Abstract
The buildings Taut designed in the late 1920s bear few visible similarities to the expressionistic building and city plans he sketched during and immediately following the First World War. As such, Taut’s works are often separated into distinct stylistic periods. This categorization cloaks Taut’s continued commitment to socialist utopian ideals. This paper treats Taut’s expressionist period as a self-conscious attempt to clarify his architectural and socialist convictions. By situating Taut’s successive architectural phases in historical context, this paper will show how the ideas Taut explored during his expressionist phase continued to influence the design of the residential housing complexes he built with GEHAG in the late 1920s by analyzing his Britz Horseshoe Estate.
Highlights
For viewers familiar with Bruno Taut and the Crystal Chain’s fanciful and impractical architectural designs, it would be easy to be disappointed by Taut’s later projects
2 This paper will treat Taut’s expressionist period as a selfconscious attempt to clarify his architectural and socialist convictions. By situating his successive architectural phases in historical context, this paper will focus on Taut’s Britz Horseshoe Estate to show how the ideas he explored during his expressionist phase continued to influence the design of the residential housing complexes he built with GEHAG in the late 1920s
Even historians who defend the movement against accusations of fanaticism, like Wolfgang Pehnt, are careful to emphasize that “the expressionist blueprint is bound to its particular historical moment,” and that there is “no hope for a revival of expressionism.”4 These characterizations of the movement imply that expressionist architecture was nothing more than a reactionary movement too detached from reality to contribute to the future evolution of modern functionalist architecture
Summary
For viewers familiar with Bruno Taut and the Crystal Chain’s fanciful and impractical architectural designs, it would be easy to be disappointed by Taut’s later projects.
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