13I:RLIN * XCSA EIJROPEAN CONFEItENCE 1997 DEMOCRACY AND GLASS I CONSTRUCTION

DEBORAH ASCHER-BARNSTONE Ball State University

We live for the mostpart within enclosed spaces.

These form the environ?nent from which our . . culturegrou~s.Our culture is in a sense aproduct town to have one. New mass production techniques of our architecture. Ifwe wish to raise our culture developed by entrepreneurs like Samuel Hereman to a higher level, we are forced for better or for advertised "the new portable and economical hothouse" worse to transform otwarchitecture. And this will which permitted the average middle-class homeowner to bepossible only if we remove the enclosed quality build his own greenhouse. By the end of the century, from the spaces ... this can be done only through European cities and suburbs were dotted with tens-of- the introduction of glass architecture ... through thousands of "private Idahos." the greatest possible number of walls that are There was also a correlation between the interest in made entirely of glass - colored glass. The new greenhouses and the development of "green" proposals: environment that ute shall thereby create must public parks, green belts, and garden cities. As bring with it a neul culture. industrialization spread, the rural population migrated to - Paul Scheerbart.' the cities in search of higher-paid jobs and a more prosperous future. Instead, the vast migrations caused Glass has been the subject of architects' fascination overcrowding and urban conditions deteriorated rapidly. for centuries, but since the early 19th century, glass has By the 1850s, the middle and upper classes began to had various associations and connotationsrich in symbolic perceive the potential for social conflict embedded in the content. As with all symbols, however, meaning is rarely atrocious living conditions. Exposure to nature and fresh clear and often contradictory. On the one hand, glass air were seen as necessary elements for good health as connotes openness, transparency, and accessibility and well as ethical and moral well-being. is therefore used for government buildings in both The glass house therefore became an integral part of democratic and totalitarian regimes. Glass is viewed as a numerous 19th century utopian schemes, the place where futuristic, visionary material and is therefore used for the ills of the industrial revolution and class difference utopian socialist architecture such as people's palaces, could be reconciled. The glass house was ametaphor for and paradigmatic industrial buildings, symbols of the social responsibility and equality - the ring-shaped glass people's oppressors. Glass is used for skyscrapers, symbols house used as a meeting hall in Pemberton's Happy of the collective and economic power; and for the single Colony and Fourier's glass hall were all conceived in this family home, symbol of the individual. Glass is used in spirit. It was referred to as a "pleasurance" or "people's sanitaria to suggest the new hygiene, progressive culture, paradise," suggesting once again the conceptual idea of and fim~rescience; and in museum design to celebrate a popular Garden of Eden. In , "people's history, preservation and scientific classification. Thus, palaces" and "floras" arose at the time of the Gotha glass has no single symbolic meaning, but can be used for Program and innovative socialist legislation. There were numerous, often conflicting purposes. three proposalsin the mid-19th centuryto construct glass From the beginning of the 19th century, the notion rings and covered walkways over portions of downtown of the glass house was associated with utopian visions, : William Moseley's 1855 Crystal Way, Frederick some social, some political, some purely spatial and Gye's 1845 plan, and Joseph Paxton's 1855 Great Victorian architectural. The first glass houses, greenhouses, were Way. The British entrepreneur Titus Salt intended to developed to preserve nature in a man-made environment purchase Paxton's Crystal Palace, dismantle it and rebuild where it would be possible to collect non-native species it for use as a factory building in Saltaire, his utopian such as oranges and orchids. The Iarge glass buildings industrialcommunity in order to constn~cta more li~~rnane were similar to other 19th century structures designed to factory. Ebenezer Howard's garden city proposal of 1898 accommodate a growing popular interest in classification includes a "wide glass arcade called the Crystal Palace. and collection. The greenhouses were giant glass display ...[TJhis building is in wet weather one of the favorite cases, large-scale museum displays filled with life-size resorts of the people... " It was the shopping mall, garden, specimens. The greenhouses were also conceived as recreation center, the physical, spatial and spiritual heart 1997 ACSA EI!ROPEA& CONFERENCIJ f

of the utopian community.' completely new, pure material in which matter is melted The glass house also came to represent an alternative down and recast. Of all the materials we have it works in mode of living - a foil to the traditional architectures. As the most elementary way. It reflects the sky and the sun; a building material, glass is an industrial product, a man- it is like clear water; and it has a wealth of color, form, and made invention which together with that other icon of character which is indeed inexhaustible and which can the industrial age, steel, made the glass houses possible. be a matter of indifference to no person," wrote Adolf Thus glass symbolized contemporary culture and Behne of the new material. "The European is easy in the technology. Older homes were built of the outmoded, very place where he has no responsibility, but in the hard solid masonry bearing-walls, with small windows, usually environment where he would have responsibility, under covered by heavy drapes, making the interior dark at best. a jellylike interior he is blunt and brutal. Glass will change The benefits of natural light were not considered to be as him. Glass is clear and angular, but in its hidden richness important as the privacy which small glass surfaces and it is mild and soft." drapery afforded. With the new concern for health and The designers adopted Scheerbart's better living conditions came the recognition that natural optimistic attitude towards glass construction, and light and air are necessaq7to sanitary living. Thus there accepted glass as the material of the future. Glass was grew the belief that the modern house should have as revered for its transparency, its ability to be both material muchglazingas possible, bathing the interiorwithnatural and immaterial, to literally dissolve the solid wall into a light and creating a better environment for living. The dematerialized presence. The transparent glass tower Dutch and German movements known as symbolized the clear and uncomplicated future; it was an promoted these ideals. Projects like Jan Duiker's icon for the beneficent triumph of modern technology.' Zonestraal Sanitorium in Hilversum, Holland, his Open The Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin adopted Air School in Amsterdam, and 's Scheerbart's ideas in his 1921 utopian novel, We, in building in , used large glass and steel facades for which Zamyatin critiqued an imaginary future totalitarian building types that traditionally had masonry facades society where the individual will is suppressed in favor of with punched openings. Brinkrnan and Van der Vlugt a collective technological dream. Zamyatin's imaginary used glass for their Van Nelle Factory in Delft in a manner One State is completely constructed of glass: buildings, reminiscent of Titus Salt's plans for the Crystal Palace. streets, furniture, are all transparent, crystalline objects The Van Nelle is the ultimate industrial paradise, one whose transparent condition serves as a critique of the where light pours in from all sides balancing the negative futuristic society where the apparent popular unity turns effects of factory conditions. out to be a fiction. Private opinion is hidden behind the Although the romance with glass and glass opaque walls of the human head; sexual encounters, the construction goes hand-in-handwith the development of most intimate and private of human acts, are hidden the modern idiom worldwide, 20th century German behind drawn blinds. Zamyatin clearly describes man's architects have had a special fascination with the material. inborn need for privacy, individuality and the personal From 1893onward, the German architect Paul Scheerbart imagination, the human qualities totalitarianism seeks to began to write obsessively about glass, initiating an eradicate. The novel's great irony lies in the reversal the intrigue with the material that continued to develop reader discovers as he progresses; utopia becomes during the next 100 years. For Scheerbart, glass was the dystopia as it becomes clear that the perfect f~~ture consummate modern material, it could transform our society is oppressive and dysfunctional. The Russian built environment thereby changing the way we live. He filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein also developed a concept for glorified glass in a vision both Utopian and prescient. a movie in which glass architecture was used to critique Scheerbart's vision had an undeniable influence on society. In his proposal for The Glass House, Eisenstein the first generation modernists practicing in Germany envisioned a film whose action transpires entirely within between the wars. 's Glashaus design for the a glass tower. Eisenstein's dystopia, unlike Zamyatin's, 1914 Werkbund exhibition in Cologne, a joint project was intended as a critique of democracy rather than with Scheerbart, Mies van der Rohe's 1919 design for a totalitarianism, but the message was the same: the glass and steel office building, his 1920 and 1922 glass exposure of all physical dimensions of life to public view towers, and Gropius' 1926 Bauhaus Building, are just a is oppressive, rather than egalitarian or democratic. few of the seminal modern designs influenced by In fact, as in fiction, the glass hall has been used to Scheerbart's ideas. Taut's utopian visions including the symbolize open government for both democratic and Kristallhaus and Apine Architektur imagined glass cities totalitarian regimes. Giuseppe Terragni's masterpiece whose mythical organization would reconcile the the Casa de Fascio in Como celebrates glass and the separation between spirit and body, sacred and profane.' notion of transparency as a symbol of unity, open- The German "Glass Chain" group was also inspired by mindedness and accessible government. Ironically, Scheerbart's writings. Terragni attributed these qualities most often associated A diverse fraternity including Bruno Taut, Hans with democratic regimes to fascism. Some pioneers of Scharbun, , Walter Gropius, and art early twentieth-century Soviet architecture such as historian Adolf Behne, which would eventually split into Leonidov, Golotsov, and the Vesnin brothers have also two factions, the New Objectivists and the Expressionists, utilized glass for similar symbolic purposes or, more the members of the Glass Chain shared avision of glass as notably, Tatlin who, in his famous Monument to the a symbol of purity and perfection. "No material prevails ~ird~nternationalproposal for the revolutionary Soviet over other materials so much as does glass. Glass is a parliament, envisioned a spiral, open steel structure with rotating glass volumes suspended inside which would time and again by twentieth-century German architects. contain the various divisions of the Soviet government. Eller, Maier, Walter S: Partner's Lundtng in Diisseldorf, In the face of the absolute collapse of the German Kulka's Landtag, and Behnisch's new Bundestng political system after World War 11, German culture building are examples of three recent German suffered a tremendous shock which struck at the very parliamentary buildings which reinterpret Schwippert's roots of the society. The desire to be "correct," to be approach to the type by using circular plenary chambers responsible world citizens, to deal with a mass guilt too enclosed in transparent glazing. Behnisch and Kulka's vast to grasp, informed a re-evaluation of every aspect of similar approach is not surprising given their common culture including the built environment. One debt to 1950s architect an pioneer of glass construction, consequence of this cultural upheaval is that glass Egon Eiermann, who began his career working for Mies developed a special connotation in German architectural van der Rohe. Thus the new generation's interest in glass practice. It became the emblem ofdemocratic culture, of construction can be directly linked to the utopian schemes an architecture that is literally transparent to the masses of the first generation modernist visionaries. All three and therefore represents an open democratic system finalists for the Reichstag restoration project rather than a closed autocracy or totalitarian regime. As acknowledged the importance of glass and transparency early as 1927, the relationship between democracy and to a German notion of democracy in their designs. British glass construction was promoted by Hannes Meyer for architect Sir Norman Foster proposed partially encasing the his League of Nations Design when he argued the building existing building in a transpireit glass skin and situating the should have: "No back corridorsfor backstairs diplomacy, plenary chamber inside a glass box; Calatrava also provided but open glazed rooms for the public negotiations of for a glassed-in legislative chamber; as did De Bnujn, who honest men. "5 proposed to place the chamber outside the body of the old Hans Schwippert adopted a similar attitude for his building rather in its center, as a focal point." 1949 Rundestag design in which he constructed a For the new Bundestag, Gunther Behnisch chose to transparent glass chamber whose express purpose was adopt Schwippert's concepts of openness and to reveal the democratic process. Schwippert hoped the transparency by designing a glass box within a glass box, "house of openness" would be the very opposite of the making the workings of democracy visibly accessible to solid, closed, impenetrable Reichstag. He also proposed all. He hoped, as far as was possible, to dissolve all a new layout for the delegates' seating, a substantial physical boundaries between government and the people. formal departure from historic plan types, the circular "Everything which divides has been reduced as far as layout. Although Konrad Adenauer refused to realize the possible, while every continuity is strengthened." daring plan, it has senred as a precedent for later German The actual plenary chamberwas located at the center parliamentary chambers. Until Schwippert made his of the architectural composition in order to emphasize its proposal, seating arrangements for democratic importance to government, and in order to permit the parliaments and legislatures were organized in one of two maximum visual penetration as well as a physical ways: the rectangular church choir modeled after the connection to both the city and Rheinriver. "The concept British House of Commons, or the semi-circular for the new plenary assembly area is the fill1 embrace of amphitheater modeled after the surgical amphitheater the assembly room by the hall and waiting areas. This and favored in France and America. IJp until the 20th reasoning established the position of the assembly as a century. German architects had little influence on focal point, sandwiched between the transparent views parliamentary design because the country was late to of the whole, from the city side to the Rhein river." unify under a democratic system. Behnisch calls the spatial effect he has designed the The rectangular plan was seen to promote dialog and "open room" and expresses the hope that by turning discussion across the aisle by forcing members to face public attention to the elected representatives, the and confront one another. But the ministers, and other individuals, his building will epitomize the democratic officials were seated to the side in a position similar to system. that of a justice in a court of law creating a hierarchical Behnisch explains the significance of the individual relationship between member and minister. The semi- by comparing the interior design to a game of Mikado, or circular plan for a legislative assembly offered fairly "pick-up-sticks," which is a game of chance. "The egalitarian placement in a room, but still separated Mikado is a meaningful metaphor for the intersection of members along party lines and from the ministers and different individuals. As in a Mikado there are chance president. For these reasons, Schwippert found the places and directions forming preferential paths." In traditional plan forms less than ideal for a 20th century Mikado, each stick is a unique entity, much like each democracy. He also disliked the separation of political member of a democratic community, or each elected factions to the right and left of the speaker's podium, a representative in a legislature. Behnisch recreates the fact which gave birth to the political notions of left and chance encounter in his handrail details, especially the right, terms which originally referred to the side of the famous bird's nest, with special art installations, the aisle on which a party Ivas seated. Schwippert favored variety of 20th century furnishings used rather than a the circle because he saw it as more egalitarian than the single style, and with the separation and articulation of other two plan types. Thus Schwippert's search for the individual building elements throughout the project. ideal form was an attempt to create a perfect, or utopian, The building skin is not a ten-centimeter thick traditional space in which government could operate. curtain wall but a multi-layered structure whose total The circular plan and glass hall have been adopted thickness is several feet.- 1997 ACSA EUROPEAN CONFERENCE * BERLIh

Behnisch is indebted to Schwippert for another the basic prerequisites for democratic rule, namely, the design feature, the circular plan he adopted for the participation of the people, a condition that cannot be plenary chamber. The perfect circle symbolizes the created by transparent architecture alone. In Tbe Social equality accorded to allmembers whether of the majority Contract, Jean Jacques Rousseau stresses that social or minority parties, and the community that exists in order does not flow from force or from nature but from spite of political differences. It is also thought to promote agreements in which the entire citizenry must participate. debate and discussion because members face each other Further, these agreements will only effect lasting and from equal positions. stable government if they are periodically renewed by the The choice of glass as primary building material for people. Thus participation is at the foundation of a the Bundestag was a natural consequence of Behnisch's democratic notion of government. Behnisch's new clearly stated goals for the new building: " ... there are Bundestag is clearly flawed in this regard, the legislature other things which ought to be retained, e.g. the old sits inside a round glass container, observed from galleries Academy building, the signs of growth reflecting the which are physically and spatially separate, a condition development of the republic, which is a typical feature of which precludes any direct public participation in the the existing buildings; the rural-urban setting, the character everyday proceedings. Of course, the German political of the architecture, the unpretentious, the open-valuable system is not a direct democracy, any more than the qualities and ideals of our republic." Glass is not a American system, but an indirect one in which the precious or pretentious material like stones such as people's wishes are represented by elected officials. In marble and travertine; its transparent nature makes is this sense, the box-within-a-box configuration of the appear ephemeral rather than solid and immoveable. Bundestag is true to the actual workings of government, Glass is an anti-monumental material which certainly a notion the architect did not intentionally address. helps avoid any connection with majesty and power, The irony involved in Bennisch's choice of glass must images the German government probably wished to also be pointed out. German society has never fully avoid. Furthermore, Behnisch chose glass in part to exorcised its past. The Nuremburg trials were organized serve another interest historically important to the German by the Americans and therefore not an "Aufarbeitung der public - the green scape. Behnisch intended the Geschichte" for the . Many former Nazi officials transparency to allow visual connections to the green continued in political power after the war, including the urban plaza on one side and the Rheinaue on the other. democracy's founding father,Adenauer's right-hand man, Further, the transparent quality would so dissolve the Gloebke, who had played a leading role in the SA before exterior walls as to physically connect these spaces 1945.Thus transparency and honesty are not necessarily removing the distinction between inside and outside or attributes of the post-war German democracy. making the Bundestag appear to be a container sitting on The German parliament must have struggled with the ground plane capturing human action. Behnisch the question of symbolism and architecture as it debated wrote, "We thought the entry hall could be a part of the the decision to remove the government from Bonn to green plaza, open for the public, a sort of Market hall. " In Berlin, to abandon the newly constructed Bundestng for this case, the Bundestag as glass house also refers to the areconstmcted Reichstag. But the vote ultimately favored 19th century greenhouses and people's palaces where the force of one symbolic element over another by glass buildings symbolized man-made, earthly paradises. deciding to return to the symbolic center of the German Gunther Behnisch's Butzdestag is unquestionably a state and culture. The implication is that Berlin as a good piece of architecture. At issue, however, is the positive symbol of unity is stronger than the negative strength and coherence of the conceptual argument history associated with the Reichstag. The relocation is behind the architemre. As a symbol for the democratic also a rejection of Utopia, the garden city Eden Bonn process and the idealsonwhichpoliticaldemocraqisfounded, represents, for dystopia, the corrupt, schizophrenic Berlin the glass house is appealing. But symbols are immaterial whose physical reunification has, to date, remained an representations, as far from the real world as utopias. unrealized desire. The hope is, of course, that relocating According to the view supporting Behnisch's work, the parliament in Berlin will erase the memories and scars visual penetration of a parliament building ensures open, remaining from the 50-year physical and political split accessible, and honest government by exposing rather since Berlin was capital of a united German republic. than concealing the actions of the legislature. Supposedly, Reconstructing and reusing the old Reichstag would this exposed condition will prevent the recurrence of reconnect the present democracy both symbolically and fascism. Of course, proponents of this view argue that physically to the past. the German fascist government was in the hands of a In his competition entry Foster proposed to make minority whose actions were largely secret. If the larger the connection by leaving the old structure as a gutted public had been aware of the government's policies, the shell, and by encasing it in glass so that the Reichstng more egregious Nazi crimes could have been prevented. would become a kind of artifact enshrined in a display This argument ignores overwhelming evidence to support case. No viewer could fail to remark the irony involved the wide dissemination of information about Nazi actions, in preserving as a sacred element an object with so including the infamous Kristallnacht, or breaking of the dubious a history. Foster says the building's "history is glass, in which Jews were persecuted and Jewish property poor and disappointing - in the 40 years before it was vandalized; a night for which glass symbolizes anti- burnt there was barely a decade of democracy. . .. From democracy and dystopia. this perspective the Reichstag seems to represent an Rut more importantly the argument ignores one of architecture of false values - anti-democratic, anti-liberal - quoting from a past which existed only in myths and Behnlsch md Partners: Design 1952-1987 (: Cantz. Wagnerian operas."' The symbol inverts itself to become 1987). its opposite once again. "Der Bundestag," Arch~tecturalRe~,iew, March 1993. pp. 20- In Towards a neu~Architecture wrote, 33. "The machinery of Society, profoundly out of gear, Conradi. Peter. "Transparente Architektur=Demokratie?" Der oscillates between an amelioration, of historical Architekt, Sept. 1995, pp. 539-532. importance, and a catastrophe ... It is a question of "Construire pour la Democratie," Technique er Archirecrure, building which is at the root of the social unrest of today December 1992. pp. 24-27. : architecture or revolution. "'Le Corbusier's comment The Crystal Chain Letters: Archirecrural Fanmsies fj Bruno can be read as either naive or ironic architecture or - Tautandhis Circle,ed and trans. By Iain Boyd White. (London: revolution - an ironic comment on his contemporary's MIT Press, 1985). belief in utopia, and in architecture's power, or naive faith in the impossible - architecture's ability to transcend Cullen, Michael S. "Reichstag Revisited." Architectural Re- vietu. March 1993, pp. 38-40. the conceptual and act on the tangible universe. Architecture or revolution. Democratic or anti- Ein Gang durch die Austellu?zg: Rebnisch G Partner democratic. Utopian ordystopian. The symbolic meaning (Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, 1993). of the material, glass, is contradictoryat best. Perhaps the very qualities that make glass soattractive, its transparency and immateriality, its delicacy and reflectiveness, its Gregotti, Vittorio. "Un'ocasione perduta," CasaDella, ,May crystal-like appearance, ultimately render it impossible to 1993. pp. 2-3 and 71. define. Or perhaps glass is no different from other Hastings, Maurice. "The House of Commons," Architectural metaphors and symbols, an agent which carries meaning Review, September 1950, pp. 161-181. and whose meaning depends on the author's personal Hix, John. The Glass House (London: Phaidon, 1974). agenda rather than some universal value. Philip Johnson Processes: i%e Glass House, 1949 and the ATGT Corporate Headquarters, 1978. Catalogue 9, Insti- NOTES tute for Architecture and Urban Studies (Cambridge. MA: I In translation in Ulrich Conrads' Progmms and Manifestoes on MIT Press, 1978). T~letztiet11-cet~tutyArchitecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 32-34. Jones, Peter Blundell. "Parliamentary Precedents,"Architec- tural Review, March 1993, pp. 34-38. See Georg Kohlmaier and Bama von Sartory's history of green- house and conservatory construction, House of Glass, for a Kohlmaier, Georg andvon Sartory, Barna. Houses of Glass: thorough discussion of the connection between the development ANineteenth Century Building Type (Cambridge, MA: MIT of the green movement and glass symbolism, pp. 7-42. Press, 1986). "ee Iain Boyd White's Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Korn, Arthur. Glass in Modern Architecture of the Bau- Activisnl (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982). haus Period (London: Design Yearbook, 1968). See 's Glass in Modern Archiiecture of the Bauhaus Lampugnani, Vittorio Magnano. Architecture of the 20th Period (London: Design Yearbook, 1968). Century in Drawings: Utopia and Reality (New York: Rizzoli, 1982). In translation in Hannes Meyer by Paul Schnaidt. "Parliament Building at Bonn," Architectural Review, Sep See "Reichstagunresolved" in theArchitecturalReview of April tember 1950, pp. 182-184. 1993 and "Le parlement inachevk" in Architecture d'aujord'hui of February 1995 for more in depth discussions of the politics "Rathaus in Wehl," Detail, Aug/Sept 1994, pp. 465-468. and complications surrounding the competition and eventual "Reichstag: le parlement inacheve," Architecture choice of architect and approach for the Reichstag renovation. d'aujord'hui, Feb 1995, pp. 24-29. ' See Ein Gang durch die Austellung: Behnisch & Partner for "Reichstag unresolved," Architectural Review, April 1993, Behnisch's extensive discussion of the Bundestag project, its pp. 8-10, aims, development and realization, pp. 75-99. "Sachsischer Landtag in Dresden," Detail, Aug/Sept 1994, See "Reichstag unresolved,"Arcl~irect~~ralReview, April 1993, pp. 479-485. pp. 8-10. White, Iain Boyd. Bruno Taut and the Architecture of " SeeLeCorbusier. TowardsanewArckitecture,transhy Frederick Actizjism (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982). Etchells. (London: Dover, 1986), p. 270. Williams, Sarah "Dresden Diet,"Architectural Review, Oct 1994, pp. 54-57. REFERENCES Wright, Frank Lloyd. "In the Cause of Architecture: The "Architektursache Landtag D~isseldorf,"Bauwelt, Nov 1988, meaning of LMaterials- Glass," The Architectural Record, pp. 1870-1871. 1928, v. 64., pp.11-18. Behne, Adolf. The Modern FunctionalBuilding, Trans. Michael Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We (London: Penguin Books). ~obinson. Intro. Rosemarie Haag Bletter. (Santa Monica: Getty, 1996).