Page 26 - Studio International - March 1968

by a strongly expressionist bias. It was largely the activi- without the theorizing of De Stijl. The way Rietveld
ties of Van Doesburg that brought about the particular opens out the corner of the Schroder House with win-
kind of design-oriented course which flourished there. dows to leave the plane of the roof hovering is not
In December 1920 Hans Richter and Viking Eggling entirely unrelated to the hovering relations of planes
invited Van Doesburg to Berlin where he was introduced achieved by Gropius through the extensive use of panes
to Gropius. By 1921 Van Doesburg was lecturing at the of glass which turn corners at the Bauhaus.
Bauhaus. 'At Weimar I have overturned everything ... I The organization of the German productivist movement
have talked to the pupils every evening and I have in- by Lissitzky and Moholy-Nagy in 1921 brought together
fused the poison of the new spirit everywhere.' The Van Doesburg and Mies van der Rohe. Compare the fol-
writings of German dadaists, including Schwitters, were lowing words by Rietveld about space with the plan of Mies
published in De Stijl and architectural work by Oud van der Rohe's project for a brick country house (1923) :
appeared in the Bauhausbuch. Both Oud and Van `If for a plastic purpose, we separate, limit and bring
Doesburg lectured at the Bauhaus in 1922, and it was in into human scale a part of unlimited space, it is (if all
Weimar that the architect Van Eesteren joined De Stijl. goes well) a piece of space brought to life as reality. In
The magazine had editorial offices in Weimar from 1921, this way, a special segment of space has been absorbed
so that close contact between De Stijl and the Bauhaus is into our human system. Was that general space, then,
indisputable. not to be experienced as reality? It was not real until
Although Bayer's work—in his street-car waiting room there was introduced in it a limitation (clouds, trees or
project of 1924, for example—shows a formal and spatial something else that gave it a size and that reflected light
appreciation of De Stijl, for the most part De Stijl ideas and sound) .'
become tempered in the Bauhaus to suit a more func- What Mies takes from De Stijl becomes integral to his
tional approach to design. Marcel Breuer's wood and conception of architecture; his basic unit becomes the
canvas chair of 1922 relates to a six-legged chair of 1919 wall rather than the room. His project for three court
by Rietveld. Breuer's simplification retains the unorna- houses of 1938 is reduced to the sole use of planar elements
mented expression of the chair's structure whilst expres- within a rectangular whole.
sing more of its function by making it more evidently Even Breuer's first chromium-plated tubular chair of
suitable for sitting on. A hanging lamp of 1923 by 1925 is reduced to its essential parts permitting the free
Gropius, composed of a number of tubular bulbs, is prac- flow of exterior space within its structure. Van Doesburg's
tically a direct reply to a lamp of 1920 by Rietveld. The Bauhausbuch was published in 1925 and Oud's in the
difference concerns the space employed : Rietveld's bulbs following year.

Right, Schroder House
designed by Gerrit Rietveld,
1924.
Far Right
Rietveld
Interior for Dr Hartog,
Maarssen 1920.

are overlaid in three dimensions developing, in a sense,
about a centre, whereas those of Gropius explore space
as if to measure it through one dimension at a time.
The tubular metal balustrades of Gropius' balconies on
the students' residences at the Dessau Bauhaus of 1926
are especially close to those employed by Rietveld at
the Schroder House. One wonders to what extent Gropius'
asymmetrical counterbalancing of the individual units of
the Dessau Bauhaus complex would have been possible