Date

1976

Author

Aslanoğlu, İnci

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Bruno Taut, one of the contributors in the development of modern architecture at the turn of the Century, was, besides being an architect, a writer of books on architecture, an editor, a city planner and an educator. Taut's earlier experiments during his individualistic and imaginative period which covered roughly the years of the First World War, concentrated primarily on the use of glass as a building material. Among the experimental projects that were executed, his glass pavillion for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne stands out; and was influential on the subsequent developments of building with glass. After the War, Taut remained a significant figure within the expressionist movement in Germany and participated in the 'Arbeitstrat für Kunst' and 'Die Glaseme Kette'. The expressionistic and Utopian projects he designed for the Alpine summits, using glass and reinforced concrete, were truly extraordinary. The proposal for the crowning of the summits has also influenced his later designs for an ideal city where he emphasizes the city center as the crown of the city. The other distinctive phase in Taut's work starts from about 1924 with housing projects in Berlin and presents a rational, functionalistic approach which leaves out most of his previous aesthetic speculations. During his 'siedlung' period, Taut was among the few prominent architects invited by Mies van der Rohe to contribute with a house to the Weissenhof Settlement near Stuttgart, undertaken by the Werkbund Organization in 1927. The years Taut spent outside of Germany, he worked in Russia, Japan, and then in Turkey. He was, in Turkey, the author of several buildings the best known being the Faculty of Letters in Ankara. He also taught at the Academy of Fine Arts where he was the chairman for the two years he stayed in Turkey. Despite his short stay, Taut deserves a special place among the other foreign architects working in Turkey at the time. This may largely be attributed to his sound approach to architecture that negated the accustomed monumental, neo-classical style of the 1930's.

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http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/1976/cilt02/sayi_1/35-48.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/51368

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Department of Architecture, Article