The Museum of the Weissenhof village in Stuttgart, opened in 2006 in one of the houses of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, is annually visited by an average of 25 thousand people, a third of them are students and schoolchildren. There is no data on how many avant-garde architecture lovers are looking outside the rest of the houses, former exhibits of the exhibition of the German Werkbund "Housing" in 1927, but it can be assumed that nothing less. Residents of the district, tenants of apartment buildings Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Peter Behrens, residential buildings of the blockaded development of the Dutch Mart Stam and J. J. P. Auda, the buildings of Hans Scharoun, Adolphe Schneck and Le Corbusier with Pierre Jeanneret as they can, are protected from prying eyes and cameras of passers-by. They plant shrubs around the perimeter of the garden, set up screens over the gates, and close the curtains tightly. But they do not leave - for various reasons. More on this later.
They are not "born" as a monument, they become a monument
This interest in Weissenhof architecture did not always exist. Although the very origin of the village immediately became a polemical, even provocative event of an international scale. For the first time, within the framework of a construction exhibition, it was decided to build real houses for future residents, rather than temporary exhibits. The German Werkbund appointed Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was then known primarily for his unrealized project of a Berlin skyscraper with glass facades, as the curator of the project. It was he who invited other participants.
Stuttgart, the wealthy industrial center of the 1920s, was willing to provide, among other things, a plot of land for the exhibition - in return for the promise that local architects would be included in the program. It cannot be said that the word given to the city administration was violated, two Stuttgart architects - Adolf Schneck and Richard Döcker - implemented their projects, but these were exactly the ones that the city had in mind. Traditionalists, representatives of the Stuttgart school (for example, one of the authors of the project of the famous station Paul Bonatz) were left behind. Obviously, to be convincing, the new has no room for compromise. The second scandal was the participation of the Frenchman Le Corbusier in an atmosphere of growing nationalist and revanchist sentiments (as he positioned himself at that time), he also became the main "media" bait of the project.
After a preparatory rush (the participants and organizers had 8 months at their disposal - from the moment the architect was invited to the delivery of the project), on July 23, 1927, the exhibition opened. 17 architects from five countries built their homes on Killesberg Hill, more than 60 designers presented new pieces of furniture and textiles, the industry showed its new possibilities. During the four months of the exhibition "Housing" Weissenhof was visited by more than half a million people. The resonance in the international press was great. However, no one hesitated to criticize: the settlement with flat roofs was called "Arab village", "neo-Morocco", and the furniture was found uncomfortable and unaesthetic. But the biggest problem was the cost of housing.
The program “affordable housing for all” turned out to be several times more expensive than normal for the Stuttgart region. The problems began immediately after the end of the exhibition. Housing turned out to be difficult to rent out (all the houses belonged to the city under the contract). New tenants from the early years began to complain about mold, and redevelopment began almost immediately. Here we can recall the statement of one of the Weissenhof architects, J. J. P. Auda: “In the first year, let the enemy live in the new house, in the second - the friend, in the third year you can move in yourself.”
The decision to demolish the settlement was first made in the mid-1930s, but buyers for the site were not immediately found. In 1938, the command of the Wehrmacht decided to settle on the hill, the land was sold to the Third Reich, and the architects of the Stuttgart school Paul Bonatz and Paul Schmitthenner and one of the "Weissenhof authors" Adolf Schneck took part in the design competition. But a year later, after the start of the war, the headquarters of the command moved to Strasbourg. Anti-aircraft guns were placed in the village, and a hospital for children with measles and diphtheria was opened in the building of Mies van der Rohe. During the war, anti-aircraft guns were destroyed by the allies, and with them the houses of Walter Gropius, Max Taut, Hans Pölzig and others.
In the situation of the post-war housing shortage, there was no choice: the surviving Weissenhof houses were restored, some were completed - another floor was built on the roof of Le Corbusier's double house, the terraces on the Behrens house were crowned with gable roofs. In the 1950s, the houses of Bruno Taut, Adolf Rading, and the second house of Max Taut were demolished. In 1956, permission was issued for the demolition of Le Corbusier's houses (now they are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List), and only the intervention of the burgomaster of Stuttgart Arnulf Klett made it possible to avoid a fatal mistake. It was he who achieved the recognition of the remaining 11 Weissenhof houses (initially there were 21) as an architectural monument: this is how the current state of the buildings was at least mothballed - with a changed layout, altered heating and communications.
History got off the ground thanks to architects and “ordinary” avant-garde connoisseurs who organized the Initiative 77 group: it became the basis of the current Society of Friends of the Weißenhof (Freunde der Weißenhofsiedlung) - the organization that contains the museum. Thanks to private initiative and assistance, a decision was made on a radical restoration of the houses, which was carried out in 1981-1983. Then the renovated housing was rented out again.
Home car
The curator of "Housing" Mies van der Rohe, as a general requirement for the projects of the participants, indicated not only flat roofs, but also the obligatory indication of the target audience. In his apartment building, for example, small apartments were conceived for a working single woman, for a couple without children, for a small family, for a single man. The double house of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret was supposed to be considered as a home for a family of workers. Detached single-family houses were intended for people with higher education.
Ya. Y. P. Aud created a whole "fortress" for the housewife of his day: he turned the house to the street with its economic side - narrow windows protecting the private sphere, a courtyard for garbage cans, storing fuel and drying clothes, a back door. To enter through the "front door", one had to first pass a small private garden. Great attention was paid to natural light and fresh air, staircases led to flat roofs, and these terraces were seen not just as a formal element, but as a playground for sports exercises. One of the balconies of Schneck's house was part of the bathroom, closed by a pull-out screen.
Everything was thought out in an extremely rational and functional way: sliding doors (they are also walls) changed the purpose of the living space (the night and day half in the Corbusier house, for example), the furniture was either built-in or mobile, saved by office space (60-centimeter the corridor, the low ceiling of the servant's bedrooms - and there were such rooms even in the house for the working family - and garden rooms). The villager was also viewed as part of a single mechanism. By definition, he was young, healthy, slender, children turned out to be, in a certain sense, a reduced copy of adults, and not a factor determining additional requirements for living space. Reality has made its own adjustments.
When, after the restoration of the Weissenhof village in the early 1980s, it was announced that apartments and houses would be leased out, the young N. family did not hesitate for a long time: "Who doesn't want to live in the monument?" The most surprising thing is that their position for 32 years of life in the house designed by the Dutch architect Mart Stam has not changed. They still believe that living in an experimental 1927 listed housing is a godsend, a lottery win, a challenge they have accepted. And this - despite all the experienced and existing difficulties and the approaching old age. The age of N. is viewed with optimism, because behind the wall, 92- and 86-year-old neighbors are successfully “fighting” with steep stairs to the bedroom and even steeper stairs leading to the garden.
When you look at designer furniture that fully corresponds to the international style of Stam, at the reconstructed color scheme of the premises, at the built-in wardrobes, sliding doors, window frames restored in accordance with the originals, you might think that people who are professionally connected with the field of architecture and design live in the house. But this is not the case. The owner once worked as a printer and typesetter in a printing house, the hostess was an employee. His interest is rather of a political nature: while working for the Social Democratic Party, he drew attention to the history of the Weimar Republic and to the transformation of democratic ideas into architectural projects. Mies van der Rohe and his team could rejoice at this development of their idea: new construction, a new type of housing as a method of raising a tenant - in action.
“Mart Stam designed a house for a small family, but in reality a maximum of two people can live in this house,” - a couple of years after settling, N. had a son who still lives with his parents, and they are very familiar with the problems of living together in a small square. well. The layout of the house does not provide an opportunity for privacy, except in the bedroom, but there is only space for a bed there. They turned the garden room on the ground floor, which is connected by a steep staircase directly to the living room, into a study. You can concentrate there only if no one is watching TV or listening to music in the living room. Poor soundproofing is the first problem. The second is thermal insulation, but this is understandable. For Stam, light and air were important, there were, accordingly, a lot of windows, and few doors. The third is keeping the house clean. When designing the windows, for example, in the living room above the staircase going down, the architect did not think about how the hostess would wash them (now N. hires a company to wash the windows, since they themselves are not able to perform such acrobatic actions).
Living in an architectural monument is not only accepting a challenge, but also a responsibility, as well as preserving and studying heritage. Among the tenants of the village, such a minority - five houses take part in the special program, the N. family from Mart Stam's house - among them. Residents of apartments in the houses of Mies van der Rohe or Peter Behrens are ordinary tenants, not burdened by any special conditions. Rather, they simply put up with the increased attention of tourists to the village, not wanting to leave the good area. The tenants of five other houses, "architecture-conscious" residents of Weissenhof, signed special agreements with the owner of the real estate (it is the state of the Federal Republic of Germany), according to which they are obliged to restore the original layout (and not change it), monitor the functioning of the original structures (for example, sliding doors), make repairs only with the consent of the commission, etc. In return, they receive subsidies for restoration and renovation work.
For 32 years of life in Mart Stam's house, the N. family restored the staircase to the garden room (previous tenants closed the descent tightly), a built-in wardrobe between the kitchen and the living room with windows for dispensing ready-made food (the hostess admitted that she had never used this “canteen” method, windows are closed and covered with kitchen utensils), sliding doors between the living room and the corridor. The staircase, railings and structural beams have been painted in historic blue. Marcel Breuer's Thonet chairs were matched to this blue, and it is absolutely no coincidence: they are the closest variation of the patented in 1927
console chair Mart Stam (this similarity sparked a lawsuit to determine the author of the idea of such a chair between Breuer and Stam, which unfolded in the late 1920s). The window frames with historical fixtures were also reconstructed, and the living room acquired its original color scheme based on the research carried out.
Inhabitants of the Stam house feel in a certain sense as curators of the museum, which means that sometimes (albeit very rarely) they open doors for visitors - architects, journalists, students. The largest group that visited their home numbered fifty people, they were female soldiers of the Bundeswehr, who did not even hesitate to look into the closets. But the most amazing incident happened about 25 years ago. When the American edition of the glossy Mercedes magazine was preparing to publish an article about Weissenhof, a laconic photographer came to Stam's house: first she cleaned the whole house at her discretion, and then filmed the interiors for 9 long hours, completely ignoring the tenants, including the little boy … In the end, in the form of gratitude, she offered to make portraits of the owners. Having lost patience, N. refused. Now they say with a smile: "Perhaps we are the only ones who refused to pose for Annie Leibovitz."
