Custom Residential Architects Network

This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Custom Residential Architects Network and Committee on Design .
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When I was in school, the seemingly total disconnect between all of architectural history and modernism discomfited me. For thousands of year, the transitions from this to that made sense and then, in the early 20th century, we managed to expunge all of that and start over. There were no connections across that divide. I didn't believe it but in those days I could not see across the abyss. Today's post contains images of Peter Behrens' own house in the Darmstadt Artists Colony (DAC), completed no later than 1901. Behrens was invited to join the Colony as a painter and graphic designer, but quickly took the opportunity to design and build this house on the Mathildenhohe. On the outside, it is a revealing attempt to make architecture without speaking architecture's language. Stripped of classical detail, it is also oblivious, expressively, to gravity. In places the elevations are two dimensional graphic designs foisted on the building with no understanding of architectural responsibility. This building is raw revolution, the thing itself before the theory had been written, a work created sans road map. Behrens, unlike Loos later, could not completely banish exterior decoration. Thus, this house is at the divide, no longer art nouveau, but not quite modern either. Behrens of course grew up to be a grandfather of modern architecture, teacher and mentor to Mies and Gropius among others. ------------------------------------------- Mike Mense FAIA Owner mmenseArchitects Anchorage AK -------------------------------------------

Thank you very much.  It is good to be reminded of such things.

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Sidney Delson FAIA Emeritus
East Hampton NY
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-07-2014 19:55
From: Mike Mense
Subject: Prenatal Modernism

This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Custom Residential Architects Network and Committee on Design .
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When I was in school, the seemingly total disconnect between all of architectural history and modernism discomfited me. For thousands of year, the transitions from this to that made sense and then, in the early 20th century, we managed to expunge all of that and start over. There were no connections across that divide. I didn't believe it but in those days I could not see across the abyss. Today's post contains images of Peter Behrens' own house in the Darmstadt Artists Colony (DAC), completed no later than 1901. Behrens was invited to join the Colony as a painter and graphic designer, but quickly took the opportunity to design and build this house on the Mathildenhohe. On the outside, it is a revealing attempt to make architecture without speaking architecture's language. Stripped of classical detail, it is also oblivious, expressively, to gravity. In places the elevations are two dimensional graphic designs foisted on the building with no understanding of architectural responsibility. This building is raw revolution, the thing itself before the theory had been written, a work created sans road map. Behrens, unlike Loos later, could not completely banish exterior decoration. Thus, this house is at the divide, no longer art nouveau, but not quite modern either. Behrens of course grew up to be a grandfather of modern architecture, teacher and mentor to Mies and Gropius among others.

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Mike Mense FAIA
Owner
mmenseArchitects
Anchorage AK
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