Undoubtedly Quint had lost his way in a snowstorm, had missed the pass down to the hospice and had climbed up to the wilder heights of the Pizzo Centrale. There the night, the fog, and the whirling snow had probably engulfed him. That must have happened in late Autumn or early winter. For when the herdsmen found him he must have been lying in the deepest stratum of ice and snow for at least five or six months. A sheet of paper was found in his pocket on which were still legible the words "The mystery of the Kingdom?" Nobody heeded or understood the phrase. But when the chronicler saw the sad document he could not restrain a feeling of emotion. Had Emanuel Quint died convinced or doubting? The bit of paper holds a question surely. But what does it mean: "The mystery of the Kingdom?” Gerhart Hauptmann, Emanuel Quint, The Fool In Christ, pg. 474
Late in November 1917, having finished reading the tragic conclusion to Gerhart Hauptmann’s tale of the pathetic nomad and sufferer of “Christ mania” Emanuel Quint, the German architect Bruno Taut began working on Alpine Architektur (hereafter AA).1 It was a collection of drawings with accompanying text illustrating his vision of a utopia. Containing pavilions, palaces and monuments constructed out of a spectrum of coloured glass and situated high up in the snowy Alpine mountain range, AA was Taut’s peaceable kingdom of imaginary architecture dreamt up as a cooling balm to the wholesale industrialised slaughter of the First World War. As readers we tour through valleys, up glaciers, then ultimately, flying up above the icy mountain peaks, depart our world to voyage into the sparkling and fiery solar system Taut has rendered. Just after leaving the atmosphere, we take one final look back to a radiant Earth, its daytime side shimmering intense blue in the sun, its silvery nighttime side speckled with glowing jewel-like cities. Then we continue, embarking on a Sternbau into the universe.
1
For a good chronology of the development of Alpine Architektur, see Matthias Schirren, Bruno Taut: Alpine Architektur, Ein Utopia/A Utopia, (München, Berlin, London and New York, Prestel, 2004) specifically pg. 8
First, I’ll briefly outline Taut’s social and political influences around the time he made AA. Then I’ll look at how Taut’s AA was influenced by fiction, specifically the work of the German critic and fantasy novelist, Paul Scheerbart. Further, I’ll look at the idea of “cosiness” in relation to civilisation. I then argue that although generally bunched in to the category of architectural drawing or visionary architecture, this is an insufficient categorisation of AA and that it is actually a work of graphic narrative more akin to a comic book or picture-book. I will then conclude by thinking how we can understand AA in relation to Michel Serres’s The Natural Contract.2 1. Bruno Taut: A Self-Conscious Communion With Nature
Taut never formally trained as an architect and – after a visit to Berlin in 1902 – was considering becoming a painter. At this time his main artistic influences were the metropolitan architect Alfred Messel and symbolist painter Arnold Böklin. These two are emblematic of an intellectual and artistic duality which defined Taut throughout his career – a duality he was aware of early on: “Thoughts about painting now occupy me constantly. It seems to me that I can give my character its fullest expression in this medium – probably better than in architecture […] Spatial composition with colour, coloured architecture – these are areas in which I shall perhaps say something special […] painting always brings me back to architecture and vice-versa. I don’t have to worry about a cleavage between the two.”3 This desire to fuse “structural clarity and artistic fantasy” 4 anticipated the underlying motives behind the founding of the Activist movement a decade later. 2
There were several texts which I read that, although don’t feature in this essay, provided an impetus. Probably the main one was Dominic Fox’s Cold World, which contained a wonderful description of dysphoria being a potentially constructive and creative process. Several texts suggested by Esther which focused on the drawn aspect of AA and its relationship to comic books, along with other ideas about Sci-Fi, ascension and Darko Suvin’s notion of a Brechtian “cognitive estrangement”, enriched my reading for this but in the end, to do justice to the authors ideas would have demanded far more space than I have! 3 4
From diary entry 17 March 1905, in Iain Boyd White, Bruno Taut And The Architecture Of Activism, pg. 20 Iain Boyd White, Bruno Taut And The Architecture Of Activism, pg. 20
The Activist movement (of which Taut was a member) attempted to combine the irrationalist psychological revolt of Expressionism with the more pragmatic social reform movements prevalent in Germany at that time.5 Through his involvement with an organisation called the Choriner Kreis (a direct precursor to Activism), Taut befriended the art historian Adolf Behne, with whom he would walk together in the woods surrounding the town of Chorin “indulging in the slightly self-conscious communion with nature which inspired the Wandervogel movement.”
6
Taut was opposed to what he saw as uncontrolled urbanisation and an admirer of the English garden city movement, in 1912 becoming an advisory architect to the German equivalent of the Garden City Association, the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft. Throughout his career, Taut was interested in the boundaries of architecture and opening up buildings to the outside as a symbolic (if not real) opening up of the human race to nature, ideas which he elaborated on in numerous essays.7 At the same time as his burgeoning involvement in the social reform movement, Taut became involved with Hewarth Walden’s Expressionist magazine and gallery, Der Sturm. His intellectual restlessness gave him a reputation as an outsider, Walter Gropius (who would later head the Bauhaus) noting to Adolf Behne “Bruno doesn’t fit into any group. His destiny is to remain alone and he should acknowledge this and draw the consequences.”
8
During the
Weimar Republic, Taut was also an important figure in the transition between what the art historian Franz Roh described as the “ecstatic”, “loud” and “warm” qualities of Expressionism to “sober”, “cold” and 5
For more information on Activism and social reform movements in Germany at the time see Iain Boyd White, Bruno Taut And The Architecture Of Activism, pp. 7–16 6
Iain Boyd White, Bruno Taut And The Architecture Of Activism, pg. 7
7
Bruno Taut, "The Earth Is A Good Dwelling", in eds. Edward Dimendberg, Martin Jay and Anton Kaes, The Weimar Republic Sourcebook [no translator cited] (Berkley: University Of California Press, 1994). First published as "Die Erde Eine Gute Wohnung" in Die Volkwohnung, Zeitschrift Für Wohnung Und Siedlungswesen" 1, no. 4 (24 February, 1919) pp. 45–48 8
ed. Iain Boyd White, The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies By Bruno Taut And His Circle, (Cambridge MA and London, MIT Press, 1985) pg. 3 from a letter dated 29 December 1919.
rational New Objectivity moment.9 But, from 1912 through to the 1920s, Taut became increasingly interested, even obsessed, with glass architecture. And in the writings of Paul Scheerbart found a kindred spirit who saw a transcendental, utopian quality in this material which had recently become mass producible.
2. Get Used To The Cold: Paul Scheerbart, Glass Architecture And Cosiness
The Beauty Of The Earth When Glass Architecture Is Everywhere. The face of the Earth would be much altered if brick architecture were ousted everywhere by glass architecture. It would be as if the Earth were adorned with sparkling jewels and enamels. Such glory is unimaginable. All over the world it would be as splendid as in the gardens of the Arabian Nights. We would then have a paradise on Earth, and no need to watch in longing expectation for the paradise in heaven. Paul Scheerbart, Glass Architecture And Alpine Architecture By Bruno Taut, pg. 46
Although AA was propelled by Hauptmann’s novel, Paul Scheerbart’s writing, especially his 1914 treatise Glasarchitektur (hereafter GA) provided its main conceptual framework.10 Taut and Scheerbart formed a close relationship through their involvement with Der Sturm, and by the end of 1913 – when Scheerbart would have been writing GA – they were in regular contact.11 That GA was dedicated to Taut, and Taut’s 9
Franz Roh, German Art In The Twentieth Century: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, with additions by Julianne Roh (London: Thames And Hudson, 1968) pg. 113. For more on this period of Taut’s career, read Taut’s Modern Architecture, (London: The Studio, 1929) 10
Though: "Lurking behind the immediate source of Scheerbart was the ghost of Nietzsche." Iain Boyd White, Bruno Taut And The Architecture Of Activism, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), pg. 67. Specifically his Thus Spake Zarathustra. See Boyd White’s aforementioned book for more on this. 112
On Taut and Scheerbart’s relationship, see Dennis Sharp’s introduction to Paul Scheerbart, Glass Architecture And Alpine Architecture By Bruno Taut, pp. 1–12. By the early 1920s Taut had left his more fantastical roots behind and embraced the modernist ‘cool’ of New Objectivity, more akin to the clean
Glashaus pavilion (an experimental structure made as part of the 1914 Cologne Werkbund exhibition) was dedicated to Scheerbart in return, is telling of the intertwinement of their visions at the time.12 Scheerbart’s writing is usually satirical and very concise in its descriptions, a counterpoint to the naturalism of his contemporary, Gerhart Hauptmann.13 In the space of several sentences characters meet and get married, travel over continents by airship, build towering glass monuments and so on. But in its methodical approach, GA is unique from most of Scheerbart’s oeuvre. Its detailing of the practical minutiae of glass buildings can sometimes seem like a parody of seriousness when compared to the humour and irony found in novels like The Gray Cloth And Ten Percent White: A Ladies Novel or short stories like The Light Club Of Batavia.14 In it, Scheerbart provides the reader with an index of 111 short paragraphs outlining measures needed in order to progress towards the enlightenment of a “glass culture”. Advice is given on topics ranging from “Chapter 17: The Avoidance Of Wood In Furniture And Interior Decoration” to “Chapter 14: Overcoming The Danger Of Fire” to “Chapter 35: Ventilators, Which Are Ousting The Customary Windows” even to the practical use of vacuum cleaners to suck up bugs infesting public parks. Though Scheerbart occupies much time in GA explaining the benefits functionality of the Bauhaus style. 12
An intertwinement which some authors reflect by conflating the two men themselves: see Janet Ward’s Weimar Surfaces were she generally refers to them as “Scheerbart & Taut” as if they’re an architectural firm. As a rule, Scheerbart and Taut are very rarely mentioned alone; a description of Scheerbart’s writing is almost inevitably followed by a discussion of his influence upon Taut. 13
“He saw his own writing, though yet unrecognized, as much superior to the descriptive, naturalistic style of the popular playwright Gerhart Hauptmann: "How much higher I stand than these thoroughgoing realists, I, the only thoroughgoing alcoholic!"” in Rosemarie Haag Bletter, "Paul Scheerbart's Architectural Fantasies", Journal Of The Society Of Architectural Historians, Vol. 34, No. 2 (May, 1975), pg. 86 [cites Stanisław Przybyszewski, Erinnerungen An Das Literarische Berlin, pg. 152. According to Dennis Sharp’s introduction to Glass Architecture, Scheerbart and Przybyszewski were together, for a while, both involved in Satanism] 14
A particularly wonderful Scheerbart quote: “I became a humorist out of rage, not out of kindness” from the preface to his Rakkóx Der Billionär, in Iain Boyd White, The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies By Bruno Taut And His Circle, (Cambridge MA and London, MIT Press, 1985) pg. 5
of transparency and light (specifically coloured light) and other aspects of “glass culture”, he continually returns to the underlying problem of temperature. In “Chapter 4: Double Glass Walls, Light, Heating And Cooling” he expounds on double glazing as a method of temperature regulation (a subject he was particularly passionate about) explaining “the double glass wall is an essential condition for all glass architecture”. In Chapter 13 he writes “The reader might gain the impression that glass architecture is rather cold, but in warm weather coolness is not unpleasant. Anyhow, let me make it clear that colours in glass can produce a most glowing effect, shedding perhaps a new warmth. What has been said up to now takes on a somewhat warmer atmosphere.” In a neat twist, sensually substituting one energy for another.15 In a 1918 review of GA, Adolf Behne modifies this point sternly “[…] the European is right when he fears that glass architecture might become uncomfortable. Certainly, it will be so. And that is not its least advantage. For first of all the European must be wrenched out of his cosiness (Gemütlichkeit). Not without good reason the adjective 'gemütlich' intensified becomes 'saugemütlich' (swinishly comfortable). Away with comfort! Only where comfort ends does humanity begin.”
16
For Scheerbart, the not inconsequential cold which would result from glass architecture could be compensated by coloured glass’s “glowing effect, shedding perhaps a new warmth”. Is this new warmth similar to 15
This sensual ‘substitution’ is echoed by Lisa Heschong: "Tetsuro Yoshida suggests that the Japanese are masters of substitution of one sense for another. He reports: "In the Summer the householder likes to to hang a picture of a waterfall, a mountain stream or similar view in the Tokonama and enjoy in its contemplation a feeling of coolness" in Lisa Heschong, Thermal Delight In Architecture, (Cambridge MA and London, MIT Press, 1979), pg. 24 citing: Tetsuro Yoshida The Japanese House & Garden 1955, (Frederik Praeger) pg. 16 16
Adolf Behne, "Review Of Scheerbart's Glass Architecture", in Form And Function, in eds. Tim And Charlotte Benton with Dennis Sharp, Form And Function: A Sourcebook For The History Of Architecture And Design 1890–1939 (Crosby Lockwood Staple, 1975) pg. 77. Behne goes on to say “[Glass’s] profoundest effect, however, will be that it breaks down the inflexibility and harshness of the European […] Underneath a jelly-like exterior he is dull and brutal. Glass will transform him. Glass is sheer and angular, yet in its hidden potential it is gentle and delicate." pg. 77. Though according to Janet Ward in her Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture In 1920s Germany, (Berkley, Los Angeles and London: University Of California Press, 2001), Behne’s thermal delight "amounts, in fact, to the frankly merciless tabula rasa spirit of modern urban planning, as witnessed even more hauntingly in the project for a "skyscraper city" (Hochhausstadt, 1924) by Hilberseimer–a vision that presents itself as the extreme consequence of modernity's deornamentation in design, a dystopian utopia lost in an abstract zone of euphorically geometric yet spiritually voided streets." pg. 73
the purifying and spiritually uplifting effects of coldness found in Behne’s notion of a departure from comfort in a voyage towards the human? This dynamic between cosiness and humanity is also found in Walter Benjamin’s “Experience And Poverty”: It is no coincidence that glass is such a hard, smooth material to which nothing can be fixed. A cold and sober material into the bargain. Objects made of glass have no "aura." Glass is, in general, the enemy of secrets. It is also the enemy of possession […] Do people like Scheerbart dream of glass buildings because they are the spokesmen of new poverty? But a comparison will perhaps reveal more than theory. If you enter a bourgeois room of the 1880s, for all the coziness it radiates, the strongest impression you receive may well be, "You've got no business here." And in fact you have no business in that room, for there is no spot on which the owner has not left his mark [...] Walter Benjamin, "Experience And Poverty" pg. 734
Here Benjamin writes about “poverty of experience” as not only a loss of the skill of (mainly oral) storytelling from an onslaught of new electric technologies, but also as the “galvinisation” of an “oppressive wealth of ideas”, including astrology, yoga, Christian Science, chiromancy, vegetarianism and Spiritualism amongst others. For Benjamin, Scheerbart’s writing is a “barbaric” artistic method of evacuating high minded bourgeois trappings from literature.17 This poverty clears away memory, property and other vestiges of an old humanism and forces the destructive characters “to start from scratch; to make a new start; to make a little go a long way; to begin with a little and build up further […] Among the creative spirits, there have always been the inexorable ones who begin by clearing a tabula rasa. They need a drawing table […]”18 Here, Scheerbart’s science fictions 17
Benjamin also outlines this artistic character in his short essay “The Destructive Character” in Selected Writings, Volume 2 1927–1934, translated by Rodney Livingstone and others, (Cambridge MA, The Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press, 1999) pp 541–2 18
Walter Benjamin, "Experience And Poverty" in Selected Writings, Volume 2 1927–1934, (eds. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith) translated by Rodney Livingstone and others, (Cambridge MA, The Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press, 1999)
and fantasies visualise how technologies like glass architecture, along with telescopes, aeroplanes and spaceships will transform people into a “new type of techno-self”
19
He provides an example to artists how
they can retransmit the impoverished nature of experience by incorporating capitalism's alienating "barbarisms" formally; Scheerbart and his fellow artist barbarians “all incorporate candid reflections of the end of humanism."20 3: Reminiscences Impressed In Dough
What current of coldness runs through the above ideas? Here humankind leaves the cosiness of their spiritually squalid backsteinkultur (brick culture) for the brisk transparency of glass culture and its architecture. For Benjamin, the cold and sober glass surfaces herald a new but impoverished world, a way of “surviving civilisation”; For Scheerbart, his glass rooms offer humanity a “new warmth”; Behne sees the redemption of the European in coldness, a way towards actual humanity. We can find this movement in AA also. Taut’s cosmology drew influence from pantheism and animism. As a follower of the psychophysicist Gustav Theodor Fechner, Taut believed in "universal animation", that everything in the cosmos was alive and that any effort on the part of humankind to separate from nature was erroneous, if not fatal.21 This was reflected in Taut’s interest in the opening up of buildings [see illustration of Taut’s TrägerVerkaufskontor pavilion], which he returned to several times, gradually decrypting the mausoleum-like “Prussian monumentalism” of his early pavilions.22 Later this interest would return during a prolonged stay in Japan. In a text on the Isé shrines there, Taut writes that they “have 19
Esther Leslie, Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, (London, Pluto Press, 2000) pg. 86
20
Ibid. Also, in “Experience And Poverty” Benjamin includes Bertolt Brecht, Paul Klee, Adolf Loos and Walt Disney/Mickey Mouse alongside Scheerbart as destructive characters. 21 22
Matthias Schirren, Bruno Taut: Alpine Architektur, Ein Utopia/A Utopia, pg. 16 In Dennis Sharp’s introduction to Glass Architecture And Alpine Architecture By Bruno Taut, pg. 12
their origin in the Japanese climate, which has much of both sunshine and dampness, so that while the air is not transparent, the sky is brilliant. From this come not only the deep green of the surroundings, but also the particular feeling of the Japanese for nature”23 Taut continues in a very Benjamin-like tone: “Just as the air in the room is completely changed by being open to the outside, so the reminiscences attached to the walls and corners – reminiscences which all too easily oppress the inhabitants – are erased as though impressed in dough.”
24
For Taut, the building is the site of the beginning and ending points of man’s self awareness as part of both nature and culture. The building is a space of negotiating one’s relationship with nature, so a closed off “cosy” space is anathema to his architecture. Via the openness found in his architecture (an idea later incorporated by scores of modern architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright) Taut hoped to allow the human being to reintegrate into the outside world and thus, become one with nature again.25 But this meaning of coldness is primarily part of his built practice; there is a coldness that exists specifically in AA. As is always the case with Taut’s work there is another occupation going on concurrently.
4: A Cosmic Picture-Book
Writers on Taut and AA often implicitly assume that his vision ought 23
Bruno Taut, The Fundamentals Of Japanese Architecture, (Tokyo, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai [The Society For International Cultural Relations] 1937), pg. 26, captions to illustration 2. 24 25
Bruno Taut, The Fundamentals Of Japanese Architecture, pg. 12
For an explicit manifesto on this aspect of his work, especially as a polemic against cities, see: Bruno Taut, "The Earth Is A Good Dwelling", in eds. Edward Dimendberg, Martin Jay and Anton Kaes, The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, pp. 45–48
really end up in the physical realm – after all, Taut is an architect, so why would he draw up an architectural plan for something that could never be built? Siegfried Kracauer's somewhat tongue-in-cheek accusation that Taut was a "fanatic" who dreamt up "hazardous glass palaces" is telling of this ingrained assumption.26 Kracauer saw AA as a fantasist’s plan created during idle hours for want of commissions. Walter Laquer tells us "such outlandish fantasies would have been easily dismissed but for the fact that Taut was also an excellent and eminently practical architect and designer, the builder of some of the biggest housing projects in Berlin"
, as if Taut liked to “go out and
27
play” once and a while, but once he got his act together could be trusted with the real work; as if “dreams” like AA would have a detrimental or even dangerous effect on “real” buildings. No matter how funny Kracauer's criticism, it belies a viewpoint that casually overlooks the actual artwork.28 AA was never supposed to end up in the physical world. AA is a narrative fiction and a series of drawings depicting an architectural realm that resides in the readers phantasie, it is a virtual reality; a work that Janet Ward calls "a cosmic picturebook".29 It does what a novel or a building cannot do: draw out a narrative graphically depicting Taut’s imagined cosmos. AA is not only textually described in staccato phrases but elucidated through line and 26
In Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture In 1920s Germany, (Berkley, Los Angeles and London: University Of California Press, 2001) pg. 151, [note 52: from Kracauer, "Über Türmhaüser" Frankfurter Zeitung 160 (march 2 1921) Quoted by Zohlen, "Schmugglerpfad" pg. 332] 27
Walter Laquer, Weimar: A Cultural History 1918–1933 (London: Weidenfeld And Nicolson, 1974) pg. 180. Taut’s work as a social housing architect also drew criticism from conservative press, mocking him as an architect of "little people's happiness" and describing the buildings pejoratively as "home-grown" according to Kurt Junghanns, see: ed. Winfried Brenne, Bruno Taut: Master Of Colourful Architecture In Berlin/Meister Des Farbigen Bauens In Berlin, (Berlin, Deutscher Werkbund, 2008) pg 7 28
Here I think it's important to also note John A. Stuart, an important scholar of Scheerbart, Taut and the influence of fiction on architectural practice. Throughout an informative 15 page essay focusing on Scheerbart's influence on Taut's work, Stuart fails to acknowledge any divide between Taut's built architecture and his drawn work. Stuart also spends the entire essay treating AA as if it was a narrative work of the same nature as GA, totally ignoring the fact that AA is quite obviously a drawn work! 29
Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces, pg 64. Despite obvious formal differences, this picture-book model provides a good antecedent to today’s own ‘impoverished’ digitally animated architectural showreels which, in super glossy digital HD, often depict scenes of “high nature” or the retirement afterlife of clean and airless interminable eternity, a tepid undead zone; the holiday afterlife, in which we never need to think, least of all about returning to the daily grind. For instance see the architectural animation firm Archiform3D’s unsettling showreels: http://www.archiform3d.com/3d-gallery/index.php
coloured ink washes; it draws out a specific kind of distance (in the case of AA, mostly birds-eye view) that is unique to picture-books and comic books: freeze-framing objects into place, rendering everything into line, shading and boundary. This format allows Taut and the readers of AA to make (as he once described Scheerbart’s writings) “journeys at home”30 into the hostile cold of outer space. But, unique from narrative fiction and architecture, Taut’s cosmic picture-book format allows for a poetics of sight and distance, a choreography that places the reader hovering above our world. The things represented in AA are not only in arrest, but they are quite literally frozen, becoming more so as we ascend into the cold of space. And hovering above Earth, in Taut’s virtual world, sight becomes clearer: we can see the whole wide world. 5. Leaving Home
Fantastical worlds can become real in two ways – in the systems of the tyrant or the visions of the liberator. Likewise real spaces can become fantastical in a twofold fashion. On the one hand, a tyrant might fictionalise a physical space so that he can exploit it [...] On the other hand, a liberator might transform a humanised region into the sublime laws sustaining the cosmos. A poet might release chthonic energies underlying city grids. Eric G. Wilson, The Spiritual History Of Ice, pg. 141
In the Natural Contract Michel Serres writes of man's harmful relationship with planet Earth. In it he asks: how do we get to an idea of planet earth with an addition to the social contract, a new posthuman law; a natural contract which acknowledges our dependence on the Earth. In effect, how do we survive our civilisation? His answer it seems to me begins with "go outside", nature is a legal subject now, we have added it to our social contract. I believe that Taut's AA operates in much the same way. Taut’s work was ideologically driven 30
Matthias Schirren, Bruno Taut: Alpine Architektur, Ein Utopia/A Utopia, pg. 14
and as his social commitment manifested itself his housing designs, his interest in “opening up” architecture represented a following through on his spiritual commitments, namely to “universal animation”, “[…] we city dwellers today are all unhappy [...] Once humans find their happiness, their inner peace, through a connection to the earth, then their soul will once more be fulfilled; it will be at peace in the world”
31
Throughout the Natural Contract, Serres too uses the image of architecture and the city to describe not only the encapsulation of humanism and limits of culture as opposed to nature, but also its sheer size: “The hard, hot architecture of megalopolises is equal to many a desert, to groups of springs, wells, lakes […] or to an ocean, or a rigid and mobile tectonic plate. At last we exist on a natural scale”
32
Later
he continues: Whether you leave from Sparta or San Francisco, dying is done in the same way [...] the world outside lies under the same imperishable sky. Twenty cities and one external world [...] a hundred sets of laws and a single desert exile; all suburbs look alike. A thousand cultures, one nature [...] where do we get the universal? From demise, from expulsion, from the outdoors, from the hell of falling stones. Yes, from burning stars. From the other world. From a world without men. Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, pg. 74 Taut’s AA depicts this ultimate journey into the cold “outdoors”, transforming the humanised regions of the world into a launch pad from which we take off into the cosmos. Ascending from the cool waters of a mountain lake, we fly through valleys and up glaciers, above the icy mountain peaks. Dotted across this snowy Alpine mountainscape are pavilions, palaces and monuments constructed out of a spectrum of bright, coloured glass. Flying up above the icy mountain peaks, we leave Earth to voyage into the solar system. After 31 32
Bruno Taut, "The Earth Is A Good Dwelling", pg. 458
Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, translated by Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson, (Ann Arbor MI, The University Of Michigan Press, 1990)
leaving the atmosphere, we take one final look back to a radiant Earth, its daytime side intensely blue in the sun, its silvery nighttime side speckled with glowing jewel-like cities. This moment in AA, where the reader sees our planet whole and floating in the universe, is where we decide whether to continue on our “journeys at home” or return to the Earth with our new experience.
