The first Werkbund Exhibition of 1914 was held at Rheinpark in Cologne, Germany.
The first Werkbund Exhibition of 1914 was held at Rheinpark in Cologne, Germany.
the Deutscher Werkbund, a group of professionals united in their views, with the aims of ennobling commerce by the collaboration of art, industry, and craftsmanship through education, publications, lectures, and other means. Founding members included Hermann Muthesius, Peter Behrens, Theodor Fischer,Fritz Schumacher, and Heinrich Tessenow.
The Werkbund exhibition of 1914 in Cologne was the first exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund. It opened to the public on May 15, 1914. The exhibition lasted only three months and was prematurely shut down due to the outbreak of World War I. [1]
The innovative Glass Pavilion was built by German architect Bruno Taut in 1914. Glashaus has been identified as an early example of the Expressionist architecture movement. [2] (financed by the German glass industries to promote the use of glass in building)
The Werkbund Pavilion was a model factory and office building designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. [3]
The Farbenschau Pavilion by Hermann Muthesius was a neoclassical style. The building features a large dome and paired columns along the front facade. This pavilion showcased exhibits for chemical dyes. [4]
The Festive hall by Peter Behrens was also a of neoclassical style with resemblance to Palladio's designs. [4]
The Werkbund Theater is the work of Belgian architect Henri van de Velde. The theater building could be described as a trailblazer for a style we now understand is the International Style. The Werkbund Theater is featured in Walter Gropius's Bauhaus book International Architecture (1925). [4]
The theater housed many contributions from German artists, including the fountain in front of theater, sculpted by Georg Kolbe. The sculpture in the middle of the fountain was a human form standing on one leg in a bath of water, centered in the front of the entrance to the building. [4]
In a different style, Hermann Obrist had multiple sculptures around the theater including two relief sculptures resembling the shape of an eye. Obrist also had two freestanding sculptures, one was a fountain unconnected to a water source. His contributions to the theater had a theme of nature, but instead of being smooth and sleek like the buildings facade or Kolbe's sculpture, Obrist's designs included many sharp points. Van de Velde seemed to debate the addition of Oboist's contributions due to their overwhelming contrast, and the pieces were added just in time for the exhibition. [4]
Some of the other art contributions occurred inside the theater, including Milly Steger's sculptural relief, Ludwig von Hofmann's painted murals, along with Lisa Brentano's painted tiles. [4]
The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function. Along with the doctrine of functionalism, the Bauhaus initiated the conceptual understanding of architecture and design.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German-born architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar and taught there for several years, becoming known as a leading proponent of the International Style. Gropius emigrated from Germany to England in 1934 and from England to the United States in 1937, where he spent much of the rest of his life teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In the United States he worked on several projects with Marcel Breuer and with the firm The Architects Collaborative, of which he was a founding partner. In 1959, he won the AIA Gold Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in architecture.
Jugendstil was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German counterpart of Art Nouveau. The members of the movement were reacting against the historicism and neo-classicism of the official art and architecture academies. It took its name from the art journal Jugend, founded by the German artist Georg Hirth. It was especially active in the graphic arts and interior decoration.
The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to functional and utilitarian designs and construction methods, typically expressed through minimalism. The style is characterized by modular and rectilinear forms, flat surfaces devoid of ornamentation and decoration, open and airy interiors that blend with the exterior, and the use of glass, steel, and concrete.
Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, was an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction ; the principle functionalism ; an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.
The Deutscher Werkbund is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design. Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with design professionals to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets. The Werkbund was less an artistic movement than a state-sponsored effort to integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass production techniques, to put Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States. Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau indicates its range of interest.
Henry Clemens van de Velde was a Belgian painter, architect, interior designer, and art theorist. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, he is considered one of the founders of Art Nouveau in Belgium. He worked in Paris with Siegfried Bing, the founder of the first gallery of Art Nouveau in Paris. Van de Velde spent the most important part of his career in Germany and became a major figure in the German Jugendstil. He had a decisive influence on German architecture and design at the beginning of the 20th century.
Peter Behrens was a leading German architect, graphic and industrial designer, best known for his early pioneering AEG Turbine Hall in Berlin in 1909. He had a long career, designing objects, typefaces, and important buildings in a range of styles from the 1900s to the 1930s. He was a founding member of the German Werkbund in 1907, when he also began designing for AEG, pioneered corporate design, graphic design, producing typefaces, objects, and buildings for the company. In the next few years, he became a successful architect, a leader of the rationalist / classical German Reform Movement of the 1910s. After WW1 he turned to Brick Expressionism, designing the remarkable Hoechst Administration Building outside Frankfurt, and from the mid-1920s increasingly to New Objectivity. He was also an educator, heading the architecture school at Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1922 to 1936. As a well known architect he produced design across Germany, in other European countries, Russia and England. Several of the leading names of European modernism worked for him when they were starting out in the 1910s, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.
Bruno Julius Florian Taut was a renowned German architect, urban planner and author of Prussian Lithuanian heritage. He was active during the Weimar period and is known for his theoretical works as well as his building designs.
Heinrich Tessenow was a German architect, professor, and urban planner active at the time of the Weimar Republic.
Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius, known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect, author and diplomat, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German architectural modernism such as the Bauhaus.
Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts that especially developed and dominated in Germany. Brick Expressionism is a special variant of this movement in western and northern Germany, as well as in the Netherlands.
The Weissenhof Estate is a housing estate built for the 1927 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany. It was an international showcase of modern architecture's aspiration to provide cheap, simple, efficient, and good-quality housing.
The Arbeitsrat für Kunst was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the Workers and Soldiers councils and was dedicated to bringing current developments and tendencies in architecture and art to a broader population.
The Fagus Factory, a shoe last factory in Alfeld on the Leine, Lower Saxony, Germany, is an important example of early modern architecture. Commissioned by owner Carl Benscheidt who wanted a radical structure to express the company's break from the past, the factory was designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. It was constructed between 1911 and 1913, with additions and interiors completed in 1925. Because of its influence in the development of modern architecture and outstanding design, the factory has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011.
Modern furniture refers to furniture produced from the late 19th century through the present that is influenced by modernism. Post-World War II ideals of cutting excess, commodification, and practicality of materials in design heavily influenced the aesthetic of the furniture. It was a tremendous departure from all furniture design that had gone before it. There was an opposition to the decorative arts, which included Art Nouveau, Neoclassical, and Victorian styles. Dark or gilded carved wood and richly patterned fabrics gave way to the glittering simplicity and geometry of polished metal. The forms of furniture evolved from visually heavy to visually light. This shift from decorative to minimalist principles of design can be attributed to the introduction of new technology, changes in philosophy, and the influences of the principles of architecture. As Philip Johnson, the founder of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art articulates:
"Today industrial design is functionally motivated and follows the same principles as modern architecture: machine-like simplicity, smoothness of surface, avoidance of ornament ... It is perhaps the most fundamental contrast between the two periods of design that in 1900 the Decorative Arts possessed ..."
The architecture of Germany has a long, rich and diverse history. Every major European style from Roman to Postmodern is represented, including renowned examples of Carolingian, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Modern and International Style architecture.
The New Objectivity is a name often given to the Modern architecture that emerged in Europe, primarily German-speaking Europe, in the 1920s and 30s. It is also frequently called Neues Bauen. The New Objectivity remodeled many German cities in this period.
The Glass Pavilion, designed by Bruno Taut and built in 1914, was a prismatic glass dome structure at the Cologne Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition. The structure was a brightly colored landmark of the exhibition, constructed using concrete and glass. The dome had a double glass outer layer with colored glass prisms on the inside and reflective glass on the outside. The facade had inlaid colored glass plates that acted as mirrors. Taut described his "little temple of beauty" as "reflections of light whose colors began at the base with a dark blue and rose up through moss green and golden yellow to culminate at the top in a luminous pale yellow."
Werkbund exhibition – The Dwelling was an exhibition organised by Deutscher Werkbund held in Stuttgart between July and October 1927.
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