Very strange name “White Yards”.
We were get there by my friend Irina, who is now living in Stuttgart.
White Yards – Weissenhofsiedlung – turned out to be a beautiful neighborhood located on a hillside of Killesberg.
We went there in the spring and sunny day. Simple green. The first house seemed very familiar, something already visible. Construction – Modern of Soviet period in snow-white concrete. Clear smooth shape, broken configuration profile, lots of light, outdoor terraces, flat roofs. Externally – home of the future, quarter of dreams. Quarter was established in 1927 on the initiative of the famous German art association Verkbund. Actually, planning a pilot of the future settlement involved 16 leading avant-garde European architects, including Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Sharoun, Max and Bruno Taut, and others.
Houses were very different, but fully in keeping with the technical and aesthetic requirements of modern times. There were built 31 house for 63 apartments.
Le Corbusiers two-storey house, with a clear steel-fram, with exquisitely rhythmic transverse division, practically the only one that can be viewed from the inside. Narrow staircases, strange transitions, small rooms with built-in furniture, kitchen with a large window and also built –in and carefully chosen furniture. The above is not surprising today, but it was very innovative and unusual in 1927. Especially striking a huge terrace with steel racks and flower gardens, divided into several zones. Terrace, of course, not glazed, and with a great view to the lower city. Something indefinable from Franc Lloyd Wright may be in this terrace? may be a long row of windows? flat roof? This house is not inscribed in the landscape, as did Wright, but he is also not in the prairie. And for the urban landscape, there is no more perfect form than the urban-white concrete, metal and glass.
Surprising not only in form but in content, single-family house of Walter Gropius. It is built from the most stylish material 20 th century – fiber cement. This versatile material developed 100 years ago, at one time was used not only by architects but also by artists and designers. Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Max Ernst, and even wrote to the fiber cement! Despite its apparent simplicity, the material was indeed unique – an incredibly strong due to adding an asbestos fibers. Unfortunately, over time it became clear that the fiber is very dangerous to human life, and since 1981 in Germany, its use is prohibited (as the case in other countries – to study the literature). There were urgently invented artificial fibers for strength and fiber cement have started a new life.
We were not able to look back in any house, but everything was still simply wonderful. It is a pity that the modern in architecture in our country had not so long life!