Paul Scheerbart
Molti anni fa quando lessi “Architetture di vetro” di Paul
Sheerbart mi piacque così tanto che dedicai 4 brani a questo libretto piccolo e
affascinante oggi ho riunito qui: notizie (Italiano & English) immagini
ed alla
fine parte del mio omaggio musicale :-)
Many
years ago when I read "Architecture of Glass" by Paul Sheerbart I
liked it so much that I devoted four songs to this charming little book. I have
gathered here today: news (Italiano & English) pictures
and at last part my
musical tribute :-)
Biografia poesie architettura teatro libri…
Biography
poems theater architecture books…
Paul
Scheerbart – The Glass architecture: an architect circumnavigates the globe by
airship, constructing wildly varied, colored-glass buildings
YouTube
Paul
Scheerbart - Prä-psychedelisches Perpetuum Mobile der architektur-liter.
Avantgarde
Scheerbartiade
Bruno
Taut: das Glashaus. Rundgang und Dekonstruktion
E poi… And
then…
Index
Italiano
Architettura di vetro
Padiglione del vetro, Esposizione del Werkbund
Bruno Taut
English
Glass architecture
Glass
Pavilion
Bruno Taut
Was ist
ein Original? Paul Scheerbart for high voice and piano
AIC 2004
Color and Paints, Interim Meeting of the International Color Association,
Proceedings
Paul Scheerbart's Architectural Fantasies
Architettura di vetro Paul Scheerbart, Architettura di vetro, Berlino 1914
“Noi viviamo perlopiù in spazi chiusi. Essi costituiscono
l’ambiente da cui si sviluppa la nostra civiltà. La nostra civiltà è in certa
misura un prodotto della nostra architettura. Se vogliamo elevare il livello
della nostra civiltà saremo quindi costretti, volenti o nolenti, a sovvertire
la nostra architettura. E questo ci riuscirà soltanto eliminando la chiusura
degli spazi in cui viviamo. Ma ciò sarà possibile soltanto con l’introduzione
dell’architettura di vetro, che permette alla luce del sole, al chiarore della
luna e delle stelle di penetrare nelle stanze non solo da un paio di finestre,
ma direttamente dalle pareti, possibilmente numerose, completamente di vetro,
anzi di vetro colorato. Il nuovo ambiente che in tal modo ci creeremo dovrà
portarci una nuova civiltà.”
“Se vogliamo elevare il livello della
nostra civiltà saremo costretti, volenti o nolenti, a sovvertire la nostra
architettura. Questo ci riuscirà eliminando la chiusura degli spazi in cui viviamo…con
l’introduzione dell’architettura di vetro.”
Padiglione del vetro, Esposizione del Werkbund (http://www.vitruvio.ch)
Progetto di Bruno Taut per l'esposizione del Werkbund di
Colonia del 1914. Il padiglione era costituito da una struttura in calcestruzzo
e rivestito di vetro; la copertura era costituita anch'essa da una cupola di
vetro con inseriti all'interno dei prismi colorati che producevano, con la luce
solare, l'effetto di un grande cristallo. Sulle pareti interne vi erano
riprodotti degli aforismi del poeta e scrittore Paul Scheerbart (Danzica 1863 -
Berlino 1915) ispiratore, con altri, dell'architettura espressionista e mentore
di Taut. "I tempi nuovi ci portano il vetro Ci fa pena la cultura del
mattone. Senza un palazzo di vetro La vita è una condanna."
Scheerbart si immaginava nei suoi romanzi, molto amati
dagli espressionisti, una nuova civiltà, più elevata, in armonia con il cosmo:
"La nostra civiltà è in certo qual modo il prodotto della nostra
architettura. Se vogliamo portare la nostra civiltà a un più alto livello,
siamo costretti nel bene e nel male a trasformare la nostra architettura. E
questo ci sarà possibile soltanto se riusciremo a eliminare dagli spazi in cui
viviamo il loro carattere di chiusura". Per far questo era necessario,
secondo Scheerbart, costruire delle nuove architetture, aperte, che lasciavano
penetrare la luce del sole, della luna e delle stelle, non solo dalle finestre
ma anche dalle pareti. Nel 1914 Paul Scheerbart scrisse il libro
"Architettura di vetro" (Glasarchitektur, abelino, 1914) che divenne
una sorta di breviario per gli architetti espressionisti.
Bruno Taut
Paul
Scheerbart, Glass architecture 1914
We live
for the most part within enclosed spaces. These form the environment from which
our culture grows. Our culture is in a sense a product of our architecture. If
we wish to raise our culture to a higher level, we are forced for better or for
worse to transform our architecture. And this will be possible only if we
remove the enclosed quality from the spaces within which we live. This can be
done only through the introduction of glass architecture that lets the sunlight
and the light of the moon and stars into our rooms not merely through a few
windows, but simultaneously through the greatest possible number of walls that
are made entirely of glass - coloured glass. The new environment that we shall
thereby create must bring with it a new culture.
Glass
Pavilion (by Jack Brindley)
Taut was
a prolific German architect, and was best know for his theoretical work and the
brightly coloured prismatic dome of the Glass Pavilion built for the 1914
Cologne Werkbund Exhibition. Working alongside Walter Gropius (founder of the
Bauhaus school) Taut introduced the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a Total
artwork including elements of painting, sculpture, music to create an "all
encompassing architecture".
Taut was
particularly famous because of his devotion to colour and glass. The Pavilion
was accompanied by an essay written by Taut outlining the potential of
different types of glass, and how the material might be used to orchestrate
human emotions and assist in the construction of a spiritual utopia. The
Pavilion had poems by Paul Scheerbart written around its sides which included
examples such as -"Coloured glass destroys hatred." and "Without
a glass palace, life is a conviction". Scheerbart also went on to publish
a range of books about Tauts work most notably 'The grey cloth'.
Bruno Taut
What is
an original?
What is an original?
An egg
without a shell. --
A feast
for the bright-eyed...
How does
such an original live?
In fear
and torment.
Finally,
finally it will have been
Gobbled
by the bright eyed...
Who then
sees an original?
What do
I know?
Dreadful,
dreadful,
An egg
without a shell.
I know
-- I know:
The is
the only saving grace --
To be
hard boiled, hard boiled
That egg
without a shell!
From a
rough life, let go,
crudely
shaped, you original!
Then let
those bright-eyed
get a
stomach ache from --
They
don't really suit you well.
AIC 2004
Color and Paints, Interim Meeting of the International Color Association,
Proceedings
Paul
Scheerbart’s utopia of coloured glass
Gertrud
OLSSON
School
of Architecture, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Points
of departure for my presentation of Paul Scheerbart and his architecture of
coloured
glass
are the concepts of utopia and transparency. In regard of the theme of the
meeting,
“Colour
and Paints”, one might reflect on whether transparency contains either colour
or
paint,
or both of them. The German poet Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) was also a
visionary architectural writer and inventor engaged in avant-garde circles. For
more than twenty years he wrote about his
speciality:
glass architecture. His book Glasarchitektur was published in Berlin in
1914. The book —a minimalistic essay, a utopian text— consists of 111 very
short chapters, or rather pieces composed around
a single
theme, aesthetically elaborated and mirroring Scheerbart’s ideological and
technical
interest
in coloured glass. He writes in the first chapter: We live for the most part
within enclosed spaces. These form the environment from which our culture
grows. Our culture is in a sense a product of our architecture. If we wish to
raise our culture to a higher level, we are forced for better or for worse to
transform
our architecture. And this will be possible only if we remove the enclosed
quality from the spaces within which we
live. This can be done only through the introduction of glass
architecture that lets the sunlight and the light of the moon and stars into
our rooms not merely through a few windows, but simultaneously through the
greatest possible number of walls that are made entirely of glass —coloured
glass. The new environment that we shall there by create must bring with it a new culture.
(Scheerbart 1914 [2000: 13]) Scheerbart’s aim is to make civilization better,
to reform mankind in a new built society. And the newborn, the future coming is
an extensive and far-reaching translucency. New construction technology
connected with the decade’s metaphysical interest and spiritual movements will
grow to be the creative forces. This is the utopia of Paul Scheerbart. Accordingly, his project is composed of the
spiritual construction of buildings, of building up in glass materials. Not,
however, in transparent glass, but in coloured glass, showering of sparks.
Glass as a building material is for Scheerbart infinitely generous, a new
material in possession of everything. Glass in common with light owns the
possibilities. It does not moulder away. Scheerbart writes in a pure plain even
style as the actual glass. He has a good
sense of humour in his texts but is serious in his project. In chapter XIII in
Glasarchitektur he writes: “Perhaps the honoured reader apprehends that glass
architecture is a bit cold. But – during the warm season the cold is quite
agreeable. At all events, I venture to say that the colours in the glass have a
glowing effect, perhaps a ‘new’ warmth streams out” (Scheerbart 1914 [2000:
26]). Scheerbart’s glass house consists
of coloured glass elements. The daylight passes and filters the colours, and
originates a translucent —but not distinctly transparent— impression. From the
inside you can discern the outside. From the outside you can get an inkling of
forms
taking
shape. Man is not shut in by bricks. The coloured glass shuts her off from
people’s view. The coloured glass also presents intimacy in the room. The city
and the scenery are barely discernible. On the other hand man is left in peace
thinking of the new civilization. In the summer of 1913 the architect Bruno
Taut (1880-1938) met Scheerbart in a workshop for glass painting and mosaic.
They became soul mates and the next summer they collaborated on the Glass House
at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition. Taut made the design and construction, and
the ideas and visions of Scheerbart soared over the building project. The dream
became a reality, the Glass House was realized. Scheerbart contributed maxims
and verses on glass and colour to be
engraved on the façade: “COLOURED GLASS DESTROYS HATRED”, “WITHOUT A
GLASS PALACE LIFE IS A BURDEN” (Figure 1). In conformity with the cathedral
builders of the Gothic era Taut is creating an interior separated from the
outer world. The interior space is filled with light and colour. The purpose of
the Glass House is beauty. The interplay of mosaic, coloured glass,
basin-water, reflex and light
fills up the building. The house uncovers the architectural potential concealed
in the glass material. The cupola embraces a colour-spectrum ranging from
deep-blue and mossgreen to golden yellow, and, at the very top, the subsiding
hue of white gold. The floor is made of glass with an open circle through which
the visitors can look downwards, and also walk downstairs, into a lower “room
of ornaments”. The middle of the lower room contains a basin, and from the
basin water is streaming towards the exit. In the background of the room is a
kaleidoscope, and changing patterns of coloured glass are seen. And in
additional to all this: the reflections playing in the water. The architects
began to build of glass. Hygienics argued for interiors filled with sunshine
and light. Medical findings showed a relation between architectural design and
the spreading of infectious diseases. Industrial achievements gave chances to
model huge glass surfaces. In 1911 Walter Gropius’ factory, Fagus Werke, was
built outside Hannover in glass and steel.
Further
on the architect developed an engineering in order to give the construction an
expression of weightlessness. By displacing the force of gravity away from the
façade it became possible to construct the whole façade as a glass surface. The
Werkbund exhibition 1914 displayed Gropius’ curtain-wall, fabricated of clear,
transparent glass. The glass
architecture of this kind is different from the architectural ideal of Paul
Scheerbart. As we have seen, Scheerbart does not count on transparency.
Scheerbart, as well
as Taut,
looked upon glass as a material with special properties. Glass is, in Taut’s
words, the floating, the slender, the angular, the sparkling, the light.
Nevertheless, glass was not immaterial to Scheerbart and Taut. Glass was the
most airy of all materials, but still a material. Even so, one could shape
glass into crystals, the highest symbols of purity and death. Scheerbart’s and Taut’s Glass House. The
interior of the Glass House. AIC 2004 Color and Paints, Interim Meeting of the
International Color Association, Proceedings
Perhaps
this is the appropriate place for mentioning that recently I made a visit to a
couple of Oscar Niemeyer’s buildings in Rio de Janeiro. The great Brazilian
architect uses the glass brick wall in a rather similar way as Taut does, both
in the Ministry of Education and Health and, even more remarkably, in the
Headquarters of the Bonavista Bank. In the Bonavista building one can study the
translucent effect of a glass brick
wall, shaped like a wave, dividing the inside and the outside. Bruno Taut’s
belief in the future takes along a social thought involving “a decent home for
everyone”, symbolically to find one’s way home. His ambition was a new society
socially organized. “Architecture will thus become the creator of new social
forms”, he wrote (Taut 1919). Taut was a
forerunner talking of colour in architecture. And he was a forerunner using
colour in architecture. As mentioned, Taut was inspired by Gothic architecture,
just as
Scheerbart
was. The cathedral, in the capacity of a module of great and spiritual value,
incarnates the building up, in spirit of community, of the new society. A
culture for the future was conjured up in which architecture —die Urkunst, the
Primary Art— manifests the idea in common, the social thought. In Taut’s utopia
Architecture replaces the Christianity of the Gothic era. Taut draws and
describes small star-shaped communities spread out over the country. In these
communities the cathedrals of the new era glitter in the shape of modern
crystal palaces. Taut’s intention was to
build a society open to people’s view,
to give the citizens the opportunity to obtain a clear insight into their own
community. In his capacity, after the Great
War, as
city architect in the German town Magdeburg, Taut introduced strong colours in
the façades, but he did not particularly work in glass. In a project called Das
Bunte Magdeburg, Taut invited artists and private house owners to repaint the
city. Not only buildings but also kiosks, clocks and advertisements were
designed in expressionist colours. During his time in Magdeburg he pursued
Siedlung Reform, a municipal housing area in Berlin, in a style so pure and plain
that it offended the inhabitants. Furthermore, the colouring was so
“undisciplined that it distracted the eyes” (Konstakademien 1982: 3). At this
time (the 1920’s) the Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy taught at the
Bauhausschool in Dessau. He examined the tension and relation between light and movement,
between materiality and visuality. He studied virtuality and the virtual
volume. For example, Moholy-Nagy pointed out that a lighted merry-go-round
revolving is virtual but also a visible volume in motion. His constructions of
transparent materials —such as wirenetting, strainers, plexiglas, grinded
panes of glass, light projections and
reflecting substances— transferred the notions of tangible and non-material
forms. Moholy-Nagy also introduced the word
transparency in architectural context. In architecture “transparency
means a simultaneous perception of different spatial locations” (Rowe and
Slutsky 1997: 23). We have already
touched upon the concept of literal
transparency, namely what is described in recent theoretical works, as
“pervious to light, allowing one to see into or through a building, this was
made possible by the development of frame construction and techniques for
fixing large areas of glass” (Forty 2000: 286). In Words and buildings. A
vocabulary of modern architecture, Forty distinguishes between literal, phenomenal and transparency of
meaning. In his book The new vision, Moholy-Nagy gives a clear description of
transparency in modern architecture: A white
house with great glass windows surrounded by trees becomes almost transparent
when the sun shines. The white walls act as projection screens on which shadows
multiply the trees, and the glass plates become mirrors in which the trees are
repeated. A perfect transparency is the result;
the house becomes a part of nature. (Moholy-Nagy 1947: 63-64) In Von Material
zu Architektur, a book published in 1929, Moholy-Nagy explicates how a new
world shows itself in the growing visual culture. In painting coloured pigment
is replaced by a display of coloured light. And architecture changes from restricted closed spaces into
free fluctuation of forces. This alteration is especially manifested by Le
Corbusier, in his strive
to visually bring the scenery into the room. Paul Scheerbart, on his part,
perceived the different aspects of light, and above all, light refraction so to
say powered by glass material. Scheerbart advocated translucency by means of
colour, allowing light to pass through areas of glass, though not to the degree
of transparency.
As we have seen, this opaqueness, this opacity, gives shelter from being
observed. Instead it opens up towards the scenery outside and it makes room for
peace and contemplation. Built in glass,
iron and concrete Scheerbart’s glass architecture is transparent in the literal
sense of the word. The erected Glass House is in possession of a transparency
of meaning “experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself” (Sontag 1996:
13). But Paul Scheerbart’s notion of transparency is also metaphorical, as a
utopia of a new society. The metaphor indicates something different from the
literal meaning, a change of use. Perhaps
is Scheerbart’s utopia a challenge to our contemporary views. A challenge to
our modern world built in a way (and I am now using a sentence taken from
Moholy-Nagy’s The new vision, 1947: 62) where it is no longer possible to keep
apart the inside and outside.
REFERENCES
Forty,
A. 2000. Words and buildings. A
vocabulary of modern architecture. London: Thames &
Hudson.
Konstakademien.
1982. Fyra engagerade i Berlin. Bruno Taut. Stockholm: Kungl. akademien för de
fria
konsterna.
Moholy-Nagy,
L. 1947. The new vision, 4th ed., and Abstract of an artist. New York: G.
Wittenborn.
——.
1929. Von Material zu Architektur. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2001.
Rowe,
C., and R. Slutsky. 1997. Transparency. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Scheerbart,
P. 1914. Glasarchitektur. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2000.
Sontag,
S. 1996. Against interpretation and other essays. New York: Picador.
Taut, B.
1919. Die Stadtkrone. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2002.
Address:
Gertrud Olsson, School of Architecture
Royal
Institute of Technology KTH, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Paul
Scheerbart's Architectural Fantasies
Rosemarie
Haag Bletter
Journal
of the Society of Architectural Historians
Vol. 34, No. 2 (May, 1975), pp. 83-97
Published by: University of California Press
Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/988996
Me & Scheerbart
Scheerbartiana
(1989)
Lyrics
