Peter Behrens’s Drawings (1922-29)

Considered for a long time eclectic and contradictory, Peter Behrens‘s stylistic research shows, conversely, a rigourous consistency, as it has been demonstrated by Stanford Anderson through his iconologic analysis of the architect’s works.

The metamorphosis of his activity responded, in fact, to a complete adherence to the changing mythologies of German haute-bourgeosie and to the attempt of a sacralization of institutions and behaviours of the industrial and commercial upper-class. As quoted by P.Portoghesi in the same issue of Controspazio we took the following drawings from, the same Behrens declared in 1912:

“There is no more doubt that the real Berlin is transforming more and more in a new commercial city. Nothing could be more right then, that instead of accepting this inevitable process lightly or with regret, one will deliberately pursue this character and take all the necessary measures in the interest of the city, so that this character takes on a significant emphasis. The characterization, the creation of a type is indeed, in every art, and not any less in architecture, the most important moment of any formulation. You can not come up with anything more interesting that the implementation, across a city, of one character and a unified stylistic concept. So far, Berlin has not such a character, although, since fifteen years already, a trading house, the Wertheimbau of Messel, introduced a “type”.

It is as if the logical consistency , the energy and the proven ability of the commercial upper class in Berlin, to whom we owe the rapid development of our capital, fail for the matters of form. It seems that a clear and logically developed conception of form does not lie within any serious business evaluation, but rather fall victim to an amateurish inclination towards romance and splendor. At bottom, it is inconceivable that something needed for serious and sheer hard work should not assume an appearance that reflects this seriousness.”

The role of architecture for Behrens is clearly to celebrate the commercial bourgeoisie, through the revelation of its class values and the denial of any nostalgy for an ousted aristocracy. Even in the period when the architect adheres to Expressionism, he is never oriented, as Taut, towards an attitude of dissent against  the historical values ​​of the industrial bourgeoisie.

A series of milestones in his research are thus identifiable: during the Darmstadt period (1901), in the wake of Art Nouveau, Behrens embraced the Nietzschian heroic myths of culture and by a ritual symbolism he advocated the palingenesis of bourgeois life through an evasion in the world of art. The transition between this naturalistic period and his later activity in Berlin is evident in works such as the neo-romanic Hagen Crematorium (1906) and in the pavilions of Oldenburg exhibition (1905), where the recovery of the Florentine Romanesque style manifests as a shift towards a classic language, in search for new linguistic conventions based on abstraction and anti-naturalism. During the A.E.G. Turbinenfabrik time (1909) the factory becomes a “temple of the industry”, the new techniques giving to the architectural image that same objective control that in the classical temple resulted from the mechanism of orders. The following decades sees an eclectic swing between echoes of expressionism, strict monumentality (from the Deutsche embassy in Petersburg, 1912, to the train carriage factory in Hannover-Linden, 1917, to the embassy commissioned by Hitler in 1933), and rigourous rationalism (the Tabakfabrik in Linz, 1930); works that testimony of his ability to listen towards the researches of the next generation and to operate a linguistic mimicry. The ideological roots of this attitude are read, by P.Portoghesi, (Controspazio 1-2, 1970) as a revival of the historicist eclecticism of the nineteenth century, deprived of its passive philologism “but rooted in a purely bourgeois need to be able to have a range of divergent possibilities, suitable to realize the vocation to the double and triple play and to accomodate the trend to classification, to division, to the  cataloging of experiences,  moods, ideologies”.

The drawings of Behrens reveal his total control of the design process: the clarity of the volumetric articulations are evidenced by the choice of the points of view and the buildings are always represented in relation to the environment. In parallel stands his ability to express the consistency and vibration of the materials in the façades, through a wide array of drawing techniques, exploiting different inclinations of the graphite and even enhancing the roughness of the paper.

Here follows a sample of drawings by Peter Behrens (1922-29). Source: the Italian magazine Controspazio 1-2 1970;

Related:

Stanford Anderson
Considering Peter Behrens: interviews with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Chicago, 1961) and Walter Gropius (Cambridge, MA, 1964)

 

Decorations for a piano

 

Drawing for a door

 

Dombauhütte, Munich 1922, elevation and plan

 

Mausoleum 1925, elevation

 

Mausoleum 1925, plan

 

Mausoleum 1925, perspective of the interiors

 

Hoechst administration offices 1920-27, central hall elevations

 

Hoechst administration offices 1920-27, conference hall

 

Project for a hotel in Brno 1926

 

Jägerstrasse, Berlin 1928. Study for the passage through the ministry gardens

 

Jägerstrasse, Berlin 1928. Study for the passage through the ministry gardens

 

S.Adam departement store, Berlin 1929. Study

 

S.Adam departement store, Berlin 1929. Study

 

Building complex Berolina in Alexanderplatz, Berlin 1929. View “A” of the intersection of Königstrasse with Landsberger Allee (today’s Lenin Allée). Option A

 

Building complex Berolina in Alexanderplatz, Berlin 1929. View of the intersection of Königstrasse with Landsberger Allee (today’s Lenin Allée). Option B

 

Building complex Berolina in Alexanderplatz, Berlin 1929. Two versions of a part of the complex.

 

Competition for the extension of Parliament’s offices, Berlin 1929. Two views

 

 Study for a Berlin skyscraper, 1929

 

  Proposal for the arrangement of the center of Prague with a building for the bank of Czechoslovakia