Salutogenese – Das Jahrbuch der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur 2021

Architecture and
Urban Infrastructure
Prof. Dr. Joaquín Medina Warmburg
Nina Rind
Nikolaus Koch
Territorial Traces of a Salutogenetic Urban Plan
in Karlsruhe since 1715
Searching in Germany for early case studies of a healthenhancing
architecture and urban planning, one will find
striking examples from the nineteenth century, when
approaches to hygienic and social reform anticipated the
achievements of modernism during the Weimar Republic
(1918–33). Even earlier, however, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, attention had been paid not only to
sunlight, but to a whole series of factors in architecture and
urban planning that were deemed important for healthy
living. These efforts can be seen in the Residenzstadt
(official residence and capital) Karlsruhe, a city built as
the new seat for the court of a margraviate in southwest
Germany.
At first glance, the geometry of the baroque city of Karlsruhe
reveals the intention to control the city, its population, and
the surrounding territory. The margrave ruled the urban
and rural surroundings from the panopticon-like castle
at the city’s center. What is less obvious, however, is the fact
that this control was also meant to create a healthy living
environment. At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
Hippocrates’s ancient doctrine of miasmas (vaporous
putrid emanations) continued to apply. According to this
belief system, the air was considered to be the carrier of diseases
such as malaria, which was the main threat in areas
along rivers, such as was the case in Karlsruhe. An urban
A Christian Thran, View of the
city of Karlsruhe from the North
(1739)
34 Diskurs