House of Weissenhof

I have chosen the House of Weissenhof.  It is a modern style house that is very unique in shape, color, and size.  I was attracted to it because of its overhanging top since you don’t see many buildings that look like that at all.  The history, house details, and purpose of the house are all important to know when understanding where ideas came from when designing.

            Le Corbusier, a French architect, built the House of Weissenhof.  It was built in Stuttgart, Germany in 1927, part of the 20^th century.  The house is modern and is made of mainly stucco that is over brick.  It was built after the war and Le Corbusier had to deal with a difficult ground surface that was uneven and the budget was limited.

            The house’s main material used is stucco around the upper exterior of the house.  Le Corbusier used common materials such as brick, tiles, and vaults formed with tiles as permanent shuttering.  The roof is covered with grass, which is interesting because you do not usually come across houses with growing life on top of them.  The house is made up of squares and rectangles; it is a theme that you see throughout the exterior of the house.  All of the many windows are small squares that balance out the white stucco on the front exterior elevation.  The back of the house has several square and rectangle shape cement blocks that give a feeling of openness because the centers are hollow instead of solid.    Le Corbusier’s ‘five points of a new architecture’ are free plan, free façade, pilotis, roof garden and ribbon windows.  He accomplished all of these in the Weissenhof.  Some of the main rooms in the house include a boiler room, coal store, washroom, lots of storage, kitchen, dining, living, maid’s room, five bedrooms, a boudoir, bathroom, and a terrace

            Le Corbusier’s main reason for a modern house was to be different from everyone else, as he knew it would be compared with other European Modernist designers.  The function of this house is just like any other house; it is to be well designed for people to be comfortable living in.  As you can tell it was meant for a family with lots of children.  Le Corbusier was on a budget when designing this house because it was after the war and money was limited.   The house from a distance is very appealing because of all of the contrasting elements.  A different architect decided in the same year to design something very similar to Le Corbusier’s design.  He made Weissenhof row houses that are two stories tall and have a focus on gardens.  The materials and colors and shapes from the Weissenhof house were inspired for the Weissenhof row houses.  Le Corbusier’s House of Weissenhof has a very futuristic look to it, which I think is why people still draw eyes towards it today.

            As a four-story house that is built on a very challenging hill in Stuttgart, Germany, it was a very successful design for the time it was built.  Le Corbusier really captured the rectilinear elements around the house.  The one thing it never became was a popular or standardized house.