Contested Architecture: The ‘Woba’ Residential Colony in Basel, 1930

Rhea Rieben

doi:10.17645/up.v4i3.2141

Abstract

In 1930, a housing exhibition called ‘Woba’ took place in the city of Basel. Unique for Switzerland, the commercial aspect of the furniture industry was complemented by a newly constructed residential colony. In accordance with discussions held one year before at the II CIAM congress in Frankfurt a. M., the Wohnung für das Existenzminimum was brought to life. Thirteen architectural offices experimented with different spatial designs in order to develop cheap and hygienic housing for the working class. For one month, some of the houses were open to the public. In the Swiss press, a vivid and controversial debate arose. On one side, its supporters advocated for standardized and rationalized housing as an appropriate way of living for modern individuals. On the other side, conservative forces saw a communist scheme at work in this housing in the style of Neues Bauen. By analyzing contemporary press articles on the Woba, this paper shows that the question of society’s future was being negotiated through architecture and furniture.

Highlights

We are on Im Surinam, a long, straight street in a flatroofed residential area at the rear of a railway station on the outskirts of Basel
The invention of type-furniture (Typenmöbel), a piece of furniture designed for serial production and versatile in its reduction to its basic function (Rüegg & Tropeano, 1995), proved key to the development of a new living concept: type-furniture as the embodiment of a modern way of living, because it gives an answer to the question of how to live in order to develop a new attitude to life
The Heimatstil debate and the question of Baubolschewismus, which shaped the reception of this project, had already been underway previously, as much as the Neues Bauen (Dogramaci, 2019; Kohlrausch, 2019), influenced by developments in neighboring countries

Summary

Introduction

We are on Im Surinam, a long, straight street in a flatroofed residential area at the rear of a railway station on the outskirts of Basel. Urban Planning, 2019, Volume 4, Issue 3, Pages 212–222 home for a family with two children, including a garden (Figures 1 and 2) It was built in 1930 by Paul Artaria and Hans Schmidt as part of a housing exhibition colony. During the heyday of the cooperative housing movement in interwar Basel, around 250 houses were built in garden city fashion by Bernoulli and Künzel—all of them with steep roofs It was only in 1928 when Hans Schmidt and Paul Artaria took over Hans Bernoulli’s position as co-planners of the housing cooperative’s Lange Erlen and Rüttibrunnen that the flat roof first appeared in Basel’s residential areas (Figure 3; Artaria & Schmidt Architekten, 1928; Pläne der Wohngenossenschaften Lange Erlen, 1928).

International Context

Housing is Political

Conclusions