Moll House – Hans Scharoun

Hans Scharoun talked of “creating with space”—his houses, of which this pre-war 1937 example is an early hint, were irregularly ordered open-planned concoctions centred around a “middle space” that organised the whole, around which the satellite spaces overlapped according to function and topography—each of which was given its own definition within the larger whole. 

Rather than a standardised “system of band boxes,” as he called the “handed down” principle on which so many standardised boxes have been produced, his houses were individualised for each client, and each context.

The context of this house, the Moll House, required a traditional face be represented to the street, beyond which the house gradually opened to the gardens and landscape beyond, which for Scharoun were an integral part of the house itself.

The Moll House was created for a married couple, one of which was a painter and the other a sculptor, for each of whom Scharoun created a studio—setting up a relationship with the music room that formed a “spatial triangle” across different levels.

Little documentation now exists of many of Scharoun’s houses, a great pity since his strand of modernism had so much more to offer than than the sterile boxes produced by his modernist contemporaries that are now copied so poorly, so slavishly, and in such quantities today.

Check out this site however, which attempts a basic spatial analysis of this deceptively complicated house.

Or at least a few more plans and sections.

‘Baench House’ Hans Scharoun

People don’t need to break their lives into little boxes—either in their day-to-day lives, or in their homes.

Hans Scharoun thought it wrong that people should be squeezed into boxes—that the outside shape should dictate the life inside.  He thought that the inner life of the house should generate the form in its entirety—or as much as possible, in the case of the 1935 Baensch House, since the rules about street-frontages in this case dictated a ‘box-form’ to the street (left). [More about this kind of ‘Mullet Architecture’ here.]

Nonetheless, within the constraints upon him, Scharoun (the designer of the justly-famous Berlin Philharmonic Hall) crafted a remarkably open feeling of spatial flow encompassing half-a dozen changes of level, producing a remarkably relaxed place in which to live.

See if you can work out where on the plan each of these pictures was taken.

Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall - Hans Scharoun

                                     

Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall, damaged by not destroyed in a recent fire, is said to have the best acoustics of any concert hall yet built.

Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Scharoun was an organic architect -- sometimes known as 'the other modernism' -- which to Scharoun meant working from 'the inside out' to let the building develop based on its essential function rather than by some externally imposed style.  In Wright's words, this produced a building in which form does not just follow function, but in which form and function are one.

Scharoun's design for the Berlin Philharmonic Concert Hall, produced from 1953 to 1963 introduced concepts to concert hall design such as 'vineyard terracing,' which give superior acoustic performance to the then traditional 'shoe box' design.  And after noting that “people always gather in circles when listening to music informally,” he introduced the then radical concept of ‘music in the round’ -- the building developing from the natural way in which we enjoy music together, and placing everyone close to the performers.

No wonder it plays home to one of the world's great orchestras.

  

Schminke House - Hans Scharoun

The Schminke House, by German organic architect Hans Scharoun. 1933. You can view a 3d CAD tour of the house here. TAGS: Architecture