On Architecture: Complexity and Decline

Taha A. Al-Douri

Architecture is a collaborative, trans-disciplinary undertaking, not unlike political practice. Architects following armies into conquered territories, turned visions of political order into architecture, the embodiment of order as varied as was the role of the architect throughout time. When Germany, pondered her image as an industrialized nation with philosophical gravitas, she turned to design recognizing the new means of mass production, mechanized yet not losing sight of the makings of good taste: craftsmanship, proportion, and the fitness of form to purpose, both emotional and utilitarian. The architect once again was leader even at times when building was at a lull as Bruno Taut wrote in a letter dated November 24, 1919 “Today there is almost nothing to build … it is a good thing that nothing is being built today. Things will have time to ripen, we shall gather our strength, and when building begins again we shall know our objectives and be strong enough to protect our movement against botching and degeneration.” These views were in their natural context of The Crystal Chain Letters, the correspondence of “Architectural Fantasies” by Bruno Taut and his circle that included Hermann Finsterlin, Max Taut, Walter Gropius, Hans and Wassili Luckhardt, and Hans Scharoun (Taut, 1985). Taut maintained the complexity of an organic union between building and architecture, essential and mystical as that between body and spirit.

Full Text