Berlin’s allotment sheds are a good example of twentieth-century vernacular architecture in a European metropolis – built by common people, using available resources and traditional technologies. By the early twentieth century allotments had become widespread in Europe, providing vegetable supply and also leisure for the industrial working classes (Ward andCrouch 1988; Moran 1990; Nilsen 2014; Bell et al. 2015). Unlike for example in Britain, where construction on such rented garden plots was usually forbidden, German legislation allowed for sheds to store gardening tools and provide temporary shelter, but forbade permanent dwelling. In light of an endemic housing shortage the latter was nonetheless frequently practised.

During the exacerbated housing crisis of the interwar period, and particularly since the Second World War when large parts of German cities lay in shambles, self-built permanent dwellings on garden plots were common. Official policy, both under the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime, alternated between eradication and legalization. Bans on allotment dwelling or attempts at “consolidation” (preventing existing colonies from further growth) went hand in hand with pro-allotment legislation and sometimes even public subsidies for their upgrading (Urban 2013:229-31; Rollka andSpiess 1987:42-6, Kleinlosen and Milchert 1989:36-48). With the bombings of the Second World War, when citizens of all classes lost their homes, policy changed, and self-built housing was promoted as a bottom-up remedy against homelessness. But in the postwar period they gradually disappeared as a result of rising wealth levels and an effective social housing programme, combined with “slum clearances,” forced relocation, and, once again, legal provisions that outlawed garden plot residences. Allotment dwellings were thus a twentieth century phenomenon, peaking from 1920-1960, and diminishing thereafter (Urban 2013).