Villa Tugendhat,Brno

Villa Tugendhat is one of the pioneering prototype of modern architecture in Europe and it was
designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is the only exemplar of Modern architecture in the Czech
Republic recorded on the UNESCO List of World Cultural Heritage and it was finished in 1931. The
villa is located in the wealthy neighborhood of ern Pole in Brno, Czech Republic. Brno is the second
largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city and an important university city.

I have chosen to talk about this topic because last summer I had the chance to stay in Brno one week
and Villa Tugendhat was one of the most interesting buildings I have seen there. Today, the house is a
museum and you have to book a ticket with at least one month in advance. Fortunately, when I
arrived there they said: oh, you are lucky, there is one more ticket for the technical tour in English
today!

The three-storey Villa is situated on a sloped terrain and faces to the south-west with two entrances:
one on the north side of the lot, which slants down towards the south, forming a small garden and
one that includes a terrace that traverses the house and forms a balcony on the garden side. The first
storey, the basement, contains the utility facilities. The second storey, the ground floor consists of
the main living and social areas with the conservatory and the terrace as well as the kitchen with
facilities along with the servants' rooms. The third storey, the first floor, has the main entrance from
the street with a passage to the terrace, the entrance hall, the rooms for the parents, children and
the nanny with appropriate facilities. The chauffeur's flat with the garages and the terrace are
accessible separately. Today, the chauffeurs has been transformed in the ticket office but in the
garage is steel kept an old well maintained car. Its presence makes you feel that there is still someone
in the house and he is prepared to take the car and leave.

The exterior of the house is painted in white and as an element of the new architecture the roof is
flat.

The construction of the plastered structure consists of a steel framework, reinforced concrete ceilings
and brick masonry. The subtle supporting columns of a cross-shaped profile are anchored in concrete
bases and partially lead through the masonry and partially through the spaces of all the floors. Shiny
chrome columns stand like a subtle partition for the living room area, the office with the library and
the seating area. The functional division is emphasized by the wall from honey and yellow colored
onyx with white veins from the foothills of the Atlas in Morocco and the half-circular wall originally
from Macassar ebony wood mined on the island of Celebes in south-east Asia.

The most prominent feature of the 'flowing' living area was the grand seating arrangement in front of
the onyx wall and the dining room demarcated by the half-cylinder from Makassar ebony. The
interior could be connected up with the garden through suspension of the two large window panes.
The office with the library and the adjoining winter garden was behind the onyx wall. Behind the
ebony curved wall was a seating area next to a wall from milk glass which could be lit up.
The inner furnishings of the house were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe along with two of his
colleagues. The furniture was primarily from tubular and strip steel as well as from noble woods
(rosewood, zebra wood and Macassar ebony). Three 'Tugendhat' armchairs stood in front of the onyx
wall upholstered in silver-grey 'rodion' material, three 'Barcelona' armchairs and a stool in emerald
green leather, a glass table and a white bench. A colour accent was provided by a reclining chair
covered with ruby red velvet .'Brno' chairs made from tubular steel and covered with white sheepskin
were situated around the round dining table from black polished pear wood. What is really
interesting about this table is that it is not a single furniture object but it looks like one. It has many
semicircular pieces and you can form a bigger or a smaller table. Chairs were placed next to the
glazed milk wall and in the library. Two 'MR 20' wicker armchairs faced one another next to the
writing desk behind the onyx wall. Behind one of the librarys wall is hidden a secret niche that Fritz
Tugendhat used to keep his most valuable books.

In addition, not only the furniture was bespoken. The door knobs were also designed special for this
house. They have a minimalist design and shiny aspect. Moreover, there were no paintings or
decorative items in the villa, but the interior was by no means austere due to the use of naturally
patterned materials such as the captivating onyx wall and rare tropical woods. The onyx wall is
partially translucent and changes appearance when the evening sun is low. The architect managed to
make the magnificent view from the villa an integral part of the interior. From every storey of the
house you can see the two medieval buildings that dominate the city and the most visited sights of
the city: the pilberk castle and fortress and the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul on Petrov hill.

The majority of the metal furniture was produced in Germany. The built-in furniture and part of the
free-standing items were produced in the Brno firm Standard Flat Company of the architect Jan
Vaek which at the same time realized part of the interiors of the Mller Villa in Prague by Adolf
Loos. Vaek's firm apparently also installed the curved inner wall from Makassar ebony.

A particular thing about interior circulation is the fluidity of space. The ingenuity stays in Mies idea to
enlarge the door frames up to the ceiling so that they look like wardrobe doors. When Fritz and Grete
Tugendhat said they think that doors with standard heights will work better Mies said: If you dont
want these doors you can look for another architect to build your house. Of course they didnt.

The utility and technical equipment of the house were completely innovative for the time. The two
large windows opposite the onyx wall and the dining area could be retracted via electric motors all
the way to the floor. On the basement there is a room just for the large glass panes. I have been told
that they weigh over 800 kilograms. A detail that was forgotten or intentionally omitted is about
what happens after we retract the big windows and there are children in the living room? There is no
fence to stop them from falling out on the terrace while playing hide and seek, running etc.

The boiler room and storage areas for coke, the cellar, spaces for garden furniture and tools, rooms
for fruit and vegetables, wash room, drying room, ironing room as well as the moth room for
storage of fur coats were in the basement. There was also the dark room for Fritz Tugendhat who
was a passionate photographer and amateur film maker. There was a distribution system for drinking
and utility water as well as an air system, involving a combination of heating, cooling and
humidification. Although there was still little experience with this kind of equipment, the air system
worked perfectly. Air heating based on coal-fired power had a problem: the heated air smelled like
coal. The problem was solved by overlapping a sawdust filter on the ventilation hole.

At the beginning of October 1939 the Villa was taken over by the Gestapo and from January 1942
became the property of Nazi Germany. In the autumn of the year 1940 the German soldier and
architecture student, Louis Schoberth, stayed in the Villa. He became friends with Gustav Lssl, the
Tugendhat's chauffeur who had remained in the house up until the beginning of September 1941.
According to Schoberth's account, the half cylinder from Makassar ebony was no longer in the Villa
nor the majority of the furnishings as of the autumn of the year 1940. Radical construction changes
came about in the 1940s when Walter Messerschmidt, director of Klcknerwerke in Brno, had his flat
and office here. He had amongst other things the glazed milk glass wall bricked up at the street
faade and the entrance way from the upper terrace. He also increased the height of the chimney
and had additional inner walls inserted into the interiors.
The private dancing school of an instructor at the Brno conservatory Karla Hladk consequently sat in
the Villa from August 1945 up to June 1950. The structure was placed under the ownership of the
Czechoslovak state in October 1950 and a rehabilitation center for children with spine defects was
established here as part of the nearby childrens hospital up to the end of the 1960s.

Finally, the front of the house does not compete with neighboring houses fronts. Its minimalism and
lack of decorations creates a modest appearance and I think that simplicity is exactly what a house
with such a large city-view needs.




Bibliography
www.wikipedia.org
www.tugendhat.eu
whc.unesco.org