Bauhaus-Museum Weimar

After Dessau, our next stop was Weimar, 100 or so kilometers southwest, two plus hours by DB.  The central German city is well known because of its rich cultural heritage and its importance in German history.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the literary figure, lived most of his creative life here since 1775.  Together with Friedrich Schiller, the city was a hotbed of the German Enlightenment.  In the 19th century, Franz Liszt made Weimar a music centre.  The political history of 20th-century Weimar was volatile: it was the place where Germany’s first democratic constitution was signed after the First World War, giving its name to the Weimar Republic period in German politics (1918–33).  Weimar was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1996 (Bauhaus) and 1998 (Classical Weimar).

We came here because the Bauhaus School (Staatliches Bauhaus) was founded here in 1919.  Walter Gropius, a renowned architect, took over the Grand Duccal Academy of Art and the School of Applied Arts and rechristened the combined institution the Bauhaus.

The School lasted from 1919 to 1925, when it moved to Dessau, after the newly elected right-wing Thuringian council put pressure on the school by withdrawing funding and forcing its teachers to quit.

Our focus was the new Bauhaus-Museum Weimar opened in April 2019 which presents the Gropius Collection, the world’s oldest collection of original Bauhaus works.  Another new museum dedicated to Bauhaus was also opened in Dessau in 2019 to commemorate the centenary occasion (see our earlier post here).

The site for the museum in downtown Weimar was carefully chosen – Weimarhallenpark – which forms a historical area with the Neue Museum (which we visited) and the Gauforum buildings (see photo below) built in 1937 as a symbol of Nazi power and later used by the National Socialist movement.

When the Bauhaus School was forced to leave Weimar in 1925, museum director Wilhelm Koehler chose 168 pieces and started an archive authorized by Walter Gropius.  Hidden inside unopened crates in the City Castle, the collection survived the Nazi years and was inventoried in 1950’s.

The museum exhibition on three floors focuses on the design icons who taught and worked at the School, and their works.

With a multidisciplinary focus, the museum features works of fine art, design and architecture.

Gropius argued that a new period of history had begun with the end of the First World War.  In 1923, Gropius had proclaimed the guiding principle for those working at the Bauhaus: “Art and Technology –  a new unity !”

Bauhaus cradle following the “color of shapes” idea of Kandinsky.

Instead of the traditional painting or drawing classes, the students were all expected to learn a craft and were designated as apprentices and journeyman. The instructors were “Masters”. The artists or “masters of form” taught color theory and design, and led workshops together with “masters of crafts”.

Swiss painter Johannes Itten, German-American painter Lyonel Feininger, and German sculptor Gerhard Marcks, along with Gropius, comprised the faculty of the Bauhaus in 1919.

The famed 1923 door handles by Gropius

He wanted to create a new architectural style to reflect this new era. His style in architecture and consumer goods was to be functional, cheap and consistent with mass production.

To these ends, Gropius wanted to reunite art and craft to arrive at high-end functional products with artistic merit.

Feininger’s wood cut

By the following year the School’s ranks had grown to include German painter, sculptor, and designer Oskar Schlemmer who headed the theatre workshop, and Swiss painter Paul Klee, joined in 1922 by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky.

In 1922, the School also saw the move of Dutch painter Theo van Doesburg to Weimar to promote De Stijl (“The Style”), and a visit to the Bauhaus by Russian Constructivist artist and architect El Lissitzky.

The school existed in three German cities—Weimar, from 1919 to 1925; Dessau, from 1925 to 1932; and Berlin, from 1932 to 1933—under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928; Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933.

Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe in 1929

A New Bauhaus school was founded in Chicago, later becoming the Institute of Design, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Mies van der Rohe was the dean of architecture and designed its campus.

Walter Gropius went on to accept a teaching position at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; several Bauhaus artists designed and built over 4,000 Bauhaus buildings (called the White City) in Tel Aviv, Israel, and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.

The influences of Bauhaus on the idea of modernism, art and architecture, design and crafts, culture and education are deep, transformative and global.

This is the last post on our 2019 Bauhaus pilgrimage.  There were just so much to see, read and digest.  We can do this again and will learn something completely new.

 

 

The New Bauhaus Masters’ Houses, Dessau

… continuing from our earlier post on the original Bauhaus Masters’ Houses,

The first house we saw when coming from the School was the new Director’s House (Direktonenhaus) where the information desk is situated.  Why are there new Masters’ Houses ?

After the Bauhauslers moved out in 1932/1933, the school was closed by the Nazis, and the Houses were altered.  As the home of the Director, the Gropius building was large, had a garage and rooms for servants’ quarters, all surrounded by a tall white wall.

Dessau lost three-fifths of its buildings during World War II, being the headquarters for an important aircraft manufacturer, Junkers.  The Gropius House and the Moholy-Nagy House were destroyed on March 7, 1945, although the basement and garage remained.  The city, then in East Germany, sold the houses to Junkerswerke, a company that worked with the Bauhaus School and Marcel Breuer to develop tubular steel furniture before the war.

In 1956, the Emmer family purchased the site intending to rebuild the original house on the remaining footprint, but the planning office rejected this, and they were only allowed to build in a traditional style with a pitched roof.

The Haus Emmer had been on this site for almost 60 years with an internal layout almost exactly to Gropius’ ideal. It was only demolished in 2010 to allow for the new building to take its place.

A competition was held which was won by the Berlin architecture firm Bruno Fioretti Marquez.  The design deliberately avoided a historically accurate reconstruction.  Instead, the goal was to evoke the original design through a playful approach based on fuzzy memory – “architecture of imprecision”.

The new building was completed in 2014.  When visiting the surviving and the new houses, it has been said that the visitors will become aware of the differences between historical structures and reinterpretations while taking into account the imprecision of memories.  We think the choice of this design reflects Germany’s view of its past history.

In the cubic design of the new houses, the style of the old masters’ houses are found again, but the bare walls and ghostly translucent window express the destruction and the void left by the real houses.

The residential design of Gropius has now evolved into an open space that is used for exhibitions.

Last but not least, is the restored Trinkhalle – which was the first thing we saw as we approached the Masters’ House site.  It was originally a 1932 modification by Mies van der Rohe of the wall built by Walter Gropius around his own residence. The so-called “pump room” was a refreshment stand which broke the monotony of the austere white wall that blocked the view of a group of elegant old buildings.  The original Trinkhalle was demolished in the 60’s, and rebuilt in 2016.

Today, the Masters’ Houses are used by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.  We were able to visit all the houses on this site except two that were used as residences for visiting artists around the year.  To see more images of the Masters’ Houses, use this link to Google Arts and Culture’s Model Houses for the Modern Age site.

 

 

 

The Original Bauhaus Masters’ Houses, Dessau

This is our third post on the Bauhaus site in Dessau. Our visit was made during the centenary year (2019) of the founding of the Bauhaus School of Design.

For this post, try a 2020 collaboration by the brothers Eno – Mixing Colours

A lot of the academic-sounding text in these Bauhaus posts were partially taken from our purchased books, pamphlets we picked up on site, as well as the copious volumes of writings on the internet, particularly https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/en/index.html.

In 1926, in addition to the Bauhaus school building, the city of Dessau commissioned Walter Gropius to construct three pairs of identical semi-detached houses for the Bauhaus instructors (Meisterhaus, each housing 2 families) and a detached house for the director (Direktorenhaus).

These were built in a small pine wood on the street now known as the Ebertallee. The houses are about 10 minutes walk from the Bauhaus Building (our earlier post is here).

The semi-detached houses take the form of interlocking cubic structures of various heights, flat-roofed while vertical strip windows on the sides let light into the staircases.  The light-colored have generously-sized terraces and balconies and feature colorful accents on large, black-framed windows, the undersides of the balconies, and the drainpipes.  The equality of each duplex was guaranteed by simply rotating the design for the first segment and then building the second half at a ninety-degree angle.

Although they were designed in the 1920’s, they still look modern to our eyes – are they the timeless classics that the media adores ? and have we (the masses) been conditioned to recognize them as such ?

Gropius planned to build the complex based on a modular principle, using industrially prefabricated components. In view of the technical resources available at the time, apparently his plan was only partially realized.

With their white, cubic structures and complex connections between exteriors and interiors the houses showed the way forward for modern architecture and testified to the debate about standardization in housing construction.

The list of residents reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of modernists: László Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger in one house, Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer in another, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee in the third.  Walter Gropius occupied the Director’s House – the first house one sees when coming from the school’s direction.

For the color design of the interiors, artists such as Klee and Kandinsky developed own ideas that were closely related to their works.  Klee and Kandinsky used their white-walled homes as blank canvases for the color experiments, painting their interior spaces in almost two hundred colors, that came to light only upon restoration.  The dusty pink/purple room below was Paul Klee’s bedroom !  I (Chris) am a long-time fan of Klee’s work – in the 80’s, I bought a postcard of a painting by him with this color scheme. So this visit was particularly meaningful.

The Kandinsky/Klee Master House was reopened to visitors on 18 April 2019 after extensive restoration.  It was quite an experience for us to be able to walk through the life of Bauhaus masters in the surroundings they created for themselves. We watched all the videos running in the houses, which documented their activities.

All of the houses were fitted with built-in space-saving closets, wardrobes and cupboards, and modern (at the time) household appliances. The furnishings complied with the requirements for optimum day light exposure, ventilation, easy-to-clean surfaces and ergonomic working height.  Much of these modern simple comforts are taken for granted by us now but it must have been quite revolutionary in the 1920’s.

Gropius was interested in reforming the household. Notably, the toilet is separate from the bathroom.  The kitchen where meals are prepared is separated from the dish-washing area, and the dining room.

Others who lived here later, include Hannes Meyer (the next director after Gropius), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (the third director), Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper and Alfred Arndt.

This ensemble of Masters’ houses is the epitome of the artists’ colony of the 20th century.

The Director’s House and the Moholy-Nagy/Feininger were destroyed during World War II.  See the rebuilding of these two houses on our next post.

The Bauhaus Building, Dessau

Our second stop in Dessau is the Bauhaus school building itself.

Let some 70’s Krautrock accompany you on this post.

A lot of the academic-sounding text in these Bauhaus posts were partially taken from our purchased books, pamphlets we picked up on site, as well as the copious volumes of writings on the internet – e.g., https://www.bauhaus-dessau.de/en/index.html.  New York Times had an excellent article on the school, click here.

In 1925, the Staatliches Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau and the building designed by the school’s founder Walter Gropius was inaugurated on December 4, 1926.

The sculptural composition of the Bauhaus Building comprises several volumes which Gropius planned according to their functions. Unlike traditional 19th century academy buildings, which consisted of a compact symmetric structure, the Bauhaus Building plan in the form a pinwheel conveys the impression of movement.

The Building has a skeleton of load-bearing reinforced concrete (clearly visible) and a skin of glass, which provided it with the modern signature sense of transparency, openness, and lightness.  We are looking at the mother of all boxy glass buildings of the 20th century.

By moving all supporting columns into the interiors, thus dispensing with any kind of dominating corner shape, the workshop wing is enclosed by panels of glass (Gropius was allegedly inspired by shoji screens).

Instead of installing glass panes floor by floor, the design relies on a grid system which is suspended from the roof of the building like a curtain – hence the term “curtain wall.”

Opened windows in a curtain wall – you won’t find many, if any, nowadays.

The five-storey studio building accommodated 28 students and junior masters.

The three-storey north wing rendered white is distinguished by horizontal bands of windows and was used by the vocational school.

The administration occupied the lower level and the Bauhaus’s architectural department the upper level of the two-storey bridge which connects the north wing and the Bauhaus.

Among the workshops and design studios, there was a spacious souvenir shop.

We hung around the very early-mid century cafe on the ground floor and mingled with the non-tourists.

We were able to walk through several floors of classrooms (seminarraum) and studios, and peered into empty workshops.

While it looked empty, there were names on doors and people working in offices. This Bauhaus Building is a living, working museum.

The Bauhaus and its sites in Weimar and Dessau have been included on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1996. Not only for its architecture, the award also applies to the Bauhaus as an institution.

Its conceptual thinking aimed to shape a complete modernism in which social and societal aspects played a role, as did all facets of housing and the way of living. The Bauhaus thus represents not only a milestone in architecture and art, but also a revolutionary contribution to the history of ideas of the twentieth century.

The Building is a built manifesto of the Bauhaus idea.

Our next post is about the houses built for the school masters.

 

The brand new Bauhaus Museum Dessau (in 2019)

Since it was not possible to do much traveling in 2020, we do not have many photos left to share from last year.

Going back …, 2019 was the centenary year of the founding of the Bauhaus school in Germany.  We took a pilgrimage tour of the three German cities where the Bauhaus school existed: Dessau, Weimar and Berlin.  So … this is our first post about this trip in Germany.

From my (Chris) favorite German label, Kompakt:

The school was operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts, architecture and the fine arts.

Our tour began in Dessau, a town 80 miles southwest of Berlin, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the school was situated between 1925 and 1932. We were greeted by this installation at the Dessau bahnhof – notice the tiles behind the installation which were laid at angle, lending it more dynamism.

The first stop is the brand new Bauhaus Museum Dessau which was opened by Angela Merkel on September 8, 2019 to commemorate the centenary.  We visited it on September 29, 2019.

The museum was built by addenda architects (González Hinz Zabala) from Barcelona. Their design was selected from 831 submissions in an open international competition held in late 2015. The concept is that of a floating concrete block (“black box”) in a glass shell.  The upper floor provides optimum climatic conditions for storage and display of the collection while the ground floor is open and transparent, offering a forum for talks, dances, and performances.

There was a cafe and shop as well as a semicircular wooden “Arena” by American artist sculptor Rita Mcbride, where events can be held for a number of spectators.

The Bauhaus school became famous for its approach to design, which attempted to unify the principles of mass production with individual artistic vision and strove to combine aesthetics with everyday function.

This brand new museum will select for exhibitions from the collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, brimming with more than 49,000 items. While some of the items in the exhibition are one-off experimental works, many items are now part of everyday life.

Previously the foundation did not have such display opportunities for the vast collection.

The Wassily Chair (below), also known as the Model B3 chair, was designed by Hungarian-born designer Marcel Breuer between 1925-1926.  Also shown is one of his chrome nesting tables.

The permanent exhibition – Versuchsstätte Bauhaus – features over 1,000 exhibits and tells the story of the famous school in Dessau.

This table lamp (“MT8”) designed by German designer Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Swiss designer Carl Jakob Jucker, became known as the Bauhaus Lamp, embodying the principle that “form follows function”.

The exhibition aims to show Bauhaus as a vibrant place where people taught and learned, conducted artistic experiments and worked on industrial prototypes.

According to their website (click here), the exhibition does not “focus on the famed design icons and the masters, but rather the school and the students: the reality of learning and teaching between the poles of creative design and industrial prototype production, artistic experiment and economic pressure, educational institution and emancipatory aspiration.”

On display were snapshots and movies about the students’ daily lives, at work and at play.

There is a massive wall of names, photos, pins and interconnecting strings which graphically display the gatherings, networks, and influences of artists, craftsmen and architects of the 20th century.

The connections illustrate the historical conditions, visions, working procedures, methods, movers and shakers of the time.

New York artist Lucy Raven won the invitation competition “Kunst am Bau” with her concept of “Lichtspielhaus” – a dynamic lighting installation made of glass in different colors, which interacts with the architecture of the building.

The back of the museum faces a park. The previous building was destroyed in World War II. Dessau was heavily bombed on 7 March 1945, six weeks before American troops occupied the town.

“Bauhaus” graphic in a pedestrian subway near the bahnhof.

Next stop – the school in Dessau.

Our trips 2018, part 2

Dear Readers,

It has been a tradition on this blog to take a look back at some of the places we visited last year. In Part 1, we posted photos of places we visited in the second half of 2018. Here are the places we visited in the first half.

Click on the links, where provided to read more about the places of interest. There are usually a series of related posts per location, you can discover them easily in the calendar at the bottom of the post.

In reverse chronological order:

Entrance to Harbor of Lindau, on the shore of Lake Constance in the summer

Red carpet area in St Gallen, Switzerland

Champions League Final in Kiev, Ukraine

Real Madrid scored against Liverpool and went on to win the title 3-1 –  Marcelo, Bale (2 goals – 64′ and 83′), Benzema (1 goal at 51′), Modric and Ronaldo

The Lavra, Kiev (Kyiv), Ukraine

Neues Rathaus at Marienplatz, Munich

Late night Ginza, Tokyo, in April

Zhengyang Gate, Qianmen, Beijing – 正阳门箭楼

Wanchai, Hong Kong in April

WYK, Hong Kong

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Dead sea resort, Jordan

Petra, Jordan

Oslo, Norway where we spent the beginning of the new year

Nobel Peace Center, Oslo

Let’s see where we will go in 2019.

Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen

While staying at Lindau, we went to see the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen. The industrial town is situated on the german shore of Lake Constance and west of Lindau. We saw a zepplin on the first day we arrived in Lindau.

The museum presents on 4000 m2 of exhibition space its world’s largest collection on airship navigation: a multimedia narrative of history, courageous people, technical innovations and high performance.

We used in this post much of the explanation of the museum from their web site which is here. We saw a short movie about the history of airship and the company which developed the technology.

Ferdinand von Zeppelin established his famous dirigible factory at the end of the 19th century. The 128m-long LZ1 airship (Das Luftschiff) rose from its mooring on July 2, 1900.

The first large exhibition hall on the ground floor is dedicated to the biggest and most famous Zeppelin airship: the LZ 129 Hindenburg. This partial reconstruction brings to life a flight to North and South America by airship that took place in the 1930s. 

This ship became the Hindenburg disaster which occurred on May 6, 1937, in Manchester Township, New Jersey, United States. The  LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast. Of the 97 people on board, there were 35 fatalities (13 passengers and 22 crewmen). A variety of hypotheses have been put forward for both the cause of ignition and the initial fuel for the ensuing fire. Photo taken from wikipedia.

The disaster was recorded on film and widely distributed. The event shattered public confidence in the giant, passenger-carrying rigid airship and marked the abrupt end of the airship era.

Despite the disaster, it is clear that the frame is an amazing piece of engineering.

Intricate and precise. Perhaps, this is a reason why steampunk is almost believable.

Besides the preparations required for the journey, it visualizes the luxury at the time on board the flying hotel. 

Via the drop-in ladder you can climb into the real-life passenger compartments of the LZ 129, which have been recreated according to historical plans. It was noted that the interiors were designed according to the Bauhaus school in 1930’s – so the airship really incorporated state-of-the art design and technology of the time.

In the permanent exhibition, flying is explained graphically using the principle of “lighter than air” and made tangible at experimental stations.

The successful history of the Zeppelin Group and its pioneers shows how technical innovations have emerged and the cult of Zeppelin has been celebrated for over a century. There was a display of numerous zeppelin-inspired objects, e.g., pens, etc.

We took a coffee break at the cafe.

Other aviation companies, including Maybach, also arose in Friedrichshafen to help service the industry, which received a major impetus from World War I.

Old poster about identifying British versus German military aircrafts in World War I.

Maybach limo and engine

The exhibitions on the period from 1933 to today is mostly about the integration of the company into the Nazi and the WWII economy, the destruction of Friedrichshafen, and the reorganisation and redevelopment of industrial enterprises after 1945.

Because of its industrial output, Friedrichshafen was heavily bombed during the war. This aerial photo shows a decimated factory complex and all the bomb craters around it.

The company is still in existence and has diversified into various light and heavy industries, e.g. ZF Group that makes gear box for cars.

It was a really interesting visit as we know so little about zepplin before. Too bad it was too late to join a flight. I will try to do it next time.

The museum is located in front of the harbor and we took a ferry back to Lindau. Nice visit.

Lindau food diary: Eil.Gut.Halle

While on Lindau, we went to Eli.Gut.Halle for dinner. It is located close to the lighthouse at the end of the promenade.

Offering outdoor and indoor seating, it has both a view of the harbor and the lake.

Here is a view of the harbor of Lindau – the lighthouse, the lion and the tower (from right to left). There are more pics of the harbor in our last post.

We were there when the sun was setting, and the sky was beautiful.

The restaurant is attached to a lounge/event space, a bar and a gallery of sports cars. There is a meeting area upstairs.

From above, one could see the top tier of cars at a better angle.

The theme is obviously sports cars, but not all of them are vintage.

Most cars are German made understandably.

A few English and Italian.

Surprisingly, we did not see a BMW. Munich being the birthplace of BMWs is not far away and we were in Bavaria.

What I have not seen/heard before is a Porsche-branded tractor – fire-engine red.

The food was good, not touristy.

Nice ambiance.

Go for a drink if you are in town.

Lindau, Germany

In May, we went to Lindau with IT. Lindau is a small island in Lake Constance (Bodensee), located near the meeting point of the Austrian, German and Swiss borders and is nestled on the lake in front of Austria’s Pfänder mountain (see later post). 

We took this aerial photo when flying from Zurich to Kiev after our visit to the island, and recognized it immediately.

Lindau is connected to the mainland on the north shore by a road-traffic bridge and a railway dam. We did not drive and came by train from Switzerland. The station on the island is an old building and has its charm.

Lindau Hauptbahnhof are connected to Friedrichshafen, Munich, Ulm, Augsburg, Bregenz and Zürich by train services run by DB, OBB and SBB.

Our hotel is in front of the harbor on the promenade. Very scenic and lively.

One morning, a small orchestra played on the harbor front outside our hotel.

Lindau is old. The first use of the name Lindau was documented in 882 by a monk from St. Gallen (which we visited after Lindau, see later post). The name Lindau means “island on which linden trees grow”.

Traditionally, it is popular for tourists from the southern parts of Germany.  A well-known landmark in this southwesternmost city of Bavaria is the harbor entrance with Bavarian lion and new lighthouse.

The six-meter-high lion, watching over Lake Constance, is the work of a Munich professor Johann von Halbig. Completed in 1856, it consists of sandstone and weighs about 50 tons.

We strolled to the end of the breakwater on the side with the lion and looked across to the lighthouse. The lighthouse is relatively new, 36 meters high and measures a base circumference of 24 meters. Apparently, it is one of the few structures of its kind which has a clock in the facade.

Looking back towards the harbor, the Mangturm tower can be seen on the left in the photo below. Our hotel is just behind it. This tower used to be a square stone building was built in the 12th century as part of the medieval city fortification.

There are cars on the island but only a small number as the streets are old and narrow. The island is charming for that reason.

Apparently, the Nobel Laureate Meetings began here in 1951 and brings many Nobel Prize laureates to Lindau each year. Students from all over the world are able to meet up with Nobel Laureates to discuss scientific developments.

The Old Town Hall (Altes Rathaus) was built from 1422 in Gothic style – the work on the impressive building lasted 14 years.

It also houses the former Imperial City Library (Reichsstädtischen Bibliothek) in Lindau. It was Martin Luther who in 1524 called on the “councilors of all German cities” to create “good books or librareyen books” – and his appeal was heard here in 1538.

The library houses a colored copy of the first complete German Bible translation of Martin Luther from 1534 which has been put on display in autumn 2013 and protected by a huge climate-stabilizing glass cube.

The welcoming biergarten on the island. It must be packed with very happy people today as this is posted.

Lindau is a jewel on Lake Constance. Comfortable, relaxing, and cultural.

We will come back one of these days.

Zaha Hadid’s Fire Station on the Vitra Campus

Last year, IT and I went to visit the Vitra Campus – located just across the Swiss-German border in Weil am Rhein. See our earlier posts about the Campus and the company’s showrooms. We joined a walking tour of the private areas of the Campus – the factories, the warehouse and the fire station.

Zaha Hadid’s first completed building is perhaps the most famous fire station in the world. The building was commissioned after a disastrous fire at the Vitra factory in 1981.

Completed in 1994, the building housed a garage for fire engines along with another wing containing locker rooms, showers and common areas.

The slanting walls are not caused by my camera, they do not meet at right angles.

The sharp-angled sculptural forms yells “emergency!’ The walls seem to glide past each other.

According to her firm’s web site, the fire station “emerges as a linear layered series of walls, between which program elements are contained – a representation of “movement frozen” – an alert structure, ready to explode into action at any moment.”

This building is a key work of so-called Deconstructivism and of late twentieth-century architecture in general.

For architecture pilgrims, the Vitra Campus is a mecca and this fire station is a high point. Since it no longer functions as a fire station, we were invited inside to sit in the conference room.

The fire station represents the earliest attempt to translate Hadid’s fantastical, powerful conceptual drawings into a functional architectural space.

This Fire House project – a complex construction of tilted and clashing planes – looks very different from her later, organic designs.

Vitra’s voluntary fire fighting team decided to co-operate with the professional city fire brigade and dissolved the factory-based fire fighting teams. As a consequence Vitra no longer needed a fire station and the building became a space for lectures, concerts, and exhibitions.

Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004.

She worked for her former professors, Koolhaas and Zenghelis, at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, becoming a partner in 1977.

Hadid established her own London-based architecture practice in 1980.

On 31 March 2016, Hadid died of a heart attack in a Miami. We did a post about her building in Hyde Park, London (here) shortly after her death.

Alexander Girard at Vitra Design Museum

This is the third post on what we saw at the Vitra Campus.

The Vitra Design Museum is one of the publicly accessible building on the Campus. A major retrospective – “Alexander Girard – A Designer’s Universe” was installed when we visited. Much of what is written below came from their web site which is very informative.

The Vitra Design Museum was founded in 1989 by the company Vitra.

It is housed in a building by Frank Gehry (who else ?). Next to it is a gallery also by Gehry, where we saw an exhibition about the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (see that post here).

The work of the Vitra Design Museum is based on its collection, which encompasses not only key objects of design history, but also the estates of several important figures (including Charles & Ray Eames, George Nelson, and Verner Panton).

It is dedicated to the research and presentation of design, past and present, and examines design’s relationship to architecture, art and everyday culture.

Originally envisioned as a private collector’s museum, major internationally acclaimed exhibitions were presented later, including retrospectives on Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright and Luis Barragán.

It developed its own product lines to finance its activities and an independent publishing house was established.

Alexander Girard (1907-1993) is renowned for its fabric designs and collection of folk art.

In 1951, he was appointed as the director of Herman Miller’s textile department.

He recognized an impulse in folk art, based on a universal human heritage of patterns, motifs and design techniques that transcends the limits of  time and place.

Girard donated over a 100,000 pieces of folk art to the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A new wing was built at the museum—which Girard designed—to house the collection.

Vitra is licensed to make a range of products bearing his graphic designs as well as a series of collectible wooden dolls.

Check out the web site of the Girard Studio to see more of his works.

VitraHaus, Weil am Rhein

VitraHaus is Vitra’s flagship store on the Campus. One can see, touch, compare, test, and buy all of Vitra’s home and office furniture offerings here. We visited the Campus last year and this is the second of four posts. See the Campus overview here. Most of what is written below came from their web site which is very informative.

Designed to display the furniture brand’s Home Collection, the five-storey building consists of stacked volumes with pitched roofs covered in charcoal stucco.

The company commissioned Basel-based architects Herzog & de Meuron in 2006 to design the VitraHaus.

Each gabled end is glazed and cantilevers outwards up to five metres, creating the impression of a pile of houses.

A lift takes visitors to the fourth storey, where we started the circular tour. On that day, it was a space completed in different degrees of pink.

Internally, spiral staircases connect the intersecting interiors.

The furniture showrooms are seamless as one moves from one area to the next.

The lower floor is dedicated to office furniture.

In addition to the display area for the company’s products, there is an exhibition space for the chair collection of the Vitra Design Museum.

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These collectible miniatures are everywhere in this building.

Technicolor Eames.

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One can order a custom-made Eames chair at the Lounge Chair Atelier. The choice of every component can be made by the customer.

There is also the Vitra Design Museum Shop and a café with an outdoor terrace.

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There was so much to see and buy in this building.

According to their website, the VitraHaus has a daytime view and a reversed night time view. During the day, one looks out onto the green landscape, but when darkness falls, the illuminated interior of the building glows from within, while its physical structure fades out. The glazed gable ends turn into display cases that shine across the Vitra Campus.

We did not stay late enough to see it.

Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein

Last year, IT and I went to visit the Vitra Campus – located just across the Swiss-German border in Weil am Rhein. Much of what is written below came from their web site which is very informative. They also have a great drone video of the campus here.

The Vitra Campus comprises a public and a private area. In the public space, you will find the Vitra Design Museum, the VitraHaus and the Vitra Silde Tower. The private area, where the production facilities are located, can only be accessed as part of an architectural tour (on which these photos were taken).

VitraHaus (see later post)

In 1981, a fire destroyed the majority of the production facilities used by Vitra. The resulting reconstruction provided an opportunity to produce various buildings with renowned architects. The company decided to built its own firehouse. The Vitra Fire Station was the first full-scale work by Zaha Hadid ever to be realised. See later post.

Nicholas Grimshaw was chosen as the first architect to rebuild the Campus. As the insurance funds only covered a six-month interruption in production, Grimshaw designed a factory constructed from simple prefabricated metal elements.

The horizontally striated façade made of corrugated sheet metal bears witness to the industrial purpose of the building as well as the technological competence of the company.

The Vitra Design Museum building was designed by the American architect Frank Gehry as his first project in Europe. See later post about this museum.

Designed by the Japanese architectural office SANAA, the Vitrashop Factory Building was completed in 2012. The building has a nearly circular footprint and consists of two adjoining semi-circular concrete shells.

The flowing character of the building’s exterior is created by a white curtain façade made of undulating acrylic panels.

Although the production hall is larger than any of the other factory buildings on the Vitra Campus, the façade gives it a light, almost floating appearance.

The Schaudepot is the second building on campus by the architects Herzog & de Meuron. The new structure was not yet opened when we visited but opened later in 2016. It combines the simple appearance of an industrial building with the complex requirements of a walk-in museum repository.

Balancing Tools by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen

The sculpture was commissioned by the children of Vitra company founder Willi Fehlbaum as a gift for his seventieth birthday. It depicts the three main tools employed by upholsters who play a central role in the production of furniture.

Dome by Richard Buckminster Fuller

Petrol Station. Jean Prouvé was an important engineer, architect and designer of the post-war era. He developed furniture and buildings based on carefully constructed metal structures produced in his own metalworking shop.

The Conference Pavilion by Tadao Ando was the architect’s first work outside Japan.

The centrepiece of the building consists of a sunken courtyard that seems to conceal the surrounding environment and lends the building an almost monastic tranquillity and intimacy.

Posts to come will cover the VitraHaus, Design Museum and the firehouse.

Objection! Protest by Design at Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

IT and I visited the Vitra Design Museum at Weil am Rhein in April 2016. It is a beautiful, well-designed (duh), starchitect-built campus – more about this place in future posts. From 26.02 – 29.05.2016, in a free-standing gallery next to the museum,  the exhibition titled “Objection! Protest by Design” was held.

The exhibition presented a number of objects that was spawned by the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement 雨傘運動 in Hong Kong that took place between 26 September 2014 and 15 December 2014. Much of what I wrote below came from the Vitra-distributed exhibition guide.

In a reaction to proposed changes in the electoral process in Hong Kong, spontaneous student protests erupted in Hong Kong. The protesters created numerous informal and improvised physical structures, graphic images, digital art, and online networks; protesters used the umbrella that gave the movement its name to protect themselves from the police.

“Broken” by Jonathan Mak. Notice the fractured leg and an off-balance star and the tiny umbrella beneath it.

There were two large “tables” which were overlaid with a large scale birds-eye view of the streets in Hong Kong.

Protesters were highly organized in their occupation of three main heavily trafficked protest sites: Admiralty, Mong Kok and Causeway Bay.

Do click on the map below here to see in details the Admiralty site.

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A large number of installations (barricades, means to cross the expressway median), first aid stations, study areas, press stands and camp sites appeared in the 8-lane expressway and two shopping districts to become voices and means of protests.

The appearance of these installations were recorded and mapped, and shown on these two tables.

Mong Kok

A number of barricades were set up to create a safety zone in order to make a defined space for resting. They were recreated here by 3D printing.

The Lennon Wall was created by students and social workers with Post-Its on a wall of a stair leading from a street up to a pedestrian footbridge in Admiralty.

They invited people to write down their hopes and reasons for staying in Admiralty after the police tried to disperse the protestors with tear gas.

At the end of the occupation, the Wall was taken down and parts of it were preserved.

The exhibition wanted to show how design not only shapes and define products, but can also function as an agent of change in politics, communications and social innovations.

I hope the people of Hong Kong all voted and voted wisely today.

Our trips 2015, part 2

Dear Readers, Happy New Year !

Continuing with our first post of 2016, this post takes a look back at the places we visited in the first half of last year. In 2015, there were 94 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 650 posts. The post that had the highest number of views in 2015 was about our visit to a durian stand in a night market in Malaysia.

Click on links, where provided to read more about the places of interest. There are usually a series of related posts per location, you can discover them easily in the calendar at the bottom of the post.

In reverse chronological order from June:

Berlin, Germany in June to see the Champions League final – a part of the wall

München, Germany in April for work, Asam’s church

Catania, Sicily, Italy during Easter – Teatro Bellini

Taormina, Sicily

Siracusa and Ortigia, Sicily

Half way up Mount Etna and Meditterranean sea, Sicily

Langkawi, Malaysia in January

Hong Kong

Georgetown in Penang, Malaysia

Penang, Malaysia in January

Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016.

 

 

DRIVE, Volkswagon Group Forum, Berlin

After the UEFA Champions League Final game on a Saturday in June (click here to see the post), we stayed an extra day in Berlin. As expected on a Sunday, most of the shops were closed. So we were pleased to discover Volkswagon Group’s “flagship” store, not far from Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstrasse 84/Unter den Linden. See the Forum’s site here.

Apparently, it was only a month old when we visited in June 2015. Following extensive remodelling with a completely new design, the former Automobil Forum reopened with all of VW group’s twelve brands under one roof.

The Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Volkswagen trucks, Scania and MAN brands are presented.

The VW brand was represented by a rally race car.

Apparently, all Porsche dashboard looks the same.

In Europe, more than one in four cars are made by the group. Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft is the largest company in Europe, apparently, and this is their communication platform on mobility.

Not following auto news, we had no idea that Lambo and Bentley are both VW brands.

The Lambo’s shark look is comical, as is the over-tanned rolly polly Bentley.

According to their website (click here ):

“The Volkswagen Group Forum gives us the opportunity to further enliven its economic and social role. Here in the heart of the capital, we want to establish a continuing dialogue with people.”

The Group operates 119 (May 26, 2015) production plants in 20 European countries and a further 11 countries in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Every weekday, 592,586 employees worldwide produce nearly 41,000 vehicles, and work in vehicle-related services or other fields of business. The Volkswagen Group sells its vehicles in 153 countries.

Interacting with digital exhibits, the visitors can discover both the past and present of the Volkswagen Group.

Of course, they are selling the brands here not the actual cars, but they sell books and other branded paraphrenalia. But the range of merchandise here pales in comparison with what was on offer at BMW Welt in Munich (click here to see the post).

There were several walls full of miniature models on display. The model cars were not available for sale. They serve a documentary purpose.

Volkswagen started producing Sambas in 1951. In the sixties this version became popular as a hippie bus. Instead of a sliding door at the side the Samba had two pivot doors. In addition the Samba had a fabric sunroof. At that time Volkswagen advertised with the idea of using the Samba to make tourist trips through the Alps. Sambas were standard painted in two colors. Usually, the upper part was colored white. The two colored sections were separated by a decorative strip. Further the bus had a so-called “hat”: at the front of the van the roof was just a little longer than the car itself to block the sun for the driver.

We assume they would make a model only if the real car existed – but Porsche police car ?  Only in Germany !

The forum offers conference spaces and two restaurants – the eateries sounded interesting but we did not have time to try them.

A fun place to spend half an hour.

Berlin food diary: Cocolo Ramen, Kreuzberg

Just a quick post about what we ate while in Berlin. The places mentioned in these food diary entries are all memorable for various reasons and definitely recommendable.

Don’t remember why we wanted to have ramen in Germany. IT’s friend recommended this place Cocolo Ramen in Kreuzberg.

Since we were hungry, we took a cab from our hotel (near the zoo) to Kruezberg, an area with a lot of immigrants and a canal runs through it. The restaurent is on Paul-Lincke-Ufer. We were sure the driver did not take the most direct route.

This area feels a bit like the canal area in Milano – numerous bars and restaurants line the sides of the canal, very local and without the touristy fares. Click here to see our post on the Naviglio Grande in Milano.

Cocolo was packed on the outside since the weather was agreeable. We quickly found a table inside next to a big window.

The locals must love it because the inside was quickly filled up too.

Standard ramen on the menu. Nothing surprising. Authentic and tasty is how we would describe it.

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Definitely worth the trip seeking it out if you crave ramen in Berlin.

But on the next day, we found a second Cocolo (probably its parent) in Mitte. Cocolo is apparently a growing enterprise.

Berlin food diary: Austernbar in KaDeWe

Just a couple of short posts about what we ate while in Berlin. The places mentioned in these food diary entries are all memorable for various reasons and definitely recommendable.

KaDeWe is a large luxury department store in Berlin, equivalent to Harrods in London or Shinsegae in Seoul. They have the most extensive gourmet food retail area on the entire 6th floor.

I(Chris) had sang praises about this place in earlier posts, some of which reported on my attempt to count how many different types of sausages were available for sale in the store. If you are curious, click here and here to find out. At that previous visit, I was by myself and chose to enjoy a bowl of bouillbaise on a bar dedicated to serving this dish. Click here to see it.

This time, there were four of us, and since all the food bars were serving interesting and delicious-looking dishes. It took us quite a bit of walking around and debate among ourselves before settling down for the seafood and oyster bar, Austernbar.

The place was packed and the staff was very energized. One guy’s job was mostly opening oyster – he used a long hinged blade fixed onto the counter rather than a small shucking knife. He had to be fast. See the orders in front of him.

The variety of oysters on the menu was extensive – originating from Scottish waters (which was the tastiest in our opinion) to French Atlantic coast, around Sylt, and the Mediterranean, etc. We had a sampler of six different kinds.

IT had the smoked eel which was very tasty – just the right amount of smoky flavor with a touch of natural sweetness.

We also had a couple of grilled seafood platters. Yummy.

Definitely a fun place to have a chilled glass of champagne and oysters.

UEFA Champions League Final 2015, Berlin

This June, we were the lucky guests of IT again for the UEFA Champions League Final 2015 which was held in Berlin, Germany.

Beside Sue and IT, we were joined by MW(HK) and MI(CH). We arrived at the Olympiastadion around dusk after much traffic congestion, despite being transported in a VIP bus provided by the game’s sponsors.

The Olympiastadion was built for the 1936 Olympic Games, the 11th Summer Olympics. Adolf Hitler wanted to use the stadium for propaganda and ordered the construction of a new sports complex rather than renovating an existing Deutsches Stadion.

We waited quite a bit on the outside before being let in through a VIP entrance. As we learnt afterwards, there were as many as 5000 counterfeit tickets in circulation and UEFA was trying to deal with it outside the stadium.

The stadium was renovated in 2004 and hosted 6 matches including the final for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Its capacity is about 75,000 spectators – the largest football stadium in Germany.

The two teams in this year’s Champion League final are FC Barcelona, Spain and Juventus from Torino, Italy.

Juve was the underdog team.

We had seats in midfield, half way up the side facing the player’s entrance.

The Barça fans are on our left and Juve fans on the right.

The game started with a short opening ceremony.

Having been to Camp Nou – the clubhouse of FC Barcelona (click here for the post), I(Chris) knows the Barça team better. Now they have 3 South American star players – Messi, Neymar and Suarez.

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The game was very exciting, top-level play, without excessive pushing or tripping. We were truly surprised when the half time whistle was blown as the game was so engrossing that we did not even look at our watches.

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Barça won the game 3-1, being the overall better team. Juve had its moment after they scored an equalizer but their high spirit was quickly lost when Barça scored its second goal. Even before the third goal was scored in the last minutes of the game, it was all over for Juventus already.

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This was our third attendance of a Champions League final game (lucky us) and this game was the most enjoyable to watch.

We saw the other two games – 2012 in Munich (Allianz stadium, Chelsea beat Bayern Munich, click here to see us holding the actual cup before the game and also here) and 2013 in London (Wembley, Bayern Munich beat Borussia Dortmund, click here). The stadium and hospitality service in Berlin was better than Wembley and on par with Allianz.

All thanks to IT.

 

 

Our trips 2014 – part 2

H a p p y  2015 !

Now that we are back from our year-end vacation, we are taking a look back at some of the places we visited last year. This is the second of two posts; Part 1 is here.

The photos are organized in reverse chronological order. Some of the trips are business trips and some are vacations. Click the links where provided to see the actual posts. There are usually a series of related posts per location, they are uploaded around the same time – you can discover them easily in the calendar at the bottom of the post.

June 2014 – Val de Loire, France – It was a road trip with our “new” car and we saw V and her families.

Chambord

 

Orleans

 

Chez Liz, Orleans – thanks, we had a great time seeing every one.

 

May 2014 – Cologne, Germany

 

April 2014 – Milan, Italy – I (Chris) went to see the Salone Internazionale del Mobile.

April 2014 – Korea – Sue went with her family for a tour.

Seoul

Busan (부산, 釜山)

Jeju Island (제주도, 濟州島)

 

April 2014 – Morges, Switzerland – Annual Tulip festival

 

February 2014, Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland with IT who came to see ballet, eat fondue and buy accordion.

 

January 2014, Times Square, New York. I (Chris) took this from the building where I worked many years ago on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 44th street.

We are wondering where we will go in 2015.