To his future wife Erich Mendelsohn once wrote, “I define ‘function’ as a mode of architectural action dependent solely on conditions of use, material, and construction. I define “Architectural dynamics” as the expression of tension innate to elastic building materials, of movement and counter movement within the immovable stability of the building itself” (Letters of an Architect 166). That these remarks were passed through the post to his soon-to-be wife are somewhat remarkable, and that this engagement shaped his own thoughts displays a unique temperament whereby she exerted influence.
Reflecting on the Max Planck Institute for Human Development urges an assessment of these “architectural dynamics” or as Mendelsohn also called it, “a certain sensibility.” How does one qualify these ideas or is their irreducibility already qualification? In their design for the MPIHD Fehling and Gogel concentrated on the content of the institution and how that content might arise in an architectural form. This approach almost urges an adaptability as the content of a research institute (its practices, methods, concerns) will surely change over time. But as Amos Gitai mentioned last night at the Deutsches Guggenheim, architecture is inevitably non-adaptable due to the discursive restraints that force a single arrangement or narrative (zoning, construction, etc.) Though it is worth noting that such a reductive statement inherently ignores change. While architecture, according to Gitai, might be argued as a single narrative or arrangement, this completely ignores the instability of physical form and its attendant symbolic systems.
The Schlossplatz/Marx Engels Platz here in Berlin is arguably a counterexample to this very notion of non-hybridity. The former baroque palace that was cleared by the GDR gave way to the Palast der Republik which was cleared by the most recent German political manifestation. Inherent in this instability are site characteristics that retain content whose presence is structured through the absence of form (the castle/palace). This is where symbolic systems directly interact with those qualified as material. The green void currently in the center of Berlin is a temporary sublimation of its historical form and content, at least until another architecture or meaning is crafted for the German people. Maybe this temporary presence as absence shares a lineage with the “certain sensibility” Mendelsohn described to his wife, and which manifests in the tectonics of the MPIHD.
Sublimation of form via content
Reassembled mirrors
Updates to this blog have been entirely absent though I am now beginning to craft different narratives together here in Berlin. Currently I am developing a deeper historical analysis of the city center of Berlin to complement the observations I have been conducting at the Marx Engels Forum. Market halls, slaughterhouses, bürgerin, neoliberalism, and protest are topics of inquiry.
For my criticism seminar I am researching the Max Planck Institute für Bildungsforschung here in Berlin, designed by the architects Hermann Fehling and Daniel Gogel. It will be a relatively short term paper but should introduce relevant commentary on the strands of organic modernism within German design.
When I began this blog my initial inclination was to include a greater commentary on art. This is manifesting itself in the contemporary analysis of the Marx Engels Forum as the temporary art museum next to the footprint of the Palace of the Republic cannot be ignored in assessing the current context.
I will be returning to Austin at the end of December and will only have sketches of my thesis before then. Until at least February this blog will be content updates and archive imagery in anticipation of writing in the Spring.
