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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bruno Taut | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Taut | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:40:58.119258+00:00 | kb-cron |
A lifelong painter, Taut was distinguished from his European modernist contemporaries by his devotion to colour. As in Magdeburg, he applied lively, clashing colours to his first major commission, the 1912 Gartenstadt Falkenberg housing estate in Berlin, which became known as the "Paint Box Estates". The 1914 Glass Pavilion, an illustration of the new possibilities of glass, was also brightly colored. The difference between Taut and his Modernist contemporaries was never more obvious than at the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung housing exhibition in Stuttgart. In contrast to the pure-white entries from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, Taut's house (Number 19) was painted in primary colours. Le Corbusier is reported to have exclaimed, "My God, Taut is colour-blind!" During the November Revolution of 1918, Taut was involved in the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, an association of revolutionary artists based on council democracy. The group assumed the "primacy of architecture", demanded the demolition of all war memorials and saw art as a means of revolutionising society. From March 1919, Taut belonged to their three-man management team, along with Adolf Behne, César Klein and Walter Gropius. The group disbanded in 1921. In 1924 Taut was made chief architect of GEHAG, a Berlin public housing cooperative, and was the main designer of several successful large residential developments ("Gross-Siedlungen") in Berlin, notably the 1925 Hufeisensiedlung ("Horseshoe Estate"), named for its configuration around a pond, and the 1926 Onkel-Toms-Hütte development ("Uncle Tom's Cabin") in Zehlendorf, named for a local restaurant and set in a thick grove of trees. Both of these constructions became prominent examples of the use of colourful details in architecture. Taut worked for the city architect of Berlin, Martin Wagner, on some of Berlin's Modernist Housing Estates, now recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The designs featured controversial modern flat roofs; access to sunlight, air, and gardens; and generous amenities like gas, electric light, and bathrooms. Political conservatives complained that these developments were too opulent for 'simple people'. The progressive Berlin mayor, Gustav Böss, defended them: "We want to bring the lower levels of society higher." Between 1924 and 1931, Taut's team completed more than 12,000 dwellings. In tribute to Taut, GEHAG incorporated an abstracted graphic of the Horseshoe Estate in its logo. This state housing association was sold by the Senate of Berlin in 1998; its legal successor is Deutsche Wohnen.
== Japan == Being of liberal political sympathies, Taut fled Germany when the Nazis gained power. He was promised work in the USSR in 1932 and 1933 but was obliged to return to Germany in February 1933 to a hostile political environment. Later in the same year, Taut fled to Switzerland. Then, with an invitation from Japanese architect Isaburo Ueno, he travelled to Japan via France, Greece, Turkey and Vladivostok, arriving in Tsuruga, Japan, on 3 May 1933. Taut made his home in Takasaki, Gunma, where he produced three influential book-length appreciations of Japanese culture and architecture, comparing the historical simplicity of Japanese architecture with modernist discipline. For a time, Taut worked as an industrial design teacher, and his models of lamps and furniture sold at the Miratiss shop in Tokyo. Taut wrote in his diary about the famous loyal dog Hachikō. Taut was noted for his appreciation of the stark, minimalist vein of Japanese architecture found at the Ise Shrine and the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto. He was the first to write extensively about the architectural features of the Katsura Imperial Villa from a modernist perspective. Contrasting it with the elaborately decorated shrines of shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu at Nikkō, Tochigi, he famously said that "Japan's architectural arts could not rise higher than Katsura, nor sink lower than Nikko". Taut's writing on the Japanese minimalist aesthetic found an appreciative audience in Japan and subsequently influenced the work of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. The only extant Taut-designed architectural work in Japan is the extension to the Hyuga Villa at Atami in Shizuoka. Built-in 1936 on a site below the original villa owned by businessman Rihei Hyuga, and part modern and part traditional Japanese in style, the three rooms provided additional space for social events and views over nearby Sagami Bay.