MODERN ARCHITECTURE
Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut: MODERN ARCHITECTURE. London: The Studio Limited, [1929]. First English-language edition. Quarto. Embossed black Publishers cloth decorated in gilt. Dust jacket front panel face-trimmed and expertly attached to front free endpaper. 212 pp. Black and white photographs. Black cloth lightly rubbed along lower fore edge. Architectural historian’s bookplate to front endpaper. Front hinge starting. Scholarly pencilled marginalia throughout textblock. A couple of signatures slightly pulled, but a nearly very good copy.
9.25 x 11.5 hardcover book with 212 pages fully illustrated with black and white photographs of industrial buildings, offices, shops, restaurants, apartment buildings, halls, theatres, stadiums, schools, religious buildings as well as many other types of houses. Each photograph annotated with the name of the building and architect & the year it was built. The English edition of Taut's important work on the "new movement."
- Why a New Movement
- Historical
- What is Modern Architecture?
- The Early Developments of Modern Architecture
- Modern Building
- Elements
- Questions of Taste
- Conclusion, with a few Comments on England
- Bibliography
Includes work by Pol Abraham, C. R. Ashbee, Otto Bartning, Peter Behrens, Max Berg, H. P. Berlage, B. Bijvoet, L. C. Boileu, Victor Bourgeois, J. A. Brinkman, Pierre Chareau, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Djo-Bourgeois, Richard Döcker, J. Duiker, Easton & Robertson, Gustave Eiffel, August Endell, M. D. Felguer, Alfred Fischer, Theodor Fischer, Alf Francken, Josef Frank, Frederick French, Bohuslav Fuchs, Tony Garnier, Gauger & Otto, Johannes Göderitz, Walter Gropius, Gabriel Guevrékian, Richard Hächler, Otto Haesler, Hugo Häring, Hendry & Schooling, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Josef Hoffmann, Vladislavovitch Joltowski, Albert Kahn, E. Kaufmann, L. De Klerk, Korn & Weitzman, Herman Borisovitch Krassin, S. M. Kravetz, Carl Krayl, Kysela, Béla Lajta, Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, André Lurçat, Charles Rennie Macintosh, Emile Maigot, Rob Maillet-Stevens, Béla Málnai, Ernst May, Erich Mendelsohn, Alfred Messel, Adolf Meyer, Hannes Meyer, Karl Moser, W. M. Moser, Richard J. Neutra, Martin Nyrop, Oelsner, Josef M. Olbrich, J. J. P. Oud, Pierre Patout, John Paxton, A. & G. Perret, Oskar Pixis, Hans Poelzig, Gerrit Rietveld, J. K. Riha, Riphan Grod, James Gamble Rogers, John Root, Michel Oroux-Spitz, C. H. Rudloff, Conrad Ruhl, Henry Sauvage, Hans Sharoun, R. M. Schindler, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Karl Schneider, O. E. Schwiezer, S. S. Serafimoff, Charles Sielis, Sloan & Robertson, L. Stynen, Louis Sullivan, Thomas S. Tait, Bruno Taut, Andrew J. Thomas, Oldrich Tyll, Henry Van Der Velde, Mies Van Der Rohe, L. C. Van Der Vlugt, C. Van Easteren, S. Van Ravesteyn, Martin Wagner, Otto Wagner, Gilbert Wallis, The Brothers Wessnin, And J. G. Wiebenga.
"Before the war I was denounced as a glass architect; In Magdeburg they called me the apostle of colour. The one is only a consequence of the other; for delight in light is the same as delight in colour." — Bruno Taut
The German architect Bruno Taut (1880-1938) gained recognition as a leader of the 'New Objective' architecture. His best-known single building is the Glass Pavilion at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914). He served as city architect in Magdeburg, designed several successful large residential developments in Berlin, and headed GEHAG (a private housing concern, which still exists). Taut’s left-leaning politics often caused him problems—limiting his opportunities before WWI and forcing him flee to Switzerland and Japan (he wrote three influential books on Japanese culture and architecture). His politics, the influence of the garden movement, and the Deutscher Werkbund resulted in a belief that architecture is a universal art, not for the elite only.
"The painter in me subordinates itself to the architect - and that is quite in keeping with my nature. For me painting can never be an end in itself" -- Bruno Taut
As one of the "most unfairly neglected of Modernist architects" Taut’s colourful contribution to the course of modern architecture seems to have been unduly suppressed by the tyranny of black-and-white photography as the medium of choice for contemporaneous record. Modernist architecture of the 1920's was typified by the Purist's white facades and, since form follow function, it was standard practice to publish architectural photographs in monochrome. Popular manifestos, such as Le Corbusier's 1923 VERS UNE ARCHITECTURE, did not mention colour at all. Corbu also used his editiorial power at L’ESPIRIT NOUVEAU to reject Theo van Doesburg’s writings on the subject of color in the plastic Art of Architectue. The modernist agenda-setters believed Color had no place in the glorification of the new age of machinery, of form, and the modern spirit. Niklaus Pevsner obstinately ignored the contribution of Expressionism, or anything that deviated from the zeitgeist of the 'International Style", in his influential historical writings.