German architect Bruno Taut: "We glorify the architecture!"

Bruno Taut (1880–1938) is well known to professionals and, I hope, to his compatriots; His name did not say anything to me until I went deeper during the emergence of constructivism/functionalism. In Europe, these are the heyday of the Bauhaus, the concept of which Taut shared, being simultaneously a rationalist and dreamer.

The contribution of Bruno Taut to world architecture - as it is seen from today - is that he was one of the first to do in practice the really massive construction of typical apartments. In the photo 1 and 4, where the buildings of the Taut are presented in different cities of Germany of the first third of the 20th century, we see entire quarters of the same or almost the same two -story houses, which gives the systematic use of color.

The role of color in mass development is the favorite theme of Bruno Taut, he left a lot of theoretical developments in this area and, fortunately, managed to see the practical embodiment of his ideas in Berlin and Magdeburg, where Taut was the main architect for several years.

As an expressive example, photo 2 shows the samples of doors in one of the quarters built according to the Taut project. Considering this game of colors, forcing to recall children's drawings, I think that still Tautu was lucky to be born in Germany- although with the coming to the power of the Nazis he was forced to leave his homeland forever.

He was lucky in the regard that the 1920s in Germany were a mass development time carried out by the forces of the city authorities, so the number of apartments built according to Taut's projects in Berlin alone was estimated at tens of thousands.

Of course, the residents of each house were obliged to follow the proposed architect of the coloristic scheme. In fact: it is impossible to imagine the same buildings with a peelled dirty-gray plaster, which, alas, we are accustomed to "not to notice".

Bruno Taut as a creative person is characterized by a combination of imagination and practicalism. In 1914, at the exhibition in Cologne, he became famous for the "glass pavilion" - a building erected for advertising purposes for the association of glass manufacturers. This is a dome of inconsistent beauty (model, see photo 3), where glass is used not as decor, but as the main material.

Yes, partly the taut was a visitor and a dreamer; In 1917, his book "Alpine Architecture" was published, reflecting these views. But with all that, Taut was a wonderful practitioner and organizer - not without reason he was the main city architect in Magdeburg, and then in Berlin. By the beginning of the First World War, Taut managed not only to receive fundamental training as an architect and a planner, but also to create his own architectural bureau (1909) and implement a large project of the Sad city for the Falkenberg region in Berlin (1913–1915; modern form-in photo 4).

Taut's interest in the design of cities was facilitated by the famous architect, theorist and cultural figure, German Muthesius, who in 1910 insisted on his trip to England; He introduced Taut to the circle of Walter Gropius. In the context of the philosophy of Sada city, Taut in the prewar years created two large projects for housing construction in Magdeburg. These projects were implemented in 1912-1915 and became the first urban areas, where the main principle was to use pure color.

The difference in relation to the color between the Taut and the representatives of Bauhaus was clearly manifested at the construction exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927: MIS Van Den Rue and Walter Gropius showed snow -white buildings, and Taut presented a house sparkling with all colors of the rainbow.

In 1924, Taut became the chief architect of the Berlin Construction Association. He was the author of large-scale residential buildings of 1925-1926-these are the blocks of “Snow” and “The Higher of the Uncle Tom”. Houses with all amenities were municipal housing and intended to ordinary citizens, which caused dissatisfaction with the conservative part of bureaucracy. Now they are included in the legacy of UNESCO. When the Nazis came to power, it became clear that in this Germany for Bruno Taut - a Jew and a socialist - there is no place. In 1932, he came to the USSR, but quickly returned and went to Switzerland. From there he left for Japan. Then, in 1936, Taut moved to Turkey, where he was offered a professor’s position at the Academy of Fine Arts.

There he died in 1938, having managed to build a number of buildings by order of the Turkish Ministry of Education.

Despite the fact that Bruno Taut was, of course, a dreamer, he showed great sobriety in the structure of his life and in his work.

After all, he embodied the main content of his dreams in the layout and construction of quite real buildings, providing blood for tens of thousands of his fellow citizens. These modest, usually two-story, houses painted like children's cubes can still be seen in the suburbs of Berlin.

See, in particular, sites:
www.nashi-progulki.ru/ru/list/article.php?id=3325 ;
http://iudblog.org/2015/01/25/a-walk-in-berlin-bruno-tauts-falkenberg-housing-estate