Between tenement buildings and blocks of flats. Architecture of buildings of civil servants’ housing cooperatives in Wrocław at the beginning of the 20th century

Agnieszka Gryglewska

doi:10.37190/arc200110

Abstract

The subject of the article is the architecture of the houses of the Housing Association of Civil Servants (Beamten-Wohnungsverein zu Breslau eGmbH) and the Housing Association of Municipal Civil Servants and Teachers (Wohnungsverein städtischer Beamten und Lehrer zu Breslau eGmbH) – the oldest and biggest cooperatives in Wrocław before World War I, the purpose of which was the construction of healthy, solid and modernly equipped apartments with rents competitive for commercial construction. Examination of the preserved archival documentation made it possible to identify the legal conditions of their establishment and investment activities such as land selection and purchase, project financing, project implementation, their authorship and organization of construction. The study discusses the architecture of eight complexes of cooperative buildings along with their surroundings, intimate gardens and playgrounds in the courtyards. The houses built in traditional perimeter development stood out from the neighbouring tenement houses by the simplicity of their shape and façade decorations. Already at that time a tendency to unify the plan and façade of long buildings with several staircases could be seen, which led to the creation of the first houses of the “residential blocks” type. The article analyzes the way apartments were shaped, their layout, functional division, size, technical facilities and common economic facilities, which met the requirements of cooperatives and modern reform tendencies, which would find their continuation in housing construction in the times of the Weimar Republic.

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