‘From 1912 to 1922…there flourished in German speaking countries a school of so-called expressionists…this movement was rapidly pushed into the limbo labelled “romantic”…only to emerge again with force and authority as a prophecy of what would happen to modern architecture in the nineteen-fifties.’ (Reyner Banham). Though undoubtedly sweeping, Banham’s statement does convey the feeling that Expressionist architecture somehow died a premature death, only to rise from the grave…at least as an influence.
Expressionism
is a loosely used term applied to architecture from 1911 to 1925 that is not
old-fashioned, but that does not conform to the approach that gave rise to the
International Style. Expression of the functions of a building through its form
is normally associated with the latter. Expressionism is rather the expression
of artistic and spiritual feeling which may, or may not, be functional. The
Expressionism is commonly associated with painters like Kokoschka and Nolde,
and sculptors like Barlach. But whereas self-expression is central to these
artists, the architects coupled it with a social consciousness.
Expressionism
is often linked to post-war Germany in an attempt to see it as the product of a
specific set of circumstances: the disillusionment of losing a war and the need
for some great social and spiritual renewal. A new age ushered in by visionary
architects. When these feelings receded, the theory goes, such a localized
architecture could not survive: it belonged only to a specific time. Leaving
apart the question of time for a while, it might be useful to point out the
existences of Dutch Expressionist architecture in the Amsterdam School. In 1918
an estate was commissioned from JF Steel and became the Park Meerwijk colony
Some of the plans, particularly Blaauw’s (one of the architects Staal employed
on the project) have crystalline shapes. The crystal was an Expressionist symbol
of the soul, which they borrowed from the writer Wilhelm Worringer. The buildings
have an organic approach to shapes similar to the Expressionists plus there is
also a considerable influence from the English Arts and Crafts Movement in the
use of materials such as thatch, brick, vertical
tile-hanging and wood.
This, and
similar work such as P Vorkink and JP
Wormser or Bernhard Hoetger, might be seen to be part of the same thought
process that produced the German Otto Bartning’s house for a director in Zeipau
in Schleswig (1923-25). A more explicitly Expressionist building is JM van der
Meij’s Het Scheepvaarthuis headquarters for the Navigation Company in Amsterdam
(1916). The sculpted ornamentation creates a feeling of nervous energy and
symbolizes the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans as well as the Great Bear
star constellation. Electric light bulbs mark the position of the stars. In
other words the building is used as a vehicle to express concerns other than
purely architectural. Working with van der Meij on this building was M de
Klerk, who built the Eigenaard estate (1913-15) and the triangle formed by the
Oostzaanstraat, Zaanstraat and Hembrugstrat (1918-21). He has tried to
introduce movement in the wall surfaces by using broad sweeps of brick and
imbalance, or eccentricities, of proportion.
Another
criticism levelled at Expressionism is that it is “paper architecture”; nothing
was ever built, it was purely visionary sketches. Admittedly the crystalline
structures of Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion (1914) or J Lambert, G Saake and P
Bailly’s Pavillon des Diamantaires or W
Luckhardt and R Belling’s Mercedes-Stern Publicity Pavilion, were only
temporary buildings for exhibitions but many Expressionist ideas not only
passed the paper stage but stayed up; not as follies but as usable, viable
buildings or structures. Structures include
Walter Gropius’ War Memorial in Weimar (1919), Max Taut’s Wissinger Tomb in
Stahnsdort (1920) or Hermann Obrist’s Tomb of Karl Oertel (before 1911).
Amongst the fully realised buildings is W Wurzbach and R Belling’s Scala
Restaurant in Berlin (1921), the interior of which shows the use of crystalline
structures in a permanent building. There
are also examples of interior design such as Bruno Taut’s Club Room in Berlin
(1919-21) which attempts to bring movement and dynamic tension into the room by
use of a plaster spiral with a colour scheme provided by Franz Mutzenbecher.
Sculptural qualities can be seen in Eric Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower
Observatory in Potsdam (1921) which appears to have been moulded with the ease
of a soft material like clay. It is in fact brick, cut and given the appearance
of concrete. In 1912 the newly formed
Anthroposophical Society decided on the construction of ‘a free high school for
spiritual science’, to be named after another famous thinker: Goethe.
Goetheanum I burned down on New Year’s Eve 1922/3 but the architect, Rudolf
Steiner, designed another, which was to be put up between 1925 and 1928. Both
buildings display a sense of arrested motion in the otherwise static forms, as
it the building were capable of movement but frozen at a specific moment. The
sculptural forms are treated as motifs which metamorphose organically from one
part of the building to another. As Steiner describes it, ‘it is necessary so to
allow one concept to grow out of another that in the progressive living
metamorphosis of concepts there come to light images of that which appears in
nature as a being possessing form.’
Rudolf Steiner,
as far as we know, had no contact with the other Expressionists, and there were
a number of architects working in Germany at this time who were not in what we
might call the inner core of Expressionism, but who were profoundly influenced.
Hans Poelzig’s Bismark Monument near Bingerbrück (1911) is an
early example of a building Bruno Taut much admired. It has the overall form of
an oriental temple with a rippling, textured surface. In 1919 Poelzig had the
opportunity to convert the Schumann Circus, in Berlin, into a new theatre – the
Grosses Schauspielhaus. This building exploits spatial effects, false walls of
roughly rendered brickwork, colour and rings of stalactite forms to literally
theatrical effect. Through the stylized stalactites were not purely decorative,
they had an acoustic function, but they seemed to have been picked up in the
decoration of Wilhelm Kreis’ Rheinhalle Planetarium in Düsseldorf (1926). Among Poelzig’s other buildings the Capital Cinema in
Berlin, of 1925, was another attempt to capture the irrational world of fantasy
in a building of public entertainment. Peter Behrens, another architect
associated with the Werkbund, built his IG Farben chemical and dye works
(1920-24) in Hoechst-am-Main with almost as many Gothic overtones as his
Cathedral Masons’ Lodge of 1922. He demonstrated that the aesthetics of a
building that had no other function than to celebrate the tradition of the
‘spiritual brotherhood of religious artists’ could also work in industrial
architecture.
The pre-war Werkbund was much tougher in their architectural
ideas, and more intent on producing architecture which reflected industry
rather than transforming it. Many post-war architects revitalised this strain
of modern architecture under the influence of Russian ideas, like those of
Lissitsky, Werner Graeff and the G group. In Holland the Amsterdam School was
bitterly opposed by De Stijl, with architects like JJP Oud trying to impose
order, unity and harmony in buildings by use of geometric forms. A group called
the Ring was formed in Germany and included such Expressionist-type architects
as Bruno and Max Taut, Erich Mendelsohn, the Luckhardt brohers, Hans Scharoun,
Hans Poelzig and Otto Bartning. In the late twenties this group changed
noticeably in style, for example Bruno Taut’s Gehag housing in Berlin-Britz of
1927. It would be wrong to ascribe this change wholly to the emergence of
Functionalist and Rationalist theories. Though it is not hard to see how a theory
based on architecture might have more appeal to an architect than one based on
art and spirituality. But it was the practical facts of their trade which had
the most direct influence on the evolution of their work. From about 1924
onwards local governments began to commission and build designs for
large-scale, low-cost, domestic housing developments. The Ring were heavily
engaged in the suburbs of Berlin until after 1930. Given the financial
condition of the country at the time, these housing estates had to be built to
the most stringent budgets, and a Functionalist/Rationalist approach was
necessary to extract the maximum possible performance from materials, machinery
and every square meter of floor space and site.
Expressionist architecture generally fared much better in
buildings of public and community interest, such as churches, theatres and monuments,
than it did in the economic and functional demands of industry and mass
housing. But it was not really until the 1960s in Germany that anything of real
force or original vitality emerged due to changed economic conditions. Back in
the assumed Expressionist period proper Dominikus Böhm built or rebuilt many
Catholic churches in the Expressionist style. In the sixties, his son Gottfried
Böhm
also maintained that churches must be more than just functional, that they must
show spatial qualities of a purely expressive nature. His Catholic Pilgrims
Church in Neviges (1966-68) has no visible geometric order or system of
measurement, the complex faceting of the walls and ceiling show a sculptural
and suprarational approach to architecture. Dieter Baumewerd, in his Church of
the Holy Spirit in Emmerich am Niederrhein (1965-66), uses reinforced concrete
mushroom-like shapes to create a large number of different heights and light
effects inside, as well as more angular mushroom shapes on the outside to
provide a distinctive profile. Helmut Striffler uses contrasts in interior
light and darkness by narrow window slits in solid concrete walls, with an acute
pitch of the roof, in his Church on the Blumenau in Mannheim in 1961. An
Expressionist distribution of contrasting heights and shapes and sizes of rooms
is consolidated in his Memorial Chapel in Dachau, built in 1967. The sculptural
handling of space to spiritual intent is also evident, but perhaps to a lesser
extent, in the church work of the collective – Wolfgang Hirsch, Rudolf Hoinkis,
Martin Lanz, Paul Schütz and Dieter Stahl, and in the work of Rainer Disse,
Klaus Franz and Carlfried Mutschler.
Though Expressionism is given its fullest reign in Germany,
in church architecture, it is not an isolated phenomenon; it can be seen to
contribute to a liberalisation of what might be called post-Brutalism. The
basic elements are still concrete cubes, but they are handled with greater
freedom. Numerous examples could be given, because of the vague nature of the
influence, so Reinhard Gieselmann’s Home for the Aged in Karlsruhe (1964-66)
will have to suffice. A less relevant, and totally improvable, example could be
Denys Lasdun’s work at the University of East Anglia, which even has the
graffiti ‘Post-Brutality Architecture’! In other words it is a distribution of
concrete cubes and rectangles designed to break up the monotony of a façade in
a manner justified more by art than by function. Gottfried Böhm’s
town hall at Bensberg, in 1967, has more explicit romantic/Expressionist
content and is attached to an old castle; his Bethany Children’s Village
(1966-68) situated in Bensberg, has some of
the same playful fantasy. Günther Bock describes his community
centre at Sindlungen (1961) as a ‘bizarre concrete structure’ and Roland
Rainer, M Saume and G Norer also seem to use concrete in an expressive, rather
than purely logical, manner in Bremen City Hall (1962-65). The irrational, or
seemingly irrational, has great appeal for these architects though they are
reticent about their sources and inspiration. Some of the influence is likely
to be sculpture which may or may not have Expressionist style and intent.
Johannes Peter Hölzingert and Herman Goepfert’s Lakeside Restaurant at
Karlruhe (1966-67) which uses fluorescent tubes in the manner of contemporary
sculpture but inserted into a supporting steel frame at different levels. This
results in a complex sculptural canopy to the building. Other materials, such
as plastics, now offer the architect new possibilities of creating expressive,
sculptural forms – for example in Dieter Schind’s work.
It is probably most relevant to look at German architects in
an attempt to trace the influence of Expressionism but there are several other
architects whose style became more fluid and Expressionist during the fifties
and sixties. The most famous of these is Le Corbusier. From 1950 to 1954 Le
Corbusier’s church Notre-Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, Vosges, was being
constructed. It contains a towering silo-like chapel and a boldly projecting
brown concrete roof, which Le Corbusier says was inspired by the shell of a
crab. The two white walls meet like the prow of a ship, and have a surface
texturing produced by rough timber shuttering. Water is drained off using an
oriental system. The south wall has an irregular series of small square and
rectangular windows, splayed to produce a lighting effect inside expressive of
mystical experience. It also produces a sense of movement, since the viewer can
only see one or two windows at any one time. Instead you see the light diffused
from the other invisible windows so the full range of effects can only be seen
by moving around the building. Le Corbusier’s Palace of the Assembly in Chandigarh
(1953) has a brise-soleil like the roof at Ronchamp. The roof of this building
is distinctive in outline with a triangular projecting council chamber and a
similarly projecting large assembly hall shaped like a cooling tower. His
Maison de l’Homme (Centre Le Corbusier) in Zurich (1963-67) has two large steel
screens fitted together to provide an angularly panelled brise-soleil, which
breaks up the space of the roof terrace into an ever-changing system of
heights. Le Corbusier denies the influence of Expressionism on his work, but
this is perhaps not to be taken too seriously. In 1926-7 he visited Steiner’s
Goetheanum II in progress and was described as being enormously impressed. But
even so it took a long time for anything similar to emerge in his own work.
Other architects of note include Hans Scharoun. Some of his hostels
and high rise apartments follow a typical international box style but his
Berliner Philharmonie concert hall (1956-63) is of especial note but other
projects and individual houses maintain an eccentric conjunction of angles. Emile
Aillaud was determined in his Citė de l’Abreuvoir, avenue Ėdouard
Vaillant at Paris-Bobigny, that he would avoid the sterile discipline of
endless right angles and geometrical exactness of post-Expressionist
architecture. He wanted a fluid approach which would provide ever-changing
visual variety. At Bobigny he created a long, wavy, broken line of apartments
in five-storey towers, some cylindrical, others three-pointed. The
three-pointed plan also appears at the eastern end in a series of three-storey
buildings.
The Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto reverses the
German trend and extends from an early functionalism to greater experimentation
with distinctive, strong and irregular shapes for commissions from museums and
churches to town halls and public buildings including the Helsinki University
of Technology (1949-64) and the Finlandia Hall (1976). His thorough knowledge
of furniture design and traditional Scandinavian materials like wood led to a
sculptural approach to larger structures. The Vuokseniska church at Imatra, by Alvar
Aalto, has a copper roof with windows above an uneven, bulging, façade. The
interior volumes bear little relation to the exterior bulge though there are three
humps in the internal ceiling (not reflected in the roof-line) which correspond
to the windows. These sections can be divided by sliding partitions, part of
the path of which is curved, going past two small curved vaults.
Adventurous modern church architecture is not something that
only happened in Europe. In America Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Unitarian
Church of Madison, in 1947, on a triangular plan, with a triangular copper roof
as an expression of hands held together in prayer. His Beth Sholom Synagogue of
1954 is likewise a symbol and expression, this time themed on the tenets of Judaism.
Lloyd Wright’s regard for what he called ‘organic architecture’ is evident in
the expanding spiral of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York (1956). You
could also go to Australia, for the Sydney Opera House, or to South America,
but the links with previous examples of Expressionist architecture become
increasingly difficult to establish in moving outside Europe. Europe, and
largely Germany with the notable exception of the Amsterdam School, contained
the Expressionist buildings of the teens and twenties. And a substantial number
of completed buildings there were considering the visionary nature of their
sketches. These were practicing architects with sound structural understanding.
It was not that Expressionist architecture couldn’t be built that led to its
decline but that it couldn’t be built in the economic conditions of Germany during
the late twenties and thirties. Meanwhile the rise of the Machine Age aesthetic
and the International Style provided an alternative for modernists. In some
cases this was a reaffirmation of ideas, to which Expressionism only formed an
interlude. This was the case with Walter Gropius who started the Bauhaus with
an Expressionist/Arts and Crafts style and ideology but evolved to a more
functionalist position compatible with the Werkbund era. In the fifties and
sixties there was a reaction against this approach to architecture, and a
revival of interest in the work of Gaudi, Art Nouveau, Gothic and Oriental
architecture that echoed some of the same sources of inspiration as the
Expressionists. So there is a sense in which Expressionism is the most directly
linked in time and, in Germany at least, in place to the origins of post-Second
World War architecture. But Expressionism is only part of an overall heritage
of influences. It failed to establish itself as an ‘International Style’.
Perhaps the very concept is anathema to the personal expression of spiritual
and sometimes eccentric passion. Yet paradoxically it has served well as a
stylistic influence in the building of churches and many other buildings of
community focus where the aspirations and experiences of visitors is more
important than the basic functions of domesticity and economy.
Copyright c.1980 Adrian Annabel
