Salutogenese – Das Jahrbuch der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur 2021

Parallel to the expansion of the drinking water supply, small
sewers were increasingly introduced as drainage canals of
the city. These all drained into the main Landgraben canal.
When Friedrich Weinbrenner re-planned the city from 1800
onwards, the Landgraben, now located in the growing city,
had to be included in its new plans. The unusual triangular
layouts of public spaces, such as the squares Lidellplatz
and Ludwigsplatz, were the result. The city’s plan resulted in
polygonal and angled parcels, which presented an architect
with special design challenges. Friedrich Weinbrenner was
very talented at designing polygonal ground plans which
served as model houses in aspects such as lighting and ventilation.
Despite the initial minimum width of forty Werkschuh
— about twelve meters — houses were later subdivided.
Brick walls were used to separate structures, which aided
in fire protection. Entrances could be used in common and
residents shared infrastructure such as functional buildings
in the courtyard, the garden, the well, or possibly the manure.
The definitive rejection of the longstanding theory of miasmas
after the London cholera epidemic of 1854 was anticipated
by developments in medicine, but also in the architecture
of the late eighteenth century. The distance regulations
for the construction of model houses in Karlsruhe
discussed above were established before a scientific certainty
was given about the decisive role of water in the spread of
pathogens. All in all, the case of Karlsruhe shows that by
the early eighteenth century at the latest, the design of the
built environment at both the regional and architectural
scales, was already permeated by fundamental healthenhancing
considerations for the general public. The interlinking
of horticulture, architecture, urban planning,
and infrastructure was of central importance, even though
there was a tension between spatial centrality and infrastructural
decentralization, between social welfare and
F Narrow house ground plan (Carlsstraße
41) with a well set exactly
on the property border (1812)
42
Diskurs