Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House – Weightless Living

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52200/46.A.F0FQWVA0

Keywords:

Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing

Abstract

In his review of Franz Hessel’s "Spazieren in Berlin", Walter Benjamin noted that the author celebrated the "last monuments of an old culture […] for which cosiness came first", but whose time had come. The new architecture transferred "the domicile of men […] into a transit passage of all imaginable forces and waves in light and air. The future stands under the signature of transparency". Two years earlier, Siegfried Kracauer wrote about the exhibition of the Werkbund entitled "Die neue Wohnung" (The New Home) in 1927. Here, the attempt "to undermine the former isolation of the individual by dismantling the external partition walls" became evident. But perhaps "only the anonymous existence of the mass bound to capitalistic economy is granted a voice".

How to Cite

Wagner, M. (2012). Mies van der Rohe’s Tugendhat House – Weightless Living. Docomomo Journal, (46), 20–25. https://doi.org/10.52200/46.A.F0FQWVA0

Published

2012-07-01

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Author Biography

Monika Wagner, Universität Hamburg

Studied painting, art history, archaeology and literature. She is teacher of Art History at the University of Hamburg since 1987. The focus of her publication activities since mid 1990s has been on the significance of materials and substances. She developed a completely new approach to the understanding of Modern art in the book Das Material der Kunst, 2001.