Bauhaus-oriented

Thanks to the influence of the architects Max Eckhard, Otto Bartning, Adolf Meyer and Heinrich Westphal, functional Bauhaus-oriented architectural ideas gained increasing ground in Gildenhall and were combined with the modern idea of the garden city. Thus, from 1922, based on a design by Max Eckhard, a complex was built in Blumenstraße comprising two parallel terraces of houses (3) , interrupted only at one point (house number 3 to 33 and 4 to 34). The terraces formed a large communal courtyard with small front gardens in front of each house. The ends of the four terraces were marked by cubiform houses with hipped roofs (house numbers 3, 4, 18-20, 33, 34) which were reserved for the master craftsmen. While the two timber-framed houses designed by Heyer at the southern end of the complex protrude into the building line of the terraced houses and thus look like gate lodges, the master's houses mark the interruptions in and ends of the two rows of terraces. Blumenstraße is terminated to the north by a head-end building (Blumenstraße 1 / 2) which was designed and built in 1925/26 by Adolf Meyer. Meyer came to Gildenhall when the Bauhaus in Weimar closed in 1925 and continued working on the construction of the settlement with two additional terraces of houses facing each other which are located to the south of the four timber-framed semi-detached houses (Blumenstraße 39 - 59 and 40 - 68).

Meyer's most distinctive building in Gildenhall is the exhibition and office building in Hermsdorfer Weg 1 (4) which he designed in 1925. It was remodelled by Heinrich Westphal in 1926/27. Subsequent extensions impair the character of the building, however, the sober functional form of the Bauhaus architecture is still clearly identifiable. Another settlement project, designed by Heinrich Westphal and comprising houses for the craftsmen, was started in Gildenhaller Allee (39 - 45 and 47 - 85) in 1927.

It became impossible to maintain the desired combination of high standards of ethics and craftsmanship and serial production in times of economic difficulty and in the face of strong competition from industrially produced goods. Gildenhall existed until 1929 when the recession prompted by the world economic crisis put an end to this ambitious utopian settlement.