Blumläger Feld Housing Estate

In the 1920s, the architect Otto Haesler did much to shape the cityscape of Celle with his designs. His third and final housing project for Celle was the Blumläger Feld Housing Estate, which was built in 1930/1931. Thanks to its rational design and standardised floor plans, Haesler created affordable, minimally sized dwellings for the poorer segment of the population. In terms of its minimisation of living space and cost savings, it was his most radical design. Among the advocates of the New Architecture, the floor plans therefore provoked great criticism. Given the housing shortage prevailing at that time, however, the estate was an important contribution to social housing in the Weimar Republic.

The housing complex originally consisted of a group of two-storey buildings. Two 222-metre-long linear buildings along Hugoweg and Rauterbergweg plus a transverse building visually dominated the estate. In 2003, the linear building on Hugoweg was demolished and the building on Rauterbergweg was augmented with an additional storey. Only one segment with two flats, plus the transverse building (“Lungenflügel”) and the combined wash and bath house, which extends the line of the Rauterbergweg building but whose entrance is at Galgenberg 13, have been preserved in their original form. The Otto Haesler Foundation has been running the Otto Haesler Museum in the latter building since 2001.

The flats in the first linear building (on Rauterbergweg), with their very small rooms, were equipped with furniture and built-in kitchens. The flats in the second linear building (on Hugoweg) and the transverse building were rented unfurnished and thus had slightly larger room dimensions. Between the two linear buildings, 88 tenant gardens were laid out to promote self-sufficiency. These gave the housing estate the character of a garden city.

In a second phase of construction, three shorter linear buildings and two individual buildings were later built to the north. Due to the higher demand for unfurnished apartments, they share the same dimensions and floor plans of the second linear building. The buildings from the second phase still exist today but require extensive refurbishment. The reason for this is corrosion damage to the steel frame structure employed by Haesler, who was among the first to experiment with such construction. The damage meant that all the residents had to vacate their homes in the summer of 2018.

What will happen to this listed historical housing estate is still unresolved. The Otto Haesler Museum is after the renovation open to the public. [KS/DK]