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New Objectivity (architecture)
Encyclopedia
The Werkbund and Expressionism
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, under the auspices 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...
's attempt to provide a Modern face for Germany. Many of the architects who would become associated with the New Objectivity were practicing in a similar manner in the 1910s, using glass surfaces and severe geometric compositions. Examples of this include 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....
and Adolf Meyer
Adolf Meyer
Adolf Meyer may refer to:*Adolf Bernard Meyer , German anthropologist and ornithologist*Adolf Meyer , Swiss psychiatrist*Adolf Meyer , German architect-See also:...
's 1911 Fagus Factory or Hans Poelzig
Hans Poelzig
Hans Poelzig was a German architect, painter and set designer.-Life:Poelzig was born in Berlin in 1869 to the countess Clara Henrietta Maria Poelzig while she was married to George Acland Ames, an Englishman...
's 1912 department store in Wrocław. However in the aftermath of the war these architects (as well as others such as Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut
Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....
) worked in the revolutionary Arbeitsrat für Kunst
Arbeitsrat für Kunst
The Arbeitsrat für Kunst was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921...
, pioneering Expressionist architecture
Expressionist architecture
Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement that developed in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts....
—particularly through the secret Glass Chain
Glass Chain
The Glass Chain or Crystal Chain sometimes known as the "Utopian Correspondence" was a chain letter that took place between November 1919 and December 1920. It was a correspondence of architects that formed a basis of expressionist architecture in Germany. It was initiated by Bruno Taut.-Names,...
group. The early works of the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
, such as the Sommerfeld House, were in this vein. Expressionism's dynamism and use of glass (whether for transparency or colour effects) would be a mainstay of the New Objectivity.
The effects of De Stijl and Constructivism
De Stijl
De Stijl , propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian , Vilmos Huszár , and Bart van der Leck , and the architects Gerrit Rietveld , Robert van 't Hoff , and J.J.P. Oud...
, whose architects such as Jan Wils
Jan Wils
Jan Wils was a Dutch architect.He was born in Alkmaar and died in Voorburg.Wils was one of the founding members of the De Stijl movement, which also included artists as Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Gerrit Rietveld.Among others, Wils designed the Olympic stadium for the 1928 Summer Olympics...
and JJP Oud had adapted ideas derived from Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
into cubic social housing, inflected with what Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg was a Dutch artist, practicing in painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.-Biography:-Early life:...
called 'the machine aesthetic'. Also steering German architects away from Expressionism was the influence of Constructivism
Constructivist architecture
Constructivist architecture was a form of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. It combined advanced technology and engineering with an avowedly Communist social purpose. Although it was divided into several competing factions, the movement produced...
, particularly of VKhUTEMAS
VKhUTEMAS
Vkhutemas ) was the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, replacing the Moscow Svomas. The workshops were established by a decree from Vladimir Lenin with the intentions, in the words of the Soviet government, "to prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for...
and El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky
, better known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works...
, who was frequently staying in Berlin in the early 1920s. Another element was the work in France 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...
, such as the proposals for the concrete 'Citrohan' house. In addition, Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn
Erich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...
had already been veering away from Expressionism towards more streamlined, dynamic forms, such as in his Mossehaus
Mossehaus
Mossehaus is an office building on 18-25 Schützenstrasse in Berlin, renovated and with a corner designed by Erich Mendelsohn in 1921-3.The original Mosse building housed the printing press and offices of the newspapers owned by Rudolf Mosse, mainly liberal newspapers such as the Berliner Tageblatt...
newspaper offices and the Gliwice
Gliwice
Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. Gliwice is the west district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population of 2 million...
Weichsmann factory, both 1921–2.
Early houses and estates
Georg Muche
Georg Muche was a German painter, printmaker, architect, author, and teacher.-Early life and education:Georg Muche was born on 8 May 1895 in Querfurt, in the south of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany and grew up in the Rhön area...
's Haus am Horn
Haus am horn
The Haus am Horn was built for the Weimar Bauhaus's exhibition of July through September 1923. It was designed by Georg Muche, a painter and a teacher at the Bauhaus. Other Bauhaus instructors, such as Adolf Meyer and Walter Gropius, assisted with the technical aspects of the house's design...
, and in the same year, Gropius/Meyer's design for Chicago's Tribune Tower
Tribune Tower
The Tribune Tower is a neo-Gothic building located at 435 North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. It is the home of the Chicago Tribune and Tribune Company. WGN Radio also broadcasts from the building, with ground-level studios overlooking nearby Pioneer Court and Michigan Avenue. CNN's...
competition. However the fullest early exploration of a new, non-expressionist avant-garde idiom was in the 1923–24 'Italienischer Garten' in Celle
Celle
Celle is a town and capital of the district of Celle, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town is situated on the banks of the River Aller, a tributary of the Weser and has a population of about 71,000...
by Otto Haesler. This was the first Modernist 'Siedlung' (literally 'settlement', though Estate would be more precise), an area of new-build social housing characterised by flat roofs, an irregular, asymmetrical plan, with houses arranged in south-facing terraces with generous windows and rendered surfaces. Contrary to the 'white box' idea later popularised by the International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
, these were frequently painted in bright colors. The strongest proponent of color among the housing architects was Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut
Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....
.
The New Frankfurt
Ernst May
Ernst May was a German architect and city planner.May successfully applied urban design techniques to the city of Frankfurt am Main during Germany's Weimar period, and in 1930 less successfully exported those ideas to Soviet Union cities, newly created under Stalinist rule...
to the position of city architect and planner by the Social Democratic administration of Frankfurt-am-Main. May was trained by the British 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...
planner Raymond Unwin
Raymond Unwin
Sir Raymond Unwin was a prominent and influential English engineer, architect and town planner, with an emphasis on improvements in working class housing.-Early years:...
, and his Estates showed garden city influence in their use of open space: however they totally repudiated the nostalgic style of Unwin's projects such as Hampstead Garden Suburb
Hampstead Garden Suburb
-Notable Residents :*Theo Adams*Martin Bell*Sir Victor Blank*Katie Boyle*Constantine, the last King of Greece*Greg Davies*Richard & Judy Finnigan*David Matthews*Michael Ridpath*Claudia Roden*Jonathan Ross*Sir Donald Sinden*Marc Sinden...
. May's 'New Frankfurt' would be enormously important for the subsequent development of the New Objectivity, not only because of its striking appearance but also in its success in quickly re-housing thousands of the city's poor. However their advanced techniques often alienated the building profession, much of whom were made superfluous by the lack of ornament and speed of construction. May would also employ other architects in Frankfurt such as Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was the first female Austrian architect and an activist in the Nazi resistance movement. She is mostly remembered today for designing the so-called Frankfurt Kitchen.-Training:...
(where she developed the Frankfurt Kitchen
Frankfurt kitchen
The Frankfurt kitchen was a milestone in domestic architecture, considered the fore-runner of modern fitted kitchens, for it realised for the first time a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at low cost...
) and Mart Stam
Mart Stam
Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Estate, the "Van Nelle...
. The immediate effect of May's work can be seen in Gropius's 1926 Torten Estate in Dessau
Dessau
Dessau is a town in Germany on the junction of the rivers Mulde and Elbe, in the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. Since 1 July 2007, it is part of the merged town Dessau-Roßlau. Population of Dessau proper: 77,973 .-Geography:...
(built around the same time as the more famous Bauhaus building), which also pioneered prefabrication technology. That Germany had become the centre of the New Building—as it was called, in preference to 'the New Architecture'—was confirmed by the Werkbund's Weissenhof Estate
Weissenhof Estate
The Weissenhof Estate is a housing estate built for exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927...
of 1927, where despite the presence 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 JJP Oud, most of the architects were German-speaking. Further Werkbund Estate-exhibitions were mounted in Wrocław and Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
in subsequent years.
Functionalism and the Minimum Dwelling
Weimar constitution
The Constitution of the German Reich , usually known as the Weimar Constitution was the constitution that governed Germany during the Weimar Republic...
, which provided for "a healthy dwelling" for all Germans. This phrase drove the technical definition of Existenzminimum (subsistence dwelling) in terms of minimally-acceptable floorspace, density, fresh air, access to green space, access to transit, and other such resident issues.
At the same time there was a massive expansion of the style across German cities. In Berlin, architect-planner Martin Wagner
Martin Wagner
Martin Wagner is an artist, cartoonist, and filmmaker currently living in Austin, Texas. He spent his childhood living overseas, in such locales as Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore....
worked with the former Expressionists Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut
Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....
and Hugo Häring
Hugo Häring
Hugo Häring was a German architect and architectural writer best known for his writings on "organic architecture", and as a figure in architectural debates about functionalism in the 1920s and 1930s, though he had an important role as an expressionist architect.A student of the great Theodor...
on colourful developments of flats and terraced houses such as the 1925 Horseshoe Estate, the 1926 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (Onkel-Toms-Hütte) and the 1929 'Carl-Legien-Siedlung', through the auspices of the Trade Unionist building society GEHAG. Taut's designs featured controversially modern flat roofs, humane access to sun, air and gardens, and generous amenities like gas, electric light, and bathrooms. Critics on the political Right 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." Similar experiments in municipal socialism such as the Viennese Gemeindebau
Gemeindebau
Gemeindebau is a German word for "municipality building". It refers to residential buildings erected by a municipality, usually to provide low-cost public housing....
were more stylistically eclectic
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
, so Frankfurt and Berlin's authorities were taking a gamble on public approval of the new style.
Elsewhere, Karl Schneider designed Estates in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....
designed low-cost houses in Berlin's Afrikanische Strasse (and in 1926, a monument to Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen...
and Karl Liebknecht
Karl Liebknecht
was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919...
) while straight-aligned, and to their critics, schematic Zeilenbau flats were built to the designs of Otto Haesler, Gropius and others in Dammerstock, Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
. The term 'Functionalism
Functionalism (architecture)
Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should design a building based on the purpose of that building. This statement is less self-evident than it first appears, and is a matter of confusion and controversy within the profession, particularly in regard to modern...
' began to be used to denote the rather severe, 'nothing superfluous' ethos of the New Objectivity, being used as early as 1925 by Adolf Behne
Adolf Behne
Adolf Behne was a critic, art historian, architectural writer, and artistic activist. He was one of the leaders of the Avant Garde in the Weimar Republic....
in his book Der Moderne Zweckbau (The Modern Functional Building). In 1926 practically all Modernist German architects organised themselves into a group known as Der Ring
Der Ring
Der Ring was an architectural collective founded in 1926 in Berlin. It emerged out of expressionist architecture with a functionalist agenda. Der Ring was a group of young architects, formed with the objective of promoting Modernist architecture. It took a position against the prevailing...
, which attracted criticism from soon to be-Nazi architects
Nazi architecture
Nazi architecture was an architectural plan which played a role in the Nazi party's plans to create a cultural and spiritual rebirth in Germany as part of the Third Reich....
like Paul Schultze-Naumburg
Paul Schultze-Naumburg
Paul Schultze-Naumburg was a Nazi architect and one of Nazi Germany's most vocal political critics of modern architecture...
, who formed 'the Block' in response. In 1928 the CIAM
Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne
The Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne – CIAM was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged around the world by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern...
had formed, and its earliest conferences, dedicated to questions of Existenzminimum were dominated by the social programmes of German architects.
Spread of the New Objectivity
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, the so-called ABC Group. It was made up of collaborators of El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky
, better known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works...
such as Mart Stam
Mart Stam
Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Estate, the "Van Nelle...
and Hannes Meyer
Hannes Meyer
Hans Emil "Hannes" Meyer was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1928 to 1930.-Early work:...
, whose greatest work was the glassy expanse of the Van Nelle Factory
Van Nelle Factory
The former Van Nelle Factory on the Schie river in Rotterdam, is one of the most important historic industrial buildings in the Netherlands. It is a former factory currently used as an office complex for design and media firms....
in Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
. The clean lines of the New Objectivity were also being used for schools and public buildings, by May in Frankfurt, in Hannes Meyer
Hannes Meyer
Hans Emil "Hannes" Meyer was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus in Dessau from 1928 to 1930.-Early work:...
's Trade Union school in Bernau
Bernau
Bernau may refer to:*Bernau bei Berlin, a town in Brandenburg, Germany*Bernau am Chiemsee, a municipality in the district of Rosenheim in Bavaria, Germany*Bernau im Schwarzwald, a municipality in Baden-Württemberg, Germany...
and Max Taut
Max Taut
Max Taut was a German architect.- Biography :Max Taut was born in Königsberg, the younger brother of Bruno Taut. He, his brother and Franz Hoffman formed Taut & Hoffman, an architecture firm in Berlin, In the 1920s, Max Taut was particularly known for his office buildings for trade unions...
's Alexander von Humboldt School in Berlin, as well as police administration and office buildings in Berlin under Martin Wagner. Cinemas, which would be very influential on Streamline Moderne
Streamline Moderne
Streamline Moderne, sometimes referred to by either name alone or as Art Moderne, was a late type of the Art Deco design style which emerged during the 1930s...
picture palaces, were designed by Erich Mendelsohn (Kino-Universum, now Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz
Schaubühne
The Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz is a famous theatre in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin, located at almost the middle of the famous Kurfürstendamm. It is a conversion of the Kino Universum, designed by Erich Mendelsohn in 1926. This was perhaps the first Modernist cinema built in the world, as...
, Berlin, 1926) and Hans Poelzig
Hans Poelzig
Hans Poelzig was a German architect, painter and set designer.-Life:Poelzig was born in Berlin in 1869 to the countess Clara Henrietta Maria Poelzig while she was married to George Acland Ames, an Englishman...
(Kino-Babylon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse, Berlin, 1927–28) A composite style that used the new forms with more traditional masonry building was developed by Poelzig with his Haus des Rundfunks
Haus des Rundfunks
The Haus des Rundfunks , located in the Westend district of Berlin, Germany, is the oldest self-contained broadcasting house in the world. It was designed by Hans Poelzig in 1929 after winning an architectural competition...
in Berlin and IG Farben Building
IG Farben Building
The IG Farben Building or the Poelzig Building was built from 1928 to 1930 as the corporate headquarters of the IG Farben conglomerate in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is also known as the Poelzig Ensemble or Poelzig Complex, and previously as the IG Farben Complex, and the General Creighton W....
in Frankfurt, and by Emil Fahrenkamp
Emil Fahrenkamp
Emil Fahrenkamp was a German architect and professor, one of the most prominent architects of the interwar period, best known for his 1930 Shell-Haus in Berlin....
in his undulating Berlin Shell-Haus
Shell-Haus
Shell-Haus is a classical modernist architectural masterwork that stands overlooking the Landwehrkanal in the Tiergarten district of Berlin.- Building and design :...
. Meanwhile Erich Mendelsohn's architecture had developed into a 'dynamic functionalism' for commerce, seen in his curvaceous department stores such as the Columbus-Haus in Berlin (demolished in the 1950s) and in the Schocken Department Stores
Schocken Department Stores
Schocken Department Stores was a chain of department stores in Germany before the Second World War.The company was found by Simon Schocken and Salman Schocken...
, 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 ....
(demolished in the 1960s) Chemnitz
Chemnitz
Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Chemnitz is an independent city which is not part of any county and seat of the government region Direktionsbezirk Chemnitz. Located in the northern foothills of the Ore Mountains, it is a part of the Saxon triangle...
and Wrocław. In Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
Robert Vorhoelzer
Robert Vorhoelzer
'Robert Vorhoelzer was a German architect.Bavarian architect Robert Vorhoelzer belongs to the classical modernist school of architecture that is otherwise rather underrepresented in Bavaria. Most of his works were built when Vorhoelzer was Oberbaurat of the Bavarian postal administration...
and Robert Poeverlein founded the "Bayerische Postbauschule" and built many modernist post offices while the architectural mainstream of 1920s and 1930s Munich still preferred the nostalgic "Heimatstil".
The Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, beginning in 1929, had a disastrous effect on the New Building, because of Germany's financial dependence on the USA. Many estates and projects planned in Frankfurt and Berlin were postponed indefinitely, while the architectural profession became politically polarised, something symbolised by the sacking in 1930 of the Marxist Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer—who had stressed, with his collaborators Ludwig Hilberseimer
Ludwig Hilberseimer
Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer was a German architect and urban planner best known for his ties to the Bauhaus and to Mies van der Rohe, as well as for his work in urban planning at Armour Institute of Technology , in Chicago, Illinois.-Life:Hilberseimer studied architecture at the Karlsruhe Technical...
and Mart Stam
Mart Stam
Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th century European architecture, including chair design at the Bauhaus, the Weissenhof Estate, the "Van Nelle...
, the importance of working class and collective housing—to be replaced by Mies van der Rohe, whose Barcelona Pavilion
Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion , designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. This building was used for the official opening of the German section of the exhibition. It was an important building in the history of modern...
and Tugendhat House had gained him a reputation as a purveyor of luxury to the rich, and proceeded to turn the Bauhaus into a private school.
Dispersal and exile
Siemensstadt
The Siemensstadt Housing Estate is a nonprofit residential community in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. It is one of the six Modernist Housing Estates in Berlin recognized in July 2008 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.-Geography:...
Estate in Berlin, which was planned by Hans Scharoun
Hans Scharoun
Bernhard Hans Henry Scharoun was a German architect best known for designing the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall and the in Löbau, Saxony. He was an important exponent of Organic architecture....
as a more individual and humane version of the 'existence minimum' residential housing formula. But the political mood turned uglier through that time, with open hostile press, and direct pressure on Jewish and/or Social Democratic architects to leave the country.
Many prominent German modernists went to the Soviet Union
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....
. Since 1920 Moscow had been the site of the Russian state-run art and technical school, a close parallel to the Bauhaus, Vkhutemas
VKhUTEMAS
Vkhutemas ) was the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, replacing the Moscow Svomas. The workshops were established by a decree from Vladimir Lenin with the intentions, in the words of the Soviet government, "to prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for...
, and there had been significant cultural connection through the cross-fertilization of El Lissitzky
El Lissitzky
, better known as El Lissitzky , was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his mentor, Kazimir Malevich, and designing numerous exhibition displays and propaganda works...
. Russia had colossal plans for entire cities of worker housing, and an eye on acquiring German expertise. Ernst May, Stam and Schütte-Lihotzky moved there in 1930 to design New Towns like Magnitogorsk
Magnitogorsk
Magnitogorsk is a mining and industrial city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River. Population: 418,545 ;...
, with Hannes Meyer's so-called Bauhaus Brigade and Bruno Taut soon to follow.
But the Russian experiment was over almost before it started. Working conditions proved hopeless, supplies impossible to get, and the labor unskilled and uninterested. Stalin's acceptance of the "retrograde" Palace of Soviets
Palace of Soviets
The Palace of the Soviets was a project to construct an administrative center and a congress hall in Moscow, Russia, near the Kremlin, on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour...
entry in the February 1932 competition provoked a strong reaction from the international modernist community, particularly 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...
. The modernists had just lost their biggest client. Internal Russian politics led to vicious in-fighting among Russian architects' unions, and an equally vicious campaign against foreign 'specialists'. Some designers did not survive the experience.
Others would leave Germany for Japan, or for the sizable German-exile community in Istanbul. Major architects in the modernist community ended up as far afield as Kenya, Mexico, and Sweden.
Isokon
The London-based Isokon firm was founded in 1929 to design and construct modernist houses and flats, and subsequently furniture and fittings for them...
Project and other projects in England, then eventually to the United States, where Gropius, Breuer and Berlin city planner 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 :...
would educate a generation of students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design
Harvard Graduate School of Design
The Harvard Graduate School of Design is a graduate school at Harvard University offering degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design.-History:...
.
More popularly, in the United States, the publication of Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
and Henry-Russell Hitchcock
Henry-Russell Hitchcock
Henry-Russell Hitchcock was the leading American architectural historian of his generation. A long-time professor at Smith College and New York University, he is best known for writings that helped to define Modern architecture.-Biography:...
's groundbreaking International Style
International style (architecture)
The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...
MOMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
exhibition and book of 1932 established an official "canon" of the style, with an emphasis on Mies, Gropius, and Le Corbusier. Attention to these three came as the expense of the Social Democratic context of Neues Bauen, and the architectural logic of state-sponsored mass-produced dwellings. Johnson and Hitchcock derided 'fanatical functionalists' like Hannes Meyer for building for 'some proletarian superman of the future'. Although stripped of its social meaning and intellectual rigor on import to the USA, the New Objectivity would nevertheless be enormously influential on the postwar development of Modern architecture worldwide.
Characterization of New Objectivity
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...
as an architectural style to begin with would have provoked strong disagreement from its practitioners. In the words of Gropius, they believed that buildings should be "shaped by internal laws without lies and games," and that the practice of building would transcend the use of ornament and any stylistic categorization. In German the phrase Neues Bauen, dating from a 1919 book by Erwin Gutkind, captures this idea, because Bauen connotes 'construction' as opposed to 'architecture'.
The New Objectivity continued to result in original work in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Eastern Europe (particularly Budapest
Bauhaus in Budapest
Bauhaus was a dominant architectural tendency in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, between 1930 and 1948. Large residential buildings, cinemas, churches and even an airport was built in this style, in particular in Újlipótváros in the XIII district, and Városmajor and Pasarét in the II district of...
) and other places through 1939.