Glass Pavilion
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The Glass Pavilion, designed by
Bruno Taut Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24 December 1938) was a renowned German architect, urban planner and author of Prussian Lithuanian heritage ("taut" means "nation" in Lithuanian). He was active during the Weimar period and is know ...
and built in 1914, was a
prismatic An optical prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that are designed to refract light. At least one surface must be angled — elements with two parallel surfaces are ''not'' prisms. The most familiar type of optical ...
glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...
dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...
structure at the
Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...
Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition. The structure was a brightly colored landmark of the exhibition, constructed using
concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...
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." The Glass Pavilion is Taut's single best-known architectural achievement. He built it for the German glass industry association specifically for the 1914 exhibition. They financed the structure that was considered a ''house of art''.
Colquhoun Colquhoun ( ) is a surname of Scottish origin. Phonetically, MacOlquhoun is similar to MacElhone/MacIlhone and therefore may derive from the name the Gaelic name ''Mac Giolla Còmhghan''. ''Còmhghan'' is derived from ''comh'' ("together") and '' ...
, p. 92
The purpose of the building was to demonstrate the potential of different types of glass for architecture. It also indicated how the material might be used to orchestrate human emotions and assist in the construction of a spiritual utopia. The structure was made at the time when
expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
was most fashionable in Germany, and it is sometimes referred to as an expressionist-style building. The only known photographs of the building were made in 1914, but these black-and-white images are only marginal representations of the actualities of the work. The building was destroyed soon after the exhibition since it was an exhibition building only and not built for practical use.
Richards Richards may refer to: *Richards (surname) In places: * Richards, New South Wales, Australia * Richards, Missouri, United States * Richards, Texas, United States In other uses: * Richards (lunar crater) Richards is a small lunar impact crate ...
, p. 16
The Glass Pavilion was a pineapple-shaped multi-faceted polygonal designed rhombic structure. It had a fourteen-sided base constructed of thick glass bricks used for the exterior walls devoid of rectangles. Each part of the cupola was designed to recall the complex geometry of nature. The Pavilion structure was on a concrete plinth, the entrance reached by two flights of steps (one on either side of the building), which gave the pavilion a temple-like quality. Taut's Glass Pavilion was the first building of importance made of glass bricks. Anzovin, p. 15, item 1198. There were glass-treaded metal staircases inside that led to the upper projection room that showed a kaleidoscope of colors. Between the staircases was a seven-tiered cascading waterfall with underwater lighting, this created a sensation of descending to the lower level "as if through sparkling water". The interior had prisms producing colored rays from the outside sunlight. The floor-to-ceiling colored glass walls were mosaic. All this had the effect of a large crystal producing a large variety of colors. Weston, p. 40 The frieze of the Glass Pavilion was written with aphoristic poems of glass done by the anarcho-socialist writer
Paul Scheerbart Paul Karl Wilhelm Scheerbart (8 January 1863 in Danzig – 15 October 1915 in Berlin) was a German author of speculative fiction literature and drawings. He was also published under the pseudonym ''Kuno Küfer'' and is best known for the bo ...
. Watkin, p. 590 Examples of these were "Colored glass destroys hatred" and "Without a glass palace, life is a conviction". Scheerbart's ideas also inspired the ritualistic composition of the interior. For Scheerbart, bringing in the light of the moon and the stars brought in different positive feelings which led to a whole new culture.
Paul Scheerbart Paul Karl Wilhelm Scheerbart (8 January 1863 in Danzig – 15 October 1915 in Berlin) was a German author of speculative fiction literature and drawings. He was also published under the pseudonym ''Kuno Küfer'' and is best known for the bo ...
in 1914 published a book called ''Glasarchitektur'' ("Architecture in glass") and dedicated it to Taut. Taut in 1914 founded a magazine called ''Frühlicht'' ("Dawn's Light") for his Expressionist devotees. It emphasized the iconography of glass which is also represented by his Glass Pavilion. This philosophy can be traced back to accounts of
Solomon's Temple Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple (, , ), was the Temple in Jerusalem between the 10th century BC and . According to the Hebrew Bible, it was commissioned by Solomon in the United Kingdom of Israel before being inherited by th ...
. An early drawing of the Glass Pavilion by Taut says he made it in the spirit of a
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
cathedral.


Taut's idea for "Glass Pavilion"

Taut called on architects to follow him into the contemporary Expressionist painters in seeking a new artistic spirit, he wanted to create a building with a different structure, and similar to Gothic Cathedrals. Bruno said that his building didn't have any real function, it was more to provoke something in someone than a practical building. The Glass Pavilion or "Glashaus" was one of the first exhibition building designed as a mechanism to create vivid experiences, where people would be able to feel, touch and primarily see. The goal of this functionless building as that architecture would include the other arts of painting and sculpture, to achieve a new, unified expression.
"The longing for purity and clarity, for glowing lightness and crystalline exactness, for immaterial lightness and infinite liveliness found a means of its fulfillment in glass—the most ineffable, most elementary, most flexible and most changeable of materials, richest in meaning and inspiration, fusing with the world like no other. This least fixed of materials transforms itself with every change of atmosphere. It is infinitely rich in elations, mirroring what is above, below, and what is below, above. It is animated, full of spirit and alive ... It is an example of a transcendent passion to build, functionless, free, satisfying no practical demands—and yet a functional building, soulful, awakening spiritual inspirations—an ethical functional building" -Behne
This building was made into an installation, a symbol, a mystical sign and a start for a new world view and future architecture.


References


Bibliography

*Weston, Richard, '' Plans, Sections and Elevations: Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century'', Laurence King Publishing 2004, *Watkin, David, ''A History of Western Architecture'', Laurence King Publishing 2005, *Richards, Brent et al., ''New Glass Architecture'', Yale University Press 2006, *Colquhoun, Alan, ''Modern Architecture'', Oxford University Press 2002, *Anzovin, Steven et al., ''Famous First Facts, International Edition'', H. W. Wilson Company 2000, *"From Object to Installation in Bruno Taut’s Exhibit Pavilions." Journal of Architectural Education. Vol. 59. Washington: Blackwell, 2006. 66-69. Print. *
Markus Breitschmid Markus Breitschmid (born 20 April 1966, Lucerne, Switzerland) is a Swiss-American architectural theoretician and the author of several books on contemporary architecture and philosophical aesthetics. His most highly regarded books are ''Der bauen ...
, "Glass House at Cologne." in: Harry Francis Mallgrave, David Leatherbarrow, Alexander Eisenschmidt (eds.) The Companions to the History of Architecture, Volume IV, Twentieth-Century Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., London, 2017, , pp. 61–72. {{Authority control Buildings and structures completed in 1914 Architectural lighting design Glass architecture Building engineering Modernist architecture in Germany Expressionist architecture Art Nouveau architecture in Germany