Max Bill - Ulm pavilion

Sabela Barreiro García

MAX BILL ULM PAVILION exhibition of the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 1955

“In any movement there are people who contribute and people who live from others contributions. Currently there are without any doubt, two kinds of artists�

Max Bill

THE MAN

1 2 3 THE THE PAVILION END

The story p.1 The 5 concepts p.2 The angles p.5 The beauty p.6 The maths The music The infinity

The approach p.13 The Ulm pavilion p.14 The reference p.16 The concrete art p.18 The pavilions p.21 The Japanese culture p.23

Conclusions p.22 Bibliography and webgraphy p.22

part 1: THE MAN

N

December 22th Winterthur

December 9th Berlin

1924-1927 1927-1929 1929 1930 1931 1934-1938 1935-1953 1944 1951 1957 1967

He was architect, painter, sculptor, graphic and industrial designer, publicist, professor at the Swiss School and one of the most important figures of concrete art He studied goldsmithing at the Zúrich Kunstgewerbeschule, where he was influenced by Dadaism and Cubism He attended Bauhaus arts and crafts School in Dessau, where he approached the functionalism of design. Some of the opinions about functionalism said that is something useful that sometimes fall into the abstraction of objects and it loose the main idea He returned to Zúrich to focus in painting, architecture and graphic design He created his own architecture office, being part of the Deustcher Werkbund (architects, artists and industrial designers association, founded in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius, it was the Bauhaus precursor). He projected Nuebühl gardens in a modern style, close to Zúrich He worked as a sculptor and he became interested in the theory of “concrete art” developed by Theo Van Doesburg, including this style in his previous works He did his “15 variations about the same subject”, and started to publishing them because he had the feeling that many people were interested in art without having a clear and precise idea of how the works were made, neither how was its internal and external structure He created different variations about the infinite loop which takes the form from one of the Moebius ties He focused on industrial design. It is remarkable the watches collection created for Junghans between 1957 and 1962. This collection included wall clocks and watches with a rationalist style and an industrial aesthetic He create together with Aicher Scholl and Otl Aicher the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, an industrial design school inspired by the Bauhaus He left Ulm and he established his own studio in Zúrich about painting, sculpture and architecture He is recognized in Switzerland for his work and his career, being a member of the National Council of Switzerland but also professor at the Hamburg Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste and president of Enviromental Design from 1967 to 1974 and associate at the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1976

the stor

1908-1994

the 5 concept

unity

His works are guided by a permanent rule. We can see his projects as a small syntheses of himself and then see the overall. Although he has a solid conceptual base, Max Bill is an action man. Through concepts, the reality must be organized in categories of pairs with opposite meanings: idea/form, abstract/concrete… This binary system forces the exception of one of the terms, however, Max Bill manages to find the midpoint

Taking mathematics as a reference model, he tries to arrange everything in a precise and millimetric way. His works do not need ornaments since the precision itself makes it attractive to the viewer. It will be a coordinated action in which things are just in the right place

inteligibility

What Max Bill does is purely intellectual. His works acquire a character of constructive complexity that is explained through its form. What Max Bill tries to do is that the viewer understands even the smallest detail

“Variation is just the visible face of unit”. In the same unit, he plays with volumes to transform the different shapes into others. For example, he plays with a cylinder changing its height and thickness, but keeping its volume constant.

That way to make clear and recognizable things came by his instruction in calligraphy (readability of the message). But now objects must look like what people would expect them to be

regularity

precision

variation

In this aspect, it is a matter of not avoiding any utility concept, which causes in his designs a focus in his ideas that can be expanded but containing at the same time so the overall is appropriate. Works are treated like toys, giving it that fun and austerity component.

“Max Bill through 5 concepts” Carles Martí and Joan Llecha.

DPA magazine: Max Bill. Number 17. Decisiones UPC, Barcelona, 2001.

the angle “Max bill, painter, sculptor, architect, designer� electa, milano 2006 We can summarize the four artistic facets of Max Bill in a fairly defined style of rational lines and search for beauty in simplicity.

His architecture is guided by plans (ZĂşrich house, 1932) and pure geometric figures (circumference for exhibition spaces).

As we will see later in the Ulm pavilion, every space Bill creates are diaphanous, wide and with a great rational sense typical of Modernity.

Max Bill designs continue in that line: everyday objects such as watches, phones or chairs which are solved with minimum strokes but very defined, pure and simple in appearance. The 19510 quartz lamp, as an example, is so original and attractive that we could use it now in contemporary era with the certainty that we would assimilate it as a design object for any house (like an Ikea lamp).

Sculpture that Max Bill creates could not be less that an analysis of elementary forms that are cut (construction with disks, 1945), are added (unity of equal cylinders, 1966), are turned on themselves (continuity, 1946) or interact with others of the same class (gavezo sculpture, 1969). Materials are related both to traditional stone construction as well as modernity; using materials that shine (brass) and give us the opportunity (typical of that industrial time) of bending to give rise to warped and abstract shapes.

One of his last works, that is nothing but a highlighting of the structure (gavezo sculpture, 1969), will remind us to the Ulm pavilion, which is built with necessary elements just for to sustain itself. It shows in some way the subordination of the form to the function it performs.

Finally, but not least, Max Bill was also painter, as a modernist artist from the 30s to even the 80s. Squares, triangles, circles and primary colors. Combination (horizontal, vertical and diagonal) of these elements with the simplicity that followed him throughout all his artistic career, also in other fields.

Undoubtedly, we are talking about a complete and creative man, cultivated in the areas in which he works and whose style fits perfectly in the time he developed his production.

the beaut

INDIVIDUALIZED BEAUTY Beauty can be defined objectively, what shows many variations in its meaning.

For Winckelmann is impossible to define beauty because it is superior to our intellect, showing that we have not been able to devise anything more sublime and perfect and understanding that something beautiful and perfect seems to be the same.

For Hegel, who agrees with Schidler, beauty is the union of the rational and the sensible things creating a true reality .

However for Bill, beauty is the addition of every function with the form, creating an harmonious unit.

Beauty of the search, logical beauty, beauty of the endless space, beauty of the structure, beauty of the landscape, elemental beauty, typography beauty, regular beauty… they are some of the variations that give unity to the work of Bill.

In his manifesto “Concrete art”, he said: “Beauty will be abstract in its idea and concrete in its objectification, it can not be stated on the basis of a number of parameters capable of guaranteeing any result, it will be different for each assigned task, it will be incomprehensible without form and function; in fact, it will be the result of an adequate integration of form and function”.

Beauty will be for Bill the most difficult task to fulfill; it will be mandatory a great cultural education, an aesthetic training.

Due to the varied themes that Max Bill uses, we can consider him as an eclectic artist, but the idea of beauty is present as any other function of his objects.

The work of Bill will establish a constant line with the rational. It will not be an ideal beauty, generalizable, obtained as a statistical medium point; it will be a relational, concrete beauty, related to processes, situations or precise topics, a beauty in which construction will have an essential importance. A beauty concept that would be related to rules and own tools from each discipline.

That means that you can not consider the same beauty in a sculpture or in an architecture building. This beauty will be related to necessity, so Bill rejects the idea of an absolute beauty.

Beauty will be always relative to something: it will in relation to the satisfaction of needs for which the object has been created, whether spiritual or material; in each task, beauty will be different.

Bill will write, with equivalent words to those of Hegel, that while some believe that works that are born of emotion are completely valid, others believe in the validity of the scientific process and he will clarify: “I am convinced that both conceptions are wrong: it is necessary not just in tuition, but a synthesis process based on careful analysis”

To understand the work of Max Bill, we will have to take into account two texts about the search for beauty: a summary of the 1948 conference in Werkbund: “The beauty of function, beauty as a function”; and a second one in 1956, translated as: “(Form, function, beauty)=(form)”.

Beauty will be an integrated function in the totality work of Bill. However the problem of beauty is not only a functional problem, also formal, affecting not only art and design but also architecture.

the beaut

BEAUTY AS A FUNCTION

LOGICAL BEAUTY But we can not understand art and architecture of Bill only from logical reason; we find the cause of subjectivity that complements methodological reason on its need for beauty, on its continuous search for itself.

The beauty in Bill will be understood thanks to the collaboration between logical reason and intuitive reason, because “in its singularity, the sensible appears only as a simple case of universal legality… for neither in nature nor in art, the experience of beauty is based on experience, only what was previously calculated is found and noted as a particular case more than the universal one” Search for beauty as a cause of Max Bill intuitive reason. Influenced theoretically by German idealism, specifically by Hegel, Bill is considered a rational creator, looking for methods and mathematical systems that sustain the creative method so as not fall into personal expression, rejecting individualism as a producer of subjective ideas.

far from creating a new formalism, what these can yield is something far trascending surface values since they not only embody form as beauty, but also form in which intuitions or ideas or conjectures have taken visible substance

the math

24

i think that is possible to widely develop an art based on a mathematical conception

It is believed that art has nothing to do with mathematics and that it is an arid, non-artistic matter, a purely intellectual issue and therefore foreign to art. Neither criteria are acceptable, because art needs both feeling and thought.

As a well-known example, we can mention again Juan Sebastián Bach, who with mathematical tools, gave form to the material “sound”, creating perfect structures. In his library there were mathematical texts together with the theological writings, at a time when mathematics had been abandoned as a formative element in the process of configuration of forms, and in which this idea had not yet been taken up again.

It is necessary to insist again that thought is one of the essential features of man. Thought enables the ordering of emotional values ​​ so that the work of art emerges from them. But the primary element of any plastic work is geometry, the relation of positions in the plane or in the space.

Mathematics is not only one of the essential tools of primary thought and, therefore one of the necessary resources for the knowledge of the surrounding reality, but also, in its fundamental elements, a science of proportions, of the behavior between things, between groups, from movement to movement. And because it contains these fundamental things and puts them in meaningful relation, it is natural that such events can be represented, transformed into image.

Organización f La exposición s sala contigua al ve de altura, con un metros). La ilumin de un lucernario d roble y las parede La exposición c aplicadas y de la p con un propósito d secretario del «Sc cretariado de la «O Comisión Federal que el visitante de La organización ar añadidos, destina las siguientes par secciones sucesiv jetos industriales, y la tercera secció 1) Entrada: está colgado del techo de 1 metro por 1 m junto representa la de las tres seccio tejidos; hacia el m relojes, artículos d publicitarios. En la libros e impresos; sobre el panel obl fotografías de edifi

The exhibitions consisted in a selection of objects from the applied Arts an industrial production fields. These objects were selected with an unit proposal for the same architect in collaboration with Schweizerischer Werkbund secretary and Oeuvre secretary, and they were proposed to be exhibited to the Federal Commission for applied Arts.

The distribution of the set allows the visitor to necessarily pass through all the exhibited objects. He achieved the architectural organization of space only with added elements, whose purpose would be to contain and display the objects.

The exhibition has these parts: 1) entrance, with the space element “Switzerland” 2) three successive sections: the first one dedicated to decorative art and industrial objects, the second one to graphic art, typography and photography and the third one to architecture 3) rest room

the math

­ wiss section on the S “Triennale di Milano”,1936.

the math

Monument to the unknown political prisoner, 1952.

“While I was thinking about the monument, I noticed that was essential to clarify what kind of prisoner was him before starting to develop the project. My first intention... it was evident that he was not the publicly known leader of a group, but the stranger who adheres to a political tendency, without having created it.

This political adherent, different in its ideological motivations, according to the regime of government that fights, becomes a prisoner when the state authority of a fascist, communist, monarchical or democratic nature decides to suppress the opposition by force. (...) I therefore arrived at my own definition of the proposed theme: “monument to the integrity attitude and to intellectual loyalty, to the free and responsible choice of the own path””

Each artistic work has an emotional component and organic elements to make it possible. Everything flows between these two poles, but sometimes is possible to analyze each of them equally.

“It seems to be a bit doubtful that anyone will be able to extract all the pleasure they can provide, if they do not have at least a slight knowledge of the methods used in its production” According to Max Bill, mathematical methods give shape to sound matter, giving rise to perfect structures. Bach teaches us that the treatment of materials responds to a degree of perfection that brings us closer to perfect sound mechanisms. The musical reflection can adapt to the concept of variation in which we fit Max Bill. It is a harmonious composition but with variations in its form, harmony could be the set of the work.

The key is to see the changes following the same unit. Elements of the same piece are altered by transformations in their same unit. “Definitely, the composer uses the technique of variation before beginning to compose music. And it does so with tools inherited from the Renaissance counterpoint that in Bach, had found its supreme artifice.

Again art is governed by sophisticated principles of permutation that send us to mathematical calculation”.

If we focus on what Max Bill thought, any art can be based on mathematical thought.

Bach and Webern can be the paradigm in the universe of sound. However, although we are aware of an accurate analysis and knowing how it is achieved, what really makes these works stand out is the feeling they are capable of transmitting. What comes to fascinate us at first moment, despite its mathematical basis, continue to amaze us through the aesthetic and emotional attraction of a true work of art.

“Theme with variations. A musical reflection based on the work of Max Bill” Josep Maria Guix. DPA magazine: Max Bill. Number 17. Decisions UPC, Barcelona, 2001.

the musi

Max Bill, “Fifteen variations on the same theme”, 1934-38.

the infinity

max bill work is a infinite work that shows itself infinite

The influences of the ancient quarries of Clot de Mèdol, which supplied golden stone to the new city, seem implicit in the works of Max Bill Columns.

This material, which for a long time was used to build walls, institutions and monuments from Greece and Rome, configures two objects of marked verticality in the mentioned quarries.

They occupy a privileged position in the center of the hollow excavated and they rise a height of 16 meters, which increased at the time of the excavation; both needles symbolize the Roman obelisk.

Max Bill gets carried away by these influences in a column that begins with a square: “Column with three cuts in eight angles” 1966 and “Column with triangular and hexagonal sections” 1966 that he makes with a triangle, same theme and different materials, measurements and proportions.

Having as a beginning of this experimentation the sculpture-pavilions, “Pavilion of Ulm” 1956 Stuttgart believes in the inexhaustible work, inconclusive, infinite... his creations are not closed (lengthening even 20 years in a continuous process of learning).

You learn by analyzing all the variations of a theme that can be recurrent throughout a lifetime.

He also explains how to learn, based on methods that make us understand the pieces: disposition, symmetry, masses of color ... Max Bill strives to tell, with the only purpose of his own learning.

For Max Bill, art is based on a mathematics of rhythms and relationships, and therefore he expresses the multiplicity in his works, following the progression: rhythm, mathematics, geometry, volumetry, architecture.

“To infinity with Max Bill” by Ton Salvaró. DPA magazine: Max Bill. Number 17.

Edicions UPC, Barcelona, 2001.

Endless column Brancusi, 1938

Clot de Mèdol quarry

Play with pure geometric forms as he experienced in “Fifteen variations on the same theme” 1938 and the progressive development, influence of the “Endless Column”

by Brancusi.

Through serial combinations of spiral growth we could reach infinity.

part 2: THE PAVI

ILION

the approac Ulm is a city in the German state of Baden-WĂźrttemberg that was founded in medieval times. In the center is the huge and centuries-old cathedral of Ulm, in the Gothic style. Its bell tower offers views of the city and, on clear days, you can see the Alps.

Ulm has a peculiar mixture of tradition and modernity.

At the end of the war, this city was practically destroyed, forcing an adequate solution for its reconstruction.

A careful restoration and a modern air was conferred to Ulm.

the Ulm pavilio

the pavilion reminds both the traditional wooden buildings and those for constructivism exhibitions of the 1920s (for example, urss pavilion by konstantin mélnikov, parís, 1925)

In 1956, the HfG was commissioned to design the pavilion for the city of Ulm for the State Fair Exhibition of Baden­/Württemberg in Sttutgart. Max Bill projected it in collaboration with some professors of the Visual Communication Department of the HfG and its director Friedrich Vordemberge­ Gildewart (in the picture).

The controversial construction was formed by a structure of profiles of rough wood, cut and later mounted in situ.

The four wooden skirts of the deck, slightly inclined, were assembled so that they left a gap in the center.

In the center of the wooden platform of the pavilion, 12x12m, stood a reproduction of the pinnacle of the tower of the cathedral of Ulm, which jutted out over the hollow of the roof.

On the four inside walls, large bird’s-eye panoramic photographs were placed, which gave the impression that the city of Ulm was being seen from the top of the cathedral. At the same time, these panels served to partially brace the structure and, under them, were the information panels that showed the city of Ulm.

The differentiation and visibility of the bearing system and the platform was one of the essential formal themes of the Ulm pavilion.

The same idea lay behind the Swiss pavilion at the International Exposition (Paris,1937) and at the Universal Exposition (New York,1939). That time, Bill had proposed an orthogonal reticular steel set from which he hung, between empty spaces, a flexible system of cells and circulation passages with the content of the exhibition.

The model pictures show that the Ulm pavilion had originally a similar structure. For stability reasons, diagonal braces had to be placed on the side walls.

The physical integrity of this wooden element uniquely proposes a visual memory of the city of Ulm, characterized by the simplicity and the subtle shape of clear and precise lines.

the Ulm pavilio The structural keys harmonize with the open style of the composition, inviting anyone to see the city

Bill Max, “Ulm pavilion, Stuttgart�, 2G International Architecture Magazine.

Number 29. Barcelona, pp 152-155

the referenc

Spanish pavilion for the Architecture Biennale, Venezia 2014 This pavilion designed by IĂąaki Ă balos, seeks a reflection of modernity in 20th century through 12 current projects of Spanish architecture, making explicit reference to the Ulm pavilion on the use of the image and the frame.

Plan of the Ulm pavilion

Composition of the Spanish pavilion

One of the first differences between both pavilions is the composition of the plants While the Ulm pavilion has a squared plan based on four elements placed in a spiral shape reaching a central point where is located the octagonal fireplace, the Spanish pavilion is composed so that the user choose the route, causing that the rooms are not understood as isolated capsules but a broken labyrinth in the interior space.

The different plant composition causes that in the Ulm pavilion the space is totally open, whereas in the other one although rooms are not completely isolated, they are delimited by partitions in which the 12 project of the exhibition are placed.

Along with these differences, there is also some similarity between both pavilions as the use of simple geometric elements for the composition of each plant creating completely different plants.

Section of the Spanish pavilion

In both pavilions the luminous effects caused by their composition are appreciated.

In the case Ulm ones, these effects are generated by the open spaces and by the different inclinations of the roof around the spiral, whereas in the Spanish pavilion the illumination comes from the skylights of pitched the roof illuminating in this way the whole showroom.

Exhibition plan of the Ulm pavilion

Exhibition plan of the Spanish pavilion

Another of the main differences is the way in which the ROUTE IS PLANNED for their respective exhibitions.

In Ulm, the route will be made through the elements of the spiral placing each exhibitor in the middle of each element of the spiral, while the route of the Spanish pavilion can not be defined due to its composition.

This allows the visitor to choose their own path through the exhibition creating a completely random order making the exposure influence differently for each user.

After a small graphic analysis of the plant and distribution of the Ulm pavilion from the comparison with the Spanish pavilion, we conclude that the pavilion refers to the JAPANESE CULTURE from the elements placed in spiral form in the plant reflecting the platforms of this particular culture; at the same time, the spiral composition focused towards the central point, which is the octagonal chimney, gives us the idea of ​​a home, where life that took place inside the house is focused towards the center where it used to be located a heat source like a fireplace or in this case a chimney.

the referenc

Section of the Ulm pavilion

the concrete art

Theo van Doesburg He calls the movement that replaces abstract art as “concrete art”, in the Paris of 1930. He uses it for the first time in the the magazine “Art Concret”, in which he establishes the theoretical bases of this new movement:

AbstractionCreation (1931/1936) was the main group that put these principles into practice.

“The work of art should not receive anything that comes from the formal properties of nature or sensuality or sentimentality, since a pictorial element has no more meaning than itself and, therefore, the painting has no other different meaning”

Universal character for the representation of abstract art in a new reality.

The arithmetic compositions of the founder Van Doesburg, directly influence the concrete art. The paintings are based on pre-established laws that limit the artist and make it impossible to alter the work spontaneously.

Van Doesburg (1924)

Rejection of nature, symbolism and the objective.

Line, shape and surface. Color in the background.

Simple geometric shapes in tension: circles, squares, triangles; combined to create structures that evoke architecture and construction.

Flat colors, plastic vibration and chromatic effects of space.

The same art creates its own reason for being without other elements.

Pure sensitivity of own values.

Auguste Herbin (1882-1960)

the concrete art After Van Doesburg died, his ideology was disseminated through exhibitions of painting, sculpture and applied arts by Max Bill, Naum Gabo and Auguste Herbin.

All of them seek to become a universal art that reaches an audience that is hostile to a new art; besides creating an aesthetic debate with Surrealism, a movement with which he disagrees frontally.

Finally, the representatives of the concrete art went away (in the decade of the 50) towards other tendencies. It was in 1970 when Victor Pasmore or Piero Dorazio, again focused their works around the search for a pure geometric art.

Max Bill will adopt from Josef Albers, the term Tribute to the square for “Problems of time in Swiss painting and sculpture”, from 1936, from which will emerge in France, Italy and also Switzerland, a new concrete art.

So it happens that Max Bill is a multi-faceted man and faithful representative of concrete art in design, painting, sculpture and scarcely architecture.

In the first works of the artist, his insistent preoccupation with the mathematical logic of paintings and designs, which governs forms and their proportions: geometric and with planned tonal relations, is already clear.

This is a bridge art, leaving the doors open to continue in the search for new plastic paths based on creative freedom.

It is here where artists begin to think of a direct collaboration with sculptors, painters, designers and architects to enrich themselves culturally and move away from naturalism together.

Rational and straight lines that frame pure geometric shapes: square and triangle.

Masses of flat colors are combined with chromatic tensions. The idea of ​​ infinity always present in the work of Bill.

the concrete art

a line in tension with space, a pure geometric and non-figurative surface

Between 1935 and 1953 he made different interpretations of the sculpture of the infinite loop in polished metal.

The infinite is abstracted in a piece that turns on itself and creates its own raison d’être without needing anything more.

Max Bill, professor and director of the Zürich and Ulm Schools, organizer of concrete art exhibitions, inspired both Europe and South America (Argentina and Brazil).

His architecture, more theoretical than practical, brings together all the qualities of the works of its other artistic disciplines (painting, sculpture, design) and is also based on the principles of concrete art.

Bill Max, “Infinite loop”

the concrete art This happens in the Pavilion of Ulm in Stuttgard, 1956.

It does not blend into the surroundings, nor does it evoke the surrounding nature, in its location the pavilion emerges almost like a sculptural piece. This is the case with “Endlose Treppe” 1991 or the “Annex in Winterthur” 1997, which are released from contextual ties to emerge in the form of independent pieces that could have been placed in any other geography.

Max Bill is functional, he simply represents the city of Ulm, and he does not look for symbols or emblems. He focuses on the extension of the line and the surface to create a rational space.

The universal nature of the works of concrete art allows architecture to be understood and be able to reach the public for its frankness: in the use of materials, the structural elements seen that are directly part of the exterior-interior image of the pavilion , the purity of the encounters, the basic program without complex routes, the human scale...

Everything is expressed directly so that it can be understood together without difficulty.

The geometric and simple shapes mo dulate the space and combine to create a pavilion that is both architecture and construction, and this is shown by the marked instructive nature of the pavilion structure. What you see, necessarily fulfills a structural function.

Bill Max, “Ulm pavilion, Stuttgart”, 2G International Architecture Magazine.

Number 29. Barcelona, pp 152-155

the pavilions

Max Bill swiss pavilion A series of cubes of different dimensions that holds independent sections of the exhibition, ordered within a three dimensional modular assembly

It is about giving it a differentiating character and showing the visibility of the SELF-SUPPORTING SYSTEM, as we can see in the Ulm pavilion. He make a great emphasis on the geometric shapes that characterize his works. Bill uses the repetition of simple geometric forms based on the simplification of geometric concepts.

His work is therefore visualized as a conceptual design, based on three concepts that always characterize Max Bill’s projects: form, laws and structure.

The philosophy is simple, start from basic forms, slightly transgressing the laws to give rise to new processes and with ethereal structures and with great visualization.

The Exhibition of Decorative Arts of 1925 in Paris, made a great impression on him, and he began to be interested in the modern movement.

So in 1937 with the celebration of the International Exhibition that would be a kind of continuation of the 1925; Max Bill made a project for the Swiss pavilion, despite not being among the 32 studios invited to the contest.

This pavilion would be located on the banks of the Seine in an outstanding situation, characterized by being a primary modular structural assembly from which boxes or cubes hung.

The boxes would be painted in different colors creating a composition.

His works acquire a character of traditional precision, adapted to reticles that make up the interior space. This is what we see in the Ulm pavilion.

The stone sculpture with its pillars, arches and baseboard strips is one of Max Bill’s best-known late works

This work reflects a composition of simple lines that harmonize with the form showing the entire order of the project.

That is the base of his work: Simple geometric shapes with graphic purity or minimal inclinations to give visual effects.

A grid is composed between the pieces according to the vertical composition of the elements. This limits the horizontal space where the work will be found but not the visual space that starts from it.

That is how Max Bill give an amplitude character that modifies the environment regulated by an unlimited environment.

The composition of the floor is also significant in the Ulm pavilion, in which four-byfour tapestries are arranged in an intuitive way forming a spiral.

Both, in one way or another, reflect the visuals of both the city and the plaza. In a simple way and always without closing the space completely, is solved with sculptures as he does in this pavilion.

the pavilions

Sculpture pavilion, 1983

the japanese cultur

even starting its architecture through the chinese model, japan has managed to highlight its style of understanding the use of housing

The traditional Japanese house is elevated, allowing the air to pass inside and below it.

These houses constitute a practically open space towards gardens or outdoor spaces.

The pavilion has a elevation on the ground that allows the passage of air. In addition, the main space is completely open allowing a flow of continuous ventilation.

The wood in the Japanese culture is worked in a respectful way and traditionally they paint the one that is exposed. As in our pavilion, materials are shown in a simple way.

Respecting the innate quality.

One of the things that makes wood a fairly used material is that its composition makes it cool in summer, warm in winter and flexible in case of an earthquake Buildings dedicated to living as well as Buddhist temples followed the shoin-zukuri domestic architecture style. Sliding panels covered by transparent and opaque paper and mats. Currently, they are still indispensable elements in typical houses.

Although they are immovable in the pavilion of Ulm, they are characterized by the typical lightness of Japanese panels. These panels keep behind them the images that show the city.

Something that we can clearly identify in this project is the framework of the floor.

The worlwide know and basic idea is the placement of the TATAMI, with a great thermal insulation capacity.

The concept of tatami comes from “tatamu” which translated would be like “stack and fold”.

Over the years, its relevance in the world of Japanese interior design was strengthened and became an element of a great importance. Its placement follows the principles of a basic organization.

We see how the pavilion acquires this uniqueness and captures the essence of the Japanese “mats”.

Its organization, its meaning. A simple arrangement characterizes this work, which teaches us that Eastern culture also has a place in our constructions

the japanese cultur

One of the things we can see as in a typical Japanese house, is its squared layout. It is easy to identify the central point, because in many occasions is reinforced.

This element has privilege in front of others. The furniture is usually portable so the rooms do not have a predetermined order. The center of the dwelling would be associated with the fire, the core.

We therefore find a central element in our pavilion, which reflects the character of meeting or home that is transmitted in Japanese culture. In a more generic way, it is the denomination of unity that Max Bill could represent in the city of Ulm.

the japanese cultur

Japanese architecture assemblages These assemblages were characterized by purity, simplicity, harmony and efficiency

One of the traditional Japanese materials par excellence is wood: cypresses and elms were carved by ingenious craftsmen who managed to not use screws, nails or metal pieces in the joints between structural elements.

A simple appearance in the designs hides an elaborate assembly, which does not forget the natural values of the material in its structural bending, torsion or shear stresses.

Many Japanese architects, and other nonAsian architects such as the German Max Bill have reinterpreted this technique in their works.

The Ulm Pavilion, built almost entirely with wood, uses these traditional Japanese assemblages in the encounters between beams and pillars, structural elements that are the naked design of the pavilion.

part 3: THE END

His relationship with the outside world is admirable; his philosophy, his way of observing and capturing things. Each element transports us to a state, humble and simple.

We understand that his reflective acts are the most important and profound aspects that characterize his works. It is not the structural element itself, nor the finish of the pavement, but who is represented on it.

The small pavilion gives us the view of Ulm, an open pavilion, without borders. Perhaps he tries to explain what the city is like through that composition, or perhaps we are too naive.

The relationship that we can observe with the oriental world is obvious.

Its interrelated spaces, exterior with interior, the use of wood in a simple way as we see in Japan, the structures raised for air movement or the same tatami recreated in some way inside.

We cannot forget that central space, to which everything is focused and in which nobody repairs. Perhaps a meeting space but centered towards the panels in which the images are displayed. Are we not all part of the city?

Max Bill is going to look for beauty in all his works, but for that he ensures an exhaustive and scientific study of them, taking into account that beauty is always going to be relative to something, linking it to precise processes or situations. Establishing the difficulty of this search, it ensures a previous cultural education and aesthetic training.

In Ulm's pavilion, the use of simple, ordered geometric figures creates an open path around a central point. It will be in that simplicity, together with the relationship between interior and exterior space from the openings generated by the position of the panels, where Bill finds beauty.

CONCLUSION

Max Bill covers different facets, and in all of them he is able to leave the mathematical rationalist mark, which characterizes his work. Even architecture manages to arrive with the functionalist essence and strongly influenced by concrete art, without forgetting the importance that beauty has had for him from its origins, always linked to a necessity, and variable in its wide production.

The Ulm Pavilion is a box in which all these concepts are placed, hierarchically ordered, and all of them create the summary image of what Max Bill purely is.

Almost approaching a constructivism in which the work itself is the structure, where the expression of the materials is honest, the techniques are not hidden and above all, the use of the principles of concrete art prevails, of which he himself is the promoter: universal character, geometrization, eigenvalues...

Sabela Barreiro GarcĂ­a

MAX BILL ULM PAVILION sabelabarreirog@gmail.com +34 685946804 LinkedIn Pinterest