Das neue Frankfurt

The Siedlungen are housing estates built in between the 1925 and 1931 that defined new forms of urban expansion in Frankfurt. Under the ideas of the Garden City as a mean of dissemination of the city in the field Siedlungen estates are built in low density residential areas interspersed with green areas. Through the identification, and analysis of urban qualities of the traditional city: homogeneous urban form, comprehensive and closed; opposed to the industrial city: heterogeneous urban form, fragmented, and undefined, modern German architects developed urban rationalization processes in response to the uncontrolled growth of the modern metropolis. From the house design to the city planning, the Siedlungen exemplifies the most important attempts to rationalize the industrial city. Industrialize processes in building technology for architectural design, defines new qualitative and quantitative parameters for the production of modern housing, with the construction of 15.000 housing units. Modern production enabled to tackle urban problems in different urban scales, giving the architect’s work the role of an agent of large urban transformations. The urban plan of Frankfurt coordinated by Ernst May was based on a vision of decentralization and zoning at a metropolitan scale. This outcome characterizes an intervention process in which general and particular urban issues are addressed in sectorial plans, within a specific approach to each urban area.