moving slowly from copenhagen to norway in a rented campervan, we took the ferry on our first day from elsinore to helsingborg on the swedish side of the sound and found lewerentz' early workers' housing in eneborg.
eneborg's egnahem, workers' housing, helsingborg, skåne, sweden 1911-1918.
architect: sigurd lewerentz (1885-1975)
planning: torsten stubelius from 1907-1911, with sigurd lewerentz from 1911-1914.
(read more about it
here.)
no one in their right mind would call lewerentz a left-wing architect, or a political architect for that matter, yet the first years of his career were devoted to affordable housing and he plays a natural part in our little narrative.
during his
wanderjahre lewerentz had worked for three leading members of the german
werkbund around the time of the initial planning of hellerau, the first german garden city. the werkbund was a ruskinian endevour to raise the quality of german craft, architecture and planning; not to gain a greater market share as would be the case today, but to improve all three and, ultimately, the lives of the germans. in the spirit of ruskin, aesthetics and morals were seen as interconnected, and housing was a key concern.
the lasting contribution of the werkbund to scandinavian architecture probably came from heinrich tessenow's writings and his enchanting drawings concerning modest housing. examples following tessenow's books closely were built around copenhagen in the early 1920's. they became popular with academics rather than the working class they were originally aimed at. this may in part explain why german werkbund housing, channeling english garden city ideals, was always a part of our left-wing architecture which in turn was always a suburban rather than an urban movement.
lewerentz' workers' housing in eneborg was a first. its influence is difficult to chart, since it has been all but forgotten, but it is worth noting that
kay fisker, our own copenhagen master of regionalist brick housing, worked for lewerentz around the time it was conceived. it remains social housing to this day as I realised when I overheard an argument in serbo-croat on the stairs. how much of our later social housing can we expect to last us a hundred years?
