165
INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTER
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Paradigmatic character of the Dessau Bauhaus building with regard to these principles;189
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The pioneering position of Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, and Oud in the movement.190
Platz and others had already envisioned the new buildings’ rise to the status of a style.191 In Baukunst der neuesten Zeit, he had written: “A new architecture is arising. . . . We are at the beginning of a development process . . . that will precipitate a new style.” Even the equivalence implied between the “new style” and historic styles, such as Gothic, and the belief that this new style would lead away from the “chaos” of historicism, already appear in Platz’s work. In addition to its explicit references to Gropius and Mies, Platz’s book refers indirectly to the philosophical positions and mode of production of both these architects. Listing the common characteristics of the “new architecture,” the author cites the conception of architecture as “an expression of the
181 Dieter
Bogner, “Architecture as Biotechnique,” 147.
182 Pauline
Fullerton, “List of New Books on Architecture and the Allied Arts,” 85. In the thirties and forties, bibliographies of the most important books on modern architecture included Platz’s work.
183 Philip
Johnson, “Modernism in Architecture,” 134.
184 According
to Schulze, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography. Also see Terence Riley, The International Style, 202.
185 Platz
does not include footnotes. Thus, the reader has to recover his use of the literature mentioned in the bibliography.
186 Platz
on Frank Lloyd Wright: “It is not surprising that this great artist had a strong influence on German architects….Many currents tying us to America eminate from Wright’s rural houses and sober industrial buildings but most of all from his skyscrapers” (Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit, 67). Compare to Hitchcock and Johnson: “But it was in America that the promise of a new style appeared first and, up to the war, advanced most rapidly [particularly with Wright’s continuation of the Chicago school]” (The International Style, 25).
187 Platz,
quoting Peter Behrens’s maxim in his text: “We do not want a technology that follows its own course in isolation but rather a technology that is sensitive to the Kunstwollen of the era.” Behrens also warns of the “dangers of functional architecture” (Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit, 66). Compare Hitchcock and Johnson: “The new conception that building is science and not art, developed as an exaggeration of the idea of functionalism” (The International Style, 35).
188 Platz,
Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit, 65, 75. Compare Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style, 13.
189 Platz
calls the building “a convincing symptom of the pendulum swing” toward the new architecture. Hitchcock and Johnson: “The Bauhaus is something more than a mere development from the technical triumph of the Alfeld factory,” in reference to a previous description of the Fagus factory as the prototype of the style.
190 Platz
does not mention Le Corbusier because his book is limited to German and Dutch architecture; Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit, 64ff. Compare Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style, 28, 31, 33.
191 Also
see the writing of Walter Curt Behrendt from the twenties.