Glass Pavilion

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1914 "Glass Pavilion" of Bruno Taut

The Glass Pavilion, built in 1914 and designed by Bruno Taut, was a prismatic glass dome structure at the Cologne Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition.[1][2] The structure was a brightly colored landmark of the exhibition, and was constructed using concrete and glass.[1][2] The concrete structure had inlaid colored glass plates on the facade that acted as mirrors.[3] Taut described his little temple of beauty as

Taut's Glass Pavilion is his best known single building achievement.[1][2][3] He built it for the association of the German glass industry specifically for the 1914 exhibition.[1][2][3] They financed the structure that was considered a house of art.[4] The purpose of the building was to demonstrate the potential of different types of glass for architecture.[5] It also indicated how the material might be used to orchestrate human emotions and assist in the construction of a spiritual utopia. The structure was made at the time when expressionism was most fashionable in Germany, and it is sometimes referred to as an expressionist-style building.[1][2][3] The only known photographs of the building were made during 1914; due to their black and white nature, these photographs are only marginal representations of the actualities of the work.[1] The building was destroyed soon after the exhibition since it was an exhibition building only and not built for practical use.[1][3]

The Glass Pavilion was a pineapple-shaped multi-faceted polygonal designed rhombic structure.[1][2] It had a fourteen-sided base constructed of thick glass bricks used for the exterior walls devoid of rectangles.Each part of the cupola was designed to recall the complex geometry of nature.[1][2] The Pavilion structure was on a concrete plinth, the entrance reached by two flights of steps (one on either side of the building), which gave the pavilion a temple-like quality. Taut's Glass Pavilion was the first building of glass bricks of importance.[3][6]

Interior staircases and waterfalls


The frieze of the Glass Pavilion was written with aphoristic poems of glass done by the anarcho-socialist writer Paul Scheerbart.[2][7] Scheerbart's ideas also inspired the ritualistic composition of the interior. For Scheerbart, bringing in the moon's and the stars' light brought in different positive feelings which led to a whole new culture.

Examples of these were

"Glass Pavilion" of Taut being built.



  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Weston, p. 40
  5. ^ ,p 40
  6. ^ Anzovin, p. 15, item 1198, The first building of glass bricks of importance was the Glass Pavilion, built in 1914 in Cologne, Germany, by the modernist-socialist architect Bruno Taut.
  7. ^ Watkin, p. 590, The simplified frieze or string-course of the Glass Pavilion, which Taut built for the glass industry at the Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition in 1914, was inscribed with aphorisms. such as "coloured glass destroys hatred."
  8. ^ Weston, p. 40, One of Taut's early drawings for the Pavilion describes it as having been made in the spirit of a Gothic cathedral.

