Page 37 - Dreamscapes Magazine | Winter 2021-2022

workers palaces along Karl-Marx-Allee in East Berlin ran into similar cost problems.
In the end, at the height of the Cold War neither side of the Berlin Wall could declare total victory in the blueprint battle.
A JOURNEY BACK TO
THE CRADLE OF THE BAUHAUS
A few days before my excursion to Hansaviertel, I had hopped a train from Berlin to the historic city of Weimar. In 1919, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus School of Design there, favouring func- tional shapes, industrial materials and streamlined design that largely sidelined ornamental flourishes. Six years after its founding, the Bauhaus was relaunched in the nearby city of Dessau, which commis- sioned Gropius to design his model Bauhaus Building with its now iconic glass curtain walls. (The building, which is on the Dessau University campus where Gropius taught architecture, was recently renovated and opened its doors to the public two years ago for the Bauhaus cen- tennial.) The liberal-thinking school then relocated to Berlin in 1932 where it was promptly shut down when Hitler came to power one year later. Its exiled disciples spread across the globe.
BRINGING NATURE INDOORS
After my foray to Weimar and Dessau, I see these Bauhaus ideals play out in the
Hansaviertel. While all of the Hansaviertel homes are not strictly Bauhaus, certainly most are imbued with Bauhaus principles, especially the idea of harmoniously bal- anced geometric shapes and glass walls that allow for light and the possibility of seeing greenery within a building. My guide and I ambled over to the apartment designed by Aalto. I oohed at the way the Finnish archi- tect designed the building so that natural light filters through to every apartment. I also lapped up how the column-supported, open and covered alfresco atrium connects opposite sides of the buildings and crescendos to generous views of green space. I half-jokingly asked David if we could stay long enough for a resident to invite us inside to see their place.
A HARMONIOUS ENDING
Before the tour wrapped up, we headed to another of Hansaviertel’s famous buildings: an all-concrete 17-storey high-rise that rises
above a crop of trees. The “Giraffe,” as David tells me it’s called, was designed by Klaus Müller-Rehm and Gerhard Siegmann. The whimsical nickname of this minimalist building, given because it protrudes from the trees like the long-necked animal in the nearby zoo, made me smile. The brown- trimmed windows even reminded me of a giraffe’s spots.
Looking at all the Bauhaus-inspired buildings, even on a cold January day, when there were no children playing on the green spaces designed for them, I couldn’t help feel just how much the neighbourhood captures the imagination with its progressive ideals and sense of possibility.
Now, how about this for a happy ending to a story about rivalling design ideologies? Berlin’s Hansaviertel and the Karl-Marx-Allee in the former East Berlin are together being considered for a UNESCO World Heritage Site status to be designated in 2022. DS
TRAVEL PLANNER
Lufthansa flies daily to Berlin from several Canadian cities lufthansa.com Pullmann Berlin Schweizerhof pullman-berlin-schweizerhof.com and
the Ku’ Damm 101 kudamm101.com are two boutique hotels in the Bauhaus style, not far from the Hansaviertel and the Tiergarten.
visitBerlin and art:berlin offer walking tours of the Hansaviertel visitBerlin.de/en/hansaviertel and artberlin-online.de/en/international-architecture-1957-2/
In Dessau, take a guided tour of Gropius’ seminal Bauhaus Building bauhaus-dessau.de/en/visit/opening-hours.html
WINTER 2021/2022 DREAMSCAPES 37