Otto Haesler (13 June 1880 – 2 April 1962) was an influential German architect.
He is often grouped with Bruno Taut, Ernst May and Walter Gropius as being among the most significant representatives of the Modernist ("Neues Bauen") architecture that became important initially during the Weimar period, notably in respect of residential accommodation.
Life
Early years
Otto Haesler was born in Munich slightly fewer than ten years after Bavaria had been incorporated into the new German state. He attended secondary school in Passau where during school holidays he worked as a draftsman for the city building department. Between 1898 and 1902, he attended Building Academies in Augsburg und Würzburg.
In 1902, Otto Haesler began training as a bricklayer in Frankfurt am Main. In 1903, he took a job in the Frankfurt office of the noted architect Ludwig Bernoully. Later on in 1906, he set himself up in his own architecture practice in Celle, focusing on commercial renovation and "new-build" developments. A significant project from this time was the "Trüllerhaus". In 1908, he joined an architectural partnership with Karl Dreher. In 1914, he applied unsuccessfully for a position in public office locally as Bürgervorsteher. Between 1915 and 1917, when he was wounded, he participated in the war.
The end of the war in 1918 marked the start of a busy period for Haesler, now aged nearly 40. In 1918, he produced his proposal for the "Auf der Heese" residential development in Celle's Carstens Street (Carstensstraße). This referenced back to existing plans from before the war, as a watercolour drawing by his former partner Karl Dreher, who had been killed in 1916, demonstrates. Each of the 32 terraced houses featured a saddleback roof and a kitchen/living area, adumbrating mainstream features of "modern" twentieth century housing. For detached buildings, such as the school (originally drawn by Haesler in 1911, and today used as a day centre and meeting space), in the village of Bannetze, he had invoked a more traditional repertoire, specifying an interrupted-hipped roof (Krüppelwalmdach).
Neues Bauen
Haesler championed the building of social housing, providing improved living conditions for an increased number of tenants at an affordable rent. He wanted to reduce costs and at the same time improve living spaces by using standardised floor plans and employing the newly available steel frame construction methods. He therefore oriented and designed his developments to maximise the use of sunlight, replacing corridors with living rooms able to benefit directly from the afternoon sun, and bedrooms directly accessible from the day-time living spaces. He rationalised and industrialised modern residential development.
There are three residential Otto Haesler developments in Celle dating from the mid 1920s and early 1930s.
Italian Garden Settlement
With his first, the "Italian Garden Settlement" ("Siedlung Italienischer Garten") of 1924/25 Haesler incorporated inspiration he had gained from a visit to Bruno Taut in Magdeburg. Haesler publicised the modern design-language of the new buildings across Germany: shortly after completion, the Italian Garden Settlement came to be seen as the first "Neues Bauen" residential development in the country. There was no attempt at "interesting" ground plan lay-outs, and Haesler did not entirely stay within the economic restrictions mandated.
Georgsgarten Settlement
Haesler's "Georgsgarten Settlement" ("Siedlung Georgsgarten"), in 1926/27, was the first industrially constructed "ribbon cell" (terraced format) residential development. With the "Georgsgarten Settlement" Haesler succeeded in creating an "urban planning first". He applied the "Cabin floor plan" concept developed by Ludwig Hilberseimer, which gave rise to an open-plan cell structure, but combined that with contemporary fashionable touches such as prominent balconies, apparently influenced by the Gropius Bauhaus development in Dessau. The Georgsgarten also marked the first outing for the protruding three-sided glazed stair housing which from now on became a Haesler trademark.