Bruno Taut - Germany

Germany

After training in Berlin and joining the office of Theodor Fischer in Stuttgart, Taut established his own Berlin office in 1910. The elder architect Hermann Muthesius suggested that he visit England to learn the garden city philosophy. Muthesius would also introduce him to some of the Deutscher Werkbund group of architects, including Walter Gropius. Taut had socialist sympathies, and before World War I this hindered his advancement.

Taut completed two housing projects in Magdeburg from 1912 through 1915, influenced directly by the humane functionalism and urban design solutions of the garden city philosophy. The Reform estate was built between 1912-15 in the southwest of Magdeburg. The estate comprises one storey terrace houses for a housing trust. It was the first project where Taut used colour as a design principle. The construction of the estate was continued by Carl Krayl. Taut served as city architect in Magdeburg from 1921 to 1923. During his time as city architect a few residential developments were built, i.e. the Hermann Beims estate (1925–28) with 2,100 apartments. Taut designed the exhibition hall 'City and Countryside' in 1921 with concrete trusses and a centre sky light.

A lifelong painter, Taut is unique among his European modernist contemporaries in his devotion to colour. As in Magdeburg he applied lively, clashing colors to his first major commission, the 1912 Falkenberg housing estate in Berlin, which became known as the "Paint Box Estates". The 1914 Glass Pavilion, an essay in the new possibilities of glass, and familiar from black and white reproduction, was actually also colored brightly. Taut's distinction from his Modernist contemporaries was never more obvious than at the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung housing exhibition in Stuttgart. As opposed to pure-white entries from Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, Taut's house (Number 19) was painted in primary colors. Le Corbusier is reported to have exclaimed "My God, Taut is colour-blind!"

In 1924 Taut was made chief architect of GEHAG, a housing cooperative in Berlin, and was the main designer of several successful large residential developments ("Gross-Siedlungen") in Berlin, notably the 1925 Horseshoe Development ("Hufeisensiedlung"), named for its configuration around a pond, and the 1926 Uncle Tom's Cabin Development ("Onkel-Toms Hutte") in Zehlendorf, named oddly for a local restaurant and set in a thick grove of trees. Taut worked for the city architect of Berlin, Martin Wagner, on some of Berlin's Modernist Housing Estates, now recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The designs featured controversially modern flat roofs, humane access to sun, 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."

Taut's team completed more than 12,000 dwellings between 1924 and 1931. GEHAG is still in business, and has a horseshoe as its logo as tribute to Taut.