The periphery of the German city: from the garden city to the modern Siedlung

This article examines how the most recognisable urban forms of the Siedlung in the first postwar period in Germany were influenced by previous experiences in the construction of the urban periphery involving the company town and the garden city. The adaptation of these peripheral settlements - in which the desired balance between the country house and the urban dwelling was achieved by introducing terraced housing- to meet certain requirements of sufficient density to satisfy the growing demand for small dwellings was to determine the final configuration of the "modern Siedlung," the settlement characteristic of the expansion of the large German city in the 1920s. An urban form that was to combat the housing shortage problem by providing systematic, medium-density housing groups consisting mainly of linear buildings several storeys high integrated with the open space in a remarkable balance between building and nature. On the basis of original sources from that period, this text addresses noteworthy aspects of this evolution towards a spatial, functional and aesthetic shaping of the collective accommodation characteristic of a Modernist German urbanism which still deserves to be taken into consideration in the current discussion about urban density.