Der Abbau der Großstadt : Leopold Bauers urbanistische Entwürfe und Metropolvisionen

The study considers the town planning projects and designs (never implemented) for dominant features of big cities of the leading Viennese architect Leopold Bauer (1872–1938), whose work and life story were closely linked with Moravia and Silesia. In the interwar period Bauer was one of the leading representatives of Austrian town planning, but his designs tended to represent "idealistic" commentaries on contemporary town planning practice and had no chance of being implemented in Austria at that time. The author examines the evolution of his concepts, from developing the "artistic foundations" of Camillo Sitte, through the model of garden cities surrounding manufacturing centres, to his "American" visions of terraced cities with multi-level road communications. The common denominator of his town planning designs was criticism of the contemporary big city, which Bauer saw as the embodiment of all the social, economic and cultural problems caused by the processes of industrialisation. The study also describes the plans that he entered for competitions and tenders, in which Bauer presented his distinctive syncretic strategy, demonstrating the essential quality of his "conservative modernism".