Let them collapse, these built vulgarities. With this sentence Bruno Taut begins his publication Die Auflösung der Städte (Disintegrating Cities) brought out in 1920. The accompanying graphic shows a collapsing, 19th century housing tenement above and a vision of the future below captioned „Now our earth blossoms“: single-family houses strewn far out into the countryside, set into floral patterns seen from the air.

It was the hate of the urban misery in large cities that led reformers to search for alternative settlement patterns at the onset of the 20th century. Theorists such as Ebenezer Howard (Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, 1900) presented a model for suburban settlement patterns. And practitioners of the Neues Bauen, as well, adhered to an antiurban reflex with their urban expansions—be it at Dessua-Törten, Frankfurt-Westhausen or the Neubühl Werkbund housing project in Zurich. Suburbanization experienced new dimensions in the vastness of America, where Frank Lloyd Wright planned a settlement form in harmony with nature for the era of mass mobilization with his concept of Broadacre City, worked out since the early 1930’s. Criticism of such models, above all because of the ensuing urban sprawl, soon became manifest. Thus, the British architect Hugh Casson published a Critique of our Expanding Subtopia in the February issue of the American Journal of the AIA. The editors introduced the text with the words „The author praises our buildings but reports that we live in a mess“ and illustrated it with a caricature by Tom Gladden showing the monster of „unplanned building“ with an uprooted tree in its hand moving amidst single-family houses, car cemeteries and advertising world regalia. The disintegration of the cities did not lead to the blossoming of the earth.

The return of the urbane has often been called for in recent times and, as such, the end of suburbia. The American real estate crisis seems to confirm such tendencies. Yet the state of affairs is not as simple as it is sometimes made out to be. Representatives of the compact city and the planar city stand irreconcilably opposite one other. It remains unclear where the pendulum will come to rest.
The editors

02 Editorial
12 Machen wir es uns nicht zu einfach! Positionen, Kontroversen und Kompromisse in der städtebaulichen Entwicklung | Lukas Küng
18 Die Formlosigkeit gestalten: Über Suburbanisierung und die Konkurrenz von «raumwirksamen Kräften» | Robert Kaltenbrunner
22 Standardisierte Individualität: Über das Unbehagen an der Fertighausarchitektur | Julia Gill
32 Wasteland Suburbia: The Sound of a Bubble Bursting | Marc Angélil, Cary Siress
34 Vom «Périph» zum «Boulevard Central»: Notizen zu einem urbanistischen Labor für die Stadt des 21. Jahrhunderts | Angelus Eisinger, Nina Brodowski, Jörg Seifert
42 Abkehr von Suburbia? Krisengewinner New Urbanism | Mathias Remmele
44 Landschaft bauen statt Landschaft verbauen – Dutch Mountains in Korea MVRDV: Gwanggyo Power Centre bei Seoul (Südkorea) | Daniel Jauslin
52 Suburbia Reset: From the Ground Up | Marc Angélil, Sarah Graham
56 Die Krise im Bild: Gregory Crewdsons analytische Dekonstruktion von Suburbia | Jørg Himmelreich
62 «Village fig.» – Lebens(t)raum im Kunstformat: Zur Werkreihe Village fig. der Künstlerin Sofie Thorsen | Verena Doerfler
66 Don’t make movies out of your life Suburbia im Spiegel von Spielfilmen | Sønke Gau

Architektur Aktuell
72 Patrick Gmür und Jakob Steib: Wohnsiedlungen Büelen, Wädenswil, Imbisbühlstrasse, Zürich-Höngg
78 Frank Schäfer Architekt, L3P Architekten: Mehrfamilienhaus Staldern, Regensberg

Rubriken
82 Ausstellung
Between Earth and Heaven – John Lautner
Lighthouse Glasgow, Lilian Pfaff
84 Bücher
85 fsai
86 Baugeschichten: Nur noch ein Nachruf - Zum Abriss von Egon Eiermanns Taschentuchweberei von 1951 | Sonja Hildebrand
90 Ortstermin Rheinauhafen Köln | Frank Peter Jäger
94 Lieferbare Hefte
95 Neues aus der Industrie
104 Vorschau und Impressum