INTERNATIONALE NEUE BAUKUNST
[Die Baubücher Band II]
Ludwig Hilberseimer
Ludwig Hilberseimer: INTERNATIONALE NEUE BAUKUNST [Die Baubücher Band II]. Stuttgart: Verlag Julius Hoffmann, 1928 [Im Auftrag des Deutschen Werkbundes Herausgegeben]. Second enlarged edition. Text in German. Slim quarto. Embossed and printed thick wrappers. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 56 pp. 137 black and white illustrations. Architectural historians’ bookplate to front endpaper. Fragile dust jacket edgeworn and chipped, with front flap neatly separated and a couple of archival tape repairs to verso. Pencilled checkmarks to margins of a few leaves. A very good copy in a scrappy—but essentially complete—example of the rare dust jacket.
9 x 11.5 softcover book in dust jacket with 56 pages and 137 black and white illustrations presenting the newest and finest examples of the as yet uncodified International Style, issued on behalf of the Artists and Industrialists of the German Werkbund.
Features work by Alfons Acker, Peter Behrens, Djo Bourgeois, Victor Bourgeois, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret, Richard Doecker, C. Von Eesteren, J. C. Eggericx, Luigi Figini, Josef Frank, Freyssinet, Tony Garnier, Gelhorn & Knauthe, M. J. Ginsburg, Walter Gropius, Erwin Gutkind, Richard Hächler, Max Ernst Haefeli, Hugo Häring, Otto Haesler, S. Hempel, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Huib Hoste, Arthur Korn, Heinrich Kosina, Ferdinand Kramer, Jaromir Krejear, B. Lachert, S. Larco, El Lissitzky, Luckhardt & Anker, André Lurcat, Robert Maillet-Stenvens, Ernst May, Chase Mcarthur, Erich Mendelsohn, Adolf Meyer, Hannes Meyer, Mies Van Der Rohe, Werner Moser, Richard Neutra, R. M. Schindler, V. Obrtel, J. J. P. Oud, L. Péri, Auguste Perret, G. Pollini, Hans Poelzig, Rudolf Preiswerk, Adolf Rading, Brüder Rasch, C. E. Rava, S. Van Ravensteyn, Gerrit Rietveld, Rudloff & May, Alberto Sartiris, Hans Sharoun, Adolf G. Schneck, Karl Schneider, J. N. Soboleff, Hans Söder, Alois Spalek, Mart Stam, Rudolf Steiger, J. Szananjca, Bruno Taut, Max Taut, L. C. Van Der Vlugt, Jan Wils, Hans Wittwer, W. M. Wladimiroff, Frank Lloyd Wright, and others.
The Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen) is a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists, established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus. Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with design professionals to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets. The Werkbund was less an artistic movement than a state-sponsored effort to integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass production techniques, to put Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States. Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau (from sofa cushions to city-building) indicates its range of interest.
The Werkbund was founded by Olbrich, Peter Behrens, Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul and others in 1907 in Munich at the instigation of Hermann Muthesius, existed through 1934, then re-established after World War II in 1950. Muthesius was the author of the exhaustive three-volume "The English House" of 1905, a survey of the practical lessons of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Muthesius was seen as something of a cultural ambassador—or industrial spy—between Germany and England.
The organization originally included twelve architects and twelve business firms. The architects include Peter Behrens, Theodor Fischer (who served as its first president), Josef Hoffmann, Bruno Paul, and Richard Riemerschmid. Other architects affiliated with the project include Heinrich Tessenow and the Belgian Henry van de Velde. The Werkbund commissioned van de Velde to design a theatre for its 1914 Cologne Exhibition in Cologne. The exhibition was closed and the buildings dismantled, ahead of schedule, because of the outbreak of WW I. Eliel Saarinen was made corresponding member of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1914 and was invited to participate in the 1914 Cologne exhibition. Among the Werkbund's more noted members was the architect Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, who served as Architectural Director. Lilly Reich became the first female Director in 1920.
Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer (1885–1967) 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 (now Illinois Institute of Technology), in Chicago, Illinois.
Hilberseimer studied architecture at the Karlsruhe Technical University from 1906 to 1910. He left before completing a degree. Afterward he worked in the architectural office Behrens and Neumark. Until 1914 he was coworker in the office of Heinz Lassen in Bremen. Later he led the planning office for Zeppelinhallenbau in Berlin Staaken. Beginning in 1919 he was member of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst and November Group, worked as independent architect and town planner and published numerous theoretical writings over art, architecture and town construction.
In 1929 Hilberseimer was hired by Hannes Meyer to teach at the Bauhaus at Dessau, Germany. In July 1933 Hilberseimer and Wassily Kandinsky were the two members of the Bauhaus that the Gestapo identified as problematically left-wing. Like many members of the Bauhaus, he fled Germany for America. He arrived in 1938 to work for Mies van der Rohe in Chicago while heading the department of urban planning at IIT College of Architecture. Hilberseimer also became director of Chicago's city planning office.
Street hierarchy was first elaborated by Ludwig Hilberseimer in his book City Plan, 1927. Hilberseimer emphasized safety for school-age children to walk to school while increasing the speed of the vehicular circulation system.
Beginning in 1929 at the Bauhaus, Hilberseimer developed studies concerning town construction for the decentralization of large cities. Against the background of the economic and political fall of the Weimar Republic he developed a universal and global adaptable planning system (The new town center, 1944), which planned a gradual dissolution of major cities and a complete penetration of landscape and settlement. He proposed that in order to create a sustainable relationship between humans, industry, and nature, human habitation should be built in a way to secure all people against all disasters and crises.
His most notable built project is Lafayette Park, Detroit, an urban renewal project designed in cooperation with architect Mies van der Rohe and landscape architect Alfred Caldwell.