History and Description
The estate was built for the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition of 1927, and included twenty-one buildings comprising sixty dwellings, designed by seventeen European architects, most of them German-speaking. The German architect Mies van der Rohe was in charge of the project on behalf of the city, and it was he who selected the architects, budgeted and coordinated their entries, prepared the site, and oversaw construction. Le Corbusier was awarded the two prime sites, facing the city, and by far the largest budget.
The twenty-one buildings vary slightly in form, consisting of terraced and detached houses and apartment buildings, and display a strong consistency of design. What they have in common are their simplified facades, flat roofs used as terraces, window bands, open plan interiors, and the high level of prefabrication which permitted their erection in just five months. All but two of the entries were white. Bruno Taut had his entry, the smallest, painted a bright red.
Advertised as a prototype of future workers' housing, in fact each of these houses was customized and furnished on a budget far out of a normal workers reach, and with little direct relevance to the technical challenges of standardized mass construction. The exhibition opened to the public on 23 July 1927, a year late, and drew large crowds.
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