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To See Daydreams: The Glass Utopia Of Paul Scheerbart And Bruno Taut, Ufuk Ersoy

Publications

In 1914, the passionate young architect Bruno Taut (1880-1938) and the bohemian poet Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) drew a parallel between the two imaginative disciplines of building and narrative and committed themselves to a shared vision of Utopia. Both sought to represent an archetype of “glass architecture”; one by narrating, the other by building. Highly critical of existing architecture and social conditions, they were in search of an inspiring alternative, as were many of their more progressive contemporaries. Yet, what made Taut and Scheerbart’s shared approach more sophisticated than that of their contemporaries also left it open to criticism. In particular, …