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  Building Utopia: Berlin Chases UNESCO Status for 1920s Social Housing

Building Utopia Berlin Chases UNESCO Status for 1920s Social Housing

By Siobhán Dowling in Berlin

Part 2: Addressing Social Questions through Architecture

Berlin's left-wing director of municipal building Martin Wagner managed to build an impressive 150,000 dwellings in just a few short years before funds dried up in the depression of the 1930s. And in a city that was a magnet for Europe's creative elite, he could avail himself of the cream of modern architects, many of whom were involved in the recently established Bauhaus School, to provide this decent housing.

Some of the most revolutionary and visionary practitioners of avant-garde modern architecture, such as Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun and, in particular, Bruno Taut, chose to apply their skills to building small apartments for ordinary people, a fact less surprising than it might first appear. "Modern architecture is very strongly connected to social questions," Jaeggi points out.

Although the settlements cannot strictly be described as Bauhaus -- the terms "International Style" or "New Building" are more accurate -- Berlin's Bauhaus Archive decided to support the UNESCO application with a recent exhibition dedicated to the six settlements and their bid for World Heritage status.

Colorful Machines for Living

As the hugely popular exhibition explained, all but one of the six settlements were built during the 1920s, with Falkenberg dating back to World War I. Although they are now over 80 years old, the settlements are remarkably well preserved, a testament to the quality of the materials and of the construction methods.

And contrary to many people's perceptions of modern architecture as being severe and monochrome, many of the settlements are remarkable for a quite unexpected element: color. This is especially true of those built by Bruno Taut, who was known as the "master of color" for his use of bright blues, pinks, yellows and terracotta. He strove to avoid uniformity, using layout, form and color to give individual dignity to social housing. "Taut believed that one shouldn't make any architectural experiments at the cost of the people who lived there," Jaeggi says.

Taut's relative obscurity today is partly due to his decision to flee first to Japan and then to Turkey after the Nazis branded him a "cultural Bolshevik." The more famous Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe opted for the United States where they established the Bauhaus name -- and cemented their own reputations.

Does Modernism Belong in the Museum?

Ironically, the city that exported its modernist aesthetic to much of the world has no World Heritage Site from the 20th century. Berlin's two UNESCO-approved sites are the impressive Museum Island in central Berlin and the ornate royal palaces and gardens of Potsdam and Berlin.

And there are those who question the validity of bestowing UNESCO status on the six 1920's settlements. "What is so extraordinary about them?" sniped a recent article in the conservative daily Die Welt, arguing that the ideals of the collective society that were behind such estates are "obsolete" and "anachronistic" and that "the modern" was now only fit for the museum.

Thomson disagrees, arguing that the settlements are lived-in examples of an architecture that is timeless. "Residents experience on a daily basis the advantages of how ideas were put into reality at the time," she says. She points out that, while there may be comparable estates in other parts of Germany, these ones stand for the Berlin of the 1920s, "when it was the heart and hub of the avant-garde in Europe."

Jaeggi argues that modern architecture also deserves to be protected and presented as something unique. "Why should we say it is not worth protecting just because it was a utopia?" she asks. "Why does that not have just as much a claim to UNESCO status as a Gothic cathedral?"