Villa colony

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Aerial view of Blasewitz and Striesen in Dresden

In the context of urban planning, the villa colony is a more or less systematic collection of several villas in a limited area within cities or as a suburb in the 19th century.

History of origin

From the middle of the 19th century, residential quarters specially created for the wealthy bourgeoisie emerged in Germany, which were built exclusively or predominantly with detached single - family houses. The architectural freedom of design was allowed to unfold. One- or two-story single-family houses were not suitable as the immediate neighbors of four or five-story apartment buildings in the city center. Streets were laid out in the manner of avenues and front gardens were taken into account in the development plan . Bourgeois forms of living varied from the bourgeois villa to the villa colony to the single-family row house .

With the increasing prosperity of large circles of the bourgeoisie in the founding years , the demand for representative living space rose rapidly in the 19th century. Urban development concepts took up this demand and implemented it. Following the urge to escape the often overcrowded and unhealthy inner cities, from the middle of the century onwards, spacious garden cities with villa developments were laid out on the outskirts of German (and Austrian ) cities. Because these parts of the city were completely redesigned and were located outside the closed urban settlement, the term 'villa colony' quickly caught on in analogy to overseas colonization (possibly based on 'allotment garden colony').

Forms of development

Outstanding examples are the foundations in Dresden , the Marienthal colony in Hamburg-Wandsbek and the Berlin villa colonies Lichterfelde-West (from 1860), Westend (from 1866) and Grunewald (from 1880). The most elaborate of the closed villa settlements of the founding years (for example, Lichterfelde-West) are complex systems with architecturally planned street patterns, avenues with driveways and sidewalks - separated by green strips - and a large number of formally designed spaces. In some cases, train stations, lighting and / or technical facilities were also adapted to the architectural concepts. The architectural styles of the villas often show the ingenuity of Wilhelmine building. A wide variety of architectural styles were placed next to each other or combined without hesitation. Characteristic are extensive gardens (often with coach houses and farm buildings ) and adorned with fountains, temples and the like, which as a rule, however, were built much smaller than in classic - singularly built into the landscape - villas.

Later villa settlements, on the other hand, from around 1890 (e.g. Berlin-Dahlem , or in front of the gates of Berlin for the managers of Siemens the villa colony Neu-Finkenkrug (from 1893), the villa colony Falkenhain (from 1898) or from 1907 Wilhelmshorst ) do without usually on complex and representative overall facilities in favor of a “natural” appearance as garden cities embedded in forests .

Because of their loosened up construction, many villa colonies survived the wildfires triggered by the Allied bombings (see also firestorm ) comparatively well. In the post-war period , the large houses were often divided into apartments or gardens were built on due to the housing shortage. Up until the 1980s, Wilhelminian style villas were torn down in favor of new buildings in line with contemporary tastes. In the meantime, outstanding examples of ensembles of old villas are under ensemble protection .

Other important preserved villa colonies

19th century villa settlements
Villa settlements after 1900

literature

  • Dorle Gribl: Villa colonies in and around Munich, Munich 1999, ISBN 978-3-934036-02-4 .
  • Heike Werner: Architecture excursions from Munich: Würmtal & Umgebung , Munich, 2011, ISBN 978-3-9809471-4-5 .
  • Nicola Bröcker and Celina Kress: settle southwest. Kleinmachnow near Berlin - From the villa colony to the community housing estate , Berlin 2006 (1st edition 2004).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tilman Harlander (Ed.), Villa und Eigenheim: Suburbaner Städtebau in Deutschland , 2001, p. 232
  2. ↑ Thomas Weichel, Civil villa culture in the 19th century. , in: Dieter Hein / Andreas Schulz, (Eds.), Citizenship Culture in the 19th Century , 1996, p. 234 ff.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Voigt, Das Bremer Haus , 1992, p. 276
  4. ↑ In Erlenstegen there is now fear , eveningzeitung-muenchen.de, accessed on June 2, 2020
  5. ↑ More green for Nuremberg , sueddeutsche.de, accessed on June 2, 2020
  6. ↑ www.wilhelmshorst.de