From above, the Hufeisensiedlung, the Horseshoe Estate, looks like a giant horseshoe wrapped around a pond, and from the ground it looks like something rarer, a housing project that people actually love. It was designed by Bruno Taut and Martin Wagner between 1925 and 1930 for a cooperative, as part of the effort in Weimar-era Berlin to give working families light, air and gardens instead of the dark tenements of the nineteenth century. Rows of low terraced houses with their own small gardens curve around a central green, and the façades are painted in strong colours, notably a long blue wall. It is one of six Berlin housing estates that UNESCO listed together in 2008 as examples of modern housing reform.
Taut was a believer in colour as a social tool, and the estate's reds, blues and whites give it a lively, cheerful feel that has survived decades of restoration. Walk through the courtyards and you find details like the garden gates, the doors, the staircases, each designed with care. Many of the houses are still occupied by tenants and owners, so be respectful and stay on the public paths. There is an information point in one of the buildings for visitors.
Britz lies in the south of Berlin, in the Neukölln district, close to the Britzer Garten, a large park laid out for a garden show in 1985, with lakes and a windmill. The riding here is city riding, with wide avenues, tram lines in places, cobbled sidestreets and heavy traffic at rush hour. Weekends are calmer, and the green areas offer a pleasant contrast. Tempelhof Field, the former airport, is close and open as a park, where cyclists and kite fliers gather on the old runways.
Fuel and supplies are easy to find in Berlin, with plenty of stations along the main roads and shops in the shopping streets of Neukölln. Nearby Gropiusstadt, a huge high-rise estate designed in the 1960s, shows a different approach to the same housing problem. For food, a Berlin currywurst or a döner kebab is the obvious snack, and the area has many Turkish and Arab cafés. A coffee and a stroll around the horseshoe is a gentle way to spend an hour.