Above the northern part of Stuttgart near the Academy of Fine Art, the Weissenhof Estate (Weißenhofsiedlung) is a pioneering and influential housing development built in 1927 for an exhibition by the Werkbund. 

This group of leading international architects, which included Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, threw off the flowing decorative forms of the Art Nouveau movement and became leaders of the Modernists by embracing functional geometric building designs with little or no ornament.

The semi-detached housing units used new construction methods as well, with steel frames and prefabricated elements.