Social Housing in Germany: Threshold between architecture and politics

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In this final chapter one can summarise that all these terms and their significance were closely related to the political state - they had become definitions of the two political regimes. The topics of prefabricated houses and the standardisation of construction elements, brought to the architectural scene during the modernist period (1924-1933), along with the heatedly debated over flat roof, became signs of a liberal government and were thus implemented by the architects of the FRG after the division of the country. The grandeur and monumentality of the Nazi rule, stressing to the German population the power of the state, became present once more with the GDR, as discussed in Chapter 5. Social housing was not by any means the only type of construction being explored by authors and torn between the modern and traditional. Public architecture was also exposed to this opposition but was not as crucial to the German life as the social housing can be perceived as. Social architecture can be considered as a way of providing shelter to the nation that supports the need for any type of public architecture. In that sense, social housing can be viewed as more important and thus, understanding of the interest of German architects over social housing, examined through the case studies in this dissertation, can be gained. As discussed in the Introduction, shifting between the tradition and the modern, both of which as assumed define respectively the capitalist and democratic political regimes, German architects were searching for balance. Now, with the German country becoming multinational and especially with the recent refugee crisis that has spread all over Europe, the job of the German architects is no longer solely to create dwellings for the German people. The debate on traditional and modernist seems long gone with the advance of technology and construction and, whereas there is still control of politics over architecture, it seems to be purely by building law regulations and not as restrictive as it has been before. The multinational state of Germany and the liberal political system allow for more diversity in architecture than before, especially after opening its doors for the refugees of the East.

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