Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (39.2006)

Fig. 6. C. Luedecke: Vil-
la Straat in Breslau, side
view, 1863. Drawings
collection, Museum of
Architecture, Wroclaw,
Poland.

the design to the legal requirements. Similar obsta-
cles influenced the style of the interiors of multi-fa-
mily houses. Buildings in a Condensed development
were illuminated only from two sides and most often
based on a three-passage construction systém. The
street-side of the building usually housed représenta-
tive rooms, the rear side housed bedrooms and utility
rooms. Large apartments were designed in front hou-
ses connected with one or two wings — the front build-
ing housed représentative rooms, residential rooms
and bedrooms, the wings housed kitchens and other
utility rooms. It is worth emphasizing that in
Wroclaw, like in the majority of German cities of the
19th Century, designing and building multi-family
houses was mainly carried out by masonic and build-
ing grandmasters. Architects with academie éduca-
tion mainly dealt with représentative houses and pub-
lic facilities, residential houses being designed only
on request of a particular investor.
Both Luedecke and Schmidt limited their design-
ing work almost only to residential buildings, which
were not only a long-term Investment and source of
income for the founders, but also their homes and
work places. The interiors of the buildings were adap-
ted both to the legal requirements and the area lay-
out, as well as to the needs of the Investors, who usu-
ally expected the best possible ‘economical’ use of such
expensive properties. There was no option for apply-

ing the classical standard in designing the spatial lay-
out of the building, but it wouldn’t be difficult to
find Boetticher’s ‘tectonics’ in the façades of the houses
designed by Luedecke and Schmidt. This means that
décorations of the façades included elements which,
at least theoretically, could fulfil particular construc-
tion fonctions, as well as other independent, small
architectural compositions.
Another example of the ‘tectonic’ trend in Lue-
decke’s work is the design of a villa for the entrepre-
neur Robert Straat, drawn up by the architect in 1863-
The house was designed on a nearly quadratic plan —
its structural core was a cross of middle rooms which
was completed by four corner rooms [Fig. 5]. Three
of them served as residential rooms, the fourth was
designed as a kitchen with auxiliary rooms. The width
of middle rooms was determined by the size of the
staircase located on one of the cross’s arms. The lay-
out of the view was reflected on the façades of the
building, which connected this design with Durand’s
method of design, and so did the strict symmetry and
axiality, as well as the repetitiveness of the main ele-
ments of the interior layout. But the motifs used by
Luedecke to articulate the façades of the building were
derived from Schinkel’s school of architecture. The
simple cubic structure of the building was diversified
by small risalits and loggias, which underlined the
symmetrical axis of each façade and distorted their

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