Marcel Breuer Through a Multi-Lens Window: Agency in the Afterlife Of

Home , Marcel Breuer

PEP AVILÉS of the actual histories generating those images; on the other, they facilitated cultural ROGUE OBJECTS integration, formal evolution, and the Marcel Breuer through fulfillment of professional agendas. The popular press’s descriptions of a Multi-Lens Window: Breuer’s work after his arrival to Boston in Agency in the Afterlife 1938 underscored its potential contribution to mainstream modern American taste. of Images His work and particularly his persona “had not to be mistaken for a prophet of revolution,”

I. ARRIVAL but as an “adaptive force,” attempting to Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 “fuse” vernacular trends with the newest fads Narratives describing modernism as the and techniques in architecture.3 Breuer unambiguous set of formal traits resulting from was hardly a utopian designer, as he was more the process of modernization overlook the concentrated on the aesthetic renewal agency and ambivalence of the images made of materials than the exploration of radical during the early years of modern architecture.1 changes to local architectural culture. In Far from univocal, the changing reception the prewar circumspect aesthetic atmosphere of those images in different cultural contexts toward modern architecture, the link Breuer provides a good opportunity to trace created between past, present, and future morphological evolutions and unpack the emerged as a middle ground between modernity polysemic and generative character of modernity. and tradition. Maybe American taste found The re-presentation of the old in the face the modern architecture represented by Breuer of the new allowed for the survival of modern to be “unfamiliar,” but the aesthetic style architecture during the postwar years, an did follow the rebellious spirit of Henry David afterlife that internalized local “conditions Thoreau by selectively breaking with old of acceptance and resistance” and contributed conventions to accommodate a new décor for to the ongoing mystification of the origins life corresponding to the changing of modernism.2 Marcel Breuer’s midcareer technological demands of a modern society.4 work helps to illustrate the reconceptualizations The idea of the malleability of Breuer’s work that some of the images produced prior found voice in a Harvard Graduate School of to his arrival to the United States underwent. Design-organized exhibition at Robinson On the one hand, these productive Hall in June 1938. The show presented ninety- adjustments resulted from the concealment eight images of Breuer’s designs to that date

An earlier version of the present essay was 1. I’m using here Detlef Mertins’s definitions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota presented at the Temple Hoyne Buell Center of the terms modernity, modernization, Press, 2008). for the Study of American Architecture in and modernism. Detlef Mertins, Modernity 3. Irma Whitney, “Breuer Exhibition at 2015. The author would like to thank Reinhold Unbound (London: AA Publications, Harvard Links Old and New Architecture,” Martin and the organizers of the Dissertation 2011), 5. Recent work to unveil the intrinsic unidentified newspaper clipping, Marcel Colloquium for providing the opportunity paradoxes of modernity includes Robin Breuer Digital Archive, Image ID: to discuss his work. He also would like to Schuldenfrei, Luxury and Modernism: 00753-00, Syracuse University Libraries. recognize Beatriz Colomina, Denise Costanzo, Architecture and the Object in Germany See also W. Clifford Harvey, “Modern Spyros Papapetros, David Smiley, and 1900-1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Design in Homemaking Comes to New Claire Zimmerman’s contributions as key to Press, 2018). England: Simplicity Rules in Modern strengthening and clarifying the argument. 2. Edward Said and François Cusset Homes,” Christian Science Monitor, Finally, Barry Bergdoll’s remarks have underscored the reproductive character December 23, 1938, 11; and W. Clifford proven invaluable. of traveling ideas in the field of cultural Harvey, “Harvard Men Build Ultra- theory. Similarly, the dynamic reception Modern Houses in Colonial Settings,” PEP AVILÉS is Assistant Professor of the images and objects of the twenties Christian Science Monitor, July 7, 1939, 11. at the College of Arts and Architecture at contributed to the evolution of modern 4. W. Clifford Harvey, “Old Homes and Penn State University and editor architecture. Edward Said, “Traveling New Mingle in Lincoln,” Christian Science of the journal Faktur: Documents and Theory,” in The World, the Text, and the Monitor, February 9, 1940, n.p. Marcel Architecture. He is currently working Critic, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Breuer Digital Archive, Image ID: OS-22_ on the reception of Antoni Gaudí’s work University Press, 1983), 226–47; François 032A-001, Syracuse University Libraries. in the postwar years. Cusset, French Theory, trans. Jeff Fort

PART III and was accompanied by a laudatory catalog Marcel Breuer published on the occasion with a foreword written by Henry-Russell of the latter’s “House in the Museum Garden” Hitchcock. In it, Hitchcock augured Breuer’s erected at the Museum of Modern Art presence in Boston would be an opportunity in April of 1949, architect and historian to provide a new response to the never-closed Frederick Gutheim noted the Americanization debate between acolytes of modern of Breuer’s architecture. For Gutheim, and traditional architecture in the US: Breuer, among all the “refugees” who came to the US before and during the World War II, The special strength of the European showed a remarkable and unique disposition visitors in relation to American “to grow, to adapt” and “to acclimatize”

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 architecture has been their ability to to the American context. He developed, in analyze more sharply than we the Gutheim’s words, a “fresh and romantic components of [the] third concept of aesthetic in the new world vein.”6 Breuer’s the traditional, distinguishing embrace of American modernism was the technical aspects, which are valid not, however, that singular: for instance, contemporary tools, from the revivalistic Sigfried Giedion, who was influenced by US aspects, which are matters of design architectural historians, pointed to the alone. To paraphrase Breuer upon this balloon frame and the Windsor chair as the particular point: they believe. . . beginning of a long, productive relation that in using on occasion traditional between industrialization, simplicity, and materials, together with new ones, design following his arrival to the US.7 and at the same time transforming the Despite the parroted narratives trumpeting spirit of the tradition, in its deepest the successful integration of Breuer’s work sense, into a contemporary one, such into the the US, it is imperative to question a fusion, such a transformation the change in material expression that his should serve to develop further new architecture underwent during this period. forms, rather than in any way How did the American context affect the to restrict or reduce the potentialities evolution of Breuer’s architecture? Can we of modern architecture.5 speak of a new materiality at play after his arrival in the US? And, more importantly, did Only a decade later, Breuer’s work had the new cultural and technological context been completely integrated into the dominant provide new grounds to interpret his previous aesthetic of US modern architecture: for work? We can trace the complex integration of instance, in reviewing Peter Blake’s work on Breuer’s work by perusing the changing

5. Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Marcel Breuer Magazine of Modern Architecture 2, no. 3 when the former was still in London. and the American Tradition in Architecture (April 1932). Shelter, edited by Maxwell See the letter from Godfrey Samuel to (Cambridge, MA: Graduate School of E. Levinson, was the name that a renewed Marcel Breuer dated August 16, 1935. Design, Harvard University, 1938), 2. editorial team chose to continue the Marcel Breuer Papers, Special Collections Marcel Breuer Papers 1920–86, box 34, former T-Square, where, by the thirties, Research Center, Syracuse University exhibition files, Archives of American Art, some of these discussions had taken place. Libraries. In addition, the trope of Breuer Smithsonian Institution. Also available at See, for instance, Ralph T. Walker, as a transitional designer between the Frances Loeb Library Special “Prophets and ‘Isms’,” T-Square Club different traditions, styles, and contexts Collections, Harvard University Graduate Journal 11 (November 1931): 5, 34. was formed in the description of his School of Design. The catalog consists of 6. Frederick Gutheim, “The Americanization work during the forties and was publicly a few typewritten pages together with a of Marcel Breuer,” Architectural Record advertised as such. In a biographical description of all the images and objects 106, no. 3 (September 1949): 28. The issue entry on Breuer in 1941, we learn that exhibited. Neither the Houghton Library of American romanticism reemerged Breuer was “particularly interested in the (Dean’s Papers) nor the Pusey Library in his subsequent writings to qualify the adaptation of modern architecture to (University Archives) kept images of the multiplicity of formal responses that American needs and possibilities.” show. The Breuer exhibition was held emerged during the fifties. “Fritz” Gutheim “Marcel Breuer,” Who’s News and Why 2, fig. 1 Marcel Breuer, “Multi-lens window, Berlin, 1929.” between two major shows on US and worked as assistant director of information no. 9 (September 1941): 15. Sun and Shadow: The Philosophy of an Architect, Soviet architecture. For the debate for the United States Housing Authority 7. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1955). between American traditionalists and in Washington, DC during the late thirties, Architecture: The Growth of a New modernists, see the multiple articles and Godfrey Samuel—a member of Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Marcel Breuer Papers, Special Collections published on the show Modern Architecture: the Tecton Group—had already wanted University Press, 1941), 345–53. Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. International Exhibition in Shelter; to introduce Breuer and Gutheim in 1935,

106 107 and was accompanied by a laudatory catalog Marcel Breuer published on the occasion with a foreword written by Henry-Russell of the latter’s “House in the Museum Garden” Hitchcock. In it, Hitchcock augured Breuer’s erected at the Museum of Modern Art presence in Boston would be an opportunity in April of 1949, architect and historian to provide a new response to the never-closed Frederick Gutheim noted the Americanization debate between acolytes of modern of Breuer’s architecture. For Gutheim, and traditional architecture in the US: Breuer, among all the “refugees” who came to the US before and during the World War II, The special strength of the European showed a remarkable and unique disposition visitors in relation to American “to grow, to adapt” and “to acclimatize”

architecture has been their ability to to the American context. He developed, in Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 analyze more sharply than we the Gutheim’s words, a “fresh and romantic components of [the] third concept of aesthetic in the new world vein.”6 Breuer’s the traditional, distinguishing embrace of American modernism was the technical aspects, which are valid not, however, that singular: for instance, contemporary tools, from the revivalistic Sigfried Giedion, who was influenced by US aspects, which are matters of design architectural historians, pointed to the alone. To paraphrase Breuer upon this balloon frame and the Windsor chair as the particular point: they believe. . . beginning of a long, productive relation that in using on occasion traditional between industrialization, simplicity, and materials, together with new ones, design following his arrival to the US.7 and at the same time transforming the Despite the parroted narratives trumpeting spirit of the tradition, in its deepest the successful integration of Breuer’s work sense, into a contemporary one, such into the the US, it is imperative to question a fusion, such a transformation the change in material expression that his should serve to develop further new architecture underwent during this period. forms, rather than in any way How did the American context affect the to restrict or reduce the potentialities evolution of Breuer’s architecture? Can we of modern architecture.5 speak of a new materiality at play after his arrival in the US? And, more importantly, did Only a decade later, Breuer’s work had the new cultural and technological context been completely integrated into the dominant provide new grounds to interpret his previous aesthetic of US modern architecture: for work? We can trace the complex integration of instance, in reviewing Peter Blake’s work on Breuer’s work by perusing the changing

106 107 reception of some of the visual and graphic the image underscores the capacity of the during the thirties and forties, a professional of the flooring documents the ongoing artistic materials and documents of past designs that multi-lens window to transform the exterior identity that competed with his will to be influences among objects, subjects, and media traveled with him from Europe. Minor landscape into an almost cinematic experience. recognized as an architect in the US. Breuer’s happening between former Bauhauslers. although significant reconceptualizations of The information in the caption regarding contribution to the Heinersdorff residence The patterned floor compositions, for instance, his previous work tell us a story about the the origins of the image had been reduced to enlarged his design portfolio, gaining him follow the work that Martha Erps, Breuer’s geographic development of modernism by the a city, and a date: Berlin, 1929. respect as an architect and access to future first wife, developed in the weaving workshop middle of the twentieth century, a story Publications on Breuer’s work appearing clients and commissions. of the Bauhaus (figs. 2, 3).13 in which visual repetition, material evolution, before 1962, as well as the entries in the Breuer Before Breuer’s migrations during the Regardless of the success of the project and personal adaptation cannot be overlooked. archives in Washington, DC, and Syracuse, thirties—first to the United Kingdom and and its rapid dissemination in journals and The emplotment of some of Breuer’s associate the image with the urban house of the then to the US—the multi-lens window magazines, Breuer “intensely” disliked the

previous designs in a new location reflects glass industrialist Gottfried Heinersdorff in Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 was never ascribed to the interior design that Heinersdorff commission, according to Blake, a changing sensibility toward the use of Berlin, a commission Breuer contributed to by he developed for the Heinersdorff residence, the editor of the 1949 MoMA brochure on materials affecting late modernism. designing some of the interiors. However, a house otherwise designed by the architect Breuer’s work.14 Blake, a German émigré, found Breuer introduced the object autonomously in Walter Wurzbach between 1928 and 1929. Breuer’s achievement in the Berlin interiors II. MULTI-LENS OPTICS a short note written in 1947 for the Argentinian Breuer’s contribution to the interior of the of the late twenties remarkable: in them, magazine Nuestra Arquitectura: “‘Multywindow house consisted of a clay chimney and a series Breuer managed to “teach table manners to Among the graphic materials that traveled with glass’ [sic.] (1929) . . . provides complete of pieces of wood and aluminum furniture: a robot.” That is, Breuer overcame the suspicion Breuer to this new context, we find the privacy and lets 100% light through. It allows closets, writing desks, benches, cupboards, the modern German bourgeois culture of the documentation describing his earlier domestic for exterior views from inside, not just etc. His work also encompassed finishes to time felt toward textured fabric in upholstery designs. Consider, for instance, the image from a single view point but from a variety of the floor surfaces and the interior walls. Gustav and furniture. Through the use of “decorative “Multi-lens window” that appeared in Breuer’s angles. . . .” 9 The multiple angles—and therefore Hassenpflug, a former Bauhaus student, patterns” and a “fascinating multi-lens window, 1955 monograph Sun and Shadow. Among images—that the window offers pinpoints executed the final drawings for the elements that repeated the outside image in a series the largest in the book, the image depicts an a postwar transitional moment between designed by Breuer.10 These drawings show of circular frames,” Blake wrote, Breuer shifted intriguing array of transparent circles new mass media (that is, television) and notable differences between the furniture upper-class modernist tastes and hesitations against a continuous, black background (fig. 1). domesticity. Reminiscent of the compound design and the aesthetic approach to horizontal toward machine-produced decorations (fig. 4).15 An urban landscape composed of a tree eye of certain insects, the concave discs and vertical claddings: if the former followed The window included in the brochure was, in the foreground and an imperial staircase to display and transmit a view of the world in a functional aesthetic without applied for Blake, a “disciplined pattern,” flexible enough the right can be made out in each circle. a multiplicity of frames, standing halfway decorations or additions, the latter presented to generate “interesting visual effects,” However, the framing changes from circle between the standardized character of a gamut of regular patterns and repetitive thanks to its combination of technology and to circle, bringing different aspects of modern materials and their properties as motifs made of small colorful tiles, materials movement. His association of technologies the landscape into focus. Toward the left of the technological symbols. presumably provided by Heinersdorff’s of reproduction and class disruptions echoed image, a sculptural figure or group of figures Sometimes considered an isolated piece of glass company Puhl and Waren.11 The floor the materialist critique that authors such appears in a few of the circles. The description industrial design, sometimes an integrated patterns were described in architectural as Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer had of the image of the window reads as follows: element in the Heinersdorff residence, the actual magazines as “mosaic-carpets,” marking a formulated by the late twenties.16 But, “Plate glass sheet with concave discs ground origin of the multi-lens window was not linguistic gap in the critical lexicon in the more importantly, Blake used for the first time into surface. Remainder of glass was clearly stated until the mid-fifties. The reasons transit between rigid materials and soft fabrics the expression “multi-lens window” in sandblasted. Window gives full light, plus for keeping that ambiguity alive may have reminiscent of Gottfried Semper’s principle architectural circles to refer to the image. privacy and offers multiplied views been related to personal ambitions: Breuer had of Bekleidung via incrustation.12 This gap was Only a few images remain from the of outdoors.”8 The technical description of been pigeonholed as an industrial designer historically appropriate: the undefined position Heinersdorff residence—including pictures

8. Marcel Breuer, Sun and Shadow: the first Bauhaus exhibition in the US compositions in front of the chimney 12. Gottfried Semper discusses the term 13. Formal influences between partners Go to the Movies” (1927), and “Cult of The Philosophy of an Architect (New York: at the Arts Club of Chicago in March 1931 suggest that perhaps more colors Bekleidung as the principle of “dressing were not uncommon at the Bauhaus Distraction” (1926), in The Mass Ornament: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1955), 79. lists Breuer and Hassenpflug together and tones were involved. Isabelle Hyman, and incrustation,” a process integrating during the twenties. Think, for instance, of Weimar Essays, trans. and ed. Thomas 9. Nuestra Arquitectura 9 (September 1947), with Walter Gropius as responsible Marcel Breuer, Architect: The Career textile and tectonic forms that culminates the influence of Anni Albers’s textiles Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Marcel Breuer Papers, box 1, folder 2, for arranging the Deutscher Werkbund and the Buildings (New York: Harry N. in Hellenic art. Gottfried Semper, (like the knotted rugs she made in 1925) University Press, 1995), 47–63, 75–86, biographical sketches, Special show in Paris, leaving aside Herbert Abrams, 2001), 69–70. Style in the Technical and Tectonics Arts; or in Josef Albers’s glass work (Glass Picture, 291–304, 323–34. See also sections I, IV, V, Collections Research Center. Syracuse Bayer and László Moholy-Nagy who also Practical Aesthetics, trans. Harris Francis 1926). Martha Erps moved to Argentina and VI in Walter Benjamin, The Work of University Libraries. contributed. See Margret Kentgens-Craig, Mallgrave and Michael Robinson in the early thirties where she reconvened Art in the Age of Its Technological 10. Peter Blake attributed the design of The Bauhaus in America: First Contacts (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, with her relatives. Reproducibility, and Other Writings on the window to Breuer and Gustav 1919–1936 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 243–44. Originally published as 14. Blake, Marcel Breuer: Architect and Media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Hassenpflug, his former student at 1999), 233–37. Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Designer, 31. Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, the furniture workshop at the Bauhaus. 11. Isabelle Hyman indicates in her monograph Künsten, oder Praktische Aesthetik. Ein 15. Ibid. MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard Peter Blake, Marcel Breuer: Architect on Breuer that the glass mosaics employed Handbuch für Techniker, Künstler und 16. See Siegfried Kracauer’s essays University Press, 2008). and Designer (New York: Museum of in the commission were black, white, Kunstfreunde, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Verlag “Photography” (1927), “The Mass Modern Art, 1949), 37. The catalog of and gray but the pictures of the floor für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1860). Ornament” (1927), “The Little Shopgirls

108 109 reception of some of the visual and graphic the image underscores the capacity of the during the thirties and forties, a professional of the flooring documents the ongoing artistic materials and documents of past designs that multi-lens window to transform the exterior identity that competed with his will to be influences among objects, subjects, and media traveled with him from Europe. Minor landscape into an almost cinematic experience. recognized as an architect in the US. Breuer’s happening between former Bauhauslers. although significant reconceptualizations of The information in the caption regarding contribution to the Heinersdorff residence The patterned floor compositions, for instance, his previous work tell us a story about the the origins of the image had been reduced to enlarged his design portfolio, gaining him follow the work that Martha Erps, Breuer’s geographic development of modernism by the a city, and a date: Berlin, 1929. respect as an architect and access to future first wife, developed in the weaving workshop middle of the twentieth century, a story Publications on Breuer’s work appearing clients and commissions. of the Bauhaus (figs. 2, 3).13 in which visual repetition, material evolution, before 1962, as well as the entries in the Breuer Before Breuer’s migrations during the Regardless of the success of the project and personal adaptation cannot be overlooked. archives in Washington, DC, and Syracuse, thirties—first to the United Kingdom and and its rapid dissemination in journals and The emplotment of some of Breuer’s associate the image with the urban house of the then to the US—the multi-lens window magazines, Breuer “intensely” disliked the

previous designs in a new location reflects glass industrialist Gottfried Heinersdorff in was never ascribed to the interior design that Heinersdorff commission, according to Blake, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 a changing sensibility toward the use of Berlin, a commission Breuer contributed to by he developed for the Heinersdorff residence, the editor of the 1949 MoMA brochure on materials affecting late modernism. designing some of the interiors. However, a house otherwise designed by the architect Breuer’s work.14 Blake, a German émigré, found Breuer introduced the object autonomously in Walter Wurzbach between 1928 and 1929. Breuer’s achievement in the Berlin interiors II. MULTI-LENS OPTICS a short note written in 1947 for the Argentinian Breuer’s contribution to the interior of the of the late twenties remarkable: in them, magazine Nuestra Arquitectura: “‘Multywindow house consisted of a clay chimney and a series Breuer managed to “teach table manners to Among the graphic materials that traveled with glass’ [sic.] (1929) . . . provides complete of pieces of wood and aluminum furniture: a robot.” That is, Breuer overcame the suspicion Breuer to this new context, we find the privacy and lets 100% light through. It allows closets, writing desks, benches, cupboards, the modern German bourgeois culture of the documentation describing his earlier domestic for exterior views from inside, not just etc. His work also encompassed finishes to time felt toward textured fabric in upholstery designs. Consider, for instance, the image from a single view point but from a variety of the floor surfaces and the interior walls. Gustav and furniture. Through the use of “decorative “Multi-lens window” that appeared in Breuer’s angles. . . .” 9 The multiple angles—and therefore Hassenpflug, a former Bauhaus student, patterns” and a “fascinating multi-lens window, 1955 monograph Sun and Shadow. Among images—that the window offers pinpoints executed the final drawings for the elements that repeated the outside image in a series the largest in the book, the image depicts an a postwar transitional moment between designed by Breuer.10 These drawings show of circular frames,” Blake wrote, Breuer shifted intriguing array of transparent circles new mass media (that is, television) and notable differences between the furniture upper-class modernist tastes and hesitations against a continuous, black background (fig. 1). domesticity. Reminiscent of the compound design and the aesthetic approach to horizontal toward machine-produced decorations (fig. 4).15 An urban landscape composed of a tree eye of certain insects, the concave discs and vertical claddings: if the former followed The window included in the brochure was, in the foreground and an imperial staircase to display and transmit a view of the world in a functional aesthetic without applied for Blake, a “disciplined pattern,” flexible enough the right can be made out in each circle. a multiplicity of frames, standing halfway decorations or additions, the latter presented to generate “interesting visual effects,” However, the framing changes from circle between the standardized character of a gamut of regular patterns and repetitive thanks to its combination of technology and to circle, bringing different aspects of modern materials and their properties as motifs made of small colorful tiles, materials movement. His association of technologies the landscape into focus. Toward the left of the technological symbols. presumably provided by Heinersdorff’s of reproduction and class disruptions echoed image, a sculptural figure or group of figures Sometimes considered an isolated piece of glass company Puhl and Waren.11 The floor the materialist critique that authors such appears in a few of the circles. The description industrial design, sometimes an integrated patterns were described in architectural as Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer had of the image of the window reads as follows: element in the Heinersdorff residence, the actual magazines as “mosaic-carpets,” marking a formulated by the late twenties.16 But, “Plate glass sheet with concave discs ground origin of the multi-lens window was not linguistic gap in the critical lexicon in the more importantly, Blake used for the first time into surface. Remainder of glass was clearly stated until the mid-fifties. The reasons transit between rigid materials and soft fabrics the expression “multi-lens window” in sandblasted. Window gives full light, plus for keeping that ambiguity alive may have reminiscent of Gottfried Semper’s principle architectural circles to refer to the image. privacy and offers multiplied views been related to personal ambitions: Breuer had of Bekleidung via incrustation.12 This gap was Only a few images remain from the of outdoors.”8 The technical description of been pigeonholed as an industrial designer historically appropriate: the undefined position Heinersdorff residence—including pictures

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fig. 2 Above, Room showing Martha Erps’s fig. 3 Below, Photographs of floor patterns fig. 4 Above, Spread in the catalog of the 1949 MoMA fig. 5 Below, View of the multiplying window located patterned floor compositions at the Bauhaus described as “mosaic-carpets” at Heinersdorff exhibition on Breuer’s work printed in at the jamb between rooms at the Deutsche Exhibition, Haus-am-Horn, Berlin, 1923. House, Berlin, 1928–29. Marcel Breuer Papers, Peter Blake, Marcel Breuer: Architect and Designer. Werkbund Exhibition at the Grand Palais, Marcel Breuer Papers 1920–1986, box 34, folder 1, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse © Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by Paris, May–July 1930. Published in Bauwelt, June exhibition files, Archives of American Art, University Libraries. SCALA/Art Resource, NY. 1930. Marcel Breuer Papers, Special Collections Smithsonian Institution. Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

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110 111 of the fireplace and entrance—all of them building materials as apparatuses for published in German magazines between 1929 the production and reproduction of images and 1930. The image of the window as such and, thus, anticipate the optical materiality appears in none of them, an absence which, of future media façades. This evolution considering the relevance and singular toward the performative character of façades focus it acquired during the postwar years, also permeated the language of mid-century brings into question the presence of the architectural criticism, as Blake’s account window in the actual commission. The first in 1949 demonstrates.20 Morphologically, the time the US audience witnessed the image multi-lens window arguably occupies an of the window was in the exhibition of Breuer’s ambiguous middle ground as a construction

work held right after his arrival in Cambridge element, juxtaposing the modern fascination Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 in 1938. Writing in the Harvard Graduate for the moving image in cinema and the School of Design show’s catalog, Hitchcock technical construction of images in television paid no attention whatsoever to the image, screens. The image of the multi-lens window concentrating instead on the potential of suggests the evolution from projection to Breuer’s capacities for aiding the development flat-surface image building, or, in other words, of modern architecture in the US.17 between László Moholy-Nagy’s fantasies Hitchcock’s indifference to the image stood of a light architecture and György Kepes’s in marked contrast to the attention it technical, discrete, and pragmatic construction received in popular media: an article in Time of billboards during the late fifties. The magazine highlighted the presence of a transition between the generic productive “remarkable” photograph in the 1938 show, multiplication provided by glass to the describing it as an image of “a group reproductive character of the multi-lens of small round windows, each curved like a window ran in parallel to Breuer’s ongoing camera lens, so that the same scene obsession with—and sophistication in appears in a different focus, or from a different the use of—patterns and textures to increase angle in each panel.”18 Addressing only a building’s visual performance in his major three pieces among the ninety-eight images postwar commissions. of Breuer’s work, Time magazine captured the mediating character of the window better III. IMAGE-MATERIAL than architectural critics, or even Breuer TRANSFERENCES himself, did at that time.19 This mediation happened between inside and outside Time magazine’s attraction to the image of the but also between eye and image, transforming multi-lens window was not an exception. the window into an apparatus for According to Cranston Jones, an architectural a modified visualization of the exterior. writer and the editor of a monograph on The insightful selection of Breuer’s Breuer’s work published in 1962, a multi-lens works by the editors at Time presents an window was among the most celebrated alternative reception and, contrary to objects exhibited at the Deutscher Werkbund Hitchcock’s conservative materialism, speaks show held at the Grand Palais in Paris from to an emerging trend in US architecture. May to July 1930.21 The exhibition was organized Regardless of prior descriptions, certain by Walter Gropius, who enlisted Herbert Bayer, understandings of the window presented Moholy-Nagy, and Breuer as his assistants.

17. Hitchcock, Marcel Breuer and Apartment Houses he designed for the curtain wall dynamic and sculptural in the American Tradition. Giedion in Zurich and the plans for a equal parts. Arthur Drexler, “Post-war 18. “Architectural Odyssey,” Time 2, no. 5 “Garden City of the Future.” Architecture” in Built in USA: Post-War fig. 6 Above, Image of the multi-lens window included fig. 7 Below, Photo of Deutsche Werkbund Exhibition (August 1, 1938): 21. Marcel Breuer Papers, 20. An example of these identifications can Architecture, ed. Henry-Russell in the documentation related to the Heinersdorff at the Grand Palais, Paris, May–July 1930. folder 1, biographical sketches, Special be found in Arthur Drexler’s 1952 Hitchcock and Arthur Drexler (New York: House, Berlin, 1928–29. Marcel Breuer Papers Marcel Breuer Papers, Special Collections Collections Research Center, Syracuse description of the “patterned, squarish, Museum of Modern Art, 1952), 26. University Libraries. round-cornered windows” of the 21. Cranston Jones, Marcel Breuer, 1920–86, series 8.17, box 30, folder 13, residencies, Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 19. Ibid. Beside Breuer’s tubular chairs, Alcoa Building in Pittsburgh as “several Buildings and Projects, 1921–1961 (London: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian the magazine referred to the Doldertal thousand television sets” that rendered Thames and Hudson, 1962), 233. Institution.

112 113 of the fireplace and entrance—all of them building materials as apparatuses for published in German magazines between 1929 the production and reproduction of images and 1930. The image of the window as such and, thus, anticipate the optical materiality appears in none of them, an absence which, of future media façades. This evolution considering the relevance and singular toward the performative character of façades focus it acquired during the postwar years, also permeated the language of mid-century brings into question the presence of the architectural criticism, as Blake’s account window in the actual commission. The first in 1949 demonstrates.20 Morphologically, the time the US audience witnessed the image multi-lens window arguably occupies an of the window was in the exhibition of Breuer’s ambiguous middle ground as a construction

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fig. 8 Above, Françoise Raoul, Le Miroir d’Eau, 1910. fig. 10 Below right, Close-up of Marcel Breuer’s room Current state. at the Deutsche Werkbund Exhibition at the fig. 9 Below left, Marcel Breuer’s detail drawings, Grand Palais, Paris, May–July 1930. Marcel Breuer dated April 7, 1930, for the Deutsche Werkbund Papers, Special Collections Research Center, fig. 11 Above, Marcel Breuer, Hunter College, 1955–1960. fig. 12 Below, Marcel Breuer, early design for the Exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris, May–July Syracuse University Libraries. Marcel Breuer Papers, series 8.64, box 15, Bijenkorf Department Store, Rotterdam, 1953–57. 1930. Marcel Breuer Papers, Special Collections folder 22, project files, Archives of American Art, Marcel Breuer Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Smithsonian Institution. Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

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114 115 Gropius and Breuer designed full-scale other details, and in which the window is only here that Breuer finally disclosed the squares that could well be identified as filters modern domestic spaces, while Moholy-Nagy not perceived as central. For instance, site where the photograph of the multi-lens producing the multi-lens window design: and Bayer arranged specific sections of the photographs that the German magazine window was taken. Although it is still a matrix of two columns and seven rows the exhibition. Commenting on the show, Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung published difficult to ascertain whether the window did of squares of approximately two feet each German critic Wilhelm Lotz noted “that of the exhibition fail to capture Breuer’s or did not belong to the Heinersdorff positioned vertically, cladding the entire the steel tube furniture has penetrated to this window, concentrating only on the models, commission, its production was certainly lateral window in the room (fig. 9). In one of circle of artists, less for technical or factory- images, and furniture exhibited by Bayer. undertaken by the glass company of the photos of the original installation of conditioned reasons than out of pure joy The fleeting status of the window is Heinersdorff, Puhl and Waren, coincidentally the Deutscher Werkbund, we find that only in the decorative handling of the material in confirmed once we take a closer look at some the same company that provided the glass a few of these glass panels were actually made combination with other materials.”22 Indeed, of the photographs in the few documents for Bruno Taut’s pavilion in Cologne in 1914. and attached to the existing window in the

the material exuberance could be seen concerning the Heinersdorff house project Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 The material evolution from German fashion conceived by Breuer, with Paris, rather throughout the exhibition in its rhetorical in all of the Breuer papers at the Smithsonian Expressionism to modern architecture and than Berlin, being the place where the image play of translucencies, glittering patterns, Archives of American Art in Washington, beyond relied on the evolution of material of the multi-lens window circulating since and visual interpenetrations of the different DC. In some of them, the scene in the window’s practices. Among the letters Breuer sent 1938 was taken (fig. 10). Together with the materials and objects employed. Breuer cutouts has been replaced (fig. 6). The new to the Deutscher Werkbund during the winter pattern identified as the multi-lens window, contributed to this decorative material landscape is not Heinersdorff’s comfortable of 1930, there is a list of the manufacturers there are also other patterns and textures in the logic for the show with his proposal for an Berlin mansion, as descriptions of the images in in charge of producing the different elements original drawing that would come back, in apartment house for temporary occupancy. all the postwar bibliography of Breuer would for the pieces to be exhibited, including one way or another, in future Breuer designs. As if designed for a magpie, the space have us believe. Through the lenses, we instead a sanded glass window with incrusted loops By the fifties, the multi-lens window had was composed of sparkling and gleaming can see the domestic space Breuer designed (Glasfenster mit Einschließungen) produced become nothing more than a prefabricated materials, such as steel, aluminum, chrome, for the Deutscher Werkbund exhibit in Paris, by Puhl and Waren in Berlin, as described image, serving as a mark of Breuer’s eagerness and glass. In an adjacent room, a model with the elevated catwalk that allowed visitors in Sun and Shadow. However, the images to get commissions in the US context but of the Bauhaus in Dessau on a plinth was set to oversee the show from a vantage point in available do not show any sign of translucency also of his evolution as an architect. It was alongside images of the Bauhaus faculty the background (fig. 7). These photos inevitably in the remainder of the glass, as Breuer’s more than a “site of concentrated attention” houses hanging from slanting panels above the cast a shade of doubt on the description of earlier descriptions in 1947 and 1962 of (to use art and architectural historian visitors, following Bayer’s Diagramme de the photograph that gained renown after 1938. the black background in the image having Alina Payne’s expression) for architects, la vision étendue. Toward the side of the room, On a second, closer look, one can see that been sandblasted indicated. Not all the designers, and possible clients alike: an optical iterations of Breuer’s Wassily and B33 what is being portrayed in the lenses is materials intended for the exhibition were pattern interweaving Breuer’s intellectual chairs were attached to the wall, suspended not a Berlin urban landscape but an image meant to be of German origin: at Gropius’s and technological context with postwar in an industrial but evolutionary pattern of the north entry to the Grand Palais recommendation, Breuer requested information material that condensed the influences in of repetition and variation from top to from Avenue du Général Eisenhower, which from Dr. Erich Raemisch, an architect and the years prior to World War II.26 The image bottom.23 In between the rooms stood Breuer’s had become part of Avenue de Selves by consultant for the Deutscher Werkbund, about also represents a significant moment in multi-lens window, a square prefabricated the early thirties. Through the openings, a glass manufacturer in Barcelona who could Breuer’s understanding of materials: from panel supported at the jamb of the entry starting on the left side of the window provide curved glass for the final design.25 the lenses of photographic and movie of room number five, right at the threshold in the photograph, the Fontaine Miroir d’eau Among the drawings Breuer submitted to the cameras to the starkness of modern materials, between architecture, domesticity, and sculpture, an allegorical composition Barcelona manufacturer, there is a set of the multi-lens window is the manifestation industrial design (fig. 5). A panoramic consisting of an artificial pond surrounded by eight 250-by-240 millimeter pieces of bent or of a fruitful interweaving of building materials photograph of the exhibition taken from an several figures that was completed in 1910 curved black glass (schwarzes Glas gebogen). and new techniques of production and elevated catwalk within the Grand Palais by the Art Nouveau sculptor François-Raoul These pieces were presumably meant to produce reproduction for expression. It also underscores and published in the magazine Bauwelt Larche, begins to emerge (fig. 8). further iterations of the original window, but the impact that these new media had on the in June 1930 captures the multi-lens window It was not until Jones’s 1962 publication on in a different arrangement. A drawing of a development of architecture, as well as the as central to the arrangement.24 This Breuer’s work that we encounter a more precise set of glass panels that were to be positioned increasing visual capacity of building materials panoramic photo stands in contrast to those reference to the “multi-lens glass” inspired at the right vertical window in the first once technological means of production later published in different journals that show by beer bottles, “sandblasted on one side.” It is room of the Grand Palais shows a number of were mastered and domesticated. From 1929

22. Wilhelm Lotz, “Ausstellung des disposition of chairs titled “ein 25. See letter from Walter Gropius to to see the glass from Barcelona in 26. The expression a “site of concentrated Deutschen Werkbundes in Paris,” Bauhaus-film. fünf jahre lang.” Dr. Erich Raemisch, November 30, the exhibition. Round pieces of glass, attention” refers to the rise of the designed trans. E.T. Scheffauer, Die Form 5, 24. Räume des Wohnhotels von Marcel 1929, and the drawings provided also known as Cibas, were commonly object as the privileged locus of modern nos. 11/12 (June 1930): 295. Breuer. Marcel Breuer Papers, box by Breuer. Marcel Breuer Digital Archive, used by early twentieth-century subjectivity. See Alina Payne, From 23. Marcel Breuer had followed an oversize 20, Special Collections Research Image IDs: 12591-001 and 12153-001, architects in Catalonia. I would like Ornament to Object: Genealogies of evolutionary, filmic pattern of Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Syracuse University Libraries. In the to thank professor Juan José Lahuerta Architectural Modernism (New Haven: dematerialization in his 1926 graphic letter, Gropius highlights his eagerness for this reference. Yale University Press, 2012), 264.

116 117 Gropius and Breuer designed full-scale other details, and in which the window is only here that Breuer finally disclosed the squares that could well be identified as filters modern domestic spaces, while Moholy-Nagy not perceived as central. For instance, site where the photograph of the multi-lens producing the multi-lens window design: and Bayer arranged specific sections of the photographs that the German magazine window was taken. Although it is still a matrix of two columns and seven rows the exhibition. Commenting on the show, Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung published difficult to ascertain whether the window did of squares of approximately two feet each German critic Wilhelm Lotz noted “that of the exhibition fail to capture Breuer’s or did not belong to the Heinersdorff positioned vertically, cladding the entire the steel tube furniture has penetrated to this window, concentrating only on the models, commission, its production was certainly lateral window in the room (fig. 9). In one of circle of artists, less for technical or factory- images, and furniture exhibited by Bayer. undertaken by the glass company of the photos of the original installation of conditioned reasons than out of pure joy The fleeting status of the window is Heinersdorff, Puhl and Waren, coincidentally the Deutscher Werkbund, we find that only in the decorative handling of the material in confirmed once we take a closer look at some the same company that provided the glass a few of these glass panels were actually made combination with other materials.”22 Indeed, of the photographs in the few documents for Bruno Taut’s pavilion in Cologne in 1914. and attached to the existing window in the

the material exuberance could be seen concerning the Heinersdorff house project The material evolution from German fashion conceived by Breuer, with Paris, rather Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 throughout the exhibition in its rhetorical in all of the Breuer papers at the Smithsonian Expressionism to modern architecture and than Berlin, being the place where the image play of translucencies, glittering patterns, Archives of American Art in Washington, beyond relied on the evolution of material of the multi-lens window circulating since and visual interpenetrations of the different DC. In some of them, the scene in the window’s practices. Among the letters Breuer sent 1938 was taken (fig. 10). Together with the materials and objects employed. Breuer cutouts has been replaced (fig. 6). The new to the Deutscher Werkbund during the winter pattern identified as the multi-lens window, contributed to this decorative material landscape is not Heinersdorff’s comfortable of 1930, there is a list of the manufacturers there are also other patterns and textures in the logic for the show with his proposal for an Berlin mansion, as descriptions of the images in in charge of producing the different elements original drawing that would come back, in apartment house for temporary occupancy. all the postwar bibliography of Breuer would for the pieces to be exhibited, including one way or another, in future Breuer designs. As if designed for a magpie, the space have us believe. Through the lenses, we instead a sanded glass window with incrusted loops By the fifties, the multi-lens window had was composed of sparkling and gleaming can see the domestic space Breuer designed (Glasfenster mit Einschließungen) produced become nothing more than a prefabricated materials, such as steel, aluminum, chrome, for the Deutscher Werkbund exhibit in Paris, by Puhl and Waren in Berlin, as described image, serving as a mark of Breuer’s eagerness and glass. In an adjacent room, a model with the elevated catwalk that allowed visitors in Sun and Shadow. However, the images to get commissions in the US context but of the Bauhaus in Dessau on a plinth was set to oversee the show from a vantage point in available do not show any sign of translucency also of his evolution as an architect. It was alongside images of the Bauhaus faculty the background (fig. 7). These photos inevitably in the remainder of the glass, as Breuer’s more than a “site of concentrated attention” houses hanging from slanting panels above the cast a shade of doubt on the description of earlier descriptions in 1947 and 1962 of (to use art and architectural historian visitors, following Bayer’s Diagramme de the photograph that gained renown after 1938. the black background in the image having Alina Payne’s expression) for architects, la vision étendue. Toward the side of the room, On a second, closer look, one can see that been sandblasted indicated. Not all the designers, and possible clients alike: an optical iterations of Breuer’s Wassily and B33 what is being portrayed in the lenses is materials intended for the exhibition were pattern interweaving Breuer’s intellectual chairs were attached to the wall, suspended not a Berlin urban landscape but an image meant to be of German origin: at Gropius’s and technological context with postwar in an industrial but evolutionary pattern of the north entry to the Grand Palais recommendation, Breuer requested information material that condensed the influences in of repetition and variation from top to from Avenue du Général Eisenhower, which from Dr. Erich Raemisch, an architect and the years prior to World War II.26 The image bottom.23 In between the rooms stood Breuer’s had become part of Avenue de Selves by consultant for the Deutscher Werkbund, about also represents a significant moment in multi-lens window, a square prefabricated the early thirties. Through the openings, a glass manufacturer in Barcelona who could Breuer’s understanding of materials: from panel supported at the jamb of the entry starting on the left side of the window provide curved glass for the final design.25 the lenses of photographic and movie of room number five, right at the threshold in the photograph, the Fontaine Miroir d’eau Among the drawings Breuer submitted to the cameras to the starkness of modern materials, between architecture, domesticity, and sculpture, an allegorical composition Barcelona manufacturer, there is a set of the multi-lens window is the manifestation industrial design (fig. 5). A panoramic consisting of an artificial pond surrounded by eight 250-by-240 millimeter pieces of bent or of a fruitful interweaving of building materials photograph of the exhibition taken from an several figures that was completed in 1910 curved black glass (schwarzes Glas gebogen). and new techniques of production and elevated catwalk within the Grand Palais by the Art Nouveau sculptor François-Raoul These pieces were presumably meant to produce reproduction for expression. It also underscores and published in the magazine Bauwelt Larche, begins to emerge (fig. 8). further iterations of the original window, but the impact that these new media had on the in June 1930 captures the multi-lens window It was not until Jones’s 1962 publication on in a different arrangement. A drawing of a development of architecture, as well as the as central to the arrangement.24 This Breuer’s work that we encounter a more precise set of glass panels that were to be positioned increasing visual capacity of building materials panoramic photo stands in contrast to those reference to the “multi-lens glass” inspired at the right vertical window in the first once technological means of production later published in different journals that show by beer bottles, “sandblasted on one side.” It is room of the Grand Palais shows a number of were mastered and domesticated. From 1929

116 117 to 1962 (the year Jones’s monograph on Breuer HUMA GUPTA Historians are thus more likely to deal with was published), the intermittently told history the digital archive and not its analog antérieur. of the Heinersdorff multi-lens window speaks But how does this shift affect the method of detachment and assimilation between image Encountering by which a historian can know the past through and material. It also records the channels sound?2 It raises a number of questions, such and influences that modern architecture the Sonic Artifact in as what types of critical listening apparatus does followed in its path toward institutionalization: the Digital Archive one need to encounter the sonic artifact in the multiplication of myths, metaphors, and the digital archive? How does one deal with the misunderstandings traveled alongside images inaccessibility and flattening of the sonic whose visual impact facilitated material and So when we imagine we are hearing the past, past? How should one interrogate the colonial 27 aesthetic evolution in postwar modernism. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/thld/article-pdf/doi/10.1162/thld_a_00678/1611601/thld_a_00678.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 we are always only listening to the archive. context of an archive’s production and its The Heinersdorff window acted as a postwar Caroline A. Jones, “The Mediated Sensorium” 1 underlying claims to facticity? This article will rhetorical apparatus, an ersatz of an original address these questions through the author’s that never existed. As such, the glass panel INTRODUCTION own experience of historicizing a digital was born and disseminated as a reproduction version of a rare, century-old sonic artifact without a proper original—it was never The technological apparatus of the post- that promised insights into a nearly extinct an acting window in the Heinersdorff house— 1895 shellac gramophone record facilitated tradition of performative storytelling selectively circulating in black-and-white the creation of modern sonic archives. in the Indian subcontinent.3 copies in the US through publications and These archives contained comparable sets exhibitions. Its presentation in Sun and Shadow of ethnolinguistic and musical recordings 1. THE ‘LAST GREATEST was an unacknowledged tribute to the or “data” inscribed onto 78-rpm records. STORYTELLER’ OF DILLI intersection between movement, light, and They were seven, ten, or twelve inches architecture. Eventually, we find the window wide, single- or double-sided, with recording The Dilli, or Delhi, that Sir Syed Ahmad Khan performing, literally, as a visual narrator lengths that varied from two to four (1817–1898) described in his 1847 Asar-al-Sanadid documenting an historical development in minutes. Today, the decreasing cost of (The Remnant Signs of Ancient Heroes) the complex relationships between objects, digitization has resulted in unprecedented was populated by storytellers sitting on a reed materials, images, and architecture. The access to older sonic archives, a process stool on the steps outside the northern gate fascination with the image of the multi-lens spearheaded by central institutions of the of the Jama Mosque, narrating tales from window diminishes as soon as the history knowledge economy, such as the Bibliothèque the Hamzanameh that included fantastic and of its materialization and circulation begins nationale de France (BnF), the British often ribald tales of jinns, sorceresses, mythical to play. The image changed in every historical Library, the Library of Congress, and The creatures, and heroes.4 A storyteller in this iteration, invoking the past only to resonate Internet Archive. tradition was called a dastango, and the dastans with contemporary and future expressions in Breuer’s work (figs. 10, 11). The reemergence HUMA GUPTA is a PhD candidate in For instance, see Mark M. Smith, ed., Experience, Science, and Art. The set of the image in different locations and via History, Theory, and Criticism in the Hearing History (Athens, GA: University of of questions this article raises extensively different media deserves our attention, as the Department of Architecture at MIT. She is Georgia Press, 2004); Mark M. Smith, builds on the questions previously a fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Listening to Nineteenth-Century America raised in their own scholarship. reinterpretation of his past works underpins Islamic Architecture. Her dissertation is (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of 4. C. M. Naim, “Syed Ahmad and His Two the relation between Breuer’s changing tentatively titled “The State Between North Carolina Press, 2001); Shane White Books Called ‘Asar-al-Sanadid’,” Modern Dwelling & Building: Sarifa Settlements and Graham White, The Sounds of Slavery: Asian Studies 45, no. 3 (May 2011): 5; aesthetic subjectivity and a renewed postwar and the Formation of Iraq” Discovering African American History Pasha Mohamad Khan, “The Broken modern materiality. through Songs, Sermons, and Speech (Boston: Spell: The Romance Genre in Late 1. Caroline A. Jones, “The Mediated Beacon, 2005); and Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Mughal India.” PhD diss., Columbia Sensorium,” in Sensorium: Embodied The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural University, 2013. Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Politics of Listening (New York: New York 7. Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, and Art, ed. Caroline A. Jones (Cambridge, University Press, 2016). See also Emily Rampur were considered key centers, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 22. Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: where dastangos could rely on different 2. This is a question that has been Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of forms of patronage from princely increasingly addressed over the past two Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, courts, landed gentry, and the growing decades by aural historians, who have MA: MIT Press, 2002); and Hillel middle class, to popular attendance. examined sound recordings, speeches, Schwartz, Making Noise: From Babel to the See Ghaus Ansari, “Lucknow: The blueprints, and personal memories Big Bang and Beyond (Cambridge, MA: City of Palace Culture” in Urban to enrich and complicate histories of, for Zone Books, 2011). Symbolism, ed. Peter J.M. Nas (Leiden: 27. Not even in art historian Giulio Carlo at this late date as part of the interior example, race, place, architecture, 3. This article owes a tremendous intellectual E.J. Brill, 1993): 329–44. Argan’s 1957 book on Breuer was there a decoration of the Berlin villa, a house not and modernity. This article builds on this debt to Caroline A. Jones and reference to the actual origins of the demolished until 1972. recent scholarship and tries to pose Stefan Helmreich, who supervised and multi-lens glass, despite the fact that an new methodological questions given the encouraged this research during image of the window appeared in its pages proliferation of digital sonic archives. a 2014 seminar titled Resonance: Sonic

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