New Frankfurt (German: Neues Frankfurt) was an affordable public housing program in Frankfurt started in 1925 and completed in 1930. [1] It was also the name of the accompanying magazine that was published from 1926 to 1931 dedicated to international trends in architecture, art, housing and education.
The project was initiated by Frankfurt's mayor Ludwig Landmann, who hired the architect Ernst May as a general manager of many communal departments. Renowned architects like Max Cetto, Martin Elsaesser, Walter Gropius, Ferdinand Kramer, Adolf Meyer, Bruno Taut, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Mart Stam worked in Frankfurt.
Under May 12,000 apartments were built, 2,000 more than planned. The buildings not only met the basic needs of housing, they set standards for urban development and design but also broke with house building tradition. All apartments and mansions were equipped with a Frankfurt kitchen. Catherine Bauer Wurster visited the buildings in 1930 and was inspired by the work of May. [2]
Nazi critics denigrated the project as "Mr May's small Soviet industry" [3] and Joseph Goebbels called Ernst May the "Lenin of German architecture", even if it is told that he loved the modern architecture. The Nazis stopped all construction activities and presented the estates to foreign visitors as their own new Nationalsocialist architecture. Most employees of the project left Germany after 1933, some of them followed Ernst May to the Soviet Union, which invited teams of famous architects, like Le Corbusier and from the Bauhaus to work there.
After some demolitions of houses designed by Mart Stam and protest, the estates were declared protected landmarks in the late 1970s.
One two-storey terrace house was renovated and restored into the standard of 1928 by the Ernst May Society, it is called the Ernst May House and is a museum today. The reconstruction was underpinned by research by architectural historians.
The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function.
The International Style or internationalism is a major architectural style that was developed in the 1920s and 1930s and was closely related to modernism and modernist architecture. It was first defined by Museum of Modern Art curators Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932, based on works of architecture from the 1920s. The terms rationalist architecture and modern movement are often used interchangeably with International Style, although the former is mostly used in the English-speaking world to specifically refer to the Italian rationalism, or even the International Style that developed in Europe as a whole.
Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form should follow function (functionalism); an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament. It emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II until the 1980s, when it was gradually replaced as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings by postmodern architecture.
Peter Behrens was a leading German architect, graphic and industrial designer, best known for his early pioneering AEG Turbine Hall in Berlin in 1909. He had a long career, designing objects, typefaces, and important buildings in a range of styles from the 1900s to the 1930s. He was a foundation member of the German Werkbund in 1907, when he also began designing for AEG, pioneered corporate design,graphic design, producing typefaces, objects, and buildings for the company. In the next few years, he became a successful architect, a leader of the rationalist / classical German Reform Movement of the 1910s. After WW1 he turned to Brick Expressionism, designing the remarkable Hoechst Administration Building outside Frankfurt, and from the mid 1920s increasingly to New Objectivity. He was also an educator, heading the architecture school at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1922 to 1936. As a well known architect he produced design across Germany, in other European countries, Russia and England. Several of the leading names of European modernism worked for him when they were starting out in the 1910s, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.
Ernst May was a German architect and city planner.
Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th-century European architecture, including the invention of the cantilever tubular chair, teaching at the Bauhaus, contributions to the Weissenhof Estate, the Van Nelle Factory,, buildings for Ernst May's New Frankfurt housing estates, followed by work in the USSR with the idealistic May Brigade, to teaching positions in Amsterdam and post-war East Germany. Upon return to the Netherlands he contributed to postwar reconstruction and finally retired,, in Switzerland, where he died.
Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, commonly called J. J. P. Oud was a Dutch architect. His fame began as a follower of the De Stijl movement.
Hans Emil "Hannes" Meyer was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus Dessau from 1928 to 1930.
The Weissenhof Estate is a housing estate built for the 1927 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany. It was an international showcase of modern architecture's aspiration to provide cheap, simple, efficient, and good-quality housing.
Constructivist architecture was a constructivist style of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Abstract and austere, the movement aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space, while rejecting decorative stylization in favor of the industrial assemblage of materials. Designs combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced many pioneering projects and finished buildings, before falling out of favour around 1932. It has left marked effects on later developments in architecture.
Leendert Cornelis van der Vlugt was a Dutch architect in Rotterdam. In the architects office Brinkman & Van der Vlugt he was responsible for the architecture of the Van Nelle Factory, a listed monument of the UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2014.
The New Objectivity is a name often given to the Modern architecture that emerged in Europe, primarily German-speaking Europe, in the 1920s and 30s. It is also frequently called Neues Bauen. The New Objectivity remodeled many German cities in this period.
Ernst Neufert was a German architect who is known as an assistant of Walter Gropius, as a teacher and member of various standardization organizations, and especially for his widely disseminated reference book Architects' data.
Martin Elsaesser was a German architect and professor of architecture. He is especially well known for the many churches he built.
Bauhaus Dessau, also Bauhaus-Building Dessau, is a building-complex in Dessau-Roßlau. It is considered the pinnacle of pre-war modern design in Europe and originated out of the dissolution of the Weimar School and the move by local politicians to reconcile the city's industrial character with its cultural past.
Berlin Modernism Housing Estates is a World Heritage Site designated in 2008, comprising six separate subsidized housing estates in Berlin. Dating mainly from the years of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), when the city of Berlin was particularly progressive socially, politically and culturally, they are outstanding examples of the building reform movement that contributed to improving housing and living conditions for people with low incomes through innovative approaches to architecture and urban planning. The estates also provide exceptional examples of new urban and architectural typologies, featuring fresh design solutions, as well as technical and aesthetic innovations.
Rudolf Fränkel, often anglicised as Rudolf or Rudolph Frankel was a German-Jewish architect who was among the leaders of the pre-war avant-garde movement in Berlin. He later emigrated to Bucharest, London and the United States, where he became an Architecture professor at Miami University, Ohio.
The Kölner Werkschulen, formerly Cologne Art and Craft Schools, was a university in Cologne training artists in visual arts, architecture and design from 1926 to 1971.
Otto Haesler was an influential German architect.
Friedrich Konrad Püschel was a German architect, town planner and university professor who was educated at the Bauhaus design school. He worked in East Germany, the Soviet Union and North Korea.
