Ernst May

Ernst May was the leading architect and urban planner behind the "Neues Frankfurt" (New Frankfurt) initiative in the 1920s. He successfully led the project to build thousands of functional, standardized housing units to alleviate the severe post-WWI housing shortage in Germany.

Ernst May was a pioneering modernist architect and urban planner known for his highly functional, standardized approach to public housing. Before his famous work in Frankfurt, he studied under influential figures and spent time in the Soviet Union applying his mass-housing principles.

With the rise of the Nazi party in the early 1930s, Ernst May, whose mother was Jewish, recognized the growing danger and left Germany. He took a group of his colleagues to the Soviet Union to work on planned industrial cities before eventually moving to East Africa.

Ernst May is celebrated as a pioneer of Neues Bauen, or New Objectivity, an architectural style focused on functionalism and rational design. His housing estates in Frankfurt featured flat roofs, standardized floor plans, and modern amenities designed to improve everyday living conditions for the working class.