Description

“Over the course of a time-sensitive development (…), the city dweller crystalized as a type. (…) The immense variety and differences in types of city dwellers must be met by a broad range of housing opportunities that offer an adequate form of living.”
Hans Scharoun[1]

The new social order brought about by industrialization was also reflected in the housing policy debate that accompanied it and the emergence of new housing models such as Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses. In addition to the spread of the nuclear family, new household forms emerged that were comprised of singles, divorcées, and widows or widowers, as well as new forms for students and urban nomads, for whom no living space had been available on the housing market before the early 20th century. These very specific user groups not only originated from the working lower and middle classes, but also included members of the upper middle class and the newly emerging educated middle class.[2] The heterogeneous target audience of Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses shared the desire not to include children among the residents.[3] Thus, for the first time since the monasteries and beguinages, a housing form developed that was largely aimed at single persons and basically focused on living without children. In addition to offering access to adequate housing, an array of shared services also provided motivation for living together. An early case of this housing form was Whitechapel Rowton House in London (1902, Harry Bell Measures), followed by Charlottenburg Men’s Hostel in Berlin (1908, Rudolf Walter) and Rehhoffstraße Men’s Hostel in Hamburg (1913, Wilhelm Behrens, Ernst Vicenz).

The new housing models of Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses and the types of floor plans that resulted were heatedly debated by international experts and presented to the public in congresses, exhibitions, and model settlements, mainly in Germany, Austria, France, and Great Britain. The second congress by architecture think tank CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne), held in Frankfurt in 1929 on the subject of The Apartment for Subsistence Living, was of great importance, as were the 1927 Werkbund exhibitions in Stuttgart, The Apartment, and one in Breslau two years later titled Living and Workroom, which also presented a model settlement.[4] Here, architects aimed to put standardization and a minimal form of living in direct relationship to the human body, drawing conclusions about minimum requirements for apartment size and drafting, among other things, a number of floor plans for Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses.[5]

Homes for Urban Nomads

While at the start of the 20th century Men’s and Women’s Hostels were still integrating young single workers into the housing market, by the 1920s modern life had produced city dwellers who were urban nomads, pursuing their activities internationally and testing out this new lifestyle in Boarding Houses. The women’s movement in particular pushed for a new form of housing, with small apartments to provide women with sufficient freedom and legitimacy to thrive in their newfound lifestyles since, at the time, there was no infrastructure for women to live independently. This forward movement was also seen in the emergence of so-called women’s clubs, where women could relax, dine, and amuse themselves without male accompaniment.[6] Accordingly, this new form of housing was often initially called Apartments for the Working Woman. Examples include the Lettenhof Women’s Colony in Zurich (1927, Lux Guyer), Lydia House in Amsterdam, built by the Association for the Protection of Girls (1927, Jan Boterenbrood), Design of a One-Room Apartment for the Working Woman (1928, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky), Women’s Community House in Basel (1929, Paul Artaria, Hans Schmidt) and the Home for Working Women in Frankfurt (1929, Bernhard Hermkes). Later, however, the term changed to Men’s and Women’s Hostels or Men’s and Women’s Apartments. The most famous example is probably Breslau Men’s and Women’s Hostel in Wrocław, Poland (1929, Hans Scharoun). In addition to Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses, the terms apartment suites and serviced living were also created.[7] The term boarding house, however, was suggestive of the modern and progressive lifestyles of the inter-war period and was immediately associated with the United States.[8] All of these terms were suggestive of living as if in a hotel, although the new lodging forms were designed for longer stays. In each type of domicile, very modest personal apartments were supplemented with services and collective living spaces in which life could be shared.[9]

The Inter-War Years

In the inter-war years, the rationalization and optimization of housing became a major policy issue.[10] Floor plans and living standards needed to be tailored to the newly formed society that had been freshly shaped by the processes of industrialization. Usefulness, convenience, and functionality were the stated goals, implemented both by rationalizing apartment production through financial and spatial economies and through typification and standardization. The socially motivated desire to achieve minimal forms and find the smallest common standardizable denominator of living were important factors in the emergence of Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses.[11] Thus, in the early 1930s, a number of Boarding Houses were built, among them the Boarding House of the West in Hamburg (1930, Rudolf Klophaus, August Schoch, Erich zu Putlitz), Arosa Collective House in Prague (1932, Karel Hannauer) and the Isokon Building in London (1933, Wells Coates). However, the housing needs and lifestyles of these new urban nomads were for the most part unknown and as yet largely unexplored. Architects therefore relied heavily on scientific analysis to calculate biological minimum requirements for humans and, from this, the dimensions and facilities that would make a dwelling practicable and functional. The result included small dwellings and micro-apartments with monofunctional rooms, space-saving interiors, and built-in furniture.[12]
Without collective facilities and the associated services such as laundry and cooking, complete living would not have been possible. The minimal micro-dwellings were designed so that operating and managing the household required the least possible effort, since residents were not at home during the day.[13] The living quarters of the Men’s and Women’s Hostels were adjusted to make them affordable even for single workers. The reduction of personal spaces and the central shared provision of services were therefore not seen as an emergency solution to a new housing situation, but instead constituted a progressive concept for relieving residents, especially working women, of the burdens of housework and enabling them to lead independent lives.[14] Collective living also provided social protection and promoted the formation of familylike structures.

The Role of Women in the Workforce

These specific forms of collective living reflected the social inequality of men and women at the time. Prior to the emergence of Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses, single men often lived in furnished subleased homes or, if they were among the lower working class, were night lodgers. Due to societal restrictions, however, single women ran the risk of being deemed immoral if they stayed in an establishment with a landlady. Moreover, the inequality of wages at all salary levels made it virtually impossible for women to find affordable housing.[15]
The increasing employment of women led to a new cross-class way of life, that of the independent working woman. In turn, this manifested itself in new housing models, though most were associated with being unmarried, as many professions — including teaching, nursing, and working in an office — long required celibacy.[16] When a woman married, she often had to give up gainful employment. It was not until the aftermath of World War I that working women slowly gained social recognition, and the generally difficult living conditions they faced increasingly entered public discussion.[17] Thus, the new living models were directed at sophisticated and progressive women and men who were breaking away from social and cultural traditions. The changing political environment in 1920s Europe led to strong notions of progress, combined with modern concepts of individuality and the liberation from traditional burdens, which created a counter-position to the established ideal of domestic coziness.[18]

Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses closed a gap in housing construction, mainly by providing extremely small and functional apartments to a specific group of users. However, there were two primary areas of criticism: that far too few Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses were constructed to meet demand, and that the housing market was much too focused on building housing for families.[19] The spatial separation of single persons was also judged to be a major disadvantage. As a result, the rationed, space-saving facilities and mono-functional rooms of the Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses never found broad favor. The working class in particular did not see the positive in the strictly formal objectivity and enforced asceticism of these minimal dwellings,[20] thus keeping the Men’s and Women’s Hostels and Boarding Houses a niche product of the housing market. After only a few years, their evolution was halted by Nazi ideologies.[21] The unique historical environment of the inter-war years and the political upheavals that led up to World War II resulted in the end of this housing model around 1940, and it was never taken up again in quite the same form. During and after the war, only a few more Boarding Houses were built, including Dolphin Square Boarding House in London (1937, London), Elfvinggarden Collective House in Stockholm (1940, Sven Backström, Leif Reinius) and Arabella Tower in Munich (1969, Toby Schmidbauer). Thus, this collective housing model, as well as that of Central-Kitchen Houses, remained a time-specific phenomenon that was not revived in a similar form until the turn of the millennium — a good 80 years later — by the Cluster Apartment and Co-Living movements.

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Originally published in: Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, Margrit Hugentobler (eds.), A History of Collective Living. Forms of Shared Housing, Birkhäuser, 2019. Translation by Word Up!, LLC, edited for Building Types Online.