Hufeisensiedlung

The Hufeisensiedlung ("Horseshoe Estate") is a housing estate in Berlin, built in 1925-33. It enjoys international renown as a milestone of modern urban housing. It was designed by architect Bruno Taut, municipal planning head and co-architect Martin Wagner, garden architect Leberecht Migge and Neukölln gardens director Ottokar Wagler. In 1986 the ensemble was placed under German heritage protection. On July 7, 2008, it was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status as one out of six Berlin Modernism Housing Estates. Since 2010, the Horseshoe Estate has also been listed as a garden monument. The Hufeisensiedlung is probably the most outstanding example of innovative German town planning during the 1920s.

At the beginning of the 20th century Berlin was growing dramatically. From 1850 to the end of the 1920s its population had basically doubled every 25 years. It was not only the cultural heyday of the Golden Twenties which caused a rapid increase in population, but predominantly the advance of industrialisation and the end of the First World War. Groß-Berlin (Greater Berlin), which had only come about in 1920 through the amalgamation of several districts in the city and its suburbs, was doing full justice to its name. At 3.8 million the number of inhabitants not only exceeded today’s population but made Berlin the third largest metropolis in the world at that time after New York and London.

This enormous influx of people was confronted with an extreme lack of housing. Particularly in working class districts like Neukölln, Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg or Wedding the hygienic conditions were catastrophic. During the interwar period high-quality architecture was built on a large scale by the city of Berlin for broad sections of the population. From 1924 to 1931 alone 140,000 flats were built. In particular the Berlin housing estates built before the beginning of National Socialism set standards worldwide and are seen right up to today as a major political and organisational achievement. In order to provide an appropriate organizational body for the construction of these estates public utility housing enterprises were founded. One of these enterprises, the 1924 founded GEHAG (Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft) hired Bruno Taut to act as the chief architect and was responsible for the construction of the estate. Together with five further building projects, the Horseshoe Estate was given UNESCO world heritage status in 2008 as one of six Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, which underscores its international architectural importance. The heritage protected part of the Hufeisensiedlung, which was built between 1925 and 1930, extends over a total of six building sections and an area of around 29 hectares. It consists of 1,285 flats, which are in three-storey buildings aligned with the street, and 679 terraced houses, each with a garden and a small terrace. A further, seventh building section is not part of the world heritage site. It is south-east of the junction between Fritz-Reuter-Allee and Parchimer Allee and was built without the involvement of Bruno Taut. Especially interesting from the point of view of architectural history is a comparison between the first two building sections and the sixth section, which is located opposite. Here, unlike in any other place in Berlin, it is possible to see all together and at first hand the architectural concepts of that time – Garden city movement, large-scale housing development, and Neues Bauen.

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