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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2008
In February of this year an exhibition of the work of Hans Scharoun devised by Nasser Golzari and Peter Blundell Jones was put on at the RIBA in London, in connection with which was held a Scharoun Symposium on 17 February. This included two German speakers sponsored by the Goethe Institute. Günter Behnisch spoke as the leading practitioner in what could be called a Scharounian direction. Also invited was Alfred Schinz, one of the most articulate of Scharoun's assistants from the rich period of the early 1950s, when Scharoun devised the prototypes for all his later work. Schinz's health unfortunately let him down, and he suggested that his place be taken by Friedrich Mebes, an architect friend from Essen who had been a student of Scharoun in Berlin in the 1940s and who still practises rather well in a Scharounian direction. With some help from Schinz, Mebes prepared what turned out to be an inspiring and informative paper, and it is printed below slightly shortened and with some tidying of the translation. Peter Blundell Jones
1 Wesen is both the verb to be and a noun meaning being or essence. (PBJ)
2 Schulschaft is a variant on Nachbarschaft, German for neighbourhood. It might therefore be translated, if unsatisfactorily, as ‘schoolhood’.
3 Neues Bauen was a general term for modern architecture in Germany in the 1920s, but was used by Scharoun's mentor Hugo Haring to describe their approach, with particular distinction from the French term Architecture, which they saw as the province of Le Corbusier. (PBJ)