65of all forms of ornament and the use of flat roofs and large balconies point to a de-
liberate tendency toward innovation, as do the employment of techniques of indus-
trial construction, the functional floor plans, the high quality of the fittings, and even
the choice of colors.
Even so, tradition continues to make itself felt under the surface. This can be
seen in the endeavor to create a calm and orderly urban image,^79 in the stressing of
symmetry and harmony, and in the frequently organic layout of the Siedlungen. The
volumes of the dwellings are closed and are clearly demarcated, while the window
openings in general are somewhat on the small side and are distributed in a balanced
fashion along the facade. The design of the urban image is based on an alternation
of seriality and symmetry. The housing units are often asymmetrical in their con-
struction, but the fact that they alternately mirror each other means that a general
picture is created in which symmetry and axiality are dominant.
Generally speaking, the architecture of Das Neue Frankfurtis not really radical
in terms of its design. It lacks a number of salient features that are fundamental to
the work of other avant-garde architects. Flexibility, mobility, and dynamism, for in-
stance—essential elements in Giedion’s concept of modern architecture—do not
predominate there. As for Le Corbusier’s five points (pilotis, fenêtres en longueur,
plan libre, façade libre, andtoit-jardin),^80 only the last element was realized in Frank-
furt at all extensively. Pilotis—an anti-organic feature par excellence because they re-
duce the relation between the building and the ground to a minimum—were seldom
if ever used; the fenêtres en longueurhardly ever occur in dwellings in the Siedlun-
gen, Riedhof being an exception in this respect. (They occur a little more frequently
in the larger projects such as the school in Römerstadt.) Nor were the floor plans of
May’s houses based on a plan libre: the articulation of the space was functional and
supporting walls were used; and the facade designs were not “free” but were de-
cided on the basis of internal requirements and the principles of calm and symmetry.
A comparison between a space-time construction by van Doesburg (figure
36)—which is a perfect example of Giedion’s notion of Durchdringung—and a
colored-in isometric projection by Hans Leistikow, which presented the color
scheme for the Siedlungof Praunheim (figure 37), leads to similar conclusions. Al-
ready in the coloring one can identify a number of striking differences.^81 With van
Doesburg, the color is applied to distinguish the different planes as much as possible
from each other in order to “dissolve” the cube; it is the “planes floating in space”
that are stressed, not the volume that they combine to create. In the isometric pro-
jection for Praunheim, on the other hand, the effect of the color, generally speaking,
is not used to “dissolve” the volumes: the colors continue round the corner, and the
differences are decided on the basis of the direction from which the plane is usually
observed (in other words, white is used for the surfaces that face “outward” and red
and blue for those that face “toward the inside”: from a distance, therefore, it is the
white that is dominant in the Siedlung). With van Doesburg, “inside” and “outside”64