Building the Dream, The Utopian Realism of Weimar Architecture

The Weimar Spectacle

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“Let us consciously be ‘imaginary architects’! We believe that only a total revolution can guide us in our task. Our fellow citizens, even our colleagues quite rightly suspect in us the forces of revolution. Break up and undermine all former principles. Horse Shit! And we the bud in fresh dung.” So, said Weimar architect Bruno Taut!!

And his contemporary, Walter Gropius replied: “Together let us desire, conceive and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise towards heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith”
In this episode we’ll be taking a look at the Utopian Architecture of the Weimar Republic, that, despite its utopian yearnings, still managed to navigate the dull needs of city bureaucracies and day to day practicalities of construction to provide new, modern homes for millions of people yearning for a whole new way of living.