Back in the first year of this blog one of my first posts was about a visit to Berlin, where my stepson and daughter-in-law live. Since that post they’ve had two boys. Mrs TD and I are just back from a week’s visit there.

Every time I return to Berlin I’m impressed by its atmosphere: strangely calm and peaceful for such a big city.

Round the corner from TD jnr’s house in Prenzlauerberg is this Weimar/Bauhaus housing development on Erich Weinertstrasse, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Designed in 1929-30 by Bruno Taut (1880-1938), with the cooperation of Franz Hillinger, head of the Draft Office at GEHAG (a Berlin public housing cooperative), the Carl Legien estate is named after the first chairman of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund [German General Trade Unions Association] founded in 1919.

Here’s what the website Architects/Architecture/Architectuul says about it:

The brief of the Berlin senate had called for a high-density residential development with five-storey buildings owing to the high cost of land, the estate being located near the city centre. The site itself was framed by a gas container, small factories and a colony of garden allotments. As a model for his design, Taut chose the functional architecture of the Tusschendijken project built in 1919/20 by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, a member of the De Stijl group, in Rotterdam. Taut’s scheme was innovative in that the u-shaped buildings enclosed the courtyards that were open toward the street, separated by a belt of green. The vertically stacked loggias facing the courtyard and the balconies which project beyond the building line into the street result in an interlocking of public and private spaces. As in most housing projects designed by Taut, the planning of green areas was entrusted to Leberecht Migge. Taut and Migge were striving for a consistent design for the entire project. They felt that workers’ quarters should be surrounded by lots of green, much like the villas of the upper class, and the green areas should be laid out in such a way as to provide an “outside living space”. If the design of a similar project designed by Taut, the Hufeisensiedlung was still influenced by the “garden city” concept, the Wohnstadt Legien had a distinctivly urban and integrative expression od contemporary industrialism society.

Taut was associated with the Deutscher Werkbund group of architects, which included Walter Gropius.

Being Jewish, he was obliged to flee Germany with the rise of Hitler and the fascists. He went first to Switzerland, then on to Japan and Turkey, where he died and is buried.

Here’s a detail that illustrates his use of colour and shape; stupidly I didn’t take more pictures of my own, so here’s one from the web:

 At no. 101 in this street is our favourite café in the area – Eckstern. The proprietor, Riadh Gose, bought the site with his wife when it was a rundown baker’s, and refurbished it (taking six months, he told us) with his designer partner, Stefan.

He offers several types of beans for his excellent coffees – our favourite is the organic one. He makes a mean bircher muesli, and provides delicious filled bagels, breakfasts and cakes. A graphic designer, he and Stefan painted all the murals inside, with themes from sites across the city, while his card and flyer, and my photo of his sign outside, are all in the spirit of the Bauhaus architecture all around.