Systematic Analyses: Development of Alexander Klein's Methods from 1927 to 1929

Light, air, and sun were the important themes that shaped interwar architecture in Germany. Well-known architects such as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, or Ernst May, devoted themselves to the Neues Bauen movement. The architect Alexander Klein is often mentioned only marginally in canonical historiography, without emphasizing the important role that his work played in the search for new standards for housing construction in the first half of the twentieth century. Klein developed diagrams, new graphical methods, and tables for evaluating the quality of various apartment types. In doing so, he tried to introduce a universally valid method for assessing good and affordable housing.

This work shows how Klein's methods of analysis changed over time and subsequently merged into an independent system. Klein persistently developed his methods to make them easy to use. He adjusted their individual components to make them interrelated. By introducing a clear sequence of analytical steps, all representations were made to follow the same principle of order and abstraction. Viewed individually, each work step focused only on one task. Combined with others, it contributed to the design of high-quality affordable housing.