BAU UND WOHNUNG
Herausgegeben vom Deutschen Werkbund
Mies van der Rohe [Foreword], Willi Baumeister [Designer]
Stuttgart: Akad. Verlag Dr. Fr. Wedekind & Co., 1927. First edition. Text in German. Large quarto. Gray cloth titled in black and red. 152 pp. Fully illustrated with black and white offset reproductions of photographs of homes in the Weißenhof Settlement, architectural models and plans, and interiors. Contributions by participants with facsimile signatures. Cloth mildly soiled and shadowed to edges and tips bruised. Interior unmarked and very clean. Binding in very good, interior in nearly fine condition, so a very good to nearly fine copy of this cloth edition, seemingly less common that the simultaneous wrapper edition.
8.375 x 11.75-inch hardcover book with 152 pages devoted to the buildings of the Weißenhof Settlement in Stuttgart, built in 1927 as proposed by the German Werkbund and ordered by the City of Stuttgart on the occasion of the Werkbund Exhibition “Die Wohnung (The Apartment).” Preface by Mies van der Rohe with contributions by Werner Gräff, Peter Behrens, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Richard Döcker, Walter Gropius, J. J. P. Oud, Hans Poelzig, Hans Scharoun, Mart Stam, Bruno and Max Taut and others.
Contents:
- Mies van der Rohe: Vorwort
- Wener Gräff: Zur Stuttgarter Weißenhofsiedlun
- Pageplan
- Peter Behrens: Terrassen am Hause
- Le Corbusier und Pierre Jeanneret: Fünf Punkte zu einer neuen Arkitektur
- Richard Döcker: Kurze Betrachtungen über Bauen von Heute
- Josef Frank: Der Gschnas fürs Gemüt und der Gschnas als Problem
- Walter Gropius: Wege zur fabrikatorischen Hausherstellung
- Ludwig Hilberseimer: Die Wohnung als Gebrauchsgegenstand
- Mies van der Rohe: Zu meinem Block
- J. J. P. Oud: Erläuterungsbericht
- Hans Poelzig: Erläuterungen
- Adolf Rading: Zeitlupe
- Hans Scharoun: Zur Situation
- Adolf G. Schneck: Über Typengrundrisse
- Mart Stam: Wie Bauen?
- Bruno Taut: Erläuterungsbericht
- Max Taut: Meine Stuttgarter Häuser
- Victor Bourgeois: Denkt an die Grenzeen!
- Adolf G. Schneck: Haus 11
- Die Mitarbeiter des buches
Features work and words by Peter Behrens, Victor Bourgeois, Le Corbusier, Richard Döcker, Josef Frank, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Pierre Jeanneret, Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, Hans Poelzig, Adolf Rading, Mies van der Rohe, Hans Scharoun, Adolf Schneck, Mart Stam, Bruno Taut, and Max Taut.
Willi Baumeister’s typography and mise-en-page directly relate to Moholy-Nagy’s contemporary work on the BauhausBücher series. Prior to the 20th century, when artists were called upon to illustrate texts or provide posters for advertising, their function was to provide visual images that bore no formal relationship to the message. In other words, the illustration was simply a diversion.
More than any other group, the expositional, programmatic set of Bauhaus Bücher engineers one of the most consistently remarkable episodes in the history of the art of the book. A series of 14 volumes (1925–1930) edited by Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy, the books rigorously demonstrate format as a systematic support of content and are discussed in Jan Tschichold’s classic and influential Die Neue Typograhie of 1928. In the Bauhaus Books the precepts and sense of content are palpably clear in the logic and decisions of design and format. Content is not so much conveyed by as in the carefully considered means and methods of presentation. Nowhere is the book more completely accomplished as a mental instrument; form and content virtually assume the operation of a mathematical proposition, arriving at a language in which everything formal belongs to syntax and not to vocabulary.
Willi Baumeister (1889 – 1955) was a German painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer. In 1919 Baumeister became a member of the Berlin artist association Novembergruppe (November Group). The group was founded by Max Pechstein in 1918, immediately following Germany’s capitulation and the fall of the monarchy. It remained one the most important alliances of German artists until 1933.
In 1927 Baumeister accepted a teaching post at the Frankfurt School of Applied Arts, later known the Städel. There he taught from 1928 a class in commercial art, typography, and textile printing. That very year, his daughter was born. The following year he turned down a position at the Bauhaus in Dessau. A member of the ring neue werbegestalter (Circle of New Commercial Designers) (chairman: Kurt Schwitters) since 1927, Baumeister joined the artist association Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) in 1930. In the same year, he received the Württemberg State Prize for the painting Line Figure. After "Cercle et Carré", he also became a member of the artist association "Abstraction-Création" in Paris.
In 1937 five of his works were shown in the National Socialist exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate art) in Munich.
In 1907, 12 artists and 12 industrialists proclaimed the foundation of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen). Their aim was to enhance the quality and international reputation of German products in a cooperation of the arts, industry and crafts. With its ambition of designing everything “from cushions to cities”, the Deutscher Werkbund became a cultural authority that sought to promote and influence the development of taste in all aspects of life.
The Weißenhofsiedlung Stuttgart (Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart) is one of the most important testimonies to the Neues Bauen (New Way of Building) movement. As a 1927 building exhibition entitled “Die Wohnung” (“The Residence”), the Estate presented new forms of living, which had been called for and promoted by the Deutscher Werkbund, to a national and international audience. 17 architects from a variety of countries participated in the exhibition. They included Le Corbusier, Gropius and Scharoun. At the time, these names were only known to the international avant garde – now they are considered among the most important masters of modern architecture. Under the artistic guidance of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, they created an exemplary residential programme for modern metropolitan man. 21 model houses were developed.
The Weißenhofsiedlung building exhibition exemplifies the state of the art in architecture and residential building of the time. Formal coherence was achieved through the fundamentally similar architectural approaches of the participating architects and the requirement of using “revolutionary” flat roofs only. Devoid of decoration or ornamentation, the cubic architecture of the Weißenhofsiedlung epitomised modernist architecture. At the time, 50,000 people visited the exhibition. The architecture was controversial: it pitted open-minded against conservative forces, flat roof against gable roof, and modernism against tradition.
Today, the Weißenhofsiedlung is considered a built manifesto of a modern and open-minded attitude to life, and stands out among 20th century building exhibitions as a prototype.