1931: Between utopia and dystopia
With Tanja Vollmer

In the thirteenth episode of the second season of “About Bauhaus”, we return once more to architecture. Under the directorship of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus increasingly focused on building design. In the “Seminar for Housing and Urban Planning” led by Ludwig Hilberseimer, new large-scale housing estates were designed that radically broke with traditional notions of the city.

What was once understood as a utopian vision of new ways of living often reminds us today of dystopian, monotonous prefabricated housing estates. But what is it really like to live in a modern large housing estate? And what impact do modernist ideas of housing have on the residents’ psyche? Podcast host Adriana Kapsreiter explores these questions in conversation with architectural psychologist Tanja Vollmer. In a large-scale study, she has investigated what housing needs people in such estates actually have and how they can best be realised architecturally.