Adolf Behne and the construction of the Modern Movement – Part 1

Abstract

The book Der moderne Zweckbau, written by Adolf Behne in 1923, reveals fundamental discussions for the understanding (and conduction) of Modern Architecture in the 1920s. In this book, the author identifies three courses or categories of thoughts, and explores them to compose the three fundamental chapters of the book. The first chapter, which is the object of this paper and, in part, translated, emphasizes the denial of established formal principles, and highlights the return to purpose and function to generate a living architecture. The effect of this operation resets the concept of building, freeing it from a static and prescribed condition. Behne relies on Frank Lloyd Wright ́s houses from the 1900s to develop his argument, and ends up writing an accurate text about Wright’s design procedures, pointing to features that would only get accentuated in the work of the American ́s architect during the 1930s and 40s.