On Sunday, July 17, 2016, the two Le Corbusier houses at the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart earned the title, "UNESCO World Heritage Site." This is the first World Heritage Site for Stuttgart and the 41st for Germany overall. Stuttgart won this status along with 17 other Le Corbusier houses from all over the world in France, Argentina, Japan, Belgium, Switzerland and India. This honor pays tribute to Le Corbusier's architectural work as an outstanding contribution to Modernism as an architectural movement that expressed the aesthetic, social and technical upheavals of the 20th century. Above all, the Stuttgart houses, which are already a sophisticated museum, are a fantastic draw for enthusiasts of art and architecture, history and design.
The Weissenhofsiedlung (Weissenhof Estate) is considered one of the most important monuments of the "Neues Bauen" (new building) movement. It was created in 1927 as a building exhibition of Deutsche Werkbund and was funded by the City of Stuttgart to create a space for the new modern city dweller. The
theme, "Form without Ornament," was tremendously avant-garde and a great contrast to the then popular and elaborately decorative Art Nouveau style. The Weissenhof Estate is comprised of a total of 33 houses with 63 apartments, and all of the 17 architects were under the age of 45. Le Corbusier was one of the most influential of these architects and his two houses comprise the duplex structure containing the Weissenhof Museum and the detached house behind it. In fact, they are the only Le Corbusier buildings in Germany. The title emphasises Stuttgart's importance in the field of architecture. "I'm delighted that Stuttgart now has its own World Heritage Site," says Armin Dellnitz, Managing Director of the Stuttgart-Marketing GmbH. "This award underlines the great touristic significance of the Weissenhof Museum and holds great potential."
The museum is currently open for visitors and is popular with young art and architecture students and history lovers, enjoying over 30,000 visitors per year. The tour takes the visitor through the two halves of the building. In the left half of the building, there is an exhibition explaining the genesis and history of the Weissenhof Estate. The museum's fittings echo the original floor plan without blurring the traces of structural changes undertaken in the meantime. The right half of the structure is oriented on the year 1927, when the Werkbund Exhibition was opened at the Weissenhof. It was also possible to restore Le Corbusier's arrangement of spaces, the coloration and a part of the furnishings. Thus the visitor encounters a "snapshot" from the exhibition at that time.
For tourists, the title "UNESCO World Heritage Site" means yet another incentive to travel here, which will benefit not only the Weissenhof Estate, but also the whole of the Stuttgart Region. Stuttgart is the capital of the Baden-Württemberg state, which can now boast five World Heritage Sites. In addition to the Le Corbusier houses, the other World Heritage sites are equally impressive, including the Maulbronn Monastery, the Upper German-Rhaetian Limes, the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings and the Monastic Island of Reichenau. Starting from Stuttgart, with the most recent World Heritage title, attractive routes can be planned to the other UNESCO locations in SouthWest Germany.
____________________________________________
