essay hi lber seim er

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Hilberseimer,

a mathematical urban planner

written by

Duco Willem Uytenhaak

TUDelft 1212176

1



Introduction“The metropolitan type of man – which of course

exists in a thousand individual variants – develops an

organ protecting him against the threatening currents

and discrepancies of his external environment which

would uproot him. He reacts with his head instead of hisheart.” This pronouncing was made by George Simmel in

‘Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben’ in 1903. Here

describes Simmel how the money economy and the growth of

the cities to metropolitan, influences the people and

the interrelation between people.

In ‘Progetto e Utopia’ Manfredo Tafuri, in 1973,

describes the developments in modern architecture.

Tafuri concludes that modern architecture cannot be seen

without the economic substructure, because it is totallyfunctional in it.

In the period of Marx the economic system was the

industrial capitalism. This started with the industrial

revolution which made a total new class society, in this

new society the prevailing class was no longer the

nobility, but the bourgeoisie. The production was in the

hands of the bourgeoisie, the avant-garde had the duty

to pave the way for the capitalistic development. Theavant-garde was unable to influent the direction of the

development or to shape the rationalization which is

inherent to this development. According to Tafuri this

job is intended for the architecture.

By the shift of the prevailing class and the

industrial capitalism an explosive growth of the cities

during the beginning of the 20th century occurred. This

growth had the effect of starting to think about the

grossstadt (metropolitan). In the grossstadt there was

anonymity and indifference which gave you a personal

freedom, unknown anywhere else. This freedom is,

according to Simmel, exactly the large value of the

context of the metropolitan[1]. Tonnies described this

as a shift in the social environment from Gemeinschaft

towards Gesellschaft, from community towards the

society[2]. Hereby Simmel also named the growing gapbetween the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective’ mind. The

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objective culture – science, techniques, knowledge and

art – grows harder in the metropolitan than the

individual can absorb. The result of this is that people

develop more and more unilaterally and more like

specialists.

Due to the explosive growing cities – in the

beginning of the 20th century – the circumstances were

very bad for a lot of the inhabitants. In Paris – which

grown from 647.000 inhabitants in 1800 to 3 million in

1910 – several families shared one room, on average

there was one toilet per 70 inhabitants, factories and

working places were located in the middle of the

residential areas, the traffic was stocked on the street

and the street was an open sewer system as well[3].

There was a major assignment for the architects to

solve the housing- and the traffic-problems for the

masses. Tafuri accentuate that architecture puts here

all emphasis on its political task. In this way

architecture tries to answer for the technical

organisation of the restructuring of production and

consumption. According to Tafuri the Neue Sachlichkeit

(the new objectivity) tries to name themselves as being

the author of the total plan[4]. Hilberseimer emphasizes

in Grossstadtarchitektur , in 1927, the structure of the

modern city as being an enormous ‘social-machine’. In

Grossstadtarchitektur Hilberseimer published his design

Hochhausstadt (plan of a highrise city). This plan is at

once an homage to, and a critique of, Le Corbusier’s une

ville contemporaine (city of Three million). By

comparing those plans it’s possible to see how thearchitects were thinking in different directions to

solve the problems which came with the new economy.

fig. 1; Ludwig Mies von der Rohe and Ludwig

Hilberseimer with their design for Lafayette

Park

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Hilberseimers toughtsLudwig Karl Hilberseimer growled up in Karlsruhe, a

city which is one of the classic examples of the

autocratically and geometrically planned city. For

Hilberseimer a metropolis was an entirely new creation

of large-scale industrial capitalism – economic, socialand technical - without historical precedent. The plans

of cities that grew up naturally were not adapted to

modern technical and hygienic requirements. The

satellite garden cities offered a solution for urban

housing but they don’t solve the problems of the traffic

into the city centre. The only way of eliminate the

chaos of the modern city was developing theoretical

solutions for the city as a whole[5].

For the metropolis the most important was the

residential building, the apartment house. Grouped in

large blocks and standardized in plan and construction.

The commercial buildings had to be transformable and

horizontal.

In Hilberseimers thinking, architecture is the

creating of space, creating the metropolis is making

interior and exterior. Hilberseimer named this thesolution of the spatial cell and the entire organism of

the city. The huge blocks required a reduction of

architectural form to its simplest, to the cubic

form[6].

4



Hochhausstadt (Hilberseimer) In 1924 Hilberseimer developed his highrise city, a

city for a million inhabitants. The city rises on two

levels. 1. A lower level for business and vehicular

traffic, here you can enter five stories of offices and

stores. These functions are placed in huge blocks of 600by 100 meters. 2. On top of those functions is the

second level; this is for pedestrian movement on

sidewalks and bridges over the boulevards from the

pedestrian level you can enter the residential. The

residents live in 15-story apartment slaps of which two

are placed parallel on each business block. At this time

Hilberseimer only created a plan for the business and

the residential. In his design is no space for public

buildings – factories, industrial plants, museums,assembly halls, churches or schools – neither for any

park or plaza.

In this design Hilberseimer solved all the traffic

problems; public transport is under the ground,

vehicular transport on ground level and pedestrian

movement at the sidewalks on the fifth level. In this

way he separated vehicular traffic from pedestrianmovement so they don’t influence each other. By ordering

the city in this way he kept the movement short, the

business is directly under the residential area. This

system is based on the old principle of living above

your store.

Late in life, Hilberseimer himself admitted:

“The repetition of the blocks resulted in too much

uniformity. Every natural thing was excluded: no tree or

grassy area broke the monotony . . . the result was more

a necropolis than a metropolis, a sterile landscape of

asphalt and cement, inhuman in every aspect.” [7]

fig. 2; Perspective of Hilberseimer Hochhausstadt .

fig. 3; “Hochhausstadt” city plan .

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Une ville contemporaine (Le Corbusier) ‘Une ville contemporaine’ is a proposal of Le

Corbusier for a city of three million inhabitants; it’s

a city without a location, without any historical or

geographical context. Le Corbusier had a disinterest in

the location; he refuses to take in to account onesingle specific limitation imposed by the location. Le

Corbusier had an obsession for arrangement, for whole of

his life he was fascinated by steamships and the

monasteries because of the total arrangement. In the

city of three million Le Corbusier achieved a total

control of the city by the architect – or the

architecture – this is a returning theme in his work.

Le Corbusier had four fundamental principles for‘la ville de 3 millions d’habitant’:

- Decongestion of the centres of the cities

- Increasing the density

- Increasing the means of circulation

- Increasing the surface of plants

‘Une ville contemporaine’ exist of a business

centre with twenty-four skyscrapers which are located ina large park area. In the middle of the business centre,

there is the central station and an arrival platform for

airplanes. North-South, East-West, are two highways

trough the centre for the vehicular traffic. In the park

around the skyscrapers are restaurants, cafés, luxury

shops, theatres etc. Next to the business centre there

are the public buildings – museums, city hall and public

service. On the east border of the plan is an Englishgarden.

The commercial area is surrounded by a residential

area in which the apartment buildings are arranged in a

geometric zigzag pattern. Around this zigzag buildings

are residential satellite garden cities. The density of

this residential area is based on the very high density

of Paris; between the residential blocks are park like

open spaces. [8]

fig. 4; ‘Une ville contemporaine’ city Plan

fig. 5; ‘Une ville contemporaine’ Bird eye-view

fig. 6; Eye-height business centre

6



The traffic principle is differently arranged in

horizontal and vertical ways as well. Le Corbusier was

separating vehicular and pedestrian movement by creating

totally different routes. The vehicular transport was on

huge highways while the pedestrians were walking trough

huge parks; the pedestrian would pass also a lot of

functions in those parks. Hilberseimer was creatingthree different levels in his transport system. Under

the ground the public transportation, on ground level

the vehicular transport and on the fifth level all the

pedestrian movement on huge footpaths connected with

bridges.

In the metropolitan city of Le Corbusier all the

buildings are placed in almost one enormous park. Aroundall the skyscrapers as well as around the apartment

blocks he created a park like atmosphere. He also

implements a large English garden at the east side of

the city. In the highrise city of Hilberseimer there was

no green at all, the whole city was a repetition of

blocks.

Even the image of the cities was totally different.

Both had large blocks or skyscrapers but how you

experienced them was far from the same. While

Hilberseimer made a mathematical clarity and a

geometrical rigor the image became one of unity and

simplicity. Every building is the same, each unit

(spatial cell) in the building looks like the unit next

to it. Le Corbusier created a variety by creating

different zones. Each zone has its own identity,

functional use and is different in appearance.

Hilberseimer had some critique on the plan of Le

Corbusier because of its density and the way of solving

the traffic problems. Hilberseimer claimed that Le

Corbusier had made an error in calculating the density

of the population in his city by falsely assuming that

the high densities allowable in office buildings could

be used for residential buildings. In the core of the

“city of three million” were one million people, around

this core there were two million people in satellite

cities. Hilberseimer made calculations in which he

fig. 8; Perspective of Hilberseimer Hochhausstadt .

fig. 9; Bird eye-view of Le Corbusiers city of . three million .

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proved that the same - or even higher – densities could

be reached with five story buildings, without skimping

on apartment size. This was possible by placing the

structures closer together but still leaving 70 to 80

per cent of the surface open.

He also asserted that Le Corbusier had failed to

solve the traffic problem of the modern city; he onlymoved the traffic jams from the road into his

skyscrapers at the elevator points[9].

In ‘le Unite de Habitation’ Le Corbusier in 1946

also transforms his scheme from horizontal to vertical

movement. Here he created a “city” or “a whole urban

plan” in one building; he created corridor streets from

which you can enter your apartment. On lifted gallerystreets were shops located and at the ground level he

lifted the building on huge pillars to maintain as much

as possible park surface[10].fig. 10; Hilberseimer Diagram showing .

variation in housing density .

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Hilberseimer after GrossstadtarchitekturAfter the highrise city model Hilberseimer soon

developed ideas about the single-family suburban house.

In the future small houses were to be a retreat from

work and the city; a safe place to raise the children.

Only singles and childless people would stay living in

apartment blocks. The single-family house would be

grouped in large settlement units in parks and gardens.

In the Weissenhofsiedlung , Stuttgart 1927, supervised by

Ludwig Mies von der Rohe, Hilberseimer designed one of

his first well publicized single-family houses.

From now on he promoted the Mischbebauung (mixed-

height site planning), nine-story apartment blocks and

single-family houses strictly orthogonal arranged on the

proper angle for sunlight. Now Hilberseimer had to solvethe traffic problem – like Le Corbusier - in the

horizontal surface. He created models for the “fish-

spine” ; this would be a pedestrian city where you could

easily walk to your work or school without passing the

vehicular transport, just like it had been in the

highrise city. Now the plan was greener and was build up

by lower buildings.

In 1938 Hilberseimer fled for the German Nazi-

regime, he immigrated to America where he worked for

Mies von der Rohe and became head of the urban planning

department of the IIT (Chicago).

More and more Hilberseimer developed his

settlement-unit. He made a few expanding proposals for

Chicago using the settlement-unit but they weren’t

realized. His most important project became “Lafayette

Park” in collaboration with Ludwig Mies von der Rohe.

Lafayette Park is a kind of settlement-unit totally

closed through traffic around it; placed in the park

there are row houses of two stories and apartment

buildings of twenty-one stories. The roads and parking

places are placed four feet below the level of the

housing[11].

fig. 11; Bird eye-view of Hilberseimers “Mischbebauung”

fig. 12; Preliminary plan of Lafayette Park .

fig. 13; Relationship parking and housing in .

Lafayette Park .

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fig. 14; Single-family house Hilberseimer “Weissenhof”

fig. 15; Bird eye-view Settlement-unit

fig. 16; Hilberseimers “fish-spine”

fig. 17; Plan Settlement-unit

11



ConclusionsAs Tafuri said; capitalism has had a huge influence

on the architecture. The urban plans of Hilberseimer and

Le Corbusier are based on the bad conditions of the

residential housing in the beginning of the 20th century

after the industrial revolution. The demand for better

houses and the growth of the economy gave chances and

demands for these architects of the Neue Sachlichkeit to

develop proposals and solve the problems with new urban

and architectural strategies.

In the plans ‘une ville contemporain’ and

‘Hochhausstadt’ Le Corbusier and Hilberseimer had to

achieve a lot of the same aims. They developed different

ways to separate; vehicular- and pedestrian movement andwork and residential. Both designs deny any geographical

or historical elements; by doing this they supposed they

would eliminate the chaos of the modern city. But

Hilberseimer and Le Corbusier created cities of such

total control, which only governments could impose.

Michael Hays says: Hilberseimer is refusing to

sentimentalize the human being as an individual by not

designing an architecture which answers to the desires

of romance and nostalgia. He created an abstract

architecture which was made to create a context where

people would react rational on the capitalistic

culture[12].

Ernst Bloch says: the urban plans of those

functionalists are private, abstract; in the face of the

“etre humain” the people in those houses and cities

become standardized termites, or in a “living-machine”alienated bodies, this is all so far away from real

human, from home, from pleasure[13].

The highrise city of Hilberseimer is a pure

theoretical proposal, scale means nothing to him;

density is everything. The city is fixed forever because

of his assumption that the workers are living over their

work and all the blocks are the same. The enormousboulevards have almost no function, the elevators do

almost everything. This movement is all internal; the

created city is almost a dead place. “More a necropolis

than a metropolis” [14]

Words: 2731

fig. 18; Hilberseimer design “welfare city” .

12



Selection out of the biographies of

Hilberseimer and Le Corbusier

Year Hilberseimer

1885

19221923

1924

1927

1927

1927

Birth of Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer (Karlsruhe)

Competition of the Chicago Tribune buildingResidential Satellite city (wohnstadt)

Design Hochhausstadt (plan of a highrise city)

Book: Grossstadtarchitektur

House in weisenhofsiedlung (Stuttgart)

Model of “welfare city”

1928

1929

1930

1931-34

1932

1933

1933-35

1937

Berlin Development project

Hannes Meyer appointed him to teach

Architecture at the BauhausMixed height housing development Mischbebauung

“Fish spine” site plan

Blumenthal house in Berlin

Development of the settlement unit

Decentralized City

Plan for the university of Berlin

1938

1939-40

19441949

1951

1955

1956

Emigrate to Chicago

Linear city project for extension of Chicago

Book: The new City: principles of planningBook: The new regional pattern:

Industries and Gardens, work-shops and Farms

Redevelopment of Chicago 39th to 47th street

Book: The Nature of Cities

1956

1958

19631963

1967

Lafayette park, Detroit

Hyde Park, Chicago

State street project, chicago

A New plan for chicagoEntfaltung einer Plannungsidee

6th May, Hilberseimer dies

Year LeCorbusier

1887

1922

1922

1923

1925

1927

1927

1929-311930

1930

1932

1935

1946-52

1947

1950

1950-53

1951-571956

1957

1958

1960-65

1965

Birth of Charles Edouard Jeanneret

Chaux-de-Fonds)Maison Citrohan

Contemporary city of three million

Vila Ozenfant Paris

Book: vers une architecture

Plan Voisin von Paris

Two houses in Weissenhofsiedlung

Maison Stein, Garches

Vila Savoye, PoissyLa ville radieuse

Plan ‘obus’ Algiers

Cite de Refuge (paris)

Ville Radieuse

Unite d’Habitation in Marseille

Headquarter United Nations New York

Book: Le Modulor

Chapel Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp

Urban plan Chandigarh, IndiaUrban Plan for Meaux

La Tourette, Lyon

Pavilion Philips, Bruxelles

Unite d’Habitation de Firminy

27th August LeCorbusier dies

after a heart attack

1920(La

13



14

das Gesistenleben

Hilde Heynen,”Architectuur en de kritiek van de

Mode 103

Hild

Mode

page

Mode

Rich , Ludwig

Hilb

Rich Ludwig

HilbLudw

n

page

h , Ludwig

b

Jean lippe Panerai

ti

Hilb

K. M

Hilb

Das

Footnotes

1] Georg Simmel, Die Grossstadte und [

rniteit” page

[2] e Heynen,”Architectuur en de kritiek van de

rniteit” page 191

[3] Alain de Boton, “de architectuur van het geluk”

266

[4] Hilde Heynen,”Architectuur en de kritiek van de

rniteit” page 190

dow of Mies[5] ard Prommer, “In the Sha

erseimer” page 19

[6] ard Prommer, “In the Shadow of Mies,

erseimer” page 20[7] ig Hilberseimer, “Entfaltung einer

Pla ungsidee” 1963 page 22

[8] Le Corbusier, “Oeuvre Complet 1910-1929”

34-39

e Shadow of Mies[9] Ric

Hil

ard Prommer, “In th

erseimer” page 33

s Depaule, Phi[10] Castex, Jean-Charle

“RaDav ionele Stad” page 174-181[11] d Spaeth “In the Shadow of Mies, Ludwig

[12]

erseimer” page 63

ichael Hays, “Modernism and the posthumanist

subject The architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig

erseimer” page 246

[13] Ernst Bloch, “Die Bebauung des Hohlraums” in:

Prinzip Hoffnung page 859

[14] Ludwig Hilberseimer, “Entfaltung einer

Planungsidee” 1963 page 22



Literature

Titel Author Year Publisher ISBN

In the Shadow of Mies

Ludwig Hilberseimer

Architect, Educator and urban Planner

Richard Pommer

David Spaeth

Kevin Harrington

1988 Art institute

of chicago

0-8478-0931-5

Ontwerp en Utopie

(vertaling van: Progetto e Utopia)

Manfredo Tafuri 1973 SUN 117 90-6168-117-0

Architecture and Modernity

A critique

Hilde Heynen 1999 MIT Press

De rationele stad

(vertaling van: Formes Urbains: de l’liot

a la barre)

Jean-Charles D

Jean Castex

epaule

Philippe Panerai

1977 SUN 90-5875-1627

De architectuur van het geluk

(vertaling van: Architecture of

Happiness)

Alain de Botton 2006 Atlas 90-450-1276-6

Modernism and the posthumanist subject

The rchitecture of Hannes Meyer and

Ludwig Hilberseimer

a

K. Michael Hays 1992 MIT Press 0-262-08212-8

Le C rbusier Oevre Complette

1910 - 1929

W. Boesiger

Textes: Le Corbusier

o

O. Stonorov

1964 Les Editions

d’Architecture

3-7608-8011-8

‘Dat is architectuur’

sleutelteksten uit de twintigste eeuw André Loeckx

Karina van Herck

Hilde Heynen

Lieven de Cauter

2001 010 publishers 90-6450-315-X

Websites visited

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxisme

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieuwe_Zakelijkheid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinschaft_and_Gesellschaft

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Bloch

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