Academy Challenge: Discover the Vienna Werkbund Estate

Werkbund estates throughout Europe bring together experimental architecture. Initiated by European Werkbunds, the exhibitions showcased temporary and permanent buildings. Probably the best-known Werkbund Estate is the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart. But the architects of modernism also let off steam in Vienna. Our Baumeister Academy winner Theresa Wunder set off for us to discover the modernism of the Vienna Werkbund Estate.

Almost every architecture student in Germany knows the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart. It is considered the model estate of classical modernism, where icons such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Pieter Oud and Hans Scharoun immortalized themselves. Josef Frank was the only Austrian architect invited to Stuttgart in 1927. Inspired by the Stuttgart Building Exhibition, he initiated the Vienna Werkbund Estate in 1929 – which was in no way inferior to the one in Stuttgart.

Under the Social Democratic government in red Vienna, large municipal housing estates, so-called superblocks, were built to counteract the housing shortage after the First World War. However, this was only one answer to the housing question. Some architects, including Adolf Loos, were supporters of the garden city movement. As a result, not only superblocks but also loose housing estates with kitchen gardens were built between the world wars. The idea of the Vienna Werkbund Estate emerged from this garden city movement at the end of the 1920s. In the 10th district of Hietzing, 33 architects – including Adolf Loos, Gerrit Rietveld and Margarethe Schütte-Lihotzky – created a total of 70 model houses.

The buildings convey the idea of modern living, but with a decisive difference to the Stuttgart Werkbund Estate. Although the living spaces provide a modern framework, the residents can design the interior individually. This difference to the Weissenhof Estate underlines Josef Frank’s opinion of the Stuttgart model: “Modern German architecture may be functional, practical, correct in principle, often even attractive, but it remains lifeless.”

All pictures by Theresa Wunder.

At the same time as the Vienna Werkbund Estate, Josef Frank built the Villa Beer at Wenzgasse 12, just a twenty-minute walk from the Werkbund Estate, together with the Austrian architect Oskar Wlach. The building for the rubber shoe sole manufacturer Julius Beer also became Frank’s built manifesto. It combines the modern ideas from his essay “The House as Path and Place”. As a visitor, you experience this building as a small town in which narrow alleyways lead to squares and where you can rest in niches. Josef Frank was not only an architect, but also a designer in his furniture store “Haus und Garten”, which he ran together with Oskar Wlach. The furniture and wallpaper for Villa Beer also came from this company.

While the houses in the Werkbund Estate are still inhabited today, Villa Beer is empty. Visits are only possible once a year. The Architekturzentrum Wien offers guided tours under the motto “Alles Frank”.

The Baumeister Academy is an internship project of the architecture magazine Baumeister and is supported by GRAPHISOFT and BAU 2019.