The Importance of Jean Welz.Pdf

The Importance of Jean Welz Jean Welz was important when he died, in 1975, as a painter. In South Africa. When he left Paris, in the autumn of 1936, he was almost completely unknown in the public sphere. In the private sphere he knew, for example, Gabriel Guevrekian, who’s Parisian entourage before the war included Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret, Pierre Chareau, Adolf Loos, Henri Sauvage, Robert Mallet-Steves, Pierre Sorel, Georges-Henri Pingusson, Andre Lurcat, Rene Herbst, UAM, CIAM, Siegfried Giedeon, Robert & Sonia Delauney, Calder, Lipschitz, Poulenc, Therese Bonney, Morton Strand, Jacques Heim. Iris Meder said he regularly played football with Le Corbusier. Therese Bonney took the photos of his house in Paris. There would have been some overlap. Welz & Guevrekian were classmates in Vienna, alongside Elizabeth Schutte-Lihotsky, Oswald Haerdtl, Ernst Plischke, and Josef Hoffmann’s son, whose father was the head of the course. Welz was second-top student to Haerdtl, whom he disliked as better at sucking-up than architecture, and was taken on by Hoffmann from graduation to 1925, when he was sent to the Art Deco exhibition in Paris, and stayed, leaving behind a very glamorous wife and his bicycle at the Railway Station. Welz’s work in Paris was - I discovered - a constant dialogue between Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos. Both were friends, Loos rather more, he used to stay in Welz’s tiny flat on later visits to Paris, after 1928. Le Corbusier gave him a note of introduction when Welz took the cheapest boat he could find - to South Africa - from Hamburg, leaving behind his beloved (2nd) wife and child. As soon as he had money he sent for them, but it took him almost a year to save that amount. His architecture set itself against the 5 Points, taking the side of the most profound ideas of Loos. Welz agreed that modern materials could be a fetish rather than necessary, but in the Maison Zilveli he was not just modern but, as Tim Benton puts it, created perhaps the most avant-garde house in Paris. Zilveli contradicts the five points, down to using Miesian cruciform pillars for the aerial main floor, instead of Corbu’s circular type. There is a thought that the cross shape might spread the load better on the uncertain subsoil of the Buttes Bergeyres. Welz’s final year tutor was Oskar Strnad, himself a considerable architect who worked with Hoffmann but favoured Loos. He commented on Welz: ‘Technically talented, skilled at drawing, very conscientious, has a masterly knowledge of the practical aspects of building, and very good taste…a very conscientious skilled draftsman with much technical understanding, very capable on all kinds of building work’ (1921). Zilveli is partly a tribute to Loos. On a narrow, deep, hillside site, it creates an extraordinary ‘Raumplan’, or, as Raymond Fischer (for whom he was Chief Architect from December 1927 to 1935), put it, a ‘Chemin Aerien’, that pays respects to Loos whilst exceeding him in that regard, and also going further than any of his pupils were capable of. The stroke of genius was to lift up the main floor to take full advantage of the potential of views to the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur. Along the long side of the house Welz created an immaculate pairing, inside and outside, of views to the Eiffel Tower, the external directly above the internal, which had a fenetre-longue, but in quite a different spirit to Le Corbusier. It had a job to do, a very specific job, and that was the aforementioned view. At the back end of the site, Welz created another remarkable double view. The back wall was a picture-window onto Sacre Coeur. To the side, inside, a tall thin door gave onto possibly the nicest balcony known to man. An extraordinary 10cm thick blade of reinforced concrete supported a balcony giving an identical view of Sacre Coeur, but outside, and with a concrete seat and desk built in to the balcony structure, whose supporting blade bore the marks of the wooden shutters with which it was made. That may be the first time in the history of architecture that beton brut was seen externally, built in 1933. Welz created another chef d’oeuvre, the year before, in 1932, just outside Paris. To my mind, that house, credited to Raymond Fischer but - again to my mind - totally Jean Welz, even where it was not, so to speak - is even greater an achievement than Zilveli, and very different. Le Corbusier remarked to the leading South African modernist of the time that his houses of the 20s were all a tribute to Palladio, culminating in the Villa Savoye. Welz’s Villa Darmstädter is, to my mind yet again, a superior tribute to Palladio, more profound, more modern and yet - as Loos would have loved - more traditional. Pierre Chareau wrote in L’Architecture de L’Aujourd’hui in 1935 on modern architecture issues, and featured three houses, the ‘best’ of modernism. Villa Stein de Monzie was the first, a Lurcat, rather in the style of Le Corbusier the second. The third was the Villa Darmstadter, credited to Raymond Fischer. To my mind, forgive me, Darmstadter is far and away the most distinctive of the three, quite different from the first two, and the best. The best modernist house, full stop. It has beauty, simplicity, and transcendent intelligence. It is a total gem. Jean Welz is important for Zilveli and Darmstadter. Jean Paul Goude’s ‘copy’ of Zilveli is no such thing. It’s aim is simple - to almost double the space - from 125 to 225 sq m. Its insincerity is conclusively proven by the omission of the balcony. The drawings of his architect are childlike, and not in a good way. His architect’s comments about the state of Zilveli reveal a peerless ignorance of the 30s, of conservation and techniques, only matched by the poverty of his cynical and feeble drawings. A copy is always a crime, much, much more than Ornament. Goude is an evil criminal. There is a final ironic note re Darmstadter. When Welz went to South Africa, the modernist who knew Le Corbusier asked Welz about Le Corbusier’s ideas when he was planning his own house. Welz spent hours explaining, and showed his own work.The architect’s (Martiennsen) reputation rests on the house for himself. It changed radically from his first drawing to the built house. In key ways that house is a copy of Darmstadter. He wrote 25 pages on the influences on his house and somehow failed to mention Jean Welz. Another bad Welz copy would be too much to bear. .

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