Margret Kentgens Craig

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.Expanding upon work done previously, including that ofHitchcock himself, these publications were the book The International Style: Architecturesince 1922, conceived simultaneously with the New York Museum of Modern Art exhi-bition Modern Architecture: International Exhibition of the same year, and the exhi-bition catalogue, edited in collaboration with Barr and Mumford.Inasmuch as thebook and the catalogue differ in sections of the text and in numerous images, theyoffered in tandem a broader spectrum of exemplary works and information on the style. Both publications include seminal works of architecture and interior designby Bauhaus protagonists.In the book International Style, the Bauhaus is represented by four architects orartists: Albers, Breuer, Gropius, and Mies.108 One interior each by Albers and Breuerare illustrated, a living room by the former and an apartment/bedroom by the latter,both built for the Building Exposition of 1931 in Berlin.The brief accompanying texton the work of Albers notes the break with tradition apparent in the wooden chairsdepicted, a characteristic considered typical of most Bauhaus products.The text ac-companying the Breuer project makes no reference to his relationship to the Bauhaus.Few architects or artists are represented by more than one piece of work; thusMies van der Rohe s five projects indicate his special status.The projects illustrated arehis apartment house for the Weissenhof-Siedlung in Stuttgart (1927), the Lange housein Krefeld (1928), the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), the Tugendhat house in Brno (1930),and the apartment for Philip Johnson in New York (1930).Gropius is represented bythree illustrations, which show the Dessau Bauhaus (1926), the employment office inDessau (1928), and the Dessau-T�rten Siedlung (shop and apartment house, 1928).The text also mentions the Fagus shoe factory in Alfeld an der Leine.109Barr was correct when he predicted in the foreword to The International Style thatthe book s importance would be possibly.epochal. 110 Its influence on the receptionof the new movement by design professionals can hardly be overestimated.111 The bookbecame a standard in design libraries; it was received by a circle much broader thanthat of the exhibition s visitors.Its influence was reinforced by its extremely convenientformat, which reflected the exhibition in the images and essay-like descriptions of65 EXPLICIT INFORMATION ABOUT THE BAUHAUSselected works; in biographical sketches of the lives and work of the architects repre-sented; and in both general and short individual bibliographies.As was appropriate toits less programmatic thrust, the exhibition catalogue discusses the relationship be-tween the works shown and the Bauhaus in greater detail.112Theories and works of architecture related to the Bauhaus also received their duein Modern Housing, a classic work by Catherine Bauer published in 1934.The authorhad worked with the Regional Planning Association of America since 1930, had par-ticipated in housing committees, and was counted as a foremost authority on thesubject even before the book s publication.Modern Housing was interested in the possi-bilities that the Neues Bauen seemed to promise with regard to public housing andhousing estates.The book contains exhaustive studies of multifamily housing andhousing estates in many countries of central and northern Europe.Bauer devotes par-ticular attention to German architecture, perhaps because of a trip to Europe on whichshe had met Otto Bartning, Walter Curt Behrendt, Richard D�cker, Sigfried Giedion,Hugo H�ring, Fritz Schumacher, and Martin Wagner.In her examination of the basicsand feasibility of various house, apartment, and estate types, she deals with the essen-tial issues of public housing, issues she saw in much the same way as Ernst May, BrunoTaut, and Gropius had: urban forms, rationalization, building codes, constructionmethods, floor plan typologies, principles of interior furnishings, and the particularsocial, economic, psychological, hygienic, technological, and aesthetic factors influen-tial in building and habitation.She also describes for her readers the themes that ranthrough the progressive central European estate housing of the twenties view, insula-tion, ventilation, standardization, the aesthetic of flowing space and of modern con-struction and illustrates her contentions with concrete examples.Among thoseexamples are the multifamily dwelling at Weissenhof by Mies van der Rohe as well as105 Ibid., 303 304.106 Ibid., 104, 303, 306.Quotations: 254 255, 303 304.Illustrations, Mies: 17, 261, 127, 312.Gropius: 305, 104, 303, 304, 307, 234, 254, 17, 352.(Sequence corresponds to mention intext.)107 See Johnson, Modernism in Architecture, and the review The New World Architecture bySheldon Cheney.108 All in all, the publication includes more than sixty architects or partnerships from 16 countriesand examples of their work.Of these, 21 are German architects, interior architects, or partner-ships.109 Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip C.Johnson, The International Style, 29, 101, 107, 181 191,143 147.110 Alfred H.Barr, Jr., foreword to Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style, 11.111 Gillian Naylor, The Bauhaus Reassessed, 172.112 See Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Philip Johnson, and Lewis Mumford, Modern Architecture: Inter-national Exhibition, 57ff., 111ff.66 THE DISSEMINATION OF BAUHAUS IDEASthe Siemensstadt housing units, the Dessau Bauhaus, and a design by Gropius for ahousing tower dating from the twenties.113 Modern Housing also contained an extensivelist of references to other literature including numerous German publications, amongwhich were Bauhausbauten Dessau and the Werkbund-sponsored journal Die Form,described as an especially valuable source of information.In her book, Bauer providedlargely new information to the United States on Gropius, Mies, and the Bauhaus; andshe did so only one year after the Bauhaus s closing and two years before Harvard Uni-versity attempted to secure one of these two architects as professor.In 1935, the English translations of two books by former Bauhaus habitu�s werefinally published, The New Vision: From Materials to Architecture by L�szló Moholy-Nagyand The New Architecture and the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius.The former is a compila-tion of the author s Bauhaus lectures and conveys his view of the pedagogic and profes-sional tenets and goals pursued by the school.The latter book provided Americanarchitectural circles with detailed, authentic from Gropius s perspective infor-mation on the curriculum, teaching structure, educational goals, understanding ofarchitecture, and fundamental artistic-philosophical perspective of the Bauhaus asimplemented and later recalled by the school s founder.All these books could be found in the large university libraries and on the recom-mended reading lists published by architectural periodicals.Numerous reviews pro-vided the basis for the publications influence and ensured that the intellectual heritageof the Bauhaus would find its way to an American professional audience [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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