Cabins, Cosy and Otherwise

Unexpected synchronicity corner: I'm sitting pointlessly if agreeably uploading my photographs of Bruno Taut's Waldsiedlung to Flickr*. This is an angular, brightly coloured and non-pissing about Modernist Estate designed in the mid-20s in a former forest on the outskirts of Berlin, served by the amusingly named Onkel-Toms-Hutte U-Bahn station. Then I'm sent an article by Lynsey Hanley - whose Estates was great and annoying in roughly equal measure, the latter partly because of the general 'flat roofs and concrete are inhuman' line - on this and the other Berlin siedlungen. Irrespective of the factual errors (eg: Taut was neither a teacher or student at the Bauhaus), it's a nice little piece, reminding that public housing didn't always have to be about either prole-stacking bombast or sickly ersatz cottages.

* along with lots more of the usual - Karl-Marx-Allee again, plus more postcards - thanks to IT for obtaining for me the nearest I've yet come across to my perfect postcard, which should contain sauciness, the seaside, 'boringness', modernism and preferably be in the former eastern bloc.