(no. 7) has a non-solid construction appearance; its body comprises two separate cuboids constituting separate residential sections which are connected via a common staircase. It also offers interesting solutions in the upper part where certain geometrical bodies are suspended in such a way that the play of light and shade highlights the façade. The rather heavy body of the building was made more appealing by the use of the loggias and lightcoloured façade with contrasting dark window recesses of different shapes. From the point of view of ”pure” func-
58 Semi-detached house no. 26/27, designed by Theo Effenberger, view from the street (south-east), 2014
tionalism they were considered unnecessary elements: simply decorative. Perhaps the building would have had better proportion if the designed number of floors had actually been built. As a ten-floor high-rise building in an estate of low-scale developments it would have achieved an additional advantage of appearing to have a light body. The semi-detached house no. 29–30 by Paul Häusler has a certain severity due to its cuboid body. The only element that rendered it more attractive was a small roof positioned above the entrance supported by two thin, differently proportioned poles. The detached houses by Theo Effenberger (no. 26–27) and Emil Lange (no. 28) are similar in their cuboid construction. For the functionalists, the form of a house was to be a result of the user's needs. This was a common assumption made by architects in the circles of Mies van der Rohe, as well as Hugo Häring and Hans Scharoun who despite that notion, were critical of one another. The only criterion was the concordance of form and function. Thus the inconsistency was not in the assumptions, but in their execution. Peter Blundel believes that the only real functionalist of the interwar period was and till recently unnoticed, is Hugo Häring, creator of the trend called ”organic architecture 98”.
88 WuWA
5. The 1929 WuWA housing estate
98 99
Ibidem, p. 17. Piergiacomo BUCCIARELLI, Hugo Häring – architekt i teoretyk. In: Hugo Häring w jego czasach, budowanie w naszych czasach. Exhibition catalogue, ed. Christ Otto, Stuttgart 1992, p. 27. Häring's position was in total contradiction to the one Le Corbusier presented at the first congress of CIAM in 1928. Le Corbusier attributed huge significance to the role of geometry and pure forms in architecture.