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California dreaming in West-German suburbia: modernist bungalow architecture and its middle-class aspirations

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  • Berlin International University of Applied Sciences
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INTRODUCTION
Preface 6
Christiane Cantauw, Anne Caplan, and Elisabeth Timm
The single-family home between politics, consumerism, 12
and the everyday: locating the West German case
Elisabeth Timm
BUILT AND INHABITED: LIVING IN A SINGLE-FAMILY HOME
Building a house of our own: three middle-class variants 30
of settling and living in northwestern Germany today
Katherin Wagenknecht
‘Young family with child’ or ‘where is it the greenest’? 60
Folke Köbberling
Comparing family housing in Düsseldorf and Neuss-Aller heiligen: 84
new aspects, stable qualities, and increasing challenges
regarding everyday life in the suburb and the city
Inken Tintemann
Build or buy? A qualitative comparison of housing preferences 102
in single-family home areas in northwestern Germany
Anne Caplan and Katherin Wagenknecht
HOME TREASURES: MINING THE SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSE
Old houses become single-family homes: Bausparkassen, 126
Denkmalpflege and conversion architecture, 1977–2002
Johannes Warda
‘Of course, it’s not all finished.’ The conversion of existing 142
real estate between networking, appropriation practice
and long-term project work
Christiane Cantauw
Renting is wasting: on the popular economy of home 162
ownership in Germany
Jakob Smigla-Zywocki
Single-family houses as urban mines – terra incognita 184
of resource management
Sabine Flamme and Gotthard Walter
KNOWING AND SHOWING: DOCUMENTING AND EXHIBITING HOUSES
AND HOMES
Modern traditions: the modernist apartment and the 200
detached single-family house in early post-war conceptions
of the ideal home in West Germany
Johanna Hartmann
Dream House Factories. What happened to the dream 218
of the factory-made house?
Julia Gill
Sunshine Boulevard, in the middle of nowhere: 230
single-family homes and carports – advertising in the
prefab industry in Germany
Anne Caplan
COMPARATIVE AND ANALYTICAL PERSPECTIVES: REGIONAL CASES OF THE
SINGLE-FAMILY HOME AS A GLOBAL FORM
California dreaming in West German suburbia: modernist 264
bungalow architecture and its middle-class aspirations
Carola Ebert
Two homes: revisiting a French type of dwelling 282
Sophie Chevalier
From rooms to houses: multi-family and single-family 292
houses among the Minangkabau in Sumatra, Indonesia
Marcel Vellinga
Authors 316
Imprint 325
266
The West German modernist bungalow
While the German term Bungalow until today suggests an Anglo-American
genealogy, the relationship between this German phenomenon and its inter-
national references is less straightforward. The architecture of this single-storey
flat-roofed modernist typology does not refer to the American bungalow with
its Arts and Crafts architecture, large roofs, shingle-clad facades, and rustic
stone bases – a typology which originated in California and became a nation-
al icon between 1880 and 1920. Contrary to what the Anglo-American imag-
ination associates with the terminology, Bungalows in Germany are inextrica-
bly connected to architectural modernism. Etymologically, the Anglo-American
term acquired new architectural references in post-war West Germany.2 Until
the late 1940s, the word bungalow had been a technical term in Germany,
used to describe foreign buildings, e.g. colonial architecture in the tropics,
US-American housing, or English country houses. It was only from the 1950s
onwards that the word was used in everyday language and with regard to
local buildings. It acquired the new, more general meaning of ‘country house,
Figure 1: Exterior view, Haus Nieaber, 1958,
Bad Salzuflen (Reinhard & Sander architects).
267Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
summer house’ (Pfeifer et al. 1993: 184; author’s transl.). At the same time,
the word Bungalow came to be associated with the modern architecture of
contemporary houses in Germany and abroad whose characteristic features
were large glass panes, cantilevering flat roofs, and wall slabs extending to the
exterior. Architecturally defining for the modernist Bungalow were modern Cal-
ifornian houses – even if none of these houses were called bungalows in the
USA: the homes by the Viennese architect Richard Neutra, who had emigrated
to the USA in 1923 (Drexler et al. 1982; Hines and Neutra 1982), and those
of the Californian Case Study House programme (McCoy 1962; McCoy and
Singerman 1989), model homes, conceived to embody a new way of life in a
sunny climate using most recent construction methods.
In West Germany, contemporary literature called Neutra’s American houses
‘Neutra-Bungalows’, and praised them as ‘dream houses of modern mankind’
and ‘the most contemporary and technically most accomplished form of [the
bungalow]’ (Betting and Vriend 1959; author’s transl.). Modern California
Houses, Esther McCoy’s overview about the Case Study House programme
(McCoy 1962), was tellingly titled Wohnbau auf neuen Wegen. Musterhäuser
und Bungalows (New Ways in Housing: Model Homes and Bungalows) in
German in 1964 (McCoy 1964). The use of the term Bungalow in these and
other West German publications (Mittag 1959; Trost 1961; 1965; Swirido
and Steingräber 1967) reveals the architectural-semantic dierence between
the English term ‘bungalow and the German Bungalow. It also highlights
how quickly the German term had become closely associated with the modern
single-storey single-family house. Until today, for German lay and architec-
tural audiences alike, a Bungalow is a modernist flat-roofed house; modern
post-war Californian houses are Bungalows; and the true American bunga-
low’ is in fact a house by Richard Neutra – whereas some English-speak-
ing authors quite rightly use ‘like a Case Study House’ (Wainwright 2014)
to account for these connotations which are dierent and unexpected for an
English-speaking audience.
The German Bungalow is thus particular in its modernity and somewhat at
odds with a globalised architectural culture whose terminology it uses. In his
seminal publication The Bungalow. The Production of a Global Culture, An-
thony King established the bungalow as a generic type across the globe and
across centuries (King 1984). His use of the word subsumes dierent build-
ing types, which are culturally specific, and he refers to architectural char-
acteristics as well as socio-economic aspects. However, socio-economically,
the situation King describes for bungalow boom times in Great Britain in the
1890s or in the USA at the turn of the twentieth century was largely similar
268
to that in post-war West Germany. In England in the late eighteenth century,
the Industrial Revolution and mercantile profits from the colonies provided
the historic background to the bungalow’s growing influence as purpose-built
holiday dwelling. Over the next century, the countryside changed from agri-
cultural production to recreational consumption, and the bungalow became
a sought-after dwelling for the countryside and expanding suburbs. Similarly,
in West Ger many the rise of the Bungalow coincided with increasing eco-
nomic prosperity. Due to the growth dynamics that became popular as the
Wirtschaftswunder – the economic boom during the late 1950s and 1960s –,
new suburban areas on former farmland, city edges, and in the countryside
near the city developed (fig. 2). Surplus capital met an interest in contem-
porary lifestyles, recent construction techniques, and holiday homes in the
countryside. Additionally, a new housing law aimed at raising the amount of
property ownership and single-family houses by encouraging potential buyers
with fiscal ameliorations (Zweites Wohnungsbaugesetz 1956).
Köln
Bonn
Wuppertal
Düsseldorf
Neuss
Figure 2: Suburban locations of
West German Bungalows in
North Rhine-Westphalia.
269Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
California dreaming
Whether in architectural magazines, design weeklies, or coee table books
like Landhaus und Bungalow (Trost 1961), from the mid-1950s onwards, the
Bungalow is omnipresent in professional and popular publications alike. The
examples shown in these publications range from simple prefabricated box
Bungalows and compact Bungalows in housing estates to a large number of
architect-designed single-family homes, grander modernist villas for industrial-
ists, and the most famous German Bungalow, the so-called Kanzlerbungalow
(Chancellor’s Bungalow). Modern bungalow architecture, with its Californian
inspirations of living comfortably with nature due to recent building technolo-
gies, became the housing ideal of the Wirtschaftswunder decades.
‘The highest happiness o f the young prospering generation was the bungalow, in which the architect’s art of
“capturing the warming, healing, and exhilarating light” could un fold particularly well.
[…] In a home “generously filled wit h light” one felt “almost on holiday”.’ (Glaser 1997:
231; Glaser cites contemporary magazin es; author’s transl.)
The Bungalow is thus not just a modern house in close contact with its ‘priva-
tised landscape’ (Ebert 2012b; author’s transl.). It signifies a casual, practical,
Figure 3: View from the living room towards the garden,
Haus Gessler, 1953, Stuttgart (Klaus Gessler).
270
and – by combination of all these traits – holiday-like home environment. A
good decade after the war, young West German architects built these home
environments with simple technologies and materials on cheap building plots
with predominantly Californian references but also referring to concurrent
contemporary developments in Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc.
Haus Gessler was one of the first modernist bungalows completed in West
Germany. In 1952, architect Klaus Gessler built the house at the age of twen-
ty-six for his family on a sloping 1,000-square metre site in the city of Stuttgart,
located in south-western Germany (fig. 3). A magazine article described the
exceptional impact of its living room and the close relationship with the out-
doors:
‘A wide glass facade, from floor to ceiling and ten metres long, generously opens up the living room towards
the garden. Four large glass panes, held by uncoated aluminium frames, can slide hor-
izontally, and thus complete the unity of living room and garden.’ (Schirmer 1953: 53;
author’s transl.)
The article explains in great detail how the ‘low building volume’ is united with
the exterior space, and how the spaces of the ‘living room and garden merge
in a way that the garden […] becomes almost tangible and attains a corpo-
real presence’ (Schirmer 1953: 48; author’s transl.). Using the spatial and
abstract terminology of architectural modernism, these descriptions illustrate
an important motif of Bungalow architecture; the interlacing of the garden and
the interior by way of architectural elements that create semi-defined outside
spaces with room-like qualities in between. In his study of inter-war hous-
ing, Andreas Vetter coined the conceptual term Pseudoraum to describe these
ambivalent or intermediary spaces between in- and outdoors (Vetter 2000:
26-32). The way Bungalow architecture shapes this interlacing between exte-
rior and interior portrays both its Californian post-war inspirationand how
the Californian modern houses in turn were heirs to the European ideas of
Liberated Dwelling in the 1920s and 1930s (Giedion 1929; 2018).
Another example for the close spatial and atmospheric connection between
the interiors and the garden (and another example of an architect’s build-
ing designed for himself) is Günther Balser’s ‘Bungalow-Haus’ (N. N. 1956:
992), built in 1956 in Frankfurt am Main. The meandering shape and narrow
span of the plan bring almost every room into direct contact with the gar-
den (fig.4): ‘Everywhere the garden’s greenery looks into the house through
floor-to-ceiling windows.’ (F. 1957: 184; author’s transl.). The living room,
an almost separate pavilion underneath a thin flat roof with a large overhang
(fig. 5), is fully glazed and opens up towards the southern garden and to the
outdoor swimming pool. Balser’s endeavour that the Bungalow should convey
271Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
Figure 4: Interior view of the living room,
Haus Balser, 1956, Frankfurt am Main
(Günther Balser).
Figure 5: Exterior view of the living room,
Haus Balser.
272
the feeling of ‘constantly being on holiday in your own home’ (Balser 1959:
276; author’s transl.) seems to have been achieved, according to Gia Balser
who reported decades later that – between the agave in the living room and
the banana tree outside – her and her husband’s friends always felt ‘just like in
California’ (Balser and Balser 2012; author’s translation).
The significance of modern architecture in West Germany
Descriptions of Bungalows in contemporary media and from a historical per-
spective equally praise the accomplishments of architectural modernism – es-
pecially the intense interplay of interior and exterior spaces facilitated by large
glass windows and the cantilevered roof. This strong focus on modern archi-
tecture’s successes and achievements has largely shaped how Bungalow ar-
chitecture is perceived in (West) Germany until today. Yet it also has to be seen
in the context of the threefold significance that modern architecture in general
acquired in West Germany after 1945. In the 1950s and 1960s, modern
architecture came to signify, firstly, the Bundesrepublik, West Germany as a
young nation, secondly, its connections to Germany’s democratic past during
the Weimar Republic, and, thirdly, the Westbindung, the close relationship with
the USA and other Western political allies during the Cold War.
Barbara Miller Lane has shown how the fact that, from the 1930s onwards,
German National Socialists ‘saw architectural styles as symbols of specific
political views’ (Lane 1968: 2) was a result of politicised architectural debates
about the Bauhaus or flat-roofed housing schemes, which had already estab-
lished this connection during the Weimar Republic. During the 1920s, the flat
roof had become the symbol of the new style. It had ignited a debate about the
new, modern architecture between its proponents – who understood the new
style as the expression of a modern industrial age and democratic values –
and its adversaries – who wanted to safeguard preindustrial times and es tatist
society along with traditional building types and forms.
Because architecture had carried such strong political connotations from the
Weimar Republic through the National Socialist regime, architectural discourse
in post-war West Germany inherited an intense political symbolism, and mod-
ern architecture became an aesthetic embodiment of the West German return
to democracy after 1945. Transparent, modernist, and flat-roofed, the Bunga-
low expressed its Californian references and the new Bundesrepublik as elo-
quently as it referred to the Weimar period. Like modern architecture in gen-
eral, it was understood to construct the visual narrative of the historic ‘break’
273Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
Figure 6: Plan,
Kanzler bungalow,
1964, Bonn (Sep
Ruf). Literature on the
Chancellor’s Bunga-
low mostly addresses
the open-plan recep-
tion area in the larger
pavilion (below), and
overlooks the dier-
ent spatiality and the
resi dential character
of the smaller pavil-
ion (above), where
the chancellor lived.
274
with the National Socialist past and the reconnection with the ‘democratic’
Neues Bauen, the modern architecture of the Weimar period. In its references,
post-war modernism in West Germany thus oscillates between the contem-
porary, transatlantic context of Americanisation, modernisation, and political
alignment with the West, and the German tradition of the Weimar period.
These connotations are especially vivid in the Kanzlerbungalow, built 1963-64
in Bonn, as a prestigious residence and reception building for the West German
Federal Chancellor by architect Sep Ruf. It is interesting how popular criticism
of its modern architecture addressed Americanisation, for example, when the
Kanzlerbungalow was derided as a ‘Hilton for beginners’ or a ‘cross between
an aquarium and an American drugstore’ (N.N.1967, 160; Koppetsch 2009,
60; author’s transl.). Architectural authors, on the other hand, keep referring
to the same historical periods – the ‘modern tradition’ since the 1920s (Pehnt
1970: 50; author’s transl.) and the ‘Bauhaus tradition’ (Riese 1986:73; au-
thor’s transl.) – and praise the Kanzlerbungalow for how it connects ‘moral
meaning’ with ‘the human longing for freedom and prospect’ (Knoll 1965:
6; author’s transl.). The political and moral impetus of modern architecture
in post-war West Germany is heightened by repeated references to the ‘defa-
mation of modernism during the National Socialist regime’ (Nerdinger 2008:
Figure 7: Street view, Haus Dr. W., 1959,
Hanover (Hans Klüppelberg).
275Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
26; author’s transl.; cf. Riese 1986: 73; Swirido and Steingräber 1967: 53).
While the residential character of the building is embodied so clearly in the
Kanzlerbungalow’s name and layout (fig. 6), the corresponding literature rare-
ly addresses it as a home. Instead and beyond this example, Bungalow publi-
cations reveal the eort to integrate modern houses into the grand narrative of
architectural modernism, including its political significance in West Germany.
A Janus-faced building typology
Images and interpretations of Bungalows focus on the way in which the living
space opens up towards the garden and the surrounding landscape. But while
the garden sides are featured widely and mostly illustrate modern architec-
ture’s radical transparency, most street facades (often unpublished) present
a rather dierent image (fig. 7). The morphological analysis of Bungalow ar-
chitecture reveals that a Janus-faced disposition is a fundamental trait of this
building typology (Ebert 2014; 2016). The way in which modern bungalows
unite two dierent conceptions of space within a strictly orthogonal configu-
ration is one of the most important features of the Bungalow typology. The
much-acclaimed openness of the living space is juxtaposed with a second,
equally modern, but completely dierent spatial configuration: the function-
al, cubicle-like arrangement of small, individual rooms that line up along a
private hallway and whose spatial seclusion results in an altogether dierent,
more closed facade. In contemporary publications, however, this aspect was
superseded by the many depictions of the Bungalow as an open, transparent,
and modern pavilion.
Within modern architectural discourse, the way Bungalows were visualised
and conceptualised had a strong influence on its interpretation. This phenom-
enon is most tangible in analyses of Paul Schneider-Esleben’s Haus Riedel,
which was built between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal in 1953 (fig. 8). Heinrich
Klotz, for example, argued that the house reveals ‘the influence of Mies van
der Rohe’, pointing to the ‘interplay of walls and glass surfaces’ and the ‘walls
[that] jut – or “shoot” – out’, which had replaced the ‘facade with traditional
window openings’ (Schneider-Esleben and Klotz 1987: 10; cited after Ebert
2014, transl. Jesse Coburn). Rolf Beckers’ analysis of Schneider-Esleben’s
work takes up a similar line of argument. Beckers traces the ‘unusual floor
plan’ back to ‘Mies van der Rohe’s country house projects of the twenties’, and
interprets it as an ‘attempt to realize a free floor plan like the one that Mies
van der Rohe perfected with the […] Barcelona Pavilion’, in which ‘a horizontal
276
spatial system was articulated […] merely through free-standing walls’ (Beck-
ers 1995: 110; cited after Ebert 2014, transl. Coburn).
In comparison to the Miesian projects that Beckers takes as points of reference,
Haus Riedel’s floor plan presents neither a pavilion nor a spacious modernist
villa, but a compact single-family home of 120 square metres, in which the
Bungalow’s dual spatial concept is well articulated. Schneider-Esleben’s design
mediates between the openness of the living room and the small, individual
rooms by dividing the bungalow with a massive brick wall. This vertical break
integrates the deep living room facade – a floor-to-ceiling glass wall under-
neath a cantilevered roof – with the flat street-side facade finished with wood
panelling in front of the kitchen, bathroom, and bedrooms. Beckers sharply
criticises the compartmentalisation of this wing of the building (which the ar-
chitect himself had praised for its eciency and practicality (Schneider-Esleben
1954: 674)) and complains that the house ‘as a whole, does not consistently
adhere’ to the logic of Miesian modernism (Beckers 1995: 110; cited after
Ebert 2014, transl. Coburn).
This pointed example demonstrates how in West German twentieth century
architectural discourse unambiguity and the modernity of architectural mo-
tifs became central features of interpretation. Bungalow architecture was sub-
sumed under the grand narrative of the rise of modern architecture with all
its implications – national and international, political and aesthetic. Manifold
similar statements make evident that the early modern architectural historio-
graphy prioritised the inclusion of Bungalows into the canon of modern archi-
tecture over allowing for any of the complications arising from addressing their
status as a private residence, and a middle-class home at that.
Figure 8: Plan, Haus Riedel, 1953,
Haan (Paul Schneider-Esleben).
277Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
The
Bungalow’
s middle-class aspirations
Even though it may not have been addressed in architectural discourse, the
status of the Bungalow as a middle-class house is apparent in both contem-
porary literature and cultural history. An analysis of West German Bungalows
with regard to their size, price, and clientele (Ebert 2016, 228–39) showed
that the majority were family homes for owners with middle-class occupations
like salesmen, architects, doctors, scientists, and lawyers. An average family
bungalow had a floor area of about 140 square metres on a plot of ap-
proximately 1,000 square metres. Even though, architecturally, West German
Bungalows may be understood as a continuation of 1920s and 1930s Euro-
pean residential modernism, the circumstances of their realisation are funda-
mentally dierent. Instead of a well-to-do upper-class elite who could furnish
avant-garde projects like Mies van der Rohe’s Haus Tugendhat with noble and
very expensive materials, post-war Bungalows were middle-class family homes
for clients in more modest circumstances.
The Bungalow’s luxury is more spatial, based on layout and design, than pure-
ly material. Here, it once more references its underlying Californian dream,
and – in doing so – it also displays its inherent middle-class aspirations. Most
Case Study Houses, for example, had been designed with educated or artistic
middle-class families in mind, as Dolores Hayden has argued (Hayden 1989).
And with regard to Neutra’s work and clients, Thomas Hines distinguishes be-
tween the early work for a wealthy upper-class elite and the post-war work for
‘the middle-class majority that made up the public of most of the mid-century
modernists’ (Hines and Neutra 1982: 254). Even though in West Germany
Neutra’s houses were often perceived as upper-class residences, there are
many references to his middle-class clients and their ‘often very limited fi-
nancial means’ (Wandel-Hoefer 1989: 180; author’s transl.). Neutra himself
had been, as Beatriz Colomina has pointed out, interested in the topic of the
small, aordable private house for his entire life (Colomina 1999: 154). He
asserted: ‘It’s not with the wealthy that the future of contemporary architecture
lies […]. It is with the people in the middle. They are the ones who can aord
to be uninhibited […].’ (Hines and Neutra 1982: 257)
In The modern American house: spaciousness and middle-class identity, Sandy
Isenstadt investigates how modern architecture was employed to achieve a
sense of spaciousness in small modern houses – ‘designers claimed they could
endow the small house with “an impression of airy space far beyond its ac-
tual dimensions” and well ahead of its actual costs’ (Isenstadt 2006: 4). The
clients’ desire for spaciousness ‘[e]xplicitly, almost heroically, in conflict with
278
Figure 9: Site plan, Haus Keil, 1955,
Meerbusch near Dusseldorf
(Bernhard M. Pfau).
279Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
actual dimensions […] was founded on the tension between spatial aspirations
and financial limitations’ (Isenstadt 2006: 6). For Isenstadt, the fixation of the
small modern house on the close contact to the garden and the landscape is
always class-specific.
‘Spaciousness in small places, in other wor ds, is an ar tefact of middle -class design cult ure: an enhancement
of a middle -class family’s most valuable possession – its house – pr omoted in vehicles
of consumer culture like magazines and pitched of ten as a discounted way to acquire th e
visual trappings of greater wealt h.’ (Isensta dt 2006: 7)
German sociologist Helmut Schelsky characterised the middle-class society by
the fact ‘that broad circles turn away from matters of the society at large, be-
come disinterested in the public sphere, and withdraw into the private realms
of work and family’ (Schelsky 1955: 237; author’s transl.). And the Bungalow
exhibits a striking synchronicity of social and spatial retreat into suburbia and
into privacy, which seems to be a direct physical expression of Schelsky’s more
psychological conclusion.
The architect’s ability to ‘maximise spaciousness’ not only applied to the rela-
tionship between house and garden, but also to the siting of the house itself
(fig. 9). Whilst opening up towards the ‘privatised landscape’, the same Bun-
galows that are portrayed as transparent pavilions in the media cut themselves
o completely from their suburban surroundings.3 They display closed facades
towards the street and are placed at the edge of their plots, maximising private
views and minimising visibility. As has been said about Haus Balser, it is ‘thus,
from the garden, that the [Bungalow] wants to be perceived: embracing and
shielding its own piece of land, closed towards the world beyond, but open to
the sun’ (F. 1957: 188; author’s transl.). While the first, obvious Californian
dream lies in the close connection to the outdoor area, a second one can be
identified in exactly this spatial economy of maximising views and minimising
space, which had been ignored in twentieth century architectural discourse. It
is here that the West German modernist Bungalow reveals its true nature as a
middle-class house.
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Endnotes
1 The chapter thus contains ideas and text passages published by the author in related
articles and online publications (Ebert 2009, 2012a, 2012b, 2014, 2016, 2018).
2 Due to the dierent status of the single-family house and individual home-
ownership in East Germany, the word referred to a modern weekend home,
a Datscha, in the GDR.
3 See Caplan (this volume) on such isolated views of today’s announcements of
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Illustration credits
Figure 1: (1960) Deutsche Bauzeitschrift DBZ 8 (9), 1096.
Figure 2: © Carola Ebert, Visualisation by StahlR.
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Figure 4: (1960) Die Kunst und das schöne Heim 58 (11), 425.
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291Comparative and analytical perspectives: regional cases of the single-family home as a global form
Endnotes
1 There are numerous studies on foreign secondary residents located in the
countryside; see the pioneer’s one Jacques Barou and Patrick Prado (1995).
2 In the Parisian suburb that I investigated, more than half of my sixty informants
possessed a second home.
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316
Authors
Authors
317Authors
Christiane Cantauw is a historian and anthropologist. She has been direct-
ing the Folklore Commission for Westphalia in Münster since 2005. Among
her activities are encompassing projects in the field of digital humanities (fund-
ed by the Volkswagen Stiftung and the German Research Foundation) in which
the visual, audio and manuscript collections of the Folklore Commissions have
been digitised and made available for open access (2006-2013). From 2015
to 2018, she directed the project “As if made for us?! The path to home own-
ership?”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Since 2014, she regularly teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in
social and cultural anthropology at the Seminar for Folklore Studies/Cultur-
al Anthropology at the University of Münster. Among her publications are:
(2017), Von Häusern und Menschen. Berichte und Reportagen vom Bauen
und Wohnen von den 1950er Jahren bis heute. Mit dem Bautagebuch von
Rosemarie Krieger (Münster, New York: Waxmann).
Anne Caplan is a research associate in the Department of Sustainable Pro-
duction and Consumption, Research Unit Innovation Laboratories at the Wup-
pertal Institute. Her research focuses on housing and home, participation and
citizen science as well as urbanity and urban planning. From 2015 to 2018,
she was Scientific Manager of the research association “The flow of things
or private property? A house and its objects between family life, resource
management and museum”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Ed-
ucation and Research (www.hausfragen.net). During this time, she realised
318
and conceived various science communication formats for the contents of the
research association. The calendar ‘Park+Roll. Carports in Suburbia - von
fliegenden Bauten und ruhendem Verkehr’ created by a student project in
cooperation with the MSD, Münster School of Design (Claudia Grönebaum),
was awarded the Gregor Calendar Award in silver in 2018. Among her latest
publications are: together with Katherin Wagenknecht (2018), ‘Bauen oder
kaufen? Eine qualitativ-vergleichende Studie zu Wohnpräferenzen in Einfami-
lienhausgebieten in Nordwestdeutschland’, Forum Stadt 3, 259–273; and
(2018), ‘Design Research as a Meta-discipline’, in: P. E. Vermaas and St. Vial
(eds.): Advancements in Philosophy of Design (Berlin: Springer), 347–367.
Sophie Chevalier is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Picardie,
France and Director of the “Habiter le monde” Research Centre. Her main in-
terests are in economic life, consumption and leisure, cities and anthropology
at home. She has carried out fieldwork in Paris and London on domestic ma-
terial culture; in Bulgaria on exchange in a privatized economy with no money
in the 1990s; and recently in Durban, South Africa after apartheid, on the new
middle classes with reference to food and shared social spaces. Her recent
books include: (2015, ed.), Anthropology at the Crossroads: The View from
France (co-author, 2013), Paris, résidence secondaire, and (co-editor, 2013),
Norbert Elias et l’anthropologie. She is co-editor of www.ethnographiques.org
and on the editorial board of Ethnologie Française, Espaces et Sociétés, Home
Culture and Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale.
Carola Ebert is Professor for Interior Design, History and Theory of Archi-
tecture and Design at Berlin International University of Applied Sciences. Her
research fields are the West German modernist bungalow, the theorisation
of interior design, and teaching and learning in architecture and design. Her
forthcoming and most recent publications are: (ed. 2020), Theorising Interior
Design. Identity Practice – Education; (ed. with E. M. Froschauer and Ch.
Salge, 2019), Vom Baumeister zum Master. Formen der Architekturlehre vom
19. bis ins 21. Jahrhundert; (author, 2019), ‘Inseln der Selbstreflexion. Drei
Diskurse zur Architekturlehre im 21. Jahrhundert, in: ibid.; (with M. Sonntag,
J. Rueß, L. Schilow and W. Deicke, 2018), Forschendes Lernen im Seminar.
Ein Leitfaden für Lehrende (Berlin); as well as several publications related to
her PhD thesis ‘Entspannte Moderne. Der westdeutsche Bungalow 1952-1969
als Adaption eines internationalen Leitbilds und Symbol einer nivellierten Mit-
telschichtsgesellschaft’.
319Authors
Sabine Flamme has been teaching material flow and resource manage-
ment at the Department of Civil Engineering at Münster University of Applied
Sciences since 2005. Since 2016, she has been speaker for the management
board of the IWARU Institute for Infrastructure, Water, Resources and Environ-
ment, where she heads the Resources Working Group, which currently em-
ploys 15 scientists. Her research activities are currently focused on increasing
added value in the field of urban mining. In this context, she supervises several
research projects on material flows from anthropogenic deposits, on the de-
velopment of recycling processes for building materials and constructions, and
on new business models in the construction sector. She is a member of various
working groups and has recently written numerous lectures and publications
on the above-mentioned topics. In addition, she received the Urban Mining
Award in June 2012 and is a founding member of IR Bau and re!source
Stiftung e. V., respectively.
Julia Gill is an architect und architectural researcher in Berlin who teach-
es building design, construction and history at the Staatliche Technikerschule
Berlin. Her main research issues are related to the conditions of production
and appropriation of architecture, focussing on questions of individualisa-
tion and standardisation in aordable housing. She has taught at several
universities and institutions, among them TU Braunschweig, RWTH Aachen,
EPFL Lau sanne, AZ Wien, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and Universität der
Künste Berlin. She is editor of the book series Forum Architekturwissenschaft
(previously published Vol. 1 (2017), 2 (2018), 3 (2019) with Sabine Ammon,
Eva Maria Froschauer and Christiane Salge. Her own publications include
(2010), Individualisierung als Standard. Über das Unbehagen an der Fer-
tighausarchitektur (Bielefeld: transcript); (2016), ‘Edited Standards. A Plea for
Greater Individuality in Standards’, in W. Nägeli and N. Tajeri (eds.): Small
Interventions. New ways of Living in Post-War Modernism (Basel: Birkhäuser),
115–118; and (2016), ‘Germany’s next Top-Modul’, Bauwelt 28/29, 14–17.
Johanna Hartmann is a researcher in the fields of art history, architectural
theory and gender studies. Her work centres on concepts of space, subjectivity,
the body and gender in discourses of the home and city. She is working on a
doctoral thesis on housing exhibitions and domestic advice media in post-war
West Germany. Until July 2019, she was a lecturer and research assistant at
the Institute for Art History – Film Studies – Art Education at the University of
Bremen, working in association with the Mariann Steegmann Institute Art and
Gender. Current publications include: (ed. together with K. Eck, K. Heinz and
320
Ch. Keim, forthcoming 2019), Wohn/Raum/Denken. Politiken des Häuslichen
in Kunst, Architektur und visueller Kultur (Bielefeld: transcript); (with N. Jablon-
ski, Ch. Schmitt, forthcoming 2020), ‘“Heile Welten” nach 1945: Heimat,
Wohnkultur, Tourismus’, in J. Gerstner, J. C. Heller and Ch. Schmitt (eds.):
Handbuch Idylle. Traditionen – Verfahren – Theorien (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler).
Folke Köbberling is an artist who develops models for interventions in urban
space that transform existing structures and thus challenge routines of dealing
with urban architecture in a subtle, often humorous way. She has been teach-
ing artistic design at TU Braunschweig since 2016 and has realised projects
and exhibitions together with Martin Kaltwasser, among others at Martin Gro-
pius Bau and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), at ZKM Karlsruhe, Lentos
Museum (Linz) and Ruhrtriennale. Among her publications are: (2017), FULL
STOP (Edition Metzel); (with Martin Kaltwasser, 2009), Hold it! The Art & Ar-
chitecture of Public-Space-Bricolage-Resistance-Resources-Aesthetics (Berlin:
jovis). See: http://www.folkekoebberling.de/.
Jakob Smigla-Zywocki has been a junior researcher at the University of
Münster, Seminar for Folklore Studies/European Ethnology since October
2016, where he also teaches undergraduate courses in social and cultural
anthropology. Before that he was a research assistant at the Folklore Com-
mission for Westphalia in Münster in the research project “The Way to Home-
ownership”. In parallel to his studies in modern and contemporary history and
social and cultural anthropology at the University of Münster from 2010 to
2015, he worked at the Villa ten Hompel memorial site in Münster.
Elisabeth Timm has been holding the chair for cultural anthropology at the
University of Münster since 2011. Her fields in research and teaching are fam-
ily and kinship, theories of culture and the history of folklore studies. She is the
general editor of the Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften (transcript, together
with Karin Harrasser) and of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
(Berghahn, together with Patrick Laviolette). From 2015 to 2018 she directed
the research association “The flow of things or private property? A house and
its objects between family life, resource management and museum”, funded
by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (www.hausfragen.
net). Among her latest publications are: (ed., together with Sonja Hnilica,
2017), Das Einfamilienhaus (thematic issue of the Zeitschrift für Kulturwissen-
schaften), and (2019), ‘Die Ästhetik der Hysterie zwischen Ritual und Realie,
ca. 1900. Kulturanthropologie und Wissensgeschichte einer Votivgabe’, in
321Authors
B. Herrmann (ed.): Anthropologie und Ästhetik. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven
(München: Wilhelm Fink), 55–95.
Inken Tintemann is a town planner who worked and graduated at the chair
“Planungstheorie und Stadtentwicklung”, held by Klaus Selle at RWTH Aachen.
Her fields in research and teaching focused on needs and patterns concerning
living and housing within dierent lifestyles and types of household. Among
her publications are: City oder Suburb – Wohnoptionen für Familien im ge-
sellschaftlichen Wandel: untersucht in Düsseldorf-Innenstadt und Neuss-Aller-
heiligen (Aachen: RWTH, 2015). Inken Tintemann is currently working for the
municipality of Düren (North Rhine-Westphalia) where she is responsible for
social town planning.
Marcel Vellinga is Professor of Anthropology of Architecture at Oxford
Brookes University in the United Kingdom. Holding a PhD in Cultural An-
thropology from Leiden University in the Netherlands, Marcel has extensive
research and teaching experience in the fields of cultural anthropology and
international vernacular architecture studies. Over the years, he has taught
and published on a variety of topics including vernacular architecture, the an-
thropology of architecture, rural architectural regeneration, and tradition and
sustainable development. Marcel is the Editor-in-Chief of the second edition
of the Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, to be published by
Bloomsbury Publishing in 2021.
Katherin Wagenknecht is scientific assistant at the Museum für Naturkunde
in Berlin. She coordinates a project on citizen science, funded by the Europe-
an Commission, aiming to explore and develop the infrastructure of citizen
science on a European level. From 2015 to 2018, she was a junior researcher
at the Seminar for Folklore Studies/European Ethnology (University of Mün-
ster), where she did research and analysis for the project ‘Building a House for
Us’, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, see
www.hausfragen.net. Katherin Wagenknecht holds an MA in History and So-
ciology (Technical University of Darmstadt) and a BA in Cultural Studies (Uni-
versity of Leipzig).
Gotthard Walter studied civil engineering at the Münster University of
Applied Sciences. He worked as a project engineer at the Münster Univer-
sity of Applied Sciences and from 1994 as head of department at the INFA
Institut für Abfall- und Abwasserwirtschaft GmbH. Since 1999, he has been
322
leading research assistant in the Resources Working Group at the Institute for
Infrastructure, Water, Resources and the Environment at Münster University of
Applied Sciences. His work focuses on the organisation and coordination of
R & D projects in the field of material flow and resource management.
Johannes Warda currently holds a lectureship in history and theory of ar-
chitecture at Erfurt University of Applied Sciences. As architectural scholar he
has taught at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, the Akademie der Bildenden
Künste Vienna and at TU Dresden. In 2014, as a grantee of the German Na-
tional Academic Foundation, he received a PhD in architecture and historic
preservation from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. In 2017/18, he was Dresden
Junior Fellow at TU Dresden and research fellow at the Leibniz-Institut für
Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa (GWZO) Leipzig. As a member
of design collectives, he has been working on art and architecture projects,
most recently on the Buchenwald Memorial (with pink tank). Recent publi-
cations include (2018), ‘Das Ökohaus – ein technisches Denkmal?’, in B.
Weller and S. Horn (eds.): Denkmal und Energie 2019 (Wiesbaden: Springer
Vieweg), 163–173; (2017), ‘Keeping West Berlin As Found”. Alison Smith-
son, Hardt-Waltherr Hämer and 1970s Proto-Preservation Urban Renewal’,
in Á. Moravánszky and T. Lange (eds.): Re-framing Identities. Architecture’s
Turn to History 1970–1990 (Basel: Birkhäuser), 275–288; (2016), Veto des
Materials. Denkmalpflege, Wiederverwendung von Architektur und modernes
Umweltbewusstsein (Bosau: Wohnungswirtschaft heute).
325
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Texts by kind permission of the authors.
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the illustration credits at the end of the articles.
The authors are fully responsible for obtaining all permissions and clearing any
associated fees for copyrighted material, both textual and graphic. Neither the
publisher nor the editors assume liability if these permissions should not have
been given.
All rights reserved.
Cover: Anne Caplan and photo by Benjamin Widholm (single-family home in
Germany/North Rhine-Westphalia, 2015)
Editorial team: Christiane Cantauw, Anne Caplan, Elisabeth Timm
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Thesis
Full-text available
Die Dissertation ist eine grundlegende Untersuchung des modernen westdeutschen Bungalows - eines prägenden Einfamilienhaustypus' der Nachkriegszeit, der bis dato in der Literatur nur anhand von Einzelbeispielen diskutiert wurde. Einleitend wird der Forschungsstand zur globalen Bungalowhistorie referiert und die Historie des Einfamilienhauses und der politisierten Architekturmoderne in Deutschland vor 1945 sowie die soziologischen Rahmenbedingungen des Bungalowbooms in Nachkriegsbundesrepublik werden überblicksartig dargelegt. Im Zentrum der Arbeit stehen die Forschungsergebnisse einer Analyse von 64 exemplarischen westdeutschen Bungalows 1952-1969. Diese wurden auf Basis einer systematischen Literaturrecherche ausgewählt und klassifiziert (vgl. Katalogteil). Es wird zunächst die spezifisch westdeutsche Begrifflichkeit des Nachkriegsterminus Bungalow herausgearbeitet und der westdeutsche Bungalowboom wird in drei überlappende Phasen periodisiert. Die Ergebnisse zu den untersuchten Bungalowprojekten werden ihrer Ikonografie, Materialität und Konstruktion sowie ihrer Typologie und ihres Naturbezugs erläutert. Es wird gezeigt, dass es sich bei der ikonografischen Darstellung des Bungalows als verglastem Pavillon um eine mediale Konstruktion handelt, die hier als die Pavillonisierung des Bungalows bezeichnet wird. Diese unterschlägt die Doppelgesichtigkeit des Bungalowtypus: neben der verglasten Gartenseite ist eine deutlich geschlossenere Straßenfassade ebenso charakteristisch für diesen Typus. Trotz der jeweils unterschiedlich ausgebildeten räumlichen Bezüge zum privaten Garten weisen alle drei identifizierten Bungalowtypen (Winkelbungalow, Rechteckbungalow, Wohnhofbungalow) diese Dualität auf. Hinsichtlich der historischen Konnotationen werden zwei unterschiedliche Rezeptionsweisen identifiziert: In der Architekturgeschichte wurde der Bungalow durch Motive rezipiert, die ihm im Kontext der Moderne Relevanz verliehen, z. B. das Motiv des allseitig verglasten Pavillons oder des fließenden Raums. Die sozialhistorische Betrachtung der Beispiele verdeutlicht jedoch, dass es der moderne Wohnhauscharakter war, der den skalierbaren Bungalowtypus zu einem idealen Wohnhaustypus für eine breite Bevölkerungsschicht machte. In seiner Modellhaftigkeit leicht zu identifizieren und hinsichtlich der Größe schwer einzuschätzen, wurde der flache Bungalow in der Nachkriegsbundesrepublik zum Symbol einer nivellierten Mittelschichtsgesellschaft.
Article
Full-text available
It was in the late the 1950s—on the brink of a prospering, forward-lookingera after the re-building of destroyed cities—that the term ‘Bungalow’ arrivedin West-Germany, where it took on specific cultural connotations that differfrom those in the Anglo-American world. Paradoxically, in Germany the termitself is understood in reference to this world until today, even if the West-German bungalow differs greatly in its architecture.The West-German bungalow marks the intersection of two globalphenomena: bungalow culture and modern architecture. Its culturalsignificance however, can only be understood in relation to the particularsof German history. I will therefore briefly sketch a genealogy of the West-German modernist bungalow, then discuss the cultural climate and historiccircumstances in 1950 and 1960s West-Germany, and finally present twoexamples, the Quelle™ mail-order bungalow (1963) and the Chancellor’sresidence in Bonn by Architect Sep Ruf (1963-64).
Article
In investigating its origins in Britain, North America, Africa, Australia and continental Europe, the book provides both a cultural history of the bungalow and an exploration of the cultural and political economy of urban and dwelling forms, the symbolic role of architecture, the influence of economy and society on the built environment, and of that environment on economy and society. Suburban growth and the expansion of leisure resorts, both represented by the 'invention' of the bungalow, are discussed in the context of an emerging world economy and the development of an international division of labour. Having looked at each continent in turn, the book ends by speculating on the present and future forms and significance of the bungalow in the light of its development and status in the past. -J.Sheail
Bungalow-Haus in Frankfurt
N. N. (1956), 'Bungalow-Haus in Frankfurt', Bauwelt 47 (42); 992-993.
Kanzlerbungalow: Richtiges Haus
N. N. (1967), 'Kanzlerbungalow: Richtiges Haus', Der Spiegel 21 (17).
Das Wohnhaus als Schaustück
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Colomina, B. (1999), 'Das Wohnhaus als Schaustück', in R. Ferguson and S. Emerson (eds.), Am Ende des Jahrhunderts. 100 Jahre gebaute Visionen (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz), 126-165.
The architecture of Richard Neutra from international style to California modern
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Drexler, A., Hines, T. S., and Neutra, R. (1982), The architecture of Richard Neutra from international style to California modern (New York: Museum of Modern Art).
Moderate Modernism for the Middle Classes. The West German Modernist "Bungalow" and the Ideal of a Prosperous
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Ebert, C. (2012a), 'Moderate Modernism for the Middle Classes. The West German Modernist "Bungalow" and the Ideal of a Prosperous "Levelled Middle Class Society" in Post-war Germany', in H. Heynen and J. Gosseye (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the EAHN (Brussels: VWK), 579-584.