DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45213#0110
106
The movement for colour in architecture involved, on the one hand, the idea of Colourful City
(Farbige Stadt) focused on refurbishing old buildings and giving them a new colour treatment and,
on the other, at introducing colour in the design of new rationally-planned housing estates. Bruno
Taut believed that the colourful cityscape would have a positive effect on residents. In particular,
colour design was to help create safe urban spaces in the so-called Grosssiedlungen, large housing
estates built during this period in various German cities.
Following the amendment of the planning law in 1925, a number of colourful developments
of the Grosssiedlung type were built in Germany, particularly in Berlin and Frankfurt-am-Mein, the
two cities which played the leading role in their construction because of the support of municipal
authorities represented by their respective City Architects, Martin Wagner in Berlin (from 1926) and
Ernst May in Frankfurt-am-Main (from 1925).
In newly-built large housing estates, colour was to counteract the monotony of plain walls and
give the complex as a whole an aesthetic value by emphasising its architectural unity. It was also
assigned an important role in satisfying the residents' psychological needs of living in a friendly
environment in harmony with nature. It was to facilitate the identification of individual buildings
and thus increase the individual's sense of security. The polychrome colour design was also to com-
pensate for relatively smaller green areas: in comparison with the housing estates reflecting the
garden-town idea, which had been popular in Germany in the preceding period, the proportion of
space allocated for private gardens was reduced in favour of communal green areas. Fernand Leger
compared polychrome buildings to a floral bouquet.270 Progressive architects insisted that the psy-
chological need for colour in architectural design increased in proportion to the degree of artificial-
ity in one's environment. Those who lived in high-risers, promoted by the Functionalists as the most
economical solution to the housing problem, had their contact with nature limited to the communal
green areas. Thus, colour was viewed as a means to substitute for the reduced or missing nature, to
unite the organic with the manmade.
270 Hans Jorg Rieger, op.cit., p. 139.
The movement for colour in architecture involved, on the one hand, the idea of Colourful City
(Farbige Stadt) focused on refurbishing old buildings and giving them a new colour treatment and,
on the other, at introducing colour in the design of new rationally-planned housing estates. Bruno
Taut believed that the colourful cityscape would have a positive effect on residents. In particular,
colour design was to help create safe urban spaces in the so-called Grosssiedlungen, large housing
estates built during this period in various German cities.
Following the amendment of the planning law in 1925, a number of colourful developments
of the Grosssiedlung type were built in Germany, particularly in Berlin and Frankfurt-am-Mein, the
two cities which played the leading role in their construction because of the support of municipal
authorities represented by their respective City Architects, Martin Wagner in Berlin (from 1926) and
Ernst May in Frankfurt-am-Main (from 1925).
In newly-built large housing estates, colour was to counteract the monotony of plain walls and
give the complex as a whole an aesthetic value by emphasising its architectural unity. It was also
assigned an important role in satisfying the residents' psychological needs of living in a friendly
environment in harmony with nature. It was to facilitate the identification of individual buildings
and thus increase the individual's sense of security. The polychrome colour design was also to com-
pensate for relatively smaller green areas: in comparison with the housing estates reflecting the
garden-town idea, which had been popular in Germany in the preceding period, the proportion of
space allocated for private gardens was reduced in favour of communal green areas. Fernand Leger
compared polychrome buildings to a floral bouquet.270 Progressive architects insisted that the psy-
chological need for colour in architectural design increased in proportion to the degree of artificial-
ity in one's environment. Those who lived in high-risers, promoted by the Functionalists as the most
economical solution to the housing problem, had their contact with nature limited to the communal
green areas. Thus, colour was viewed as a means to substitute for the reduced or missing nature, to
unite the organic with the manmade.
270 Hans Jorg Rieger, op.cit., p. 139.