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Never again an unhealthy city of tenement buildings! This was the credo
behind the housing estates that emerged in both parts of Berlin in the
post-war era. In the face of large-scale destruction, urban developers
and architects saw a unique opportunity to realise the vision developed
in the twenties for a new city with improved housing conditions and social
justice. The model was a more relaxed, functional city. Initial plans
for the city as a whole in 1946 envisaged a green city centre with a belt
of adjacent neighbourhoods. This was never realised because the still intact
infrastructure of the roads and supply networks had to be used. Nevertheless,
this model remained fixed in the minds of urban planners. The basis
of reconstruction in both East and West Berlin was state funded social
housing with standardized flats at affordable prices. Social housing schemes
shaped the cityscapes. Only once did East Berlin depart from the idea of
modern housing schemes: Stalinallee emerged in 1950 according to the principles
of a compact city in the style of "national tradition". West Berlin re-sponded
to this by constructing the Hansaviertel and the Corbusier building for
the International Building Exhibition in 1957, somewhat belatedly, since
East Berlin had long since rediscovered modern urban development. Both
halves of the city had been overambitious with these luxurious construction
projects. The best prerequisites for building housing estates were
to be found in the suburbs. However, the long rows of houses erected there
lacked the diversity of city life. "Urbanisation through density" became,
therefore, the new model, which justified constructing large housing estates
in West Berlin such as the Märkisches Viertel and Gropiusstadt in
the sixties. The social infrastructure and underground link followed later.
What remained was the inhospitableness of the "dwelling ma-chines" which
first gave their occupiers cause to demonstrate in the eighties.
While construction of housing estates had reached its climax in West Berlin,
it only really got under way in East Berlin in 1973 with the "complex construction
of flats" in order to solve the housing problem by 1990. This objective
was only to be achieved through the industrialisation of the construction
process with prefabricated buildings. Socialist housing meant flats for
the classless society, for families where both parents worked full time.
Consequently, the necessary infrastructure was built at the same time.
Although it was considered a privilege to receive a flat in a new building,
the monotony of entire towns consisting of concrete slab blocks was increasingly
criticised.
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