Weissenhof Estate

The Weissenhof Estate is a housing development on a hillside in Stuttgart, Germany, built in 1927 as the centerpiece of an exhibition organized by the Deutscher Werkbund under the artistic direction of the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who invited a group of leading modernist architects including Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Hans Scharoun and J. J. P. Oud to each design one or more houses. Each architect worked independently within Mies's overall site plan, producing a collection of flat-roofed, white-walled houses that together became an influential public demonstration of the International Style then emerging across Europe. The estate suffered damage during the Second World War and later neglect, and several of its original houses have since been restored, with a museum now occupying Le Corbusier's contribution to the site. It remains an important reference point in the history of modernist residential architecture.