Architecture for Barbarians: Ludwig Hilberseimer and the Rise of the Generic City

Author(s): Pier Vittorio Aureli

Source: AA Files, No. 63 (2011), pp. 3-18
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
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 Architecture for
Barbarians
Ludwig Hilberseimer and
the Rise of the Generic City

Pier Vittorio Aureli

George Grosz,
Grey Day, 1921
© Neue Nationalgalerie,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

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In his controversial pamphlet, Römischer
Katholizismus und Politische Form (1923), the
political theorist Carl Schmitt argued that
economic reasoning is incapable of any cultural,
visual or political representation because
ultimately it is simply what it does. Unlike
categories such as god, the people, the state,
the public, freedom or equality, any ideas about
the economy arising out of technical data are
unrepresentable and instead appear only as
a matter of facts. According to Schmitt, in a
world dominated by the mechanistic flow of
production, there is no possibility of establish-
ing any condition of value or charisma. In
contrast to other traditions of representation
The man who hasn 4 signed anything,
who has left no picture
Who was not there, who said nothing:
How can they catch him?
Erase the traces!
Bertoldi Brecht, poem from the
Reader for Those Who
Live in Cities, 1930
fundamental principle of economic mastery is tion are abstract because they do not refer to one
particular moment of their manifestation but
to exclude any convincing process of representa-
tion. At the core of his project, Hilberseimer
saw the reduction of architecture and the arts
what allows that potential - that is, the circula-
tion of consumption, or even the social in its
most disguised aspect).
The process by which the generic becomes
an explicit attribute of capitalistic production is
the process of abstraction. In the Grundrisse Karl
Marx describes abstraction as both a method of
political economy and a concrete reality that
permeates the ethos of capitalism. According to
Marx abstraction is a positive thing, a concrete
reality. Categories such as labour and produc-
instead constitute general frameworks that
determine economic relations. For Marx

- such as those practised by the church or the to their immanent generic properties not just abstractions such as 'labour in general' express
monarchy, whose expertise is based on meta- as the mechanical consequence of the ethos the ethos of a society in which individuals move
physical and transcendental values (identifying of capitalistic production, but as a potentially easily from one job to another, indifferent to the
a representative who or what) - the abstraction proactive attempt to provide an aesthetic, kind of work they do. In this way, the most
of the modern factory is incapable of being a pedagogical value and a social form - that is, simple abstraction - labour as a generic faculty
represented. To support this he cited the to contain such an ethos. As such, his work - - stripped of its artisan-like character, becomes
example of the Soviet republic, which had to encompassing not just his designs but his the most advanced means of capital. As Franc-
use obsolete emblems to signify work - such as articles and books - fundamentally represents esco Marnilo has demonstrated, the more work
the hammer and the sickle - in order to find a (in all senses of the word) the industrial metrop- is reduced to its generic essence as labour sans
representative symbol for communism, despite olis precisely because it removes any depiction phrase , the more the spatial apparatus that is
the fact that these seemed obviously anachro- that is not the most generic. On numerous meant to extract surplus value from labour
nistic when seen alongside Lenin's own occasions Hilberseimer stated that the general embodies the barest condition of possibility.
definition of communism as 'soviet + electrifica- and the typical constitute the only architectural This minimal condition is what in architecture
tion'.1 For Schmitt, the very impossibility of criteria in the modern metropolis.2 This we call the typical plan , a reduction of architec-
representation in an industrial society becomes statement, however, should not be understood ture to its most essential, universal structural
the fertile ground for value-free aesthetic as a polemical plea for functional simplicity system, and the figure that postulates the
expressions - once the agency of representation and the standardisation of material compo- indifference of the building structure towards its
has collapsed, any figuration or symbolism nents. Rather, his argument was rooted in spatial and distributive organisation. Such a
becomes merely superficial, disconnected from a much more profound understanding of the plan serves the purpose of making the subject's
the infinitesimal and ever-changing universe physical and cultural form of the metropolis. experience of place as if simultaneous with other
of technological precision. Over the following pages I would like to recon- places. This is made possible through a spatial
With the rise of industrialisation, therefore, struct Hilberseimer's understanding of the organisation that implies interaction rather
and its expanding tenets of production, capitalistic metropolis by embracing the totality
then self-sufficiency, which in turn allows for the
circulation, consumption and the efficient of its project (rather than through the entirety coexistence of qualitatively different elements
division of labour, it was no surprise that art of his projects - an archival undertaking that is within an overall 'collage-like totality'.5 Infinitely
and architecture were no longer considered desperately required, given the scarce literaturereproducible, by virtue of its simple layout and
persuasive representations of some transcen- indifference towards any context, the typical
available on such a key protagonist of twentieth-
dental message, but only realities in themselves. century architecture).3 And so the totality plan became the architectural apparatus of the
These realities were dictated by their form, of Hilberseimer's project is evoked here by factory - the place of work par excellence. And
space, mass and movement - in other words, reinterpreting its theoretical premises as they just as labour itself is a generic and ubiquitous
by their most generic, visible properties. In were manifested during the German period of condition informing all aspects of social life,
capitalistic production the generic is not the his work, and in light of today's awareness that then the apparatus of the typical plan soon
default result of its various forces, but more the generic is no longer the epiphany of a new spread out from the factory to underpin the
fundamentally the raw material of those actual urban reality but the accomplished condition whole building system of the city. As I will argue
forces. And so as Paolo Virno would have it, of our civilisation.4 over the following pages, the spatial logic of
capitalism puts to work the most generic The term generic comes from the Greek typical plan is what constitutes Hilberseimer's
faculties of the human species, like its capacity genus , meaning 'race', 'kind' or 'species', and (and Mies's) idea of architecture.
to move, to adapt to any environment, to speak, from the verbs 'generating' and 'producing'. It Groszstadt Architektur (1927), Hilberseimer's
to remember, to abstract, to cooperate with refers to an undifferentiated common quality most important book, can be understood as one
others - that is, human nature without qualities. that appears prior to that of the individual. of the very few attempts to theorise the city in
Within the history of architecture there is Generic is thus both what is common and what relation to its role as a concentration of capital
no more drastic representation of the generic is coming-into-being, what is potential. It is forand workers. Though many of its examples and
ethos of capitalistic production and the urban this reason that the generic is a fundamental case studies were already outdated by the time
consequences of economic reasoning than the category of capitalist production. If capitalismHilberseimer
is moved to the United States in the

work of Ludwig Hilberseimer (1885-1967). It is first of all the management of production, and late 1930s, the premise of the book in many ways
worth stating from the outset, however, that herenot simply production perse , then what is at indicates the meaning and direction of all of
Hilberseimer's work. The book itself is organ-
the term representation is introduced paradoxi- stake is not only what is being produced but also
cally. Indeed, as Schmitt has led us to believe, thethe very potential for production (as much as ised into ten chapters. The first two are devoted

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to the reality of the Groszstadt as an unprec- Stübben, Reinhard Baumeisterand Camillo human association where the sole design
edented urban formation driven by capital, Sitte, who all emphasised the continuity of principles are to manage traffic circulation and
while the last section details a general idea of urban design, from the modern period all the structure financial investment.

architecture conceived in response to this new
urban condition. The chapters in between can
be understood as an atlas of the most important
programmes for the new capitalist city, address-
ing, in succession, housing, commercial
building, skyscrapers, galleries and theatres,
way back to antiquity. There was, however,
one important, perhaps unlikely, precedent
for Hilberseimer's conception of the modern
metropolis as distinct from anything that
had come before it: Otto Wagner's ideas about
planning. Despite the obvious disparities in
This approach is best illustrated by the
renderings for the plan for Vienna. If Wagner' s
most renowned buildings have the reputation
of being tours deforce of decoration, then his
Groszstadt in contrast is stripped bare and
revealed in its utmost use-value dimension.

stations and airports, industrial buildings
and, finally, the differences between traditional
artisanal construction techniques and the
contemporary building industry.
Though Groszstadt Architektur is essentially
a city planning manual, each programme is
illustrated by a careful selection of projects -
built and unbuilt - that Hilberseimer presents as
exemplary for the modern metropolis. The
selection is rather eclectic in terms of its style
and language, ranging from Le Corbusier's Ville
their architectural styles, the similarity of their
approach to the city is striking. Only in their
politics do the two architects really diverge.
In 19 1 1 Wagner had published his own
pamphlet - significantly also titled Die Gro-
szstadt -devoted to the three main aspects of
urban design: the cityscape, the planning of
the city and the economic foundations of the
modern metropolis.6 With this small book
Wagner attacked a kind of palliative approach to
urban design, and one based on historical
In particular, one can see how the overall plan
is rendered through a graphic minimalism that
reduces the city form to a radial circulation
system superimposed over the topography of its
site. Another striking image features a bird's-eye
perspective of the new central park in what
was imagined as Vienna's 22nd district. In this
drawing the city appears as a vast field of
urbanisation made up of the endless repetition
of generic buildings. For Wagner, a fundamental
attribute of the Groszstadt had to embrace

Contemporaine to Adolf Loos's terraced houses, precedents and a purely morphological the social anonymity of its environment, best
from Frank Lloyd Wright's Lexington Terraces approach to the city - an approach that reached expressed by an architectural and urban form
to Anton Brenner's apartment block in Rauch- its apogee with Sitte's Der Stadtbau (1889).7 made of straight lines, pure volumes and
fangkehrergasse, from Mies van der Rohe's 1923 Instead, Wagner advocated a 'realist' attitude elemental compositions.
design for an office building to Henry van der and an urban model that would take into Ironically, the best individual exemplar of
Velde's Werkbund theatre. But nevertheless account not only the large-scale form of the Wagner's Groszstadt was later to be found in
metropolis, but also its social and economic a building designed by a fierce critic of Wagner's
there is a common thread running throughout:
notably, the appropriateness of the buildingsstructures. Before Hilberseimer, Wagner wasover-decorated style: the Villa Moller (1927-28)
to their programmatic and structural purpose. by Adolf Loos, an architect Hilberseimer hugely
therefore the very first architect to view the city
Compared to Le Corbusier's Vers une architec-as the result of economic processes, and whose
admired. Loos' house is defined by the opposi-
form needed to be radically re-imagined. He tion between its rich articulated interior and the
ture , published fouryears earlier, Hilberseimer's
book is not so much a manifesto for a new recognised, for example, that the city's funda- radical simplicity of its exterior. The building's
architecture as a realist compendium of mental asset was no longer the building, but facade seems to confirm Wagner's idea of the
architectural solutions for the problems then rather the dynamism of the traffic systems Groszstadt while its rooms create the illusion of

whose logic shaped the urban form. Another a more articulated and personalised space:
confronting the metropolis. The ordering of the
chapters and the selection of the various projects
innovative aspect of Wagner's project for the city
the Raumplan. It was the simplicity of the Villa
reflect an attempt to illustrate the most obvious was his emphasis on economic management.Moller's outward appearance that resonated
typologies of the totalising space of industrial The city, he argued, offered a kind of investment
most powerfully with Hilberseimer's elementa-
production, encompassing not only industrial opportunity where, as in Haussmann's Paris, rist architecture; its mute volumes offered as
buildings such as factories but also housing, expenditure on public spaces could be recouped
the most appropriate mirrored reflection of the
offices and theatres. In this way, implicit to the from the appreciation of private land values.8urban anonymity that surrounded it. Hilber-
As a result, Wagner attempted to subsume the
study is a critique of the existing city focused seimer's only change to its design would have
not on its purpose but in how such purpose hadindividuality of the building into a predefinedbeen to have erased any opposition, so that its
not been answered by an adequate project. planning principle. This approach had already
interior spoke to the same, resigned feelings of
For Hilberseimer the new city - the Groszstadt been anticipated by Wagner's plan for greaterplacelessness as its external form and silhouette.
- requires an overall structural, economic and Vienna in 1893, which proposed an unlimited For both Wagner and Hilberseimer, then,
spatial plan that goes beyond the scale of the expansion of the city fuelled by the concentra-the modern city is the outcome of the concentra-
traditional city. For this reason, he places greattion of capital. This Groszstadt was to be divided
tion of capital and the scientific and technical
emphasis on both the problem of the individual
by radial roads into distinct districts, each innovations this triggers. The international
cell (or room or apartment) and on traffic containing between 100,000 and 150,000 nature of capital (by this time, already defined by
circulation, since it is precisely by linking theseinhabitants. Residential and public facilities Marx), means that the modern city is also subject
two extreme scales that it becomes possible were distributed uniformly throughout with a to globalising influences, or as Hilberseimer put
to define the strategic scale of the urban project.generic gridiron; the effect of which was that it, 'The big city is the product of the capitalistic
Above all Hilberseimer argued that the apart from its central monumental axis, this omnipotence, a symbol of its anonymity, an
Groszstadt was the product of economic urban type whose social, economic and psycho-
Groszstadt was read only as an infinite carpet of
development and the natural consequence of urbanisation formed by anonymous buildings,
logical characteristics give to its inhabitants the
modern industry. Accordingly, the modern blocks and streets - an anonymity of urban form
most radical social proximity, and greater
metropolis was fundamentally different from made explicit by the economic and managerial
isolation. Everything that is local and individual
the traditional city, which had never experienced
condition of the city. Anticipating Schmitt' s is overwhelmed by the city's vertiginous and
industrial production on such a massive and scepticism about the possibility of representing
frantic development. In terms of their main
totalising scale. What is interesting about this an economic process, Wagner seems to characteristics, big cities located in different
claim is that in making it Hilberseimer broke suggest that the impact of urban economics parts of the world resemble each other.'9 This
with the tradition of urban theorists like Josephreduces the city to a non-descript place of sameness, or generic quality, forms the main

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starting point for Hilberseimer's metropolis - production, such as a newspaper headquarters, Monatshefte , for which he acted as resident art
ideas presented in the last chapter of Groszstadt but for now it is important to note how the same critic, Hilberseimer, unlike Mies, was never
Architektur ; which itself had already been approach to the elevation can be found in other shy in aligning his work as an architect to the
separately published a fewyears earlier in the projects by Hilberseimer, such as a proposal politics of the German Social Democratic Party.
form of a small pamphlet titled Grossstadtbaut- for a Boarding House (1922) and the Fabrikbau Founded in the 1870s, the spd's great innovation
en. In this small book Hilberseimer stated (1926), a mixed-use building that combines was to impose the discipline of a mass party on
that there are three fundamental fields in which housing and commercial spaces in a single what were then relatively dispersed unions and
to advance the architecture of the modern city: block. The only surviving plan of the Fabrikbau industrial societies, in the process gaining
housing, commerce and the factory. For presents a square comprised of four detached bargaining power for the German working class.
Hilberseimer all three types were crucially slabs of varying heights. While these height This strategy was possible largely because it
differences maximise the insulation of the
enabled by the plan, with the individual building emerged in parallel with the increased scale
volume and the form of its elevation conceived building, the uniformity of both plan and facade
of workers' movements and oppositional
as a direct consequence of the plan - that is, does not reflect the diversity of the programme groups,
- challenging the authority of Bismarck's
forms and facades are extrusions. Any other a concealment made even more striking by imperialism. In spite of the reputation and
formal manipulation is for Hilberseimer Hilberseimer's use not only of the same militaristic ambitions of the Machstaat,
redundant. As a result, the volumes are consist-
construction techniques for production spaces Bismarck's newly unified German empire was
ently cubic and elemental, and their surfaces are
and residential spaces, but also the same forms.
in the words of Friedrich Naumann, a 'republic
evenly covered with openings, so that rather than
One could argue that this indifference of form founded on labour'.11 And it was precisely this
being 'negatives' on the facades, the windows towards what it contains is the outcome of the foundational class, once mobilised through the
constitute a uniform pattern that reinforces very logic of the typical plan, in which (as we have
SPD into a political party - the only one of its kind
the building's generic appearance. Here seen) architecture as fixed capital is deployed in Europe at the time - that soon developed the
Hilberseimer is appropriating the spatial logic in order to harness and organise in the most clout to influence state policy on the organisa-
of industrial buildings - a logic strictly deter- rational way the worker's generic capacity for tion of labour. This political pressure quickly
production. This indifference towards living
mined by the plan - and applying it to a domestic forced a dramatic development of Germany's
typology. Yet like Mies, he never actually and working, and the transfer of the spatial and industrial sector in the period immediately
designed a factory (the ultimate manifestationformal framework of the factory to office space following the 1871 proclamation of the Second
of the typical plan). Instead he focused his and housing, also seems to parallel the increas- Reich. In the space of a few decades Berlin, the
design speculations exclusively on housing and
ing industrialisation of white-collar work. new capital of this Reich, was also transformed,
offices, effectively extending the architecture If material production implied the isolation casting off its previous incarnation as a Prussian
of production from the factory, as the place of factory facilities from other zones of the city, garrison town to become an advanced global
of material production, to the entire city seen immaterial production implied the combina- metropolis, alongside cities like London and
as the totality of capitalist production. tion of living and working in the same place. New York. Much of this growth was based on the
In this regard, one of the most striking Hilberseimer's project thus made explicit development of Berlin's tertiary or service sector,
projects illustrated by Hilberseimer in a condition in which labour loses its specific with the transition from the Wilhelmine period
attributes and becomes generic by taking on
Grossstadtbauten is his competition entry for the to Weimar Berlin seeing the emergence of
Chicago Tribune Tower. This competition can be
any aspect of the city. a whole new type of industrial worker, the
considered a turning point in the architecture Moreover, compared to material production,
Kopfarbeiter , or 'brain-worker', the forerunner
of the high-rise, signifyingthe moment when where the choreography of the assembly line of the contemporary knowledge-worker.12
it ceased to be approached as an adaptation
dictates a predictable occupation of space and Deployed in the political party, the State
reduces workers to silent controllers, immate- bureaucratic apparatus, the private corporation
of monumental precedents and was recognised
instead as a new type on its own, and one that rial production creates an increasingly flexible and the nascent 'cultural' industry, these
required its own distinctive organisation. The pattern of human association and exchange. brain-workers became a key asset of the
brief had called for a headquarters building Confronted with this more open workplace advanced political economy. And it was precisely
that was efficient and at the same time iconic. scenario, in which the predictability of the this increasing professionalisation of intellec-
Accordingly, many of the resulting entries machine is replaced with the unpredictability tual life that led philosophers like Martin
emphasised the uniqueness of their proposals,of human behaviour, the architectural apparatusHeidegger to be so radically sceptical about the
but Hilberseimer's design - submitted retro- deployed to harness production must necessar-very nature of the public sphere - no longer the
spectively, after the competition deadline - ily strive towards a zero degree of formal and autonomous arena of political discussion and
addressed the brief as the rigorous application spatial articulation. Theoretical projects such confrontation, but rather, more fundamentally,
of the architecture of the typical plan. as Hilberseimer's Chicago Tribune Tower or a space of production. So intellectual functions,
If the typical plan was already the staple of Fabrikbau and Mies van der Rohe's officeonce embodied in the solitary and economically
disinterested individual, became with white-
many American high-rise buildings, what madebuilding of 1923 address precisely this defacto
industrialisation of white-collar work and the
Hilberseimer's entry novel was that the elevation collarwork, merely another segment of the
also reflected the uniformity of the plan. Indeed,consequent integration of the whole city, with industrial wage system. However, because of the
the correspondence between the plan and its programmes of living, commerce and produc-
lack of traditional attributes of class representa-
the elevation of the Chicago Tribune seems tion, into the same generic system. tion in Germany at that time, the economic
to develop from a precedent - Albert Kahn's But before analysing the implications of this
conditions of the Kopfarbeiter were actually
Highland Park Factory in Detroit (1908) - scenario it is important to note that Hilber- inferior to those of the Facharbeiter or skilled

analysed in Hilberseimer's book on the use of seimer's commitment to a single, typical design
worker. Nonetheless, by the 1920s, the Kopfarbe-
concrete, Beton als Gestalter.10 We will consider system, and even to architecture and urban iter had become the central component in
later the implications of Hilberseimer's planning as a whole, was always coloured by his
the organisation of labour in Berlin. As Sergio
translation of an architecture for material political allegiances. A frequent contributor Bologna has noted, a register of the prevalence
production into an architecture for immaterialto the social democratic monthly Socialistische of this new urban worker during the Weimar

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 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Berlin Development Project,
Friedrichstadt District: Office and Commercial Buildings, 1928
© The Art Institute of Chicago

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 Ludwig Hilberseimer,
Chicago Tribune competition entry, 1922
© Ryerson & Burnham Archives,
the Art Institute of Chicago

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period is illustrated by the fact that there were
some 20 daily newspapers in Berlin, indicating
a substantial publishing industry whose workers
were in large part journalists, editors, writers
and designers. The transformation of this labour
force would significantly alter class structures
in Germany and, especially in 1920s Berlin,
would bring home to working-class movements
such as the trades unions and the spd the rising
importance of the Mittelstand or middle-class
as a key component of the political struggles of
Weimar Germany.
Returning to Hilberseimer, it is against this
political backdrop that we have to consider his
design is that its form is coherent both with the
overall form of the town - a rectangle that results
from the simple multiplication of the block
- and with the logic of the interior of the
residential units. Following the linear configura-
tion of the thin slabs, the various rooms of
the apartments are distributed in a linear way.
By introducing a small atrium, Hilberseimer
also removes a classic topos of the traditional
apartment - the corridor. These two devices
create a highly flexible apartment in which the
different rooms can potentially merge into
larger spaces. Much of the furniture is built in,
a technique that was inspired by American hotel
of his life, Hilberseimer believed that in order
to define the project for the modern metropolis,
one had first to abstract the reality of the city
to a set of problems, from which it would then
be possible to define architectural and urban
principles. Hence abstraction is for Hilber-
seimer not a priori , but rather an attempt to
reach an overall understanding of the manifold
reality of the metropolis.
The most famous project of Hilberseimer's
German period was not, however, the Satellite
City, but its successor, the High-Rise City for
one million inhabitants - a project that can be
seen as both an evolution and contradiction of

two most important theoretical projects, the rooms and the cabins of transatlantic shipping the premises of its forerunner. It is an evolution
Hochhausstadt or High-Rise City (1925) and the liners. The bedrooms, Schlafkabine , are also because it further radicalises the integrative
Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung{ 1928), a proposal like a ship's cabin in that they are just large approach, focusing on the two extreme scales
for the development of a tertiary and commer- enough to sleep in. of the city - the single cell and the overall urban
cial district in the centre of Berlin. Hilber- Through the design of these Existenzmini- plan. And it is a contradiction because it is
seimer' s first projects for the city, published in mum bedrooms and walls that incorporated formulated as a critique of the horizontal
1919, had focused on common typologies such furniture, it is clear that Hilberseimer under- expansion of the city and, more significantly, of
as the urban villa, theatre, station, market and stood the inhabitants of his city as nomads, its separation into two distinct zones for working
town hall.13 All are characterised by an elementa-unencumbered by heavy possessions and able and living. Published in Gr oszstadt Architektur
rist composition that seems to put into practice to move wherever their work took them. The in 1924, the High-Rise City develops out of the
his theoretical writings on art, and specifically domestic space was therefore not so much a Zeilenbau typology of the Satellite City, but with
the thesis that any idea or intention had to space to dwell as a place to simply inhabit for the vital difference that living and working space
be expressed in the simplest, most direct way a while, like a hotel room. At the other end of the are integrated within each block. Offices and
possible so as to avoid the distortions of the scale, Hilberseimer imagined the satellite city shops are contained on the lower level, in
creative process. Here, form reveals its potentialas a system of residential units - a city of housing a five-storey plinth, while the apartments rise
to address the reality of the industrialised world, {Wohnstadt) - surrounding the city of work above them, in 15-storey slabs. This initial
which according to Hilberseimer is less and less С Arbeitsstadt ). The whole system would be scheme makes no provision for factories, which
available to the value-free manipulations of connected by railway lines - the city as organic seems to confirm that Hilberseimer saw labour

the creative genius. Simplicity of form is thus Grosssiedlung. Juxtaposing the architectural and in the metropolis as increasingly tertiary,
for Hilberseimer not a retreat from reality, but the planning solutions of his proposal, Hilber- involving the production of services rather than
rather the most realistic means to approach seimer formulates what would be the corner- goods. As our contemporary post-zoning,
the complexity of the city whose social, political stone of his approach: the project of the city post-Fordist metropolis demonstrates, these are
and economic forms elude the pretensions the only conditions of labour that allow the
requires the design of the two opposite scales of
of unrestricted creativity. the individual living unit and the general urbanintegration of working and living spaces in the
This attitude is especially apparent in the plan. The building - the architectural object - same place. Thus Hilberseimer's High-Rise City
projects presented in Grossstadtbauten and is thus subordinate to, if not subsumed by, these
was the first urban plan to be based on a service
above all in his design for a Trabantenstadt , scales, with its form strictly dependent on the economy, which was precisely the economy that
or Satellite City, of 1925, which reveals Hilber- rules governing the micro- and macro-forms ofwas emerging in Berlin at that time.
the city. Yet what is new and exceptional about
seimer' s approach to city planning as an attempt Describing his project in Groszstadt
to find an overall relationship between the Architektur , Hilberseimer draws a contrast with
this integrative approach is that it does not imply
large-scale planning of the system and the the total design of the city, as was common in Le Corbusier's own City for Three Million
architectural unit or housing block. The answerturn-of-the-century urban planning. Inhabitants (1922).15 While he praises
for Hilberseimer was the Zeilenbau or terraced Instead of detailed plans, Hilberseimer Le Corbusier's intention to offer an abstract,
block, the defining typology within an overall also presents only a few strategic drawings. general model for the city, rather than just
city plan that developed further the decentral- What's more, these drawings are assumed to ad-hoc solutions, he criticises the rationale
ised ideas of not just Ebenezer Howard and be abstractions and thus liable to modification underpinning the plan. According to Hilber-
Raymond Unwin but also Ernst May. The two when applied to a specific project. For Hilber-seimer, Le Corbusier's proposal to increase
long sides of the Zeilenbau consist of thin seimer, this abstraction of the plan is not a the population density in the city centre while
mid-rise slabs oriented north-south to optimise
withdrawal from the chaos of the metropolis,simultaneously maintaining a vast open ground
but rather the only possible means to addressplane as the base for high-rise towers - the
daylight in the living spaces, while the two short
sides, containing the commercial facilities, so-called Cartesian skyscrapers - was based on
the extent of its problems, whose vastness eludes
are arranged along the east-west streets and the scale of the traditional forms of the city - false assumptions, as it collapsed together the
are low-rise to keep the block open. The result the individual block, the neighbourhood, the densities of working areas and residential areas
district. Apparent in a number of his writings,while proposing a strict separation of the two.
is a much more compact town form than either
the English garden cities or the planned from both the German and American periodsThe result was an imbalanced spatial organisa-
medieval cities, such as Montpazier in France, tion that failed to address what Hilberseimer
Overleaf: Ludwig Hilberseimer, High-Rise City,
that Hilberseimer would later study (and that saw as the fundamental issue of the contempo-
perspective view looking north-south, 1924
Richard Pommer has proposed as a direct © Ryerson & Burnham Archives, rary metropolis: circulation and mobility. If
precedent).14 An interesting aspect of the block the Art Institute of Chicago Le Corbusier's city is still in effect a composition

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/';-=09 )(8* =-0/']

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of different city districts, functional zones and Accordingly, distributive zoning and diverse like his texts, is crucial for understanding the
different typologies, then Hilberseimer's is meaning of his design work.
typologies disappear because the inhabitants of
fundamentally a system that overcomes the the High-Rise City live, work and move every- But how exactly did Hilberseimer's architec-
separation of zones and functions and organises where. As a comparative analysis of two ideal tural aesthetic develop? In the Weimar years
the city as an overall isotropic condition. cities, one can see that in Le Corbusier's one can trace his influences through his role in
There is, however, an even more radical Berlin's flourishing publishing scene, writing
hierarchical City for Three Million programmatic
difference between Hilberseimer's and Le diversity is attained by means of formal alterna-on art and architecture for Der Einzige, Feuer
Corbusier's conceptions of the city, which tives, whereas in Hilberseimer's High-Rise Cityand Das Kunstblatt- writings all characterised
it is addressed by assembling all the elements by their idealism and the obvious influence of
concerns the very understanding of urban form
and its relationship with architecture. In his of the city - domestic space, office space, roads,Friedrich Nietzsche - as well as, most signifi-
proposal Le Corbusier seems to arrange railway lines, etc - into one gridded composition
cantly, the avant-garde journal G and the spd
different building types according to the figures
that can be repeated ad infinitum. Form is no periodical Sozialistische Monatshefte, where
of classical architecture: for example, the space
longer seen as representation but as process, he was columnist from 1920 to 1933. As these
between the Cartesian skyscrapers evokes the
stripped of any figurative or individualistic articles make clear, he saw art criticism not as
spatiality of the typical Parisian classicist square;
features, in order to perform in the most rational,
an end in itself but as part of a larger project
which understood art as a vehicle for social and
the long, set-back blocks mimic the layout ofuniform way. The city is reduced to its reproduc-
the Palace of Versailles; the Immeuble Villa tive conditions. Its image may seem frighteningly
political emancipation. At first glance,
reinterprets the communitarian form of the monolithic, but it also appears to be serene, Hilberseimer's choice of topics seems quite
abbey cloister; and the form of the main trainbecause it has eliminated any formal anxiety eclectic, ranging from the expressionist art
and air terminal at the city centre suggests the of Max Pechstein to Paul Klee, from baroque
through the radical deployment of a generic type.
outline of Michelangelo's plan for St Peter's in The High-Rise City was published first to Dada, from twentieth-century classicism
Rome.16 Moreover, Le Corbusier clearly uses in Grossstadtbauten in 1925 and again a year to constructivism. Yet together they trace not
only a clear position within the arts, but also
diverse building typologies, moving from thelater in the journal G - Zeitschrift für elementare
monumental in the centre to the more suburban Gestaltung.17 In these early publications, an emerging 'aesthetic project' that seems to
Hilberseimer uses the High-Rise City as
at the periphery, whereas Hilberseimer uses only implicitly support and motivate the 'style' of
a critique of contemporary approaches to
one building type - a hybrid of blocks and slabs his architectural language.
in which all civic activities, from production tocity-planning. For example, in Grossstadtbauten As much as the subjects of his articles,
living to commerce, are superimposed ratherthe project is briefly introduced as a riposte Hilberseimer's art criticism is also distin-
than zoned in different locations. Thus the form to the phenomena of satellite towns and the guished by the apparent avoidance of any
unlimited horizontal expansion of the city.
of the city emerges from the repetition of a single polemic. Though he maintains a strong position
element or type, and reflects the logic of the While in G the High-Rise City is mentioned in that aligns him with the contemporary avant-
most conventional geometry possible - that of an article criticising an exhibition of Americangarde, he is consistently analytical and reflective,
the grid. The circulation system of the High-Risearchitecture organised in Berlin: Hilberseimerrather than dismissive or celebratory. It is also
wants to draw a contrast with the way the
City, then, is uniformly extended in all directions through his writings on art that one can begin
by the superimposition of train tracks, metro utilitarian raison d'être of much American to understand his ideas about architecture.

lines, trams, roads and pedestrian streets into architecture is concealed within buildings that'Form und Individuum' (Form and Individual),
a kind of tartan pattern. For Hilberseimer, are over-decorated or designed in the style of published in Der Einzige in 1919, spells out his
typological diversification no longer seems to traditional architectures. Thus the High-Rise key ideas, focusing on the potential of art to
be an issue. become an instrument of synthesis able to
City is not only a means to counter the European
The slabs of the High-Rise City are actually trend to expand cities by decentralising express the general character of society.19 In
residential areas (a trend that Hilberseimer
a radical development of the Zeilenbau typology order to define this general character, Hilber-
already used in the plan for the Satellite City. himself had followed in his Satellite City project
seimer used Alois Riegl's category of the
Here, the hotel is adopted as a model for Kunstwollen (Will to Art), which indicated the
in 1924), but also an attempt to un-mask the very
generic, abstract ethos of the city. This second general impulse driving a particular moment
housing, a choice that seems to develop from his
attempt is clearly articulated, not so much in of artistic production. Such impulses, according
project for a Boarding House (1926), a high-rise
residential building placed on a plinth contain-
Hilberseimer's text, as in the very peculiar styleto Riegl, are contingent, that is, they develop in
ing communal facilities. 'Boarding' - the of his drawings. These are neither futuristic, a specific historical period, but are independent
possibility of renting and sharing rooms rather like Sant'Elia's drawings for his Città Nuova, from mimetic or technological concerns.
than apartments - is interpreted by Hilberseimer Moreover, Kunstwollen transcends the differ-
nor Utopian, in the mould of Bruno Taut's Alpine
as an emerging characteristic of the modern Architektur. Harsh, dry, almost dystopian, ences between the arts and manifests itself as

metropolis, in which the extreme mobility of Hilberseimer's style of drawing - and the two the totality of artistic activity. For Hilberseimer,
workers calls for increasingly flexible living famous single-point perspectives of the then, it is not simply a category for reading art,
conditions. In the High-Rise City these condi- High-Rise City in particular - has been both but also, and above all, a concept for producing
tions are not confined to special buildings but a source of fascination and the major trigger for
art in which the general is prioritised over the
are developed as a mass phenomenon of the rejecting his entire oeuvre. Notwithstanding cult of individual expression. For this reason
Hilberseimer's later dismissal of the High-RiseHilberseimer advocates an artistic (and
entire city. The hotel-like layout of the slabs, with
their corridors flanked by rooms, makes clear the
City, which in hindsight seemed to him 'more architectural) language reduced to the very
intention to go beyond the apartment and to a necropolis than a metropolis',18 one could essence of its material constitution. Only by
argue that the peculiar style of these drawings, reaching this zero degree is it able to represent
think of the city project as starting from the most
generic datum: the individual cell. Another and confront the conditions of its age.
Previous : Ludwig Hilberseimer, High-Rise City,
crucial aspect is that with the exception of the In this regard it is interesting to note that
perspective view looking east-west, 1924
general plan of the block, Hilberseimer does another fundamental reference for Hilber-
© Ryerson & Burnham Archives,
not specify the plan of the working spaces. the Art Institute of Chicago seimer's art criticism is the Nietzschean

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distinction between Dyonisian and Apollonian Hilberseimer, the use of perspective by within the gridiron of Berlin Friedrichstadt,
culture. The Dionysian principle, as discussed by De Chirico, Carrà and Grosz also appeared to but overturns the logic of its closed block forms,
Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, and represent- accentuate the strangeness of modern objects proposing instead the same Zeilenbau type
ed in the primitive form of Greek tragedy, is rather than bring them to a fabricated unity. found in the satellite Trabantenstadt and the

embodied by the collective and anonymous Instead of stabilising the experience of the high-rise Hochhausstadt - an open block made
voice of the chorus, while the classic Apollonian viewer, the use of perspective induces a sense of two parallel slabs placed on a plinth, which in
tragedy is propelled by individual characters. the vertigo, with infinite runs of buildings this case contains only commercial spaces and
It is thus from Nietzsche that Hilberseimer and objects. It seems clear, then, that the use exhibition halls - further elaborating on his slab
elaborates the concept of a generic, anonymous
of perspective in Hilberseimer's drawings is proposal for the Chicago Tribune project as much
profoundly indebted to these painters, whose
form as a primitive form, with the necessary force as Mies's project for di Bürohaus.
to confront its moment in history and reveal itswork is suspended between abstraction and The Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung may be
material and spiritual dimensions. Kunstwollenfiguration,
, between caricature and realism. considered the summation of, or epilogue to, all
and the idea of the primitive in art, are therefore At the same time what Hilberseimer Hilberseimer's previous projects. Moreover,
for Hilberseimer fundamental categories for emphasises in the work of De Chirico and unlike his proposal for the High-Rise City, this
framing the generic ethos of industrialisation Carrà is the search for a common and general time Hilberseimer provided plans and eleva-
and its consequences. From the point of view language transcending individual expression.tions as well as simply perspectives, so that it was
of Hilberseimer' s aesthetic project, the genericThis leads him, in a review written in the early possible to see in their precise spatial organisa-
is thus transformed from a bio-political 1920s, to link the neo-classicist tendency in tion the ideas he was putting forward. Among
apparatus - the material and immaterial form painting with another movement that could these, the clear, novel element of the scheme is
of the capitalist city driven by the forces of be considered its opposite: constructivism,22 his configuration of the plinth as a vast hypostyle
production and profit speculation - to a cultural
by reason of the correspondence between its hall containing a multitude of social activities
ethos in which the forces of industrialisation artistic methods and the collective nature of ranging from fairs to exhibitions. This commer-
are tamed and reformed as a possible project industrial work. Once again, Hilberseimer is cial-cultural element, missing from previous
for the social democratic city. using the example of an artistic movement in projects, reflects the importance of culture
Hilberseimer's art historical and philosophi-
order to highlight the search for a common and spectacle in the metropolitan life of Berlin.
cal references to social democracy in Riegl andlanguage that would go beyond the problem Accordingly, cultural activities are no longer
Nietzsche also seem to chime with its politicalof individual expression. Rather than take a separated from the workplace, but completely
manifestation in Germany at that time, and inposition in terms of artistic style, he prefers integrated within it. A fundamental reference for
particular with the revisionist thesis of Eduard
to extrapolate from any proposal a potential this unprecedented solution was Hilberseimer's
Bernstein, which states that the political is an contribution
act to his quest of an impersonal research for his book on Hallenbauten, which
of mediation between two irreducible poles: the approach to form that would not confine itselfhe was working on at this time and which was
to artistic movements but would instead reflect
reality of necessity (ie, the 'natural' conditions of published in 1931. Hallenbauten are unobstruct-
a growing awareness of the ethos of an increas-ed, wide horizontal spaces suitable for a large
economy) and the realm of duty (ie, the collective
will to socialism).20 There is an interesting
ingly industrialised and generic world. variety of functions and programmes, and
correspondence here between Riegl's concept Such a position is evident in Hilberseimer'sHilberseimer's interest in them seems to pick
of Kunstwollen, as a collective will to art inde- critical appraisal of Dada and of abstract film, of
up a discussion between Mies and Hugo Häring
pendent from material causes, and the Social which he was one of the earliest advocates, as on the nature of space. Mies had criticised
Democratic belief in a will to socialism inde- Edward Dimendberg has noted.23 What Hilber-Häring' s organic functionalism, which in his
pendent from the material conditions of the seimer appreciated in Richter's and Viking hallways in particular Mies saw as resulting in
economy. In both cases the agency of will stands Eggeling's films, in particular, was the attemptone end narrower than the other, meaning the
in direct relation to its material context - neces- to reduce filmic experience to an elemental space became asymmetrical, with people only
sity - without being overcome by it. This line language devoid of any naturalistic able to fully occupy one end. Instead, Mies
of reasoning allows Hilberseimer to gather clues
or mimetic connotations. According to him, proposed a 'universal space' - a large, free space
in which the structure was reduced to a mini-
from different, at times even conflicting, artisticthis language would intensify the experience of
sources, working towards a unified project. polarity - the counter-posing of simple geomet-
mum, making it open to a range of unforeseen
For example, as an art critic he praised both rical forms - as the ultimate basis of human
activities rather than being programmed for one
the abstract filmic language of Hans Richter' s perception, establishing the process by which specific function. Besides the Hallenbauten, it is
Rhythmus 21 and the classicism of artists the individual could create a possible unity of clear that both Mies and Hilberseimer had in
gathered within the Italian Valori Plastici form out of a multiplicity of sensations. Such a mind the architecture of the factory as a model
movement, such as Giorgio De Chirico, Carlo remark is important because it explains how for such unobstructed 'free' space (both were
Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, whose return in Hilberseimer's approach to form, unity is not
familiar with the architecture of Albert Kahn,
to more detached and archaic forms provided proposed as an a priori goal but as the outcomewho since the early 1900s, in his factories for
a counterpoint to the Futurists' one-sided of an extremely differentiated context, sustained
Ford, had proposed a series of radical solutions
celebration of the mechanical world and their only by the general and the typical. Thus using typical plans that were able to keep pace
apparent value-free play of forms present alsoHilberseimer's rigorous use of extremely with accelerating advances in technology.
in Cubism.21 Hilberseimer saw in the neo-classi- simplified forms addresses precisely the intense Kahn' s design for Highland Park plant in
cism of De Chirico an unprecedented mix of multiplicity of the metropolitan experience. Detroit, in particular, was seen as the first
archaisms, Renaissance figuration and refer- This is evident in his most important project forarchitectural adoption of the assembly line,
ences to the contemporary urban landscape. Berlin, Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung, 1930, which Henry Ford's own famously efficient system of
Similarly, he admired the satirical paintings of
proposed a restructuring of the city centre. In production. As we have seen, Hilberseimer
Georg Grosz, where the primitive and the archaic
contrast to the High-Rise City, this new interven-
had reinterpreted elements of Highland Park in
are completely reinvented within the aggressivetion does not address housing but contains only his proposal for the Chicago Tribune, shifting
setting of the contemporary metropolis. For tertiary and commercial space. It sits tightly the emphasis from material to immaterial

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 Ludwig Hilberseimer, standing in front of a tower made of six
of his 15-storey buildings from the Welfare City model, 1927
© Ryerson & Burnham Archives,
the Art Institute of Chicago

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production. In the Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung,
the appropriation of the Highland Park architec-
ture is even more literal: the huge horizontal
space of the factory now becomes the vast Halle
for events, though the rigidity of the assembly line
is replaced here by the functional and program-
matic unpredictability of the universal space.
The office space in the Berlin project is developed
according to the same criteria, allowing for
a variety of different spatial arrangements that
are documented in a series of diagrams.
If, in the Chicago Tribune , the use of an
open-ended system for office building was
addressed with a proposal for one specific
building, then in Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung,
the architecture of the factory is repeated as the
system for the entire city. Like the High-Rise
City, this project also seems to challenge a
scheme by Le Corbusier, in this case, the Plan
Voisin (1925). Consisting of a group of 6o-storey
Cartesian skyscrapers, the Plan Voisin repre-
sented the application of the central part of the
City of Three Million to a specific site in Paris,
north of the Seine. In contrast to the City for
Three Million, however, the Plan Voisin is not
conceived as an ex nihilo project, but gave an
important and strategic role to the city's existing
monuments, such as the Arc de Triomphe, Notre
Dame and Eiffel Tower. There is a key sketch of
the project that shows how the new intervention
forms a kind of backdrop to these monuments,
which are finally freed from the tight urban
fabric. In a very similar way Hilberseimer
conceived his Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung in
direct relation to existing monuments in Berlin,
such as the Gendarmenmarkt, with Schinkel's
Schauspielhaus and the paired French and
German cathedrals. In a photomontage and
sketch of the project he clearly shows how the
new intervention is focused on the complemen-
tary relationship between the baroque and
classicist forms of the existing architectures and
the rigorous abstraction of the Zeilenbau slabs.
Yet, like the High-Rise City, the scheme is both
a homage to and a critique of Le Corbusier' s
proposal for the new centre of Paris. The Plan
Voisin implies a total reform of the urban layout,
whereas the Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung
respects the grid layout of Friedrichstadt, and
simply doubles the size of the blocks and opens
them up. Moreover, while Le Corbusier pro-
posed a tertiary workplace made up mainly
of office space, Hilberseimer conceived a much
more nuanced environment in which work
and leisure are mixed.
In order to understand the novelty of
Hilberseimer's proposal, we need to return
briefly to the particular social structures that realised in Detroit in the 1950s with his project
prevailed in Germany and especially in Berlin for Lafayette Park, undertaken in collaboration
at that time. As Sergio Bologna has remarked,with Mies. Nonetheless, a concern with the and dry architectural language appears neither
during the years of the Great Depression all-subsuming nature of work, and its implica- as an act of negation, nor as a provocation,
(from 1929 on) the extremely atomised condi-tions for the entire urban condition, is visiblebut rather as a critical project of the capitalistic
tions of industrial labour triggered a process and even radicalised further in Hilberseimer's
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of decentralisation - a phenomenon that would subsequent research. In this work, his focus on
only happen in the late 1960s in most other the city as a whole is emphasised by his very
industrialised countries. Rather than following specific graphic language, where the urban form
the trend of large concentrations of factory and its architecture are abstracted as a pure
workers, as in the Fordist mode of production, circulatory system. The famous Hilberseimer
the labour force was scattered into smaller units, 'ladder' - the settlement unit perfected in 1940
so as to tame the threat of a Bolshevik revolution but already under development at the end of the
1920s - exemplifies a method of abstraction
and allow for more efficient control by the trades
unions. Weimar Germany, and especially Berlin,
whereby the design of the city proceeds from the
can therefore be considered the birthplace definition of its common denominator, namely
of not only the very first mature manifestation the extensive circulation system which is the key
of what has since come to be defined as post- asset of urban production.24 After moving to
Fordism, but also of another phenomenon the United States in 1938 (to teach at iit, at the
typical of post-Fordism - the precarious worker.invitation of Mies), Hilberseimer would
Uncertainty in the labour market in Weimarconcentrate almost exclusively on the urban
Berlin had resulted in the constant mobility scale. The problem of architecture had effec-
of workers, to the point where the space of work tively been eliminated during the German
was no longer the traditional workplace, but period: confronted with the increasing complex-
rather the city itself with its constant array of ity of the Groszstadt , architectural form had
possibilities. Hilberseimer's Halle seems to 'melted into air', to use the famous image
respond to this condition, being the architec- evoked by Marx and promulgated by Marshall
tural materialisation of just such a space Berman as the fundamental goal of modernity.25
of possibilities in which work is no longer And yet, underlying the silent 'extremism' of
conceived in the form of the clearly organised Hilberseimer's research is an implicit sugges-
workplace, but as a latent condition invested tion of the fundamental image of the contempo-
in the space of the city in its totality. And the rary city - an image hitherto hidden by the
multiple images that since the beginning of the
fundamental asset of this city as factory is not the
machinic assembly line in the factory, but living twentieth century have masked the real condi-
labour- the workers themselves. In this context,
tion and the real purpose of the city, which is to
the forms and spatial associations resulting put to work the body, the intellect and also the
from work become much less predictable. soul of the people inhabiting it.
No longer formed by passive intellect subsumed This reductivism seems to be the reason
by the linearity of the assembly, they now arise why Hilberseimer has been repeatedly accused
from an 'active' intellect seeking possibilities of having conceived the most inhuman city
of work in all the manifestations of the city's possible. To both his critics and his very few and
kaleidoscopic environment. The only space thattimid supporters, Hilberseimer's project was
can accommodate (and harness) these condi- only acceptable In the Shadow of Mies, to use the
tions is the 'free' space of the Halle, that is an very sad (and profoundly unfair) title of the only
architecture with no further qualities beyond monograph on his work available in English.26
the simple delimitation of a generic space. And yet Hilberseimer's project was not con-
ceived as a polemical manifesto, but rather
In this way, with the Vorschlag zur City-Bebau-
ung Hilberseimer arrives at the very essence of as a realistic means to accommodate and reform
his work, which is the proposal of an architec- the existing conditions of the metropolis -
tural language that is deprived of any specificity a metropolis shaped less by form and more by
in order to respond to a city whose power is the ubiquity of urban space, with its increasingly
based exclusively on the power of labour and ineffable trades and transactions. To advance
production. Yet as we have seen, Hilberseimer's such reform, Hilberseimer did not simply
propose an alternative architectural style for the
understanding of labour, though never explicitly
theorised, is expressed not in the traditional city, but used a combination of visual art, film,
form of the workplace, but as a total condition planning and architecture to set up the condi-
that tends to subsume the entire space of city. It tions for a radical subjectivity able to accept
is true that after the Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung
and absorb the reifying forces of the metropolis.
Hilberseimer would focus on more 'traditional' These forces are clearly rendered as the impetus
projects for housing, especially on the now- of the generic, the rise of the general not as
famous Mischsiedlung, a mixed-density housing
an overarching harmonic whole, but as the
development which was brought to an advanced
coexistence of radically different phenomena
state during his German period, and finally that are linked together by the unstable totality
of capitalistic production. Once this is taken
into account, Hilberseimer's seemingly grey
Groszstadt- a representation, reflecting the
17
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expansiveness of the urban condition as the And yet he praised architects like Loos or artists can start again from nothing. The ethos of the
destiny of human civilisation. like Klee (both also admired by Hilberseimer) tabula rasa is for Benjamin, then, the only
In pursuing this increasingly abstract and because they rejected the established values salvation for those inhabitants of the city who,
generic vision of the city Hilberseimer seems of art and instead embraced the rigour of those in the face of the increasing impoverishment
to confirm the architectural mandate set out by who, in a state of extreme necessity, operate of human experience, respond hysterically by
Walter Benjamin in 'Experience and Poverty', within a strict economy of means. Benjamin substituting a surplus of (false) human experi-
1933. 27 in this text Benjamin reflected on what called this new type of cultural producers ence consisting of 'yoga, chiromancy, vegetari-
kind of cultural values the working class - the 'barbarians' , indicating their facility with the anism and any sort of spiritualism'.28 In place
oppressed class - could ultimately rely on. He rude, bare, uprooted language of an era that of this pathetic cultural resistance to the
suggested that the only way to respond to the was incapable of relating its vicissitudes in the inhuman character of the metropolis, it is better
conditions of crisis facing the then crumbling nuanced and epic terms of the old narratives. to oppose - Benjamin suggests - a disenchanted
Weimar republic - the devastation of the First These barbarians were completely disenchanted acceptance of the real productive conditions
World War, economic collapse, the subsuming about the present and at the same time totally of the city. In this sense Benjamin seems to
of human subjectivity to the forces of capital and committed to it. speak for Hilberseimer's Groszstadt when he
the rise of Hitler - was to embrace the tabula For Benjamin, barbarians were also all the calls on us to realise that we have become 'poor
rasa promoted by the architects of the modern people who had no history or memory and who of experience', that is lacking in humanity. Yet,
movement. Of course Benjamin knew very well as a result had to learn the art of living in these as Benjamin wrote, it is sometimes precisely by
that this erased landscape was not an innocent bare places, because any attempt to leave traces accepting this extreme condition, by admitting
gesture of the avant-garde artist, but the productis impossible in an environment made of the that we have given up the last remnants of
cold materials of the industrial age. Barbarians our old humanity, that we might one day regain
of capitalist forces to which the artist or architect
could at least give a specific recognisable form. have no tradition (or have rejected it) and thus it at a doubled rate of interest.

1. Carl Schmitt, Romischer Katholizismus
und politische form (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1923), p 25.
2. Ludwig Hilberseimer, Groszstadt
Architektur (Stuttgart: Julius Hofmann
Verlag, 1927), pp 97-98.
3. Literature on Hilberseimer is scarce,
especially when we consider the
importance of his work. This essay
does not aim to be an all-encompassing
scholarly survey, but focuses only on
a few projects which I consider the most
speculative. For a broader view of his
work see David Spaeth, Ludwig Karl
Hilberseimer: An Annotated Bibliography
and Chronology (New York: Garland,
1981). For the German period, see the
monographic issues of the Italian
journal Rassegna, no 27/3, September
1986. See also Richard Pommer, David
Spaeth, Kevin Harrington (eds ),In the
Shadow of Mies: Ludwig Hilberseimer,
Architect, Educator, Planner (New York:
Rizzoli, 1988). This volume is the only
historical monographic study existing
on Hilberseimer in English. Though
it offers good historical insights and
a survey of his work, it also rather
underestimates Hilberseimer's
contribution; a position clearly
represented in the book's title. Another künstlerischen Grundsätzen. Ein Beitrag
very important reading of Hilberseimer zur Lösung moderner Fragen der
is offered by К Michael Hays in his study Architektur und monumentalen Plastik
on the post-humanist turn in modern
architecture. See К Michael Hays,
Modernism and the Post-humanist
Subject (Cambridge, ma: mit Press,
1992). More recently important
contributions have been made by
German architect Markus Kilian and
Italian scholars Francesco Bruno and
Francesca Scotti. See Markus Kilian,
Grosstadtarchitektur und New City: Eine
planungsmethodische Untersuchung der10. Ludwig Hilberseimer and Julius
Stadtplanungsmodelle Ludwig
Hilber seimers, PhD dissertation,
Universität Karlsruhe School of
Architecture, available online at digbib.
ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/
documents/1281; Francesco Bruno,
Ludwig Hilberseimer: La costruzione
di una idea di città. Il periodo Tedesco
(Milan: Il Libraccio, 2008); Francesca
Scotti, Ludwig Hilberseimer: Lo sviluppo
di una idea di città. Il periodo Americano
(Milan: Il Libraccio, 2008). Hilber-
seimer's American period has also
been the subject of original and highly
speculative readings by Albert Pope,
Charles Waldheim and Caroline
Constant. See Albert Pope, Ladders
(New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1996); Charles Waldheim (ed),
Hilberseimer /Mies van der Rohe,
Lafayette Park, Detroit (New York:
Prestei 2004); and Caroline Constant,
'Hilberseimer and Caldwell: Merging
Ideologies in the Lafayette Park
Landscape', ibid, pp 95-111.
4. The expression 'generic city' was coined space and whose influence could affect
by Rem Koolhaas in his famous text
of the same title. See Rem Koolhaas,
'The Generic City' in s,m,l,xl
(New York: Monacelli Press, 1995),
pp 1239-57.
5. Christian Norberg-Schultz, 'Free Plan
and Open Form', Places, no 2, 1983^5.
6. Otto Wagner, Die Grosstadt: Eine
Studie uber diese von Otto Wagner
(Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1911).
7. Camillo Sitte, Der Stadtbau nach seinen
unter besonderer Beziehung auf Wien
¿Vienna: 1909).
8. August Sarnitz, 'Realism Versus
Verniedlichung: The Design of the
Great City', in Harry Francis Mailgrave 14. Richard Pommer, "'More a Necropolis Architecture, Design and Film
(ed), Otto Wagner: Reflections on the
Raiment ofModernity (Santa Monica,
ca: Getty Center, 1988), pp 85-112.
9. Ludwig Hilberseimer Groszstadt
Architektur, op cit, pp 7-8.
Vischer, Beton als Gestalter
(Stuttgart: Julius Hoffman, 1928).
11. As quoted in Mario Tronti, Operai e
Capitale (Rome: Derive Approdi, 2006),
P254-
12. The rise oí the Kopfarbeiter can be
traced back to the very origin of the
intellectual within society. The 1964), pp 34-43. Gabriele Mastrigli
common use of the term 'intellectual' has proposed a close reading of the
to address a specific social group finds 'classical' figures in Le Corbusier's
its origin in a famous public cause: Contemporary City for Three Million.
the Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s - in See Gabriele Mastrigli, 'In Praise of
which a Jewish official, accused of Discontinuity, Or La Leçon de Rome',
betrayal by the French army, was in Berlage Institute, Power: Producing
believed to be the innocent victim of the Contemporary City (Rotterdam: nai,
an anti-Semitic plot. Writers such as 2007), pp 113-124.
Emile Zola and artists such as Edouard 17. Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grosstadtbauten
Manet openly stated their support (Hannover: Appos Verlag, 1925), p 24;
for Alfred Dreyfus. In reaction, the Ludwig Hilberseimer, 'Amerikanische
conservative press dismissed these Architektur', G-Zeitschriftfur
figures as intellectueles. Since then gestaltende Arbeit, no 5, 1926, p 190.
the term has come to be applied to 18. Ludwig Hilberseimer, Entfaltung einer
those figures who belong to the sphere Plannungsidee (Berlin: Ullstein
of culture but whose work and beliefs Bauwelt Fundamente, 1963), p 20.
were made explicit within a public 19. See Ludwig Hilberseimer, 'Form und
Individuum', Der Einzige, П03, 1919.
political issues. Intellectuals are thus 20. See Ludwig Hilberseimer, 'Valori
cultural agents whose work and Plastici', Sozialistiche Monatshefte,
activities have a direct relationship 23 May 1921, pp 629-30; Ludwig
with public affairs. From the epic Hilberseimer, 'Neoklassizismus',
appearance of Zola's J'accuse, the Sozialistiche Monatshefte, 25 July 1922,
famous article of accusation against pp 697-98; 'Konstruktivismus',
the establishment that had condemned Sozialistiche Monatshefte, 12 September
Dreyfus, over the course of the 1922, pp 831-32.
twentieth century the intellectual 21. Ludwig Hilberseimer, 'Bewegung-
publicity has become integral within kunst', Sozialistiche Monatshefte,
the most crucial political and economic 23 May 1921, pp 467-68.
organisations of society. On the rise 22. Ludwig Hilberseimer,
of the knowledge worker see Sergio 'Konstruktivismus', op cit.
Bologna, Ceti medi senza futuro ? 23. Edward Dimendberg, 'Towards an
ÍRoma: Derive e Aoorodi. 2007). Elemental Cinema: Film Aesthetic
13. Max Wagenfuhr, 'Architectonische and Practice in G', in Detlef Mertins
Entwürfe von L Hilberseimer', Deutsche and Michael WJennings (eds),
Kunst und Dekoration, no 12, 1919. G : An Avant-garde Journal of Art,
than a Metropolis", Ludwig Hilber- ig23~ig26, trans. Steven Lindberg,
seimer's Highrise City and Modem City Margareta Ingrid Christian
Planning', in Richard Pommer, David (London: Tate Publishing, 2011), p 57.
Spaeth and Kevin Harrington (eds), 24. See Albert Pope, Ladders, op cit.
In the Shadow of Mies: Ludwig 25. Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts
Hilberseimer, Architect, Educator and into Air (New York: Verso, 1982).
Urban Planner (Chicago, il: The Art 26. Richard Pommer et al, In the Shadow
Institute of Chicago, 1988), p 31. of Mies, op cit.
15. Ludwig Hilberseimer, Groszstadt 27. Walter Benjamin, 'Experience and
Architektur, op cit, pp 17-26. Poverty', in Selected Writings, vol 11
16. Le Corbusier, 'Une Ville Contempo- (Cambridge, ma: Belknap Press of
raine', in Oeuvre Complete, igio-ig2g Harvard University, 1999), pp 731-36.
(Zurich: Les Editions d'architecture, 28. Ibid, p 732.

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