Proceedings of 2nd International Symposium for Color Science and Art 2020

Color Planning in Modern Architecture: Focusing on
Housing Estates in Germany during the Weimar Period
Monado Ebisawa
Tokyo Polytechnic Univ., 1583 Iiyama, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0297, Japan

regularity in coloration. In the latter project, different colors
were adopted according to the facing of the wall, i.e., he usedgreen for the east walls and red for the west walls of houses
because each color corresponded to the rising or setting sun.2The Britz housing estate was designed between these twoprojects. As Taut did not give any concrete explanation about
the color planning of this endeavor, we must consider his concept
by analyzing the existing architecture. Berlin architects Helge
Pitze and Winfried Brenne researched this housing estate in the1980s, and most of its original colors have been restored inrecent years. By referring to the documents written by Pitze andBrenne3, and by constructing an original model of the housing
estate, the author of this paper tried to understand Taut’s concept.
A study using an architectural model has the following merits:First, it allows the author to have a bird’s-eye view of whole
design, even a large project like a housing estate, and second, itmeans the author can see the colors of both the street- andgarden-side walls, which are hard to observe on-site.

ABSTRACT
Modern architects developed color planning during the periodof Germany’s history known as the Weimar Republic. This
study discusses its use in modern architecture by focusing on theBritz housing estate, designed by Bruno Taut in the second halfof the 1920s in Berlin. This housing estate consists of threestory apartment houses and two-story townhouses, each ofwhich has different color-planning characteristics. The author
tries to clarify them by analyzing an architectural model madewith the help of a field study and concludes that Taut’s approachto color planning seemed to change within a short period of time.
1. INTRODUCTION
Modern architecture that appeared at the beginning of thetwentieth century in Europe realized geometry-based, abstractarchitectural design. As we know these works mainly fromblack-and-white photographs, we may believe that modern
architecture was largely white and without color. However,various colors were used to enrich architectural spaces; in fact,
color was one of the most important elements of architecture atthat time. Many architects dealt with this in Germany during theWeimar Republic, especially in the great numbers of housing
estates built in this era, where various colors were used both on
the inside and the outside of buildings. One of the most famous
German architects in this period was Bruno Taut (1880-1938).
This paper focuses on Taut’s masterpiece, the Britz housing
estate, and considers his approach to color planning by analyzing
an architectural model made with the help of a field study.

3. The Britz Housing Estate and its Architectural Model
Taut’s Britz housing estate was constructed by GEHAG in six
sections between 1925 and 1930, and this study focuses on
sections one and two (1925-27), which are characterized by acentral horseshoe-shaped building (Figs. 1, 2). These two
sections consist of 555 apartments (one-story dwelling units) and
472 townhouses. The horseshoe-shaped building and the threestory buildings constructed along the peripheral roads were allplanned to house apartments and were designed with flat-roofed,geometrical modern forms (Figs. 2, 3). The two-story
townhouses located inside the site have seemingly traditionalarchitectural forms with pitched roofs (Fig. 4).
The architectural model for this study was constructed with ascale of one to five hundred (1/500). Both the form and color of
the houses were based on the documents written by Pitze andBrenne as well as observations made during the author’s fieldstudy. The model was built of Styrofoam and colored withacrylic paints.

2. Bruno Taut and Housing Estates in Berlin
In the history of modern architecture, Bruno Taut is famous as
an expressionist architect who presented an original utopian
vision in approximately 1920 as well as being known for hiswork in Japan during the 1930s. However, he was mostproductive during the Weimar Republic, especially in the second
half of the 1920s. As the chief architect of a housing company
named GEHAG, he planned almost ten thousand dwellings inBerlin from 1924 to 1931. After World War I, Germany faced aserious housing shortage, and many reasonable dwellings wererequired. For that reason, many apartment houses were planned
as simple buildings in which Taut used colors to enrich theinhabitants’ living environment.
As some previous studies suggest1, Taut’s manner ofarchitectural coloring gradually changed from the 1910s to the1930s. In an early project called Garden City Falkenberg (191316), which was termed a “box of watercolors” at the time, heseemed to use colors freely, while the fifth section of a forest
housing estate, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1930), shows a clear

Fig. 1 Model of the Britz Housing Estate, Sections 1 and 221

Proceedings of 2nd International Symposium for Color Science and Art 2020
therefore, it can be speculated that Taut’s usage of blue changed
after the construction of Lining Street. There are also buildingson this street on which two colors alternate between every house,
like stripes (Figs. 4, 5), a coloration which is not foundelsewhere. Moreover, on many townhouses in section one, thecolors of the garden-side wall are different from those of thestreet-side wall, while most of the townhouses in section two
have the same colors on both sides.
We can say that the coloration of section two is more
systematic than that of section one. For example, in section two,the buildings on Jochen-Nussler Street in the southeastern area
are of great interest as they show a gradual transition from white
to yellow to red in a zigzag pattern (Fig. 7). This allows us topotentially see an aspect of Taut’s stance on systematic colorplanning.

4. Analysis of Taut’s Color Planning in Britz
The color planning of the Britz housing estate shows thedifferent characteristics of the three-story apartment buildings
and the two-story townhouses. The former buildings have aneye-catching, unified coloration, as is seen on the horseshoeshaped building (Fig. 2) or the red buildings (called Red Front)
along the eastern peripheral road (Fig. 3). While planning these,
Taut seemes to have wanted to create a contrasting color effect.
For example, on the wall of the horseshoe-shaped building, Taut
adopted white as the background color and emphasizedstaircases and the top floor with blue lines. The Red Front also
has a contrast between its red background and pink staircases.
On the other hand, the townhouses show a relatively random
coloration consisting of four colors: dark red, yellow, white, andblue. Each townhouse has one color on the street-side wall, andsome of the townhouses have the same color on the garden side
as that of the street side, while others have a different one. In aprevious article4, the author pointed out the following
characteristics of colors on the street-side walls of thesetownhouses:• Taut used dark red most commonly as a fundamental color. The
number of blue residences was small, and they were mainly
located at the end of a building.
• He gave the townhouses arbitrary zigzag arrangements andchanged colors where the houses followed this layout.
• He varied coloration from street to street. For example, in somebuildings, two colors alternated between every residence (orevery two residences), while some buildings were unicolored.
The author concluded that because there was no clear
regularity in the color planning, it must have been laid out
according to Taut’s sense of design.
By making the architectural model, it became clear that hiscolor planning seems to have changed in the short period of time
between section one, constructed between 1925 and 1926 in thenorthern area of the site, and section two, constructed between
1926 and 1927 in the southern area (Fig. 1). For example, thetownhouses along Lining street in the northeastern area show aunique coloration that is different from other streets, i.e., thewhole building is colored blue (Fig. 5). On other streets, blue
residences are placed only at the ends of townhouses (Fig. 6);

Fig. 2 The Horseshoe-shaped building

Fig. 5 Model of townhouses, Lining Street

5. Conclusion
This paper discusses Bruno Taut’s Britz housing estate as an
example of color planning in modern architecture. Taut’s color
planning became more systematic after designing the Britz
housing estate. Through analyzing an architectural model, theauthor observed that it changed between the creation of sections
one and two of this project.
During the Weimar Republic, many modern architects, notonly Taut, dealt with color. By considering the other architects’works, the progression of color planning in modern architecture
may be traced more explicitly.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Mr. Kentaro Tsutsumi forconstructing the architectural model. I also thank Mr. W. Brenne
and Mr. Jens Rieser for their advice and provision of materials.
Notes

1. e.g. W.Brenne, “Wohnbauten von Bruno Taut”, in: W.Nerdinger (ed.),
Bruno Taut, Stuttgart, 2001, pp.275-289
2. B.Taut, “Farbe”, Gehag-Nachrichten, I 6, 1930
3. Gross-Siedlung Britz: Dokumentation und Rekonstruktion desOriginalzustandes (Band 2A, 2B, 3A, 3C), Berlin, 1984-91
4. M.Ebisawa, “On the planning of residential buildings and their colors
in the Hufeisensiedlung Britz by Bruno Taut”, Summaries of technicalpapers of annual meeting of AIJ, 2019 (in Japanese)

Fig. 3 The Red Front

Fig.6 Model of townhouses in Section 222Fig. 4 Townhouses, Lining Street

Fig.7 Model of townhouses,Jochen-Nussler Street