Geography of Germany summer semester 17 Sebastian Ehret
Urban Geography in Germany
18.05.2017
Geography of Germany
A dialogue last saturday
My mom was visiting me in Kiel, and we went for walk in the city center.
My mom: „From today‘s perspective this architecture is not so pretty. Why did they build like this?“
Me: „Yeah, Kiel had been destroyed during World War 2. And well, that‘s just how they built in the 1950s and 1960s.“
What a good question, and what a bad answer!
In today‘s lecture I‘d like to answer this question in a better way.
2 Geography of Germany
My starting point: models of urban planning
Renaissance City Baroque City Fingerplan (HEINEBERG 2015, p. 224) (HEINEBERG 2015, p. 224) (HEINEBERG 2015, p. 134)
Why is it interesting to investigating models of urban planning?
1) Current face of a city consists of relicts of various former models of urban planning (HOW a city‘s appearance came into being)
2) Models of urban planning represent abstract and ideal imaginations of the city. Therefore, they are a mirror to ideas, values, and discourses of a certain point in time (WHY a city‘s appearance came into being the way it was) 3 Geography of Germany
Getting closer to the why
Where to start for this lecture‘s question?
historical - Historical context of the early 20th context century
- Life in cities during industrialization
- Cultural developments towards modernity between the late 19th century cultural social and early 20th century context context
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Life in cities during industrialization
- Accelerating urbanization, high density of population, urban planning couldn‘t keep up
- Very selective access to basic infrastructure (housing, food, water, electricity, heat)
- Enormous socio-economical gap between rich and poor
- Environmental problems, health problems
- Social tentions and the potential for uprisings
- Huge influence of machines and technology
- Standardisation of the everyday life, bad working conditions
Fritz Lang‘s Metropolis (1927) (pinterest.com) 5
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Response of urban planning
1) Prussian city expansion according to groundplans (e.g. Stübbenplan in Kiel)
- Provided the general structure of streets and the heights of the buildings
- Those plans left quite a lot of freedom for filling out this general structure
- More pragmatic than conceptual
2) Ebenezer Howard‘s Garden City
3) Le Corbusier‘s Functional City
Stübbenplan Kiel (1901) (kiel.de) 6
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Towards modernity in art (I)
Impressionism Expressionism
- Focus on atmosphere and colour, - Freedom of colour and form, moving moving away from detailed sketching away from perspective, focus on towards an open pictoral form dynamics and contrast - The artist‘s perception is more - Pictures as interpretation of the artist‘s important than the realism of the object individual feelings
Claude Monet‘s Impression; Sunrise (1872) Ludwig Meidner‘s The Burning City (1913) 7 (wikipedia.de) (pinterest.de)
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Towards modernity in art (II) Constructivism, cubism and others - Structures and geometry are back - No relationship between picture and reality - Focus on structuring and ordering the painted objects in the picture
Vassily Kandinsky‘s Komposition VIII (1927) Juan Gris Fantomas (1915) (wikipedia.de) (wikipedia.de) 8
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Towards modernity in music (I)
Classical symphonic music Impressionism Expressionism - General formal and - Moving away from formal - Rhythm, dynamics, harsh contrasts structural principles principles - Harmonic principles are extended - Harmonic principles - Harmonic principles are and contested even further extended and contested - Irritation, abstraction, expression - Capturing atmosphere
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Claude Debussy (1862-1918) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) 9 (wikipedia.de) (wikipedia.de) (br-klassik.de)
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Towards modernity in music (II) Twelve-tone technique - Form and structure are back - Basic structures are rows of all 12 tones in the chromic system - It is considered to be form of serialism
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) Arnold Schönberg‘s op. 33a (1929) 10 (schoenberg-gesamtausgabe.de) (wikipedia.de)
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Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928)
- Stenographer at the British parliament
- Inspiration by political debates about urban planning and the problems of industrialied cities
- Personal goal: fundamental reform of urban planning in order to overcome contradiction between city and countryside
- To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898), where he developed his idea of the Garden City
Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) (gutenberg.com)
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The Garden City (I)
Main argument:
- Success of the model depends on people‘s housing decisions
- The Garden City (town-city) combines the benefits of country and city by avoiding their disadvantages
Howard‘s diagram ‚The Three Magnets‘ 12 (LAMPUGNANI 2010, p. 26)
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The Garden City (II)
Howard‘s model of the Garden City (HEINEBERG 2014, p. 129) 13
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Influences
Realizations in Britain planned by Howard:
- Letchworth (1903)
- Welwyn Garden City (1920)
Spread of the garden city movement to other European Countries (e.g. Germany)
Idea was transformed and used as legitimation for rapid growth of garden suburbs
14 General plan of Letchworth (LAMPUGNANI 2010, p. 29)
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Le Corbusier (1887-1965)
- Studied arts in Switzerland (mainly influenced by Jugendstil)
- Planned and built his first mansion by the age of 17
- Through travelling he established two fascinations: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret – Le Corbusier (1887-1965) (1) avantgarte movements in arts (nzz.ch) (2) mechanical and industrial innovations and technologies
- Fundamental break with the pictoresque tradition of his education
- From 1915 onwards he tried to meet social problems with solutions in urban planning
- L‘Esprit Nouveau (‚The New Spirit‘) Cover of - Historical/personal background: World War 1 L‘Esprit Nouveau (1920-1925) 15 (wikipedia.de)
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Maison Citrohan (1920)
„The mansion Citrohan (to avoid pronouncing it like Citroën). In other words, a house like a car, conceptualized and constructed like a bus or a cabin on a ship. […] One has to act against the house of old times, in which space is poorly used. One has to (since time is money) understand a house like a machine for living [‘Wohnmaschine’] or like an object of utility.”
(translated after LAMPUGNANI 2010, p. 388)
Maison Citrohan (1920) (LE CORBUSIER 1946, p. 31) 16 Geography of Germany
Ville Contemporaine (1922)
Coloured sketch of Ville Contemporaine (1922) 17 (LAMPUGNANI 2010, p. 390)
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City for 3 mio. people
Important elements:
- City centre
- Civic centre
- Living quarters
- Garden cities
- Infrastructure
- Parks and greenbelt
Plan of Ville Contemporaine 18 (LE CORBUSIER 1946, p. 39)
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Plan Voisin (1925)
Model Plan Voisin Plan Voisin integrated into the map of Paris (LAMPUGNANI 2010, p. 393) (LAMPUGNANI 2010, p. 394)
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Athens Charter and the Functional City
- 1928: foundation of the Congrès Internationaux d‘Architecture Moderne (CIAM)
- 4th meeting of the CIAM in 1933 was dedicated to new ways of urban planning
- Le Corbusier published Athens Charter in 1941 as the Participants of the 4th CIAM meeting (fondationlecordusier.fr) Functional City‘s foundational document: - 95 propositions about urban planning
- Main argument: cities are characterized by four functions: living, working, leisure, and traffic
- In urban planning the realization of these functions should be separated systematically and spatially
- Most influential principle in urban planning after WW2 Cover of La Charte d‘Athènes (version 1943) 20 (fondationlecordusier.fr)
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Kiel after World War 2
- Heavily destroyed, especially the city center, and industrial and military areas along the Förde
- Kiel played an important role during NS-regime as military site
- Desire for both urban reconstruction and symbolic Kiel-Brunswik after WW2 redefinition (shz.de)
Urban reconstruction in the style of Le Corbusier‘s ‚New Spirit‘ seemed to provide both!
Ruins in Kiel after WW2 (kiel.de) 21
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Kiel as Functional City Director of the department for urban planning in Kiel: Herbert Jensen
„Jensen thought of the city as an entity. He tried to establish a decentralized and structurally scattered city [‘dezentrale, gegliederte und aufgelockerte Stadt’] without losing its internal cohesion. Building activities to extend the periphery were stopped; new areas of green were introduced systematically throughout the city. As a result, distinct areas of development emerged. Space, air, light, movement and nature were the guiding principles for urban planning. In doing so, Jensen combined the traditions of the 1920s and 1930s with a large-scale planning of traffic. He tried to define Kiel as a classical example for modern urban planning in Germany.”
(translated after HÖHN and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 18)
Reconstruction plan of Kiel‘s inner city (1948) 22 (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 18)
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Working
Sketch of Le Corbusier‘s Ville Contemporaine (LE CORBUSIER 1946, p. 36)
Sketch of Holstenplatz (1950) 23 (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 22)
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Working
Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Exilees (1954) Landesbank und Girozentrale Schleswig-Holstein (1954) (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 65) (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 61) 24
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Working
2 sketches of the central post office (1952) 25 (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 66)
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Leisure
Sketches of the Kieler Schloss (1961) (HÖHNS and SEILER- KROLL 2008, p. 94) 26 Geography of Germany
Leisure
Ostseehalle (1951) 27 (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 99)
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Leisure
Kiel University (1959-64) Kiel University (1959-64) (BEUCKERS 2015, p. 192) (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 29)
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Traffic
Ostseekai (1960-61) 29 (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 26)
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Living
Sketch of Holtenauer Straße (1947) (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 40)
Holtenauer Straße (1949-54) (both HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 41)
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Living
Living in Medusastraße (1950-51) (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 40) 31
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Living
Mettenhof (1971) (both HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 44)
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Living
Weißer Riese in Mettenhof (HÖHNS and SEILER-KROLL 2008, p. 43) 33 Geography of Germany
Kiel as Garden City
Migge‘s green belt around Kiel (1922) Allotment gardens in Kiel (around 1920) (Landeshauptstadt Kiel 2016, p. 15) (Landeshauptstadt Kiel 2016, p. 13) 34
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Today‘s green belt
Freiräumliches Leitbild Kiel (Landeshauptstadt Kiel 2007, p. 11) 35
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Suburbanisation after World War 2
Specific character of suburbanisation in (Western) Germany was characterized by main gouvernmental housing policies: (1) investment in hugh social housing complexes; (2) promotion of privat housing
Why was suburbanizing privat housing so popular? Flyer (1956) - Growing welfare (ZIMMERMANN 2001, p. 333)
- Success of Fordistic mass production and mass consumption
- Expansion of transportation infrastructure
- Political support (building societies; „Wohnungsbauprämie“)
- Economic decisions by individuals
- Cultural aspects (desire for living close nature, owning garden, having a house for the family)
Advertisement in the 1950s 36 (ZIMMERMANN 2001, p. 344)
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Kiel-Elmschenhagen as suburban Garden City
Sketch of Elmschenhagen Garden City (1939) Satellite picture of Elmschenhagen today (kiel.de) (Google Maps) 37
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Suburbanisation in Kiel-Suchsdorf
Satellite picture of Suchsdorf today 38 (Google Maps)
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Like a summary
My mom was visiting me in Kiel, and we went for walk in the city centre.
My mom: „Walking through Kiel I asked myself: Why did they build the city like this?“
Me: „Well, I think after the war Kiel was not only destroyed, but also in search for a new symbology or urban identity. This is why radical ideas in urban planning of the early 20th century seemed to be so appropriate. Most influential were the models of Ebenezer Howard and Le Corbusier that shaped the way Kiel was reconstructed until the 1960s. And that‘s still a main feature of Kiel‘s urban face today.“
My Mom: „But in the end it‘s not so pretty, isn‘t it?“
Me: „Yeah, I know…“
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Thanks for your attention!
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Do you have questions and comments?
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