The Hufeisensiedlung ("Horseshoe Estate") is a housing estate in Berlin, built in 1925–33. 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 7 July 2008 it was inscribed as one of six estates that constitute the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates World Heritage Site.
Historical background
At the beginning of the 20th century Berlin was growing dramatically. From 1850 to the end of the 1920s its population had roughly doubled every 25 years. It was not only the cultural heyday of the Golden Twenties which caused a rapid increase in population, but also 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 people, the number of inhabitants not only exceeded today's population but also made Berlin the third-largest metropolis in the world at that time after New York and London.
Reformist housing and concepts of urban planning
This enormous influx of people was confronted with a lack of housing. Particularly in working class districts like Neukölln, Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg or Wedding. During the interwar period, housing was built on a large scale by the city of Berlin for broad sections of the population. From 1924 to 1931 alone 140,000 apartments were built. In order to provide an appropriate organizational body for the construction of these estates, housing cooperatives were founded. One of these enterprises, GEHAG (Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft), founded in 1924, hired Bruno Taut to act as the chief architect responsible for the construction of the estate. Together with five further building projects, the Horseshoe Estate was inscribed as part of the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates World Heritage Site in 2008. 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.
Architectural details and variations
Closely linked to the heart of Berlin, the development combines a unique architectural style with the social ideal of a terraced garden home for everyone. Hufeisen is the German term for horseshoe, which describes the shape of the curved 350-meter long structure which gave name to the project. It consists of 25 housing units joined together around a pond that dates back to the ice age. The central building structure is surrounded by townhouses and embedded in a suburb that feels urban and rural at the same time.
The facades of the terraced houses are painted in dark red, yellow ochre and - especially at the end of a terraced row – in deep blue or gleaming white. Doors and windows and individual building elements of the blocks of flats like loggias, stairwells or low-ceilinged attic floors are painted to contrast clearly with the facades. The front and rear sections are often designed in separate colour combinations. Further contrasts in material and colour are created by the use of bright red and yellow clinker bricks in the area of the chimneys, the entrances and the base of the walls. Perhaps the most striking design feature is the construction and colour of the entrance doors.