In the 19th C. the Hansaviertel area near the Tiergarten in Berlin was a residential district much favored by the prosperous middle classes, with houses of the traditional Berlin type (a front wing on the street, with two side wings linked by a range to the rear). The old quarter was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War, and in 1953 the Berlin Senate resolved that it should be rebuilt, but with a more open layout.
Work began on this model scheme in 1955, and in 1957 it was the central feature of the International Building Exhibition held in Berlin. The ten landscape architects who were involved in the project contrived to extend the landscape of the Tiergarten -- which had also been replanted -- well into the housing area. The project was carried out as a collaborative effort by 48 leading architects from thirteen different countries. The complex comprises accommodation of all types, ranging from detached houses with gardens to town-houses and grouped and high-rise blocks of flats, together with a congress hall, school and crèche, Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, a library, a cinema (now a children's theater) and shops, grouped around a U-Bahn station.
Worth noting are the eight-story building owned by the Finn Alvar Aalto near the Hansaplatz U- Bahn Station; Günther Gottwald's four-story house on Klopstockstrasse, where the flats have sliding walls; Walter Gropius' large curved block of flats in Händelallee, where the sculpture in sheet-copper named "Daybreak No. 1" (Morgendämmerung Nr. 1) also stands; the colorful block built by the Frenchman Pierre Vago with its staggered balconies; the blue and red painted building by Fritz Jaenecke and Sten Samuelson on Altonaer Strasse; the building opposite by the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer on four splayed supports; and the seventeen-story high-rise block of 164 individual apartments by Klaus Müller-Rehm and Gerhard Siegmann on the southern edge. The lending library by Werner Düttmann, built around an inner courtyard, is a very original design. The abstract steel sculpture "Memorial to an Unknown Knitter of Pullovers" by the Hansaplatz was by Hans Uhlmann in 1960. A few yards away in Hanseatenweg No. 10, the Academy of Arts regularly mounts exhibitions and gives concerts and theatrical performances.
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