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The New Objectivity (a translation of the German Neue Sachlichkeit, sometimes also translated as New Sobriety) is a name often given to the Modern architecture that emerged in Europe, primarily German-speaking Europe, in the 1920s and 30s. It is also frequently called Neues Bauen (New Building). The New Objectivity remodeled many German cities in this period.
The earliest examples of the style date to before the First World War, under the auspices of the Deutscher Werkbund's attempt to provide a modern face for Germany. Many of the architects who would become associated with the New Objectivity were practicing in a similar manner in the 1910s, using glass surfaces and severe geometric compositions. Examples of this include Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer's 1911 Fagus Factory or Hans Poelzig's 1912 department store in Breslau (Wrocław). However, in the aftermath of the war these architects (as well as others such as Bruno Taut) worked in the revolutionary Arbeitsrat für Kunst, pioneering Expressionist architecture, particularly through the secret Glass Chain group. The early works of the Bauhaus, such as the Sommerfeld House, were in this vein. Expressionism's dynamism and use of glass (whether for transparency or colour effects) would be a mainstay of the New Objectivity.
The turn from Expressionism towards the more familiarly Modernist styles of the mid-late 1920s came under the influence of the Dutch avant-garde, particularly De Stijl, whose architects such as Jan Wils and JJP Oud had adapted ideas derived from Frank Lloyd Wright into cubic social housing, inflected with what Theo van Doesburg called 'the machine aesthetic'. Also steering German architects away from Expressionism was the influence of Constructivism, particularly of Vkhutemas and of El Lissitzky, who stayed in Berlin frequently during the early 1920s. Another element was the work in France of Le Corbusier, such as the proposals for the concrete 'Citrohan' house. In addition, Erich Mendelsohn had already been veering away from Expressionism towards more streamlined, dynamic forms, such as in his Mossehaus newspaper offices and the Gliwice Weichsmann factory, both 1921–2.
Perhaps the earliest examples of the 'New Building' in Germany were at the 1922 Bauhaus exhibition, Georg Muche's Haus am Horn, and in the same year, Gropius/Meyer's design for Chicago's Tribune Tower competition. However, the fullest early exploration of a new, non-expressionist avant-garde idiom was in the 1923–24 'Italienischer Garten' in Celle by Otto Haesler.
This was the first Modernist Siedlung (literally "settlement", though "estate" would be more precise), an area of new-build social housing characterised by flat roofs, an irregular, asymmetrical plan, with houses arranged in south-facing terraces with generous windows and rendered surfaces. Contrary to the 'white box' idea later popularised by the International Style, these were frequently painted in bright colors. The strongest proponent of color among the housing architects was Bruno Taut.
The major expansion of this came with the appointment of Ernst May to the position of city architect and planner by the Social Democratic administration of Frankfurt-am-Main. May was trained by the British garden city planner Raymond Unwin, and his Siedlungen showed garden city influence in their use of open space: they totally repudiated the nostalgic style of Unwin's projects such as Hampstead Garden Suburb. May's 'New Frankfurt' would be enormously important for the subsequent development of the New Objectivity, not only because of its striking appearance but also in its success in quickly re-housing thousands of the city's poor.
However, their advanced techniques often alienated the building profession, much of whom were made superfluous by the lack of ornament and speed of construction. May would also employ other architects in Frankfurt such as Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (where she developed the Frankfurt kitchen) and Mart Stam. The immediate effect of May's work can be seen in Gropius's 1926 Siedlung Dessau-Törten in Dessau (built around the same time as the more famous Bauhaus building), which also pioneered prefabrication technology. That Germany had become the centre of the New Building – as it was called, in preference to 'the New Architecture' – was confirmed by the Werkbund's Weissenhof Estate of 1927, where despite the presence of Le Corbusier and JJP Oud, most of the architects were German speaking. Further, Werkbund Estate-exhibitions were mounted in Wrocław and Vienna in subsequent years.
The architects of the New Objectivity were eager to build as much cost-effective housing as possible, partly to address Germany's postwar housing crisis, and partly to fulfill the promise of Article 155 of the 1919 Weimar Constitution, which provided for "a healthy dwelling" for all Germans. This phrase drove the technical definition of Existenzminimum (subsistence dwelling) in terms of minimally-acceptable floorspace, density, fresh air, access to green space, access to transit, and other such resident issues.
At the same time there was a massive expansion of the style across German cities. In Berlin, architect-planner Martin Wagner worked with the former Expressionists Bruno Taut and Hugo Häring on colourful developments of flats and terraced houses such as the 1925 Horseshoe Estate, the 1926 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' (Onkel-Toms-Hütte) and the 1929 'Carl-Legien-Siedlung', through the auspices of the Trade Unionist building society GEHAG. Taut's designs featured controversially modern flat roofs, humane access to sun, air and gardens, and generous amenities like gas, electric light, and bathrooms. Critics on the political Right 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." Similar experiments in municipal socialism such as the Viennese Gemeindebau were more stylistically eclectic, so Frankfurt and Berlin's authorities were taking a gamble on public approval of the new style.
Elsewhere, Karl Schneider designed Estates in Hamburg, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed low-cost houses in Berlin's Afrikanische Strasse (and in 1926, a monument to Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht) while straight-aligned, and to their critics, schematic Zeilenbau flats were built to the designs of Otto Haesler, Gropius and others in Dammerstock, Karlsruhe. The term Functionalism began to be used to denote the rather severe, nothing superfluous ethos of the New Objectivity, being used as early as 1925 by Adolf Behne in his book Der Moderne Zweckbau ("The Modern Functional Building"). In 1926, practically all Modernist German architects organised themselves into a group known as Der Ring, which attracted criticism from soon to be-Nazi architects like Paul Schultze-Naumburg, who formed Der Block in response. In 1928 the CIAM had formed, and its earliest conferences, dedicated to questions of Existenzminimum were dominated by the social programmes of German architects.
A leftist, technologically oriented wing of the movement had formed in Switzerland and the Netherlands, the so-called ABC Group. It was made up of collaborators of El Lissitzky such as Mart Stam and Hannes Meyer, whose greatest work was the glassy expanse of the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam. The clean lines of the New Objectivity were also being used for schools and public buildings, by May in Frankfurt, in Hannes Meyer's ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau and Max Taut's Alexander von Humboldt School in Berlin, as well as police administration and office buildings in Berlin under Martin Wagner. Cinemas, which would be very influential on Streamline Moderne picture palaces, were designed by Erich Mendelsohn (Kino-Universum, now Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, 1926) and Hans Poelzig (Kino Babylon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse, Berlin, 1928–29) A composite style that used the new forms with more traditional masonry building was developed by Poelzig with his Haus des Rundfunks in Berlin and IG Farben Building in Frankfurt, and by Emil Fahrenkamp in his undulating Berlin Shell-Haus. Meanwhile, Erich Mendelsohn's architecture had developed into a 'dynamic functionalism' for commerce, seen in his curvaceous department stores such as the Columbus-Haus in Berlin (demolished in the 1950s) and in the Schocken Department Stores, in Stuttgart (demolished in the 1960s) Chemnitz and Wrocław. In Munich Robert Vorhoelzer and Robert Poeverlein founded the "Bayerische Postbauschule" and built many modernist post offices while the architectural mainstream of 1920s and 1930s Munich still preferred the nostalgic "Heimatstil".
The Great Depression, beginning in 1929, had a disastrous effect on the New Building, because of Germany's financial dependence on the USA. Many estates and projects planned in Frankfurt and Berlin were postponed indefinitely, while the architectural profession became politically polarised, something symbolised by the sacking in 1930 of the Marxist Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer—who had stressed, with his collaborators Ludwig Hilberseimer and Mart Stam, the importance of working class and collective housing—to be replaced by Mies van der Rohe, whose Barcelona Pavilion and Tugendhat House had gained him a reputation as a purveyor of luxury to the rich, and proceeded to turn the Bauhaus into a private school.
Important work within Germany continued into the early 1930s, particularly the Ring's Siemensstadt Estate in Berlin, which was planned by Hans Scharoun as a more individual and humane version of the 'existence minimum' residential housing formula. But the political mood turned uglier through that time, with open hostile press, and direct pressure on Jewish and/or Social Democratic architects to leave the country. Many prominent German modernists went to the Soviet Union. Since 1920, Moscow had been the site of the Russian state-run art and technical school, a close parallel to the Bauhaus, Vkhutemas, and there had been significant cultural connection through the cross-fertilization of El Lissitzky. Russia had colossal plans for entire cities of worker housing, and an eye on acquiring German expertise. Ernst May, Stam, and Schütte-Lihotzky moved there in 1930 to design New Towns like Magnitogorsk, with Hannes Meyer's so-called 'Bauhaus Brigade' and Bruno Taut soon to follow.
But the Russian experiment was over almost before it started. Working conditions proved hopeless, supplies impossible to get, and the labor unskilled and uninterested. Stalin's acceptance of the "retrograde" Palace of Soviets entry in the February 1932 competition provoked a strong reaction from the international modernist community, particularly Le Corbusier. The modernists had just lost their biggest client. Internal Russian politics led to vicious in-fighting among Russian architects' unions, and an equally vicious campaign against foreign 'specialists'. Some designers did not survive the experience.
Others would leave Germany for Japan, or for the sizable German-exile community in Istanbul. Major architects in the modernist community ended up as far afield as Kenya, Mexico, and Sweden.
Others left for the Isokon Project and other projects in England, then eventually to the United States, where Gropius, Breuer and Berlin city planner Martin Wagner would educate a generation of students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
More popularly, in the United States, the publication of Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock's groundbreaking International Style MOMA exhibition and book of 1932 established an official "canon" of the style, with an emphasis on Mies, Gropius, and Le Corbusier. Attention to these three came as the expense of the Social Democratic context of Neues Bauen, and the architectural logic of state-sponsored mass-produced dwellings. Johnson and Hitchcock derided 'fanatical functionalists' like Hannes Meyer for building for "some proletarian superman of the future". Although stripped of its social meaning and intellectual rigor on import to the USA, the New Objectivity would nevertheless be enormously influential on the postwar development of Modern architecture worldwide.
Characterization of New Objectivity as an architectural style to begin with would have provoked strong disagreement from its practitioners. In the words of Gropius, they believed that buildings should be "shaped by internal laws without lies and games," and that the practice of building would transcend the use of ornament and any stylistic categorization. In German the phrase Neues Bauen, dating from a 1919 book by Erwin Gutkind, captures this idea, because Bauen connotes 'construction' as opposed to 'architecture'. [1]
The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known as the Bauhaus, was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts. The school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify individual artistic vision with the principles of mass production and emphasis on function. Along with the doctrine of functionalism, the Bauhaus initiated the conceptual understanding of architecture and design.
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar (1919). Gropius was also a leading architect of the International Style.
The International Style or internationalism is a major architectural style that was developed in the 1920s and 1930s and was closely related to modernism and modernist architecture. It was first defined by Museum of Modern Art curators Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932, based on works of architecture from the 1920s. The terms rationalist architecture and modern movement are often used interchangeably with International Style, although the former is mostly used in the English-speaking world to specifically refer to the Italian rationalism, or even the International Style that developed in Europe as a whole.
Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture, was an architectural movement and style that was prominent in the 20th century, between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. Modern architecture was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction ; the principle functionalism ; an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament.
The Deutscher Werkbund is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design. Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with design professionals to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets. The Werkbund was less an artistic movement than a state-sponsored effort to integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass production techniques, to put Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States. Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau indicates its range of interest.
The year 1928 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Bruno Julius Florian Taut was a renowned German architect, urban planner and author of Prussian Lithuanian heritage. He was active during the Weimar period and is known for his theoretical works as well as his building designs.
The first Werkbund Exhibition of 1914 was held at Rheinpark in Cologne, Germany.
Hans Poelzig was a German architect, painter and set designer.
Mart Stam was a Dutch architect, urban planner, and furniture designer. Stam was extraordinarily well-connected, and his career intersects with important moments in the history of 20th-century European architecture, including the invention of the cantilever chair, teaching at the Bauhaus, contributions to the Weissenhof Estate, the Van Nelle Factory,, buildings for Ernst May's New Frankfurt housing estates, followed by work in the USSR with the idealistic May Brigade, to teaching positions in Amsterdam and post-war East Germany. Upon return to the Netherlands he contributed to postwar reconstruction and finally retired,, in Switzerland, where he died.
Hans Emil "Hannes" Meyer was a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus Dessau from 1928 to 1930.
Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts that especially developed and dominated in Germany. Brick Expressionism is a special variant of this movement in western and northern Germany, as well as in the Netherlands.
The Weissenhof Estate is a housing estate built for the 1927 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany. It was an international showcase of modern architecture's aspiration to provide cheap, simple, efficient, and good-quality housing.
The Arbeitsrat für Kunst was a union of architects, painters, sculptors and art writers, who were based in Berlin from 1918 to 1921. It developed as a response to the Workers and Soldiers councils and was dedicated to bringing current developments and tendencies in architecture and art to a broader population.
Der Ring was an architectural collective founded in 1926 in Berlin. It emerged from expressionist architecture with a functionalist agenda. Der Ring was a group of young architects, formed with the objective of promoting Modernist architecture. It took a position against the prevailing architecture of the time, Historicism. With the rise of National Socialism and the increasing difficulty between Hugo Häring and the other members, Der Ring dissolved in 1933.
In the meantime the German architects whose work follows newly discovered laws of design, have founded a new association. 'The Ring' — a figure of self-contained form without a head — unites a group of like-minded people to pursue their ideals in unison.
The architecture of Germany has a long, rich and diverse history. Every major European style from Roman to Postmodern is represented, including renowned examples of Carolingian, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Modern and International Style architecture.
Berlin Modernism Housing Estates is a World Heritage Site designated in 2008, comprising six separate subsidized housing estates in Berlin. Dating mainly from the years of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), when the city of Berlin was particularly progressive socially, politically and culturally, they are outstanding examples of the building reform movement that contributed to improving housing and living conditions for people with low incomes through innovative approaches to architecture and urban planning. The estates also provide exceptional examples of new urban and architectural typologies, featuring fresh design solutions, as well as technical and aesthetic innovations.
New Frankfurt was an affordable public housing program in Frankfurt started in 1925 and completed in 1930. It was also the name of the accompanying magazine that was published from 1926 to 1931 dedicated to international trends in architecture, art, housing and education.
Erwin Anton Gutkind, was a German-Jewish architect and city planner, who left Berlin in 1935 for Paris, London and then Philadelphia, where he became a member of the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. Of his work in Germany, all but one building remains and as of 2013 most if not all have historical protection orders on them. Some of them have also been restored.
Werkbund exhibition – The Dwelling was an exhibition organised by Deutscher Werkbund held in Stuttgart between July and October 1927.
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