Scharoun snip

Architectural Review, The, August, 2004 by Peter Blundell Jones

HANS SCHAROUN 1893-1972: OUTSIDER OF MODERNISM

By Eberhard Syring & Jorg C. Kirschenmann. Koln: Taschen. 2004. [pounds sterling]4.99

How on earth Taschen do it is unclear, but this attractive 96 page book sells for under five pounds, surely within range of any student budget. Colour printing quality and design are of a high standard, and it gets off to a good start with a picture of the beautifully restored Schminke House on the cover. The text by Syring and Kirschenmann, authors of one of the best German monographs from the centenary 11 years ago, is concise, accurate and well-balanced, and the photos are well chosen, including some unfamiliar ones. The 23 projects included are a good representative selection, though one misses the Gerd Rosen Gallery and Mannheim Theatre projects, arguably crucial to the development of Scharoun's architecture. The greatest weakness of this otherwise admirable book is a lack of attention to the contextual side of the work, which may simply be due to lack of space for site plans and descriptions. The impression remains, though, that the authors are still cowed by the slander from German post-modernists about Scharoun's town-planning ideas. Admittedly in many cases--and especially with the Philarmonie--the contextual intentions were traduced, but this says more about the general instability of masterplans in the modern period than about the mistaken intentions of the architect.