THE REVOLTED ARCHITECT

Politiquement, j'ai toujours été un révolté.
OSCAR NIEMEYER

With the end of Estado Novo in Brazil, in 1945, the communist militants, arrested during the dictatorship of Gétulio Vargas, are amnestied. Then, the architect Oscar Niemeyer decides to host, in his own house, Luís Carlos Prestes, general-secretary of the Brazilian Communist Party. After a few weeks of coexistence, Niemeyer converts himself to the cause and joins the party that will chair in 1992.

In 1964, he is invited to Israel by Yekutiel Federman, owner of Dan Hotels, to discuss some potential projects. Meanwhile, there is a military coup in Brazil. The coupists sack the headquarters of the magazine Módulo and his studio. Incidents that force him to extend his, in principle brief, stay in Israel. But, six months later, he ends up returning to his country.

In 1965, a year after his return to Brazil, he resignes from his position as a professor at the university in protest for the dictatorial policies of the Brazilian military government and, taking advantage of the success of his monographic exhibition at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, leaves for France. In this exile, which will last about twenty years, he designs, among other works, the Headquarters for the French Communist Party in Paris.

Siège du Parti communiste français (sketches by Oscar Niemeyer, 1965)

In a few days, Niemeyer develops a preliminary project in accordance with the local conditions and its surroundings, that is to say: in accordance with the size and shape of the site, as well as with the orientation and operation of the building And at the same time it gives an answer to one of the main requirements of the program: to provide a safe building, with discreet and easy controlled entrances.

All of this explains the final solution adopted: a block in curved line which unfolds throughout the whole area of ​​the plot that borders with the neighbors, where the party's offices are located. In this way it frees the rest of the lot and preserves, between the building and its neighbors, the spaces necessary for its vertical accesses, located outside to facilitate future modifications that the program of the building may eventually require.

Then he places the rest of the building a meter and a half below the street level, creating a system of inclined planes where we can find a large auditorium, semi-buried but easily accessible, and the entrance hall, which it is called foyer de la classe ouvrière, where, through multiple curved walls, a whole series of spaces for exhibition, waiting and conference rooms are located.

Siège du Parti communiste français (photos by Joan de Torres Calsapeu, 2000)

In the words of its own author, the building becomes an example of contemporary architecture and a potential point of tourist attraction. But it is not a simple architectural challenge. It is the worker's house. A building with new, simple forms, without luxurious and superfluous finishings that represents the fight against misery, discrimination and injustice which, according to him, must be the goal of French communism.

However, it is not a communist who welcomes him, and facilitates his architectural practice in France but André Malraux, then minister of culture of President Charles de Gaulle's last government. In 1959 Malraux had described Brasilia as the city of hope and Palácio da Alvorada's columns as the most beautiful ever seen after the Greeks. It is thanks to Malraux's devotion for the work of Niemeyer, which he collects in his Imaginary Museum, that the Brazilian architect owes him, to a large extent, his projects in France.

According to Niemeyer himself, Georges Pompidou, then prime minister, stated that this building is the only good thing that the Communists have done, ignoring the fact that the architect has not a quite very rebellious past. In fact, in 1936 he designed, in collaboration with, among others, Lúcio Costa and the advice of Le Corbusier, the Headquarters of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Rio de Janeiro commissioned by a fervent fascist and Brazilian anti-communist like Gustavo Capanema.

MIES AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

Elle est belle, elle ne signifie rien.
ANDRÉ GIDE

Where do the sculptures of Aristides Maillol which appear in Mies van der Rohe's collages in his Museum project for a small town come from? In this project, commissioned by the Architectural Forum for its special issue "New Buildings for 194X" in May 1943, four Maillol sculptures share space with Picasso's Guernica and with another cubist painting by Braque: 'Torse de jeune fille' from 1930, 'Étude pour le monument à Paul Cézanne' from 1912, 'L'Action enchaînée' from 1906 and 'La Nuit' from 1905.

The origin of Guernica in this imaginary museum is clear. Picasso's painting arrives in America in 1939 and, until 1942, it is exhibited in several north american cities. Among them Chicago. From December 4th to 28th, 1940, The Arts Club of Chicago organizes a retrospective exhibition of Maillol's work. In addition, a year before this exhibition, a monograph is published by Berlin-based art historian John Rewald.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 'Concert Hall' (1942)

In 1942 Mies choses another sculpture by Maillol to illustrate his Concert Hall project. In this case, he creates a photomontage, with an image of the assembly hangar of the aircraft factory Glenn L. Martin Company, by the architect Albert Kahn, as a backdrop, where Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' appears, in the foreground, as a ready-made. His presence, however, reinforces the idea that, in this context, nothing is what it seems. It is not until a few years later that the sculptor Mary Callery, a personal friend of Mies, will remove Maillol's work to place the figure of a scribe from Ancient Egypt. Although in the catalog of his retrospective exhibition, between September 16th, 1947, and January 25th, 1948, at the MoMA, Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' will still be there.

That photomontage has its origins in an architectural design course that Mies teaches in January 1941 at the IIT. In this course he proposes as a theme a concert hall and three different ways of approaching his architectural solution. One of his students, Paul Camagna, opts for the solution of a single large open space with strictly acoustic partitions. And this is how the interior photography of a large industrial space is chosen, such as the assembly hangar for the PBM Mariner patrol bomber flying boat. Years later, Campagna himself will admit that the concert hall project is more of Mies than his.

Peter Behrens 'Ausstellungsraum in der Kunsthalle, Internationale Kunst- und Große Gartenbau-Ausstellung, Mannheim' (1907)

A year before Mies entered his studio, Peter Behrens asks Karl Ernst Osthaus, an art collector and patron, for a female nude by Aristides Maillol like the one it was exhibited, between April and September 1906, at the eleventh Kunstausstellung (art show) of the Berlin Secession. Osthaus brings him a plaster reproduction of 'Le Méditerranée'. This is how Maillol's sculpture, perhaps under the influence of german Hellenism, will become the main character of the room created by Behrens at the Internationale Kunst- und Große Gartenbau-Ausstellung in Mannheim.

But Maillol is not the first sculptor to whom Mies turns to in his works. In fact, in his collages for the courtyard houses of 1938 he incorporates sculptures by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, a personal friend of his brother Ewald who was also a sculptor. Another photograph of the interior of Villa Tugendhat from 1930 already shows a sculpture by Lehmbruck himself. It is none other than 'Torso' from 1914. And in the Glasraum (glass room), designed by Mies and Lilly Reich, for the 1927 Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, we find his 'Maedchen, sich umwendend' of 1913.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 'German Pavilion, Barcelona, preliminary scheme' (1928)

In one of the first versions of the German Pavilion in Barcelona, ​​Mies plans to incorporate up to three sculptures. One where we can find now ‘Der Morgen’ (the morning) by Georg Kolbe. A second, also on open air, at the edge of the main pond. And the third in the central space of the Pavilion. On the other hand, in a collage of 1928 a figure seated in the inner pond is glimpsed. There is also a drawing by the architect Sergius Ruegenberg, then Mies's assistant and later Hans Scharoun's collaborator in his Berlin Kollektivplan, where a figure sitting in the same place can also be seen.

If Kolbe’s statue, at that stage of the design,  isn’t even drawn it may be because it isn’t expected to be there. If we also consider that Lehmbruck and Kolbe did not make this type of sculpture, it can also be that the sculpture Mies has in mind, from the beginning, is none other than Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée'. On the other hand, the Pavilion is nothing but a Mies collage. In this case, a badly re-constructed collage. Because, despite not being a work by Mies, both Puig i Cadafalch's exterior colonnade and Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' are integral parts of the Pavilion. Because form, by itself, does not exist.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe 'German Pavilion, Barcelona, interior perspective' (1928-29)

Nowadays, you can see Maillol's 'Le Méditerranée' in the courtyard of Perpignan's City Council. A woman isolated and elevated in a pedestal leaning her, left, arm on her, also left, bent leg. It could be said that his skin is crushed by the sun of this Catalan Arcadia. Go see her, stand in front of her, accompany her for a while. She is all we have left of what could have happened in Mies Pavilion.

"LES HEURES SOMBRES"

La maison se posera au milieu de l'herbe comme un objet, sans rien déranger.

LE CORBUSIER

In June 1928 Pierre Savoye, co-founder of the insurance company Gras Savoye, visits Le Corbusier, in his Parisian studio, to entrust a weekend residence, to receive friends and take a break with family, in a field of 7-hectare in Poissy.

The Villa Savoye, spontaneously named by its owners as “Les Heures claires” (The clear hours), is built between 1929 and 1931. As early as 1930, Eugénie Savoye, Pierre’s wife, begins a correspondence with his architect, which will last until 1937, where she communicates all its construction defects.

G.E. Kidder Smith 'Villa Savoye' (1959)

The first letter dates from March 24, 1930, where Madame Savoye already complains that the terrace, garage and cellar are flooded and that the infernal noise of rain on the skylight in her bathroom does not let her sleep. In another letter dated September 6, 1937, she writes: "It's raining in the lobby, it's raining on the ramp, and the garage wall is absolutely soaked. What's more, it's still raining in my bathroom, which is flooding every time that there is rain."

Le Corbusier goes so far as to tell her that, as a client, she should consider architects as friends of their house and not their enemies. Nevertheless, at the beginning of 1938 the owners stop living there. But it is not until May 1940 that they definitively abandone it. Shortly afterwards it is confiscated by the Nazis for its strategic location. From there they can watch the entire Seine Valley and the Ford factory in Paris.

René Burri 'The Villa Savoye' (1959)

It is not until two years after the end of World War II that the Savoye family regains their ownership. Widowed and impoverished, Madame Savoye turns her land into a farm by transforming the house into a barn and, consequently, accelerating its decline.

Perhaps for this reason, in 1958 it is expropriated again. This time by the Poissy City Council which reserves 6 of its 7 hectares for the construction of a new school and ends up transforming the Villa into a Maison des jeunes et de la culture, although at first it was planned to be demolished.

The Villa Savoye, Destruction Through Neglect (1966) MoMA

Then the alarm goes off and a whole series of campaigns and mobilizations begin, on an international scale, to save Villa Savoye. As a result of this pressure, the building passes into the hands of the French Republic. And in 1965, a few months after Le Corbusier's death, André Malraux, then Minister of Culture, classifies it as a historical monument.

But as Arthur Drexler, director of MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design, denounces: the harm is already done. Even restored, the Villa Savoye, due to this amputation, can never again be seen as an object, without anything altering it.

SCHINKEL'S MONTSERRAT

In which the human being, entirely alone on his own Montserrat, can find peace and happiness.

J.W. GOETHE 'Sämmtliche Werke' (1836)

Recently the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) has put online the entire collection of K.F. Schinkel's graphic work. So, one fine day, while procrastinating, I ended up discovering two images with the title of Eisenbergwerk in Katalonien (Iron mine in Catalonia): an exterior view where a limestone relief very similar to Montserrat is intuited, and an interior view which is like a hybrid of the prisons of Piranesi and the caves of Collbató or Salnitre. I immediately checked to see if Schinkel had ever been to Montserrat. But, reviewing his entire travel history, I can state that it is impossible. So who could have talked about Catalonia and its sacred mountain to the Prussian architect? There is only one possibility: Wilhelm von Humboldt, his protector at the Court of Frederick William III of Prussia.

In fact, Humboldt visited Montserrat in 1800 for two days. His ascension is evoked in the poem Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries), written in 1784 by his friend J.W. Goethe. A poem where Goethe tells us about a pilgrim who climbs a mountain where there is a monastery inhabited by hermits. Just like Montserrat back then. On his return to Paris, still shocked by the experience, Humboldt began to write a letter, in the form of an essay, to his friend, which he did not publish until three years later, in the Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden, entitled “Der Montserrat, bey Barcelona”. Curiously, the same year when Humboldt and Schinkel, during his stay in Rome, met in person.

K.F. Schinkel 'Eisenbergwerk in Katalonien. Außenansicht' (1815)

In this letter, Humboldt exposes a fascination with the mountain, above all, from a geographical, but also from an aesthetic, point of view. The harmony between man and nature stands out. An almost edenic harmony. Although he pays more attention to the hermits than to the monastery itself. According to him, the hermits show us, in their understanding with nature, that a life in harmony is possible. They represent a place in arcadian life. They are like the good savage of Rousseau. They meditate and find inner peace through pure contemplation. Thus, Montserrat is seen as an earthly paradise. As a return to simplicity, self-sufficiency and peace of mind. As an experience understood as an initiatory journey. But, in the whole essay, he does not tell us anything about its caves.

So how come did Schinkel become aware of its existence? Perhaps because of the French politician, archaeologist and traveler Alexandre de Laborde. Between 1794 and 1797, at the time of the French Revolution, Laborde discovered the mountain and, unlike Humboldt, visited its caves. In fact, in the first volume of his “Voyage pittoresque et historique de l'Espagne”, published in 1806 and dedicated entirely to Catalonia, he includes a detailed description of Montserrat which also includes two engravings, on his own words, of its beautiful stalactite caves.

K.F. Schinkel 'Eisenbergwerk in Katalonien. Innenansicht' (1815)

“This Saturday my Christmas piece, a big old iron mine in Catalonia, will be opened and shown during the Christmas market, from 6 a.m. daily throughout the evening, in my theater at 43 Französische Straße”. With this announcement, at the Berlinischen Nachrichten on December 16th, 1815, Wilhelm Ernst Gropius (Karl Wilhelm Gropius's father) promoted the presentation of these two eminently Montserratian Schaubilder (dioramas with musical accompaniment and human figures and animals) designed by Schinkel. From 1807 to 1815, Schinkel himself worked mainly in the design of panoramas and dioramas for Gropius' optical-mechanical theater until the death of Paul Ludwig Simon, when he was promoted to Geheimer Oberbaurat (private construction adviser). Five years earlier, however, Humboldt had already nominated him for the post of Geheimer Oberbauassessor (private construction consultant) of the Preußischen Oberbaudeputation (Prussian Construction Council).

EUROPAHAUS

But one thing people like us cannot do without: the big city, where the lights are bright at night.

KURT TUCHOLSKY

With the passing of time, the myth of Potsdamer Platz has grown so big it has ended up casting a huge shadow over neighboring Askanischer Platz. However, it should be remembered that, during the first half of the last century, it had become one of the neuralgic centers of Berlin. Then everything revolved around the big train stations. At Askanischer Platz was the Anhalter Bahnhof, the largest and busiest train station in the city. From 1841, the year of its inauguration, large hotels were established in its surroundings. First the Harsburger Hof and later the Excelsior, once the largest hotel on the european continent.

Ideenwettbewerb zur Verbauung der Prinz-Albrecht-Gärten in Berlin, 1924

In 1924, with a desire to take advantage of this dynamic, the promoters of the famous skyscraper at Friedrichstrasse station promoted a new competition. Its aim was to define the western part of the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais, where the royal stables were, with a large building that gave facade to the square and preserved its garden at maximum. The main building, an 18th-century palace, later modified by K.F. Schinkel, occupied its eastern part. The winning proposal of the competition was presented by the architects Richard Bielenberg and Josef Moser, also authors of the Hotel Fürstenhof near Potsdamer Platz. It should be noted that their proposal had nothing to do with what was later eventually built. In fact, the authors went from proposing a neoclassical styled building to a complex of buildings designed according to the principles of the Neue Sachlichkeit, more similar to the proposal presented by Otto Firle.

Europahaus am Anhalter Bahnhof, 1936-37

This complex of buildings, in a certain sense, wanted to be a replica, on the Askanischer Platz, of  Haus Vaterland, located just in front of the Potsdamer Bahnhof. Opened in 1911 as Haus Potsdam, the building was designed by Franz Schwechten. Curiously, the same architect who, a few years earlier, had designed the Anhalter Bahnhof. It housed Café Piccadilly, the world’s largest restaurant with 2,500 seats, a theater, with a capacity of 1,200 seats, and numerous offices. In 1928 it was renovated and re-opened, under the motto of the world in a house, with its theater transformed into a cinema and offices into multiple themed restaurants. In addition, Carl Stahl-Vrach, the architect of its renovationa and set designer for films such as Fritz Lang's "Doctor Mabuse", transformed the building into one of the first exponents of the Lichtarchitektur, or architecture of the night.

Saarlandstraße (heute Stresemannstraße), 1941-42

On the other hand, the Askanischer Platz complex had a façade about 280-meter-length and a total area of ​​35,000 square meters and was built in two phases. In the first phase, completed in 1926, Deutschlandhaus was built. A building which contained a mall, a theater, a ballroom, and a movie theater. Very similar to Tauentzienpalast. A complex of offices, shops and a ballroom of which Bielenberg and Moser were also the authors. The second, after many troubles and the death of Bielenberg, could not be completed until 1931. And it is in this last phase, designed by Moser and Otto Firle, that one of the first tall buildings in Berlin with steel structure was built: the Europahaus. A 12-storey tower that would eventually give its name to the whole complex. Firle surely contributed many of his own ideas, previously included in his competition proposal. One of them, no doubt, was the transformation of the Europahaus into another showcase in Berlin of the architecture of the night. But it was not until 1935 that a 15-meter-high structure was added to the central tower, crowned with the luminous logos of Allianz and Odol, adding up to a total of 50 meters, which broke definitely with the marked horizontality of the winning project.

Abraham Pisarek 'Auf Berliner Straßen', 1945-46

Nazism ended up stripping Europahaus of all its neons lights and turning it into the Reich's ministry of labor headquarters. During that period of darkness, the Anhalter Banhnhof became one of the three main Berlin stations where, between 1941 and 1945, almost a third of Berlin's Jews were deported. From this station, thanks to the infamous and disciplined task developed by Adolf Eichmann, they were sent, in groups of 50 to 100 people, to Theresienstadt Ghetto, in passenger convoys added to regular trains. But RAF's strategic bombing ended up devastating the station and its environs. However, Albert Speer's insane plan to transform Berlin into Welthaupstadt Germania had already envisaged closing the station and turning it into a public swimming pool. In fact, it was not until 1960 that the Anhalter Bahnhof was completely dismantled. And with its closure, and subsequent demolition, a part of Berlin’s history fell into the pit of oblivion. Except for Europahaus which still stands today, but in the darkness originally imposed by the Nazis.