From A4 paper to the Octametric brick: Ernst Neufert and the geo-politics of standardisation in Nazi Germany

Abstract

It goes without saying that publications have changed the way we look at architecture—indeed, the entire world. What is less self-evident is that some of the most influential publications are ones that we rarely, if ever, read. Published materials include documents of all kinds: reports, statutes and codes, for example. Technical publications can include standard sheets, which are always published in some form, and not just manuals or handbooks. Standard sheets have revolutionised the world in which we live despite the fact that few of us can claim familiarity with the knowledge that they convey. Nation states will sanction them, companies help create them and markets perpetuate them. Yet few of us can recite what even one of them states.DIN 476 is an example of a standard sheet which few of us have read but on which many of us rely. In this essay, I examine its impact on the thinking of the architect Ernst Neufert (1900–1986), one of the twentieth century's most influential, if also controversial, architects, and consider how it shaped his understanding of standardisation. I also look at how it informed his approach to social housing construction in Nazi Germany and detail how efforts to rationalise the management of paperwork transformed design practice. Finally, I reflect on the profound extent to which Neufert's Octametric System influenced post-war reconstruction in East and West Germany.