“Balance-Sheet” City: Martin Wagner and the Visualization of Statistical Data

Martin Wagner (1885-1957) was a leading city planner of the Weimar Republic and chief planner for Greater Berlin from 1926 to 1933. This essay addresses the role of statistical data visualizations in early twentieth-century planning and, specifically, in Wagner’s conception of the city as a financial organism subject to managerial-governmental intervention. I argue that for Wagner modern techniques of social data calculation and representation, such as the balance sheet and the graph, became key instruments of planning by translating urban territory into an avatar of the metropolitan economy. Heuristic devices, such “paper cities” of data also had a rhetorical function, both in Germany and in the United States, Wagner’s adoptive home after 1938—serving to publicize planning expertise and frame the discipline’s intellectual and political legitimation.

Sanabria, Tomás José (1922–2008)

Sanabria is a representative figure of the second generation of 20th-century Venezuelan architects. He studied in the United States of America after World War II and had a rigorous functionalist orientation, paying attention to natural conditions, environmental features, the relationship between architecture and geography, the influence of architecture in civic culture, structural and technological expressiveness, and the links between architecture, art, and the urban scale. After graduating as an engineer (1941–1945) from the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), he embraced a functionalist approach during his studies (1945–1947) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. At Harvard Walter Gropius, Martin Wagner, Ieoh Ming Pei, Hugh Stubbins, and Marcel Breuer were among his professors. He returned to Venezuela in 1947 and worked as professor of Architecture for Engineers at the UCV’s School of Engineering. By 1948 he was director of the Department of Architectural Composition at the School of Architecture in the Faculty of Engineering. In 1954 he became the first director of the School of Architecture in the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, founded that year.

Neue Sachlichkeit in Architecture

The term Neue Sachlichkeit was coined by Gustav Hartlaub with his exhibition: ‘Neue Sachlichkeit. Deutsche Malerei seit dem Expressionismus’ (New Objectivity. German Painting Since Expressionism) at the Kunsthalle Mannheim in 1925 and is now used to describe a movement during the politically, socially, and economically unstable years of the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919–1933) that includes painting, photography, design, and architecture (Rewald, 2006). In architecture the term mainly relates to Neues Bauen (New Building) and avant-garde currents of rationalist and functionalist Modernism that existed alongside conservative counterparts and Expressionism. Among its contributors in Germany were Walter Gropius, Otto Haesler, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Ernst May, Hannes Meyer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Martin Wagner. Architecture and design was created in order to fulfill objective functions and not along the lines of personal taste, preexisting historical, national, or regional styles. The Sache–the object, subject matter–was scrutinized in order to fulfill its function and serve its user best as possible. The way in which this was approached was sachlich–objectively and factually–without emotional attachment to ways in which the object was designed or used previously. Neue Sachlichkeit therefore was an approach to design pursuing, but not always achieving, practicality, suitability, and objectivity by setting aside all matters considered by its practitioners as irrelevant (Schwartz, 1998 and Schmalenbach, 1940).

Migge, Leberecht (1881–1935)

Leberecht Migge was a German landscape architect and writer. During his early career he collaborated with architects Hermann Muthesius and Henry van de Velde. Considered pioneers of modernist architecture, van de Velde and Muthesius (among others) were the founding members of the influential DeutscherWerkbund (1907–1934, 1950--), a German association of architects, designers, and industrialists that Migge joined in 1912. During the 1920s Migge worked on large-scale settlement projects with Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner in Berlin (Onkel Tom’s Hütte [1926–31] and Berlin-Britz aka Hufeisensiedlung [1925–1931]), and with Ernst May in Frankfurt am Main (Römerstadt [1926–1930]). The economic crisis that followed World War I caused a severe housing shortage and in Berlin, as in Frankfurt, large-scale building programs were initiated to improve the living conditions of the working class. Gardens were incorporated into the plans of these new settlements, giving tenants easier access to nutritious foods, protecting them from fluctuating food prices, and providing spaces for physical exercise. Having collaborated on some of Germany’s most influential settlements of the 1920s, published extensively, and completed a range of recognized projects, Migge was one of the most prolific landscape architects of his time.

565. Aporías de una ideología urbanística: arquitectura, territorio y capitalismo en el trabajo de Martin Wagner

La arquitectura y el urbanismo del Movimiento Moderno se presentaron inicialmente como artífices de una transformación socioespacial emancipadora, pero parte de su legado resultó tremendamente lesivo para las ciudades y sus habitantes más humildes. Este artículo explora esa paradoja mediante un análisis del trabajo de Martin Wagner —figura tradicionalmente destacada por su compromiso político— con especial atención a una etapa apenas conocida de su carrera: su actividad docente e investigadora en la Universidad de Harvard. Wagner desarrolló en EE.UU. intuiciones previas sobre una ‘rehabilitación’ general del modelo urbano y regional, siguiendo un principio intelectual explícito de asimilar en el proceso de diseño la lógica del capital y el desarrollo espacial desigual con el fin de asegurar la viabilidad de sus propuestas. Aunque su autor las presentó como un nuevo patrón de asentamiento ideado “para el pueblo y por el pueblo”, esta visión prefigura algunos de los episodios más sombríos del urbanismo de las décadas posteriores. En su particular crudeza el Wagner americano permite comprender mejor no sólo su contribución durante la República de Weimar, sino también el alcance del ‘déficit’ político, contradicciones y aporías de un sector dominante de la ideología arquitectónica y urbanística en el siglo XX.