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Wohnstadt Carl Legien

Berlin, Germany
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The so called Wohnstadt Carl Legien was built by Bruno Taut and Franz Hillinger in 1929 - 1930. The brief of the Berlin senate had called for a high-density residential development with five-storey buildings owing to the high cost of land, the estate being located near the city centre. The site itself was framed by a gas container, small factories and a colony of garden allotments. As a model for his design, Taut chose the functional architecture of the Tusschendijken project built in 1919/20 by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, a member of the De Stijl group, in Rotterdam. Taut's scheme was innovative in that the u-shaped buildings enclosed the courtyards that were open toward the street, separated by a belt of green. The vertically stacked loggias facing the courtyard and the balconies which project beyond the building line into the street result in an interlocking of public and private spaces. As in most housing projects designed by Taut, the planning of green areas was entrusted to Leberecht Migge. Taut and Migge were striving for a consistent design for the entire project. They felt that workers' quarters should be surrounded by lots of green, much like the villas of the upper class, and the green areas should be laid out in such a way as to provide an "outside living space". If the design of a similar project designed by Taut, the Hufeisensiedlung was still influenced by the "garden city" concept, the Wohnstadt Legien had a distinctivly urban and integrative expression od contemporary industrialm society.

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krazin, July 11th, 2011
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