through theoretical preparatory work, because the chaos o f the contemporary metropolis can only be confronted with experi ments in theoretical demonstration ,120

The aim of experiment is “to develop, in th purely abstract, the basic principles of urba planning from contem porary requirem ents.”1 Abstraction from the particular is thus prepart tory work toward the identification an coordination of the disparate relationships th< constitute the metropolis. This m ethod—confrontation through at straction—was already present in the High rise City, and it might characterize Hilbei seimer’s fundam ental approach to the metropolis Both H ilberseim er’s writing and projects can b seen as theoretical dem onstrations that, despit the chaos engendered by “the principle of specu lation,” the m etropolis, like the Construct ivist object and the abstract film, posses ses immanent laws of organization. In thi way, Hilberseim er’s projects for the metropo lis were abstractions designed to reveal the ele m entary logic of architecture and urbai form — theoretical experiments intended, ii Hilberseim er’s words, to enable the metropoli: to “discover its own laws.” Once discovered 120 Hilberseimer, “Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung,” Da Kunstblatt, 93; compare to this volume, p. 112. 121 Ibid., 94; compare to this volume, p. 112.


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H ilberseim er thought, the basic elem ents of the m etropolis could then be reassem bled as a com plex, ordered unity. M easure w ould then rule, chaos could becom e form , and logic would reign. Although H ilberseim er regularly insisted that his projects had no prospect o f realization, he nevertheless m aintained th a t “ seem ingly u to pian hypotheses indicate the real path that necessity will force us to follow sooner or later.” 122 T he question today is w hether we are too early or too late to see H ilberseim er’s hypoth eses tested by the force o f necessity.

Metropolisarchitecture

The Metropolis The design of the environment is one of humani ty’s primary tasks. State and city planning constitute essential elements of this design. States and cities are mutually dependent and always interrelated. Metropolises, and world cities in particular, are the energy centers of both states and the world these states produce; they are inter sections of the flow of human activity, economics, and spirit. The city, and above all the metropolis, therefore cannot be considered an independent organism existing for itself alone. The city grows with and is connected to the people who produce it; the all-encompassing economic system con nects it to the entire civilized world. This world constitutes a collective organism. Comprehend ing the laws of this organism is a crucial preliminary task of planned design. The constructive method must follow an investigative analysis—a system atic investigation and evaluation of the fundamental and the essential. Human societies produce organizational Commu nity forms that correspond to their respective produc formation tive capacities: the loosely defined tribal area is replaced by the more firmly articulated village at the level of agrarian production. The firmly orga nized city emerges at the level of artisan production. At the final stage of industry, trade, and traf fic—the highest stage of human social organization to date—the metropolis and world city appear. Design o f the environ ment

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The m etropolis is a product of the economic Econom ic developm ent o f the m odern era. It is the natural prem ises and necessary result o f global industrialization. Large cities o f the past differ from m odern m etropolises prim arily in their entirely disparate econom ic foundations. These cities o f the past corresponded to the stage o f m aterial productive forces that determ ined the econom ic structure of the society that produced them . Therefore these historical cities cannot be com pared to the m od ern m etropolis and no portentous parallel can be draw n betw een them . A ccording to Friedrich Engels, Rom an im perial society reached the sum mit o f sim ple com m odity production but collapsed at the threshold o f capitalist m odes of production, while the m odern m etropolis pre supposes the capitalist m ode o f production.1 T he conspicuously large num ber o f m etrop T he large olises, in co n trast to the relatively isolated larger num ber o f m e cities o f the past, is a further result o f this m od tropolises ern econom ic organization. Indeed, there is a tendency to extend the m etropolis across an entire c o u n try — across the entire civilized world. F or the m om ent this trend operates in an overly exploitative fashion th a t corresponds to speculative private interests, which lack planned organization. Yet this tendency has the undeni able aim o f productively integrating every 1 [H ilberseim er refers to the ou tlin e o f the social and econom ic developm ent o f the R om an Em pire th at Engels provides in The Origin o f the Family, Private Property, and the State, w hich was first published in 1884.]

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Today’s metro polis


person into the collective economic organism. It is im portant to recognize that the metropolis is not an enlargement of the antiquated urban model. The metropolis differentiates itself according to its characteristics, not only accord ing to its size. A city becomes a metropolis only through the introduction of certain economic phenomena, primarily through the concentra tion of capital, people, and the industrial exploitation of both. With the disappearance of these factors, the metropolis will dissolve—a large population alone is not enough to make a large city a metropolis. Thus the present form of the metropolis owes its appearance primarily to the economic form of capitalist imperialism, which, for its part, developed in close collaboration with sci ence and technologies of production. Its powers extend far beyond national economies and increasingly into the global economy. An excess of intensity and energy is achieved through extreme concentration and comprehensive orga nization. Since production for one’s own needs is no longer sufficient, aggressive overproduction is encouraged; the focus is on stimulating needs rather than satisfying them. Thus the metropolis appears first and foremost as a creation of allpowerful capital; as a feature of its anonymity; as an urban form with its own economic, social, and collective psychic foundations that enable the simultaneous isolation and tightest amalga mation of its inhabitants. A rhythm of life

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am plified a thousand tim es displaces the local and the individual. M etropolises share a certain resem blance w ith one another; one finds an in ternationalism in their appearance. They do not relate to specific dom ains like royal capitals; that is, they represent neither the physiognomy nor the image o f th eir state and nation. By confusing m etropolises w ith royal capi tals, the seats o f bureaucracy, many have branded m etropolises parasites on the rest o f their respective countries. They are seen only as con sum ers, not producers. Entirely m isjudging its true essence, m any have overlooked the fact that the m etropolis itse lf accelerates econom ic pro duction processes by draw ing econom ic control ever faster and m ore consciously to itself. This acceleration has contributed greatly to the pro ductive labor and intellectual achievem ents of the nation. Today’s econom ic relationships sim ultaneously condition the m etropolis and are, in turn, conditioned by the activity o f the m etropolis. T hus it is understandable that the m etropolis is m ost strongly form ed in nations that in recent generations have experienced the m ost intense industrial developm ent: Am erica, England, G erm any, and Belgium. T he Rom ance and Slavic nations have, as yet, very little o f the required concentration o f capital and highly reproductive proletariat. W ith the fall o f feudalism the bourgeoisie saw itse lf as the m aster o f the w orld and assum ed a place o f pow er for w hich is was ill prepared.

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Nineteenth-century forms of production brought unexpected development to nations that, with out the organizational capacities required to manage such production, implemented entirely insufficient regulatory measures. With surprisDisorga- ing abundance, a great number of forces nized city clamored for and instigated the formation of building metropolises, yet it was not possible to harness or organize these forces or to make their excesses useful to the general public or the collective pop ulation. Instead of thoughtfully and sys tematically addressing all public needs, one attem pted merely to satisfy fleeting demands without consideration for general interests. Long-term responsibility was quite easily deferred. Everything was left to private initia tive, whose essential point of view was to drive up land values and rental profits as high as pos sible. There was no general or directed aim, which would have been necessary to turn such a comprehensive social form as the metropolis into a functioning organism. This is why the primary characteristic of metropolises is disorganization. The organizing spirit, as it is expressed in the management of great industrial and trade corporations, has been entirely disregarded in the planning and construc tion of metropolises. In the former the principle of the division of labor systematically organizes False the entire company. In the latter everything is growth confused. Residential quarters are infiltrated by noisy, smoking factories or by traffic-producing

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com mercial buildings. The spatial exploitation required in the city center is thoughtlessly applied to residential districts as well.2 Streets are sche m atically planned. Building codes are applied uniform ly to all types o f buildings w ithout dif ferentiating according to purpose or taking into consideration special characteristics. M etropo lises lack any sort o f organizing design. The more spontaneously and unexpectedly they developed, the m ore they are the products of mere happen stance. The various forces that com pose metropolises run ram pant, w orking against each other instead o f collaborating, so energy is lost rather than gained. It is a m isuse and consum p tion o f people w ithout result. T h at the m etropolis can be abused like everything else does not speak against the m etropolis, but against the abuser. A nd the abuser is capitalism . Its ruth less exploitative ori en tation is concerned only w ith profit and p rofitability n o t w ith people. This is the basis of the destructive character o f all o f capitalism ’s en terprises, including the m etropolis. Only in a socially o rdered society, w here production cor responds to the needs o f people, not to the greed for profit o f the privileged, can the m etropolis becom e a purposeful organism , can it change from a d estructive to a constructive entity. This 2 [H ilberseim er uses the E nglish w ord C ity in the origi nal, which is re n d ere d here as city center. H e follows B ritish usage o f C ity as s h o rth an d for a specialized busi ness d istrict. See this volum e, pp. 64-65]

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depends on the spirit that builds the city, which is today, however, of a very comfortable mecha nistic variety. A city born of the spirit of speculation will be always an artificial, never a necessary product. And everything artificial awaits an imminent downfall. According to Henry Ford the modern metropolis has been wasteful. It is bankrupt today and will tomorrow cease to exist because its lifes pan is determined solely by its functionality and profitability.3When both fail, decline will set in. So the end of the metropolis? NO! But an end to the metropolis that is based on the principle of speculation and whose very organism cannot free itself from the model of the city of the past despite all the modifications it has experienced—an end to the metropolis that has yet to discover its own laws.

3 [Hilberseimer paraphrases Henry Ford’s statement in My Life and Work (1922): “The modern city has been prodigal, it is to-day bankrupt, and to-morrow it will cease to be.” Ford’s book was translated into German in 1923. In German, “the modern city” is rendered as “Die moderne Grofistadt” (the modern metropolis), bringing F ord’s statement semantically closer to Hilberseimer’s concerns. See Henry Ford with Samuel Crowther, My Life and Work (Garden City: G arden City Publishing Co., 1922), 193; Mein Leben und Werk (Leipzig: Paul List, 1923). 225.1

Urban Planning The task o f the urban planner extends far beyond the present. It is he who will determ ine, in broad strokes, the city and the urban life o f the future. Therefore the basis o f all urban construction m ust be a com prehensive plan, which, with thought and care, takes into account the various needs o f a future com munity; considers the geo graphic and topographic location o f the city; and does not leave the city’s national, economic, and productive im portance out o f consideration. The definition o f the means o f tran sp o rtatio n —train T ra n sp o r tation and canal routes, m ain streets, elevated and underground tra in s— is o f prim ary im portance. These are the arteries o f the entire organism . O f sim ilar im portance is the division o f the city into F unc tional residential, com m ercial, and industrial quarters division according to the conditions and qualities o f the territory and in consideration of the correspond ing needs. Likewise the building o f parks, green spaces, and bodies o f w ater throughout the urban organism is o f g reat im portance. In order to elim inate land speculation, which has had devastating effects on our cities, in the future such a plan m ust be preceded by a com prehensive expropriation of the land so that the city can develop spatially unhindered. T he claim s o f private property m ust necessarily concede to the claim s o f the general public in the construction o f a city. U rban plan ning is not a private concern but a public matter.

92 / Two j urban types

The natural city

Camillo Sitte


Over the centuries two urban types have emerged, which seem, from a philosophical per spective, to be diametrically opposed, but in practice have influenced one another greatly: the naturally developing city and the artificial geometric city. The naturally developed city is not the cre ation of a single will, but the product of a long evolution. Like the city of the Middle Ages, it is the work of many generations. It was organized either radially around a center—with a cloister, a cathedral, or a castle as the focal point—or it was organized along a river or military road with an extended center, so that the streets radiate out like fingers. The advantages of the natural city are found in its complete adaptation to the ter rain. The physiognomy of its streets depends on the individual house, whose narrowness can adapt to any form. Depressed by the desolation o f today’s cities, Camillo Sitte was the first to attem pt to identify the causes of this bleakness and to propose remedies.4 He took the medieval city as a model and made an artificial system the principle of this form of development. He mis takenly sought models in the past and tried to pose the problem of urban planning in purely formal terms, divorced from technical and hygienic factors. This urban system has nothing to offer the present. It is the result of slow 4 [See Camillo Sitte, Der Stddtebau nach seinen kurtstlerischen Grundsatzen (Vienna: Karl Gaeser, 1889).]

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organic evolution. On the o ther hand, contem porary urban developm ent, particularly in its scope, requires extensive foresight. Its specifica tions guide developm ent down certain paths, so that the plan, which in the past was a result, becomes today a necessary precondition. These The dem ands correspond in large m easure to the geom etric city geom etrically p artitio n ed urban system. It is a typical product o f colonization. Even the peo ples o f antiquity used such a system for founding cities. It proved itse lf to be very suitable when it was im portant to quickly and crudely delim it urban terrain th a t was to be rapidly developed. Yet despite the various form s this urban system acquired from the R enaissance through the Baroque, it has nevertheless been applied to the m odern m etropolis as prim itively as it was to those old colonial cities, though the scope is indeed far greater. As a result o f its schem atic Schem a tic ap application, this urban system has been greatly plication discredited. D ue to convenience, thoughtless ness, and lack o f im agination, it has been senselessly applied w ithout consideration for the terrain , the relationship to the sun, and w ith out p roper p erspective or architectonic sense. It has been m uch disputed as to which of these system s is superior. It is unnecessary to try to reach a general decision on this m atter. P racti cal requirem ents and artistic sensibility alone are decisive. M ore im p o rtan t than any system is the organism th a t is to be designed. F or creative people, system s are only a m eans tow ard design,

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never ends unto themselves. The widespread opinion that any unevenness of terrain prevents Bath and geometric planning is unfounded. The Baroque Canberra has shown that even on uneven terrain a com pletely organized and geometric layout can b achieved, as in the city of Bath built on the hills of Avon to the east of Bristol. Or to name a more Fig. 6 recent example, Canberra, the new Australiai capital which is being built according to the plans of the American architect Walter Burley Griffin. It is a consistently executed geometric desigi laid out on a hilly terrain dotted with lakes. American For the time being, American metropolises metropo- m 0st purely embody the m etropolitan type. lises Americans created straight streets for objective reasons: in addition to the clarity attained, which eases the flow of traffic, a rectilinear network of streets has the advantage of producing rectangu lar city blocks. New York has already had a district designed according to these principles for 100 years: M anhattan, today’s business cen ter. The layout of Philadelphia, whose center is based on a plan by William Penn, is founded on similar principles. In W ashington the rectilinear network of streets is overlaid by a system of diagonal streets in order to ease traffic. Of par ticular note is the plan of the projected city Fig 7 Prince Rupert in British Columbia by Brett and Hall of Boston. The city is laid out on two pla teaus that are divided by a deep stone ravine. The residential quarter extends along the inclination of a hill, with streets that are adapted to the

Fig. 7 Brett and Hall, Plan o f Prince Rupert, British Columbia, 1909

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terrain. The commercial city, which is situated on the plateau, is subdivided by a grid of streets. It is one of the few examples of a radical separa tion o f the residential and the commercial city. Neglected The common element in these urban proj design ects lies in their neglect of design. Their construction is an undisciplined outgrowth of the urban plan. They are an inorganic accumula tion of opposed elements. Their layout is determ ined exclusively by economic viewpoints whose narrow-mindedness is becoming mori and more apparent, thus throwing the usefulness of such urban forms into question. For contem porary urban planning the most City ex tensions im portant and m ost essential problem is the city extension. Several systems have been developed to meet this need, the m ost im portant of which are the concentric and the radial systems. The The con oldest is the concentric system: expansion centric through the installation of a new ring in the sense system of a medieval city, where the circular defensive wall, if rebuilt farther out, allowed a new ringshaped extension. This form of extension has survived even into the era of intensified traffic, yet it proves to be wholly inadequate for the metropolis. It enables not systematic growth but systematic compression. In the place of a ring The radial form ation, the radial system proposes a radial system axis o f development. Instead of forcing the developed and undeveloped land to conform to a belt-shaped space, a wedge-like extension allows a more intensive exploitation of undeveloped


97

land for the po p u latio n .5 Yet this is also not a final solution but only a provisional remedy, which expires when the grow ing city has reached a certain size. Then this sort of extension is like wise no longer a fundam ental im provem ent, but only an attem pt at renovation m ade in the spirit of com prom ise. T he problem of the m etropolis has yet to be The un solved in term s o f residential hygiene or traffic resolved m anagem ent. F or som e time, one thought that system of the m etro the housing problem could be disregarded polis because this was prim arily a m atter of ap a rt ments for proletarians, who generally receive very little attention. F or them , the w orst was good enough. T he traffic problem , on the other hand, soon dem anded g reat attention. Yet both residential and traffic problem s are closely con nected, because the traffic o f the m etropolis is, of course, not an end unto itself but a m eans in the hands o f the inhabitant o f the m etropolis. Thus the urban planner m ust consider them both at the sam e tim e, as they are the m ost im portant aspects o f the entire com plex o f urban planning. The sterility and unsustainable character of urban extension system s to date has already led to a new system o f city extension and to a new 5 [H ilberseim er alludes to the w edge-like green spaces devised by B runo M ohring and R udolf E b ersta d t as “ green lungs” for B erlin in th eir entry for the C om peti tion for G reater B erlin o f 1910. See R udolf E berstadt, Handbuch des Wohnungswesens und der Wohungsfrage 4th ed. (Jena: G ustav Fischer, 1920), 232-33.]

98 The separa tion of districts

The satellite system


system of urban planning in general. Attempts have been made to create perfect housing devel opments through the complete separation of residential districts from centers of work. It is no accident that these attem pts began in Eng land, the country that without a doubt has the most developed residential culture. In England attem pts have always been made to separate working and living quarters, which was, however, only ever possible for the upper classes. Here as well, the proletariat, the largest part of the popu lation, was condemned to live in impossible apartm ents in working-class districts, which are the same in all metropolises. In a certain sense they make up the true international character of the metropolis. The rapid growth of the m etro polises has only ever made these districts worse. The separation or dissolution of the m etro polis into residential and working quarters leads ultim ately to the form ation of the satellite sys tem. Arranged concentrically around the heart of the city, the center, which in the future will only be a place of work, are self-sufficient living quarters at a sufficient distance— satellite cities of a limited population size, whose distance from the central city can be quite great given today’s means of transportation, that of a rapid train system built specifically for commuters. In spite of the local self-sufficiency of these living quarters, they remain elements of a collective system, remaining closely connected with the city center, with which they form an


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econom ic and governm ental unit. T he residents o f satellite cities w ork in the city center. The center will gradually becom e a place o f work, w ithout residential quarters, as these are to be fully excluded. It will be objected that the transport of these great m asses o f people to the central city will cause extrem e difficulties, even that it will be im possible, because currently it is not even pos sible to m anage traffic w ithin the m etropolis itself. As justified as this critique is, one m ust keep the following in mind. Raym ond Unwin, a specialist in housing at the English M inistry of H ealth and one o f the key supporters o f the sat ellite city system , has calculated according to statistics that 60 percent o f all the workers in L ondon work in districts different from those in which they live. Indeed, in m any cases the num ber o f w orkers who leave their district to go to work is the sam e as those who travel to the same M asses district to work. Because these great masses of peo p le— in N ew York there are three m il o f people lio n — who m ust be transported to and from the central city, already live apart from their w ork places, they could ju s t as well live outside the city in a satellite district. W ith system atic organiza tion it is even possible for com m uting tim e to be reduced and for the population to live in healthy, respectable dwellings. London already has two such satellite cities: Letchw orth w ith 35,000 and Welwyn w ith 40,000 inhabitants, yet the city is w orking intensively on future satellites.

100


Constructing satellite cities also allows the developed area to be restricted. Building activ ity, which has always been distributed across the entire m etropolitan periphery, can be concen trated at certain points, which will be relatively quickly developed and thereby always have a completed character. Today’s urban periphery with its exposed firewalls and innumerable streets leading nowhere will disappear. The m etropolis will become an organically unified figure and the necessary connection to open land will finally be established. Restricting the devel oped surface of the city will also be of great im portance for traffic planning. In connection with such a far-ranging urban extension, the inner city m ust be renovated and, accordingly, the population redistributed. By The inner creating new residential quarters, the entire city is inner city will be made free for commercial life. only a streets must be regulated, and narrow, unsanicommer, , ciai city tary> an<* poorly constructed buildings and blocks m ust be demolished and rebuilt. Renova tion must not be hindered by a sentimental consideration for history, because our task is not to conserve the past, but to prepare the way for Paris the future. T hat even a medieval urban center can be reconstructed according to modern requirem ents is dem onstrated by the sweeping renovation and redesign of Paris, which was exe cuted by Georges-Eugčne Haussm ann around the middle of the nineteenth century. Even if this renovation was determined by strategic


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considerations and is today outdated, its actual purpose was nevertheless to obtain a clear over view o f the city and facilitate unhindered traffic by thoroughly organizing the urban center. M artin M achler’s plan for Berlin is even Berlin more all-encom passing.6 H e has attem pted to according to define a functional design for Berlin according to M achler’s a com prehensive prognosis and has established plan param eters according to which his new organiza tional m easures are to take place. In order to m eet the city’s econom ic, social, Fig. 8 and cultural tasks, M achler allots Berlin a circu lar area w ith a fifty-kilom eter radius, m easured from the tow er o f the city hall.7 The areas are divided according to the various requirem ents o f econom ic and social life: there will be a rea sonable ordering o f consum er and producer groups, as well as places for w ork, leisure, and residence. T he vital h ea rt o f Berlin is trade. The surface area defined by a six-kilom eter radius from the tow er o f the city hall will be devoted to trade. This ring is to be surrounded by another of a ten-kilom eter radius reserved for com merce. A wedge o f sixty degrees cuts into this business and com m ercial zone from the west. 6 [See M artin M achler, “ D enkschrift betreffend eine E rganzung des G esetzentw urfes zu r B ildung eines S tadtkreises G roB -B erlin,” Der Stadtebau 15, no. 1-2 (1920): 3-12.] 7 N ew York later ado p te d a plan for the future develop m ent o f the city w ithin a circular area defined by an eight-kilom eter radius.

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Fig. 8 Martin Machler, Schematic distribution o f Berlin’s functions, 1920

Fig. 9 Hugo Haring, Project for Platz der Republik, Berlin, 1927


103

Fig. 10 New York, High-rise street

G overnm ent offices, am bassadorial buildings, hotels, and institutes for art, research, and edu cation populate this wedge from the center to the periphery. T he large o uter ring contains facilities for leisure, sanitation, and agriculture. T he industrial settlem ents also contain space for w orkers’ settlem ents because industry

104


and the working population go hand in hand. Therefore industry must be located where it can provide workers with suitable housing. Between the southwest and northeast in dustrial areas, the residential settlements are arranged along the waterways for those who work in the center. The The precondition for this organization of traffic Berlin is a correspondingly developed transporfor Berlin tat*on system that wiU facilitate flawless traffic management. Through the creation of a central train station for Berlin, which is to be designed as a major traffic node, Machler attem pts to solve these problems. He gathers all of the rail lines that enter Berlin from all directions at two train stations at the northern and southern ends, respectively, of the city’s inner periphery and directs them beneath the city by electric rail. The intersection which results will become a central train station which will be the focal point of both commuter and long-distance rail. This organiza tion will render all terminal train stations superfluous, thereby radically solving one of the most difficult traffic problems in the center of the city.8 Fig. 9 Hugo Haring executed an architectural design for a detail of this comprehensive plan: 8 [Machler’s plan addressed the fact that most of Ber lin’s train stations were terminals, that is, end-of-theline stations, which made transferring between stations and rail lines difficult, thus complicating the travel experience.]


105

the governm ental center that is concentrated around the Reichstag. H e attem pts to create an entire urban space devoted to political functions, concentrating the buildings required into a p olitical forum . T he im m easurable advantages the satellite system presents to the housing industry are off set by the above-m entioned disadvantages for tran sportation: such designs do not im prove traffic in relation to today’s traffic patterns, but n either do they exacerbate them further.9 By solving the housing problem only one of A the m ost im portant challenges facing the m etrop one-sided solution olis is met. T he problem o f traffic, which is ju st as im portant, is no t affected in the least by this attem pt to solve the issue according to urban planning standards. T he traffic w ithin the central city will still contribute to and cause the same deficiencies. T he horizontal expansion o f urban land and the satellite system may be viewed as an excessive cham pioning o f horizontal urban plan ning. They will never offer the possibility of perfectly organizing the ever-increasing traffic in the city center o f a m etropolis. Everything from the o uter districts will always surge tow ard the center, w hich, w hen a city has reached a certain size, sim ply cannot absorb all o f the traffic. Com plete chaos will ensue. 9 [C om pare to H ilb erse im e r’s earlier advocacy for decentralization: Ludwig Hilberseim er, “Vom stadtebauli chen P roblem d er G roB stadt,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 29, no. 6 (1923): 352-57; see this volum e, pp. 42-44]

106


Fig. 10

This chaos in urban planning was exacer bated in America because buildings could be built at any height whatsoever until a building regula tion was put in place inl915.I0Inthis way high-rises were built on urban sites that had been designed for relatively low development; a drive was created to outdo one’s neighbor simply out of the desire to hold the record for the tallest building.

Disad vantages of sky scrapers

A skyscraper often creates fewer offices than the number o f existing ones that it detrimen tally affects by blocking the supply o f light and air. Even more disastrous is the effect o f tall commercial buildings on street traffic, which today defies description. When the employees o f a clothing store want to go outside for fresh air during lunch they stand shoulder to shoul der. I f someone needs to travel one-two kilometers in New York during business hours and is careless enough to choose a motor vehicle 10 [Hilberseimer refers to the Building Zone Resolution adopted by the New York City Board of Estimate in 1916, which regulated the height and bulk of buildings and divided the city into three classes of districts: residence, business, and unrestricted. The resolution introduced the concept of the “zoning envelope,” which limited the mass of a building according to predetermined formulas and stimulated the design of stepped-back skyscrapers. See Commission on Building Districts and Restrictions, Final Report, June 16,1916 (Flew York: Board of Estimate and Apportionment Committee on the City Plan, 1916), 22344; Carol Willis, Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995), 67-79.]


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as a mode o f transport, he will be faced with hour-long delays (W erner H egem ann).11 The im possibility o f these conditions natu rally increases w ith the height o f the building. Thus R aym ond U nwin makes the following observation on the 55-story W oolworth Build ing. If an em ployee is allotted five square m eters o f w orkspace, this building can contain 14,000 people.12 If a standing em ployee is allotted 60 square centim eters o f ground, then, if all of these em ployees w ere gathered in front o f the building at the sam e tim e on a sidew alk six m eters wide, a sidew alk 855 m eters long would be required to accom m odate these 14,000 peo ple. But if one begins to calculate the figures for these people in m otion, then, w ith a necessary surface for a w alking person o f 60 by 150 centi m eters, a sidew alk o f the sam e w idth would have to be 2,100 m eters long. Because the W oolw orth Building has but a fragm ent o f this sidew alk and because it is not isolated, but betw een other buildings, even if they are n o t as tall, one m ust w onder how cir culation is even possible given N ew Y ork’s narrow streets. 11 W erner H egem ann, “ D as H ochhaus als V erkehrsstorer und d er W ettbew erb d er C hicago T ribune: M ittelalterliche Enge und n euzeitliche G o tik ,” Wasmuths Monatshefte fiir Baukunst 8 (1924): 296. 12 R aym ond U nw in, “ H igher building in rela tio n to town planning,” RIBA Journal 31, no. 5 (1924): 125-50.

Fig. 56

108


The congestion of streets for pedestrians is coupled with an even more severe situation for motor vehicles. New York’s narrow streets allow only three automobiles to travel side by side, yet one is allowed to stop on both the right and left sides, leaving only one lane for unhindered m otion—a condition that makes traffic obstructions ever more catastrophic. Here the consequences of neglecting the fundamental principle of urban planning—to never build a street higher that it is wide—are being felt. In America they are striving with all of their energy to solve this ever-increasing deficiency that threatens the existence of the metropolis. Under present circumstances the continued existence of the m etropolis itself appears impossible. To ease the effects of congestion on streets Improve ment of caused by high-rises, the office of the state of the street New York has developed the Regional Plan of system New York and Environs.13This plan attempts to Figs. create more space for vehicular traffic and to 11-12 separate pedestrian and m otor traffic by altering and improving the street system and by raising the level of the sidewalk above that of the Street conges tion

13 [Hilberseimer refers to the New York Regional Plan ning Association, which was founded in 1922. The Association was not, as Hilberseimer suggests, a govern mental organization. It was funded in large part by the Russell Sage Foundation and directed by the British plan ner Thomas Adams. See Michael Simpson, Thomas Adams and the Modern Planning Movement: Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1900-1940 (London: Mansell, 1985).]


U

U

m ftn n n j R « :.. j Fig. 11 New York, Proposals fo r street expansions to accom modate traffic: (Top Left) Current condition; (Top R ight) Elevation o f sidewalks; (B ottom ) Elevation o f sidewalks, the use o f the ground floor space o f buildings fo r transportation, and the enclosure o f streets fo r pedestrian traffic

stre e t.14 T he C ity Planning C om m ission o f C hi cago is likew ise attem pting an urban renovation o f the inner city o f Chicago, which has already 14 [H ilberseim er refers to H arvey W iley C o rb e tt’s design for a system o f su p erim p o sed traffic netw orks for lower M anhattan. See H arvey W iley C o rb ett, “ D ifferent Levels for F o o t, W heel, and R ail,” American City 31, no. 7 (1924): 2-6; see this volum e, pp. 71-73.]

110

Fig. 13

M etro politan chaos


been partially executed. Though these attempts at improvement are greatly limited, they never theless signify a desire to bring about structural change. This is in contrast to the purely decora tive attempts at concealing these problems undertaken by other cities. Some cities try to con ceal the inadequacy of their urban structures through the introduction of broad avenues, which as a rule cut diagonally across the grid of the urban plan. In Philadelphia, for instance, the dec orative extravagance of Fairmount Parkway in no way solves the deficiencies of the urban plan. It has yet to be made clear that in the con struction of the m etropolis one is faced with the organization of a new form with its own dynam ics, which not only quantitatively but above all qualitatively differentiates itself from the city of the past. This is where the planlessness and cha otic character of all metropolises, which are entirely products of happenstance, derive from. As long as they have not reached a certain scale, it does not m atter whether they are planned well or poorly. But their shortcomings become glar ingly visible as soon as this scale is surpassed. This is the condition in which most of the socalled metropolises more or less find themselves today—first among them are the American m etropolises governed by high-rises. We have identified the character of the existing metropolis as a conglomeration, as an accumulation of disparate elements. Their development is a haphazard concatenation that


111

Fig. 12 New York, Proposal fo r a two-story street without intersections

Fig. 13 Jacques Griber, Philadelphia, 1917

Plan fo r

Fairmount Parkway,

serves only im m ediate needs, w ithout a higher perspective or sense o f responsibility to the future. In contrast, the city o f the future m ust have the character o f a planned entity, o f a fully thought-through organism . All deficiencies

112

Sche matic solutions


m ust be recognized and eliminated; the city must be systematically constructed according to its various elements and be designed in a completely new sense. It must embody the fundamental requirem ents of urban planning. The urban lay out must be clear and manageable. Dwellings m ust be sanitary and comfortable. Enclosed resi dential courtyards are to be avoided. The blocks should be open and allow the circulation of air. The width of streets and courtyards must corre spond to the height of adjacent buildings. Traffic m ust be regulated and separated according to type so that each sort of transportation mode is allocated its own respective level. The chaos of the contem porary metropolis can only be confronted with experiments in theo retical dem onstration. Their task is to develop, in the abstract, the fundamental principles of urban planning according to contemporary requirements. This will produce general rules that enable the solution of certain concrete prob lems. Only abstraction from the specific case is capable of revealing how the disparate elements that constitute the metropolis can be brought into an order of dense relationships. Attempts at such a fundamental analysis of the design of the metropolis have been undertaken by Le Corbus ier and Ludwig Hilberseimer. Both attempt to organize everything that the population of a city of millions requires for life, labor, and leisure, with the intention of achieving a maximum am ount of order, fulfilling everyone’s needs for


113

space, air, hygiene, and com fort, and o f turning the city into an efficient organism . Le C orbusier designed a plan for a city of Le three m illion inhabitants in order to dem onstrate C orbusi e r’s urban his principles o f urban planning.13 To allow plan absolute clarity o f his intentions, he selected a Figs. com pletely flat te rra in — a level surface w ithout 14-16 topographic hindrances, which enabled him to fully realize his geom etric design. H e divides the population into three cate gories: the urban, the suburban, and the mixed. He calls the urban dw ellers those who both work and live in the city. T he suburban dwellers are those who w ork in the industrial zone and live in the associated garden cities. T he m ixed category describes those who w ork in the city b ut live in a garden city. An urban form em erges as a delim i ted, dense, and concentrated o rg an — the cen ter — and an extended, supple, elastic o rg an — the factory zone w ith garden cities. Between the two is an undeveloped strip o f forests and meadows. T he principles o f his plan include easing R elief o f the pressure placed on the center, albeit w ith an the center increase o f its p o pulation density, by increasing the m eans o f tra n sp o rtatio n and increasing green space. The O n a surface o f 2,400 by 1,500 m eters, 3,600,000 square m eters or 360 hectares, in the high-rise core city center stand tw enty-four high-rises, which Le C orbusier, Urbanisme (Paris: G. C res & Co., 1925).

114

M ETRO PO LISA RCHITECTU RE

Fig. 14 Le Corbusier, Ville Contemporaine, 1922; perspective

Fig 15 Le Corbusier, Ville Contemporaine; plan


Fig. 16 L e Corbusier, Perimeter Block

115

116

The residen tial city


occupy 5 percent of this area. They are cruciform in plan and without courtyards. They are of iron and glass and are to be sixty stories high. Every building accommodates 10,000 to 50,000 employees with an allotment of ten square meters for each. There are a total of between 400,000 and 600,000 workplaces. On average that amounts to an occupancy of between 17,000 and 25,000 employees for one high-rise, which corresponds to a density of 1,110 to 1,650 employees per hectare. This minimal development, which occupies only 5 percent of the terrain, allows the con struction of parks with playgrounds and sports facilities. Parking lots and garages are at the bot tom of the high-rises. Restaurants, cafes, and luxury shops are arranged on terraces in the parks. A t one side, bordering the English garden, is a forum with public and administrative build ings: museums, theaters, concert halls, and the city hall. The adjoining English garden is planned as a future expansion district for the city. To the other side of the city are docks, freight train sta tions, and industrial quarters. Insofar as they do not live in a garden city, the 400,000 to 600,000 employees who work in the city have apartm ents with their families in the residential district bordering the city center. There are two types of buildings. The first is composed of open, bracket-like blocks with five to six two-story dwellings stacked vertically. The density of these buildings is 300 persons per


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hectare w ith 85 percent open space. The second type is com posed o f closed blocks w ith the same density but w ith only 48 percent open space. N early two m illion people live in the garden The garden cities. H ere construction is three stories high. cities Each dwelling has 100 square m eters o f living space spread over two stories and a private gar den o f 50 square m eters. To this space is added 150 square m eters o f com m unal fruit and vege table garden space and an adjoining 150 square m eters o f com m on recreation and sports areas. In addition to residential building types, The street and rail the street and rail system defines the structure of system the u rban plan. T he spaciousness o f the devel opm ent perm its a very favorable traffic system. T he central tra in station is located at the center o f the city. It unites all rail traffic: on the first u n d erground level is the subway netw ork, which has stations b eneath every high-rise and residen tial block. On the second underground level are the long-distance lines. On the platform above the central train station is the runw ay for aerial tran sp o rtatio n . S treet traffic is sim ilarly clas sified. H eavy vehicles and buses travel un derground. A ll buildings stand on pillars so that the ground level is com pletely open. This level form s the “docks” o f the buildings, where deliveries are unloaded. Light trucks, slowmoving private autom obiles, and pedestrians travel on basem ent level. Both large, 180-meterwide axial streets are equipped w ith elevated 40-to-60-m eter-w ide highways for fast-m oving

118

Fig. 10

Critique


automobiles. These elevated highways are con nected to street level by ramps. Intersections and curves hinder traffic, which is why the number of streets is reduced and all of them are straight. Yet they do not only intersect at right angles, they also run diagonally. The module of street traffic is the distance between two sub way stations, which is 400 meters. Thereby land parcels of 400 meters per side are created. The street loses its constricting corridor-like charac ter due to the bracket-shaped buildings. It becomes more spacious and no longer feels closed in. Le Corbusier believes he has achieved not only a qualitative, but also a quantitative im provement of the city. The qualitative improve m ent is absolutely certain. His city is well orga nized and spacious. It is more a park than a sea o f houses. The chaos of New York seems to have been overcome. Disorder has become order, insecurity has become security, disquiet has become quiet. The air is pure. Life is simplified. All the difficulties of today’s metropolis have been eliminated. The entire problem has been wonderfully solved. But if we investigate the quantitative im provement that Le Corbusier believes he has achieved, we reach a negative conclusion. The alleged enormous increase of population density of the city is based on a fiction, on the equation o f incommensurable scales. The qualities of this city are not thereby annulled, but its quantitative improvement is greatly modified.


119

In contrast to existing cities, where streets becom e narrow er as they approach the center, Le C orbusier places the broadest streets in the city center. H ow is this possible w ithout reducing po p ulation density? T hrough am assing stories, which Le C orbusier increases up to sixty. This not only fails to reduce population density but even m ultiplies it. The average p o pulation density o f Paris is 364 p ersons per hectare; o f L ondon, 158; and o f Berlin, 300. In the overpopulated quarters of Paris it is 533 persons per hectare; in London, 422; and in Berlin, 383. If one com pares these figures w ith those th a t Le C orbusier believes he has achieved in the center o f his city, 1,100 to 1,650 persons per hectare, one has the im pres sion that, by utilizing high-rises, he has been able to triple the p op u latio n density while m ain taining a great quantity o f open space. U pon closer inspection it tu rn s out th a t he has com pared incom m ensurable scales: the residential density o f m etropolises and the density o f com m ercial occupancy. W hile the ten square m eters th at he allots em ployees as w orkspace are quite sufficient (in A m erica they are only allotted five square m eters), this space is quite insufficient to meet the needs o f a person at home. F or residential p urp oses one should never assum e an area of u nder thirty square m eters for a single person. It th erefore follows th at the high level o f density calculated by Le C orbusier is totally fictitious. It

The am assing o f stories

An im possible com pari son

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The demands on street space


is founded on the impermissible equation of workspace and residential space. As further proof, the following should be taken into consideration: we have ascertained that each of these twenty-four high-rises provides on average workspace for 17,000 to 25,000 employees. Each high-rise has a parcel of land of 400 by 400 m eters (160,000 square meters, or 16 hectares) at its disposal. If one were to develop this 16-hectare area with exclusively five-story buildings, 20 to 30 percent of this area would be required in order to accommodate the same 17,000 to 25,000 employees, which would still leave 70 to 80 percent of the overall space unde veloped. Admittedly, Le Corbusier builds on only 5 percent of this 16-hectare area and intends the remaining 95 percent to be used as park and green spaces where sports facilities can also be housed. Nevertheless, upon closer examination of these parks and green spaces, one is again led to essentially negative conclusions because there m ust also be sufficient street space available to the employees accommodated by the high-rises. For pedestrians alone one m ust allot one square m eter of moving space per person. According to Erich Giese, the braking distance required by autom obiles is about twenty-six square meters o f traffic space.16Thus if each person is allotted 14 Erich Giese, Strafiendurchbriiche als Mittel fiir die Losung des Berliner Verkehrsproblems (Berlin: Verlag der Verkehrstechnik, 1925).


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an average o f th re e-fo u r square m eters o f street space, that com es to a total circulation area of 75,000 to 100,000 square m eters. This spatial requirem ent causes the park and green spaces to shrink to such an extent th a t only two to three square m eters are left per person. F urtherm ore, the vertical traffic will becom e dow nright cata strophic in these enorm ous sixty-story com m ercial buildings during rush-hour periods or in an em ergency situation because, in eradicating the h orizontal congestion of streets by im posing great spaciousness, Le C orbusier did nothing other than shift this horizontal congestion into a vertical congestion o f high-rises. As a resu lt o f equating residential density and the density o f occupancy for com m ercial buildings, Le C o rb u sier gave the im pression th a t he was able to triple p o p u la tio n density. We believe we have proved th a t this is based on fic tion. So, since it is also possible to attain the sam e density using buildings o f only five sto ries, the only thing left to decide is w hether one should b uild a city center o f high-rises sepa rated by large intervals or a city center o f buildings o f n orm al height. V ertical traffic can be reduced by increasing these tw enty-four high-rises accordingly and thus the sam e effect w ith regard to density is produced using either buildings o f n o rm al h eight or high-rise devel opm ents. T hus it becom es clear th a t an eco nom ic problem has been tu rn e d into a problem of p ure aesthetics.

' L22

M E T R O P O L IS A R C H IT E C T U R E

^turns out that Le Corbusier’s proposal is ân attem pt to harmonize existing i of chaos he proposes the g eo m etric system. He does not ^hough initially this impreslarranges and improves, uh ^ alteration or fresh Even the traffic |/ly formulated, gd and spacious, : is not thereby êd

ily relative? by increasby radically

llberseimer s is aT construction of the menstead of further expansion at the ground level, Hilberseimer proposes further com centratiori and clustering—the construction |o f individual urban elements, functionally disting uished by their vertical placement. Two cities stacked vertically, as it were. The commercial city


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and vehicular traffic lie below; the residential city C omm erand pedestrian traffic lie above. Subways and cial city below, long-distance train lines lie underground. residential As a vertical city, it can be nothing other city above than a city o f high-rises. Yet in contrast to the chaos o f A m erican high-rise cities, whose struc Fig. 10 ture is arbitrarily defined, it m ust be system ati cally organized. T he high-rise, which, like the tenem ent block, has long contributed to the chaos o f the u rban organism through the con ventional subdivision o f parcels o f land, m ust be used in a com pletely new way. Its advar m ust not be canceled ou t again by its ^ rbitrary application. T his is to be achieved y aggregating high-rises in blocks and th' ough unified organization and design. Because the resident^ 1city i? located above t live above his |jh e com m ercial city, ev I'jo la c e . T his a s ^ ctlof the new city is sim ilar f :ity o f the f ast. In the city o f the m edieval re,?.‘n\ ;i tia * q u arters were placed above com m ercial and w orkspaces in a single house. W hat was individual in the past, in the age of manual labor, will becom e collective in the future, in the age of industry. Through this verti- Horizoncal stacking of commercial and residential cities, paths between them will no longer be traveled traffic horizontally but for the m o s t part vertically— tak ing place indeed even within the building itself, elim inating the need to ever step onto the street. T oday’s lengthy, tim e-consum ing routes will disappear, sim plifying b o th life and traffic and

124

The new street system


reducing the latter to the utm ost. The detached house, which transform ed the m etropolis into chaos, will vanish. It will be replaced by the communal house, which occupies the entire block and includes apartm ents, work and com mercial spaces, and everything else that life requires. The common street system, which is composed of num erous blocks of individual houses, which in turn produce innumerable courtyards w ithout light or air, will disappear along with the detached house. The smallness of these blocks requires an expensive, tightly meshed network of streets, without thereby raising the quality of the apartm ents or func tionally organizing the street system. The new urban form determines its street sys tem in relation to the sun and the dimensions of streets and blocks according to the supply of light, air, and the requirements of transportation. The provision of light and air demands at minimum a distance between buildings that is equal to their height: street width equals building height. These considerations determine the width of streets and the depth of blocks because the distance between buildings inside the city blocks must also corre spond to the height of the building. Block length is determined by the distance from the urban rail sta tion. This produces blocks of extreme length but, because transverse residential structures have been eliminated, of minimal depth. Ludwig H ilberseim er’s plan, which is constructed from essential urban elements,


Fig. 17 Ludwig Hilberseimer, High-rise City, 1924; northsouth street

Fig. 18 Ludwig Hilberseimer, High-rise City, 1924; eastwest street

a ttem p ts to realize these requirem ents for a city o f one m illion in h a b ita n ts in a purely th e o re ti cal schem a w ith o u t any in ten tio n o f realization. T he basis is a block 100 m eters deep and 600 m eters long th a t serves com m ercial functions in its five low er stories and resid en tial functions in

The exam ple

126


Fig. 19 Ludwig Hilberseimer, High-rise City, 1924; plans and sectid


127

128 Fig. 19

Suitcase instead o f the moving van


its upper fifteen stories. As shown in the floor plan and cross section, the block is composed of two longitudinal slabs, which in the lower, com m ercial portion are linked by eight trans verse wings. The upper residential sections rem ain unconnected, that is, without court yards. Each residential slab is served by stair? and elevators and divided into seven units, which perm its the organization of apartments for any num ber of people on every floor. Everj apartm ent includes a large living room, a num ber of bedroom s, a bathroom , a pantry, an entryway, and a balcony. Furtherm ore, each floor contains two rooms for the service staff, which, as in a hotel, is responsible for m aintain ing the apartm ents. Individual apartm ents are to be made more comfortable through techno logical means and are to be fully equipped in such a way that tables and chairs are the only movable furniture an occupant requires. When moving to a new apartm ent, one no longer has to pack the moving van, but only one’s suitcase. The m odel of the dwelling is no longer the detached house, which is inadequate as mass housing, but the hotel, which is adapted to pro vide all conveniences and the utm ost comfort. The lowest story of the residential section, which is set back in the cross section from the wider, commercial portion, contains the entrances to the commercial areas as well as to the apartments. Restaurants and smaller stores are also found here. By setting the residential


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section back from the com m ercial section o f the block, a pedestrian path is created, which, although it is ten m eters wide, only projects beyond the com m ercial portion o f the building two meters. The elevation o f the pedestrian paths requires bridges over the streets at intersections. Through this elevation today’s m ost dangerous traffic calam ity can be elim inated, that is, the crossing o f pedestrians and vehicles on the same level. A sixty-m eter-w ide street for vehicular traffic is located in the com m ercial city; increased autom obile traffic can develop here w ithout issue. M ost traffic m ust be served by the com muter rail system , however. It can only be located below ground. A system o f superim posed rings that run in both directions along the main street will accom m odate a system o f continuously run ning shuttle trains. T he placem ent o f stations is o f prim ary im portance. City blocks are deter mined in their length by the distance from subway stations, enabling the construction o f a superior urban rail system , w hose stations are organized in such a way th at they can be quickly reached even from the m ost d istant point. Long-distance trains also run through the center o f the city in two directions. They are located underground as well, beneath the subway. A main train station in the center of the city, at the intersection o f the two long-distance lines, enables the connection w ith the subway in both directions. T he schem a o f a city for circa one m illion in h ab itants covering a surface o f 1,400 hectares

Elevated footpaths

Circling s u b terra nean trains

Long distance trains

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was designed on the basis of a building with fourteen residential floors that can house 9,000 people and contains circa 90,000 square meters of office and commercial space (so that every person is allotted ten square meters) on the com mercial levels. If one enlarges this plan to cover a city of four million inhabitants, the approxi mate population of G reater Berlin, it would require an area of 5,600 hectares, which roughly corresponds to that of Old Berlin, where two million people live on 6,600 hectares.17Although the population density is m m v doubled, the quality of the apartm entsR V H - w ^ g ^ d e c r e a s e s . On the contrary, quality will be greatly"JtWnroved since all room s receive sunlight, courtyar elim inated, and residential slabs stand seventy m eters apart. Thus these apartm ents are perfect and hygienically flawless m etropolitan dwell ings. They represent a solution to the m etropolitan housing problem. Furtherm ore, because the traffic problem has been more or less solved by separating traffic types, but pri marily by greatly reducing the traffic itself, it turns out that the vertical city, in contrast to the horizontal city, solves both of the mq^t esênti problem s of urban planning. m ^ The reduction of developed area achieved' by building and population concentration also 17 [Old Berlin refers to the city’s municipal boundaries prior to the incorporation of outlying settlements into the G reater Berlin m etropolitan region in 1920.]


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enhances the benefits provided to urban dwellers j A dvan by increasing the open and park spaces. All tages of concen schools, hospitals, and sanatoriums, as we/ tration sports and leisure areas, are to be em be^ within these green spaces. A d d itio n a l^ trast to today’s urban fragm entation, whrT in hours of travel in order to reach t h j side, the spatial concentration of this ciu one to reach the countryside quickly wi of a corresponding well-developed rail Sj T hese p ro p o sals should be consi ^ ther as u rb an plans nof. the city. B oth are \ ►ossibili Luse there The city Cities are as bdiis no such th in g |; « r W .r i H viduality in d iv id u alities on the char,J tions, and life. T his is schem atic determination of the ^-dnfoose tbi th ese elem ents — an ittem p t to eria&le a m ore efficient form a tio n of in u rb an organisrii by reorganizing and reap5lying th e se elem ents. * '

J

Urban planning i%not an abstraction but ather the fulfillment and organization of real leeds and purposes. Reality modifies every ibstraction. Its conditions form the most essential actors of urban planning and therefore cannot be gnored when designing an urban organism. In spite of each individual and unique charicteristic, a city is integrated both economically

132 Regional planning

The dissolu tion of cities

The necessity of centers


and, in term s of its political temperament, intel lectually into the entire nation, and the latter in turn into the entire world, wherein a city’s achievements determ ine its rank and value. Just as the individual is only productive to society when he is able to suit his thoughts and deeds to fit society’s objectives, so must the city, and even the nation, cooperate with other nations harm o niously in the building of the great human society. From this point of view, urban planning expands to become regional planning; urban planning becomes national planning. With this, Bruno T aut’s theory of the dissolution of cities finally acquires actuality, especially as the pro gress of technology perfects radio and television and reduces traffic to a minimum.18 But as far as the theory of the dissolution of cities can be taken, the national organism of the center—the metropolis determ ined by the struc ture of the overall population—will always be required. The economic, social, and political life o f a people is that o f a tremendous suprapersonal individual. Even he, therefore, requires an instrument, which is continually exposed to all stimuli and is also capable o f giving stimulus; an instrument that plays a similar role to the brain in the human body. The central city and 18 [See Bruno Taut, Die Auflosung der Stadte (Hagen: Folkwang-Verlag, 1920).]


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capital o f a national organism are naturally predestined to be physiologically equipped with this instrument. This city is the collector, gener ator, and regulator o f all material and spiritual forces o f a society (M artin M achler).19 O ur concept o f th e city is for the tim e being Historical still founded on an ideology attached to the his burden torical past. A lthough walls and gates have long since fallen, th eir m em ory haunts our minds. U rban projects, as they are currently being pro posed for Paris and Tokyo, for nine m illion people, or for N ew York, for thirty-five m illion inhabitants, are based on prem ises entirely dis tinct from those to w hich we were accustom ed until now. They will therefore produce a new type o f city th a t will do away w ith the concept o f spatial cohesion, a concept we always used to D ecen im agine o u r cities. T h eir great expansion neces sarily leads to decentralization, which will only tralization and be possible on the basis o f the m ost intensive concen co n centration. Besides the housing problem , the tration traffic problem will becom e the A lpha and O m ega o f u rb an planning. O f course a distinct separation by purpose m ust exist. O ne will system atically group indi vidual centers o f w ork according to type, so th a t industrial decentralization will take place 19 M artin M achler, “ D enkschrift betreffend eine Erganzung des G esetzentw urfes zur Bildung eines S tadtkreises GroB-Berlin,” Der Stadtebau 15, no. 1-2 (1920): 7.

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alongside the establishment of concentrated points of global economic import. Or, for exam ple, the economic and spatial connection within an industrial district will naturally grow together to form an enorm ous organically linked city. But this is extremely dependent on national plan ning. The design of the nation of the future depends on the form ation of great economic complexes. It will depend on the merger of nations and nationalities into economic units. Thus, for us in particular, the unification of the politically divided European continent into an economic unit is the precondition for a produc tive and exemplary politics of urban planning, which will bring a solution to the as yet unre solved problem of the metropolis.

Residential Buildings U ntil the m iddle o f the nineteenth century, urban dw ellings w ere in general the property of their inhabitants. W ith the introduction o f free dom o f m ovem ent laws and freedom o f trade, a fundam ental change was introduced in nearly all nations. The path to the city was suddenly opened to innum erable m asses o f people. C ities experi enced an unforeseeable and rapid population grow th, prim arily in the num bers o f the w orking class, bu t the num ber o f buildings could not keep up. T he sudden need for a great num ber of The rise o f the dwellings led to the construction o f tenem ents. Since this tim e, the tenem ent has been the p rin tenem ent cipal u rban residential form , especially in m etropolises. O ther residential form s such as the sm all house and the cottage are o f lesser im portance than the tenem ent. This relatively sudden need for apartm ents was as surprising for architects as it was for the T he respective public authorities. In a free play of forces, building activity in m etropolises was left to e n tre p re n eur as entrepreneurial builders and oriented toward builder mass production. T he state and m unicipalities were helpless before these tasks, which were the results o f new dem ands. They failed to recognize the social im portance o f housing and, in line with contem porary views, granted entrepreneurs abso lute freedom . In this way residential construction became an object o f speculation, which brought

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capitalists great returns to the detriment of social health. Pretentious facades often shamefully con cealed multiple bleak courtyards surrounded by small apartments devoid of light and air. Pure materialism determined building plans that were mechanically designed and executed. Nobody realized that the only things being created were breeding grounds for sickness and discontent. I f these urban planners and speculators had even fo r one moment taken the somewhat higher ground, if they had even once viewed the masses, which were to be settled in these massive develop ments, not as a conglomeration o f animals, but as vessels o f spirit and soul, if they had but once learned to consider the settlements they created as one cell within a collective state, as an organic part o f one great organism, ... then they would have seen how narrow, limited, and without insight or foresight their modes o f operation actually were (Martin Machler).20 The neglected residen tial building

Residential construction has been neglected as both a social problem and an architectural problem. It has been considered a simple job that can be taken care o f on the side; at most the possibility of designing a facade was of interest. Its actual importance has not been acknowl edged. Yet the residential building is the building 20 Martin Machler, “Das Siedelungsproblem," Sozialisti sche Monatshefte 27, no. 4 (1921): 185.

R E S ID E N T IA L B U IL D IN G S

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problem o f the present. It is the actual problem of the architecture o f the m etropolis. To date, the tenem ent has been built accord ing to entirely false prem ises. M any have m istakenly sought to derive the building type from the individual house, w hich was above all conditioned by the narrow plots o f land charac teristic o f private land ow nership. D espite having exploited the land m ost cleverly, archi tects have attem p ted to m aintain the external character o f the individual house. This en ter prise has led to the m ost grotesque deform ations. It was never clear th a t the tenem ent building represents a new architectural problem , whose solution goes hand in hand w ith the solution of social problem s. O ne had neither the courage nor the will to go to the source o f the housing problem and tried instead to conceal the calcu lated uniform ity o f the plan and structure by uniquely designing the facade. Preoccupied by the external a rt o f the facade, one forgot the actual problem , w hich is no t one o f form , but one o f organization. Yet one believed to have exhausted the arch itectu ral problem in the design o f the facade. T hus all attem pts at reform have been d irected to the facade, the supposed dom ain o f the architect. T he floor plan was to be m o n ito red by the building inspectors, and the speculators and entrepreneurs had control o f the m ost im p o rtan t and fundam ental facto rs— the subdivision o f parcels and city blocks. N ob o d y dared to intervene in this

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Urban plan and building plan

Narrow, closed court yards


disorganized tripartite division of labor. Yet only when this state of disorganization is replaced by constructive organization can the problem of the tenem ent really be corrected and turned from a chaotic to an organic entity. Since nobody truly grasped the object as such, everyone deviated from the fundamental principle of design, that is, that architectural law is to be derived from the object itself. This mis take was turned into an enduring principle. From this point o f view the difference between the norm al kitsch facade and a facade of tasteful classicism is relatively meaningless. On the con trary, the so-called art of facades is even worse than absolute kitsch. It strives to give the impres sion of culture and to turn a social problem into a formal problem. Yet it is nothing other than a tastefully executed artificial front. The planning of residential buildings ac cording to the blocks defined by the street system is of decisive importance. The site plan is closely related to the building plan. Only when both are jointly conceived can the ultim ate goals of urban planning and hygienic demands be met. The selfevident north-south orientation of residential streets for low-rise settlements, which ensures the dwellings ample light, has been completely ignored when planning the layout of tenements. The narrow, closed courtyard impedes air circu lation, so that in a m etropolitan apartment that which it most needs is lacking: sun, light, and air. Thus the typical street block of today, which


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uses buildings encircling num erous small court yards, m ust be b arred from use. D ue to the exploitation of lim ited space in com m ercial quar ters, the am ple land found in residential districts is also being restricted, simply for the sake of g reater returns and out o f purely speculative motives. T he speed of today’s m eans o f transpor tation can accom m odate low-density construction in residential districts and their placem ent at great distances from the center o f the city. Yet the tenem ent does not yet need to be forgotten and converted to a low-rise building. R esidential con struction in the m etropolis will be able to do w ithout cram ped spaces, but, for econom ic rea sons, no t w ithout m ultistory buildings. Ju st as a system o f streets and land subdivi sion has been created according to a speculative po int o f view, so m ust a system be created that takes the needs o f the inhabitants into account in every way; one th a t considers life and general welfare. T he m ost im p o rtan t requirem ent is to The m ost ensure th a t every dw elling, including the very im portant needs sm allest, has space, air, ventilation, and sun. Dwellings facing only to the no rth are to be avoided and th e floor plan is to be arranged so th a t it m eets all requirem ents. T he w ork o f the speculator and the en tre preneur, executed w ithout thought to planning, m ust be replaced by the system atic w ork o f the consciously responsible architect, w hose task is to take into account general needs as well as con structive, technical, and hygienic conditions,

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facts, and demands. Nevertheless one must not deny the fact that residential construction is, in large part, a question of production. It is depen dent on economic factors, which cannot be ignored without cultural consequences. The New ground must be broken both in the politics organization of the overall plan and in the hand of land ling of details. In the future tenements will not be designed based on the arbitrary borders of pri vate property. Instead, collective associations, building societies, and unions must take initiative in residential construction, or, as in the example of Holland, cities and the state itself will be involved by employing qualified architects. It is imperative to exploit all of the advan tages that arise from combining individual parcels of land into one unified block, which could contain a great number of the most ideal dwellings. Combining numerous apartments into one larger unit enables facilities to be estab lished that are uneconomical for the standard tenem ent, but required for life in the metropolis. The entirety of m etropolitan life is cluttered with facilities that arose to help accomplish basic household tasks, yet are today completely sense less. Just think of cooking in many individual kitchens or of laundry being done in many indi vidual sinks. While all work is regulated by the principle Orga nized o f the division of labor and the combination of home eco forces, at home the medieval form of solitary nomics labor has persisted. The solitary person—the


141

w om an— has to perform the m ost diverse tasks, w ithout ever really arriving at productive achievem ents, so th at she is oppressed by the diversity o f her w ork and her energies are dissi pated. T he reason th a t new form s o f work are required here is twofold. On the one hand is the demand to bring home economics, which is a great portion o f general economics and includes the greatest portion o f consumption, into harmony with the total econ omy and to increase its productivity, and on the other hand it is necessary to create conditions that enable women to live fulfilling lives. That means organizing household labor, that is, a sys tematic dismantling o f the total work required within a household, and reassembling it anew, taking into account the imperatives o f time and energy conservation, and, at the same time, improving labor techniques by introducing machines, which must be presupposed in the con text o f such a reorganization (M eta C orssen).21 W ith a little know ledge and understanding o f the restrictive factors o f petit bourgeois life, which are ro o ted in the individual household, the am algam ation o f these m any costly individ ual tasks will n o t only save tim e and money but will also, given truly productive labor, greatly 21 M eta C o rssen , “ H a u s a rb e it,” Sozialistische Monatshefte 30, no. 1 (1924): 51.

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simplify home life and significantly raise the standard of living. The A comfortable and practical dwelling residen should m eet all of its inhabitants’ needs while tial utilizing the minimum am ount of space. The minimum size and num ber of rooms depend on which demands m ust absolutely be met. Rooms for liv ing, eating, sleeping, washing, and cooking are necessary and should be organized and arranged in the floor plan so that residential needs are met using the least possible amount of space. It is very im portant for the small apartm ent to be m eticulously designed because although this is the type with the fewest means at its dis posal, it is the most common form of dwelling in the metropolis. The smallest apartment for a family with children of both sexes must have at least one liv ing room, which is also used for meals, three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom equipped with a toilet. With an area of seventy square m eters—an area that corresponds to a normal three-room apartment in Berlin—this spatial requirem ent can be met if functions are strictly separated. The most im portant requirement is that this area be organized according to purpose. The disorganization of the typical small apart ment forces inhabitants to use every room for sleeping so that no real living or dining space remains. Meals must then be taken in the kitchen, which is plagued by smoke and fumes from cook ing. If one organizes this area according to


143

purpose and lim its the size o f the room s to a nec essary m inim um , then a type o f dwelling can be found that meets the minim um requirem ents o f a family o f five to six people. T he dim ensions o f a room can be reduced only to a certain degree. But dim ensions are defined by purpose, the num ber o f people who are to use a room , and the type o f furniture required. F u rn itu re in particular, which is closely adapted to hum an dim ensions, will be a decisive influence on the dim ensions o f room s. T he size and placem ent o f furnishings m ust be m ost care fully considered. A dditionally, at least one room should be slightly larger than the others because today’s econom ic situ atio n lim its the space allot ted to a sm all dwelling and living in narrow room s becom es oppressive and cram ped, while the co n trast betw een sm aller and larger room s has an enlivening effect. In a sm all dw elling the living and dining room , as a dual-purpose space, m ust have the largest dim ensions, while the rem aining room s can have the sm allest possible dim ensions. N o po rtio n o f a room , even the sm allest, can go unused. Even a very sm all room can be com fortably furnished and m eet the requirem ents o f developed living standards if it is system atically organized. A b etter m odel than B erlin’s uneconom ical apartm ents is the furnish ing o f a sh ip ’s cabin, w hich contains all necessities in the sm allest am ount o f space. O r consider the efficiency o f the kitchen and furnishings in a dining car, w here in the m ost com pact space, a

The dim en sions of room s

144

Built-in furnish ings


great num ber of people work; this conveys the incredible efficiency of which an apartment is capable. Furtherm ore, living rooms in the rest of the world are much smaller than those we are used to in Germany. In order for the dwelling to achieve such efficiency, all cabinets and closets for clothes, linens, luggage, dishes, etc., as well as all of the kitchen’s furnishings must be built-in. When even the smallest surface area matters, then things can no longer be left to chance as was cus tomary until now. For the cost of the space that furniture requires, one can comfortably build everything necessary in, so that in the future beds, chairs, and tables will be the only movable furniture to be dealt with. The simplification and adaptation of inte rior furnishings to their proper uses and the elimination of everything unnecessary will sim plify and ease domestic labor. First of all, in every house heating stoves should be replaced by a cen tral heating system connected to a water heater. This will not only save a great amount of work, which is especially crucial in a small, narrow household, but will also be less expensive, since less fuel will be needed. Furthermore, the unclean fumes caused by stove heating will be eliminated. The best apartm ent is without a doubt one that contains all that is necessary, fulfills all needs, and at the same time requires the least am ount o f labor. The comfort of living depends less on the size than on the functionality of the


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room s in an apartm ent. T he tenem ent can and must be designed in such a way, as it is unfortu nately no t today, so as to becom e a perfect organism com bining the greatest com fort with the sm allest expenditure o f energy. Once it has freed itse lf from the false m odel o f the individ ual house, it will becom e increasingly akin to a hotel ou tfitte d w ith all m odern conveniences, which em bodies the m ost com fortable and freest way o f living in to d a y ’s w orld. A fundam ental change in the equipm ent and furn ish in g o f a dw elling will be introduced w ith this econom ization. T he o rn am en tal com p lexity o f furnishings custom arily found in an ap a rtm en t, especially in the prew ar years, no longer co rresp o n d s to ou r way o f life. T hese stucco ceilings, richly carved furniture, and costly w all paneling are in d icato rs o f poverty, n o t w ealth. They co rresp o n d to the stuccokitsch o f facades and fulfill sim ilar functions: they serve to conceal unsolved spatial problem s. T he design o f th e room can only proceed using the com ponents o f th e room . W alls, floors, ceil ings, doors, and w indow s are its m ost essential elem ents w hose unresolved ch a ra cte r one tries to conceal w ith p reten tio u s luxury furniture and d ecorative w orks o f art. T he room and fur n itu re are to be d efined by th e ir functions as b asic com m odities. T h e ir system atic co n stru c tio n and design will lead to th a t sim plification w hich d istin g u ish es every strictly and objec tively executed object.

F u rn ish ings

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The room and furnishings must be designed with an architectonic sensibility. Spatial rela tionships, illumination, and color determine a room ’s formal character and must produce its unity. The room is to be as neutral as possible, even in its coloration, because it is not a means unto itself but a means to meet very specific demands. It is only good when it completely ful fills those demands. Fixed and By installing all cabinets and closets, furni movable ture will be practically reduced to beds, chairs, furniture and tables. By eliminating decorative furniture, which piles up in our present dwellings as if they were junk shops, space will suddenly be created in the smallest rooms, so that, in spite of its diminished size, the new apartm ent will have much more usable space than a larger standard apartm ent, which is however stuffed like a furni ture storehouse. Thus one will have to devote full attention to these few remaining types of furniture. Their small num ber will make them meaningful once more, and their full value and purpose will again be acknowledged. After all, furnishings should not be useless decorations but perfect, func tional objects. But functional organization is not enough to reduce the cost of residential construction. The uneconomical waste of space corresponds to uneconomical working m ethods and the uneconomical use of materials. In the future great attention will have to be devoted to both

RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS

147

because m aterial costs and wages determ ine construction costs. M artin W agner has deter Reducing m ined th at by reducing the tasks carried out on construc the building site to a m inim um and by thoroughly tion costs planning the w orking process, that is, by the im proved organization o f w ork, building costs can be reduced by 50 p ercen t.22 I f one also calcu lates the reduction o f costs offered by the industrial production o f individual building ele m ents, then it is in no way a utopian assum ption th at in the future building costs will am ount to but a fraction o f cu rren t and past am ounts. New A lthough the problem o f new materials is being investigated everywhere, we still do not have m aterials these new m aterials. We need an independent research institute to conduct the necessary experi m ents and analyze the results. This new material should by no m eans be a sub-standard substitute m aterial. On the contrary: it m ust be superior to current building m aterials. It m ust perform its tasks with greater perfection. C onstruction itself will have to be given new foundations. As in the construction o f com m ercial buildings, in housing construction one will also have to separate loadbearing elem ents from those that merely enclose, that is the supported elements, as Auguste Perret attem pted decades ago in his apartm ent house on the Rue Franklin in Paris. The problem o f the 22 M artin W agner, Probleme der Baukostenverbilligung: Ein Beitrag zur Verbilligung des Wohnungsbaues (Berlin: Verband S ozialer B aubetriebe, 1924).

148

Fig. 50


load-bearing frame has been immaculately solved in iron and reinforced concrete in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s exemplary and systematic applicaof this system of construction to the jitial building. ; material problem of the wall needs to ^, doors, led


149

that allow for com plete industrialization. Per haps windows, doors, closets, and cabinets will be m olded out of m etal or out of another m ate rial that can be m olded in a sim ilar fashion. The industrialization o f construction requires th a t all building elem ents be strictly typified and all details standardized. The resi dential building, especially one that houses a great num ber o f inhabitants, requires a design oriented not tow ard the individual but tow ard the collective. D ue to its production methods, the entire construction industry is calling for typification. In contrast to the unique product delivered by handw ork, industry produces seri ally and is therefore oriented tow ard standardization and the benefits this process provides. As in the autom obile industry, indus trial housing construction will achieve ever refined form s and m ore perfect designs result of standardization and its Even the developm ent of details by architects requires unnecessary w ork th at is of co nstruction, w hich is the field also requires a th at applies no t only to entire organism o f a

Type and

norm

150


their apparent exhaustion, become something completely new in the hands of a creative person. W hether one wills it or not, today’s condi tions demand that the entire field of construction be thoroughly industrialized. Also, the number o f young professionals in specialized building trades is insufficient. This is apparent even now when very little is being built and it will be even m ore so when construction once again proceeds at a norm al pace. Then the conditions them selves will inspire new methods, preparing the way for the industrialization of residential con struction. Then houses will no longer be built, but put together from ready-to-assemble compo nents and made suitable for habitation in the shortest time. The Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright Funda mental is among the first to have attem pted to funda solutions mentally solve the tenem ent problem. His designs for the Lexington Terraces, which are Fig. 20 based on the Francisco Terraces built in 1894 in Chicago, seek to solve the problem of the rental apartm ent through centralization. Three-, four-, The American and five-room apartm ents are brought together tenement in the form of a unified block that is composed of internal and external groups of apartments. The internal group of apartments is separated from the external group by a narrow courtyard. The streetside group has three stories, while the courtyard group has two. Every apartment has two entrances, one from the street and another from the courtyard for service, which is provided


151

Fig. 20 Frank L loyd Wright, Lexington Terrace Apartments, 1901; bird’s-eye view

by building staff. The narrow courtyard onto which the bedrooms look must be considered a deficiency, yet it is determined by the peculiarity of American conditions. Wright’s smaller apartment buildings are distinguished by courtyards that open onto the

Fig. 21 J. J. P. Oud, Tusschendijken Apartments, Rotterdam, 1920-21

152


street, a typical feature of American apartment buildings that improves ventilation. W right’s apartm ents are oriented toward extreme econ omy. Rooms are differentiated according to functions. All cabinets and closets are built-in to save space. The complete renunciation of stylis tic imitation, which has had disastrous effefl Europe and America, has here produced, J the task of building itself, exemplary work<^j ain perfection. Bmtafaman J. J in attempting to design a block of a|>ar|ij> an integral unity. His apartment blocks nrclbtterdam contain small dwellings and a systematically executed economization of living area. The floor plan is organized so as to allow variation in the size of apartments. A dwelling is composed of a living room, a kitchen, and, according to need, two to five bedrooms. The construction of these blocks is distinguished by architectural purity and unambiguity—through precision and clarity. Neither arbitrary interruption nor unmotivated arrangement is present. Only the windows, arranged on each floor-level and in the stairway as perfectly cut-out recesses, affect the undisturbed cubic mass of the block. This economical and functional use of space and distribution, which express securely defined living habits, stands in contrast to the arbitrariness of German spatial order and application, which necessarily leads to wasted space and fails to make dwellings more comfortable or livable. The scarcity of funds and

1 R E S ID E N T IA L B U IL D IN G S

153

the general decline in prosperity of the postwar years have, however, led to extensive efforts at economy, which have greatly reduced the am ount o f living space allotted to a single person, indeed making it seem insufficient. F or exam ple, the city o f V ienna has preh’X-Jq^Ml T -t ei iM H >vmtieters for scribed an a r & h iri ty g h tKsqu a small apartm ent, w hich is far too 1 ttle for a nner was large family. Neverthelesi b u tio n o f this small area using extre

living space to a m in im u i com pression led to m e: ing room area from ea becom e far too sm all, t: in h abitant w ould have t< only the t ing and pr< reserved for him and him ;

neijt, which vine the inh; it. Twao tljii

as space ding^has >

154


shown that the floor plan of a standard six-bedroom apartm ent can be divided into three apartm ents of two bedrooms each, of which only one would be equipped with a small kitch enette while the second would have a sleeping alcove and at least a small section of living space; the final apartm ent has only a space for sleeping. But, in exchange, the inhabitants have numerous communal rooms at their disposal—a central kitchen, dining room, recreation room, a parlor, music room, and reading room —and as a result, life would be conducted as if in a hotel. Yet these attempts to conserve living space Excessive spatial have gone too far. They are only valid as tempo demands rary emergency measures. The means to a true economization is to be found not in the shrinking of rooms, which makes both the apartment and the inhabitant suffer, but primarily in a reasonable economy of finance and real estate and in


155

OETAIL-GRUNORlSS Ein£r WOHNUNG wj« * BETTEN.

Fig. 23 Ludwig Hilberseimer, 1923; flo o r plan

Four-bedroom

apartment,

a systematically executed process of typification, which would enable the industrialization of residential construction. Only here can true sav ings be made and a great reduction of total costs achieved without detriment to the apartment as such. For it is precisely the metropolitan small apartment which requires, in the interest of social health, the most perfect design and especially the separation of rooms according to function. Guided by these demands, Ludwig Hilber seimer has attempted to design a small dwelling and to create a typology of rooms for a tenement. His plan variations for three, four, five, six, and seven inhabitants are each based on identical spatial elements and satisfy the corresponding spatial requirements. The fundamental elements

F loorplan variations Figs. 23-24

158


are entryway, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, sleeping alcove, and balcony, which appear in the same dimensions in all apartments. Only the largest room, the living and dining room, changes its size according to the number of inhabitants. The m ost efficient use of space is achieved through built-in cabinets, closets, and kitchen furnishings. All rooms, even the sleep ing alcove and the entryway, have their own source of natural light and allow cross ventila tion. The two-story buildings at the northern

1H i T 5

nil-

mSilife 1 1

;

llm3

Fig. 26 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Residential City, 1923; perspective

Fig. 27 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Residential City, 1923; view o f street


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and so uthern ends o f the block th a t contain stores lend the o therw ise unform ed mass a cubic form. They provide an anim ated contrast to the residential wings, open the block structure, and reveal its three-dim ensional character. The arrangem ent o f the block front is augm ented by the slightly p ro tru d in g stairw ells as well as the balconies, w hich are deeply recessed, and this feature, in conjunction w ith the stairw ells ju t ting out, creates ta u t three-dim ensional accents. In the co rresponding schem atic plan o f a residential city these elem ents are used to organize an entire city (satellite city) o f circa 125,000 inhabitants, com posed o f large, open, and ventilated blocks. T he n o rth -so u th streets are resid ential streets, w hile the few east-w est streets are in ten d ed for com m erce and traffic. The two tra in statio n s th a t connect to the city center are located so th a t they may be rapidly reached from any po in t in the residential settlem ent w ith o u t requiring any o ther m eans o f tra n sp o rtatio n . In co n trast to these attem pts to organize the room s o f an ap artm en t according to their respective p urposes and to perm anently define the d istrib u tio n o f functions, there is also the possibility o f allow ing the ten an t to divide the available space according to his own needs. This is m ade possible by introducing m ovable p arti tion walls, or rath er wall com ponents, which can easily be fastened to the ceiling and floor and which, as a resu lt o f th e ir m aneuverability, will

Sche-

matic riskien3 tiai cjty rigs.

25-27

Flexible layout of

160

Figs. 28-29


allow rooms to be divided up in any way at any time without issue. Mies van der Rohe realized these ideas for the first time in the apartm ent house he built for the Stuttgart Werkbund exhibition.23 The floor plan of this apartm ent building is based on a sys-

Fig. 28 Mies van der Rohe, Apartment building, Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927

Fig. 29 Mies van der Rohe, Apartment building, Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927; floor plan variations: left, enclosed rooms; right, open rooms 23 [Hilberseimer refers to the building exhibition “Die Wohnung” (The Dwelling) at the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart in 1927.]


161

Fig. 30 A d o lf Loos, Terraced apartment building, 1924

tem of pillars and party walls between the individual apartments. The walls surrounding the kitchen, bathroom, and stairwell are the only fixed walls. All other subdivisions are made according to the wishes of the tenant through movable wall components. With six to nine such wall components every spatial variation is pos sible, as the floor plans demonstrate, without thereby exhausting the variety of possibilities. Tenements that provide each apartment with direct access to the street, in spite of the high number of individual dwellings, represent a special type. The gallery structure of Michiel Brinkman in Rotterdam includes 262 living units that are arranged in a four-story block in such a way that each individual apartment has its own entry. The apartments of the ground floor and the first floor have direct access to the street. The

Direct street entry

162


Fig. 31 Heinrich de Fries, Apartment building with split-level apartments, 1919; section and plan

upper apartm ents are reached by a second-story gallery. These upper apartm ents are of two sto ries. A living room and a kitchen occupy their lower quarters, while the upper story contains three bedrooms. Two-story The Stepney House in London by Harry apart Barnes and W. R. Davidge is an arrangement of ments in enclosed two-story apartments (maisonettes) England within one large block. Its ten floors contain five vertically stacked two-story living units, which are each accessible from a gallery running the entirety of each floor. Each apartment has a hallway with a stair leading up, a living room, a kitchen, and a balcony in the lower portion. The upper story has three bedrooms and a bathroom. The very func tional distribution of minimal space shows that


163

even in mass housing the best elements of English residential culture can be maintained. H einrich de Fries has further developed this Two-story idea of the tw o-story apartm ent.24 By differentiapartating between the heights o f the floors, he exploits ™ents ,n space effectively and achieves strong spatial conermany trasts. H is fundam ental theory is as follows: a Flg 31 cubic, relatively tall apartm ent structure is verti cally cut into two parts widthwise. The wider front section takes up the entire height and con tains the living room , or rather, the kitchen, which includes dining and living facilities. The shallower rear portion is divided into two halfstories containing bedroom s and other rooms. The upper p ortion o f the living room has a gal lery connecting it to the building’s m ain stairwells, which, as a result o f this design, are only required at g reat intervals, m eaning th at m any apartm ents can be accessed by one or two staircases. E nter ing the apartm ent from the naturally lighted and w ell-ventilated corridor, one steps onto the inte rior gallery, passing two doors to the upper bedroom s and then using a small stairway to reach the large living room . T he living room is equipped w ith an alcove for the stove, a window seat, and a balcony. F rom this level one enters the room s of the low er half-story: the third bedroom , a room for w ashing dishes and laundry, and the 24 [See H einrich de F ries, Wohnstadte der Zukunft: Neugestaltung der Kleinwohnungen im Hochbau der Grofistadt (Berlin: V e rlag d er “ B auw elt,” 1919).]

164


bathroom. The disadvantage of this distribution is that the cooking facilities are in the living space. It is a shame that the large living room must also serve as a kitchen. If the room for washing dishes were enlarged slightly, cooking could take place there too. De Fries did actually incorporate this idea into a later proposal. Two-story Le Corbusier proposes a similar distribu apart tion, which, like de Fries’s system of full and ments in half-stories, is also based on the differentiation France of ceiling heights. But in contrast to de Fries, who reacted to the demands posed by a small apartm ent, Le Corbusier’s designs are based on more extensive requirements. Le Corbusier attem pts to give the tenement some of the advan tages of the hotel and at least a few of the merits of the villa. Each apartm ent is to have the advan tages of a communal dwelling: common domestic servants, common social rooms, and a central kitchen, all of which provide the same freedom as a good hotel; that is, generally applying the hotel system of maintenance, meal services, and management to the private dwelling. His design for a building is composed of Figs. 32-33 two residential wings that are connected by two transverse structures containing rooms for com munal purposes. In total, the block houses 120 private apartm ents stacked in five layers. The floor plan organizes rooms according to need and purpose. Each apartm ent has two stories; the living room takes up the entire two-story space, the single-story spaces contain the


165

Fig. 32 L e Corbusier, Immeubles-VUIas, 1922; perspective

kitchen, dining room, bathroom, and bedrooms. Each apartment also has a large balcony extend ing to both stories, which is to be used as a private garden. The deep recesses of the large balconies

166


Ludwig Hilberseimer, Boardinghouse, 1926; perspective

TT Fig. 35 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Boardinghouse, 1926; floor plans


167

create the strong three-dim ensional character of the building, lending this apartm ent house its unique form. H igh-rises will also becom e a possibility for The the new way o f life. In A m erica buildings of ten apartm ent house to fifteen stories already exist, the so-called apartm ent houses. They com bine every im agin able service and supply every com fort in the smallest am ount o f space. A m erican apartm ent houses are furnished practically and are occu pied especially by single people and couples w ithout children w here both m em bers o f the couple are em ployed. In general they com prise a living room th a t is equipped w ith a bed that folds away into a ventilated storage space, making it possible to use the space as a bedroom at night, a dressing room , a bathroom , and a small dining room w ith an attached cooking alcove. This cook ing alcove is a furnished meticulously. It has a gas stove w ith an oven and a range, counter space for washing dishes, an icebox, a garbage chute, and all o f the labor-saving dom estic appliances. A n exam ple o f such an apartm ent house is the S urf A partm ent H otel in Chicago. It has nineteen separate very com fortable apartm ents on each o f its nine floors. T he ground floor con tains the com m on social room s. Service is Figs. conducted as in a hotel by building staff. In con 34-35 tra st to these ap artm en t houses, which are The designed for long-term occupancy and w hich are probably the future m etropolitan way o f life, are A m erican hotel the actual hotels. A m erica has also developed

168


exemplary models of the hotel in terms of over all organization as well as in the design of individual rooms. The tasks to be fulfilled by such a hotel are far more numerous and encompassing than any European variant. Its grand foyer is a sort of public leisure space, which is also used by visi tors who are not guests at the hotel. Hundreds do business, read newspapers, use rooms for dicta tion and writing, and take advantage of telephones, telegraphs, inform ation desks, bar bershops, shoe cleaners, and cafes found here. Single rooms and entire suites can also be used for exhibitions. Traveling doctors and other pri vately employed individuals schedule their visiting hours to be held in hotels for weeks at a time and use certain hotel employees as if they were their private secretaries and personal staff. The lower portions of the building serve these various functions while the upper portions contain guest rooms. Guest rooms are all quite similar in their dimensions and furnishings. They consist of a bedroom, a bathroom with a toilet, and a dressing room. The number of guests in large hotels can reach the thousands. The Palmer House hotel in Chicago by Holabird & Roche can hold 4,000 guests in nineteen stories, while the five lower stories of the twenty-four-story build ing serve other purposes.25 25 [Hilberseimer drew on Richard N eutra’s detailed descriDtion of the Palmer House; see Richard Neutra,


169

The conditions o f the m etropolis have T he small house given rise to the sm all urban house as well as the tenem ent. T he urban h ouse’s small scale seldom perm its its construction as a freestanding build ing. F or econom ic reasons, they are often built in pairs, groups, or in rows as local site conditions and the need for garden space perm it. This form first appeared in English and A m erican settle m ents intended for w orkers and civil servants in large industrial centers. Since they usually are the p roducts o f an individual or o f a private, defined group, they always display a certain com pleteness and uniform ity th at is usually absent in tenem ents. The first projects o f this sort were, like m ost m etropolitan undertakings, unsystematically exe cuted. As in tenem ent blocks the crucial factor was always the pressing daily need, that is, the creation o f the greatest num ber o f buildings. In this way bare, long, dingy rows o f houses emerged as can be seen in London and in G erm an and Bel T he gian industrial centers. Ebenezer Howard sought to im prove this situation through the G arden City English garden movement. city With the smallest amount o f money possible for obtaining plots o f land and erecting houses, a great number o f reasonably sized apartments are to be created on a defined area, which must neverWie baut Amerika?, D ie B aubiicher, Bd. 1 (S tuttgart: J. H offm ann, 1927), 24-43.]

170


theless remain undeveloped to such an extent that it can still meet all requirements o f modern hygiene for air and light, enable a certain joy o f life and leisure, andprovide individualprivate gar dens andaparcel o f arable land to all inhabitants.26 Port Sunlight near Liverpool provided a model. A certain perfection was achieved at Letchworth and Ham pstead. Architects such as Lutyens, Parker, Unwin, and Scott have played a great role in the design of garden cities. English projects maintain a certain strict ness of architectural design in spite of their adaptation to site conditions, while German set tlements are more picturesque but lack an architectural design. More exemplary in the latter respect are the projects by Danish, Belgian, and especially Dutch architects, which are based on a more fundamental understanding of the problem of the garden city than are the German projects. Together with Heinrich de Fries, Peter Beh rens made an im portant contribution to the problem of the settlement in a work titled Vom sparsamen Bauen (On Economical Building), in which they attem pted to fundamentally solve the issue.27 It is clear that any such attem pt must 26 [Citation from an unidentified source. Howard’s book To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Reform (1898), which inspired the English G arden City movement, was trans lated into German in 1907; see Gartenstadte in Sicht, trans. Maria Wallroth-Unterlip (Jena: Diederichs, 1907).] 27 Peter Behrens and Heinrich de Fries, Vom sparsamen


171

Fig. 36 Heinrich de Fries and Peter Behrens, Clustered row houses, 1918; floor plans

focus first on the question of economics. The factor that increases the cost of small house con struction, excluding labor costs and land prices, is the cost of installing streets, sewers, and other utility lines, which is more expensive due to the yard space required for a single home. To econo mize the latter costs, de Fries and Behrens propose constructing houses in groups. Six or seven houses, according to the size of the hous ing types, are to be grouped in pairs, one behind another, so that the street frontage will only be used by four or five buildings. Using this layout in the development of an eleven-hectare area allows the construction of thirty-eight more houses on the same amount of developed area Bauen: Ein Beitragzur Siedlungsfrage (Berlin: Bauwelt, 1918).

Building in groups not in rows Fig. 36

172


than would have been possible using simple row housing. F urtherm ore, this method also requires significantly less street frontage due to the relatively narrow space required for each house, thus resulting in a great reduction in the costs of utilities installation and other related ancillary costs. The architectural advantages of this m ethod are also superior to those of simple row housing. Common row houses have an amorphous, completely flat character, which architects have tried to counter with borrowed, purely decora Plastic tive motifs such as oriels and gables. By gathering organiza individual houses into groups, a three-dim en tion sional arrangem ent of masses emerges as a result of the projection and recession of the houses themselves; that is, a powerfully accentuated corporeality becomes possible. Thus, by system atically fulfilling economic requirements, not only is money saved, but also the product of such systematically executed typification is a form that, as the embodim ent of an organism, allows borrowed decorative motifs to be eliminated. Until now settlements have been designed primarily with linear perspectives in mind. Rows of houses form narrow strips of buildings along the street, emphasizing its linear quality. In order to create contrasts, squares were added and streets were widened. These were often the result of a misguided reliance on urban forms of the medieval period; like oriels and gables, these designs were also used as decorative motifs


173

intended to break up the m onotony o f the street and to lend corporeality to the linear, tw o-dim en sional street form. In contrast, the m ethod of building houses in groups also leads to an altered concept o f the effects o f streets and space. Space no longer translates into w idening roads and sidewalks; rather, space signifies the open room between structures regardless o f w hether it is also being used as a place o f traffic. O ur old con cepts o f the street and space m ust thus be definitively reevaluated. By moving a portion of a housing g ro u p ’s allotted garden space to the front yard o f the buildings, a spaciousness between individual housing groups is achieved, which puts an end to the uncom fortable close ness o f m ulti-fam ily housing arrangem ents and offers the advantage o f m aking the area of the entire developm ent available for useful purposes. Jan Wils produced an excellent example of the relaxed block front in his D aal en Berg settle ment through the skillful m anner in which he interlocked the individual houses. By employing projections and recessions across the entire build ing mass he creates an extrem ely anim ated cubic design and produces a strong contrasting effect. V ictor B ourgeois successfully relaxed the building stru ctu re in a different way. In order of avoid the n o rth -so u th o rientation o f houses in an east-w est stree t o f the C ite M oderne in Brus sels, he sets them on an axis o f forty-five degrees to th at o f the street, thereby creating a serrated developm ent w hich receives sunlight from the

A change in the concept of space

Relaxing the block structure Figs. 37-38

Sunlight in an east-west street Fig. 39

174

m e t r o p o l is a r c h it e c t u r e

-..... ») l»' — — - '

Fig. 38 Jan 1919-22

Wils.

----

Papaverhof. en Berg.

The Hague.


175

northern east-west and the southern east-west sides; at the same time, this design eliminates the rigid form of the street. Ludwig Hilberseimer has also applied his typification and functional separation of rooms to designs for row housing and the small house. The floor plan is organized so that smaller rooms are arranged in the shape of an “L” and occupy one story, wrapping around the open two-story living room. The main floor contains the office, dining room, kitchen, and entryway. On the upper floor, which has a terrace above the living room,

Fig. 39 Victor Bourgeois, Cite Moderne, Brussels. 1922-25; floor plans

Typifica tion of spaces Figs. 40-41

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Fig. 40 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Row houses, 1924; perspective

Fig. 41 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Row houses, 1924; floor plans

are the bedroom, three sleeping alcoves, and the bathroom. The flexibility of vertical develop ment allowed by the single-family house enables the differentiation of spaces according to height. The living room has not only the largest area, but also the greatest height. The alternating of

Fig. 42 J. J. P. Oud, Hoek van Holland workers' housing, 1924


177

one- and tw o-story spaces produces a decisively three-dim ensional construction, which is em pha sized when arranged in rows. In H oek van H olland, J. J. R O ud built a Fig. 42 group o f row houses particularly distinguished by its rem arkable floor plan. This floor plan rep resents the perfect solution for the tenem ent. By exchanging narrow and broad room com ponents, Changing the apartm ent size can be altered in any way. apartm ent sizes A partm ents are m ade up o f one large living room, a kitchen, and, depending on their size, one to three bedroom s. A t the corners of the blocks and in the courtyard-like recessions of the buildings are shops, w hose special design lends a lively co n trast o f space and m aterials to the sim ple form o f the block. Le C orbusier has m ade many attem pts at perfecting the form o f the sm all house. H is m ost rem arkable is the M aison “C itro h an ,” which in spite o f its sm all area provides a very com fort able dwelling. T he m ain living room has a double ceiling height; the dining room , kitchen, and the bedroom s, etc., are vertically stacked in three Spatial stories. T hus a strict differentiation o f spaces emerges, no t only in the room s them selves, but differen tiation also in th e ir organization. Le C orbusier has devoted special atten tio n to the problem o f the typification and serial production o f the small Fig. 43 house. In the Pessac settlem ent near Bordeaux he had the o p p o rtu n ity to realize his proposals for th e sm all house. T his settlem ent is com posed o f single, double, triple, and row houses with

178


Fig. 43 L e C orbusier, M o d e rn F ruges Quarter, Pessac, 1 9 2 4 26 ; g eneral a xo n o m etric view


179

small apartments. All of the buildings use the flat roof as a garden. Stairs are located on the exteriors of the single and double houses. The relatively narrow apartments, which extend back rather deeply, contain a kitchen, living room, a small and a large bedroom, and a bathroom. At the ground level, space is often left mostly open and undeveloped. This feature and the long strips of windows cause the houses to assume an ethereal quality, producing a light, almost float ing effect. All of the houses are constructed with reinforced concrete and completed using serially produced building elements. The Pessac settlement by Le Corbusier, the Torten settlement near Dessau by Walter

Fig. 44 Walter Gropius, Torten Settlement, Dessau, 1926-28; general axonometric view

180 An attempt to indus trialize construc tion Fig. 44


Gropius, and Praunheim near Frankfurt am Main by Ernst May are the first general attempts to industrialize construction. In order to avoid the danger of uniformity, which can be seen in English suburban housing, W alter Gropius has attem pted to typify individ ual building elements, not entire buildings. Various house forms can then be developed from these elements. Gropius believes that repressing individualism is wrong and shortsighted. His

Fig. 45 Walter Gropius, "Life-size building blocks," 1923; building components


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“life-size building blocks” can be put together into various types o f houses, accom m odating even the sm allest details o f building plans and any num ber o f inhabitants and their various needs. Individual houses can thus be adapted to every need and allow infinite variations, while the construction itself, in spite o f being made out o f serialized elem ents, allow s a rich diversity of appearance. By investigating functions th a t until now have b een asso cia ted w ith the w indow — illum i n ation, v en tila tio n , and views — H ugo H aring has achieved a fu n ctio n al sep aratio n o f these three purposes. A room is b est illum inated by a skylight, w hile cross v en tila tio n , occurring directly below the ceiling, is the m ost efficient v en tilation technique. Views are b est provided through clear sin g le-sh eet sliding panes of glass; th a t is panes w ith o u t grilles, as in a P ull man rail car. W hen illu m in atio n com es from a skylight and w hen only a few w indow s are req u ired for looking ou tsid e, the design o f the floor plan o b ta in s a g reat flexibility. However, illu m ination by m eans o f a skylight requires th at a b u ilding be only one story, bu t this does allow expansion on th re e sides, p erm ittin g a com pact form o f developm ent. T his is a signif icant resu lt th a t en su res sm all and individual houses an existence in th e im m ediate vicinity o f a m etropolis. O ne w ill perhaps raise the o b jection th a t th e only room s w ith a view are the living room s, a p reju d ice th a t is based

Building blocks Fig. 45

Light from above for living room s

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Fig. 46 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Single-family house, Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927; general view

The country house

purely on ignorance. On the contrary, bed room s require no view, and secondary rooms m ost definitely do not; rather they need venti lation and light, both of which will be provided to a g reater degree than before. Villas and country houses have always displayed more architectural value than the tenem ent, yet here even greater absurdities led to disasters in design. The villa and the country house are m ore or less luxury buildings. Their respective characters are influenced by individ ual desires, and thus they are not to be developed as types, but rather given a distinctly subjective


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Fig. 47 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Single-family house, Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, 1927; floor plans

character. The old private house has served as the model for the villa and the country house, and the traditional mode of building has pro duced valuable examples everywhere. This is true above all in the northern countries, espe cially England, where a distinct bourgeois residential culture has been developed, which is clearly demonstrated by the design of the floor plan. In the buildings of Lutyens, Scott,

English residen tial culture

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Unwin, and Wood a valuable building trad^f is still alive. These architects have also exen a great influence on Germany, particul^ through their interm ediary H erm ann Muth g, who attem pted to realize sim ilar projeg SV^gfflost o f th e s e b u ild in g s irate a dispassionate character of schematic abstraction i and rigidity, and they rarely display a trace of con- ' temporary vibrancy. The impression and influence of traditional models have been so great that only | a few architects have dared to take the leap into the present and to tackle the problem at its roots. The contemporary country house distinguishes itself L- from that of the past through an entirely new mode of use. While in the past it was essentially determined by its opulent character, today it is more oriented toward functionality and providing comfort to its inhabitants. Thus it renounces in the first place any imposing axial arrangements, which place great restrictions on the spatial orga nization of a small building, and attempts, rather, to render the internal spatial organization legible on the exterior of the building. The country house is unsuited for an arrangem ent in consecutive rows, in contrast to the tenement, whose isolation, even when it is 28 [Hilberseimer refers to the English architects Edwin Lutyens, M. H. Baille-Scott, Raymond Unwin, and Edgar Wood. Hermann M uthesius popularized English domes tic design in his influential work Das englische Haus (The English House); see Hermann Muthesius, Das englische Haus 3 vols. (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1904-05).]


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is countered by the dynamics of the » C o u n try houses have an organic ipnship to the surrounding garden; gJtip to the street is only secondary, g s e buildings are well suited to ra ity ; their relationships and spatial ^ S t& L j/^ n o d ifie d by the unique^ p j K & l U ^ h a t t h e country

Figs. 48-49

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Fig. 48 Frank Lloyd Wright, Martin House, Buffalo, 1905; floor plan

Fig. 49 Frank Lloyd Wright, Martin House, Buffalo, 1905; general view Emphasis on the horizontal

organization of the structure. While American architecture, like G erm an architecture, is gener ally vertical, Wright emphasizes the horizontal. He extends the flat roofs of his houses as well as


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balconies and terraces, creating contiguous, hor izontal divisions, and he uses the horizontal to strengthen the vertical progression o f his distinctly terrace-like houses. H e also incorpo rates the environm ent o f his buildings into the architectural design. T he surrounding footpaths run parallel to the horizontals o f the structure. The projections o f the roof, the terraces, and other elem ents produce partially corporeal enti ties that effectively transition the indifferent quality o f the air space into the corporeal determinacy of the building, whose weight is however simultaneously nullified optically. The influence that Wright has exerted can hardly be measured. Nearly all m odern European architects are under his influence. In particular, H olland’s vibrant archi tecture is unthinkable w ithout W right’s example. By exploiting the constructive possibilities o f reinforced concrete, M ies van der Rohe also broke new ground in country house construc tion. A ttem pts to use reinforced concrete as a m aterial for residential construction have been made many times, but for the m ost part they have been m isguided. In general, architects simply tried to create stone buildings out of concrete. The advantages o f the m aterial were not re cognized and its disadvantages not avoided. The principal advantage o f reinforced concrete construction is found in its m aterial economy, which is made possible by strictly separating loadbearing from non-load-bearing elements. Mies van der Rohe attem pted to solve the problem of

New paths

Fig. 50

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Fig. 50 Mies van der Rohe, Concrete country house, 1923

Fig. 51 Mies van der Rohe, Brick country house, 1924

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the reinforced-concrete house in a design for a country house. The main residential portion is supported by a double-stem truss system. This system is enclosed by a thin layer of reinforced concrete forming both the walls and the ceiling. Openings are cut in the walls where required for lighting and views. The fact that the wall is freed from its former load-bearing function allows openings to be placed anywhere, creating stun ning effects. The heavy corporeality of the building mass is dissolved and a floating lightness is achieved. Games of W hile Mies van der Rohe systematically form developed this effect from the mode of construc tion itself, many have tried to outwardly imitate these forms at great cost without, however, grasping the constructive sense of the new pos sibilities of form or the new organism. Mies van der Rohe’s distance from such games of form is Fig. 51 clearly shown in his brick country house. While it is a great departure from standard models, it also complies with its own constructive princi ples and the materials used. It is a new formation, created by a new spatial organism, not by a mis use of materials.

Commercial Buildings C entralization is one o f the principal require ments o f circulation in the m etropolis. The need to be able to m anage various business m atters within a lim ited space gave rise to the principle of the city center.29 T he new form o f centralized business operations led to the em ergence o f new building types: d ep artm en t stores, com m ercial buildings, and office buildings. T hese building types require w ell-lighted w orking and sales spaces, the ability to change the size and form ats of rooms, an unhindered flow o f traffic, and the com plete exploitation o f the building site. The organization o f these requirem ents produced a new building type, in w hich the typically loadbearing w alls w ere reduced to pillars and the building enclosed by walls was transform ed into a skeletal structure. Two possibilities for archi tectural design em erged: em phasizing the vertical by turning the w alls betw een the pillars into plate glass or em phasizing the horizontal by installing contiguous bands, betw een which win dows are stretched, to strongly dem arcate the separate floors. T he d ep a rtm en t store in particular, which is the organizational form o f a new business con cept, has developed b oth vertical and horizontal 29 [H ilberseim er uses the English w ord C ity in the origi nal; see n ote 2, p. 89.]

A new building type

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Fig. 52 Alfred Messel, Wertheim department store, Berlin,

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1896-1912

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194 V ertically Fig. 52


types. Alfred M essel’s Wertheim department store in Berlin consciously emphasizes the verti cal quality of the pillar system. It is a unique mix of daring construction and standard conven tions: the new constructive principle is subtly framed by historical reminiscences. Established concepts of form are schematically applied and ornam entally exaggerated in the corner arcade building with its cathedral-like tapestry room. All of this betrays a certain tentative lack of con fidence. Messel sensed rather than acknowledged the architectural consequences of the construc tive principles he applied. This corner building, with its tall, narrow windows, has produced innumerable variations. See for example the Tietz store buildings designed by Olbrich in Diisseldorf or by Kreis in Cologne. Both still employ steep ornam ental gables, required by such an emphasis on the vertical, to break up the crowning horizontal component; they overem phasize disjointed and disconnected qualities and signify a further vertical disintegration of the building mass. Peter Behrens applied this principle with relative success to the small engine factory of AEG in Berlin. This “factory building” is essen tially modeled after the Wertheim building. After everything superfluous was removed and the most essential qualities emphasized, the same basic rhythmic idea emerged: a simple arrangement in rows. This was executed with clarity, strength, and precision and the rows were architectonically


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connected. These exem plary characteristics are apparent despite the inorganic roof, required for usage and to com ply w ith building ordinances, and despite the frieze that connects the pillars and the references to classicism.

Fig. 53 V. A . and A . A . Vesnin, M ostorg department store, Moscow, 1925

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Emphasizing horizontally offers more per fect solutions. The easily attainable cubic corporeality avoids the danger of dissolving the cubic component into pure linearity, which is what occurs when the vertical quality is overem phasized. The horizontal articulation of floors allows the expression of self-supporting, verti cally stacked cubes. Such a design, which alludes to the principle of weight, does not contain the danger inherent in the systematic application of the vertical component, which is that the form itself will be disrupted. In addition, horizontal organization corresponds to the vertical stack French ing of floors. This is why, despite their historical depart reminiscences, the Louvres, Printemps, and Bon ment Marche stores in Paris produce greater architec stores tonic effects than the vertically oriented German American departm ent stores. The same is true of such depart American departm ent stores as Daniel Burn ment ham ’s building for Butler Brothers or George stores N im m ons’s for Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago, both of which are based on a principle of hori zontal design but are nevertheless completely rom antic in an architectural sense. In contrast, Louis Sullivan’s Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. departm ent store in Chicago and Otto Wagner’s Neum ann departm ent store in Vienna, in which the horizontal stacking of stories is clearly expressed architectonically, are executed with greater consequence. Wagner’s departm ent store has the special characteristic that in his building, like the Tietz departm ent store in Berlin designed Horizontality

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Bernhard Sehring, stories are defined by large contiguous panes o f p late glass. These buildings were the first to realize the new structural pos sibilities offered by steel construction, which, just like reinforced concrete, allows pillars on the building front to be entirely elim inated by using instead projected horizontal constructive elements as load-bearing com ponents. Thus, in place o f an exterior w all pierced by windows or a front divided by pillars, there em erges a great plate-glass surface subdivided horizontally by metal strips. T he sam e constructive principle was applied to a d ep artm en t store in M oscow Fig. 53 designed by the architects V. A. and A. A. Vesnin. In this instance as w ell the front, w ithout pillars, is com posed o f plate glass set in m etal frames. Yet in the end these enorm ous plate-glass M aterial panes are nothing o th e r than a new m aterial ro rom anti cism manticism. Shelves for goods are placed directly behind the panes o f glass, so th a t their true func tion o f providing b e tte r illum ination for the rooms inside is partially nullified. In contrast, E rich M endelsohn has taken account o f this fact in his Schocken departm ent store in N urem berg by placing the bands of win dows above the shelving units. Office and com m ercial buildings have de The office and com veloped m ore slowly but w ith greater architec m ercial tural logic, leading ultim ately to the high-rise. building Thus M essel’s com m ercial buildings in Berlin are in great p art based on the floor plans and con struction o f R enaissance palaces. N evertheless

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Messel has given windows and pillars equal weight by reducing the size of the pillars. The opposite is true of Ludwig H offm ann’s entirely decorative governmental buildings, where win dows are relatively small and offices receive insufficient light due to H offm ann’s emphasis on historical architectural forms.30 Despite the presence of historical forms, in Richardson’s and Sullivan’s buildings the win dow becomes the m ost im portant element, thereby allowing the need for light to greatly influence the design o f the building. Reorgani The floor plan of the administrative build zation of ing of the Mannesmann-Werke in Dusseldorf the floor designed by Peter Behrens is organized accord plan ing to the requirem ents of business operations. Fig. 54 With this he achieves new possibilities for archi tectural design, which are, however, nullified by his classical orientation. In order to facilitate universal functionality, he has avoided perm a nently separating central working spaces. The main walls of these workrooms are subdivided by numerous identically shaped and narrowly spaced pillars. Through easily removable, 30 [Ludwig Hoffmann was the Stadtbaurat (City Building Councilor) for Berlin from 1896 to 1924. Hilberseimer’s remark reflects the opinion, which was shared by a num ber of progressive architects, that Hoffmann directed a conservative building department during his tenure; pro test against his influence led indirectly to the foundation of the Ring of modern architects. See Dorte Dohl, Lud wig Hoffmann: Bauen fiir Berlin 1896-1924 (Tubingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 2004), 177-82.]

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Fig. 54 Peter Behrens. Office building o f the Mannesmannrohren-Werke, Diisseldorf 1910-12; floor plan

double-layer, so u n d p ro o f p artitions the size of the room s can be altered at any tim e according to need. Thus room s can range from the small twowindow room to enorm ous halls accom m odating many w orkers and w ith as many windows as desired. B uilt-in filing cabinets in the walls of the corridors perfect this practical usage. Frank Lloyd W right took into account the business operations o f large organizations even more system atically. H is adm inistrative building for the Larkin C om pany in Buffalo is com prised of one single light-flooded space. O pen w ork spaces on each floor surro u n d the central light court. N o p artitio n w alls hinder supervision and com m unication. E verything is functionally equipped. A unique form was logically devel oped based on w hat was needed.

Open work spaces

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The systematic design of the commercial building utilizing the constructive potential of steel and reinforced concrete has paved the way for Skeleton entirely new architectural possibilities. As in the construc department store, skeleton construction has over tion taken wall construction in the commercial building. Ensuring maximal illumination has decisively conditioned the form and purpose of the building, thus creating a new building structure. Beyond that, the tectonic character of con Overcom ing the struction has changed in its essence. Steel and old sys reinforced-concrete constructions have sur tem of load and mounted the old load and support system. Both enable the building mass to protrude beyond its support supporting pillars. Thus, recalling medieval wooden construction, Hans Poelzig built his Bre slau (Wroclaw) commercial building in such a way that each story juts out beyond the one below it. Erich Mendelsohn has devoted his atten tion to the same problem, particularly in his expansion o f the Mosse building in Berlin, though he addresses the issue indirectly rather than pointedly, and, to an extent, paraphrases it symbolically. He strives to articulate his inde pendence from load-bearing vertical elements through the lateral and diagonal cantilevering of individual stories. Mies van der Rohe has recognized the design possibilities of the new constructive the ories with unique consistency; his design for an office building represents their architectural solution. A double-stem frame measuring eight


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Fig. 55 Mies van der Rohe, Concrete office building, 1923

meters w ide w ith a peripheral cantilever o f four The meters was established as the m ost economical efficient system of construction system . This fram e carries the ceil construc ing panel, w hich at the end o f the cantilevered tion section form s an upw ard right angle and becomes Fig. 55 the interior wall, serving as the back wall for the shelving units, w hich have been rem oved from the central space and placed on the peripheral walls for the sake o f clarity. Above the shelves is a strip o f w indow s th a t runs to the ceiling unbro ken by visible w alls or supports. T he horizontal stacking o f the m ultistory building is thus dynamically em phasized and m ade a defining principle o f the design. T he design o f the build ing is based on the essence o f the task and it employs the m eans o f o u r time. F orm and con struction have becom e an im m ediate unity.

High-rises

The develop ment o f the high-rise

The steadily increasing concentration of busi ness life in America has logically led to the high-rise. With the high-rise, America has pro duced a building type whose daring construction contains the kernel of a new form of architecture. The first high-rises appeared in the 1880s in the commercial district of Chicago, a small area bounded by Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, and the terminal train stations of the central rail lines. Business operations that were concentrated in this small area took on ever-greater dimen sions. Nobody wanted to forsake the economic advantages that resulted from such concentra tion. Increasing the number of stories in a building became the only way to accommodate the pressing need for space. At first additional stories were added to existing buildings; eventu ally high-rises were built and their advantages soon recognized. High-rises were therefore erected not only where space was scarce but also where the technical and economic advantages of concentration were found. They soon appeared in great numbers in nearly all larger American cit ies. They rose completely haphazardly and without consideration for urban planning per spectives; one-sided, ephemeral interests reigned. The physiognomy of these cities was quickly and fundamentally transformed. In place of the extended, moderately contoured horizontal

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character, w hich still defines the silhouettes of European m etropolises, richly form ed urban sil houettes w ith p o te n t accents appeared in A m erica— tow ering m asses separated by deep ravine-like gaps. But the effects o f these high-rise cities are based on pure happenstance; they lack a con sciously planned design. A ttem pts at conscious planning have been m ade repeatedly w ithout success. T he problem o f the individual building can only ever be solved in conjunction with the problem o f the city. W ith regard to the high-rise, which exerts such g reat influence on the plan of an urban area, the la tte r is o f great im portance. Like every building, the high-rise is but a cell, a com ponent o f the u rb an organism , and it m ust be system atically connected to the latter. A lack o f planning, however, is one o f the characteristic features o f the capitalist econom ic form. This is also naturally expressed in the urban form th a t capitalism has produced, that is, in the m etropolis. In A m erica, the classic nation o f the liberal capitalist economy, this disorganization has been pushed beyond all bounds. In the m ountain ranges o f buildings in N ew York the material convictions o f our tim e have found their m ost powerful expression. W hile in Europe this excess remains lim ited, in A m erica the drive of specula tion has functioned unchecked and produced total urban disorganization. Elim inating this situ ation has becom e a pressing question o f survival.

Lack of planning

Fig. 10

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Fig. 56 Cass Gilbert, Woolworth Building, New York, 1913

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Fig. 57 M cKim, M ead & White. Pennsylvania Hotel. New York. 1919

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The inability to recognize the new in its early development also led to grotesque deformations in the construction of high-rises. Architects attem pted to neutralize the unusual appearance of high-rises by decorating them with stylistic features derived from past ages, degrading them to the level of an Italian pseudo-palazzo. Th< Aggrega aggregation of forms, instead of conscious for tion mation, became the principle of design. Yet the instead of inherent elemental characteristics of these build formation ings survived such clever mock architecture. Architecture is based primarily on the form o f construction that makes its existence possi ble. Recent architecture in particular has nearly achieved a state of pure construction as a result o f its founding principle of rationalism; in the architecture of the past, sacred and religious requirem ents outweighed rational purposes. The first high-rises were originally built like all residential buildings since antiquity. They were composed of perim eter load-bearing walls and pillars. Yet with the increasing number of stories, the disadvantages of this form of con struction became increasingly clear and its unsuitability increasingly apparent. The thick ness of the walls grew with the number of stories, swallowing up space. The load-bearing limits of the land were quickly surpassed by the monstrous masses of material required. At first builders separated the ceilings from the walls, supporting the former with steel support beams. From here it was only a short step to an independent system of

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steel supports able to bear great loads and forces Separat with relatively sm all cross sections and enabling ing loadthe separation o f load-bearing and non-load- bearing and bearing elem ents. T his reduces the perm anent non-loadload, allowing b oth a greater num ber o f stories bearing and faster construction. elements It is characteristic o f A m erican architec Disregard for the ture that, ap a rt from a sm all num ber of exceptions, the stru ctu ral support system has support system been entirely ignored in form al design. The con structive im plications w ere understood, but not the im plications for form . T he structural skele ton was covered in various m ock architectural styles; m em ories o f w hat A m ericans saw on European to u rs w ere grotesquely distorted. Mock Renaissance form s had the m ost prestige, but medieval form s were also used. F or instance, architec ture Cass G ilbert succeeded in destroying the ele Fig. 56 mental greatness o f his W oolw orth Building, the tallest building in the w orld, by adding G othic stylistic elem ents o f pressed m etal. A m erican arch itectu re is strongly influ enced by the academ icism o f the French Renaissance. N evertheless, it m ust be recog nized that form s are applied w ith taste and logic to the extent possible. T he architects of these buildings have delivered p ro o f th a t antique forms, w hich until now have been adapted to every form o f building, o r rather, have controlled every shift in constructive principles, are also suitable as decorative elem ents for the high-rise. Despite the im portance o f such buildings as

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Ernest R. G raham ’s Equitable Building, McKim, Mead & W hite’s Pennsylvania H otel in New Fig. 56 York, and even Albert K ahn’s General Motors Building in Detroit, they are still only academi: achievements that carry no value for the future. The design of their masses is their only valuable and new element. They are based on a floor pla: employing wings that places courtyards and light wells on the street side of buildings, thus allow ing a cubic vertical organization of the buildin;, and favorable lighting conditions. However, the vast majority of other highrises depart from these and similarly tasteful The do buildings. American high-rises do, in general, minance still exhibit the same constructive principles, of the which, however are greatly modified as a result functional of the unbridled sway of the elementary concept concept of function; indeed these constructive principles are m anipulated ad absurdum. In these buildings no consideration is given to the decorative ele m ents found in the wealth of classical forms. The forms used are applied only out of pure conven tion. Their removal would reveal a naked functional building. This is surely an advantage but still not a solution. Yet these are precisely the buildings that have contributed most to the realization that details based on the dimensions of norm al rooms become absurd in a high-rise. They have made it clear that a systematic appli cation of the concept of function also creates new architectural forms that no longer require a decorative shell. Decisive for the design of a Academi cism

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high-rise are only the new needs and require ments related to technology and spatial relationships, as well as the new m aterials: steel, reinforced concrete, and glass, which have all proved to be very effective for high-rises. The only A m erican architect to recognize and grasp these facts, besides Sullivan, was John Root, who im plem ented them in his M onadnock Building in Chicago constructed in 1891. It is astounding th a t this high-rise, which is one of the earliest high-rises ever built, has yet to be surpassed by an o th er in its “correctness.” Though it does belong to an era in which the sup port system had n o t yet been invented, what distinguishes this b uilding is th a t it revealed that the problem plaguing all architecture is a cubic and rhythm ic problem ; th a t it revealed this in a new way and took contem porary conditions into consideration. T he desire to replace creative inability w ith overblow n m aterial accum ulation, that is, the em barrassing p ath taken for m ost later buildings, was here instinctively avoided. An unm istakable sense o f pro p o rtio n gives this building an inner consistency and logical form. Root abandoned m etered design, axial em pha sis, and the com bination o f separate elem ents into higher-order form al com positions. The mass was successfully designed as an organism . A rchitecture ceased to be an ill-fitted mask. Root gave A m erican architecture a foundation and a goal w ith this building: he attained libera tion from E uropean taste; he form ulated the

The design

The first experi ment Fig. 58

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Fig. 58 Burnham & Root, Monadnock Building, Chicago, 1891

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American principle o f style that Frank Lloyd Wright universally outlined. T he new that has arisen in this way has nothing to do with banal functionality; rath er it is sim ultaneously the greatest coherence and concentration. Root has shown that new types o f expressive forms must be found to satisfy the conditions o f his country and the requirem ents o f the present. T here has been no lack o f a ttem p ts to alter the u nsustainable c o n d itio n s resu ltin g from the haphazard erec tio n o f high-rises in A m erica’s high-rise cities. A new building law, the “zon ing law,” the fu n d am en tal principles o f which were already assum ed by Sullivan in his C hi cago high-rises, atte m p ts to im prove the am ount of light received in in d iv id u al h igh-rises.31 P ro visions vary from u rb a n d istrict to urban district. T hus, in som e d istricts the first setback m ust occur at a h eig h t o f tw o and a h alf tim es the w idth o f th e stree t; in o th e r districts, it m ust take place lower, at a h eight o f tw o tim es the width of th e stree t. A tow er may only be erected when it covers no m ore th a n one q u arter o f the total area to be developed. T he S helton H otel in N ew York was b u ilt by A. L. H arm o n accord ing to these principles. A design by H ugh Ferriss shows how an en tire city block can be designed according to these regulations; New York, an in ten se upw ard d issolving o f building masses. T his is surely a g re a t im provem ent but 51 [See n ote 10, p. 106.]

The new form

Zoning

Fig. 59

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Fig. 59 Hugh Ferriss, Proposalfor the development o f ablocl according to the zoning law, 1925

High-rise and traffic Fig. 14

it does not provide any advantages for the flou of traffic. Le Corbusier attem pted to solve the traffic problem by placing high-rises at large intervals from each other. This proposal had already been made by Perret.32 Raymond Hood, the designer 32 [Hilberseimer refers to Auguste P erret’s projects for a city of towers of 1921-22. See J. Labadie, “Les cathćdrales de la citć moderne,” L ‘Illustration, 12 August 1922, 129-36.]

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of the Chicago T ribune Tower, has recently revisited this problem in a design for high-rises that expand only in the u pper stories and occupy a relatively sm all area .33 But the broad, open spaces foreseen by these proposals are at odds with the concept o f the high-rise because if the interstitial te rrain were developed at regular building heights, it w ould provide the same amount o f usable space. The high-rise is ou td a ted in its contem po rary form, especially w hen it appears as a row house, as it does in m ost A m erican metropolises. That which has already been proved to be inad equate for the tenem ent, th a t is, an unsuitable urban plan, applies even m ore to existing highrise cities. T he u rb an plan is not an abstraction: it depends fundam entally on the type of constructive developm ent. A ll existing m etropolises are based on the m edieval system o f the individual house. But the individual house has in the meantime becom e a house for the masses. The urban plan, conditioned by the relationships of private ow nership, has yet to overcom e the stage of the individual house. T his is an im pedim ent to the system atic design o f housing for the masses because the la tte r depends entirely on the design o f the u rb an p la n — they are m utually ” [H ilberseim er refers to R aym ond H o o d ’s proposal for a series o f skyscrapers w ith sm all b uilding footprints. See Raymond H ood, “Tow er B uildings and W ider Streets: A Suggested R elief for T ra ffic C o n g estio n ,” American Architect 132, 5 July 1927, 67-68.]

Develop-

ment and Upian" ^ F,g 1

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Fig. 59 Hugh Ferriss, Proposalfor the development o f a block according to the zoning law, 1925

High-rise and traffic Fig. 14

it does not provide any advantages for the flow o f traffic. Le Corbusier attem pted to solve the traffic problem by placing high-rises at large intervals from each other. This proposal had already been made by Perret.32 Raymond Hood, the designer 32 [Hilberseimer refers to Auguste Perret’s projects for a city of towers of 1921-22. See J. Labadie, “Les cathćdrales de la citć moderne,” L ’Illustration, 12 August 1922, 129-36.]

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of the Chicago T ribune Tower, has recently revisited this problem in a design for high-rises that expand only in the upper stories and occupy a relatively sm all area .33 But the broad, open spaces foreseen by these proposals are at odds with the concept o f the high-rise because if the in terstitial te rrain w ere developed at regular building heights, it w ould provide the same am ount o f usable space. T he high-rise is o u tdated in its contem po rary form , especially w hen it appears as a row house, as it does in m ost A m erican m etropolises. That which has already been proved to be inad equate for the tenem ent, th a t is, an unsuitable urban plan, applies even m ore to existing highrise cities. T he u rban plan is no t an abstraction: it depends fundam entally on the type o f con structive developm ent. A ll existing m etropolises are based on the m edieval system o f the indi vidual house. B ut the individual house has in the m eantim e becom e a house for the masses. The urban plan, conditioned by the relationships of private ow nership, has yet to overcom e the stage of the individual house. This is an im pedim ent to the system atic design o f housing for the m asses because the la tte r depends entirely on the design o f the u rb an p la n — they are m utually 33 [H ilberseim er refers to R aym ond H o o d ’s proposal for a series o f skyscrapers w ith sm all building footprints. See R aym ond H ood, “Tow er B uildings and W ider Streets: A Suggested R elief for T raffic C o n g estio n ,” American Architect 132, 5 July 1927, 67-68.]

D evelop m ent and urban plan Fig. 10

214


dependent. This is why, as a result of an insuffi ciently organized urban plan, the advantages offered by the high-rise are for the most part nul lified. As a solitary building, the high-rise should only be constructed at certain points in the urban plan, at points with sufficient light and air. The Where it appears as a row house, the high-rise high-rise must be systematically designed as such, as Lud as row wig H ilberseim er has done in his schema for a house High-rise City. Here the high-rise is applied in a Figs. completely new way; it is integrally bound to the 17-19 urban plan, thereby creating an organic entity from the chaotic disadvantages of past highrises with regard to traffic, hygiene, and lighting. In Europe the question of the construction of high-rises has also recently been raised. Indeed, architects already considered the possi bility of high-rise construction before the war, especially in Berlin, where the constantly grow ing need for commercial space and timesaving concentration made the high-rise a necessity. Building ordinances, however, did not permit their construction. Building ordinances have The schematic been treated blandly and schematically, turning treatm ent Berlin into a faceless city. The city’s overex of build ing ordi tended horizontal character demands compact vertical elements and calls for the vibrancy pro nances duced by alternating building masses, which, in a metropolis, is only to be achieved by high-rises. If, for this reason, European cities are to build high-rises, the only suitable sites are those required by need and perm itted by the

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considerations o f urban planning, because the European high-rise has a com pletely different urban function from the A m erican variant, whose narrow arrangem ent has led to a com plete lack o f light in offices and thus practically destroyed the tru e advantages o f the high-rise. The A m erican high-rise is inherently a row house, w ithout how ever being properly designed as such. In spite o f all its stylistic m asquerades it retains no individual effect. In order to achieve such an effect, its location would need to be iso lated; the location w ould have to dom inate certain streets and squares and bring order and sim plicity to the street system . T he European high-rise can to a great degree fulfill these False requirem ents. T he high-rise is therefore to be m onu purposefully erected w here it accentuates and m entality focuses the dynam ics o f a street or square, giving movem ent an aim and direction. Yet it should not strive for false m onum entality, such as that seen in the building proposed by O tto K ohtz for the R eichshaus on the P latz der R epublik in Ber lin, w hose pathos recalls far too distinctly the happily conquered past, or even the pseudom onum entality o f Bruno M ohring’s designs.34 34 [H ilberseim er refers to the proposals m ade by Kohtz and M ohring from 1920 on. See O tto Kohtz, “ D as Reich shaus am K onigsplatz in B erlin,” Stadtbaukunst alter und neuer Zeit 1 (1920): 241-45; B runo M ohring, “ U ber die Vorziige d er T u rm hauser und die Voraussetzungen, unter denen sie in Berlin gebaut w erden konnen,” Stadtbaukunst alter und neuer Z eit 1 (1920): 353-57, 370-76, 385-91.]

216


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Fig. 60 Mies van der Rohe, High-rise in iron and glass, 1922

H IG H -R IS E S

217

The floor plans o f these designs are characteris tic. In o rder to achieve the m ost com pact building mass, they enclose narrow , entirely surrounded co u rtyards— com plete nonsense in a high-rise. In contrast to these decoratively oriented designs, such proposals as R ichard D ocker’s for Stuttgart proceed from the considerations of urban planning. In ord er to lend the m uddled urban silhouette o f S tu ttg art som e character, D ocker proposes high-rises in the valley (which correspond to existing tow ers in their height) and a continuous developm ent o f the ridge— vertical developm ent by em bedding building masses, n o t elevating th e m .3S W ith his high-rise o f iron and glass, Mies van der R ohe attem pted to tu rn the daring struc tural concepts th a t are explicitly expressed in typical high-rises into the foundation o f artistic design. R elinquishing tra d itio n al form s entirely, he sought to design the object from the very essence o f the new task. T he peculiar form of the floor plan is based on the recognition th at the glass house is not dependent on the interaction of light and shadow, b u t on the rich interplay of reflected light. T he curves o f the floor plan were d eterm ined according to the needs o f interior lighting, the effect o f the building mass on the street, and the interplay o f reflected light. 35 [See R ichard H erre, “ H o c h h au ser fiir S tu ttg a rt,” Wasmuths Monatshefte fiir Baukunst 6, nos. 11-12 (1921-22): 375-90.]

The high-rise in iron and glass Fig. 60

Halls and Theaters Extrava gance of form

The need for halls and theaters in metropolises offered the architects of the nineteenth century, who erringly strove for false monumentality, the opportunity for the most luxurious extravagance of form. Exterior wealth was required to conceal inner poverty. The uncomfortable impression of these magnificent buildings is caused primarily by the senseless use of historical stylistic ele ments. Travel and historical research enriched stylistic eclecticism with exoticisms, fusing clas sical principles with ornam ental elements of all peoples and periods. Joseph Poelaert’s Palace of Justice in Brussels; Charles G arnier’s Grand Opera in Paris; Gottfried Semper’s museums and theaters in Vienna and Dresden; Paul Wallo t’sReichstaginBerlin;Henri-Adolphe-Auguste D eglane’s G rand and Charles-Louis G irault’s Small Palais in the Champs-Elysees; Gabriel Davioud and Jules Bourdais’s Trocadero in Paris; and Friedrich von Thiersch’s Festival Hall in Frankfurt am Main are all spirited character istic examples of the extreme ornamental orientation of the time. An uncertain will and arbitrary games of form disturbed the clarity of building principles, which, in the end, in the hands of imitators, were fully nullified by bom bastic monumentality. And yet, with their distinct differentiation of rooms and rich shifts in cubic construction, these

HALLS A N D THEATERS

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are precisely the types of buildings that could lead to an architecture internally form ed according to its inherent characteristics, to the creation o f spa tial organisms, whose exterior is purposefully defined by the internal organization of spaces. J. P. Berlage’s stock exchange building is a clear dem onstration o f this. F o r events such as concerts, exhibitions, gatherings, and celeb ratio n s a b uilding type has developed th a t is usually com posed o f two in terconnected halls, b o th su rro u n d ed by foy ers, checkroom s, and stairs. E arlier building techniques w ere generally sufficient for their co n struction. T hus th e ir a rch itec tu ral ap p ear ances w ere influenced by the corresponding eclectic form s o f p ast ages. Even in the applica tion o f the new est co n stru ctiv e tools, th a t is, steel and reinforced concrete, one was never far rem oved from eclecticism , n o t even in the case of large halls such as th e A lb ert H all in L on don, the T ro cad ero or the G ran d Palais in Paris, or the F estival H all in F ran k fu rt, to nam e but a few exam ples. T hough the new m ode o f construction allowed large-dim ensioned room s, it was for the m ost p a rt applied in a m ost antiquarian fashion, for exam ple to im itate historical vaulted form s in iron and glass. A rchitects sought to im pede the form -shaping capabilities offered by the new constructive options w ith any m eans necessary. Sim ilar to w hat happened in the construction of train station halls, here the elem entary pow er of

Halls

220

The Crystal Palace in London


form inherent in the construction is often con cealed behind poorly executed historicisms. The immediacy of this elementary power has been inhibited; the direct unity of structure and form has been ignored. However, at the beginning of this line of development is a work that intentionally departed from the practices of stone construc tion: an exhibition hall in London, a building of iron and glass that was the ingenious work of the gardener Joseph Paxton. It was constructed for the international industrial exhibition in Lon don in 1850.36 In 1852 it was dismantled and re-erected in 1854 with even greater dimensions in Sydenham near London as the Crystal Palace. It is composed of an extended structure interrupted by lateral pavilions that contain entrances and provide architectural accentua tion. The continuous half-cylinder ceiling forms a welcome contrast to the otherwise common rectilinear forms employed. The Crystal Palace is a building of glass and iron of the most primi tive type that has nevertheless clearly and purely become form. It is a building of glazed iron latticew ork—a pure pattern of lines and sur faces—that dissolves the structure’s true weight. The traditional contrasts of light and shadow that affected proportions of form in past archi tecture have disappeared here, making way for 36 [Hilberseimer refers to the G reat Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations.]

HALLS A N D THEATERS

221

evenly distributed light and creating a space of shadowless lum inosity. M ax Berg and the reinforced-concrete com The pany D yckerhoff and W idm ann constructed the C enten nial Hall C entennial H all in Breslau (W roclaw) exclu in Breslau sively o f reinforced concrete. This building has Figs. the g reatest unsu p p o rted span o f any solid con 61-62 struction to date. Its construction is rem iniscent of the P antheon in Rome, w hose dom e is also constructed o f load-bearing ribs and rests on a cylindrical base. T he h all’s low er portion is pierced by four large load-bearing arches to which apsidal extensions are attached, expand ing the space. T he challenge in the construction was to strike a balance betw een the play o f forces in the supporting arches o f the cylindrical drum and the flying buttresses o f the apses. As flying b uttresses o f a G o th ic cathedral divert the loads of the vaulting, so here the flying buttresses of

Fig. 61 Max Berg, Centennial Hall, Breslau (Wroclaw), 1911-13

222


Fig. 62 Max Berg, Centennial Hall, Breslau (Wroclaw),

H A L LS A N D TH E A T E R S

1911-13: interior

223

224


the apses divert the load of the four large arches that support the central dom e—a spatial con struction o f rare daring and powerful energy. Wooden construction, like steel and rein forced concrete, has also been subject to designs emphasizing economization and proper engi Engi neering. In contrast to older primitive modes of neered building, which were based on the beam struc timber tures used by carpenters, new methods of construc building in wood are based on the flow of forces. tion This enables even wooden construction to span large spaces w ithout intermediary supports and to thereby fulfill new spatial requirem ents in a m anner not unlike that of iron construction. Among the many attem pts that have been undertaken in this field, those of Carl Tuchscherer and Company are the most remarkable. The trade fair hall in Breslau (Wroclaw) and Westfalenhalle above all the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund are in D ort massive constructions of rare daring and novel mund spatial effects. The floor plan of the Westfalenhalle is elliptical, corresponding to athletic require ments. The distance between supports is seventy-eight meters and the trusses are placed at twenty-meter intervals. The trusses them selves are made of a pressed wooden band with wooden relieving supports above these. The weight of the roof of the elliptical space is car ried by a continuous band of purlins that run parallel to the long axis at both narrow ends. Thus a constructive and satisfactory spatial

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effect was achieved. T he light provided by rows of windows set above the trusses gives the space the daylight required for sporting events. In addition to arranging the floor plan, the architectural challenge in th eater construction is to uniform ly align the contradictory constructive spaces o f the stage and auditorium , which are determ ined by the interior organism ; that is, to design spaces, w hose disparity is continuously augm ented due to the increasing technical dem ands o f the stage, as one unit. T he traditional theater contained both the stage and audience hall beneath one roof. G eorg M oller m ust have been the first to attem p t to arrange the building masses o f a th eater according to their actual requirem ents. In his City T heater in M ainz the audience hall, a h alf cylinder, is placed in front of the cubic stage portion. T he building was clearly and unam biguously given the character o f a th e ater. In spite o f an excess o f details, the exterior o f G arn ier’s G ran d O pera in Paris expresses the purpose o f the building as well as its interior organization. T he foyer, audience hall, and stage are clearly em phasized; the stage is powerfully sum m arized by an enorm ous gable. G ottfried Semper developed the essential form o f the th e ater even m ore purposefully. In the O pera H ouse in D resden and in the C o u rt T heater in V ienna he m aintained the cylindrical form o f the audience hall for the surrounding foyer as well, creating stark contrasts in the building m ass by placing the entry pavilions and approaches laterally.

The tra ditional theater

226


Despite his elemental creative energy, Semper was not able to escape eclecticism. Though he fought against the “impotence of half-bankrupt architecture,” he nevertheless fell victim himself to this bankruptcy with his ornamental motifs.37 Certain concepts of form and reminiscences of art history seemed indispensable to him. Technical The theater progressed further on the path perfection to technical perfection in the buildings of Max Littm ann and Heinrich Seeling, though it was still restrained by the straitjacket of stylistic lim itation. In line with contemporary taste, the decorative arts were applied to theater build ings: a different way to avoid pure design by employing a novel ornamentality; see, for exam ple, M artin Diilfer’s and Oskar Kaufmann’s theaters in D ortm und and Berlin. The Cologne Werkbund Theater by Henri van der Velde is architecturally more 37 [Semper did not use this precise phrase. Hilberseimer cites a popular misquotation of Semper’s “preliminary remarks” of 1834 on polychrome architecture in anti quity. The “half-bankrupt architecture” Semper had in mind came from the students of the Schachbrettkanzler (chessboard chancellor) Jean-Nicholas-Louis Durand at the Ecole Polytechnique and the students of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. See G ottfried Semper, “Vorlaufige Bemerkungen iiber bemalte A rchitektur und Plastik bei den A lten,” in Kleine Schriften, eds. Manfred Semper and Hans Semper (Berlin, W. Spemann, 1884), 216-17; trans lation in The Four Elements o f Architecture and Other Writings, trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Wolfgang H ermann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 45-46.]

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227

Fig. 63 Henri van de Velde, Werkbund Theater, Cologne, 1914; floor plan

Fig. 64 Henri van de Velde, Werkbund Theater, Cologne, 1914

228 The Werk bund theater in Cologne Figs. 63-64

Court theater and people’s theater


purposeful. It is a small building and yet it is one of the most unique creations of contemporary architecture. It is free of reminiscences and historicisms and is designed as a most suitable solution to the requirements of space. With this a spatial fantasy becomes creative; a fan tastically animated building has come into being; the dead building mass has been revived by rhythmic motion, assembled into three-dimen sional masses. All of these theaters, with the exception of van der Velde’s, are based more or less on the courtly hierarchical theater. This explains the historicism of their architecture. Architects attem pted to democratize the theater originally created for the court by increasing its scale—a genuine aim of the parvenu and entirely charac teristic of the intellectual spirit of the nineteenth century. But it is not possible to adapt an organ ism that has a well-defined sociological basis to a completely different set of sociological condi tions simply by enlarging it. With complete disregard of his duty, this is what Oskar Kaufmann did with the Berlin People’s Theater, turning an architectural and sociological prob lem into a formal and decorative one. The new theater, the actual people’s theater, can only become the new theater if the new requirements are also architectonically fulfilled in a purpose ful manner. The fundam ental requirem ents are the cre ation of seats that are as equal in value as

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possible; the abolition o f the traditional pictureThe funda box stage, w hich is enclosed on three sides; and mental the unity o f audience hall and stage. The m ulti require level theater and the traditional picture stage are m ents closely related; they have a com m on sociological cause— to serve the illusionistic pleasures of a hierarchically stru ctu red co u rt society. The new theater dism isses both divisions according to social ranking and the illusionistic stage. This leads to the new spatial problem , that is, the unity o f audience hall and stage. The form o f the am phitheater offers the The A m phi most seats o f equal value. They are differentiated theater only through the varied distances from the stage, which is unavoidable. By organizing seats in the form o f an am phitheater, the differentiation of height is also kept to a m inim um , benefiting the stage, which can only be o f a certain height. The T he A m erican single-level theater repre sents a doubling o f the am phitheater, as it were. Am erican singleIt was created w ith the intention o f providing the level greatest num ber o f seats o f as equal value as pos theater sible. It arranges thirty-five or m ore rows of seats successively in the parquet and in the balcony. T he pronounced tendency tow ard height in the E uropean m ulti-level th e ater gives the upper m ost balcony a very steep viewing angle. The single-level th e ater reduces this angle, in spite of the great height o f som e seats, thereby creating a much b etter field o f vision. T he A m ericans have rem oved the disadvan tageous spatial effect o f deeply recessed parquet

230

The new theater


seats beneath the balcony by breaking through the ceiling of the parquet and making the great space beneath the balcony accessible as a socalled promenoir. This eliminates the oppressive claustrophobic character of the rear parquet seats, creating at the same time a very useful promenade corridor for the balcony. The traditional picture stage can only be overcome by a stage space that is designed in three dimensions and spatially arranged. The stage m ust be divided according to height, with individual levels stacked successively one behind the other. The front of the stage must project into the audience hall; it must connect directly to the first rows of seats. Because this is the true setting of action, it represents the connection between the audience hall and the stage. Thus a spatially and architecturally unified space will appear, one that will become the true architec tural center of gravity of the building.

Transportation Buildings The train station connects street and rail traffic, T he train station thus acting as an architectonic link between the most diverse form s o f transportation. The actual hall of the train station, the space for arriving and departing trains, is in general an iron hall whose construction is determ ined by the type o f truss employed. As a rule, this space has a very rational character in contrast to the hall’s peripheral buildings: the switch room , waiting halls, luggage rooms, adm inistrative offices, all o f whose dim en sions allow them to be constructed using the The constructive tools o f the past. This is why there is such a discrepancy between these spaces and the problem halls, which are often enorm ous and built using new methods. This discrepancy has led to extreme deform ations. A m isguided pursuit o f m onum en tality sought to transform the actual building mass, the steel hall, into a stone construction, either by using stone cladding— as in A nhalter Station in Berlin; F rankfurt am M ain, C entral Station; G are du N ord, P aris— or by attem pting to surpass and elim inate the elem ental effects of the iron hall through theatrical architec tu re— H am burger and A ntw erpener S tations— or finally, as seen in the new Leipziger Station, by making the hall disappear entirely behind enor mously proportioned ancillary buildings. T he new form o f engineering construction is only w holly ap p a re n t in the unornam ented and

232


architecturally neglected rear portions of the actual halls—particularly in Hamburg, Frank furt, Dresden, and A ntw erp—where these forms develop freely; it is also apparent in the interiors of the train halls, which are wide-span, illumi nated spaces of rare majesty. The The radical change in the conditions of revolu transportation, particularly in Am erican me tion of tropolises, has not been w ithout influence on transpor the design of train stations. N ot ju st local lines, tation but also long-distance lines are now directed through tunnels into the center of the city, a feat made possible through the introduction of electricity. By placing the tracks underground, street traffic can flow unhindered above ground. This has also resulted in the disappearance of the characteristic train station hall. For instance, Threelevel at the new term inal station of the New York track C entral Railroad in New York City platform s installa are vertically stacked in three subterranean lev tion els.38 They are directly connected to each other and to the entry building through tunnels, so that transfers to every train are possible. An elevated street, which surrounds the entry building and slopes down at the rear of the site, makes the train station accessible to autom o bile traffic on two levels, ensuring the quickest 38 [Hilberseimer refers to Grand Central Terminal in New York City, designed by Reed & Stem and Warren & Wetmore, 1903-13.]

T R A N S P O R T A T IO N B U IL D IN G S 233 possible flow o f tra ffic to and from the station. U n fortunately this system atically organized organism and its ex terio r appearance do n o t co rresp o n d : a bo m b a stic building in A lex andrian-A m erican style encloses the entire com plex. If the architecture o f these buildings has until now served to conceal the alleged unseem liness o f the new form s o f construction and to create m ock works m eant to be o stentatious rep resentations, several new designs for train stations are based on the objective preconditions of the train station com plex. A train station com plex is essentially a conductor o f traffic: the m ost com fortable and functional connection of rail and street traffic requires a rational order and design o f traffic routes. T hree types o f rail com plexes result from local conditions and various traffic require ments: the term inal station, the through station, and the tra n sfer station. T he term inal station o f Rush City by R ich ard J. N e u tra is connected to a sim ilar station at the n o rth e rn side o f the city by four su b terra nean through lines for passenger traffic and two rails for cargo. T his enables the connection of long-distance and urban traffic. Ju st as the train station w ith its com m uter rail lines connects directly to subway lines, tram s are routed to the tra in statio n in such a way that no traveler needs to cross a street in order to reach the tra in station. T he proposed hotel at the

Three types of train stations The term inal station Fig. 65

234


Fig. 65 Richard Neutra, Terminal Station, Rush City, 1926

The through station Figs. 66-67

end of the train station is directly connected to the station platforms. In contrast to the term inal station, whose rails are placed beneath street level, the rails of the through station designed by M art Stam for Geneva are raised significantly above the street. The platform s are accessible through a mezzanine concourse set perpendicular to the platform s. The need to overcome these differ ences in height creates special conditions for the layout of the arrival and departure hall. Stam connects the street to the level of the con course with a ramp, thus creating a direct connection between the street and platform. Because the corridors and ticket-counter rooms are not enclosed by doors or vestibules — they

T R A N S P O R T A T IO N B U IL D IN G S 235

Fig. 66 M art Stam , Projectfo r a train station in Geneva, 1924

Fig. 67 M art Stam , Project fo r a train station in Geneva, 1924; perspective

are co n sid e red elem en ts o f the connecting ro u te betw een th e stre e t and the platform — this d irect co n n e ctio n betw een the in terio r and ex terior is in ten sifie d . In connection w ith M artin M achler’s pro posal for the redesign o f Berlin, Ludwig H ilberseim er designed a m ain train station which, as a transfer station, is the central point

The transfer train station

236


Fig. 68 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Central train station for Berlin,

Fig. 69 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Central train station for Berlin,


192 7; perspective

192 7; perspectival section

238


of both Germ an long-distance train lines and 6 8 -6 9 Berlin’s commuter train traffic.39 All the lines are routed centrally. Due to the special local site conditions, the rail complex must be bw lt par tially above and partially below ground. 'Jkr circulation— elevators and escalator^ nects the vertically stacked train lit" one continuous mechanism. T h u s ^ ^ ^ f ] ting traffic network is crea, intensive flow of traffic! The difficulty of I The growth of grows along with the si* street fixed lines of traffic j traffic trains, streetcars, and e f trains, the free traffic ever-greater im portant the systematic netw orks pendent form of the \ addition to the organi« mobile traffic in the F Figs.

ver Stadtebau,” Das Kunstblatt 11 (1927): 267-71; Max Berg, “Der neue Geist im Stadtebau auf der GroBen Ber iter und net rZeit ’ S ta d th a u k i liner KunstaussJ 8, no. 3 (192a

T R A N S P O R T A T IO N B U IL D IN G S 239 unavoidable necessity, prim arily because the autom obile is ceasing to be a luxury item and is becoming a standard com m odity in both A m er ica and Europe. W ith this developm ent, the num ber o f private drivers — the actual users of mass garages — is growing. The mass garage will become a new concept in our traffic life and will lead to new a rchitectural designs. A mass garage must not only include parking spaces for cars but also car-w ashing facilities, repair shops, gas sta tions, and lodgings for chauffeurs. For reasons of profitability, one will quickly move beyond the single-story arrangem ent of parking spaces around a courtyard and begin erecting garage buildings in w hich parking spaces are arranged in vertically stacked rows. T he autom obiles onto the upper accom plished either by ram ps or lack o f suitable parking spaces in the m etropolises will also

ing cars is o f the g reatest im portance garages. F or the tim e being individual com partm ents are preferred, for which a variety o f perpendicular and diagonal system s have

The mass garage

238


of both Germ an long-distance train lines and 6 8 -6 9 Berlin’s commuter train traffic.39 All the lines are routed centrally. Due to the special local site conditions, the rail complex must be 1 tially above and partially below ground, j circulation—elevators and escalator^ nects the vertically stacked train litf one continuous mechanism. T h u s| traffic network is crea intensive flow of traffic] The difficulty of I The growth of grows along with the siy street fixed lines of traffic traffic trains, streetcars, and e f trains, the free traffic < ever-greater im p o rtant the systematic networks pendent form of the | addition to the organic! mobile traffic in the Figs.

ver Stadtebau,” D as K u n stb la tt 11 (1927): 267-71; Max Berg, “Der neue Geist im Stadtebau auf der GroBen Ber liner Kunstausstfilliinp ” S ta d tb a u k u n s t a lter un d neuer Z e it

T R A N SP O R T A T IO N B U IL D IN G S 239 unavoidable necessity, prim arily because the autom obile is ceasing to be a luxury item and is becom ing a standard com m odity in both A m er ica and Europe. W ith this developm ent, the num ber o f private drivers — the actual users of mass garages — is growing. T he m ass garage will becom e a new concept in our traffic life and will lead to new architectural designs. A m ass garage must not only include parking spaces for cars but also car-w ashing facilities, repair shops, gas sta tions, and lodgings for chauffeurs. For reasons o f profitability, one will quickly move beyond the single-story arrangem ent o f parking spaces around a courtyard and begin erecting garage buildings in which parking spaces are arranged in vertically stacked rows. The autom obiles onto the upper accom plished either by ram ps or lack of suitable parking spaces in the m etropolises will also

ing cars is o f the g reatest im portance garages. F or the tim e being individual com partm ents are preferred, for which a variety o f p erpendicular and diagonal system s have

The mass garage

240

Airports


been developed.40 Yet developments are leading to open parking, as is already common in Amer ica and France. The advantages of this sort of parking, which occurs in large, open hall-like spaces, are enormous since both partition walls and doors are eliminated. The total space required is greatly reduced and the lanes can become much narrower. By eliminating the timeconsuming opening and closing of doors, overseeing the complex will become signifi cantly more simple and clear. The ever-increasing amount of air travel will create entirely new tasks. Like the train station, the airport will become a vital organ of the urban body. Therefore the placing of airports must proceed with the greatest care. The most important precon dition is a prime location connected to the city. Both existing airport facilities and the air plane o f today were developed primarily for military purposes. Yet they remain the standard models of aerial transportation. For this reason air traffic facilities, like the passenger airplane, are relatively undeveloped. Initially, the minimum size of an airfield was calculated to be 700 by 700 meters. As air planes increased in size, so too did the size of airfields, so that even now a size of 1,000 by 1,000 meters seems too small. 40 [Hilberseimer refers to the use of parking compart ments with individual doors and operated like small, private garages.]

TR A N S P O R T A T IO N B U IL D IN G S 241 B erlin’s ce n tral a irp o rt is ap p aren tly the only a irp o rt based on purely technical consid e ratio n s o f tra n sp o rta tio n . E xem plary for to d a y ’s c o n d itio n s is also its relatio n sh ip to the city and its d ire ct con n ectio n to the subway. Its airfield has an area o f 1,000 by 1,300 m eters; it is set w ithin an open a rea th a t is zoned to p ro h ib it fu rth e r co n stru c tio n and w hich includes a 500-m eter b o rd e r betw een the airfield itse lf and the b o u n d ary w here co n stru c tio n is again p erm itted . Today little can be said w ith certainty about the future developm ent o f airp o rt complexes. Technological advancem ents, prim arily the shift o f take-off and landing procedures from the hor izontal to the vertical, will result in fundam ental changes in the design o f the airport. Yet these will also affect future u rb an planning in ways u nim aginable today. In co n trast to tru e architectural structures, bridges do not design space, but traverse it. They are n o t finite, stand-alone structures but con necting structures. T h e ir task is to span a d e p th — to connect tw o sep arate points using a linear system . They are essentially determ ined by stru ctu ral requirem ents. Therefore the depen dency o f form on construction and calculation is n ow here so striking as in bridge building. H ere the elem ents o f design are identical to the ele m ents o f construction, so th at design in the figurative sense is fundam entally im possible. Still, th e perfect design incorporates both the

Figs. 70-71

Bridges

242


Fig. 70 Heinrich Kosina, Central Airport, Berlin, 1926; siteplan

The optical impres sion

technical-constructive and aesthetic solution. Only when both requirements are met is the solution perfect, rational, and tectonic. The opti cal im pression of a bridge is determined primarily by the placement and layout of the road. The latter is the essential element of the organism of a bridge; it is to be borne, supported, and held. The forces necessary for this, te c h n i cally formed and connected, transition from support to support, and from pillar to pillar, in a straight line, oscillating between concave or


Fig. 71 Heinrich Kosina, Central Airport, Berlin, 1926; air plane hangars

convex lines, or in all these lines, uniting into one com pound linear system . T here are three fundam ental bridge sys tems, w hich correspond to various system s of support and the tran sference o f w eight to

244

M ETRO POLISA RCHITECTU RE

Fig. 72 Jo h n Fowler, B ridge over the F irth o f Forth, 1890


G ird e r b rid g e s

s u p p o rts : g ir d e r b rid g e s, w h ic h v e rtic a lly ; a rc h b rid g e s, w h ic h trj n an g le s ; a n d s u s p e n s io n b r i d g e y m it lo a d s v e rtic a lly b u t in s r. In th e la tte r, th e road^; e r s u p p o r te d f r o n y i. ab o v e . A ll o f thesj lite d in to o n e c »mposite system. ^ T h e s im p l e s t oridge is i

Lgcmal bracing.

T R A N SP O R T A T IO N B U IL D IN G S 247 structure, hung from the la tte r so to speak, as in the Czerny Bridge in H eidelberg. In the la tte r arrangem ent, the horizontal th rust is accom m odated by the bridge itself since the ends o f the arches are securely connected to the road. T he pressure is then no longer exerted diagonally, bu t rath er transferred horizontally, whereby the arch construction becom es a type of girder bridge. T he tra n sfer o f diagonal pressure in arch bridges requires th a t the abutm ents be sturdily designed. Ballast structures, such as those em ployed in the G riinental H igh Bridge over the K iel Canal, can becom e necessary. N orm ally however, these constructions provide an occa sion for decorative excess as at the Pont d ’A lexandre in Paris, a low arch bridge over the Seine. T he la tte r was an attem p t to im itate the com pactness o f stone bridges in iron, also o ut of purely decorative motifs. T he bridge is com posed o f screw ed, cast-steel elem ents instead of riveted, rolled-iron com ponents. In suspension bridges the road is not sup p o rted from below b u t suspended from above. The s tru ctu re required for this type of bridge has created a new tectonic entity characterized by tall pillars and the descending upper curve, form ing a lively co n trast to the ascending curves of girder and arch bridges. T he design o f the load-bearing pillars is decisive for this construction. They can be exe cuted in stone as in the Brooklyn Bridge in N ew

S uspen sion bridges

248


York by John and Washington Roebling or even more systematically in steel as in a design for a bridge for Cologne by Peter Behrens. The com The construction of bridges based on com posite posite systems is diverse. This is demonstrated system especially in the counter-motion of the extended, crisscrossing double-curves, exhibited for exam ple in the pedestrian bridge built over the Spree in Berlin-Niederschoneweide by Heinrich Miiller-Breslau, which is composed of girder and suspension bridge elements. Another example is the robust bridge over the Firth of Forth in Scot land with its 500-meter free span. This bridge is based on a unique cantilever construction with upper suspenders ascending in a straight diago nal line, curved lower arches, and arch beams hung in between. Its powerful effect and its ele m ental stability are particularly expressed by the straightness of the upper suspender construc tion. It is a work of rare forcefulness and the most elementary impact. Bridge building has also become a broad Bridges in reinforced field for the application of reinforced concrete. concrete Its structural advantages, short production time, minimal m aintenance costs, and technological and economic advantages have prompted the rapid introduction of this method. Many struc tures of this type, primarily girder bridges and arch bridges, have already been realized. The structural and technical foundations are the same as those in steel construction. The differ ence is merely in the material, which, in contrast

T R A N S P O R T A T IO N B U IL D IN G S 249 to steel construction, requires a m ore com pact mass. A t the sam e tim e, the danger exists that The m aterials will be m isused, th a t stone bridges will m isuse o f be im itated. This was the case with W ilhelm m aterials K reis’s design for the F riedrich-A ugust Bridge in D resden in w hich a m isguided desire to con form to the u rban im age produced a concrete bridge th a t im itates a bridge o f stone. In the pro cess, its exterior surfaces w ere covered with an o rnam ental cut-stone shell, ju s t like the MaxJo sef Bridge in M unich by T heodor Fischer, which also ornam entally im itates stone forms and the stru ctu ral character o f m asonry by inserting jo in ts into the surface. T hus the m ore significant reinforced con Skeletal crete bridges are those th a t clearly express the character uniqueness o f the m aterial and the skeletal char acter o f its stru ctu re w hile uniting structural necessity and design o f form . I m ention the H u n dw ilertobel Bridge by E duard Ziiblin and C om pany in the Swiss canton o f A ppenzell, whose thinly stru ctu red features com pletely cor respond to the m aterial and w hose form perfectly expresses the constructive principles o f this building technique.

Industrial Buildings

No models

The engineer

The architect

Gottfried Semper’s mistake

The new principles of building have been most freely realized in industrial construction. In fact, the designs of engineering structures are virtu ally determ ining the peculiarities of form of our age. Buildings have been created for new indus tries and purposes. These structures are entirely without prior models in terms of typology, struc ture, and dimension. Thus these new buildings could be realized without inhibition. In solving these tasks, the pure constructive element, and thus the activities of the engineer, took prece dence, which at first resulted in clarity and awareness of objective needs. Then the increas ing performance demands restricted the engineer to the purely objective, functional-constructive element. Industrial corporations, set on obtain ing extreme economy, demanded spaces and buildings of the greatest functional capacity. By indiscriminately emphasizing functional con struction, engineers were able to achieve completely new architectonic results. Archi tects, on the other hand, caught in the spell of their traditional concepts of form, ignored the new possibilities; they were either unable able to free themselves from traditional constructions and forms or they used the new structural possi bilities to realize incongruous monumental and representational effects. For instance, although Gottfried Semper both recognized the suitability

IN D U S T R IA L B U IL D IN G S

251

of iron as a new structural m aterial and under stood the ideal o f its system atic appli c a tio n - in v is ib le architecture, the possibility of creating m axim um functionality using a m ini mum am ount o f m a terial— because he was unable to liberate him self from stone construc tion, he dem anded at the sam e tim e that iron not be applied independently.41 It was only to be used to increase the spanning capabilities of more com pact constructions; th at is to say, he sub o rdinated a new constructive principle to a principle derived from the concepts o f form of the past. P eter Behrens, led astray by the im perialist consciousness o f pow er o f the prew ar era and lim ited by classical influences, believed it was necessary to place a facade on the front of his A EG T urbine H all, w hich is otherw ise a robust structure, in B erlin-M oabit. H e designed the cor ners o f this iron hall as m ighty ashlar blocks with the intention o f creating a m aterial and static co n trad ictio n — an architecturally effective con tra s t— and o f achieving an im posing effect. Yet these m asonry co rn er pillars, which p roduce a hieratic, im posing effect, are in fact 41 [H ilberseim er refers to S em per’s rem arks on the “ castiron sty le” ; see G o ttfrie d Sem per, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kiinste 2 vols. (M unich: F. B ruckm ann, 1860-63), tran sla te d as Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, or. Practical Aesthetics ed. H a rry F rancis M allgrave, trans. H a rry F rancis M allgrave and M ichael R obinson (Los A ngeles: G e tty R esearch In stitu te , 2004), 658-59.]

The sym bol ism of facades Fig. 73

252


Fig. 73 Peter Behrens, AEG Turbine Hall, Berlin, 1909


254


not pillars at all. They are, as shown in the floor plan, composed of a thin shell of reinforced concrete. They represent an attem pt to use new technological means to achieve archaic effects—a typical aspect of facade architecture, a desire to symbolize uncertain sensations of nonexistent forces, a desire to subordinate organic features to representational tastes. Industrial buildings that constitute pure Pure engineer works of engineering are more significant. Their ing works astounding architectonics are based not on a vague aesthetic sensibility but on powerful origi nality, on a naive sense of architectonics. They prove that great functionality includes not only the m ost practical designs but also the m ost aes thetically perfect solutions. Only by completely meeting all needs can impressive, typical solu tions be found and new building types created. Despite the heterogeneity of industrial buildings, which derives from their diverse pur poses, their common characteristics include precise objectivity and the strictest fulfillment of economic and technological necessities. These characteristics are the basis for a perfect ly functional design—for works of convincing self-assurance. Industrial buildings are characterized by The diver sity of their extremely large, functionally defined diver industrial sity. Buildings and rooms are differentiated ac buildings cording to size and the type of object to be handled, in accordance with the production processes. The relationship of individual buildings and rooms to


255

Fig. 74 Karl Bernhard, Silk-weaving Factory, Nowawes (Babelsberg), 1912

Fig. 75 Erich Mendelsohn, Red Banner Textile Factory, St. Petersburg, 1925; model

each other is determ ined by the coordinated flow o f raw m aterials and partial and com pleted goods through the course o f production. C ounteractive and reverse movem ents of m aterials lead to a lack o f space and raise production costs. Spatial requirem ents vary according to function. W orkshops and production room s may require large, sm all, high, or low form ats. They may have to be at ground level, elevated, or below ground. They may also have to accom m o date p roduction processes in w hich work flows vertically in stacked production rooms. In the m etropolis the high price o f land forces the use

256


Fig. 76 Wayss & Freitag, Maizena grain silos, Barby an der Elbe, 1922-24

Fig. 76

of multistory buildings, even for production pro cesses which could be accommodated in a horizontal building. Beyond single and multi story buildings there are production processes that require great height, making halls a neces sity primarily when overhead cranes are required. For the accommodation of fluids and gasses, for the storing of ore, coal, cement, and grain, container structures and silos are necessary. In contrast to stone constructions, which use only lateral force and vertical compression,


257

constructions in steel and reinforced concrete use tension and curvature, w hereby structures of astounding daring and com pletely new spatial forms are enabled: extended, horizontally cov ered w orkshops; enorm ous, broadly spanned halls; tall, skeletal structures; cantilevered con structions; and thin-w alled container and silos. Because o f the inherent possibility o f placing windows everyw here and at any size, all-day illu m ination can be achieved even in low-rise buildings co nstructed on large developed spaces, since the light can en ter through skylight sheds or lanterns. In ord er to achieve the m ost unhin d ered horizontal extension o f a structure while m aintaining suitable lighting conditions, widespan tra in platform ro o f trusses are com m only em ployed, w hich, at the ends, becom e large p er pen d icular skylights in the form o f gabled ro o f structures, thus also considerably influencing the external ch aracter o f a building. If widespan spaces w hose entire height is needed for op erations are required, this can be accom m o dated by a new stru ctu ral system , which places the truss inside the overhead lantern system that runs along the ro o f in a caterpillar-like fashion, enabling a level ceiling and a space th at can be used in all o f its dim ensions. A hall is required when both spaciousness and g reat heights are necessary. T he cross sec tion for halls allow s m any variations, all o f which are determ ined by the intended use. Trusses and sup p o rts are b o th the stru ctu ral and

M eans of construc tion Fig. 74

Low-rise buildings

Halls

258

M ulti story buildings

M E T R O P O L IS A R C

s p a c e -d e fin in g i n te r io r anj s tru c tu ri te m s w ith r a r I ings, la te r a l b u ild in 1 depen< tu r n d< th e in d u s trj to ry by p a r tic u b u ild in w id e, e n a b le ery. Th! a n d e le i a llo w ai F tJ plexes. convey^ c o n taii fu rn a a


259

260

The creative mastery of means


In the future the architect will have to relin quish both the desire to superficially beautify the work of the engineer and to impose monumen tality on engineering structures. For the sake of a unity of a higher order he will cooperate with the engineer to put architectonic interests at the ser vice of structural problems. The new can only be built on the foundation of the constructive and the functional. The constructive idea must be infused with the architectonic spirit. The engi neer’s drive toward characteristic solutions must not be annulled by preconceived concepts of form. The architect, through the force of the divi sion of labor and through his ignorance, has lost control of constructive elements. Only when the architect recovers control and creatively masters them, will he emerge from the sterility of his epigonism and achieve truly creative output. Although artistic will will indeed always be deci sive, this will must nevertheless be characterized by the fact that it excludes no element that con tributes to the definition of unity.42 Calculated construction and an instinctive feeling for masses and forms must be one; contradictory elements must be designed as a unity. Mathematics and aesthetics are not opposed; they are equal tools, the absolute basis of architecture. 42 [Hilberseimer uses the phrase kiinsterlisches Wollen, which approximates Alois Riegl’s concept of Kunstwollen, or artistic volition. Hilberseimer incorporated the con cept of Kunstwollen into the earliest drafts of Grofistadtarchitektur. See this volume, p. 58.]

Building Trades and the Building Industry “M etropolisarchitecture” is distinguished from The altered the architecture o f the past prim arily through premises changed sociological and econom ic prem ises.43 New functional requirem ents have produced peculiarities o f form th at have com e to com pletely define m etropolisarchitecture. Today we need not cathedrals, tem ples, or palaces, but rather residential buildings, com m ercial build ings, and factories, which, however, have been built to resem ble cathedrals, temples, and pal aces. In addition to designing the city as such, one of the m ost im portant tasks o f m etropolisarchi tecture is to sensibly design the residential building, the com m ercial building, and the fac tory. Pure m odels o f these building types have yet to emerge. They m ust first be created. T he hom o geneity o f the intended use enables com prehensive standardization and thus an industrialization of the entire building industry. This is a necessary task for which no t even the first step has been taken today. T he industrialization o f production, 43 [H ilberseim er uses th e w ord Grofistadtarchitektur for the first tim e here. T h e term is re n d ere d as “ m etro p o lisa rc h ite ctu re” in o rd e r to convey the im m ediate relationship betw een the m etro p o lis and arch itectu re in H ilb erse im e r’s th eo ry o f the city. See this volum e, p. 12.]

262

Resis tance

Mock architec ture


the standardization of production processes, the typification of the products of production, and generalization to the point of universality are today the tasks of every industrial firm. Until now, the building industry has shied away from industrialization, normalization, and the mode of analysis associated with these pro cesses, which are the foundations of all industry. It still rests on individual, manual foundations, while the entire present is based on collective, industrial conditions. Business and industry have essentially altered the environment. Every field of labor has been affected by the strict divi sion of labor, creating corresponding production processes that meet new requirements. Indus trial collectivism has replaced manual individualism. Only the building industry con tinues to operate using manual labor. It has rem ained essentially unaltered through all of these changes in production. Today it still applies the working methods of antiquity and the Mid dle Ages. This is a strange discrepancy, for which architects are mainly responsible. The architecture of the past century was ret rospectively oriented. It was fully alienated from its most fundamental elements and ignored every invigorating contemporary development. Archi tects hoped to remedy this problem with all kinds of mock forms. Even in their best achievements, architects were not able to free themselves from the urge to conceal necessity with “beauty.” Instead of demanding from engineers, chemists,

T H E B U IL D IN G IN D U S T R Y

263

and industry new structures and m aterials to cre ate new, m ore rational m odes o f building, architects absurdly used the new structures and m aterials offered to them as substitute materials. For example, reinforced concrete was used to im itate cut stone, and iron structures were dis guised w ith stylistic elem ents from all past ages. The academ ic stylistic tradition hindered the com plete recognition and utilization o f new con structive possibilities. T hrough their conser vatism, architects have im peded or rather inhib ited the im plem entation and exploitation o f new m ethods and m odes o f w orking in all branches of the building trades, thereby frustrating the fruitful effects th a t industry has delivered in every o ther area o f practice for architecture. Because m anual construction has stub bornly persevered, architects have not yet realized th a t the m achine is only a tool with greater po ten tial than m anual labor. T he fruitful effects o f m echanical production processes on form have no t yet been recognized. F or the m ean time, one sees in the m achine only schem atization and an im pedim ent to the process o f creation. The precise opposite is actually true. By m echa nizing tools we w ill achieve a g reater freedom o f creation; it will n o t hem in a c rea to r’s intentions, but rath er stim ulate them . Because, like a labor er’s tool, the m achine is a tool in the hands of the creator. It is by no m eans an end in itself, but only a m eans to an end, an executing organ o f a superior will.

Im ita tions

The m achine is a means, not an end in itself

Freedom of creation

Metropolisarchitecture Architec ture of the past and of the present

The metropolis, with its entirely new demands and functions, has produced a new type of archi tecture, which is in many ways diametrically opposed to the architecture of the past. Despite a certain dependence on social, commercial, and productive forms, the architecture of the past had essentially cultic and religious origins. M etropolisarchitecture lacks such associations entirely. It is born of real needs and defined by objectivity and economy; material and construc tion; and economic and sociological factors. It is therefore independent of historical architecture, which arose from fundamentally different rela tions, and it cannot, as is often attem pted, be derived from architecture of the past. It is illogi cal, absurd, and contradictory to try to apply the forms of historical architecture, detached from their premises, abstractly, indiscriminately, and without distinction. M etropolisarchitecture is a new type of architecture with its own forms and laws. It rep resents the design of today’s operative economic and sociological conditions. It seeks to free itself from all that is not immediate. It strives for reduction to the most essential elements, to achieve the greatest development of energy, the most extreme possibilities of tension, and ulti mate precision. It corresponds to contemporary human life; it is the expression of a new


265

aw areness o f life th at is not subjective-individ ual but rath er objective-collective. A rchitecture is the creation o f space. Its A rchitec foundation is the sense o f space. T hrough m ate ture is the rial o bjectification the sense o f space is made creation o f space perceptible— m aterial substance is form ed ac cording to an idea. T he form ation o f m aterial substance according to an idea also entails the form ation o f ideal substance according to m ate rial laws. A rchitecture is created through the union o f b oth factors in a single form. A rchitec ture is therefore ju s t as dep endent on a spatial idea as on the space-enclosing m aterial. It only em erges through th e ir indissoluble unity; it is realized in the process o f design. To a much greater degree than the oth e r arts, architecture is rooted in m aterial, the form al design o f which is one o f arch itec tu re’s central tasks. T he E xternal form and in terio r space are m utu ally d ependent. T he organization o f the interior relation ship determ ines the design o f the exterior, ju st as, between vice versa, in terio r space depends on essential exterior and features o f exterior design. E xterior form and interior interior space share a com m on b order in the external surface o f a structure. T hese surfaces, as a co n centration o f b oth spatial conditions, co nstitute the actual architectonic form. The universal agreem ent o f in terio r and exterior cre ates the p ro p o rtio n ality necessary for perfection. In single-room buildings this agreem ent is easy to achieve. T he relationships becom e m ore com plicated as the num ber o f room s and floors

266

The floor plan

Style as result


increases. A horizontal design of a structure will arise on its own as a result of the layering of floors, while an exclusive emphasis of vertical elements in a horizontally layered building is nonsensical. The relationship of interior to exterior is essentially determ ined by the floor plan. Thus the floor plan is of the greatest importance for the general design of a building. The plan should be discernible from the building’s external appearance and vice versa. The floor plan intro duces the third spatial coordinate, depth, to the horizontal and the vertical elements; thus it must be systematically integrated. It represents the horizontal projections of the structure, which, along with the vertical projections (sections and elevations), geometrically define and establish the building. The sum of the most characteristic features of a period’s total artistic creation is labeled its style. Our time has until now searched in vain for its style. It has summoned neither a general will nor directed creative people to concrete prob lems o f design. U nder the suggestive influence of the past and the characteristic historicism of the nineteenth century, our time has believed that it had to be imitative in order to be effective. Misjudging the most im portant style-forming factors, our time has considered the architec tural problem to be one of pure form and sought to hide its creative inability behind decorative stylistic masks. In seeking style, the absence of


267

style was achieved. Because, like form, style can never be an objective but only a re s u lt— style is never an end in itse lf but always the result of the creative perm eation o f the entirety o f sociologi cal, econom ic, and technical conditions and dem ands; style em bodies their harm onization and artistic expression. T he secondary, form, has been placed before the prim ary, organic unity. But the individual form , the detail, is not inde pendent and detachable, as academ icism would have us believe, but rath er is always dependent on the total design, a relation o f the latter. Today it appears as if this academ icism has been overcome. In arch itectu re a fundam ental renew al is m aking itse lf felt, particularly in response to the building tasks o f the m etropolis. This move ment is w orking tow ard the essential, tow ard recognizing and designing the im m ediate and the necessary. T he new architecture, w hich is now being form ed, has finally found the basis on which its activities can becom e fruitful. Like every work, architecture m ust also be connected to the over all w hole and defined by necessity. It has finally been recognized th a t architecture can only be form ed in itself, can only be based on its own fundam ental elem ents, only shaped out o f itself. A striving for clarity, arch itectu ral logic, and inner tru th will lead to an austere unification. All works, as diverse as they may be, m ust em a nate from a unified spirit. T he architect m ust be in accord w ith the principles o f the engineers, of

268

The basis of the new architec tonic

The problem of archi tecture


their creations: machines and ships, cars and air planes, cranes and bridges, which are always connected by the spirit of unity and represent the expression o f a common will. Rational thinking, accuracy, precision, and economy—until now characteristics of the engi n eer—must become the basis of the new architectonic. All objects must be complete in themselves, reduced to their ultim ate essential forms, organized reasonably, and led to their ultim ate consummation. Like every discipline, architecture is also confronting the requisite need to provide clarity regarding the means on which it is based and which are at its disposal. In this context, painting has provided valuable preliminary work. It was painting that first drew attention to the funda mental forms inherent in all art: geometric and cubic elements that perm it no further objectifi cation. The simple cubic bodies—boxes and spheres, prisms and cylinders, pyramids and cones, purely constructive elem ents—are the fundamental forms of every architecture. Their corporeal clarity demands clarity of form, bring ing order to chaos in the most realistic manner. The problem of architecture, apart from the practicality of materials and their appropriate use, is the spatial design of masses, which en compasses the organization, visualization, realization, and formation of a vision. The cor poreality of architectural masses is produced by the rhythm of light and shadow. The whole


269

design lives as a result o f light. The entire rhythm receives its vitality through it. T he w eight or lightness o f architecture depends on the effects of light and shadow, on the surface th at receives and controls both. “ In o rder to use light and shadow according to their essential properties and intentions, the architect has only certain geom etrical com binations at his disposal. W hat trem endous effects he can create from lim ited means ... M ight the effects o f art be greater the more sim ple the m eans?” (A uguste R odin).44 T he architect m ust forget the entire ballast of form s w ith w hich he has been burdened by a scholarly education. T he econom y o f a train car or an ocean liner provides an exam ple superior to any diagram o f stylistic ornam ent. T he archi tect m ust develop solutions to new tasks organically, taking intended use, construction, and m aterial into consideration. In the process of design he m ust rem em ber the fundam ental architectural elem ents: structure, surface, color, window and door openings, balconies, loggias, and chimneys. W orking w ith these elem ents, he will arrive at an arch itectu re th a t em erges ou t o f its own principles. H e will be able to elim inate ornam ental d ecoration and oth e r adornm ents because adornm ents are nothing but shells hid ing unsolved arch itectu ral problem s concealed 44 [A uguste R odin, Die Kathedralen Frankreichs (Leipzig: K. W olff, 1917), 4. H ilb erse im e r c ited the G erm an tra n s lation o f R o d in ’s F rench text; see this volum e, pp. 59-60.]

270


by ornam ental plaster and neutralized by decora tive design. Only designing the truly functional will lead to a pure architecture. The constructive function must be viewed as architecture: the taut ness of functional relationships, construction itself, must overcome its own materiality and Individ become architectonic form. M etropolisarchitec ual cell ture is considerably dependent on solving two and urban factors: the individual cell of the room and the organism collective urban organism. The solution will be determ ined by the manner in which the room is manifested as an element of buildings linked together in one street block, thus becoming a determining factor of the city structure, which is the actual objective of architecture. Inversely, the constructive design of the urban plan will gain considerable influence on the formation of the room and the building as such. The The room, its constitutive elements of elements floors, walls, ceilings, windows and doors, m ate of the rial and color, furniture and its arrangement, room produce a large complex of new creative possi bilities. Through a new conception of space, new spatial relationships are created, new forms and proportions. Through the organization of indi vidual rooms in the floor plan, the functional building that encompasses an entire street block is born. In doing so, extensive relationships of form are produced. A comprehensive synthesis of form is made possible. In addition to the cubic mass, which is determ ined by the shaping power of the floor


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plan, the num ber o f floors, and the silhouette of The the building, the partitio n in g o f the building sur bearers of rhythm faces and their perforation are o f essential im portance. T he architectonic problem in this instance lies in developing projections, setbacks, and recesses th a t em erge organically from the structure. T he projection assum es a positive function in the com posite surface; the recess, with its darkness, a negative one. As organiza tional factors, b oth spatial functions determ ine the rhythm o f the structure. T hus entrances, windows, loggias, pillars, and the like are the actual exponents and bearers o f rhythm . The sharpness and precision o f rhythm ic accentua tion depend on the relationship o f the form to light; they are based on the co n trast o f the light ness o f the surface and the darkness o f the recessions th a t pen e trate it. Even large openings, deeply recessed spaces, and entrance alcoves m ust not be neu tralized by decoratively applied pillars or columns. As space-form ing elem ents, they are to be organically in co rp o rated into the building. They are n o t to be narrow ed; they are to becom e true space-form ing elem ents. They m ust be transform ed from form -destroying elem ents into form -building elem ents. A shift in the relationship o f window to sur Windows and face is o f great im portance for large buildings surface that occupy entire city blocks o r for high-rises of m any stories. In historical architecture the w in dow was always an autonom ous elem ent, a factor

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The identity of con struction and form


of division, accent, or axial order. It was a pene tration of the wall, and, as such, it had a negative surface function to fulfill in contrast to the sur rounding surface features of the building mass. In an apartm ent block or high-rise, the window is entirely divested of this significance as an auton omous building element. As a result of its frequent occurrence, the window no longer con trasts with the surface but instead begins to assume some of the surface’s positive functions; it becomes a part and component of the surface itself. The window no longer interrupts the wall surface but rather invigorates it evenly. From this shift in meaning, a new unifying element is acquired, created from purely functional pur poses because the window, applied in a wide variety of ways, could easily become dangerous in a long or m ultistory building. The identity of construction and form is an essential precondition of architecture. While con struction and form may seem to be opposed, architecture is founded on precisely their points of contact, their unity. Construction and material are the physical preconditions of architectural design, and they are always interrelated. Thus Greek architecture is based on the interplay of verticals and horizontals, as dictated by stone construction, and uses all the possibilities of cut stone while maintaining the unity of the material. A Greek temple is a perfect work of engineering in stone. Through the construction of arches and vaults the Romans greatly enriched the simple interplay of


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the vertical and the horizontal. Yet the Romans abandoned the unity o f m aterials in the separation of structural ribs, infill, and revetment, which to this day has created a characteristic composite mode o f construction, above all in the framing of openings and the covering o f floors with cut stone. From the superim position o f several stories orga nized in colum nar orders em erged the standard horizontal organization o f m ultistory buildings, a principle that M ichelangelo was the first to break. He was the first to com bine several stories into one single order. W ith this development, the absolute ornam entality o f building forms derived from antiquity was born. The forms gradually lost their sense o f structural design until they finally became mock beings in their entirety: the architecture of the nineteenth century. A s a resu lt o f its new structural tasks, M etropo m etropolisarchitecture was the first to make new lisarchi tecture co n struction and new m aterials an inevitable dem and. O nly building m aterials th at allow for the g reatest use o f space and com bine increased resistance to w ear and w eathering w ith great solidity are to be used in m etropolisarchitecture. Iron, concrete, and reinforced concrete are the Iron and building m aterials th a t enable the new types reinforced concrete of structures needed to m eet m etropolitan dem ands: ho rizo n tal or vaulted enclosures for large-span spaces and g reat cantilevered, selfsu pporting projections. C oncrete and reinforced concrete are build ing m aterials th a t place very few restrictions on

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the fantasy of the architect. We do not mean theii malleability; i. e., the possibility of overcoming all physical impediments through casting. On the contrary: their constructive consequences, the possibility of creating a completely homoge neous structure, the combination of supporting and supported parts, the pure enclosure of masses, and the rendering superfluous of every kind of covering and trimming. Overcom Through the constructive possibilities of ing iron and reinforced concrete the old support and the old load system, which only perm itted building from support and load bottom up and from front to rear, has been over come. Both enable cantilevered construction and systems projection beyond supports. They make possible the complete separation of supporting and sup ported parts and the reduction of the supporting construction to a minimum of points. The struc ture is separated into a load-bearing skeleton and its enclosing and dividing walls, which are no longer load-bearing. From these properties emerge new technical and material problems and especially new architectural and optical prob lem s— a complete change of the apparently well-founded static visual form of a structure, so that when a cantilevered construction is applied and large plate-glass surfaces covering entire stories are used, a new architecture of floating lightness comes into being. With the disappearance of walls and Horizon tal arti supports at the front, the horizontal layering culation of multilevel buildings will be emphasized.


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H orizontal design has until now been com pletely ignored due to the decorative use o f pillars, yet it is one o f the m ost im p o rtan t characteristics of a m ultistory building. A long w ith reinforced concrete construc Glass and steel tion, the application o f glass and steel as prim ary building m aterials is o f great im portance. Paul Scheerbart correctly recognized th a t glass offers com pletely new a rchitectural possibilities.45 His w ritings, however, have led E xpressionist ar chitects to use glass construction for antiarchitectural, decorative fantasies. They igno rantly flouted the stru ctu ral preconditions of steel and glass buildings. Because this is a question o f entirely new m aterials for spatial form ation, the possibilities of this com bination o f m aterials m ust first be investigated in a purely experim ental manner. The relationship o f the sense o f space to such com binations o f m aterials and spatial forms m ust be investigated. Initially preference will be given to the corporeality and solidity o f the stone wall over the steel-fram ed glass wall o f the same statistical solidity. N o m aterial can be used contrary to its own properties. T herefore a building o f steel and 45 [H ilberseim er refers to Paul S ch ee rb art’s concept o f “glass arch itectu re ,” w hich E xpressionist architects cham pioned. See P aul S cheerbart, Glasarchitektur (B er lin: Verlag d er S turm , 1914); Ludw ig H ilberseim er, “ Paul S cheerbart u n d die A rch ite k ten ,” Das Kunstblatt 3(1919): 271-74; this volum e, p. 31.]

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Color


glass requires a different technical treatm ent than a compact building. One will have to con sider the relationship of transparent glass to lighting because glass structures seem to absorb more light than they reflect. The glass building without windows or other openings also requires a new structural and metric design than that commonly used until now in a standard compact building that is pierced by openings. In particu lar, the receptivity to color and simultaneous transparency of glass contain material possibili ties that make Scheerbart’s suggestions appear as more than merely utopian visions. For the time being, however, we are still far from a planned and logical study and application of this new building material. Nearly everyone concerned with glass and steel construction has either overlooked or ignored the principles of this new type of construction, seeing in it instead a new means for exploring decorative possibilities. The element of color has been handled with great indifference in the past. A general underestim ation of color was followed by its application in a hypertrophic and completely undisciplined way during Expressionism. It was applied only superficially to surfaces and build ings without an organic connection to material or form; without becoming one of their features. In architecture, color can never be applied as color as such, but only as the color of building materials. The coloration of architecture is always determ ined by the coloration of the


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m aterial as one o f its properties. T hus the ele m ent o f color and its relationship to light are of the g reatest im portance. Evenness, consistency, intensity o f light, rate o f change, and air hum idity and tem per ature are the elem ents th at unify the optical image o f architecture according to definite laws. The haze o f the air hovering over the m etro polis dilutes any clear color. T h at is why the pri m ary color o f every m etropolis is an undefined grey, the very color o f haze. Yet coloration can co n tribute greatly to the intensification o f archi tectural aims. M onotone coloration can becom e a unifying elem ent, w hile m ulticolor schem es can becom e invigorating, even com position al elem ents — by em ploying color, both single buildings and m ulti-building projects can be more tautly brought together, heightening their cubic effect. C olor can also be used to em phasize indi vidual p arts o f a building, to differentiate parts, to create or su p p o rt a hierarchy, or to direct the eye to the flow o f the principal lines. Yet color m ust never be an added elem ent but always a p roperty o f the building m aterial. T he relationship o f building m aterials to light is also o f g reat im portance. T he tra n sp a r ency and opacity, sm oothness and bluntness, hardness and softness o f m aterials, sharp lines and edges, and tra n sitio n s from raised to recessed surfaces are decisive for the refraction o f light, the reduction o f brightness, and therefore for

The relation ship to light

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The general law


color. They determine the variable degree of corporeality and the degree of independence among individual parts. As unifying and isolat ing elements of the compositional material, they are of greatest import. The distinctiveness of an organism can be seen in its individual organs, which embody this distinction. The general law, in its universality, is represented in the entire organism, the details dem onstrating only the specific case. This is why the difference of the metropolis from other urban forms must also be displayed in individual buildings. Just as the metropolis is not a tradi tional city on a larger scale, the metropolitan building is not a conversion of older forms to larger dimensions. New structural and spatial needs and demands, altered requirem ents and different uses have led to new constructions and m ateri als, thus producing new forms. The m etropolitan structure, as a cell, and the m etropolitan organism, as a part of a unity, must contain essential architectural characteris tics that are conditioned by the nature of the metropolis. Because the preconditions of past architectural practice no longer apply, their means of expression cannot be maintained. The decorative schema of the Renaissance cannot be transferred to an apartm ent building, a ware house, or an office building if these buildings are not to lose their m eaning—it was due to this sort of nonsense that the offices of Ludwig


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H offm ann’s new m unicipal adm inistration building in Berlin receive so little light.46 A ll details applied at the scale o f individual room s becom e absurd if their intensity and m otivating force cannot incorporate the entire building; th at is, w here they are by nature inti mate details. T herefore options for incorporating organizational details are greatly reduced in m etropolisarchitecture. O rnam ent in particular is entirely absurd. Everything surges tow ard a powerful design o f the profile, o f the floor plan, which d eterm ines the contours o f the building. In a decisively cubic construction details recede into the background. T he general design of m asses and the laws o f pro p o rtio n that govern them are the decisive factors. T he necessity o f creating a law o f form that is equally valid for every elem ent, for an often m onstrous and heterogeneous mass o f m aterial, requires th a t arch itectu ral form be reduced to the m ost concise, m ost necessary, and m ost gen eral characteristics and restricted to the geom etric cubic form s, the fundam ental ele m ents o f all architecture. A ccordingly, the m ost essential qualities of the arc h ite c t— his sense o f m ass and proportion and his organizational ab ility — acquire greater im portance. To form great m asses by suppress ing ram p an t m ultiplicity according to a general 46 [H ilberseim er refers to H o ffm an n ’s S tadthaus in Ber lin (1900-11). O n H offm ann see n o te 30, p. 198.]

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law is N ietzsche’s definition of style: the general case, the law is respected and emphasized; the exception, however, is put aside, nuance is swept away, measure becomes master, chaos is forced to become form: logical, unambiguous, mathe matics, law.47

47 [For Hilberseimer’s reference to Nietzsche’s defini tion of style, see this volume, pp. 62-63.]

Selected Essays

The Will to Architecture “Der Wille zur A rchitektur,” Das Kunstblatt 7 (1923): 133-40. The art of the past decades fled from reality. Because one could not cope with the facts of societal life, one turned to mysticism. The pres ent and its tasks were forgotten in favor of metaphysical speculations. All will to design life was absent. Due to irresponsibility, to a deficient desire for life, refuge was sought in an artificially idealized past. And yet, unlike most other peri ods before, the present found itself obligated to grapple with the realities and agitations of this world. It forced a creative rationalism, called forth a revolution of spiritual means: politics, science, art. And thus after many experimental attempts, art discovered the path to reality. It reduced illusionism, the sole aim of art since the Renaissance, to absurdity; it created a new appre ciation for the objects of our environment. Today it is no longer essential to simply paint paintings, sculpt statues, or create aesthetic arrangements. Rather it is crucial to design reality itself. It is not im portant to paint reproductions, but to form entities, to apply the constructive laws of art to the room, to the object, as reality. It must be attem pted to take all those forces that today still operate in a reproductive fashion and connect them to productive labor process, to methodi

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cally spur them to efficacy. Because the objective is to order the w orld and hum an relationships, to induce responsible actions, to regulate the m ost im portant and essential conditions o f life. Only by concentrating all artistically cre ative strength in one defined area, by setting the m ost resolute aim, will we achieve the output required. A rchitecture is the artistic field that can solve the m ost problem s today. This explains the efforts o f all m odern artistic genres to con nect to architecture. F irst the im age surface was rendered architectonically. T hus as early as E xpressionism a clarification o f the means o f design was discerned. T he construction o f the im age to o k place according to stru ctu ral princi ples. But E xpressionism did no t extend beyond the dom ain o f the em otional. Subjective arbi trariness and em otional obfuscation hindered the logical expression o f form. Conscious o f the fundam ental elem ents of all design, C ubism reverted to foundational geo m etric-cubic forms. C ubism is the first stage on the path from illusion to autonom ous form ation. It recognized the identity o f m aterial and form, attem p ted to design w ith conscious, stylistic will, yet ended like Expressionism in subjective speculation. T he problem o f anthropom orphic figuration continued to absorb it far too much. It is no coincidence th a t precisely Picasso and A rchipenko in itia ted a new Classicism . A b stract art was the first to transcend the narrow b o u ndary o f the subjective in o rder to

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reach the objective, the typical. It relinquished the compositional principle in favor of the con structive. With Suprematism it achieved its ultim ate effects. Abstract idealism reached its apogee; everything still materialistic in some way was destroyed. The conclusion of an artistic phase was reached, the way made free for new creative possibilities. The Constructivists strode this path—the path to reality—purposefully. Their provisional, as yet non-utilitarian constructions reveal the unmistakable will to possess reality. The world itself became the m aterial of their design; every object was drawn into their domain. From the construction of painting, the Constructivists transitioned to the construction of objects, to architecture in the most all-encompassing sense of the word. The Constructivists most lucidly recognized the new aim, putting their entire cre ative power at its disposal. Rational thinking, accuracy, precision, and economy—until now characteristics of the en gineer—must become the basis of this com prehensive architectonic. Because Constructiv ism is no new ornamentality, no new formalism. It grips objects themselves, permeates and suf fuses them with spirit, reduces them to their essential forms, organizes them reasonably, leads them to their ultimate consummation of form. In the end, the works of the Constructivists are only experiments of material; they are attem pts to become acquainted with and shape


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m aterial and its possibilities; attem pts to fathom the potentials o f assem bly and interdependen cies, to explain contrasts o f m aterial and form, to w ork deliberately to solve the m odern prob lems posed by the latter. T hese newly discovered laws o f form will achieve an all-encom passing influence on m odern architecture. They are cer tainly m odified by different requirem ents and purposes. Every new object will always em body the law inherent to itself. But as disparate as these objects may be, they will always be con nected through the laws o f clarity and economy. T he experim ental character o f C onstruc tivist w orks excludes from the start th at they are ends u nto them selves. They are only works of tran sitio n , intended for u tilitarian architectural constructions. A w ell-disciplined training in architecture is the u ltim ate objective. Like every art, architecture is also confront ing the requisite need to provide clarity regarding the m eans upon w hich it is based and which are at its disposal. In this context, painting has pro vided valuable p relim inary work. It was painting th at first drew atten tio n to the fundam ental geom etric-cubic form s in h eren t in all art. The sim ple cubic bodies: boxes and spheres, prism s and cylinders, pyram ids and cones, purely con structive elem ents, are the fundam ental form s o f every architecture. T heir corporeal clarity dem ands clarity o f form . A rchitecture originates from geom etry. W hen geom etric entities becom e p ro p o rtio n ed bodies, architecture em erges,

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revealing diversity within great unity. The cen tral axis takes precedence over details. Particulars retreat fully before the decisive cubic composi tion. The standard is set by the general design of masses, the law of proportions to which it is sub ject. The m ost heterogeneous material masses require a law of form applicable for every ele m ent in equal measure. Thus structural forms are reduced to their most essential, most gen eral, most simple, most unambiguous. Rampant m ultiplicity is suppressed; formation occurs according to a general law of form .1 The architecture of the present distin guishes itself from the architecture of the past primarily through its sociological and economic premises. Technical particularities that are abso lutely definitive for today’s architecture result from new function-oriented requirements. These particularities are new and exhilarating elements, which constitute, through their shapes, the artis tic moment of today. Today we need not cathedrals, temples, or palaces, but rather resi dential buildings, commercial buildings, and factories, which, however, were formerly built to resemble cathedrals, temples, and palaces. One of the most essential tasks of architecture today is to sensibly design the residential building, the commercial building, and the factory. Pure 1 [Although Hilberseimer does not mention it here, his discussion of the reduction of form and the suppression of multiplicity draws on his reading of Friedrich N ietzsche’s concept of style. See this volume, pp. 62-63.]


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models o f these building types have yet to emerge. They m ust first be created. T he homogeneity of their intended uses enables com prehensive stan dardization, a necessary, constructive task for which not even the first step has been taken today. U ntil now, architecture has shied away from nor m alization, the process on which all industry is based. It still rests on individual, m anual founda tions, w hile the entire present is based on collective, industrial conditions. Ignoring neces sities has always led to rigidity. A nd what is more rigid than the architecture o f the present? But creativity reveals itself precisely by com prehen sively addressing given conditions, by seeking an adequate shape for them . T oday’s arch itec tu re is considerably de pen d e n t on solving tw o factors: the individual cell o f th e room and th e collective u rb an organ ism. T he so lu tio n will be d eterm in ed by the m anner in w hich th e room is m anifested as an elem ent o f buildings linked to g eth er in one s tree t block, th u s becom ing a shaping factor of the city stru ctu re, w hich is th e actual objective o f arch itec tu re. Inversely, the constructive design o f the u rb an plan w ill gain considerable influence on th e co n stru ctiv e fo rm ation o f the room and th e building as such. T he room and its constitutive elem ents of floors, w alls, ceilings, openings in the walls, m aterial and color, fu rn itu re and its arrange m ent, and the connection to neighboring room s produce a large com plex o f creative-

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constructive possibilities. Constructivism gener ates a new conception of space, creates new spatial relationships, new forms and proportions. By organizing individual rooms in the floor plan, the functional building that encompasses an entire street block is born. In doing so, extensive relationships of form are produced. A compre hensive synthesis of form is made possible. In addition to the cubic mass, which is determined by the floor plan and the number of floors, of essential im port is the partitioning of building surfaces and their perforation. The technical problem in this instance lies in developing pro jections and recesses that emerge organically from the structure. The projection assumes a positive function in the composite surface, the recess, with its darkness, a negative one. As orga nizational factors, both functions determine the rhythm of the structure. W hat the room represents on a small scale, the urban structure is on a large one: an allencompassing organization of reciprocal needs and relationships. A number of factors must be taken into account, some of which extend far beyond the spatial nature of the city. These are dependent on the economic and sociological structure of the state. The distinctiveness of an urban organism can be seen in its individual organs, which embody this distinction. The gen eral law, in its universality, is represented in the entire organism; the individual building demon strates one particular case. New technical and


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spatial needs and dem ands, w hich result from altered requirem ents and different uses, lead to new applications o f m aterial and to new kinds of forms. T heir constructive character expresses the singularity o f our age. T he w ork o f the engineer is com pleted by producing ratio n al o utput. T h a t o f the architect begins w here the la tte r left off. F o r the architect, a ratio n al solution is the m aterial o f design. A com prehensive conception o f form takes prece dence over the ratio n al solution. T he latter is m erely a m eans for lending corporeality to an idea, for actualizing it in space.

Proposal for City-Center Development “Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung,” Die Form 5, nos. 23-24 (1930): 608-11. Republished in Mod erne Bauformen 30, no. 3 (1931): 55-59. One of the most important and current problems for urban planning today is the reorganization and reconstruction of the city center. Today the center is a hybrid residential city and business city. As such it is functional as neither one nor the other. Thus all residences must be removed from the city center so that it can be systematically rebuilt for its purpose. Like the city center itself, its structures also comprise a mixture of residen tial and commercial buildings. The commercial building of today evolved from the apartment building as partition walls were removed from floor to floor and larger windows were knocked out. If one building was no longer sufficient, a second and third would be annexed, until one day the complexity of this product of happenstance forced, in the interest of rational business man agement, the construction of a new building. But further development and expanding operations would soon render this newly constructed build ing insufficient—especially in the case of the department store—and thus additional new buildings would be required, which, despite being adeptly attached to the old buildings, retained in


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principle the disadvantages— though on an im proved fo u ndation— as the original apartm ent buildings that had been successively annexed and converted for com m ercial purposes. O ne exam ple o f how a large departm ent store has been created from successively annexed com ponents is the W ertheim d ep a rt m ent store in B erlin on Leipziger Platz, which today covers an entire stree t block o f consider able d im ensions.1W hen, m ore than thirty years ago, the first com ponent w as designed and exe cuted, no one im agined th a t the space required by th e W ertheim b uilding w ould am ount to w hat it is today. A further phase o f this developm ent is rep resented by the T ietz departm ent store on A lexanderplatz in Berlin. In this instance, a building com plex o f approxim ately the same size as the W ertheim departm ent store was created all at once according to a specific plan, not piece meal as a result o f successive expansion.2 In doing so, all the advantages facilitated by a clear design naturally benefited operations. N o t only the d epartm ent store, but also the office building has gone through this phase o f developm ent. For 1 [The W ertheim d ep a rtm en t s to re was built in four stages from 1896 to 1912. A lfred M essel designed the first three; H e in ric h S chw eitzer, the fourth. N o longer extant.] 2 [The T ietz d ep a rtm en t sto re at A lexanderplatz was designed by W ilhelm C rem e r and R ichard W olffenstein and op en e d in 1905; a new atriu m was added in 1912. N o longer extant.]

Fig. 52

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METROPOUSARCHrrecTURE

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Fig. 79 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Proposalfor City-Center

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M ETROPOLISA RCHITECTU RE

Fig. 80 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Proposalfor City-Center

SE L E C T E D ESSAYS

Development, 1928-30; axonometric view

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Fig. 81 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Proposal; axonometric view, detail o f variant with circulation networks on three levels

example, the building complex of the Scherl newspaper corporation in Berlin even today consists of many individual former apartment buildings, which, connected to one another, rep resent a fantastic disarray of rooms and passageways at various heights.3 As a result of 3 [Founded by August Scherl in 18 8 3, the Scherl corpora tion published some of Germany’s most popular newspapers and magazines. The corporation was purchased by the media mogul, industrialist, and right-wing politician Alfred Hugenberg in 1916. Otto Kohtz designed the initial headquarters of the Scherl corporation, which was built in 1928, and planned an expansion, which remained unexe cuted, that would have encompassed an entire city block. The building is no longer extant. On the project see Otto Riedrich, “Die N eubauten der Fa. Scherl G. M. B. H., Berlin,” DeutscheBauzeitung 63, no. 42 (1929): 369-76.]


Fig. 82 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Proposal; transverse section

the associated difficulties, the Scherl corpora tion has already begun constructing a new building. It is relatively sim ple for larger com pa nies to m eet th e ir space requirem ents by constructing new buildings. T his is not the case for sm aller businesses, w hich are forced to rent space in old office buildings where room s are often very im practical. In ord er for such an office building to fulfill its purpose, the building m ust be able to provide, in addition to the room s used directly by sm all businesses, com m unal room s for conferences and the like for individual ten ants, who w ould not otherw ise be able to afford them . T he office building can best m eet these requirem ents, and thus offer entirely different

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options for use, when it is liberated from the sin gle building and instead covers an entire block. By reconstructing the city center, an option that is becom ing increasingly neces sary, these dem ands can be easily met, and at the same tim e existing objectionable condi tions can be elim inated. Expanding on a plan for a High-rise City that was form ulated in 1924, this proposal dem onstrates the reorganization and redevelopment of the city center.4 W ithout increasing land use and solely through an alternate distribution and concentration of building masses, it allows the city center to be developed and improved in a way that completely meets the standards dem anded by a business quarter. For this new city center it is entirely possible to employ the high-rise as the exclusive structural form because it is to be constructed on an urban plan that cor responds to this building type. Unlike the high-rise cities o f America, it is not based on the system of the individual building, which descends from medieval times. This urban plan, which is aligned with the high-rise, enables not only a controlled flow of traffic but also the nec essary supply of light and air by ensuring sufficient intervals between buildings, avoiding courtyards, and orienting the buildings toward the sun. The necessarily large intervals between 4 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grofistadtarchitektur, Die Baubiicher, Bd. 3 (Stuttgart: J. Hoffmann, 1927), 17-20. [See this volume, pp. 125-130.]


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Fig. 84 Ludwig Hilberseimer. Proposal; proposed block structure

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Fig. 85 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Proposal; floor plan variations


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buildings, which must at least correspond to the building height, are achieved by concentrating the building masses in high-rises. The width of the street corresponds to the width of the blocks. As needed, exhibition, sales, or storage halls can be housed here. Below this, in the basement, garages and parking lots for automobiles can be situated, thus efficiently solving the problem of parking automobiles, which poses an extraordi nary challenge for the metropolis.


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This proposal has intentionally left the existing building density unaltered. Building m asses have sim ply been d istributed differently. An increase in height by several floors is already being considered in the city center for the sort of buildings existing today, but w ith this proposal an increase in height can be readily im ple m ented. It can be executed in this case under far m ore favorable conditions than w ith existing building types since, through the elim ination of sm all courtyards, the stru ctu res in this proposal offer su p erio r w orking spaces, light conditions, and ventilation. Such a city center is also o f great signifi cance for tran sp o rtatio n planning. Should it becom e necessary, it allows for a street system to be designed on m ultiple levels and thus a com plete separation o f pedestrian traffic from vehicular traffic. F urtherm ore, vehicular traffic can be separated by the allocation of a second vehicular traffic level, facilitating street crossings w ithout intersections. T hese vehicular traffic lev els can be connected to each other by ramps. Mass public tran sp o rtatio n occurs w ithout the use of tram s, em ploying instead the subway and buses, whose stations connect to pedestrian traffic lev els by elevators and escalators.

Visual Docum ents 1 The cover of G ro B sta d ta rc h ite k tu r conveys both Hilberseim er’s interest in typological analysis and his understanding of the essentially typical nature of architecture in the metropo lis. He juxtaposes his project for a Residential City (upper right) with the struc tural skeleton of an uni dentified skyscraper (upper left). A visual rhyme links the blocks of his project to the Portland cem ent factory in El Paso, Texas, pictured in the center. At lower right, the grand hall of Tony G arn ier’s slaughterhouses of La M ouche in Lyon (1 9 0 9 -1 3 ) sym bolizes the m etabolism o f the m etro polis, while Le C o rbusier’s C ook House, at lower left, signals H ilberseim er’s sim ul taneously reverential and critical relationship to the single-fam ily house as a type and to the FrancoSwiss m aster as a designer.

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M etropolisarchitecture

3ROSS STA D T A R CH ITEKTU R I IL I U S H O F F M A N N ERLAG/ S T U T T G A R T

M I T 2 2 9 A B BI LD U N GE N / K ART. M 9 . 5 0

Visual Docum ents

2 In these pages, Le C orb usier’s Ville C ontem poraine is aligned with Jacques G re b er’s plan for Fairmount Parkway in

Philadelphia, producing a visual echo of Hilberseimer's critique of Le Corbusier’s project as m erely a geom et rical restatem ent of the

M e tro p o lis a rc h ite c tu re

Visual Docum ents

3 In th ese pages, H il berseim er com pares his projects for mass housing with realized structures: Bruno Taut and M artin

W a g n e r’s Horseshoe S e ttle m e n t in Berlin. The com parison m anifests H ilb e rs e im e r’s b elie f in the power of theoretical


projects to confront the existing metropolis.

Visual Docum ents

4 These pages represent H ilberseim er’s great respect for J. J. P. Oud. First expressed in an article in D a s K u n s tb la tt in 1923,

Hilberseim er’s admiration for the Dutch architect’s row houses, particularly his early, unrealized projects, is evident here.

Metropolisarchitecture

Visual Docum ents

5 These pages are some of the few in the book devoted to single-fam ily houses. Hilberseim er c elebrates the w ork of

Frank Lloyd W right, but illustrates Le C orbusier’s Cook House without textual commentary. Hilberseimer applied his own motto “the


house as commodity”to the thought of Le Corbusier’s single-family house he built luxurious urban villa, at the Weissenhofsiedlung (illustrated elsewhere). One can only imagine what he

Visual Docum ents

6 The buildings assem bled here dem onstrate the geographical scope of H ilberseim er’s book. From w est to east, it extends

from Frank Lloyd W rig h t’s Larkin Building in Buffalo, to Erich M endelsohn’s Mossehaus in Berlin, to Hans Poelzig’s office building in

Visual Docum ents

7 These pages illustrate H ilberseim er’s appreciation for the elem ental forms of transportation structures. Although he does not

com m ent on Eugene Freyssinet’s remarkable buildings, th eir inclusion prefigures H ilberseim er’s iater book H a lle n b a u te n

(Hall Buildings), 1931, which was devoted entirely to wide-span structures.

Visual Docum ents 8 Here H ilberseim er illustrates Hugo H a rin g ’s cowshed at the Garkau farm (1 9 2 3 -2 6 ), w hich he applauds as a building designed with specific pro duction processes in mind. The placem ent of this image on the same page as the title for the book’s following chapter, “Building Trades and the Building Industry,” is suggestive: the hand crafted m ateriality of Haring’s building stands in stark contrast to H ilber seim er’s call for industrial ization. This tacit visual argum ent perhaps derives from the longstanding, and at times acerbic, dis agreem ent betw een H ilberseim er and Haring on the fundam ental premises of urban planning.


Visual Docum ents 9 Although H ilber se im e r’s “D e r W ille zur A rch itektur” (The W ill to A rch itecture) is exten sively illustrated, his text does not address the projects reproduced. Instead, the images serve to graphically reinforce H ilberseim er’s assertion that the visual and spatial arts, Constructivism in particular, prepared the ground for the new architecture. Here, W . M . D u d o k’s Dr. H. Bavinck School in Hilversum (1 9 2 1 -2 2 ) supports Hilber seim er’s belief that “simple cubic bodies” are the basis of all architecture.

The W ill to Architecture

Visual Docum ents

ihm eigentiimliche GesetzmaBigkeit herausbilden. So verschieden diese Objtsrt/ aber auch sein mogen, immer werden sie verbunden sein, durch die Gesetzctu' Klarheit und Okonomie. Der experimentelle Charakter der konstruktivistischen Werke schliefit vornherein ihre Selbstzwecklichkeit aus. Sie sind nur Werke des libergangn fcti utilitarischen architektonischen Konstruktionen. Eine wohldiszipiinierte Scl zur Architektur als dem ietzten Ziel. Wie jede Kunst steht auch die Architektur vor der unerlafilichen NotweKf j keit, sich Klarheit iiber ihre zugrunde liegenden und zu Gebote stehenden Mifcn zu verschaffen. Hier hat ihr die Malerei wertvolle Vorarbeit geleistet. Sie h ilw erst auf die geometrisch-kubischen Grundformen aller Kunst aufmerksa 11 macht. Die einfachen kubischen Korper: Wiirfel und Kugel, Prisma und ,i;k. der, Pyramide und Kegel, rein bildende Elemente, sind die Grundformen jtc Architektur. Ihre korperliche Bestimmtheit zwingt zu formaler Klarheit. An tektur entspringt der Geometrik. Wenn geometrische Gebilde zu proporthtr r ten Korpern werden, entsteht Architektur. Vieigestaltigkeit bei grofiter Ei ilti Details der zeugenden Hauptiinie untergeordnet. Vor dem entschieden kubi cn Aufbau treten Einzelheiten vollig zuriick. Mafigebend ist die aligemeine Gab-1 tung der Massen. Das ihr auferlegte Proportionsgesetz. Die meist heterogenu Materialmassen verlangen ein fiir jedes Element gleichermaBen giiltiges Fongesetz. Daher Reduzierung der Bauformen auf das Wesentlichste. Allgemeiiax Einfachste. Unzweideutigste. Unterdriickung der Vielerleiheit. Formung tr t einem aligemeinen Formgesetz. Die Architektur der Gegenwart unterscheidet sich von der der Vergangenier vor allem durch ihre soziologischen und okonomischen Voraussetzungen. Aus hi neuen zwecklichen Anforderungen ergeben sich zugleich formale Eigentiw lichkeiten, die fiir die heutige Architektur durchaus bestimmend sind. Sie im das Neue und Belebende. Stellen geformt das heute giiltige kiinstlerische Momfc dar. W ir bediirfen heute keiner Kathedralen, Tempel und Palaste, sondern Wet-. hauser, Geschaftshauser und Fabriken. die allerdings wie Kathedralen, Teiqk und Palaste gebaut wurden. Das Wohnhaus, das Geschaftshaus, die Fabrik sin voll zu gestalten ist eine der wesentlichsten Aufgaben heutiger Architect.* Reine Typen dieser Gebaudearten haben sich bis jetzt noch nicht herausgebilii Sie miissen erst noch geschaffen werden. Bei der Gleichartigkeit des Gebra icb zwecks ermoglicht sich eine umfassende Typisierung. Eine notwendige kom i> tive Arbeit, zu der heute noch nicht einmal der Anfang gemacht ist. Die f tck) tektur hat sich bisher der Normisierung, die der gesamten Industrie zugtntB liegt, zu entziehen gewufit. Sie beruht noch auf individuellen handwerkl h i Grundlagen, wahrend die gesamte Gegenwart auf kollektiv industrielle Vc esetzungen gegriindet ist. Ignoranz von Notwendigkeiten hat bisher noch ii «r zur Erstarrung gefiihrt. Und was ist mehr e rstan t als die Architektur der G !twart. Schopferkraft offenbart sich aber gerade darin, Gegebenheiten restl 3 verarbeiten. Eine ihnen adequade Form zu finden.

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10 In these pages, Alfred Gellhorn and M artin Knauthe’s Forsterhof office building in Halle (1 9 2 1 22) is juxtaposed with

Hilberseim er’s statem ent that “today we need not cathe drals, temples or palaces, but rather residential buildings, com m ercial buildings, and

The W ill to A rc h ite c tu re

factories.”Forthe reader, Hilberseimer’s reproduction of this early example of the Neues Bauen buttresses his opposition to the alleged

“subjective arbitrariness” of Expressionism. Italso alludes to Hilberseimer’s solidarity with these left-leaning architects.

Visual Docum ents

Anspriiche in technischer und raumlicher Beziehung werden zu neuartigeju wendung der Materialien und zu neuen Formentypen fiihren. Ihr konst Charakter wird die Eigentiiralichkeiten unserer Epoche zum Ausdruck Die Arbeit des Ingenieurs ist mit der rationalen Leistung vollendet. Di . Architekten beginnt damit. Ihm ist die rationale Losung Material der G eU t' Er ordnet sie einer umfassenden Formvorstellung unter. Sie ist ihm lediglia/i tel einer Idee Korperlichkeit zu verleihen. Sie im Raume zu verwirkliche .

The W ill to A rc h ite c tu re

11 Hilberseimer illustrates his project for a High-rise Factory (1922) on the final page of his essay, suggest ing that its elementary forms represent the ultimate aim of the newarchitecture: “the general design of masses.” The spatial tension withinthis line drawing recalls the workof Hilberseimer's friend Laszlo Peri, in whose “space-constructions”Hil berseimer located the first signs of a “latent will to architecture.”

Proposal for C ity-C enter Development

12 Inthis axonometric line drawing, Hilberseimer’s Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung”(Proposal for City-Cen ter Development) appears as a potentially endless field of repeated blocks. The smaller, inset image at upper right presents avariation of the scheme with elevated pedestrian paths, recalling the superimposition of circulation networks recom mended by Harvey Wiley Corbett and adopted byHilberseimer in his Highrise City.

Visual Docum ents 13 This plate contains the m ost detailed draw ings of Hilberseimer’s proposal. Reading from bottom to top, we see H ilberseim er’s block structure com pared to a typical Berlin district, plans and sections of the entire building, and typical floors of the office slabs. Their featureless interiors corre spond to w hat Siegfried Kracauer called the “spiri tual hom elessness” of G erm any’s em erging class of w hite-collar workers, the “salaried m asses” he profiled in his book D ie A n g e s te llte n of 1930.

Afterword

In H ilberseim er’s Footsteps Afterword by Pier Vittorio Aureli

Figs. 17-18

Ludwig Hilberseimer’s oeuvre—both his proj ects and his writings—has had a strange critical fortune. At first glance, it might seem that his work has been overlooked, almost forgotten in the literature on m odern architecture. This is true if we consider that his contribution is almost absent from all the major histories of modern architecture in the twentieth century. Moreover, Hilberseim er’s work is known (if it is known at all), only through the two famous perspectives of his proposal for a High-rise City (1924). These two images have been used so often to represent the horror of the modern metropolis that they have become cliches, especially because they are often considered only as images and not as illus trations of a precise urban proposal. And yet Hilberseimer’s oeuvre has inspired the work and the approach of architects and scholars as radi cally diverse as Manfredo Tafuri, Archizoom, Giorgio Grassi, Rem Koolhaas, K. Michael Hays, Albert Pope, and Charles Waldheim, to name just a few. If Hilberseimer has suffered mainstream neglect, he has surely become an architect’s archi tect, a cult figure whose rigorous theoretical projects paradoxically seem to age much less than the work of many of his contemporaries. This is

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due to his radical and uncom prom ising approach to architecture and the city. This approach was sustained not through m anifestos or utopian pro posals for a different world; on the contrary, H ilberseim er’s radicality consists in his lucid and realist analysis of the capitalist city. This realism also inform s his design proposals, which— although executed as theoretical propos als— expressed social, political, and formal im plications that responded to the reality of the capitalist city. H is work was radical because it lacked all idealism about the reality of the capi talist city, and even if his proposals were drastic attem pts to reform the city w ithin a social-dem o cratic fram ework, he did not discount the social and geographical consequences of the new forms of production brought about by capitalist devel opm ent. This is particularly evident in the peculiar style o f his drawings. The urban atm osphere evoked by his drawings for the High-rise City is neither futuristic, nor dram atic, nor dystopian. H ilberseim er’s images, especially in his early work, describe an urban atm osphere that is detached, harsh, precise, and subtly disquieting. Perhaps the best expression of the attitude con veyed by the illustrations o f H ilberseim er’s projects is found in the opening lines of Thom as M ann’s Royal Highness, which A rchizoom used to introduce its theoretical project N o-Stop City (1969-71), a project that, as we shall see, was inspired by H ilberseim er’s drawings for the High-rise City:

Figs.

90-91

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The time is noon on an ordinary weekday; the season o f the year does not matter. The weather is fair to moderate. It is not raining, but the sky is not clear; it is a uniform light gray, uninteresting and somber, and the street lies in a dull and sober light which robs it o f all mystery, all individuality.1 The sobriety of H ilberseim er’s images corre sponds to the realism of his analysis of the capitalist city. But despite the clarity of his theo ries and proposals, his writings and projects have been interpreted in very different, sometimes opposing, ways. Indeed, H ilberseim er’s work has inspired radically different approaches to the contem porary city. In the notes that follow, I will outline some of these approaches, in partic ular those of Aldo Rossi, Giorgio Grassi, M anfredo Tafuri, Archizoom, K. Michael Hays, and Rem Koolhaas. In 1967 the publishing house M arsilio—founded by Paolo Ceccarelli and Antonio Negri, among o th ers—initiated a book series on architecture and urbanism that was edited by Aldo Rossi and

1 Thomas Mann, Royal Highness: A Novel o f German Court Life, trans. A. Cecil Curtis (Los Angeles, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939), v. Quoted in Italian by Archizoom in “C itti, catena di montaggio del sociale: ideologia e teoria della m etropoli,” Casabella 350-51 (1970): 22.

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called Polis.2 T he previous year, M arsilio had published R ossi’s fam ous book L ’architettura della citta ( The Architecture o f the City), which had a trem endous im pact on architectural and urban discourse in Italy. T he success o f the book was an incentive for Rossi and the editors at M arsilio to publish a series o f texts related to architecture and the city. R ossi’s am bition for Polis was to publish no t only new texts but also old and often forgotten texts, especially texts related to the rise o f w hat Rossi defined as “ratio n alist arch itectu re.” A m ong the first titles Rossi published was Ludw ig H ilberseim er’s Entftaltung einer Planungsidee (D evelopm ent o f a Planning C oncept), 1963, w hich was translated by R ossi’s wife, the stage actress Sonia G essner, and introduced by R ossi’s protege and early col la borator G iorgio G rassi.3 It is im portant to note the sim ilarity betw een the title of Rossi’s book—L ’architettura della citta— and the title of H ilberseim er’s m ost im portant b o o k -G rofistadtarchitektur (Metropolisarchitecture), which is trans lated into Italian as L ’architettura della grande cit ta As has been recently dem onstrated, there is no

.4

2 F o r a very insightful h istory o f the Polis book series and o th e r ed ito rial projects re la ted to arch itectu re in Italy betw een the 1950s and 1980s see F io rella Vanini, La libreria dell’architetto: Progetti di collane editoriali 19451980 (M ilan: F ranco A ngeli, 2011). 3 Ludw ig H ilberseim er, Entfaltung einer Planungsidee (Berlin: U llstein, 1963); Ludw ig H ilberseim er, U n’idea di piano, trans. S onia G e ssn e r (P adua: M arsilio, 1967) 4 A ldo R ossi, L ’architettura della citta (P adua: M arsilio,

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Fig. 87


doubt that Rossi was inspired by Hilberseimer’s book, and although references to the German architect and theorist are rather scarce in Rossi’s text, his early collaborators confirm his strong interest in Hilberseimer’s work, and especially in Grofistadtarchitektur.5 It is clear that the affinity Rossi felt for Hilberseimer lay in the idea of root ing architectural form within the reality of the city. Following the example of Hilberseimer’s Grofistadtarchitektur, Rossi sought to elucidate the laws that govern the form of the city as the prereq uisite for understanding architecture itself. For both Hilberseimer and Rossi the city comes first: it is the only meaningful context (both physical and conceptual) in which architecture can be understood at a fundamental level. And yet for both Hilberseimer and Rossi, it is precisely through architecture—as a physical artifact—that the city is knowable. This understanding of the relationship between architecture and the city is evident in the organization of Hilberseimer’s book. Hilberseimer first puts forward a general 1966); The Architecture o f the City, trans. Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1982); LudwigHilbeTseimcT,GroszstadtArchitektur:L’architettura della grande citta, trans. Bianca Spagnuolo Vigorita (Naples: CLEAN, 1981); a second edition was published in 1998. The Italian edition of Grofistadtarchitektur was introduced by Gianugo Polesello, an early collaborator of Rossi’s. 5 See Elisabetta Vasumi Roveri, Aldo Rossi e l ’architettura della citta: genesi efortuna di un testo (Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2010), 34.

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understanding o f the city as a com prehensive sys tem o f relationships, as a plan; only then does he describe the city through exemplary structures. Organizing the book in this way, H ilberseim er stresses the dependence o f architecture on the political and geographical organization o f the city. A nd yet for H ilberseim er this broader under standing o f the city finds its ultim ate confirm ation in the interior organization o f buildings. H ilber seimer never uses the term “typology,” but it is clear that for him the overall organization of the city is dependent on the organization of the single unit: the cell. T hese observations can clearly be read in R ossi’s intentional use o f specific language, particularly in the M ilanese arch itec t’s rein tro duction o f the notion o f typology as the fundam ental fram ew ork for the study o f the m orphology o f the city. T he sim ilarity between H ilberseim er’s and R ossi’s m ethod is striking: for both architects the form o f the city is gener ated from the d istributive logic urban types. And both un d ersto o d types as m anifestations o f the ethos o f a society in pure architectural terms. Why, then, did R ossi decide to publish Entftaltung einer Planungsidee instead o f the m ore canonical Grofistadtarchitektur? T he answ er may be that Ent ftaltung einer Planungsidee was a m ore recent title from H ilberseim er’s prolific bibliography. But another reason may be th a t Rossi felt that Grofistadtarchitektur was too closely related to a p articular m om ent o f the m odern m etropolis,

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while Entftaltung einer Planungsidee offered a ret rospective analysis of Hilberseimer’s career as a planner. Since the Italian translation was pub lished only a few months before Hilberseimer’s death, we might presume that Hilberseimer him self did not want to republish his old book and preferred his latest work since it would be a more up-to-date version of his theory of the city. We can be sure that Rossi liked the slightly autobio graphical tone of Entftaltung einer Planungsidee, in which Hilberseimer presented his theory and projects as if they unfolded according to a life long existential project. If Rossi’s reference to Hilberseim er was indirect, Giorgio G rassi’s relationship to Hil berseim er’s writings and projects is clear. One could say that it was Grassi who rediscovered Hilberseim er in the 1960s. Apart from his intro duction to the Italian edition of Entftaltung einer Planungsidee, Hilberseimer was a central refer ence in G rassi’s book La costruzione logica dell’architettura (The Logical Construction of Architecture), which was published the same year as the Italian translation of Entftaltung einer Planungsidee.6In this book Grassi focused on the possibility of producing architecture according to rigorous and self-evident principles. In order to find such architecture, Grassi focused in par ticular on two moments of modern Western 6 Giorgio Grassi, La costruzione logica dell'architettura (Padua: Marsilio, 1967).

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architecture: the French grand siecle, represented by such figures as P ierre Le M uet, Roland F reart de Cham bray, and C harles-E tienne Briseux, architects and authors o f influential treatises and m anuals o f architecture; and on G erm an architecture o f the years o f the W eim ar R epub lic, represented by the w ork o f Bruno Taut, A lexander K lein, and H ilberseim er. F or G rassi these two m om ents in the history o f architec ture, w hich he identified as C lassicism and R ationalism , respectively, advanced an idea of architecture indissolubly linked to an idea o f the city. In these two periods, G rassi argued, the project o f the city and the project o f architecture coincided w ithin the sam e propositions. These propositions were pu t forw ard in a logical way, according to the m ost basic conventions shared by architects o f the time. T hink o f Le M uet’s architecture d ’accompagnement, in w hich archi tecture, freed from the representational role of the classical orders, is reduced to its basic image: the urban dwelling. This approach resulted in an architecture th a t for G rassi was both au to n o m ous (because it was intelligible in itself, as legible form ), but also profoundly rooted w ithin the city for which it was designed. G rassi’s in ter est in H ilberseim er was m otivated by the need H ilberseim er shared w ith Rossi to search for an approach to arch itectu re liberated from the con fines o f au th o rsh ip and style. In his introduction to Entftaltung einer Planungsidee, G rassi em pha sized th a t even though H ilberseim er’s theoretical

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Fig. 88 Giorgio Grassi, Project for the Palazzo della Regione in Trieste. 1974

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Fig. 89 Giorgio Grassi, Project fo r the Palazzo della Regione in Trieste, 1974; plan detail

344

Figs. 88-89


projects, including the High-rise City, have pre cise architectural images, they are nevertheless characterized by the absence of style. For Grassi the forms produced by Hilberseimer were not just types, but archetypes: the slab, the block, the highrise building, the row house. Hilberseimer’s method of design was not to seek the invention of original forms but to assemble unprecedented combinations and to use them as the basis for the production of new types. In the High-rise City, for example, Hilberseimer superimposed two urban types that were at that time seen as radically anti thetical: the block and the slab. In Hilberseimer’s designs, an extreme simplicity of form corre sponds to a highly original combination of different archetypes, the end result of which is an unprecedented organization of the city and its functions. Hilberseimer’s influence is also evident in G rassi’s design work. Grassi not only adopted Hilberseimer’s terse and precise approach to architectural rendering; he also quoted projects like the High-rise City in his competition entry for the regional administrative offices in Trieste (1974). And in a lecture delivered in 1978, Grassi insisted on the validity of Hilberseimer’s formu lation of the relationship between architecture and the city.7Against the affirmation of Postmod ern historicism, which would eventually affect the 7 See Giorgio Grassi, “L’architettura di Hilberseimer” in Giorgio Grassi, Scritti scelti, 1965-1999 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000), 183-92.

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work o f Rossi, G rassi still looked to H ilberseim er as a point o f reference for a civic, anonymous architecture com pletely divorced from concerns for form or expression. If G rassi and R o ssi— early in his care er— looked to H ilberseim er as the m ost im por tant pro p o n en t o f a ratio n alist approach to architecture, M anfredo Tafuri and A ndrea Branzi und ersto o d the G erm an architect in a slightly different way, em phasizing both the political and the iconoclastic dim ensions o f his work. In 1969, T afuri published his sem inal essay “ Per una critica d ell’ideologia architettonica” (Tow ard a C ritique o f A rchitectural Ideo logy) in the M arxist jo u rn a l Contropiano in which he launched an attack on the utopian and re form ist aspirations o f m odern architecture.8 T afuri’s position was heavily influenced by the theories o f the O peraists, a group o f radical M arxist m ilitants and scholars gathered around the theories o f M ario T ronti. They w ere very critical, if no t entirely against the reform ist agenda o f the Left, w hich they saw as a strategic lever for capitalist pow er over the w orking class. T afuri’s fundam ental argum ent in this essay was that m odern architectu re, especially the avantgarde m ovem ents, had the ideological role of 8 M anfredo T afuri, “ Per u n a critica d ell’ideologia arch ite tto n ic a ,” Contropiano 1 (1969): 31-79; trans. S te phen S artarelli as “T ow ard a C ritiq u e o f A rchitectural Ideology,” in K. M ichael Hays, ed., Architecture Theory since 1968 (C am bridge: T h e M IT Press, 1998), 6-35.

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M ETROPOLIS ARCH ITECTURE

prefiguring models of organization for the city within the incessant development of capitalism. For Tafuri, the allegedly utopian dimension of architecture had the specific role of making emerging cycles of urban restructuring culturally and socially acceptable. For example, Tafuri described the trend of picturesque landscaping as promoting the ideology of an allegedly “natural city” in the face of massive industrial exploita tion and land-value speculation. Avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and De Stijl gave this industrial reality its proper aesthetic image, characterized by shock and pro ductive alienation. Once the next cycle of ca pitalist development was accomplished, these avant-garde projects were left behind as “form without utopia,” as useless weapons for both cap ital and its antagonist: the working class. Tafuri thought the only way to overcome this reality of architecture was to go beyond architecture as the design of objects and to dive into the economic processes that produced architecture itself. For Tafuri the only architect who had adopted this approach was Hilberseimer. Tafuri described Hilberseim er’s observation that the architecture of the city is dependent on the solution of two issues, the design of the elementary cell and of the entire urban whole, as the most lucid analysis of the capitalist metropolis. If Rossi and Grassi had interpreted this observation as the founda tion of the relationship between typology and morphology, for Tafuri this observation meant

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something entirely different. It m eant that H ilber seimer had understood the city as a true unity, but not as a metaphysical or transcendental unity, nor as a harm onious architectural unity. T he unity of the capitalist city lay, rather, in its identity as an enorm ous “social m achine,” an apparatus in which the type, not the overall image o f the city, represents the starting point for urban design. For Tafuri, H ilberseim er had understood that, reduced in these term s, the city was no longer a com position o f buildings but rather an organiza tion o f the econom ic process. The unity o f the city is thus no longer the city as object, as tangible arti fact, but the city as econom ic cycle that processes infinitely reproducible types. As Tafuri wrote: In the face o f modernized production tech niques and the expansion and rationalization o f the market, the architect, as producer o f "objects," became an incongruous figure. It was no longer a question o f giving form to sin gle elements o f the urban fabric, nor even to simple prototypes. Once the true unity o f the production cycle has been identified in the city, the only task the architect can have is to orga nize the cycle. Taking this proposition to its extreme conclusion, Hilberseimer insists on the role o f elaborating "organizational models " as the only one that can fully reflect the need fo r Taylorizing building production, as the new task o f the technician, who is now completely integrated into this process.

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On the basis o f this position, Hilberseimer was able to avoid involvement in the “crisis o f the object" so anxiously articulated by such architects as Loos and Taut. For Hilberseimer, the object was not in crisis because it had already disappeared from his spectrum o f consider ations. The only emerging imperative was that dictated by the laws o f organization, and therein lies what has been correctly seen as Hilber seimer’s greatest contribution.9

Figs. 90-91

Tafuri’s reading of Hilberseim er as a lucid inter preter of the capitalist city had a profound influence on the Florentine collective Archizoom, especially on the development of Archizoom’s m ost im portant project: No-Stop City (1969-71). T he project was executed for an exhibition of the work by Archizoom in Rotterdam that never took place, and it was intended as an illustration perabsurdum of the effects of the capitalist city.10 The basic principle of No-Stop City consisted in imagining the city as the superimposition of 9 Tafuri, “Toward a Critique of Architectural Ide ology,” 22. 10 The project No-Stop City was published in several magazines. The most im portant publications were: Archizoom associati, “Cittš, catena di montaggio del sociale: ideologia e teoria della metropoli,” Casabella 350-51 (1970): 22-34; Archizoom associati, “No-Stop City: Residential Parkings. Climatic Universal System,” Domus 496 (1971): 49-54. See also Roberto Gargiani, Dall’onda pop alia superficie neutra: Archizoom Associati, 1966-1974 (Milan: Electa, 2008), 169-227.

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Fig. 90 Archizoom Associates, No-Stop City, 1969-71; floorplan

Fig. 91 Archizoom Associates, N o-Stop City, 1969-71; section

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three spaces: the factory, the supermarket, and the parking lot. N o-Stop City was not conceived as an alternative to the existing city, but as an exacerbation of its elements, producing what the Operaists had called the citta fabbrica (the city as a factory), an urban condition in which the orga nization of production was extended beyond the perim eter of the factory to all forms of social life. According to Tronti, with the advent of the welfare state, in which production was organi cally linked with consumption, the evolution of production had reached a stage in which the fac tory and society coincided in the same “plan of capital.” And yet for the Operaists it was pre cisely at this point that capital would be forced to reveal its ties to the labor force of the working class. With No-Stop City, Archizoom sought to reveal this condition in its most brutal form: a continuous space devoid of any architectural quality and made inhabitable by the even distri bution of the m ost basic equipment: a bathroom placed every fifty meters, for example. As Branzi has stated, the publication of Hilberseim er’s projects in the Italian edition of Entfaltung einer Planungsidee was a fundamental trigger for the project. It is im portant to note here the ambigu ous relationship between Rossi and Grassi on the one hand, and Archizoom and Superstudio on the other. There is no doubt that the radical rationalism of Rossi’s and G rassi’s early archi tecture had a strong impact on the minimalist turn of both collectives around 1968. Branzi

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observed th at R ossi’s interest in “extrem e” architects such as Etienne-L ouis Boullee and H ilberseim er was a fundam ental influence that pushed the m em bers o f A rchizoom to purge their initial in terest in pop imagery. A nd yet T afuri’s m ore politically oriented and disen chanted reading o f H ilberseim er, w hich took no account o f neo -ratio n alist imagery, was m ore influential on the developm ent o f N o-Stop City. T afuri’s H ilberseim er revealed, regardless o f the G erm an arch itec t’s intentions, the radical disso lution o f the city as form w ithin the totalizing space o f urbanization. A gainst the colorful images o f A rchigram , the rediscovery o f H ilber seim er revealed the generic ethos o f the m odern city. As Branzi has recently recalled: The idea o f an inexpressive, catatonic architec ture, the outcome o f the expansive form s o f logic o f the system and its class antagonists, was the only modern architecture o f interest to us: a liberating architecture, corresponding to mass democracy, devoid o f dem os and o f kratos (o f people and o f power), and both centterless and imageless. A society freed from the rhetorical form s o f humanitarian socialism and rhetorical progressivism: architecture that gazed fear lessly at the logic o f gray, unaesthetic, and de-dramatized industrialism... The colorful visions o f Pop architecture were replaced by Ludwig Hilberseimer’s pitiless urban images, those o f a city without qualities designed fo r

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people without preordained qualities. Free, therefore, to express in an autonomous way its own creative, political, and behavioral energies. The greatest possible freedom occurred where integration was strongest... Alienation was a new artistic condition...11 Hilberseim er’s projects were thus understood as an invitation to confront the most radical effects of the capitalist city. W hat is more, the High-rise City was an invitation to go beyond the formal fetishism through which other avant-garde groups such as the Japanese M etabolists had confronted the social and technological trans formations of the urban environment. Moreover, in the High-rise City, Hilberseim er had demon strated that in an advanced capitalist society, life and work coincide within the same urban sys tem. He thereby suggested that the desire to zone the city into different sectors, a desire Le Cor busier clung to, was unnecessary. Even if Hilberseim er’s projects were conceived as solu tions to specific problems, his peculiar graphic presentations, in which patterns replace build ing forms, inspired Archizoom in its attem pt to define a “nonfigurative architecture” for the city. Such nonfigurative architecture was meant to reveal the city’s brute objectivity against the hum anist aspirations of modernism. 11 Andrea Branzi, “Postface,” in No-Stop City: Archizoom Associati (Orleans: HXY, 2006), 148^19.

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K. M ichael Hays has also sought to counter the hum anist interpretation o f m odern architec ture. In Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject, published in 1992, Hays interprets H ilberseim er’s work as p art o f a reform ulation o f the subject-object relationship in architecture.12 Hays observes that in m odern historiography the inter pretation o f m odern architecture has taken the form o f two canonical narratives. On the one hand, m odern architecture is presented under the rubric o f function, in which the objectivity of technological developm ent is seen as overwhelm ing the hum an dim ension o f architectural form. On the other hand, critics and historians who have opposed this view o f m odern architecture have advocated for a hum anist interpretation, in which a sovereign hum an subject regains full control of his own space. A gainst both interpretations, Hays proposes th at a fundam ental category o f m odern architecture is the specific subjectivity form ed by an intense dialectic betw een subject and object. F or Hays, the process o f rationalization im plied by the process of m odernization called the defini tion o f the subject as a “self-creating conscience and will, th a t is to say, o f hum anism ,” into ques tio n .13 C onfronted w ith this reality, in this book H ays seeks to read the legacy o f m odern architec ture in the term s th at other disciplines have used 12 K. M ichael Hays, M odernism and the Posthumanist Sub ject: The Architecture o f Hannes M eyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer (C am bridge: T he M IT Press, 1992). 13 Ib id ., 4.

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Fig. 80


to interpret modernity: as an act of negation of the most fundamental assumptions of human ism. Like the atonal music of Schoenberg or the non-narrative films of Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling (which Hilberseimer admired greatly), in the most extreme versions of modern architec ture, such those advanced by Hannes Meyer and Hilberseimer, architectural form is reconceived according to an aesthetic of renunciation, uncer tainty, and incompleteness. For Hays these aesthetic terms are fully developed in Hilber seimer’s projects and style of representation. Hays notes how in such a project as Hilber seimer’s “Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung” (Pro posal for City-Center Development), 1930, axonometric drawing suppresses any sense of depth in the reading of urban space.14 Urban form is reduced to a pattern in which any idea of origin or composition is suppressed in favor of a serial order. And yet, for Hays such explicit manifesta tion of the abstract ethos of the metropolis is not simply the accomplishment of the “real” func tioning of its architecture. On the contrary, for Hays, it is precisely Hilberseimer’s peculiar way of rendering the metropolis that deconstructs any relationship of cause and effect between form and function. In Hilberseimer’s drawings, the m etropolis appears as an over-determined pro cess in which the two fundamental tenets of the humanist project—causality and origin—are 14 On this project see this volume, pp. 290-305.

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effaced, yielding an anonym ous and nonrepresentational architectural language. In H ays’s reading, H ilberseim er’s approach to the architec ture o f the m etropolis is neither form alist nor functionalist. H ilberseim er’s (and M eyer’s) archi tecture makes visible “that things are ju st what they are, utterly shorn o f any m etaphysical illu sion o f artistic authenticity, unity, or depth.” 15 Similarly, in the work o f Rem Kool haas—particularly in his urban projects and theories o f the 1980s— we find an appropriation of H ilberseim er’s work in support o f an anti-for malist, but also anti-determ inistic position. W hile Hays was w riting his book (which originated in his Ph.D. dissertation at M IT), K oolhaas had already started a m odernist campaign in favor o f the m etropolis against the historicist architecture that became very popular in E urope in the 1980s. If for Tafuri and A rchizoom H ilberseim er’s architec ture o f the m etropolis represented the end of architecture, its final dissolution in the sea of urbanization, for Koolhaas the forces o f the metropolis were precisely the last chance for architecture to reclaim its urban role. This posi tion was enthusiastically declared in the very nam e o f K oolhaas and Elia Zenghelis’s practice, which in this sense was a clear statem ent of pur pose: Office for M etropolitan A rchitecture (OMA). As recounted by Zenghelis, H ilber seim er’s harsh architectural imagery was also 15 Hays, M odernism and the Posthumanist Subject, 171.

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Fig. 92 OMA, Project for Welfare Palace Hotel, Welfare Island, New York, 1975-76; detail

Fig. 92

present in OMA’s early work as a deliberate com plement to the hedonism and irony of the practice’s metropolitan projects. This is evident in OMA’s 1976 proposal for a housing complex with urban facilities on Welfare Island in New York City.16 16 Elia Zenghelis in conversation with the author, 23 June 2012.

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In this project, OM A revisited a classic urban theme also appropriated by H ilb erseim er— the boarding house, in w hich the typology o f the hotel is developed as strategy for housing. For Koolhaas and Z enghelis, as for the H ilberseim er of the Grofistadtarchitektur years, a truly m etro politan architecture had to be ruthlessly rooted within the m ost adverse conditions o f the con tem porary city. But while H ilberseim er sought to tam e and reform these conditions, O M A accepted and accom m odated them w ithin a new urban architecture. O M A ’s search for a new m et ropolitan architecture was a radical refusal of both the histo ricist nostalgia that, in the early 1980s, affected many E uropean architects, and of the retu rn to m odernism in its critical and regionalist versions, as was seen in Spanish and Portuguese architecture. It is precisely within this a ttem p t th a t K oolhaas w rote two o f his m ost im portant program m atic texts: “ O ur N ew S obri ety,” published on the occasion o f O M A ’s provocative con trib u tio n to Paolo P ortoghesi’s Venice B iennale in 1980, and “ Im agining N o th ingness,” a sh o rt text th a t declared th a t the “absence” o f architecture can be seen precisely as the greatest potential for its resu rrectio n .17 Both texts clearly resonate w ith H ilberseim er’s 17 R em K oolhaas, E lia Zenghelis, “ O ur N ew Sobriety,” OM A, Projects (L ondon: A rch ite ctu ra l A ssociation, 1981), 3-9; R em K oolhaas, “ Im agining N o th in g n ess” in Rem K oolhaas and B ruce M au, S, M , L , X L (N ew York: T he M onacelli Press, 1995), 198-204.

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m etropolitan approach to architecture. For Kool haas, as for the German architect, the complexity of the contemporary city requires a radical sobri ety of form. This is evident in such seminal projects as the competition entry for the redevel opment of Melun-Senart near Paris (1987) and the project for the Morgan Bank Headquarters in Amsterdam (1985), in which architectural inter vention is reduced to a minimum in order to fully accommodate programs that can be hardly pre dicted or contained. In the text “Imagining Nothingness,” Hilberseimer’s “zero degree” urbanism is cited—among references to Pompeii and the Berlin Wall—as an example of urbanism in which space as “empty space” is more impor tant than form. As already intuited by Archizoom, and theorized by another admirer of Hilber seimer, the American scholar and theorist Albert Pope, the post-industrial city is no longer defined by form; it is defined by space.18And yet this empty space is far from empty. According to Koolhaas and Pope, the empty space of the post-Fordist metropolis is congested by all kinds of volatile programs and activities whose sociological life reaches far beyond the traditional forms of the city. Attracted by extreme urban conditions, Kool haas had already in the early 1970s considered starting a research institute—in collaboration with Adolfo Natalini from Superstudio— 18 See Albert Pope, Ladders (New York: Princeton Archi tectural Press, 1996).

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completely devoted to the study o f the contem po rary city.19 T he idea w ould be partially realized in the early 1990s in the G roBstadt Foundation, and it would finally take the form o f the H arvard Proj ect on the City, a research program initiated in 1996 com pletely freed from the necessity of designing new or alternative cities. Yet, while for Hilberseim er the chaotic situation o f the city was caused by capitalist exploitation, the word capital seems to alm ost disappear in K oolhaas’s analysis of the city. If K oolhaas has moved urban research far beyond the scope of architectural concerns, he certainly has not considered w hat, for the H ilber seimer o f Grofistadtarchitektur, was the cause of urban chaos: capitalist accum ulation. W hile H il berseimer, following a Social-D em ocratic agenda, believed that the new forms o f production brought about by capitalist developm ent could be tam ed and reform ed for a m ore rational organization of the city, K oolhaas has not put forward any pro gram for the general reform o f the contem porary city. If H ilberseim er proposed design solutions, Koolhaas prefers, in his words, to “surf the waves of the m etropolis.” In these notes I have focused on the legacy of the E uropean w ork o f H ilberseim er because of its im m ediate connection to Grofistadtarchi tektur. However, it is im p o rtan t to m ention that H ilberseim er’s A m erican period has also inspired 19 Rem K oolhaas to A dolfo N a ta lin i, 8 F eb ru ary 1973, A rchivio N a ta lin i, Florence.

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original interpretations of the contemporary city. In recent years the projects and investiga tions that Hilberseim er began developing in the 1940s have been revisited by Albert Pope and the theorist of landscape urbanism Charles Wald heim. Though in very different ways, both Pope and Waldheim have found in Hilberseimer’s urban projects precursors to an idea of the city that is strongly related to the political and social ethos of the postwar American city.20 For Wald heim, H ilberseim er’s approach to city planning offers a way to structure territory that does not require a differentiation between the city and urbanization. Specifically, Waldheim sees the m aterialization of a project like Lafayette Park (executed in collaboration with Mies) as the cul mination of a lifelong investigation of settlement principles that gives us a far more nuanced view of Hilberseim er as the planner of a potential American city. Pope has offered a provocative reading of H ilberseim er’s dissolution of the grid (as evident in Hilberseimer’s project for Mar quette Park) as an anticipation of the crisis of the American grid caused by the pressures of the splintering forces of the post-Fordist era. Per haps Pope’s attitude toward this crisis exemplifies 20 See Charles Waldheim, “N otes Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism,” Bracket 1 (2010): 18-24; “Notes Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism,” Design Observer, April 11, 2010, http://places.design o b s e rv e r.c o m /fe a tu re /n o te s -to w a rd -a -h is to ry -o fagrarian-urbanism /15518/.

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H ilberseim er’s attitude tow ard the city: accept the present condition and reform it from within. There is no do u b t th at in the last tw enty years architecture has m oved in a direction a n tith e ti cal to w hat m ight be called an approach la H ilberseim er.” W hile H ilberseim er advocated an architecture governed by a general law in order to b etter confront the com plexity o f the city, today the reality o f architectural produc tion could no t be fu rth er from such a program . While the contradictio ns and asym m etries of the capitalist city have only intensified, the m ajority o f architects have indulged in a narrow ing o f th e ir concerns th a t restricts design to the scale o f the arch itectu ral object and leaves the city unconsidered. C om m ercial pressure on offices leaves little space for a rchitects to u n d er take ab stra ct or theoretical investigations. Practicing architects tend to ad ju st th e ir rather fragm entary findings into w hat today is called “research ,” w hich very often ends up as nothing m ore than an unsystem atic and com prom ised collection o f flashy im ages and inconclusive dia gram s. A n o th er em erging trend in our tim e o f econom ic recession is the architect as activist, as a figure who moves beyond a concern for form and directly engages w ith social problem s through m uch m ore volatile means: w orkshops, exhibitions, biennales, events, advocacy. In this case, the im m ediacy o f action risks obfuscating the overall picture o f the u rban situation, reduc

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ing the latter to an “innocent” playground and thus masking structural problems. On the other hand, academic research on the city often suc cumbs to either unnecessary complexity or imprecision in defining a vision. But the most problem atic aspect of research on the contem porary city is the total disconnection between, on the one hand, an understanding of architec ture in relationship to urban form and, on the other, an understanding of architecture in rela tionship to political economy. Those who focus on political economy tend to view the role of architectural form as irrelevant in the develop ment of the city; those who focus on architecture or urban design seem completely uninterested in engaging the political and economic forces that produce the city. Perhaps it is precisely in confronting this impasse that a new reading of H ilberseim er’s Grofistadtarchitektur is timely. As we have seen, the crux of Hilberseim er’s writings and theoreti cal projects was to root architectural form within a deep analysis of the contemporary city. Hilber seimer proposed neither easy formulas nor a final scenario. He put the problems on the table and identified existing architectural examples that might provide a basis for further research. Gianugo Polesello, an Italian architect close to Rossi and the editor of the Italian edition of Grofistadtarchitektur published in 1998, observed that H ilberseim er’s organization of the book suggests a possible way to update its content.

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H ilberseim er both begins and ends Grofistadtar chitektur w ith general rem arks, focusing the chapters in betw een on specific program s and building types contem poraneous w ith the publi cation itself. Polesello suggested th a t if we were to take the introduction and conclusion as they are and change the rest o f the book, we could produce a contem porary version o f Grofistadt architektur. This operation w ould reflect H ilber seim er’s critical attitu d e tow ard research: he never tried to crystallize his theories into defini tive principles, and he him self w ould later criti cize his early work. O f course it is difficult to continue to com pare the contem porary city to the m etropolis of the euphoric and dram atic early decades o f the tw entieth century. Yet I still believe th a t H ilb er seim er’s attem p t to link architectural form to the reality o f the contem porary city rem ains a fun dam ental goal today. W hat is even m ore im portant is to consider the city no longer as a self-ruled reality, an unfathom able chaos, or a bricolage o f ad hoc actions, but as the end pro d uct o f conscious decisions: as a project.

Contributors

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Ludwig H ilberseim er (1885-1967) was a plan ner, architect, critic, and educator. Born in Germany, during the 1920s he developed a series of theoretical projects for the city that remain influential today. A prolific writer, he was an art critic for Sozialistische Monatshefte from 1920 to 1933, and his books include Grofistadtbauten (1925), Grofistadtarchitektur (1927), The New City (1944), The New Regional Pattern (1949), Mies van der Rohe (1956), Entfaltung einer Planungsidee (1963), and Berliner Architektur der 20er Jahre (1967). He taught at the Bauhaus from 1928, and in 1938 he em igrated to the U nited States of America and assumed a professorship of city and regional planning at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Richard A nderson (b. 1980) holds a Ph.D. from the D epartm ent of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, where he is a Core Lec turer for A rt Humanities. He is co-author, with K ristin Romberg, of Architecture in Print: Design and Debate in the Soviet Union, 1919-1935 (2005). His writing has appeared in Future Anterior, Grey Room, Log, and the book In Search o f a Forgotten Architect: Stefan Sebok 1901-1941 (2012). Pier Vittorio Aureli (b. 1973) is an architect and an educator. He studied at the Istituto Universitario di A rchitettura di Venezia (IUAV) before obtaining a Ph.D. from the Delft University of Technology. He teaches at the Architectural

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A ssociation in London and directs the Ph.D. program “T he C ity as P roject” at the T U /D elftBerlage In stitute.T he au th o r o f many critical essays, his books include The Project o f Auto nomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (2008) and The Possibility o f an Abso lute Architecture (2011). T ogether w ith M artino Tattara, he is a co-founder o f D O G M A , an office focused on the project o f the city. T he office received the Iakov C hernikhov Prize in 2006.

Ludwig H ilberseim er— M etropolisarchitecture and Selected Essays E dited and with an introduction by R ichard A nderson Afterw ord by Pier Vittorio Aureli In the 1920s, the urban theory o f Ludwig Hilberseim er (1885-1967) redefined architecture’s relationship to the city. His proposal for a H igh-rise City, where leisure, labor, and circulation would be vertically integrated, both frightened his contem poraries and offered a tren chant critique o f the dynamics o f the capitalist m etro polis. H ilberseim er’s Grofistadtarchitektur (Metropolisar chitecture) is presented here for the first time in English translation. Two additional essays frame this interna tional cross-section of m etropolitan architecture: “Der Wille zur A rchitektur” (The Will to Architecture) and “Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung” (Proposal for City-Cen ter Developm ent). The propositions assembled here encourage us to reconsider mobility, concentration, and the scale o f architectural intervention in our own era of urban expansion.

Metropolisarchitecture - Ludwig Hilberseimer.pdf

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