There is a saying in German: quadratisch, praktisch, gut. which translates to "square, practical, good." Actually, I'm not sure if that's an informal motto, or if it's just the slogan of RitterSport chocolate bars, but it applies equally.
Flip through any magazine of architecture from any German-speaking country and you will quickly discover a preponderance of glass boxes. In many ways, the Swiss and Austrians are even worse since they really enshrine the square in facade. Peruse Wettbewerb Aktuel a catalog of competition results, and you will be hard pressed to find find something that doesn't look like everything else. All of the renderings, for example, include the same whiteness, transparency, and burst of birds in flight, to say nothing of the reflective glass boxes depicted. A casual reader would be forgiven for thinking these magazines were rather a single office's monograph.
There are of course a few exceptions- sometimes inferior renderings do not crank up the etheriality to 11, but are clearly aspiring to do so. Or you get firms like Behnisch who are proposing something other than glass boxes.
There is a deliberateness to all German architecture. A high degree of rigidity and fixedness, a deathly seriousness which is as far removed from whimsy as is possible. At its highest form, German architecture reaches the rigid, crystalline, lightness which was first envisioned by Mies in his drawings of entirely glass skyscrapers. German architecture has no smell- at worst, a somber and ill-fitting tomb for the living, at best, an eternal and timeless open mausoleum for the saints.
Whenever attempts are made to make the architecture more lively, say with an angled wall or a kinked stair, I have the eerie sense of a mortician's attempts to position a corpse with more "life-like" appearance.
German houses and apartments are very compartmentalized. The hierarchy is stratified: the house is a collection of rooms of equal size evenly distributed around a hallway which serves as an entry. Each room contains one window and one large cabinet. This probably comes from a lack of floor space (space is much more scarce) and a very functionalist attitude. Realistically speaking, the area required to cook and to have cooking apparatus is not that different than the area taken up by a bed and the ability to get in and out of it.
Modern American houses have a more blended hierarchy: the spaces of the house range in size and importance from the immediate outside area to the tiny guest bathroom. Germans may also prioritize the importance of various rooms (I'm still trying to figure out what that may be, probably a sitting room) but it's the Americans who give form to their feelings about the spaces.
Is it an over simplification to say that American architecture prioritizes the feelings of its owners, a reflection of their aspirations and ideologies, while German architecture prioritizes functionality and visible order?
Flip through any magazine of architecture from any German-speaking country and you will quickly discover a preponderance of glass boxes. In many ways, the Swiss and Austrians are even worse since they really enshrine the square in facade. Peruse Wettbewerb Aktuel a catalog of competition results, and you will be hard pressed to find find something that doesn't look like everything else. All of the renderings, for example, include the same whiteness, transparency, and burst of birds in flight, to say nothing of the reflective glass boxes depicted. A casual reader would be forgiven for thinking these magazines were rather a single office's monograph.
There are of course a few exceptions- sometimes inferior renderings do not crank up the etheriality to 11, but are clearly aspiring to do so. Or you get firms like Behnisch who are proposing something other than glass boxes.
There is a deliberateness to all German architecture. A high degree of rigidity and fixedness, a deathly seriousness which is as far removed from whimsy as is possible. At its highest form, German architecture reaches the rigid, crystalline, lightness which was first envisioned by Mies in his drawings of entirely glass skyscrapers. German architecture has no smell- at worst, a somber and ill-fitting tomb for the living, at best, an eternal and timeless open mausoleum for the saints.
Whenever attempts are made to make the architecture more lively, say with an angled wall or a kinked stair, I have the eerie sense of a mortician's attempts to position a corpse with more "life-like" appearance.
German houses and apartments are very compartmentalized. The hierarchy is stratified: the house is a collection of rooms of equal size evenly distributed around a hallway which serves as an entry. Each room contains one window and one large cabinet. This probably comes from a lack of floor space (space is much more scarce) and a very functionalist attitude. Realistically speaking, the area required to cook and to have cooking apparatus is not that different than the area taken up by a bed and the ability to get in and out of it.
Modern American houses have a more blended hierarchy: the spaces of the house range in size and importance from the immediate outside area to the tiny guest bathroom. Germans may also prioritize the importance of various rooms (I'm still trying to figure out what that may be, probably a sitting room) but it's the Americans who give form to their feelings about the spaces.
Is it an over simplification to say that American architecture prioritizes the feelings of its owners, a reflection of their aspirations and ideologies, while German architecture prioritizes functionality and visible order?
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