New Objectivity Architecture

New Objectivity is the name given to the modern architecture that emerged in German speaking Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, favoring functional, low cost design stripped of applied ornament. It is marked by flat roofs, geometric massing and extensive use of glass, developed in large part to address the severe housing shortage that followed the First World War and to meet constitutional promises of adequate housing, which tied the movement closely to social democratic politics and municipal planning. The Fagus Factory of 1911 by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, Gropius's Bauhaus building in Dessau of 1925 and 1926, Ernst May's New Frankfurt housing programme, Bruno Taut's Onkel Toms Hutte estate of 1926 and the Horseshoe Estate and Weissenhof Estate in Berlin and Stuttgart are its leading examples. Its architects rejected being grouped into a single stylistic label, holding instead that a building's design should follow directly from its internal function.