During the quest to visit our unvisited 8 German T List sites we gave the Weißenhofsiedlung 2hours as we passed through Stuttgart. We should have had longer but unfortunately it wasn’t well signposted to someone arriving by car and possessing only limited maps of the city!

The current T List entry covers solely the 2 houses (or rather one “semi”) designed by Le Corbusier and his cousin and ignores the remaining buildings of the estate designed by such luminaries as Mies van der Rohe. The transnational Le Corbusier Nomination of which these 2 houses are a part has had a chequered life with Referral in 2009 and Deferral of a reduced set in 2011 – although the actual ICOMOS recommendation on the second occasion was actually “Do not inscribe” on the basis that the entire concept of a serial nomination of Le Corbusier’s work across his career was fundamentally flawed and should be replaced by a nomination of just 3 outstanding buildings in France (Unite d’Habitation, Ronchamp and Villa Savoye).

At the moment it appears that the parties are still considering what to do next and the buildings remain on the various T Lists but there has been talk that, perhaps in Germany’s case, separate nomination of the entire estate might be a “better bet” representing as it does a multi-architect statement (albeit overseen by v d Rohe) of the International Movement’s ideas as of 1927. In any case we split our time between visiting the interior of Le Corbusier houses at a cost of 5 Euro pp and gaining an impression of the wider estate via an external “tour” of its remaining buildings. These cover a mixture of terraces, apartments and detached houses. Almost half were destroyed during WWII . In some cases a space has been left whilst in others a reduced or even new structure is present. There must be some question therefore about what attitude ICOMOS would adopt regarding authenticity and the ability of the remainder to represent the original concept.

Whatever, we enjoyed the overall impression of the Estate though whether it is significant enough to stand on its own who knows. It is obviously regarded quite highly in architectural circles -e were not alone during our tour and there were a fair number of “architectural tourists” doing the rounds – in particular from the Far East.

Of the Le Corbusier houses, one contains a small exhibit about the estate and the Stuttgart 1927 exhibition and the other (reached from the first via the roof garden) has been turned into a “furnished” example of how the house was intended to look. Its interior had become significantly changed but oringial features such as sliding doors, cupboards and hideaway beds to create a flexible living space have been reconstructed. Such concepts are of course already represented to some degree on the List in the Rietveld Schroeder house of some 3 years earlier.

All this was of interest but the house can hardly be called iconic or mould-breaking. Certainly relevant to students of Le Corbusier’s canon, but not a great deal more. If his more significant works do gain inscription that might seem to put paid to including this building in a separate Weißenhofsiedlung proposal – but the fact that Gropius already had his work included in the Bauhaus inscription didn’t prevent yet more getting inscribed in Berlin Modernism and Fagus (He couldn’t get a 4th here as his buildings were among those destroyed in WWII).