CUBE
18.07.01 - 04.09.01
Hugo
Häring (1882-1958) was key to the development of Modern Architecture as
we know it. His few realised projects, including the almost legendary
Garkau Farm, near Lübeck (1923-5), the Sausage Factory at Neustadt (1925/6)
and blocks of flats at Siemensstadt in Berlin, along with his writing
and theory of Organic Architecture, continue to fascinate cultural historians
and influence the work of contemporary architects such as Behnisch &
Partners, Caruso St.John and Florian Biegel.
The
exhibition, accompanied by a catalogue (by Blundell-Jones), included a
number of models of Haring’s work, some of which had never been built or
even published previously. Reviews of the exhibition, and the events
arranged to coincide with it, show some of its influence in subjecting
Modernism to further review, highlighting an agenda seeking to
understand how materials, place and human activities might inspire to
generate forms. The exhibition was in collaboration with the Academie
der Kunste Berlin and supported by the Arts Council.
Hugo Häring believed that architecture
should not be imposed as a preconceived idea but rather discovered in
an exploration of the place and conditions that the building is intended
to serve. This set the emphasis on process rather than product, and on
the expression of the task as opposed to the personal expression of the
architect.
Since inspiration was to be found in the functional programme of the building, Häring has also been called 'the most extreme of functionalists' (Posener), but his attitude was far from utilitarian. He wanted an architecture that responded to immediate conditions and therefore reflected them: an architecture of the utmost appropriateness. In his view the greatest obstacle to a building becoming what it needed to become was the imposition of 'geometry'. Whether this took the form of an axial methodology like that of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, a systematic grid like that of the Rationalists, or a Platonic belief in pure forms and proportions as held by Le Corbusier, Häring saw imposed geometry as a straitjacket cramping a building's natural development. His critique of these methods was important for the attention it drew to a central issue for the Modern Movement: Gestaltung or form-making.
Häring was also important in the politics of Modern Architecture in Germany. When he arrived in Berlin in the early 1920s he became friendly with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and for some years the two shared an office. Together in the mid 1920s they set up The Ring, an organisation of architects which counted among its members all the main German Modernists, and which paved the way for CIAM. Häring was the Ring's secretary, organising its exhibitions and publications, and he also wrote polemical articles on contemporary issues in architectural politics. He and Mies shared a common conviction that the way forward in architecture was a return to first principles, but they each worked on their own projects, and from the beginning Mies pursued a somewhat reductive interest in simple and universal design solutions while Häring in contrast sought the utmost specificity. The polarity between them helped each to establish his territory more clearly, and Häring's position remains important as the defining antithesis to Mies's.
While Mies's
background lay in the Neo-classicism of Peter Behrens and the much earlier
work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Häring had been taught by the great South-German
planner and contextualist Theodor Fischer, who drew on the city planning
theories of Camillo Sitte and the pan-European tendency known as National
Romanticism. Mies and Häring thus extended a debate from the previous
generation, a debate that has continued in some ways to this day. It is
about the advantages and disadvantages of repeatable building types as
opposed to the unique building dedicated to place and purpose, and it
is about whether architecture should be contingent or transcendent. Similarly
still in flux are questions about the need for flexibility and the appropriate
use of the machine.
Images:
Model and photograph: Garkau Farm, near Lübeck 1923-5
This is Häring's masterpiece and the centrepiece of the exhibition. As he was unable to build until 1924, it represents the synthesis of his modernist thinking for the first time in physical form. In his famous cowshed, Häring researched all the issues of keeping and breeding cattle, producing a novel organisation of great efficiency and also exploiting the properties of materials. It is the very epitome of working from the inside out, from principle to form, and discovering the identity of the building in the process. A large model has been made of the whole Garkau complex including the well-known cowshed and barn, but also the unbuilt house and pigsty/stable block. There are high quality colour photos of the buildings in their restored state, photos of the original archive drawings and an important original text on the cowshed which has been translated.
Curated by Peter Blundell Jones
Designed by Nasser Golzari
Organised by Graeme Russell