Hugo Haring, Gut Garkau 1924
Jorn Ahlhelm and David Owen
In the final paragraph of 'Pioneers Of Modern Design' Nikolaus Pevsner writes: "Expressionism was a short interlude.... The craving of architects for individual expression, the craving of the public for the surprising and fantastic, and for an escape out of reality into a fairy world."
Pevsner's 'Dictionary of Architecture' puts Haring in 'Expressionism', he merits few words.
Haring's developed expression was regionalist and born from the function and symbolism of the architectural programme.
Pevsner gave more credence to the work of German Architects when they behaved 'Internationally'. His position is understandable when one considers the period. 'Pioneers' was first published in 1936.
In retrospect Pevsner's view can be considered Positivist concerned with the image of a functional style rather than the function itself.
Sadly for Haring the National Socialists considered him 'Modern' and the little work he did after 1935 was clothed in Bau Polizei conventional dress. It looked German. We would maintain it was German: Specific to time, site, context and culture, he and his like-minded contemporary Hans Scharoun could not leave, even if they were not allowed to build. Haring's work looked to the Nordic, Gothic tradition rather than the geometric Latino-Greek culture of the Mediterranean adopted in stone by the National Socialists and in White by the International Modernists.
Hugo Haring's Gut Garkau Project was the most innovative and extreme of all his work. Haring's avant-garde thinking evolved out of hundreds of long architectural discussions with Mies van der Rohe and later other committed architects who formed the Ring of Ten, 'ZEHNERRING', in 1923. They formed to oppose the reactionary city planning office, but essentially the group was driven by a search for a new, appropriate architecture for the radical changing society of the post-war period. Their discussions presented Classicism and Gothic as thesis and antithesis, the debate evolving into issues of geometry: regular and organic.
It was not until 1926, after the completion of Garkau, that Haring was elected secretary of the Ring. Thus it was only after Gut Garkau was built that Haring started to publish his design philosophy. The newly founded magazine 'die form' contains two of his contributions: his famous essay 'wege zur form' in which he advocated his new design process and a short description of the cowshed at Gut Garkau ('funktionelles bauen: Gut Garkau - das viehhaus), obviously meant to be understood as an example.
Gut Garkau reveals how much Haring was working on ideas current at that time. Fortunately his client had an open and progressive mind to combine the latest technology of agriculture with a modern architecture. It must have actually appeared as an ideal project to test and manifest several ideas.
Haring's thinking and design developed together. each alternately informing the other. Gut Garkau was the result of three years thinking and discussion in Mies' office. It was a bold statement, an exclamation mark and an embarkation on new grounds in Haring's career.
Gut Garkau is as close as Haring got to his theories in built form. The three buildings(1) of the complex that were built were sufficiently successful after 20 years of use and theorising to be reproduced in agglomerated form for his 1943 farm project.
Gut Garkau established a sound theoretical framework. In particular, Haring was concerned to establish a completely new way of designing. His work was 'Bau' - building, not the instinctive, personal response of Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower or Taut's glass pavilion.
Haring wanted to relate the design process as close to those of nature as was possible. To design from the inside to the outside. Things of use should be considered as organs that belonged to man's world, not as mere objects. Lauterbach quotes Haring from an unpublished essay: " ... the movement of 'new building' does not only include building itself, but already concerns itself on the things of daily use that have an organ-like character. It is not concerned with the constructions of pyramids. know as architecture. Therefore all objects of the work and traffic, bridges and warehouses, cars and planes are the generators of the work of the 'new building' as they dominate our changing environment."
"A building therefore is the organ (tool of function) of man"(2). A statement in the same vain as Le Corbusier's house as: "machine for living in". Something which performed for men, rather than used them in a mechanistic process. At Garkau Haring went beyond his contemporary, Hannes Meyer's implication of function. While every form had its' origin in function it also sought to combine qualities of symbolism and construction. In this respect he was no different to Le Corbusier who always hushed the spiritual in favour of the mechanistic metaphor. (ie car as fit object against symbol of speed)
Haring's writings are less naive than Le Corbusier's, though harder to read and less instantly persuasive, they give a more reasoned insight into the work of their author.
Haring's idea of 'new building' was the attempt to free himself from the past and find a new stance. This aspect of the avant-garde in the 1920's was revolutionary, and most contemporary movements had this common objective.
Haring's Gut Garkau did not, however, deny traditional local building techniques. On the contrary he used timber and brick expressively in cladding and panel materials, while the main structure was a 'modern' building material: reinforced in situ concrete. It was this character that led to the building being adopted by Reyner Banham in Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, and hence the Brutalsits of the 1960's.
Haring maintained that architectural rejuvenation would come about in two stages:(3)
Firstly, recognising changing needs and making buildings appropriate. This is fitness for purpose, a rejection of Typology. going beyond the pattern book.
This was a process that Haring had learnt. His Berlin Royal Opera House Competition entry shamelessly copied Garnier's Paris Opera. Even down to the grand stair in a square well. It is worth noting that Garnier had derived the forms from the comings and goings of the Parisiennes, making the space more theatre than the building itself. An approach used again by Haring for the house near Munich.
Secondly, design without preconceived Geometric ideas. Here the Expressionist zeitgeist seems to have had its influence on the initial 'forming' of his buildings. Even so, the fashionable forms are used purposefully, helping internal organisation and external orientation.
Haring rejected style:(4) " The concept of a style disappears - a term that implies that rules of form are dictating the building envelope ... There is the unity embracing the new: it is the unity of an attitude." For him the designer had the task of finding out an object's spirit and expressing its final shape. This is Haring's irrational jump from functional planning to intuitive expressed forms. He claimed that the designer had God-like creative abilities, terming the word "logozentrisch". The quality of the design was the degree of how far the designer had understood the object's character or spirit ("wesenheit des objektes"):" The secret of the form is, that what is invisible of it is made visible." Haring strived to give each object individuality and identity, a necessity to enrich the means of living.
In his first article "wege zur form" Haring said:" there is no other way as, in nature's sense to order all things that their individuality is set free and this freedom contributes simultaneously to the life and the whole. This is the entire form of our life. If we want therefore to put claims forward on a things form, we have to do this at first for a form of new living. a form of a new society."
Pevsner's writings had a much greater significance: Popularising an architecture which was easy to ape and difficult to perfect., an architecture which appealed through images of function. Gut Garkau demonstrates Haring's commitment to a true Functionalism. Pevsner chose not to understand Haring's work and therefore ‘we’ are not allowed to. When the whole of history is written from one viewpoint many equally valid truths may be missed. Haring said of his own works "that was one solution, of many". History, written by the victors, is never so kind.
Footnotes
1. Completed buildings: Cowshed. Barn and Cart and implement store.
2. Hugo Haring 'The Problems of Art and Structure In Building' Translated by Peter Blundell Jones. 9H no 7. London, 1985
3. Ibid
4. Hugo Haering, Lauterbach and Joedicke. Karl Kremer, Stuttgart, 1965.5
5.Ibid
Hugo Haring
1882 -1958
Periodicals
Haering at Garkau, Jurgen Joedicke. Architectural Review, May 1960
Modern Antiques: 20thC Landmarks. Robinson-Cervin, Architectural Forum, May 1967
Hugo Haring, Peter Blundell Jones, Architectural Review, April 1982
Unknown Haring, Peter Blundell Jones, Architectural Review. June 1985
Hugo Haring 'The Problems of Art and Structure In Building' Translated by Peter Blundell Jones. 9H no 7. London, 1985
Aperspective Space, Peter Blundell Jones, Architectural Review, March 1988
Prototyp eines organischen Funktionalismus. Peter Blundell Jones. Archithese, May 1988
Books
Hugo Haering, Lauterbach and Joedicke, Karl Kremer, Stuttgart. 1965.Bauentwurfslehre. Neufert, Vieweg, Berlin, 1936Pioneers Of Modern Design, Nikolaus Pevsner, Faber and Faber, London, 1936Theory And Design In The First Machine Age, Reyner Banham, Architectural Press London, 1960