The modern functional building

Few individuals better chart the path of European Modernism in the first decades of this century than Adolf Behne (1885-1948). Before World War I, Behne was active in the German Werkbund. As a critic, he explored differences in high, commercial, and popular culture, publishing frequently in periodicals such as Der Sturm and Sozialistische Monatshefte. In the 1920s Behne went on to become one of the most incisive and eloquent theorists of Modernism and, together with Bruno Taut and Walter Gropius, organized the Arbeitsrat fur Kunst (Work council on the arts). Behne would also become an early critic of both the Werkbund and the Bauhaus. . Written in 1923, Behne's Modern Functional Building clarifies the concepts of German Modernism at their very inception, especially the crucial distinctions between functionalism, rationalism, and utilitarianism. In this text, Behne advocates a functionalism that is not technocentric, but is comparable to the social ideas espoused by Max Weber and Georg Simmel. This broad concern with functionalism signifies a shift from older aristocratic value systems to the everyday and common experience as paradigmatic.