This article outlines the phenomenon of West Germany’s new universities for the masses. Seldom have so many universities of such size been built so quickly as in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Nearly 40 new universities were established across the country.
It is a known fact that, from a political point of view, the priority was to provide as much space as possible quickly and cheaply. Following the concept of the functional city and the logic of increased efficiency by concentration, the vast majority of the new university complexes were constructed as large-scale structures outside of historic city centers. Architects seized the opportunity and designed the publicly financed large-scale complexes as urban utopias on a small scale, as I am going to show drawing mainly on examples in Bochum, Marburg, Berlin, Bielefeld and Constance. A key consideration – beyond efficiency – was the issue of flexibility. Inspired by systems theory, architects developed megastructures and building systems that would allow the academic communities to modify its buildings according to their needs in the future. However, the expectations that these New Universities might, due to their size and complexity, develop the same dynamism as historic towns, that were perceived to have ‘grown organically’, were fulfilled to a very limited extent only. Nonetheless, the mass universities are impressive testimony to the political, technical and urban planning spirit of the 1960s.