Mies masterwork, deteriorating and in dispute
BRNO, Czech Republic -- From the outside, the Tugendhat House doesn’t look like one of the most important residential buildings of the 20th century: it’s just two white stucco cubes separated by an opening through which a few spiky treetops protrude. But as a tour guide led a group of 10 through this modern home in the Czech Republic’s second-largest city in early March, it was clear that there was much more to the house, the bulk of which is built on the steep hillside that drops away from the street.
Massive terraces wrap around the upper story. Below, a vast living space is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass walls that look out on the garden below, so that even on a rainy day it is bright, almost cheerful. The space is divided only by a semicircular wood wall that creates a dining nook and a free-standing wall of solid onyx that separates the main seating area from a study, and that glows in the afternoon light. Two of the exterior walls even roll down like car windows, letting in the sound of chirping birds...
[But] it is in dire need of restoration.
The house, a World Heritage site, was “fundamental to the development of Modern architecture,” according to Barry Bergdoll, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. But it is also growing increasingly dilapidated, or “wasting away,” as The Prague Post put it in a recent article.
Read entire article at New York Times
Massive terraces wrap around the upper story. Below, a vast living space is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass walls that look out on the garden below, so that even on a rainy day it is bright, almost cheerful. The space is divided only by a semicircular wood wall that creates a dining nook and a free-standing wall of solid onyx that separates the main seating area from a study, and that glows in the afternoon light. Two of the exterior walls even roll down like car windows, letting in the sound of chirping birds...
[But] it is in dire need of restoration.
The house, a World Heritage site, was “fundamental to the development of Modern architecture,” according to Barry Bergdoll, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. But it is also growing increasingly dilapidated, or “wasting away,” as The Prague Post put it in a recent article.
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Views of Tugendhat House (Google Images)