The Werkbund estates in Wrocław and Stuttgart as examples of the tourism use of modernist urban complexes

ABSTRACT

The turn of the twentieth century brought many progressive ideas in the field of architecture and urban planning that are also reflected in modernist urban residential estates. These modern structures and spatial compositions reflected the need for good quality of living in healthy urban, natural and social environment. The paper focuses on two estates of the German Werkbund located in Wrocław (WUWA, Poland) and Stuttgart (Weissenhof, Germany), which due to their uniqueness constitute tourist attractions of both cities. The main objective of the comparative analysis was to identify model solutions for making historic housing estates available to visitors, shaping an attractive tourist product from entire urban complexes based on architecture and open spaces, simultaneously maintaining the balance of their basic social and tourist functions and the principles of sustainable development.

KEYWORDS:

• Werkbund estates
• modernism
• architectural tourism
• heritage
• Stuttgart
• Wrocław

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable – no new data generated.

Notes

1. Usually, six Werkbund estates are mentioned, but Urbanik (2009) lists eight of them, adding the estates in Karlsruhe (1929, Dammerstock estate) and Basel (1930, Eglisee estate).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Dagmara Chylińska

Dagmara Chylińska, a geographer, a lecturer in the Department of Regional Geography and Tourism at University of Wrocław, Poland. Professional interests in the field of cultural tourism, memory and heritage, heritage interpretation, and cultural landscapes. Currently, her research focuses on the niche forms of tourism, especially escape tourism.

Krzysztof Kołodziejczyk

Krzysztof Kołodziejczyk is a geographer specialising in active tourism, especially hiking, as well as cultural tourism, tourist infrastructure and the role of transport in tourism. The topic of his PhD thesis were standards for infrastructure on tourist trails based on selected European examples. He carried out analyses of the development of tourist trail networks, using methods derived from graph theory. Currently, his research focuses on the organisation of tourism in various types of protected areas, especially in the mountains, as well as on biographical and automotive tourism.