WEISSENHOFSIEDLUNG IN STUTTGART 1927 - BUILT MANIFESTO OF MODERNISM

The Weißenhofsiedlung with its 21 model houses is regarded as a “built manifesto” of a modern, open feeling for life. Reduced to essentials, the Weißenhofsiedlung represented developments in the area of architecture and housing at the time. Under the artistic direction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the 17 architects who took part (among them Le Corbusier, Gropius, Oud and Scharoun) developed a “model housing programme for modern urban people”. The work by architects from five different European countries in this housing estate was intended to demonstrate that this “Neues Bauen” (New Building) was an “international architecture”. Its advocates celebrated the development as a vision of the future, but critics in contrast decried it as an “Arab village”. The development polarized society – flat roof versus pitched roof,enlightened versus conservative forces, modernism versus ties to the homeland.

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