Single People and Mass Housing in Germany 1850-1930

<p>Unsettling traditional understandings of housing reform as focused on the nuclear family with dependent children <i> Single People and Mass Housing in Germany 1850-1930 </i>is the first complete study of single-person mass housing in Germany and the pivotal role this class- and gender-specific building type played for over 80 years-in German architectural culture and society the transnational Progressive reform movement Feminist discourse and International Modernism-and its continued relevance. <p/>Homes for unmarried men and women or <i>Ledigenheime</i> were built for nearly every powerful interest group in Germany-progressive reactionary and radical alike-from the mid-nineteenth century into the 1920s. Designed by both unknown craftsmen and renowned architects ranging from Peter Behrens to Bruno Taut these homes fought unregimented lodging in overcrowded working-class dwellings while functioning as apparatuses of moral and social control. A means to societal reintegration <i>Ledigenheime</i> effectively bridged the public-private divide and rewrote the rules of who was deserving of quality housing-pointing forward to the building programs of Weimar Berlin and Red Vienna experimental housing in Soviet Russia Feminist collectives accommodations for postwar guestworkers and even housing for the elderly today.</p>