Typology: Welfare Era Apartment

Typology: Welfare Era apartment

Development of the type

The Welfare Era apartment block describes a type of building which was built from around 1920 to 1990. It exhibits the wide-scale implementation of the fundamental structural elements of Industrial Era apartments with efficiency of cost and standard of living prioritized. It also incorporates modern technological improvements and improvements in standards of living into traditional Danish multi-family housing forms.

Physical Characteristics

Welfare era apartments changed significantly in form over the period in which they were constructed. A few aspects remained constant, however.

These buildings consist of long buildings composed of flats arranged side-by-side without interior corridors which are accessed by limited entry stairwells. They can be to six stories tall, and lack elevators. Like industrial era apartments, they tend to be about 10-12 meters deep (33-40 feet).

The street environment in areas with Welfare Era apartments end to be characterized by continuous unadorned facades. Without visual hierarchy it is unclear which, if any parts of the buildings are more important or where the center of the building is. This can have a disorienting or monotonous effect. Streets tend to be somewhat wider than in older neighborhoods and have higher motor-vehicle traffic. Green space or vehicle parking is sometimes provided in spaces where buildings have been set back from the street.

Large-scale government involvement in housing construction meant that for the first time a single development could cover an entire block. This was common in earlier iterations of the type. By the 1930’s architects began to deconstruct the traditional block, first by eliminating the southern side, to allow greater solar radiation to the rest of the apartments. Later plans further dismembered the traditional block with L-shaped patterns, “step” patterns of free-standing apartment buildings, parallel rows of buildings, and various other formations of free-standing buildings to take advantage of topography and site exposure.

Floor Plan

Floor plans of this housing type initially were similar to industrial era apartments, with the living room facing the street and bedrooms and the kitchen facing the street. This began to change in the 1920’s, when apartments began to be designed with the living rooms facing the (now larger, landscaped) courtyard. Other designers experimented with orienting flats based on solar radiation, with living rooms located on the south or west sides of the flat. Balconies became more common, initially as a fire-safety measure which allowed architects to eliminated one of the two staircases previously required by law. These came to be a popular amenity however, especially as recessed “bay-balconies” which offered greater privacy and protection from the elements.

Two-room flats continued to be the most common, and the share of apartments with only two rooms actually increased from 39.9% in 1890 to 46.8% in 1950.

Pictured is a three-room floor plan for a Welfare Era flat constructed in 1941. It features a recessed “bay-balcony” on one side. The living-room and balcony are on the “back” side of the building which faces landscaped yard, a reversal of the traditional orientation.

Uses

Welfare Era apartments were often 100% residential. Some units would include ground-floor commercial spaces, and very large developments would include child-care and other amenities for the use of the entire complex.

This type demonstrates the increasing segregation and specialization that characterize modern living. Land uses and social classes became more segregated. Meanwhile, each building and each room became more specialized.

Construction and Appearance

Building construction methods changed rapidly during the period of the welfare era apartment, in part due to a conscious effort on the part of architects and project managers to modernize these processes. This played out in the production of materials and in the increased use of machines in construction. However, the humble brick continued to be the most common construction material for buildings of this type. Red tile became popular for roofing in the 1910’s and is the most common roofing material for buildings of this type. An unexpected outcome of the return of red tile (Industrial Era apartments tended to have slate roofs) is that it is easy to tell roughly which areas of the city were developed before and after WWI. In the image below we can see how the roofing material correlates with parcel size and building form.

Density/Capacity

Welfare Era apartments tend to feature larger rooms and lower building coverage than previous multifamily housing types, which reduces density. Typical unit density in welfare era apartments is about 150 DU per hectare (62 DU per acre).

Adaptations

The Welfare Era apartment is relatively recent housing type, and has not needed as extensive modifications as older housing types have. In the period from 1930-1950 94% of new flats had private toilets, however only 66.3% had central heating, 69% had private bathing facilities, and only 60% had hot water. Retrofits have addressed such deficiencies in these and older Welfare Era apartments. Other adaptations include connecting buildings with district heating, adding balconies, energy-saving retrofits, and unit combinations.

Tenure

Welfare era apartments were constructed by private firms, cooperatives, and housing societies. All of these entities made use of public funds or loans for a significant share of their construction. Social housing organizations and cooperatives continued to construct buildings of this type into the 1980’s.

Variations on type

Welfare Era apartment type buildings are highly specialized for use as housing, and generally do not fulfill other uses. The Aarhus University campus design by CF Møller and Kay Fisker reflects many of the functionalist developments of the Welfare Era housing type, such as right-angle combinations of buildings, solar orientation, ample landscaped open space and minimal ornamentation applied to educational uses.

One variation on this type is to increase the height beyond size stories, without significantly altering the layout of the building. This requires elevators in every stairwell, as there are no interior corridors linking apartments. Such a layout can be seen at the Dronningegården complex that was built as part of a slum clearance program in the central city.