German Expressionism

History of Architecture- V Expressionism

Lecture – XI Expressionist architecture

Architecture buildings

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM Assignment

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 • Expressionism is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional
effect; it is a subjective art form.

German Expressionism • Expressionism is exhibited in many art forms, including painting,

literature, theatre, film, architecture and music.
• Additionally, the term often implies emotional angst – the number of cheerful
Expressionism
expressionist works is relatively small.
• It was an architectural movement which had a brief vogue in Germany and the
Expressionist architecture
Netherlands shortly after the first world war began. It was confined to these
two countries and was short lived, it ended by 1925.

Architecture buildings • They have outlines suggesting movement, Swooping and curving roofs
& towers, With decorative brickwork.
• These shapes were made possible by plastic properties of concrete and
Assignment freedom of expression is more suggestive of sculpture than architecture.

• The style was characterised by an early-modernist adoption of novel

materials, formal innovation, and very unusual massing, sometimes
inspired by natural biomorphic forms, new technical possibilities
offered by the mass production of brick, steel and especially glass.

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 • Present the world solely from subjective
perspective.

German Expressionism • Artists sought to express emotional

experience rather than physical reality
• Conception of architecture as a work of art
Expressionism
• Profusion of works on paper, and models, with
discovery and representations of concepts more
Expressionist architecture important than pragmatic finished products

• Distortion of form for an emotional

Architecture buildings effect.
• Utilizes creative potential of artisan
craftsmanship
Assignment • Arts and Crafts movement and
Art Nouveau influenced
expressionists

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 German Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionist architecture
• Bruno Julius Florian Taut (May 4, 1880, Königsberg, Germany -
December 24, 1938, Istanbul), was a prolific German architect, urban planner
and author active in the Weimar period.
Architecture buildings
• Taut is best known in the English-speaking world for his theoretical work,
speculative writings and a handful of exhibition buildings

Assignment • Taut's best-known single building is the prismatic dome of the Glass
Pavilion at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914).

• He is variously classified as a Modernist and an Expressionist

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 Glass pavilion at the Werkbund Exhibition

• Glass pavilion at the Werkbund Exhibition (1914) by Bruno Taut

• The Werkbund Exhibition of 1914 was held in Cologne, Germany. Bruno Tauts
German Expressionism
best-known single building, the prismatic dome of the Glass Pavilion familiar
from black and white reproduction, was a brightly colored landmark.
Expressionism
• Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer designed a model factory for the exhibition.
Henri van de Velde designed a model theatre.
Expressionist architecture

Architecture buildings

Assignment

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
Horseshoe Development or "Hufeisensiedlung“ built 1925, in Berlin

 The Hufeisensiedlung ("Horseshoe Estate") is a housing estate in

Berlin, built in 1925-33. It enjoys international renown as a milestone of
modern urban housing.
 It was designed by architect Bruno Taut, municipal planning head and
co-architect Martin Wagner.
 Closely linked to the heart of Berlin, the development combines a
unique architectural style with the social ideal of a terraced garden
home for everyone. "Hufeisen" is the German term for horseshoe,
which describes the shape of the impressively curved 350-meter long
structure which gave name to the project.
 It consists of 25 housing units joined together around a pond that dates
back to the ice age.
 The central building structure is surrounded by townhouses and
embedded in a suburb that feels urban and rural at the same time
 CARL LEGIEN HOUSING ESTATE , BERLIN - BRUNO TAUT, 1929

• Taut designed rows of houses,

fringes of blocks and garden
spaces in a semi-open space
German Expressionism arrangement.
• The individual flats clearly
Expressionism
orientate themselves away from
the street and towards the back
gardens
Expressionist architecture

Architecture buildings
• The Carl Legien Housing Estate was
named after the first chairman of the
Allgemeiner Deutscher
Assignment
Gewerkschaftsbund [German General
Trade Unions Association] founded in
1919.Taut, placed emphasis on a
concentrated multi-storey construction
and designed a metropolitan settlement
with four- to five-storey houses.
November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 • Erich Mendelsohn (21 March 1887 – 15 September 1953) was a
German Jewish architect, known for his expressionist buildings in the 1920s
German Expressionism the first in the style, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his
projects for department stores and cinemas.

Expressionism
• At the end of 1918, upon his return from World War I he settled his practice
in Berlin. The Einstein tower and the hat factory in Luckenwalde
Expressionist architecture established his reputation.

• As early as 1924 Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst (a series of monthly

Architecture buildings magazines on architecture) produced a booklet about his work. In that same
year, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius he was
one of the founders of the progressive architectural group known as Der
Assignment Ring

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 • Einstein Tower in Potsdam-Berlin by Erich Mendelsohn 1919-22 Erich Mendelsohn's
small, but powerfully modeled tower, built to symbolize the greatness of the
Einsteinian concepts, was also a quite functional house.
German Expressionism • It was designed to hold Einstein's own astronomical laboratory...
• Mendelsohn was after a completely plastic kind of building, moulded rather than
Expressionism built, without angles and with smooth, rounded corners.
• He needed a malleable material like reinforced concrete, which could be made to
curve and create its own surface plasticity, but due to post-war shortages, some
Expressionist architecture parts had to be in brick and others in concrete.
• Post-war shortages in the supply of concrete further complicated the situation.
Reluctantly, Mendelsohn substituted reinforced concrete with stucco-covered brick
Architecture buildings for all above ground parts of the building except the entrance, basement and
laboratory.
• He took great care, however, to achieve a uniform surface treatment between the
Assignment two materials so that the building retained the monolithic appearance of a work
conceived entirely in reinforced concrete.
• Even so, this 'sarcophagus of architectural Expressionism' is one of the most
brilliantly original buildings of the twentieth century.

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 German Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionist architecture

Architecture buildings

Assignment

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 SCHOCKEN DEPTT STORE IN STUTTGART1926-28

• The Schocken Department Store (Kaufhaus Schocken,

later Merkur Department Store) was a department
German Expressionism store in the south German town of Stuttgart

• The Stuttgart store was the most significant of the

Expressionism
projects in the sphere of retail store construction.

Expressionist architecture • The building was a department store with a modern style
in an urban context. It was constructed of brick and
concrete.
Architecture buildings
• The shopping area within the building had mainly
wooden furnishings and, in the absence of air
Assignment conditioning, had a large number of windows.

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 • Otto Bartning was a Modernist German architect, architectural theorist
and teacher.

• In his early career he developed plans with Walter Gropius for the
German Expressionism
establishment of the Bauhaus.

Expressionism • He was a member of Der Ring. In 1951 he was elected president of

the Federation of German Architects.

Expressionist architecture • In 1910, Bartning built his first church in Germany for the Old Lutheran
parish (now SELK) in Essen - Moltkeviertel, and subsequently designed the
nearby circular Auferstehungskirche / Church of the Resurrection (built in
Architecture buildings 1929), which is one of the most important models for modern Protestant
church construction in Central Europe.

Assignment • Bartning became known as an early reformer of art and design education
after the First World War together with his friend, Walter Gropius, among
others. In 1918, he planned with Gropius the concept and contributed to the
programme for the Bauhaus. He influenced Gropius' 1919 avant-guard
Bauhaus manifesto with its workshop principles and openness to the latest
international influences. His ideas for the Bauhochschule in 1926 were
developments on the same theme.
November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 WYLERBERG house near
klev 1921-24, VIENNA

•The rooms of this house

German Expressionism were angled and folded

Expressionism
•The bedrooms are
pentagonals, library
Expressionist architecture heptagonal, dining
octagonal,

Architecture buildings •The most complex is the

polygonal music rooms with
its multiple fractures,
Assignment even the windows in the
pointed bay turn away from
the wall plane and stand
angled in their soffits.

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 Michel de Klerk
• Born to a Jewish family, he was one of the founding architects of the
movement Amsterdam School.

German Expressionism • Early in his career he worked for other architects, including Eduard
Cuypers. For a while, he also employed the Indonesian-born Liem Bwan Tjie,
Expressionism who would later become his country's pioneering proponent of the
Amsterdam School and modern architecture.

Expressionist architecture • Of his many outstanding designs, very few have actually been built. One of
his finest completed buildings is 'Het Schip' (The Ship) in the Amsterdam
district of Spaarndammerbuurt. It is the single most important example of this
Architecture buildings style of architecture, using the Brick Expressionism version.

• The apartments of Het Schip were a radical departure from the poor living
Assignment conditions of many of Amsterdam's working-class people in the 20th century.
Relatively spacious, they include several separate rooms as opposed to the
one-room dwellings still common at the time. They also included flush toilets
and had ample natural light and ventilation from windows. Ground-floor
apartments also had gardens.

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 German Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionist architecture

• Hat scheep, housing complex, in

Architecture buildings
Amsterdam 1917 to 21 because this
wedge shaped block sliced into the
neighborhood like the hull of a ship, it
Assignment
was nicknamed hat scheep( the ship)

• Chimneys over the roofscape

• Entrance with the overhead

projecting bay
November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 ADOLF LOOS
• Born in 1870 in Brno (Bruenn), Moravia, Austria, to an ethnically German
family.

• Loos was only nine when his stonemason father died. A rebellious boy who
German Expressionism rather lost his bearings, he failed in various attempts to get through
architecture school.
Expressionism
• He visited the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, appreciated the work of
Louis Sullivan, visited St. Louis and did odd jobs in New York.
Expressionist architecture

• Loos was fond of using the

provocative catch phrase and has
Architecture buildings
become noted for one
particular essay/manifesto
Assignment
entitled Ornament and
Crime, written in 1908, in which he
repudiated the florid style of
the Vienna Secession, the
Austrian version of Art Nouveau.

Looshaus in Michaelerplatz, Vienna.

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 • Antonio Sant'Elia (April 30, 1888 - October 10, 1916) was an extremely
influential Italian architect.

German Expressionism • A builder by training, he opened a design office in Milan in 1912 and
became involved with the Futurist movement.
Expressionism
• Between 1912 and 1914, influenced by industrial cities of the United
States and the Viennese architects Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, he
Expressionist architecture
began a series of design drawings for a futurist Città Nuova ("New
City") that was conceived as symbolic of a new age.
Architecture buildings
•His vision was for a highly industrialized and mechanized city of the
future, which he saw not as a mass of individual buildings but a vast,
Assignment multi-level, interconnected and integrated urban conurbation designed
around the "life" of the city. His extremely influential designs featured
vast monolithic skyscraper buildings with terraces, bridges and aerial
walkways that embodied the sheer excitement of modern architecture
and technology.

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 German Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionist architecture

Architecture buildings

Assignment

A perspective drawing Perspective drawing from La Citta

by Sant'Elia, 1914 Nuova, 1914

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.
 Discuss the reasons for emergence of German Expressionism with the
contribution of Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn in the development of
German Expressionism German Expressionism.

Expressionism

Expressionist architecture

Architecture buildings

Assignment

November 2016 ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE –( LATE 18TH. TO EARLY 20TH. CENTURY ) Ar. Chandika Ahir, Asstt. Prof. GCAD, Sonipat.