The project The Crystal Pavilion is to construct Wassili Luckhardt’s Cult Building from1920. This unrealized project exists only as a drawing and was made by Luckhardt when he was a member of the Crystal Chain group. The Glass Chain or Crystal Chain sometimes known as the "Utopian Correspondence" was a chain letter that took place between November 1919 and December 1920. It was a correspondence of architects that formed a basis of expressionist architecture in Germany. It was initiated by Bruno Taut in 1919 in Germany and members included Wilhelm Brückmann, Hermann Finsterlin, Paul Gösch, Jakobus Göttel, Walter Gropius, Wilhelm August Hablik, Wassili Luckhardt, Hans Luckhardt and Bruno Taut. Unfettered by the demands of practicability, the members of the group described their visions of an ideal society and of a beneficent architecture in a series of dazzling, fantastic letters and drawings. The Crystal Chain letters document the crisis of modernism that afflicted German architectural theory in the years immediately following the First World War. The trauma of the war and the subsequent social unrest led the radical architects to reject the materialism and positivism that had characterized the "Kaiserreich." The result was an ideological and aesthetic vacuum, and the search for suitable alternatives provided the basis for the correspondence. After a year of intense theoretical speculation, several of the links in the chain, including Bruno and Max Taut, Walter Gropius, Hans and Wassili Luckhardt, and Hans Scharoun, emerged as leading advocates and practitioners of the new architecture in Germany and became involved in the Bauhaus. The crystal was central to the development of modern art and architecture and many artists of this period shared an affection for the writings of Paul Scheerbart, who since 1893 had been inventing crystalline worlds in his novels. The crystal prompted the evolution of the visual arts from representation of nature to abstraction, only to reinterpret abstract shape as representation of the hidden structure of everything in nature. Humans, animals, landscapes, towns and the entire universe were artistically reflected in the crystal. The crystal served as a symbol of power and the harbouring of social utopias. It ironically was both a means of keeping the spirit of Romanticism alive in the modern age while simultaneously reinforcing the modern inclination towards rational structures and mass reproduction. Also although French cubism did not aim to give evidence of a crystalline mythology they however discussed the crystal as a phenomenon formally closest to Cubist language, therefore French cubism can be seen to be a formal starting point for the crystalline arts of the 20th century. From there, it transmogrifies into an often formal geometrication and spectralisation and continues with constructivist and concrete art and though to the kaleidoscopic graphics of the 1960’s counterculture. The Cult Building also resembles Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. Fuller became an unlikely hero to the young in the sixties who were searching for an alternative means of living. Clearly a new way of living demanded new forms of housing. Wanting to build in what they referred to as a more alive style, these buildings took the form of domes, triangles and many other forms. Believing that if one changed the form of your place of residence that this would lead to changes in social structures, these alternatives forms were embraced in a rebellious effort to dispense of the ever present square. The realization of Lockhart’s Cult Building would be domestic in scale, a scaled down room size pavilion as part of an installation. Lockhart himself was interested in the “room-like protective cocoon” of a room which extended from his attraction to caves with their indefinable limits and ungraspable volume. This unrealized project would have been probably impossible to construct at the time of it inception. It’s simple geometrical form is uncharacteristic of much of the other members of the Crystal Chain’s work and is more indicative of later developments in architecture. Building from glass and steel has since become the standard orthodoxy in construction. We have developed his drawing into a working plan for construction and titled it The Crystal Pavilion. The Pavilion is to be built of glass with an internal stainless steel structure, each section of glass is held in place by a series of fittings which hold the glass 5cm away from the main structural frame, with a gap left between each pane of glass. This gives the appearance of the glass floating from the structure and creates a sense of expansion and lightness. The project of creating this pavilion would address the concerns of the Crystal Chain group and their far reaching legacies into later movements, from the Bauhaus period, through the Arts and Crafts movement, to the counterculture of the 60’s. We would also stage a series of events in the pavilion, such as a series of talks about cults or belief systems. This in many ways is the very essence of our concerns to revisit a time when people believed that what they did made a difference, whether this was the heady concerns of the counter culture, experimentation with drugs, eastern spiritualism or the ambitious utopian concerns of the Crystal Chain. Wassili Luckhardt Cult Building, Drawing 1920
The project The Crystal Pavilion is to construct Wassili Luckhardt’s Cult Building from1920. This unrealized project exists only as a drawing and was made by Luckhardt when he was a member of the Crystal Chain group. The Glass Chain or Crystal Chain sometimes known as the "Utopian Correspondence" was a chain letter that took place between November 1919 and December 1920. It was a correspondence of architects that formed a basis of expressionist architecture in Germany. It was initiated by Bruno Taut in 1919 in Germany and members included Wilhelm Brückmann, Hermann Finsterlin, Paul Gösch, Jakobus Göttel, Walter Gropius, Wilhelm August Hablik, Wassili Luckhardt, Hans Luckhardt and Bruno Taut. Unfettered by the demands of practicability, the members of the group described their visions of an ideal society and of a beneficent architecture in a series of dazzling, fantastic letters and drawings. The Crystal Chain letters document the crisis of modernism that afflicted German architectural theory in the years immediately following the First World War. The trauma of the war and the subsequent social unrest led the radical architects to reject the materialism and positivism that had characterized the "Kaiserreich." The result was an ideological and aesthetic vacuum, and the search for suitable alternatives provided the basis for the correspondence. After a year of intense theoretical speculation, several of the links in the chain, including Bruno and Max Taut, Walter Gropius, Hans and Wassili Luckhardt, and Hans Scharoun, emerged as leading advocates and practitioners of the new architecture in Germany and became involved in the Bauhaus. The crystal was central to the development of modern art and architecture and many artists of this period shared an affection for the writings of Paul Scheerbart, who since 1893 had been inventing crystalline worlds in his novels. The crystal prompted the evolution of the visual arts from representation of nature to abstraction, only to reinterpret abstract shape as representation of the hidden structure of everything in nature. Humans, animals, landscapes, towns and the entire universe were artistically reflected in the crystal. The crystal served as a symbol of power and the harbouring of social utopias. It ironically was both a means of keeping the spirit of Romanticism alive in the modern age while simultaneously reinforcing the modern inclination towards rational structures and mass reproduction. Also although French cubism did not aim to give evidence of a crystalline mythology they however discussed the crystal as a phenomenon formally closest to Cubist language, therefore French cubism can be seen to be a formal starting point for the crystalline arts of the 20th century. From there, it transmogrifies into an often formal geometrication and spectralisation and continues with constructivist and concrete art and though to the kaleidoscopic graphics of the 1960’s counterculture. The Cult Building also resembles Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. Fuller became an unlikely hero to the young in the sixties who were searching for an alternative means of living. Clearly a new way of living demanded new forms of housing. Wanting to build in what they referred to as a more alive style, these buildings took the form of domes, triangles and many other forms. Believing that if one changed the form of your place of residence that this would lead to changes in social structures, these alternatives forms were embraced in a rebellious effort to dispense of the ever present square. The realization of Lockhart’s Cult Building would be domestic in scale, a scaled down room size pavilion as part of an installation. Lockhart himself was interested in the “room-like protective cocoon” of a room which extended from his attraction to caves with their indefinable limits and ungraspable volume. This unrealized project would have been probably impossible to construct at the time of it inception. It’s simple geometrical form is uncharacteristic of much of the other members of the Crystal Chain’s work and is more indicative of later developments in architecture. Building from glass and steel has since become the standard orthodoxy in construction. We have developed his drawing into a working plan for construction and titled it The Crystal Pavilion. The Pavilion is to be built of glass with an internal stainless steel structure, each section of glass is held in place by a series of fittings which hold the glass 5cm away from the main structural frame, with a gap left between each pane of glass. This gives the appearance of the glass floating from the structure and creates a sense of expansion and lightness. The project of creating this pavilion would address the concerns of the Crystal Chain group and their far reaching legacies into later movements, from the Bauhaus period, through the Arts and Crafts movement, to the counterculture of the 60’s. We would also stage a series of events in the pavilion, such as a series of talks about cults or belief systems. This in many ways is the very essence of our concerns to revisit a time when people believed that what they did made a difference, whether this was the heady concerns of the counter culture, experimentation with drugs, eastern spiritualism or the ambitious utopian concerns of the Crystal Chain. Wassili Luckhardt Cult Building, Drawing 1920