Munich: Künstlerhof

1930

Architect: Uli Seeck

Fountain: Emil Manz

Zum Künstlerhof 13-25, Munich

Künstlerhof

From 1929 to 1930, Uli Seeck designed seven sculptor studios on the Neuhausen estate. Due to the plot layout and applicable building regulations, the site could not be built on any higher.

Each studio consists of a two-story workroom with 45 square meters of floor space, an adjoining room, a storage room, a bathroom, and attic storage space for materials.

There are an additional thirteen studio apartments in the attics of the neighboring apartment blocks Zum Künstlerhof 1-11 and Schluderstraße 41-47.

Studios

Thirty artists currently have studios in the Künstlerhof.

Two elongated, four-story apartment buildings border the narrow access road. The studios form a square at the end of the road.

The studios have large windows, dark wooden doors, and sculptural-looking fireplaces, as well as high double doors at the back.

In the square in front of the studio entrances is a fountain featuring a group of storks, created by the sculptor Emil Manz in 1929.

Neuhausen Housing Estate

The complex is part of the large Neuhausen housing development built from 1928 to 1930.

Construction of the housing estate was entrusted to a newly formed stock corporation, Gemeinnützige Wohnungsfürsorge AG (GEWOFAG), which has since become a municipal company.

On the outskirts of Neuhausen—where the city of Munich had meadows and farmland in the 1920s—GEWOFAG built a total of 1,600 apartments, several stores, small craft businesses, four restaurants, and two kindergartens on almost 190,000 square meters.

Hans Döllgast

Architect Hans Döllgast oversaw the Neuhausen housing estate project.

Döllgast grew up in Bergheim and the Upper Old Town of Neuburg on the Danube.

He studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich from 1910 to 1914. From 1912 to 1913, he was an assistant to Michael Kurz.

From 1919 to 1922, Döllgast worked in the studio of Richard Riemerschmid. Then, from 1922 to 1926, he worked in the studio and master class of Peter Behrens in Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfurt am Main.

From 1927 to 1929, he worked as an independent architect in Munich, Vienna, and Augsburg.

Buildings Hans Döllgast

Döllgast received his first lectureship in interior design at the Technical University of Munich in 1929. In 1939, he was appointed associate professor, and in 1943, he became a full professor at the same university.

Before the Second World War, Döllgast had already made a name for himself in Munich with several new church buildings, such as the parish church of Heilig Blut in Munich-Bogenhausen, as well as the planning of the Neuhausen housing estate from 1928 to 1931.

After the war, he influenced generations of architects through his work as a professor of architectural drawing and spatial art at the university.

Critical Reconstruction

The Alte Pinakothek was one of the first major model projects of the so-called Critical Reconstruction. The building had been severely damaged by a bombing during World War II.

He succeeded in an abstract reconstruction by closing off the outer walls with unplastered rubble bricks, leaving the bomb damage recognizable as a violation of the original Klenze building.

The building’s structure was preserved using slender steel columns, concrete lintels, and cornices. The newly created, spacious staircase is one of the most striking in Germany.