Bruno Taut
Encyclopedia
Königsberg
Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945 as well as the northernmost and easternmost German city with 286,666 inhabitants . Due to the multicultural society in and around the city, there are several local names for it...
, Germany – 24 December 1938, Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
), was a prolific German architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
, urban planner
Urban planner
An urban planner or city planner is a professional who works in the field of urban planning/land use planning for the purpose of optimizing the effectiveness of a community's land use and infrastructure. They formulate plans for the development and management of urban and suburban areas, typically...
and author active during the Weimar
Weimar culture
Weimar culture was a flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic...
period.
Taut is known best for his theoretical work, speculative writings and the buildings he designed. Taut's best-known single building is the prismatic dome of the Glass Pavilion
Glass Pavilion
The Glass Pavilion, built in 1914 and designed by Bruno Taut, was a prismatic glass dome structure at the Cologne Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition. The structure was a brightly colored landmark of the exhibition, and was constructed using concrete and glass. The concrete structure had inlaid colored...
for the Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
Werkbund Exhibition (1914)
Werkbund Exhibition (1914)
The first Werkbund Exhibition of 1914 was held at Rheinpark in Cologne, Germany. Bruno Taut's best-known building, the prismatic dome of the Glass Pavilion of which only black and white images survive today, was in reality a brightly colored landmark. Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer designed a model...
. His sketches for the publication "Alpine Architecture" (1917) are the work of an unabashed Utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n visionary, and he is classified as a Modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and in particular as an Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
. Much of Taut's literary work in German remains untranslated into English.
Germany
After training in Berlin and joining the office of Theodor FischerTheodor Fischer
Theodor Fischer was a German architect and teacher.Fischer planned public housing projects for the city of Munich beginning in 1893. He was the joint founder and first chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund , as well as member of the German version of the Garden city movement...
in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, Taut established his own Berlin office during 1910. The elder architect Hermann Muthesius
Hermann Muthesius
Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius , known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect, author and diplomat, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German architectural modernism...
suggested that he visit England to learn the garden city
Garden city movement
The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" , containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and...
philosophy. Muthesius would also introduce him to some of the Deutscher Werkbund
Deutscher Werkbund
The Deutscher Werkbund was a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists. The Werkbund was to become an important event in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design...
group of architects, including Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
. Taut had socialist sympathies, and before World War I this hindered his advancement.
Magdeburg
Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....
from 1912 through 1915, influenced directly by the humane functionalism and urban design solutions of the garden city philosophy. The Reform estate was built between 1912-15 in the southwest of Magdeburg. The estate comprises one storey terrace houses for a housing trust. It was the first project where Taut used colour as a design principle. The construction of the estate was continued by Carl Krayl
Carl Krayl
Carl Christian Krayl was a German architect and artist of the early twentieth century, who was associated with several of the leading avant-garde art movements of German Expressionism....
. Taut served as city architect in Magdeburg from 1921 to 1923. During his time as city architect a few residential developments were built, i.e. the Hermann Beims estate
Hermann Beims estate
The Hermann Beims estate is a social housing project of the 1920s. It is named after Hermann Beims , mayor of Magdeburg, who held office from 1919 until 1931. It was designed by Bruno Taut, Magdeburg's city architect between 1926-29....
(1925–28) with 2,100 apartments. Taut designed the exhibition hall 'City and Countryside' during 1921 with concrete trusses and a centre sky light.
A lifelong painter, Taut is unique among his European modernist contemporaries in his devotion to colour. As in Magdeburg he applied lively, clashing colors to his first major commission, the 1912 Falkenberg housing estate in Berlin, which became known as the "Paint Box Estates". The 1914 Glass Pavilion, an essay in the new possibilities of glass, and familiar from black and white reproduction, was actually also colored brightly. Taut's distinction from his Modernist contemporaries was never more obvious than at the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung housing exhibition
Weissenhof Estate
The Weissenhof Estate is a housing estate built for exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927...
in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
. As opposed to pure-white entries from Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
, Taut's house (Number 19) was painted in primary colors. Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
is reported to have exclaimed "My God, Taut is colour-blind!"
During 1924 Taut was made chief architect of GEHAG, a housing cooperative in Berlin, and was the main designer of several successful large residential developments ("Gross-Siedlungen") in Berlin, notably the 1925 Horseshoe Development ("Hufeisensiedlung"), named for its configuration around a pond, and the 1926 Uncle Tom's Cabin Development ("Onkel-Toms Hutte") in Zehlendorf, named oddly for a local restaurant and set in a thick grove of trees. Taut worked for the city architect of Berlin, Martin Wagner
Martin Wagner (architect)
Martin Wagner was a German architect, city planner, and author, best known as the driving force behind the construction of modernist housing projects in interwar Berlin.- Germany :...
, on some of Berlin's Modernist Housing Estates
Modernist Housing Estates
Berlin Modernism Housing Estates consists of six subsidized housing estates that testify to innovative housing policies from 1910 to 1933, especially during the Weimar Republic, when the city of Berlin was particularly progressive socially, politically and culturally...
, now recognized as a UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site
A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...
.
The designs featured controversially modern flat roofs, humane access to sun, air and gardens, and generous amenities like gas, electric light, and bathrooms. Political conservatives complained that these developments were too opulent for 'simple people'. The progressive Berlin mayor Gustav Böss defended them: "We want to bring the lower levels of society higher."
Taut's team completed more than 12,000 dwellings between 1924 and 1931. GEHAG is still in business, and has a horseshoe as its logo as tribute to Taut.
After World War I
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
during 1932 and 1933, and came back to Germany during February 1933 to a hostile political environment. As a Jew with Social Democratic sympathies, he fled to Switzerland, then to Takasaki in Japan, where he produced three influential book-length appreciations of Japanese culture and architecture, comparing the historical simplicity of Japanese architecture with modernist discipline. He was the first to reveal the architectural features of Katsura Imperial Villa
Katsura Imperial Villa
The , or Katsura Detached Palace, is a villa with associated gardens and outbuildings in the western suburbs of Kyoto, Japan...
to the West, consequently influencing the work of Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
and Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
. Taut also did furniture and interior design work.
Offered a job as Professor of Architecture at "State Academy of Fine Arts" in Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
(currently, Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts
Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts
Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University is a Turkish state university dedicated to the higher education of fine arts. It is located in the Fındıklı neighborhood of İstanbul, Turkey.-History:...
), Taut relocated to Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
during 1936. In Ankara he joined other German wartime exiles in Turkey, including Martin Wagner.
Before Taut's premature death on 24 December 1938, he wrote at least one more book and designed a number of educational buildings in Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....
and Trabzon
Trabzon
Trabzon is a city on the Black Sea coast of north-eastern Turkey and the capital of Trabzon Province. Trabzon, located on the historical Silk Road, became a melting pot of religions, languages and culture for centuries and a trade gateway to Iran in the southeast and the Caucasus to the northeast...
after being commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Education. The most significant of these buildings were the "Faculty of Languages, History and Geography" at Ankara University
Ankara University
Ankara University is a public university in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. It was the first higher education institution founded in the Turkish Republic....
, "Ankara Atatürk High School" and "Trabzon High School". Taut's final work one month before his death was the catafalque
Catafalque
A catafalque is a raised bier, soapbox, or similar platform, often movable, that is used to support the casket, coffin, or body of the deceased during a funeral or memorial service. Following a Roman Catholic Requiem Mass, a catafalque may be used to stand in place of the body at the Absolution of...
used for the official state funeral of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an Ottoman and Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, writer, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey....
on 21 November 1938 in Ankara.
He died on 24 December 1938 and was laid to rest at the Edirnekapı Martyr's Cemetery
Edirnekapi Martyr's Cemetery
The Edirnekapı Martyr's Cemetery is a burial ground located in the European part of Istanbul, Turkey. It consists of an old, historical part and a modern one....
in Istanbul as the first and the only non-Muslim.
External links
- Britz/Hufeisensiedlung in Berlin by Bruno Taut & Martin Wagner (with drawings and photos)
- Museum of Architecture biography of Taut