An Englishman in Gropiusstadt

Gropiusstadt may bear Walter Gropius’ name, but he would have been appalled to see it. The Bauhaus-founder drafted the original plans but this sprawling, 230 hectare south Berlin suburb of 50,000 residents didn’t work out the way he intended.

The wall going up in 1961 sparked a housing emergency for West Berlin as they could no longer build outwards. The solution? Build up. The highest buildings in Gropius’ original plan were five stories. Instead the (perhaps ironically titled) ‘Ideal Haus’ reaches 30.

We’ll never know for sure what Gropius would have thought as he died six years before the estate’s completion, it being named after him as a posthumous memorial. It’s gone through an oh-so-familiar modernist estate life cycle. Initial post war enthusiasm gave way to social failure synecdoche — it’s infamously the home of the 14-year-old drug addict in We Children of Zoo Station. These days the inevitable hipster fetishisation is encouraged by its location just south of trendy Neukölln.

Visiting today, I’m struck by how effectively its entwined with nature and the surprising amount of street life for a high rise estate — with the first every German comprehensive school, a lido, community centre and a variety of shops nestled amongst the towers. Two older Turkish men, who lived a stone’s throw away, shared a drink with me as I relaxed in one of the many small, civic squares. Looking up at the Ideal Haus one asked “Is it like being an Englishman in New York?”. Maybe Walter would have liked his name sake after all.