The lily, client and measure of Bruno Taut's Glashaus

Extract

A current issue in architectural scholarship is the rethinking of the origins of Modernism. As a formative exemplar of early architectural Modernism, Bruno Taut's seminal exhibition pavilion, the Glashaus (1914) [1] is understandably part of this debate. In 1959, Reyner Banham in his article, ‘The Glass Paradise’ suggested that it would be appropriate to investigate the origins of the Glashaus, as it was both vastly dissimilar to and exceeded any of Taut's previous designs. In an effort to answer this question, Banham subsequently introduced the unique role played by the Bohemian poet Paul Scheerbart in the design of the Glashaus. As a result of Banham's inference, Rosemarie Haag Bletter systematically explored the Taut/Scheerbart relationship in ‘Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart's Vision: Utopian Aspects of German Expressionist Architecture’ in 1973.