Responses to Mechanization: The Deutscher Werkbund and Futurism

1. Responses to Mechanization: The DeutscherWerkbund and Futurism Industrialization in the early 20th century (1900-1915) could be seen as significant in architectural terms because: What had been the purview of engineers in its infancy became a legitimate building typology to be studied and designed by architects. Industrial productivity increased as mass production strategies evolved in both the manufacturing and consumer industries. Human productivity could be increased, in theory, if the work place was conducive to administrative and individual activities. Where all products are similar, architecture could add a sense of value to the products of a corporation. Artists and craftsman could contribute significantly to the artistic, economic, and manufacturing quality of industrial products.

2. Cite Industrielle – Tony Garnier’s Rome Prize “Thesis” Presentation 1899-1904

4. Set on the side of a river valley in the Lyons region, this industrial city of 35,000 was intended to: • Function as a regional center • Demonstrate the precepts of an ideal socialist society Gariner projected a comprehensive concept that included: • Distributed and compatible uses (zoning) based on typology, wind and climatic conditions as well as solar orientation and landscape conditions • Building codes that regulated density, light and ventilation • Design guidelines that required fireproof construction in concrete with the elimination of all ornamental characteristics, formal functional expression, and compact buildings in compact districts

5. Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation), founded in 1907, was an association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists with the declared intent of improving the form and quality of consumer goods. Intended to put Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States with regard to the design and industrialized production of all product forms.

6. Margarete Steiff (teddy-bear) Factory in Giengen/Benz Germany, 1903

7. A double-skinned curtain wall covers the entire factory. • The outer skin hangs the full height of the supporting structure. • The inner layer reaches from floor to each ceiling. • The frame with the curtain wall rests on a concrete base.

8. Turbine Factory, Peter Behrens, Berlin, Germany, 1908

11. A utilitarian factory building given monumental importance for its potential as having “high design” value and cultural significance.

12. Fagus Shoe Factory by Water Gropius & Adolf Meyer, Alfeld Germany, 1911

14. In a radical reversal of traditional practice solid corners are abandoned in favor of full transparency. • Illustrates the raising of construction materiality to precise clear “material beauty”.

15. Werkbund Pavilion for the Cologne Exhibition, 1914, the Machine Hall by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer • The forms have no obvious historic precedent. They draw their inspiration from industrial machinery • The materials are glass, steel and masonry products • The glass is utilized to reveal the interior and production rather than to light the spaces

16. In response to the engineering aesthetic of the first 15 years of the new century architects sought to discover an artistic architecture. An architecture free from material obligations and rationalism. Glass Pavilion, Bruno Taut, Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition, Cologne, Germany, 1914 Conceived to demonstrate the potential for a new culture unlike centuries of “brick culture”

17. Electricity Works (an architectural vision) by Antonio Sant’Elia, 1914 • Airport/Railway Station by Antonio Sant’Elia, 1913

18. Sant'Elia dealt in dreams. • He was a prophet of a much more general sort - an artist-architect who issued a clarion call to the glories of modernism, who wanted to proclaim the potential of 20th-century technology to remake the world. • We see in Sant'Elia only energy, only belief, only a fresh and romantic dream that modernism really could change society.