Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.com

www.Ebook777.com


Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.com
The City Crown by Bruno Taut

www.Ebook777.com


Ashgate Studies in Architecture Series
series editor: eamonn canniffe, manchester school of architecture,
manchester metropolitan university, uk

The discipline of Architecture is undergoing subtle transformation as design
awareness permeates our visually dominated culture. Technological change, the
search for sustainability and debates around the value of place and meaning
of the architectural gesture are aspects which will affect the cities we inhabit.
This series seeks to address such topics, both theoretically and in practice,
through the publication of high quality original research, written and visual.
Other titles in this series
From Formalism to Weak Form: The Architecture
and Philosophy of Peter Eisenman
Stefano Corbo
ISBN 978 1 4724 4314 4
Suspending Modernity: The Architecture of Franco Albini
Kay Bea Jones
ISBN 978 1 4724 2728 1
The Architecture of Industry
Changing Paradigms in Industrial Building and Planning

Edited by Mathew Aitchison
ISBN 978 1 4724 3299 5
Architecture in an Age of Uncertainty
Edited by Benjamin Flowers
ISBN 978 1 4094 4575 3
Charles Robert Cockerell, Architect in Time
Reflections around Anachronistic Drawings
Anne Bordeleau
ISBN 978 1 4094 5369 7
Forthcoming titles in this series
In-Between: Architectural Drawing and Imaginative Knowledge
in Islamic and Western Traditions
Hooman Koliji
ISBN 978 1 4724 3868 3
Phenomenologies of the City
Studies in the History and Philosophy of Architecture
Edited by Henriette Steiner and Maximilian Sternberg
ISBN 978 1 4094 5479 3


The City Crown by Bruno Taut

Translated and Edited by

Matthew Mindrup
The University of Sydney, Australia
and

Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis
Drexel University, USA



Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.com
© Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike Altenmüller-Lewis have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
Ashgate Publishing LimitedAshgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East
110 Cherry Street
Union RoadSuite 3-1
FarnhamBurlington, VT 05401-3818
Surrey, GU9 7PTUSA
England
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The city crown by Bruno Taut / [translated and edited] by Matthew Mindrup and Ulrike
Altenmüller-Lewis.
pages cm. -- (Ashgate studies in architecture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-2199-9 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-2200-2 (ebook) -ISBN 978-1-4724-2201-9 (epub) 1. City planning--History. I. Taut, Bruno, 1880-1938.
II. Baron, Erich. III. Behne, Adolf, 1885-1948. IV. Scheerbart, Paul, 1863-1915. V.
Mindrup, Matthew. editor. VI. Altenmüller-Lewis, Ulrike, 1971- editor. VII. Taut, Bruno,
1880-1938. Stadtkrone. English.

NA9090.C58 2015
711’.4--dc23
2015002219
ISBN 9781472421999 (hbk)
ISBN 9781472422002 (ebk – PDF)
ISBN 9781472422019 (ebk – ePUB)

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,
at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD

www.Ebook777.com


Contents

List of illustrations
Translators’ Preface  
Acknowledgements  

vii
xi
xiii

Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia  

1


Title Page
Dedication

1

The New Life: An Architectonic Apocalypse
Paul Scheerbart

35

2

40 Examples: Historic City Crowns  

41

3
The City Crown
  Architecture 
  The Old City 
  The Chaos 
  The New City 
  Body Without a Head 
  Raise a Flag 
  The City Crown 
  Economic Costs for The City Crown

73
74
76
77
78
79

82
86
98

4

Epilogue: Recent Attempts at Crowning Cities  
Bruno Taut

101

5

Aufbau  
erich Baron

115


vi

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

6

Rebirth of Architecture  
Adolf Behne

125


7


The Dead Palace: An Architect’s Dream  
Paul Scheerbart

141

Sources  
List of Figures  
Contents  

143
145
147


Afterword: The City Crown in the Context of Bruno Taut’s Oeuvre  

149

Index  

177


List of Illustrations

Black and White Illustrations


Figure 6  Durham.

1.1  Ebenezer Howard, “Garden City,” Image
no. 2 of Howard, To-morrow: A Peaceful Path
to real reform, 1898. © Town & Country
Planning Association.

Figure 7  Adrianople, Selim Mosque.

1.2  Bruno Taut, Stadtschema (City
Diagram), in Die Stadtkrone, 1917.
1.3  Bruno Taut, Das Glashaus (The Glashaus)
at the 1914 Kölner werkbund–Ausstellung
(1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition), 1914.
1.4  Bruno Taut, haus Der Freundschaft
in Konstantinople (House of Friendship in
Constantinople), 1916.

Figure 8  Augsburg, St Ulrich Church.
Figure 9  Utrecht.
Figure 10  Assyrian Temple, reconstruction.
Figure 11  Madurai, Great Gopura.
Figure 12  Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem,
reconstruction.
Figure 13  Cologne.
Figure 14  London.

1.5  Bruno Taut, Das Kristallhaus (The
Crystal Building), Sheet 3 of Bruno Taut,
Alpine Architecture, 1917.


Figure 15  Selinunt, reconstruction.

Original Illustrations

Figure 17  Yangon, Shwedagon Pagoda.

Figure 1  St Barbara by Jan van Eyck.

Figure 18  Salamanca.

Figure 2  Charles Cottet, City Image.

Figure 19  Yangon.

Figure 3  Mont-Saint-Michel.

Figure 20  Buarcos.

Figure 4  Strasbourg.

Figure 21  Tzaffin.

Figure 5  Monte Compatri.

Figure 22  Prenzlau.

Figure 16  Athens.



viii

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

Figure 23  Angkor Wat.

Figure 48  City crown, plan and elevation.

Figure 24  Cairo.

Figure 49  City crown, perspectival view.

Figure 25  Hebron in Palestine.

Figure 50  Garden City Estate Falkenberg
near Berlin.

Figure 26  Moscow. Great Cathedral in the
Kremlin.

Figure 51  Street views from Falkenberg.

Figure 27  Moscow with the Kremlin.

Figure 52  Design of a votive church by
Schinkel.

Figure 28  La Chaise-Dieu.
Figure 29  Béziers.
Figure 30  Strängnäs.

Figure 31  Pisa, Piazza del Duomo.
Figure 32  Danzig.
Figure 33  Aden.
Figure 34  Srivilliputtur.
Figure 35  Miao tai tae, Memorial Temple.

Figure 53  Design for a monument of
Friedrich the Great on the Leipziger Platz in
Berlin by Gilly.
Figure 54  Karlsruhe, city plan.
Figure 55  Temple of Confucius in Qufu.
Figure 56  Plan diagram from Howard.
Figure 57  City center of Letchworth
Figure 58  Plan of the city of Qufu.
Figure 59  Augsburg, Elias Hollplatz.

Figure 36  Paris.

Figure 60  Municipal building for New York.

Figure 37  Speyer.

Figure 61 New York, city skyline.

Figure 38  Mainz.

Figure 62  XXII District in Vienna.

Figure 39  Toledo.


Figure 63  Project for Klein-Hoheim.

Figure 40  Bangkok.

Figure 64  Plan for an Australian capital city.

Figure 41  Chidambaram, Shiva-Pond.

Figure 65  Project for an International
World Center.

Figure 42  City crown, east elevation.
Figure 43  City crown, west elevation.
Figure 44  City crown, bird’s eye view
looking west.

Figure 66  Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Berlin.
Figure 67  Palace of Justice in Brussels.
Figure 68  The Capitol in Washington.

Figure 45  City skyline.
Figure 46  City plan diagram.

Figure 69  Design of a Monument for the
People by Berlage.

Figure 47  City crown, image.

Figure 70  Cathedral in Rouen.



List of Illustrations
ix
Free ebooks ==> www.Ebook777.com

Figure 71  Palitana, the Great Temple
Chamukte.
Figure 72  The Great Pagoda of Udaipur.

Colour Plates
1  Bruno Taut, Wohnstadt Carl Legien,
Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, 1928–30. Loggias
at housing block. Photo: Laura J. Padgett,
January 2009.
2  Bruno Taut, Wohnstadt Carl Legien, BerlinPrenzlauer Berg, 1928–30. Housing block
Sültstraße. Photo: Laura J. Padgett, April 2009.
3  Bruno Taut, Wohnstadt Carl Legien,
Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, 1928–30. Housing
block Sültstraße. Courtyard elevation and
corner balconies. Photo: Laura J. Padgett,
January 2009.
4  Bruno Taut, Wohnstadt Carl Legien,
Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, 1928–30. Housing
block Sültstraße. Courtyard elevation.
Photo: Laura J. Padgett, January 2009.
5  Bruno Taut, Wohnstadt Carl Legien,
Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg, 1928–30. Housing
block Sültstraße. Staircase. Photo: Laura J.
Padgett, April 2009.

6  Single family row houses, north of
Argentinische Allee. Reconstruction of the
color plan by Bruno Taut illustrating results
of the color analysis. Photo of drawing:
Helge Pitz, Architekturwerkstatt Helge Pitz –
Winfried Brenne, 1976/1977.
7  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel Toms
Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31. Single
family row houses, north of Argentinische
Allee. Terraces with glass roof along the
garden façade. Illustrating results of the
color analysis. Photo of drawing: Helge Pitz,
Architekturwerkstatt Helge Pitz – Winfried
Brenne, 1976/1977.

8  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel Toms
Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31. Single
family row houses, north of Argentinische
Allee. Illustrating the results of the color
analysis. Photo of drawing: Helge Pitz,
Architekturwerkstatt Helge Pitz – Winfried
Brenne, 1976/1977.
9  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel Toms
Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31. Yard at
Birkenhof. Landscape reminiscent of Taut’s
early pastel drawings from nature. Photo:
Laura J. Padgett, September 2008.
10  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel Toms
Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31. Photo:
Laura J. Padgett, September 2008.

11  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel
Toms Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31.
Apartment building Waldhüterpfad. View
from stairhall. Photo: Laura J. Padgett,
September 2008.
12  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel Toms
Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31. Corner
Hochsitzweg and Hochwildpfad. Photo:
Laura J. Padgett, September 2008.
13  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel Toms
Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31. Am
Wiesenblau. Garden facades. Photo: Laura J.
Padgett, September 2009.
14  Bruno Taut, Waldsiedlung Onkel Toms
Hütte, Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1926–31. Photo:
Laura J. Padgett, September 2008.
15 Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum, Dornach,
Switzerland. Built in poured concrete from
1925–8. Photo: Mark Brack, 1989.
16  James Turrell, “Twilight Epiphany”
skyspace at Rice University, Houston, Texas,
2012. Photo: Florian Holzherr, 2012.

www.Ebook777.com


This page has been left blank intentionally


Translators’ Preface


Translations of historical texts are by their very nature always a balancing act
between historical accuracy, linguistic beauty and an interpretation of the author’s
original intent. The works included in this book are certainly no exception. Written
under the influence of the First World War, the texts included in Die Stadtkrone
represent the hopes and longings of three individuals, Eric Baron, Adolf Behne
and Bruno Taut, for a new utopian society made possible by architecture. In three
different voices and three different approaches, Baron, Behne and Taut reason for
the viability of creating a new garden city where people can live and work in peace
and community underneath the shadow of a single, purpose-free glass structure,
a city crown. Shortly after the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on November 9, 1918,
the First World War came to an end and a handful of artists and architects joined
Taut in forming the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Working Council for Art) to work with the
new socialist government to help forge the cultural politics of the new country. Die
Stadtkrone was, for Taut as well as for his friends in the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, Adolf
Behne and Walter Gropius, used as a starting point for developing the goals of their
new council. Later it was a guideline for Taut’s “Ein Architektur-Programm” (“An
Architecture Programme”) from Christmas of the same year and Gropius’ Bauhaus
Manifesto of April 1919. So it is surprising that after its publication in 1919, such an
important work in the development of modern architecture, urban planning and
architectural education has never been translated into English.
Taut is still considered one of the most influential architects of the modern
movement and his writings had an undeniable impact on the early twentiethcentury architectural culture. For English-speaking audiences, Taut’s Die Stadtkrone
is a staple of any discussion surrounding the garden city movement, utopianism,
Expressionist or early modern architectural history – all the more reason for our
surprise that the anthology had yet to be translated into English. There have
been fragments of the anthology’s different texts translated in the literature on
Taut and early modern architectural history but never a complete rendition of
the anthology’s arguments in their entirety. It was only in 2009 that the Journal of



xii

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

Architectural Education solicited us to produce the first English translation of Taut’s
title essay, “The City Crown.”
Translations not only require a fluency in the original and translated languages
but also a deep knowledge of the context in time – in the case of Die Stadtkrone, this
includes the historical, cultural, social and political background in which the authors
conceived their texts and in which today’s audience will read it. As historical texts,
which usually come with antiquated phrasing and expressions that are no longer in
active use, the challenge of this translation was to find appropriate English words
and syntax that, while accurately describing the context of the German, also mirror
the idiosyncrasy of each author’s voice and field of study. When confronted by
difficult or unclear phrasing, we made every effort to retain the voice and the intent
of the author, adding footnotes to justify our interpretation of the text. Similarly,
we sought to add important references to clarify an author’s citation of a work or
concept that was either ambiguous or, at times, inaccurate.
The texts and images in this translation are organized to retain the original
format of the book – a composition of layers intended to guide the reader to
understand the efficacy of his city crown proposal. At the outermost layer of the
facsimile, the reader encounters two poems from Paul Scheerbart: at the beginning
is the poem “Das neue Leben” (“The New Life”) and the end with the short poem
“Der tote Palast” (“The Dead Palace”). After having set the poetic tone of the volume
with these works, Taut includes 40 examples of historical city crowns to prepare the
reader for the subject matter and argue for the necessity of his urban scheme. His
title essay then references these images to justify the need for a new city crown that
he includes in his urban scheme, a completely conceived garden city accompanied
by drawings and images. Immediately following an explanation of the costs, Taut’s

section “Neuer Versuch zu Stadtbekrönungen” seeks to substantiate its validity in
contemporary architectural practice with additional examples of contemporary city
crowns. Under the title “Aufbau”, Eric Baron’s essay then encourages the edification
of socialism after the end of the First World War through art and architecture.
Adolf Behne concludes by elaborating on Baron’s concept by tracing the decline
of art since the Gothic and prophesizes a “Wiederkehr der Baukunst” (“Rebirth of
Architecture”) through the cooperation of the arts under architecture.
Surrounding the facsimile format, we have added an introduction entitled
“Advancing the Reverie of Utopia,” which critically examines the professional
and intellectual developments leading to and underpinning Taut’s proposal to
advance the English garden city concept with a centralized communal structure
of glass, a city crown. The afterword, “The City Crown in the Context of Bruno Taut’s
oeuvre,” sets Taut’s Die Stadtkrone in the context of his overall oeuvre, reviewing
the reception of the book at the time of its publication and the impact it had both
outside of Taut’s work and for his own career. As a work, we hope this first English
translation of Taut’s seminal anthology will become a critical text in architectural
studies on the history of European Modernism, urban design theory and Taut’s
oeuvre in general.


Acknowledgements

This English translation of Bruno Taut’s Die Stadtkrone is a work that has been many
years in the making. We would like to thank first of all George Dodds, who expressed
interest in this project as chief editor of Journal of Architectural education in 2006
and commissioned our translation of Taut’s title chapter. It was Dodds’ enthusiasm
that gave us the impetus to approach Ashgate Publishing in 2012 for their support
to complete a translation of the entire book.
In preparing this translation, we enjoyed the support of many people. Special
thanks must go to Franziska Zürcher-Mindrup, who selflessly gave of her assistance

turning the sometimes ambiguous imaginings of Die Stadtkrone’s four authors
into something reasonably comprehensible in English. It was because of her early
assistance that we were able to see the project in its entirety as a viable endeavor.
We are also especially grateful to Mark Brack, who provided us with many hours of
insightful suggestions how to phrase and re-phrase parts of the texts that were at
times barely comprehensible in the original German. For this, we would also like
to thank Tony Flynn, Frank Trommler, David Raizman, Jon Coddington and Ross
Anderson for their candid remarks on the translations and encouragement to reappraise the legibility of critical points on the texts. Discussions with them allowed
us to further gauge questions of context and interpretation.
We owe a debt to Ufuk Ersoy for providing critical insight into the introductory
chapter “Advancing the Reverie of Utopia.” Many thanks also to Paul Emmons, Marcia
Feuerstein, Ellen Sullivan and Barbara Klinkhammer, who in early conversations
inspired the idea for the “Afterword: The City Crown in the Context of Bruno Taut’s
Oeuvre.” Careful reading and suggestions provided by Rosemarie H. Bletter and
Manfred Speidel were greatly appreciated and helped us to finalize this book.
At Ashgate, we must extend our most sincere gratitude to Valerie Rose, who
enthusiastically supported this project from the very beginning. We would also like
to thank Charlotte Edwards and our production editor Adam Guppy, as well as our
proofreader Jon Lloyd. We are grateful for their patience and help throughout this
process.


xiv

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

Lastly, we would like to extend a special thanks to both our families who – in
their unique ways – sacrificed much of their own time and energy to make this project
possible.



Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia
Matthew Mindrup

Let us build a tower whose summit will touch the skies – Those who conceived the
idea of this tower could not have built it themselves, so they hired thousands of
others to build it for them. But these toilers knew nothing of the dream of those
who planned the tower. While those who conceived the tower did not concern
themselves with the workers who built it. The hymns of praise of the few became
the curses of the many. BABEL! BABEL! BABEL!—Between the brain that plans and
the hands that build, there must be a Mediator.1
Maria (Character) in Metropolis, 1927

On August 28, 1917, the German architect Bruno Taut sent the completed draft
of his anthology Die Stadtkrone (The City Crown) to the Diederichs Verlag in Berlin,
Germany.2 Published shortly after the end of the First World War, the leaflet
announcing its publication described Die Stadtkrone as the “Darstellung eine
Gestaltung, eine Form, ein Ideal” (representation of a design, a form, an ideal) to
stimulate the common work of mankind towards the creation of a single structure,
a crown “über dem leeren Chaos der Städte” (over the empty chaos of the city).3
The character of Maria in Fritz Lang’s 1927 utopian drama Metropolis ascribes a
similar role to the “Mediator,” who she believes will unite the different classes in
constructing a Tower of Babel. In Lang’s film, the inhabitants of a large industrial
city are separated into two classes: wealthy residents, who live a carefree life in
artificial pleasure gardens abounding with flowers, fountains and exotic birds,
and a subterranean working class, living beneath the city in poor conditions and
making the entire paradise above possible. By exaggerating the polarization of
the two classes, Lang sought to expose the social and urban problems that had
emerged since the Industrial Revolution in Europe and Germany in particular.4 It
was because of his own experiences with civic disorder in German cities that Taut

had the inspiration to develop Die Stadtkrone.
Born in 1880, Taut grew up in the Gründerzeit (founding time), a period of rapid
industrial and economic development following the unification of Germany in
1871. As technical developments in farming had reduced the need for people to


2

1.1 Ebenezer
Howard, “Garden
City,” Image no. 2
of Howard,
To-morrow: A
Peaceful Path
to Real Reform,
1898. © Town &
Country Planning
Association.

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

work in agriculture, the mass immigration of labor from the countryside to the
cities (known as the “Landflucht”) caused the populations of large German cities
to dramatically increase in size between 1871 and 1901.5 Miles of speculative
apartments were built to house the lower classes in what came to be known as
Mietskasernen (rental barracks) grouped around multiple courtyards in deep, poorly
lit city blocks.6 Here entire families lived in tiny, poorly ventilated rooms without
indoor plumbing to work long shifts in the factories. Meanwhile, the middle and
upper classes lived in well-lit, respectable, generously proportioned apartment
buildings recalling the personification of the classes in Lang’s Metropolis. In the

decade before Lang began filming Metropolis in 1925, Taut belonged to a small
group of artists, architects and sociologists who vigorously challenged the value of
the city as a congested, fast-paced industrial organism. One of the most important
urban proposals of the Industrial Revolution read closely by Taut and his colleagues
emerged from the English parliamentary shorthand writer Ebenezer Howard.7
Disappointed with the quality of contemporary urban life, Howard proposed
a model by which people could access the employment opportunities offered by
cities and still enjoy a healthy quality of life in proximity to nature. In a small book
from 1898 entitled To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Howard proposed the
creation of new suburban towns that were of a limited size, planned in advance and
surrounded by a permanent belt of agricultural land (Figure 1.1).8 In his proposal,


Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia

3

Howard reasoned that his new towns would be free of slums and that their
inhabitants could enjoy the benefits of social opportunities, places of amusement,
chances of employment and higher wages associated with living in a town and
access to the beauty of nature, fresh air and low rents found in the countryside.9
To argue his point, Howard created his famous (and remarkably simplistic) Three
Magnets diagram to illustrate his solution to the question carefully placed in its
center: “Where will the people go?” In the diagram, a magnet is superimposed on
three types of living environments, including “Town,” “Country” or “Town-Country”
and their respective characteristics. With individuals represented as needles,
Howard reasoned that “Human society and the beauty of nature are meant to be
enjoyed together”; his solution was that “the two magnets must be made one.”10
Appropriately organized, each “garden city” would be the perfect blend of “town”
and “country,” remaining largely independent, managed by citizens who had an

economic interest in them and financed by a group of trustees who leased the
lands to its residents.11
It was under the influence of the First World War that Taut envisioned a new way
to advance Howard’s garden city concept by merging it with a dominant central
communal structure of glass and concrete he called a “city crown.” With fewer
architectural commissions during this time, Taut devoted much of his efforts to
the development of his new urban scheme, a utopian garden city of socialism and
peace that he believed could overcome national and social differences by means of
architecture and more specifically through a city crown. Modeled after the European
medieval cathedral or Indian temple, Taut’s crown was to act as a towering secular
beacon of social harmony around which the political, commercial and residential
quarters would be organized. This crystalline structure of glass would be the
material expression of a new living community in close contact with nature and
industry unified by cosmic transcendental thoughts of the collective good.

THE CItY CROWN PROpOSAL
Published in 1919, Taut included his utopian garden city proposal in Die Stadtkrone
accompanied by contributions from the architectural critic Adolf Behne, the
Expressionist poet Paul Scheerbart and the journalist Erich Baron. Taut placed
his title essay, “Die Stadtkrone,” at the center of the anthology accompanied by
drawings including two elevations (East and West) and a bird’s-eye view (West)
leaving a Stadtsilhouette (City Skyline), Stadtschema (City Diagram), a combination
plan-elevation drawing, oblique view and perspective views of the city center,
and both aerial and street-side perspectives of his own garden city of Falkenberg,
Germany in the pages after it.
In his urban scheme, Taut proposed the construction of a city for 300,000
inhabitants who live in garden city-style housing: “rows of low, single-family
houses with deep gardens for every house … so that the residential area itself
becomes a horticultural zone.” Taking his inspiration from Howard’s city of Tomorrow, Taut decentralized industry and distributed housing near horticulture,
agriculture and parks to promote a healthy quality of life, large enough to permit a



4

1.2  Bruno Taut,
Stadtschema (City
Diagram), in Die
Stadtkrone, 1917.

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

complete social lifestyle, but not larger.12 Similar
to Howard, Taut’s ideal city is a large circle but
with a much larger diameter and ten times as
many inhabitants.
As the Stadtschema of Taut’s garden city
illustrates, the form of his city is not randomly
determined but employs a series of concentric
circles to define and segregate its physical,
social and economic requirements (Figure 1.2).
Similar to a medieval city, Taut first encircles
his garden city with a ring-like wall, not of
stone fortification walls but trees. Then, four
main streets cross the entire city in wide arches
defining an area of 500–800 meters in its center
where Taut has located the central facilities and
the crown itself. Additional circles in-between
the middle and the edge of the city define the
rows of residential buildings in a north–south
direction. Shorter connecting streets interrupt

these long lines leading to the city center. The
main streets to the north and south of the
city center define the edges of funnel-shaped fields that extend away from the
center to the east and west. To the east, Taut locates a church, city administration
buildings, commercial buildings and a train station on whose lines industrial areas
can develop outside of the city borders to the north and the south. In the west,
classrooms and hospitals are planned in a “‘… large sector-shaped park [that]
brings good air into the city from the woods and fields.”13
In Taut’s city plan, the complex geometrical arrangement of circles permits
the centrally located civic structure to connect itself to internal residential
neighborhoods and external industrial or commercial zones. While the centripetally
oriented residential quarters are directed towards the city center, recreation
and industry are located in sectors that open themselves to the surrounding
countryside and as many neighboring cities as possible. Nevertheless, despite
the effectiveness of Taut’s scheme, he asks “can all of our life’s needs be fulfilled by
comfort, ease and pleasantness?”14 For all time, Taut argues, cities have gravitated
around a single structure that could unite the longing and hopes of people in a
community.15 To restore this structure to the fabric of a contemporary garden city, he
proposes the construction of five buildings in its center to meet the social interests
of its community and to fulfill their artistic and entertainment needs.
Taut’s garden city is built up in layers, from a residentially planned exterior to
a community-used interior. As one progresses from the residential zones toward
the city center, they are greeted by stores, cafes and restaurants. Then, from this
commercial zone, reading halls, museums, aquariums and glass agricultural houses
are accessible via tree-line courtyards. Finally, inside an innermost colonnade
ring, the political and institutional structures that typically occupy the center of a
city have been replaced by the places for entertainment and education, concert


Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia

Free ebooks
==> www.Ebook777.com 5

and public houses, a theater and opera. This hierarchy of buildings is an image
of what Taut refers to as the “human stratification” of the city’s inhabitants, who
are not differentiated by their social class, but by their tempers and desires.16 In
this way “the entire city is accessible to everyone; and people go to where they
are drawn.”17 However, unlike the prescribed activities occurring in the innermost
building group, they are only the base of the most important structure in Taut’s
city scheme, a huge glass Kristallhaus (crystal house), while the crown is reserved
for the people without a single dedicated purpose.
For this Kristallhaus, Taut makes a distinction between “buildings” whose
purpose it is to provide social or communal experiences, like a theater and a
people’s house, and “architecture” that has its raison d’etre in the social wishes of
the community containing “nothing but a wonderful room” remaining “quiet and
empty.”18 In Die Stadtkrone, this “architecture” that Taut describes as a combination
of concrete, iron and colorful glass has to be rooted “in the inner spiritual life and
existence of mankind … including all that through which he perceives his own
value and relation to the world.”19 For Taut, a city always had a crown about which
its citizens would gravitate. It was “the highest structure in a townscape … a
religious building” that could “convey our deepest feelings about mankind and the
world.”20 However, compared to the religious orientation of historical city crowns,
Taut contended that religion was no longer necessary as a force around which to
organize contemporary cities. In the contemporary conception of the city, Taut
argued that the former unifying power of the Christian Church separated itself into
smaller congregations and instead promoted socialism as a new faith that could
“unite the longings and hopes of people in community.” Taut already spoke of
these thoughts in an article from 1914 where he lamented Hans Poelzig’s loss of
the Berlin Opera House competition. As he argued, it is not a conventional view
of architecture based upon “Modern Imperialism, Caste Structures and Ethnicity,”

but the “typical ideal of our days that everyone sympathizes with today,” the “social
thought” that can inspire “the new in architecture.”21 This “social thought” that
Taut refers to as a “new form of Christianity” in “Die Stadtkrone” embodies what
he argues to be an urge to “enhance the well-being of mankind” and “to feel as
one, solidly united with all mankind.” For Taut, it is this solidarity that can motivate
the “many hands and material means” to give “material expression for that which
slumbers in all mankind.”22
To justify his thesis that a non-religious structure can crown a city, Taut includes
18 images of proposed and contemporary civic structures to accompany his
essay “Neuere Versuche zu Stadtbekrönungen” (“Contemporary Examples of City
Crowns”). Since a city’s crown should be a center of the community’s spirit and
“represent our view of life,” Taut wants to use cultural and meetinghouses for the
crown and not political institutions or existing religious structures.23 Rather, the
aim of Taut’s “Die Stadtkrone” is to promote socialism by restoring the spiritual
representation of a community to city centers near theaters and gardens, and near
all new buildings that emerge from social idealism.24
To prepare the reader for his garden city proposal, Taut surrounded his text
and designs with contributions from Behne, Scheerbart and Baron. Under the
title “Aufbau” (“Building-Up”), Baron encourages the edification of socialism after

www.Ebook777.com


6

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

the end of the First World War through art and architecture. Behne elaborates on
Baron’s concept by tracing the decline of art since the Gothic and prophesizes a
“Wiederkehr der Baukunst” (“Rebirth of Architecture”) through the cooperation of

the arts under architecture. Taut’s aim for the construction of a communal purposefree city crown of glass is to give the city brilliance and vitality, but also peace,
silence and eternal longing – qualities that Scheerbart underlined in two poems
that the editor of Das hohe Ufer, Hans Kaiser, argued in 1919 that Taut uses like
“Schutzheilige” (patron saints) to his anthology: the beginning with the poem “Das
neue Leben” (“The New Life”) and the end with the short poem “Der tote Palast”
(“The Dead Palace”).25
In his own essay, Taut traces the importance of “city crowns” in previous cultures,
arguing that the erection of new cities and towns without this essential binding
element would only produce a “Rumpf ohne Kopf” (“Body without a Head”).26
To validate his point, Taut includes “40 Beispiele alter Stadtbekrönungen” (“40
Examples of Historic City Crowns”) from international cities including Mont
Saint-Michel, Strasbourg, Durham, Angor Wat and Bangkok.27 A similar sense of
internationalism is implied by Baron’s essay that argues for a new global architecture
of socialism. For Behne’s text, Taut includes two images: the Gothic Kathedrale zu
Rouen (Cathedral of Rouen) at the beginning and the Indian Palitana der grosse
Tempel Chamukte (Palitana, The Great Temple of Chamukte) at the end. With these
examples Taut wants to extend Behne’s study of the Gothic cathedral, and the
picture frame in particular, to Indian temples. Together, the texts and images in
Taut’s anthology suggest that his proposal is not limited to European cities but a
human phenomenon that transcends geography and culture.
As a complete work, the texts and images in Taut’s anthology are composed
in layers through which the reader is guided to understand the efficacy of his
city crown proposal. In an essay about Bruno Taut, Mathias Schirren supports this
reading comparing the structure of Die Stadtkrone to a medieval reliquary in which
the most sacred, the drawings of the city crown are hidden in its core. Schirren
makes this comparison based upon a short essay Taut published in 1919 entitled
“Bildschreine” (“Picture Shrine”), wherein Schirren argues Taut provides a possible
explanation for the composition of his book reasoning that a work of art should
be segregated from the activities of everyday life because it may dull the eye and
distract the mind.28 As Taut explains, an artwork should be framed and hidden

in the middle of a shrine that has been “adapted to the subject of the picture.”29
The drawings that Taut locates in the center of his anthology are comparable to
such an artwork framed by additional texts and images. The historic examples
at the beginning prepare the reader for the subject matter and argue for the
necessity of Taut’s urban scheme, while his section entitled “Neuer Versuch zu
Stadtbekrönungen” (“Recent Attempts at Crowning Cities”) explains its costs and
includes contemporary examples to substantiate its validity in contemporary
architectural practice.
A letter to his wife Hedwig from August 13, 1917 indicates that Taut had only
organized the texts and images into a “concept book” at a very late stage in the
planning of his anthology when he included Jan van Eyck’s painting of St Barbara
as the cover page.30 In van Eyck’s representation, St Barbara is sitting on a hill,


Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia

7

holding a palm branch and reading an open book while the tower from which she
became enlightened is under construction in the background. Speidel notes that
Taut did not include a title to van Eyck’s drawing in the City Crown reasoning that
he probably knew the authorship and the role of Saint Barbara as the patron saint
of craftsmen but wanted to give it a new meaning in its new context. For Speidel it
was “a personal dedication to [Taut’s] wife” but this doesn’t take into consideration
that the Saint, like the reader, is fondly reading a book (the city crown?) while a
unified community is building their own city crown in the background.
Early Manifestations
Despite the dating of Taut’s letter to his wife mentioned at the beginning of this
introduction, his proposal to advance the practical social reforms of the English
garden city concept with a city crown did not emerge suddenly in the months

before its publication. Since the founding of his office with Franz Hoffmann in 1909,
one can observe in Taut’s completed projects, publications and correspondences
a slow synthesis of experiences in architecture, garden city housing and pavilion
design that had crystallized in a project for Constantinople (today Istanbul in
Turkey), but were missing so far from garden city designs.
Like many German architects at the beginning of the twentieth century,
Taut developed an interest in resolving the afflictions caused by the rapid
industrialization and concomitant densification of European cities. At the end of
the nineteenth century, urban planning theory as a scientific topic with the goal
of advising problem solving did not yet exist. In his 1889 book Der Städtebau nach
seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen (City Planning According to Artistic Principles),
the Austrian architect and critic Camillo Sitte tried to resolve the distress by
rejecting grid planning and the development of over-scaled boulevards and plazas
promoting instead the creation of irregular or “organic” urban patterns with more
intimate public spaces enhanced by monuments and other aesthetic elements.31
Sitte’s co-founder of the journal Der Städtebau (City Planning), Theodor Goecke
continued to propose new principles for organizing city quarters and street lines
according to research based upon social, economic and health issues.32 Yet, other
critics took a more radical approach, calling for a return to the countryside. An
observer of English housing reform and co-founder of the Deutscher Werkbund
(German Work Federation), the architect Hermann Muthesius argued:
Denn wer von den Stadtbewohnern trüg nicht die Sehnsucht nach Feld und Wald,
nach Wiesengründen und blühenden Gärten in sich, und wem klänge nicht das
Märchen in den Ohren, dass er … mitten in ihnen im eigenen Häuschen leben könnte.
[Whoever of the city dwellers does not bear the longing for field and forest, meadow
grounds and flowering gardens, and who do not hear the sounds of the fairy tale in
the ears, that they could … in the midst of them, live in their own house.]33

By 1902, the English garden city idea of Ebenezer Howard was carried over to a
circle of poets in the commune Neue Gemeinschaft (New Community) located to

the west of Berlin in Schlachtensee.34


8

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

The Neue Gemeinschaft was a reform movement that sought emancipation
from the effects of industrialization on urban life through a vegetarian, literary and
socialist way of life. The movement’s dream of an ideal, socialist urban community
lasted only a year, with many of the founding members, including Heinrich and
Julius Hart, Bernhard and Paul Kampffmeyer, Bruno Wille and Wilhelm Boelsche,
reorganizing themselves as the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft (German Garden
City Society) in 1902.35 In the following years, it broadened its tasks to accommodate
the German conditions and reissued its Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft
Programm (Program of the German Garden City Society) as “the winning over of
the public to the establishment of garden cities.”36 The ultimate aim of Deutsche
Gartenstadtgesellschaft was “internal colonization, which will promote industrial
decentralization and with it an even distribution of industrial life across the land
through planned establishment of garden cities” and the “expansion of existing
towns in the sense of the garden city.”37
Like Howard, the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft viewed the garden city as a
means for replacing the squalor and deprivation endured by the urban working
class with a vigorous and healthy quality of life in close communion with the land
and countryside.38 The concepts Raymond Unwin developed during his planning
of the garden city of Letchworth were summarized in a textbook entitled Town
Planning in Practice and published in 1909.39 Unwin’s work was translated a year
later into German under the title Grundlagen des Städtebaus (Fundamentals of City
Planning), which became one of the earliest, most widely read urban planning
textbooks in Germany. Certainly, it was this German translation of Unwin’s textbook

that created a strong impetus for Walter Gropius and Taut to participate in an
excursion to visit the English garden cities during the same year.40
Taut’s trip to England had a profound impact upon him. Shortly after returning to
Berlin in 1910, he was appointed the advisory architect to the building department
of the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft in 1913.41 In this position, he accepted
commissions to plan two garden city projects during the same year at Falkenberg
near Berlin and Reform in Magdeburg, Germany. Both estates comprise low-rise
terrace houses oriented in north–south rows so that their primary facades were
supplied with indirect light throughout the day. An amateur artist who enjoyed
studying nature and landscapes with pastels, Taut had the houses at both estates
painted in varied colors to relieve the residents from the monotony of the typical
gray color of German tenement housing, which, at Falkenberg, became known as
the “Tuschkasten Siedlung” (paint box estates).42 Surrounded by residential areas
with a central space-like axis leading to a major civic structure, the Akazienhof, Taut
clearly took inspiration for his design of the Falkenberg estate in particular from the
first English garden city of Letchworth.
The late nineteenth-century industrial and economic expansion that
encouraged the development of the garden city movement in Germany also fueled
a pedagogical, technical and aesthetic reformation of Germany’s industrial and
applied arts. At world fairs throughout the nineteenth century, German appliedarts goods were criticized for their “technical backwardness, aesthetic inferiority,
and economic worthlessness.”43 To put Germany on a competitive footing with
England and the US, the Preußisches Ministerium für Handel und Gewerbe (Prussian


Introduction: Advancing the Reverie of Utopia

9

1.3  Bruno Taut,
Das Glashaus

(The Glashaus) at
the 1914 Kölner
Werkbund–
Ausstellung
(1914 Cologne
Werkbund
Exhibition), 1914.

Ministry of Commerce and Trade) began in 1884 to wield more control over the
education of arts, crafts and trades that were perceived to be out of touch with
nineteenth-century changes affecting industrial manufacture.44 In 1907, an
association of German artists, architects, designers and industrialists formed as the
Deutscher Werkbund to establish a partnership between product manufacturers and
design professionals to enlarge the scope of activities of the Commerce Ministry. In
combination with industry, these institutions began to develop national, state and
Werkbund-sponsored exhibitions to promote new German industrial and applied
arts that emphasized design techniques oriented toward materials, constructional
principles and local crafts industries.45 It was in this context that Taut received
an opportunity to showcase the creative architectural applications of steel and
especially the glass he later sought to employ in the Kristallhaus of “Die Stadtkrone.”
For the steel industry, Taut produced two exhibition pavilions, the Berliner
Verkaufskontor für Stahlträger (Berlin Sales Office for Steel Girders) for the 1910
II. Deutsche Ton–, Zement– und Kalkindustrie–Ausstellung (Second German Clay,
Cement and Lime Exhibition) in Berlin and the Monument des Eisens (Monument
of Iron) at the 1913 Internationale Baufach–Ausstellung (International Building
Trades Exhibition) in Leipzig, Germany. Contrary to his simple, pragmatic
housing developments in Berlin and Magdeburg, Taut’s exhibition pavilions were
conceived as mechanisms to create vivid optical and partly haptic experiences
of the materials they were intended to market. Similarly, while his Falkenberg



10

The City Crown by Bruno Taut

Garden City was under construction in 1913, Taut had the sudden inspiration
to explore the potential of glass for the Deutsche Werkbund’s 1914 Kölner
Werkbund–Ausstellung (1914 Cologne Werkbund Exhibition) and approached
the glass industry for sponsors.46 As a minor young architect with few sponsors
and a personally initiated versus officially sponsored experimental pavilion,
the Werkbund’s executive board was hesitant to include Taut’s proposal in the
exhibition.47 Paid for in large part out of his own pocket, Taut erected a glass and
concrete “net cupola” on a curved concrete apron (Figure 1.3). Taut’s ‘Glashaus’,
like that for the Berliner Verkaufskontor für Stahlträger and the Monument des
Eisens, used the material being advertised to construct the pavilion itself. Taut’s
Glashaus filmically orchestrated the visitors’ sensory experiences up, around and
down narrow glass block stairs, next to colored light filtering through brightly
colored Luxfer prisms to an internal waterfall in the lower floor. With colored tiles
and a kaleidoscope slowly projecting abstract patterns on an opaque screen,
the “gleaming, transparent, reflective character” of the structural and material
effects of Taut’s Glashaus were repeated almost verbatim in his description of the
Kristallhaus of “Die Stadtkrone,” whose “steel and concrete construction” forms the
framework that supports “prismatic glass fillings, colors and colored mosaics.”48
Although Taut’s choice of glass for the construction of the Kristallhaus had
its beginnings in the Cologne Glashaus, its most significant promotion as an
architectural building material must be attributed to his friendship and ensuing
collaboration with the poet of glass architecture, Paul Scheerbart. In a series of
fantasy novels including Das Paradies, Die Heimat der Kunst (Paradise, The Home
of the Arts) and Rakkóx der Billionär (Rakkóx the Billionaire) from 1889 and 1901,
respectively, Scheerbart had been developing the theme of an earthly paradise

ornamented by architectures of color and glass.49 During July 1913, Taut had
finished the model of the Cologne Glashaus pavilion when he met Scheerbart
whose fantasies of glass architecture must have immediately appealed to him.50
Taut and Scheerbart were in frequent correspondence throughout 1913 and 1914.51
The confluence of ideas between Taut and Scheerbart is evident in Scheerbart’s
dedication of “Glasarchitektur” to Taut and Taut’s inscription of Scheerbart’s
14 aphorisms on the drum course of the Glashaus. These aphorisms included:
“Das bunte Glas zerstört den Hass” (colored glass destroys hatred); “Ohne einen
Glaspalast ist das Leben eine Last” (without a glass palace, life is a burden); and
“Das Glas bringt uns die neue Zeit; Backsteinkultur tut uns nur leid” (glass brings us
a new era; brick culture only makes us sad).52
Echoing Scheerbart, Taut designed the Glashaus with the important concept
of removing the limits of solid walls to allow the interpenetration of “inner” and
“outer” space. As Scheerbart argued in the first aphorism of his 1914 published
“Glasarchitektur” (“Glass Architecture”):
If we want our culture to rise to a higher level, we are obliged, for better or worse,
to change our architecture. And this only becomes possible if we take away
the closed character from the rooms in which we live. We can only do that by
introducing glass architecture, which lets in the light of the sun, the moon, and
the stars, not merely through a few windows, but through every possible wall,
which will be made entirely of glass – of colored glass. The new environment,
which we thus create, must bring us a new culture.53