Advanced School Of Collective Feeling

The Advanced School of Collective Feeling

Nile Greenberg

Matthew Kennedy

1923

Illustrations from Bess

Mensendieck’s Funktionelles

Frauenturnen

Berlin

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1926

Erwin Piscator

Apartment

Marcel Breuer

Berlin

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1927

Sport at the Bahaus

Dessau

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Travail et Sport

Charlotte Perriand

Repertoire du Goute Moderne

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1930

ADGB Trade Union School

Hannes Meyer

Bernau bei Berlin

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Gymnast’s Apartment

Marcel Breuer

Berlin

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1931

House for a Sportsman

Marcel Breuer

Bauausstellung Berlin

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Gymnasium and Pool

Walter Gropius

Bauausstellung Berlin

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1933

House for an Aviator

Zanini, Scoccimarro, Midena

Milan Triennale

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1934

Figini House

Luigi Figini

Milan ##–##, ##–##

1936

Room for a Man

Franco Albini

Milan

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Mensendieck House

(Miller House)

Richard Neutra

Palm Springs ##–##, ##–##

1945

Transformation of Villa Tugendhat

Mies van der Rohe

Brno

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1986

La Casa Palestra

OMA

Milan Triennial ##–##, ##–##

of empiricism over formalism—was evidenced by the popularity of the German physician Mensendieck’s system of therapeutic gymnastics, the Hungarian dance instructor von Laban’s applied theories of human movement, and the progressive choreography of Bauhaus associate Palucca.

The Bauhaus had a well documented culture of sport, made iconic by images like T. Lux Feininger’s 1927 photo, “Jump Over the Bauhaus.” This fascination with physical culture carried over into contemporary projects by the architectural faculty, most notably Gropius and Marcel Breuer (more on this later), though the school itself was conspicuous in its lack of a gymnasium.

“Each age demands its own form. It is our mission to give the new world a new shape with the means of today. But our knowledge of the past is a burden that weighs upon us, and inherent in our advanced education are impediments tragically barring us from new paths. The unqualified affirmation of the present age presupposes the ruthless denial of the past.”

Meyer was chosen to succeed Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus in 1928. Soon after this promotion, he began work on the design of the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau. His scheme prominently featured a gymnasium outfitted with modern fitness equipment, as well as a running track encircling a pond on the grounds. It is clear from his writings that Meyer considered the integration of physical culture into everyday life to be one of the crucial tasks of modern architecture—his belief in its collectivizing potential led him to describe it as “the advanced school of collective feeling.” But, in fact, there is little to suggest that the gymnasium of the ADGB School differed much from the gymnasia that had first begun to take shape at the beginning of the 19th century. Many of these were, in effect, indoor variations of the so-called Turnplatz, an open-air facility opened in Berlin in 1811 by the German “father of gymnastics,” Friedrich Jahn. Jahn had served in the Prus-

sian army in the waning years of the Napoleonic wars, and later developed physical regimens and equipment with the aim of “restoring the physical and moral strength of the German people”— the perfection of the body as an ostensible

1923

Illustrations from Bess

Mensendieck’s Funktionelles

Frauenturnen

Berlin

1945–68

Transformation of Villa Tugendhat

Mies van der Rohe

Brno Floor 1

Reconstructed Plans

1945–68

Transformation of Villa Tugendhat

Mies van der Rohe

Brno Floor 1

Reconstructed Plans

Furniture

The Advanced School of Collective Feeling

Written and Edited by

Nile Greenberg

Matthew Kennedy

Graphic Design

Laura Coombs

Published by Park Books

Niederdorfstrasse 54

8001 Zürich, Switzerland

park-books.com

Printed in Leipzig by DZA Druckerei in an edition of 1,000.

ISBN 978-3-000000-00-0

© 2018

Nile Greenberg

Matthew Kennedy

Special Thanks

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Cover image: Bauhäusler at the beach by the river Elbe, with: upper row (f.l.t.r.) Hinnerk Scheper, Marcel Breuer, K. Wiegand; lower row (f.l.t.r.) Ernst Neufert, Herbert Bayer. Xanti Schawinsky, László

Moholy-Nagy, 1921.

The Advanced School of Collective Feeling

was a concept proposed by Hannes Meyer in 1928 based on his belief that the gymnasium was overtaking the museum as the great public space. Matthew Kennedy and Nile Greenberg have undertaken a reconstruction—through building models, redrawing plans, and examining the types of activity that took place—of a seldom discussed experiment of the 1920s and ’30s. They believe that this experiment, a series of houses, apartments, and exhibitions that merged modernist physical culture with the home, left an indelible mark on the modern domestic aesthetic as we know it.