Bruno Taut's Horseshoe Estate (Edith Fischer's Home)

This is Edith Fischer's home. Her father Bruno Taut designed the Horseshoe Estate and created a modernist style house on the estate but separated from the apartment complex. Edith and her father live in this house with her mother and two younger brothers. Edith Fischer is in her early twenties growing up in the mid 1920's Berlin. Her story begins here as she starts to experience the roaring party culture that Berlin has to offer. While Edith grew up with a rich and simple lifestyle, she often felt lonely and misunderstood by her family and friends. Edith's childhood was filled with many days spent reading on a bench on the sidewalk of the estate. While she was surrounded by lots of residents, she often found herself alone, thinking about life and trying to understand herself. Something that Edith struggled with at the base of her life was her emotions towards her sexuality. She often read books about love and found the best romance books to always center around a male and female relationships. Edith often wondered about other relationships, but she had no idea how to convey to the world her thoughts on this. Around the beginning of this story, Edith's curiosity has become too overwhelming for her imagination. This will lead her to venture out into Berlin and experience the sexy night life where new friends and new ideas await her.

The Horseshoe Estate housed 3,000 members. Bruno Taut was selected as the architect based on his past work which reflected socialist and utopian elements. Bruno also enjoyed utilizing chromatic properties of applied color and tinted glass. Bruno was not given a lot of resources so he focused on an ordered brick-built look with wild and dramatic colors. One can easily see how he designed his buildings to be so unique with simple structures and wildly dramatic colors. It is also important to know that this estate is one of the few places where a political and architectural dispute were played out in a very direct way. The flat roof on the building was very "un-German" compared to the pitched roofs. The Nazis viewed the roof as being Mediterranean, Arabic, or "more likely" Jewish. Bruno faced a lot of controversy for the estate, and eventually, he was forced to fled the country.

“Berlin's Flat-Roofed Hufeisensiedlung – a History of Cities in 50 Buildings, Day 16.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 15 Apr. 2015, www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/apr/15/berlin-hufeisensiedlung-horseshoe-estate-history-cities-50-buildings. 

Walker, David. “1920s Bruno Taut-Designed Modernist House on the Horseshoe Estate, Berlin, Germany.” WowHaus, 3 June 2018, www.wowhaus.co.uk/2013/05/09/holiday-let-1920s-bruno-taut-designed-modernist-property-on-the-horseshoe-estate-in-berlin-germany/.