Part 4 in the Series: ‘Can the Box Make the World a Better Place?’
In 1930, four years after its initial construction, The Bauhaus were asked to design and build five new housing blocks on the Törten Housing Estate. Phase Two of its development was to be overseen by Hannes Meyer, recently appointed Director of the Bauhaus, and he was determined to avoid a repeat of the mixed reaction received by phase one (See Part 3).
Ludwig Hilberseimer was asked to design the project, and it gave him the opportunity to put his recent studies into practice. He had calculated that a two bedroom flat needed 48 square meters of floor space, and believed an L-shaped floor plan was the most efficient way of achieving this.
The Bauhaus believed in ‘living economically’ and as a result Hilberseimer designed the flats with one living space compared to numerous living rooms often seen in older homes. Like Le Corbusier, Meyer believed that houses were ‘machinery for living’ and that by having one multi-functional living space it would require less maintenance leaving more time for family activities.
Hilberseimer designed the blocks with three-storeys, and built them on an east-west axis to avoid the sunlight issues that troubled Törten’s initial development. Access was by balcony as it meant only one staircase was needed for the 18 units in each block, another example of the importance of efficiency in Hilberseimer’s design. After their completion, the L-shaped blocks were met with acclaim from residents and critics, and are still inhabited today.
But despite moving away from a traditional box shape, the Bauhaus still believed in the potential of the box in architecture. With the design of phase two they had simply reinterpreted what a box was. After all, an L-shaped home is just one box with another box on the end. But what if we expand this interpretation even further? Do houses get better the less box-like they become? The Bauhaus may not have believed this, but many of their contenders did, and continue to do so, which we will explore in Part 5.
Image courtesy of Owen Hatherley on flickr
