From Object to Installation in Bruno Taut’s Exhibit Pavilions

This paper, part of a JAE special issue on "Installations by Architects," investigates the artistic and philosophical origins of Bruno Taut’s Glashaus (1914) exhibit pavilion in order to reinterpret the famous building as an experimental, free-standing “installation” that rose above being merely a pragmatic exhibition space. In close collaboration with the critic Adolf Behne and the Expressionist poet Paul Scheerbart, Taut designed a three dimensional manifesto for a utopian “glass architecture” that sought to express “a higher passion to build.” Both the collaborative construction process he envisioned and the radical new experiences inside were intended as vehicles to greater cultural, social, and even political change on the eve of World War I.