Settlement Units Density Studies, Aerial Perspective

Ludwig Hilberseimer was a German architect and urban planner who emigrated to Chicago and became chair of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Department of City and Regional Planning. After working on experimental plans for a High-Rise City (Hochhausstadt) in the 1920s, Hilberseimer shifted the scale of his planning studies to focus on the settlement unit, a new type of urban development based on low-rise houses. The settlement unit was a residential group whose size was controlled to allow inhabitants to travel to work on foot, thus mediating between the scale of the city and the needs of the individual house. Hilberseimer modeled his settlement unit on a pattern of small, attached, L-shaped houses in long rows designed to maximize privacy at a relatively high density and to promote a fruitful repetition and standardization.