ernists, interested in rationality and function, to be mere surface changes applied to old forms.
The newly industrialized Germany of the first decade of the twentieth century had grown "self-consciously progressive" and the impulse toward progressive architecture found its "natural center" in the Deutsche Werkbund, founded in 1907 (Giedion 479). In this association artists, craftsmen and industrialists were to collaborate in the creation of "honest goods of artistic value" (Giedion 480). The association, similar in aim to the earlier English Arts and Crafts Movement and the later Bauhaus, provided an atmosphere in which new ideas flourished.
Behrens, Taut and Gropius all exhibited major works at the Werkbund's 1914 exhibition in Cologne. It was, however, Gropius' model office-factory complex that garnered the most attention and clearly indicated the direction architecture would take (Fitch 38). The combination of forms and the innovations employed by Gropius in this building displayed the architect's "absolute freedom from any dependence upon historic form" (Fitch 20). The unadorned steel bents of the factory portion of the complex exhibit a "candor and directness" that had not been seen before (Fitch 20). Features of the office section also demonstrated an interest in developing radically new forms. The external concrete stairwells were cantilevered out from central columns and covered by a clear tubular glass curtain wall. The building as a whole evoked "the quiet, impersonal efficiency of the machine," a new image for a new age (Fitch 20).
...