Utopia and vision: learning from Vienna and Frankfurt Autor(es): Porotto, Alessandro Publicado por: Editorial do Departamento de Arquitetura URL persistente: URI:http://hdl.handle.net/10316.2/41248 DOI: DOI:https://doi.org/10.14195/1647-8681_7_7 Accessed : 4-Oct-2021 13:18:21 A navegação consulta e descarregamento dos títulos inseridos nas Bibliotecas Digitais UC Digitalis, UC Pombalina e UC Impactum, pressupõem a aceitação plena e sem reservas dos Termos e Condições de Uso destas Bibliotecas Digitais, disponíveis em https://digitalis.uc.pt/pt-pt/termos. Conforme exposto nos referidos Termos e Condições de Uso, o descarregamento de títulos de acesso restrito requer uma licença válida de autorização devendo o utilizador aceder ao(s) documento(s) a partir de um endereço de IP da instituição detentora da supramencionada licença. Ao utilizador é apenas permitido o descarregamento para uso pessoal, pelo que o emprego do(s) título(s) descarregado(s) para outro fim, designadamente comercial, carece de autorização do respetivo autor ou editor da obra. Na medida em que todas as obras da UC Digitalis se encontram protegidas pelo Código do Direito de Autor e Direitos Conexos e demais legislação aplicável, toda a cópia, parcial ou total, deste documento, nos casos em que é legalmente admitida, deverá conter ou fazer-se acompanhar por este aviso. impactum.uc.pt digitalis.uc.pt EDARQ JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL CULTURE 2016 JOELHO # 07 LEARNING FROM MODERN UTOPIAS —— Guest Editors: Armando Rabaça Carlos Martins Tim Verlaan Hans Ibelings Caroline Constant Alexander Eisenschmidt Carola Hein Celina Kress Alessandro Porotto César Losada Romero Cecilia Bischeri and Silvia Micheli Manfredo Manfredini and Anh-Dung Ta Exhibition History of Portuguese Architecture École Polytechnique Fédérale Alessandro Porotto de Lausanne Utopia and Vision. Learning from Vienna and Frankfurt PAPERS By definition, a utopia cannot be realized; at the same time architecture needs a “place”. Within this contradiction, modern architectural utopias have conceived of and developed spatial solutions to implement their principles. The spatial analysis of modern utopias allows for the identification of the relationship between architectural features and social organisation. Through this relationship, it is possible to establish when a utopian model becomes an urban and architectural model. The objective of this article is the comparison of different types of urban and architectural space that modern utopias have produced. Indeed, in the organisational logic of the urban fabric, spaces assume different characters depending on social contexts. In this sense, the social housing experiences in the 1920s are of particular interest not only for their utopian idea of society, but for their ability to realize a model of collective organization at the architectural and urban scale. Starting from the theoretical notions of “utopia” and “realism”, which have already been discussed by historians and critics of architecture, it is possible to identify different spatial features that, through the project, assume specific architectural forms. The comparative approach that animates this article allows the analysis of several exemples through homogeneous tools, but especially through direct observation in order to raise questions still current today. In this sense, the utopian character of the architectural models of the 1920s Frontispiece (Fig. 8) Vienna, sequence has a spatial and social “vision” that we can evaluate critically in the of courtyards in Karl Seitz-Hof. current conditions of the contemporary city. The European social housing experiences The different spatial forms adopted in several experiences in Europe during the inter war period are based on a politico-economic and institutional system: it was conceived to solve a real problem. On the one hand the housing shortage, on the other the unhealthy conditions of the blocks and buildings of industrial Großstadt: the right to a modern living for all people became a tangibile purpose. New projects for the urban development reflect the ideals of mass society: they are projects pour le plus grand nombre (Secchi, 2013). «What was clear [for architecture between 1920 and 1930] was its “political” role. […] From the standardized element, to the cell, the single block, the housing project and finally the city: architecture between the two wars imposed this assembly line with an exceptional clarity and coherence. Each “piece” on the line, being completely resolved in itself, tended to disappear or, better, to formally dissolve in the assemblage» (Tafuri, 1976, p. 100-101). The city and its architecture take on a new appearance, in which each component of the mechanism, through the rationalization of everyday life and the use of modern technology, is part of a huge social machine PAPERS (Tafuri, 1976). JOELHO #07 85 Fig. 1 Vienna, from top to bottom: Schüttau-Hof, Bebel-Hof, Fuchsenfeldhof, and Reismann-Hof. PAPERS 86 JOELHO #07 Fig. 2 Frankfurt, from top to bottom: Siedlung Römerstadt, Siedlung Westhausen, and Siedlung Riedhof-West. PAPERS JOELHO #07 87 Frankfurt by Ernst May, Berlin by Martin Wagner, Hamburg by Fritz Schumacher, Rotterdam by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, Copenhagen by Kay Fisker, Vienna administered by Karl Seitz, etc: these important architectural experiences in Europe between the World Wars can be observed through the same perspective.1 This is a wide and complex overview of examples that discussed and contributed in different ways to achieve the same objectives. If «the ultimate test of the theoretical hypotheses was the confrontation with the city» (Tafuri, 1976, p. 103), then we can identify different models, which conceived the relationship between architecture and the city as the connection between spatial organization and social practice (Panerai, Castex, Depaule, Samuels, 2004). Exploring these experiences along this point of view is an objective reading of the abundance of opportunities that the 1920s-1930s produced in the field of architecture and society. Through this observation we are able to recognize the two most important cases, two cities that correspond to coherent spatial and social concepts (Kähler 1985): on the one hand Vienna with the Hof (courtyard block, Fig. 1), on the other hand Frankfurt with row houses in the slab formation of the Siedlung (settlement, Fig. 2). If Tafuri (1976) had already established the dichotomy between Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit, then more precisely «Vienna and Frankfurt are the extreme polarities of the history of social housing in Europe in the first decades of the twentieth century» (Ortelli, 2013, p. 192). Utopia: the form of the city Das rote Wien and Das neue Frankfurt propose mechanisms and the most compelling solutions in terms of quantity and quality, compared to all other European experiences. «The architectural proposal, the urban model on which it was developed, and the economic and technological premises on which it was based […], were all indissolubly connected. Architectural science was totally integrated with the ideology of the plan, and even the formal choices were only variables dependent on it» (Tafuri, 1976, p. 114). This favorable situation is the starting node through which collaboration between the democratic administrations, intellectuals, and the organization of the city itself becomes inseparable: for Tafuri this node corresponds to the utopian aspect of architectural culture in the 1920s and 1930s to propose a “different world”. In this sense the image of the city and the daily life of modern community are a new human utopia (Tafuri, 1976). The Vienna and Frankfurt cases are of particular interest for the typological recherche and the relationship with the morphology of the city. They constitute two different models in opposition to the PAPERS 88 JOELHO #07 nineteenth-century speculative city. In both cities the urban block assumed the role of a basic unit for the urban organisation and the development of the city. In Vienna, the courtyard block or the ensemble of courtyard blocks lie within the dense urban fabric: on the one hand they accept the urban character, on the other they differ in the masterplan and architectural features. The principle of the courtyard is not an invention of the 1920s: indeed, from a typological point of view the Hof embodies a long tradition of court disposition, which began in the sixteenth-century and went through constant transformations during the centuries (Bobek & Lichtenberger, 1966). New features of the Viennese Höfe mainly concern the relationship between built surface and the free space of the court; instead, the urban structure and the relationship with the street and existing urban trafic already belong to Viennese urban history.2 The Höfe show that «the urban structure influenced by the social housing could be improved (in its internal and external relations) without becoming isolated from the growth of the city as a whole» (Aymonino, 2009, p. 50). Interestingly, despite the large production of Viennese urban policy (382 built interventions), a general city planning does not exist. While the reference to the urban vision of Otto Wagner is obvious, the residential interventions are concentrated in the empty areas of workers’ districts that arose during the building speculation (Bobek & Lichtenberger, 1966, p. 144). Especially, the specific choice3 to not apply the Siedlung and garden city models allows following the town plan of 1893, making a few changes to the parcels’ structure for the construction