The city that grew from a horse farm founded around 950 (hence the name, derived from Stuten-Garten or mares’ garden) gained its charter in 1250 and was enlarged, especially during the 18th century, as the capital and princely residence of the counts and later dukes of Württemberg. The first systematic expansion plans occurred in 1832, just as industrialization began to affect the capital as it transformed into a metropolis.

After an uninspired period of construction in the second half of the 19th century, the 20th century brought exemplary architectural achievements to the city, making Stuttgart one of the most important centers of modern architecture in Germany.

One of the most influential buildings in the history of the new architecture in Stuttgart is the Central Station (1914–27) by Paul Bonatz and E.F.Scholer. In this monumental, cubical building clad in shell-limestone blocks, all of the amenities of a modern train station were cogently realized, from the passage of trains over optimal traffic and transport ways, to travelers’ needs, to the Station Hotel and other functions. The architects made effective use of steel and concrete, using construction techniques inherent in these materials’ properties. Despite this innovation, they were unwilling to use the same materials on the stone-clad façade that features a tall, columned hall facing the city center.

Another striking building that defines the cityscape is the newspaper headquarters, Tagblatt Tower (1928), designed by E. Otto Osswald as Stuttgart's first skyscraper. Originally planned as a counterweight to the Erich Mendelsohn's Schocken Department Store of 1928 (demolished 1960), the eighteenfloor, sixty-one-meter-high reinforced concrete construction of the press tower was an important symbol of the new architecture in Stuttgart and remains a milestone in the history of skyscraper construction in Germany.

Originally built in 1927 as part of an exhibition of the German Werkbund in the north of the city, the Weissenhofsiedlung represents one of the most decisive steps in the development of modern housing and constituted the high point of avant-garde architecture of the 1920s in the Württemberg capital. The Weissenhofsiedlung essentially created a model housing estate in which seventeen of the leading architects followed the design motto Die Wohnung für den modernen Groβstadtmenschen (The Dwelling for the Modern Metropolitan Man) in designing innovative structures. Architects included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (who designed the overall plan), J.J.P.Oud, Mart Stam, Victor Bourgeois, Le Corbusier, Josef Frank, Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Hans Poelzig, Adolf Rading, Hans Scharoun, Bruno Taut, and Max Taut as well as the Stuttgart architects Richard Döcker and Adolf G. Schneck. The project pursued the programmatic goal of demonstrating ways in which rationalization was possible in housing construction and showing how planned development of affordable and reduced-cost housing could provide, in the words of Lord Mayor Dr. Karl Lautenschlager in 1925, an “improvement of total housing culture.” Critics of the project claimed that although the small, affordable apartment stood in the foreground of conceptual interests, in reality—with the exception of the J.J.P. Oud—the architects did not design houses for the working class.

Approximately twenty-one individual buildings were finally constructed, with a total of sixty-three apartments. Generally using steel skeleton construction, the individual buildings showed a remarkable degree of uniformity manifest in their straight lines, absolutely unadorned and shimmering white facades, flat roofs, and the balcony treatment reminiscent of ship railings. Likewise, technical materials such as steel and concrete were used within the interiors. Technical apparatus such as pipes and heating units were not hidden but were placed demonstratively on the walls to underscore functionality. Textiles as well as conventional furniture were generally rejected. The walls had neither paneling nor molding, and the doors had neither frames nor curves.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the Weissenhofsiedlung was defamed as Stuttgart's eyesore (Schandfleck), its architects castigated as “cultural Bolsheviks.” World War II left the project damaged from bombing and still unappreciated; the project was neither protected nor rebuilt but was rather neglected and in part disfigured through careless modifications or additions. Resurgence in interest in the project began in the 1950s, when the Weissenhofsiedlung was recognized as an architectural monument in need of protection and restoration, which was ultimately completed in 1987. The first renewal of postwar modern design was the Liederhalle, designed and built in 1955–56 by Adolf Abel, Rolf Gutbrod, and Blasius Spreng. The Liederhalle was a music center with three large concert halls of various sizes, joined into a common complex through a two-story foyer with a restaurant. A paved courtyard with shallow steps and terraces leads to the squat main entrance on the west front. The exterior of the bastion- like, projecting Mozart Hall is decorated with an overlay of quarzite plates of alternating colors and sizes. The wide wall spaces of the high main building, however, had to be satisfied with a plain segmentation into fields. The rear is pierced with countless rectangular skylights.

The Neue Staatsgalerie (New National Gallery of Art) has been considered the most important building in Stuttgart of the last 20 years and as one of the most important new museum buildings constructed in Germany since 1945. It was built between 1979 and 1984 by James Stirling, Michael Wilford, and Associates, London. The first concrete plans for enlargement of the museum arose in 1974, but the present gallery dates from an international competition for the design held in 1977, which set the task of architecturally expanding the state art collection and new construction of a small theater. In total, eleven participants were invited to compete, including seven of the most outstanding from the first competition in 1974 as well as four foreign architectural firms. They were invited to develop proposals with special consideration for urban renewal. In particular, the architects were challenged to improve green spaces and pedestrian spaces and, in part, ameliorate the scars on the city center infrastructure left from World War II. With the close of the competition in 1977, Stuttgart found itself in the middle of a controversial architectural debate between two different schools of thought and aesthetics: that of Functionalism, which traced its roots in Stuttgart to the Weissenhofsiedlung, and that of Postmodernism, a new import from Great Britain with a marked preference for stylistic pastiche and even whimsy. Immediately adjacent to the preexisting national gallery building, and joined to it by a “bridge” on the gallery level, the New National Gallery is topographically sensitive. Stirling designed a public footpath through the museum complex to integrate the historical buildings of the old National Gallery into the overall conception.

Stirling’s epoch-making achievement was to bring together these historicist elements with the modern formal vocabulary of Functionalist architecture such as colored steel construction, visible concrete, or curving forms. Through the contradictions in form and many-layered conception the museum gains in dynamism and seems predestined as a house for the art of the 20th century.

STEPHAN BRAKENSIEK

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.3 (P-Z).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

1927, Single-Family Dwelling for Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, Germany

1928, Kaufhaus Schocken, Stuttgart, GERMANY

1954-1959, Romeo and Juliet Housing, Stuttgart, Germany

1977-1984, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany

1977-1984, Building for the Württenbergisches Staatstheater, Stuttgart, Germany

1987-1996, Music Academy, Stuttgart, Germany

BERLIN; COLOGNE; LE CORBUSIER; DÜSSELDORF; FRANKFURT; GERMANY; MIES VAN DER ROHE; OUD, J.J.P.; POSTMODERNISM;

FUTHER READING

Alfani, Antonio (editor), Costruire, abitare: gli edifici e gli arredi per la Weissenhofsiedlung di Stoccarda; “Bau und Wohnung” e “Innenräume” (1927–28), Roma: Kappa, 1992

Bartl, Franz, Stuttgart, Hauptbahnhof: Empfangsgebäude und Bahnsteigüberdachung im Kontext der Architektur- und Konstruktionsentwicklung, Stuttgart, 1990

Bau und Wohnung: die Bauten der Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, errichtet 1927, hrsg. vom Dt. Werkbund, Stuttgart: Wedekind, 1927; reprint, Stuttgart, 1992

Behrendts, W. C., Der Sieg des neuen Baustils, Stuttgart, 1927

Classen, Helge, Die Weissenhofsiedlung: Beginn eines neuen Bauens, Dortmund: Harenberg, 1990

Innenräume: Räume u. Inneneinrichtungsgegenstände aus d. Werkbundausstellung “Die Wohnung”, insbesondere aus den Bauten der städtischen Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, hrsg. von Werner Gräff, Stuttgart: Wedekind, 1928

Joedicke, Jürgen, Die Weißenhofsiedlung Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 1989

Kähler, Gert (editor), Bauen in Stuttgart seit 1900, Braunschweig: Kähler Vieweg Verlag, 1991

Kirsch, Karin, The Weissenhofsiedlung, Experimental Housing Built for the Deutscher Werkbund, Stuttgart, 1927, New York: Rizzoli, 1989

Lupfer, Gilbert, Architektur der fünfziger Jahre in Stuttgart, Tübingen: Silberburg Verlag, 1997

Miller Lane, Barbara, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918–1945, 2nd ed., Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985

Nägele, Hermann, Die Restaurierung der Weißenhofsiedlung 1981–87, Stuttgart: Krämer, 1992

Rasch, Bodo, Frei Otto, and Berthold Burkhardt (editors), Fünfzig Jahre Weissenhofsiedlung: eine neue Bauausstellung zum Thema “Wohnen”; eine Dokumentation, Stuttgart, 1978

Stuttgarter Themen: Architektur in Stuttgart: Antworten auf alte und neue Herausforderungen, Presse- und Informationsamt der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart (editor), Stuttgart, 2000

Stuttgart: von der Residenz zur modernen Großstadt; Architektur und Städtebau im Wandel der Zeiten, Tübingen: Silberburg, 1994

Tinelli, Fulvia, L’involuzione delle tecniche costruttive: dal Weissenhofsiedlung (1927) al Schone Aussicht (1980), Milano: Angeli, 1987

Weißenhofsiedlung Stuttgart, red. Bearb. Thomas Schloz, 3rd expanded ed., Stuttgart: IRB, 1991. IRB-Literaturauslese, 593