EIN WOHNHAUS
REIHE DER KOSMOSHAUSBÜCHER
Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut: EIN WOHNHAUS [REIHE DER KOSMOSHAUSBÜCHER]. Stuttgart: Franckh'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung W. Keller & Co., 1927. First edition. Sm. 4to. Text in German. A near-fine hardcover book in decorated yellow cloth with inset photographic illustration: trace of wear overall, especially to one tip -- a remarkably well-preserved copy. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Exceptional modernist design, binding and typography by Johannes Molzahn.6.5 x 9.5 hardcover book with 118 pages, 1 color plate, 1 color chart with tipped-in samples and 104 photos and 72 line illustrations in text. Nice first edition of this example of modernist book design, with typography and binding design by Johannes Molzahn.
"The painter in me subordinates itself to the architect - and that is quite in keeping with my nature. For me painting can never be an end in itself" -- Bruno Taut
EIN WOHNHAUS ('A House to Live in') was published on completion of Bruno Taut's own family home at Dahlewitz in 1926-27, a culmination of the architect's use of color to examine spatial perception, light, and also environmental, energy-saving and other functional considerations.
Taut wrote "The form of the house corresponds to a crystallization of atmospheric conditions. It is supported by colour." Most striking was Taut's use of black and white --the sweeping curved east wall is painted entirely black to absorb the rays of the sun, while the westerly façades are entirely white, reflecting the heat of the afternoon. He used blue detail which delimited surfaces and increased the tension created by the curved wall surfaces.
As one of the "most unfairly neglected of Modernist architects" Tautıs colourful contribution to the course of modern architecture seems to have been unduly suppressed by the tyranny of black-and-white photography as the medium of choice for contemporaneous record. Modernist architecture of the 1920's was typified by the Purist's white facades and, since form follow function, it was standard practice to publish architectural photographs in monochrome. Popular manifestos, such as Le Corbusier's 1923 VERS UNE ARCHITECTURE, did not mention colour at all. Corbu also used his editiorial power at LıESPIRIT NOUVEAU to reject Theo van Doesburgıs writings on the subject of color in the plastic Art of Architectue. The modernist agenda-setters believed Color had no place in the glorification of the new age of machinery, of form, and the modern spirit. Niklaus Pevsner obstinately ignored the contribution of Expressionism, or anything that deviated from the zeitgeist of the 'International Style", in his influential historical writings.
"Before the war I was denounced as a glass architect; In Magdeburg they called me the apostle of colour. The one is only a consequence of the other; for delight in light is the same as delight in colour."-- Bruno Taut
Thankfully Taut included a custom-printed, number and text-keyed 24-color chart in EIN WOHNHAUS to visually enhance the book's b/w photography. A color frontis plate also vividly recreates one of Taut's interior color schemes. A significant document that sheds considerable light on a forgotten theory of Modern Architecture.
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