Architecture as a System of Oppression

In this week’s blog post, I will discuss how the ideology behind the architecture of the tenements enforces the social status of the tenants and informs the form. 

Using these paper models as a starting point, we can see the grey, muted existence that the tenants experienced whilst living in the tenements blocks during the late nineteenth and twentieth century. 

The first model is a model of one of the rooms in which a family would have lived. There are shelves on the wall, yet they are not decorated. There’s a worn out curtain hanging on the window, yet it's better than the view outside. A plate with no food and peeling, cracking walls. This is just a snapshot of what conditions would have been like, a vignette of a hard, working life. For the second model, we really get a sense of the desolation of the inner courtyards. With no greenery and a broken bicycle, it is not exactly a safe space for children to play. With rows and rows of lifeless windows, it is evident that the architecture mirrors a functional existence. 

So, what is it about the ideology behind the tenement blocks that translates to the forms? Taking it back to the Hobrecht plan of 1862 (mentioned in last weeks ‘a brief history’), we know that the original plan consisted of wide streets, with very large city blocks. The wide streets enforce the imperial nature of Berlin’s government at the time, as they drown out individuals. Furthermore, the heavily ornamented facades were reserved for the outer facing tenements only, which underpins the idea of class separation. Of course, why would anyone want to see the impoverished conditions behind. The sheer density of the blocks also echo that the tenants were only seen by the state as a number; a figure to help with their industrial exploits. It was in the state’s best interest to house these workers in high density blocks because they are able to efficiently exert control. 

During the decades leading up to the second world war, when the Nazi party were in power, there was concern that the density of the blocks helped to spread the resistance ideology. The tenements were like a rabbit warren, literally and metaphorically. A warren of ideas and social unrest, the architecture acted against the original ideas for which it was intended for. Instead of being able to exert ideological control, the architecture encouraged resistance as it had been part of a system of oppression for so long. The making of the Nazi party in this sense was its undoing, just as quickly as an agenda could be enforced by the architecture, it could also be infiltrated from the inside. Thus, the architecture is flexible with the socio-political state.

In next week’s blog post entitled ‘behind the veil’, I will explore how the heavily ornamented facades are only really a veil for what lies behind.