WANDA KONONOWICZ

The housing architecture developed by Ernst May in the years 1919-1925 in Silesia anticipated his famous realizations of functional and modern estates in Frankfurt am Mein, where from mid-1925 he held the post of the city architect. The Wrocław suburbs and Lower Silesian towns were May's first large experimental sites, on which he tested the principles of planning settlements and paved the way for typified, functional, healthy and economical housing construction.

May’s Wrocław experiences as an architect and urban planner were an important and fruitful stage on his path towards New Construction. It was an unfaltering direction confirmed by such practices as a decided preference for the social aspect in housing construction, application of typified construction elements, also whole homes and furniture, a striving for rational and cost-cutting solutions among others anticipating the „Frankfurt kitchen”, experiences with „minimum dwellings”, as well as an introduction to flat roofs. The new matter-of-factness also found its expression in town planning scale. Estates were arranged according to a rationalized „paralinear” plan, that was a link between Unwin’s picturesque compositions and the rational „linear” designs that fulfilled the postulates of new housing on „air, sun and nature”. An important achievement of his, confirming May’s contribution to modern urban planning, were the designs for decentralizing Wrocław with the use of satellites, on a scale of city as well as region. May’s experiences gathered in Wrocław, applied in the process of building New Frankfurt, supported on his greater organizational potential as the Stadtbaurat, contributed to his spectacular success, reached within a short time.