In 1980s West Germany, groups of hippies and non-conformists but similarly of well-integrated, ecologically conscious middle-class families, initiated numerous “ecological estates” that were generously subsidised by welfare state institutions as models for ecological dwelling. These included the Ziegelei in Merzhausen near Freiburg (1978-80, Rolf Disch), Alte Windkunst in Herzogenrath near Aachen (1987, Birgit Siebenmorgen and others), the Schafbrühl Estate in Tübingen, (1984-85, Joachim Eble, Burkhart Sambeth and others), and the Eco-Estate in Cologne-Blumenberg (1989, Raimund Stewen).
This paper argues that the inherent back-to-the-land approach of these projects contained an ambiguous anti-urbanism. Like Letchworth and Hellerau half a century earlier, the eco-estates were supposed to be counterproposals to a polluted, potentially unsustainable and morally corrupted city. At the same time, along the lines of Jane Jacobs or Alexander Mitscherlich, they promoted an idealised view of the dense pre-modernist city as a hub of community, diversity and creativity. This ambiguity was reflected in the architecture of these dwellings, which took from rural vernacular precedents (including grass roofs and rammed earth construction) as well as from dense premodern urban typologies.
My paper further argues that the eco-estates embodied a similar approach to the Covid-induced anti-urbanism of 2020/21, in which white-collar workers began to leave the allegedly contaminated city for home offices in summer houses and rural second homes, while at the same time promoting urban qualities such as diversity, cosmopolitanism and intercultural networks.