Tugendhat House

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April 5, 2023 

Re-opening oft he garden

Invitation by the director of the Brno City Museum, Mag. Zbyněk Šolc

Speeches by JUDr. Markéta Vaňková, Lord Mayoress of the Statutory City of Brno; Mgr. Jan Grolich Governor of the South Moravian Region

Ivo Hammer

Speech at the opening of the garden of the Tugendhat House

Madam Lord Mayoress!

Mr Region Governor!

Mr Director!

Ladies and gentlemen!

My name is Ivo Hammer, I am the husband of Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat, the youngest daughter of Grete and Fritz Tugendhat, the builders of the Tugendhat house.

I would like to thank Director Šolc for inviting me to this enjoyable event. I see the invitation as a sign of the appreciation  the Brno City Museum has for the family.

Ernst Tugendhat died on March 13, 2023. In the words of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Frank Walter Steinmeier, Ernst Tugendhat was “one of the most important philosophers of the post-war period, whose thinking revolutionized and shaped German philosophy.” On behalf of the family, I would like to thank the city of Brno and the museum for the condolences the city of Brno.

Ernst Tugendhat was the last of the Löw-Beer and Tugendhat families to live in the Löw-Beer and Tugendhat houses that belonged to this garden.

I would also like to take this event as an opportunity to commemorate Grete Tugendhat's father, Alfred Löw-Beer, who was murdered near Pilsen in April 1939 while fleeing from the Nazis.

I am happy about the opening of the fence between the two houses Löw-Beer and Tugendhat. This opening restores spatially the historical situation. It is not generally known that Alfred and Marianne Löw-Beer only gave their daughter Grete the building land and the building costs of the Tugendhat house as an anticipation of their inheritance on the occasion of her marriage to Fritz Tugendhat. The rest of the garden, including the area of the former Belvedere, remained the property of Grete's parents. Fritz Tugendhat's photos, which are published in our book, document the use of this garden, also as a playground for the children, in summer splashing around with the water sprinkler, in winter tobogganing on the slope that seems to have been made for this purpose.

I also like to remember the family reunion in May 2017. Within the framework of the Brno meeting, the city of Brno invited three families from the Jews who survived the Shoa, who were important for the city's cultural life before 1938: the  families Löw-Beer, Tugendhat and Stiassny. We had expected around 40-50 people, more than 120 came. The meeting of the families in the garden, in glorious weather, with the children playing and live music by Andrea and Jonas created beautiful but also ambivalent emotions.

The iconic photos by Rudolf de Sandalo from 1931 present the house as a solitary cube, deserted and without vegetation. The photos by Fritz Tugendhat, originating from the few years that followed that the family was able to live in their house, document the material reality of life in the house, its temporality, its aging, the vegetation and the busy landscaped garden. The photos show on the one hand the intimate connection between architecture and nature intended by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, of geometric clarity and organic liveliness, and on the other hand what Mies van der Rohe called the meaningful emptiness of the landscape garden designed by the famous Czech garden architect Grete Müller-Roder in collaboration with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and probably also Lilly Reich.

In the 18th century these hills above the Ponávka River were vineyards, partly interspersed with fruit trees. Apparently, in the 1920s, these vineyards were abandoned and a viewpoint called Belvedere was set up. The brick manufacturer Antonin Rüdiger Deycks bought the property in 1854, set up a greenhouse and probably also had trees planted in the park.

The Art Nouveau villa built in 1904 according to plans by Alexander Neumann for the manufacturer Moritz Fuhrmann also included the carriage house with an angular floor plan and also a garden with fountain, stairs, arbor and possibly also the freely undulating paths of an English park up to the Belvedere on the north Edge of Černopolní.

When Alfred and Marianne Löw-Beer bought the Art Nouveau villa in 1913 and moved in with their children Max (11), Grete (10) and Hans (12 years old), they probably left the garden unchanged.

In 1929-1930 Grete Müller-Roder took over the path system of the English Park, simplified it somewhat, introduced a kitchen garden in the area of the service wing, and along the base of the house a terracing with dry stone walls, perhaps an allusion to the historic vineyards. The floor plan of the Tugendhat house is clearly based on the axis relationship between the semi-circular dining area and the weeping willow, which was already large at the time and was Grete Tugendhat's favorite tree. Grete Müller-Roder also planned the seating area under the weeping willow, with direct access via a staircase through the terracing and a further path. A (no longer preserved) closed vegetation to the neighboring properties created the privacy of the garden space, which was understood as a meaningful emptiness, which was certainly desired by the client.

In this context, it is also worth remembering the excellent planning work of Přemysl Krejčiřík and his team during the recent restoration of the garden in 2010-2012.

I would also like to understand the opening of the garden between the two houses in a general, symbolic and social sense: as a mental opening of the gates and also as a real opening of the borders where it is necessary for cultural and humanitarian reasons.

Thank you for your attention.

The New European Bauhaus (NEB): beauty, sustainability and cultural heritage through the prism of Villa Tugendhat

High-level gathering on 21 November 2022 from 14:30-18:00 in Brno, Czech Republic. Tugendhat House

Programme:

14:30 Arrival and guided tour through Villa Tugendhat (Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat and Ivo Hammer)

16:00-17:00 High-level panel discussion 

17:00-18:00 Reception

The New European Bauhaus (NEB) is a creative and interdisciplinary initiative of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. It connects the European Green Deal to our living spaces and experiences. The initiative calls on all of us to imagine and build together a sustainable and inclusive future that is beautiful for our eyes, minds, and souls.

Architectural purity, interconnection of interior and exterior, timeless technical equipment, noble and exotic materials and, above all, a high level of preservation – these are the main attributes that led Villa Tugendhat to being inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2001. Designed by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Villa Tugendhat was built in 1929–1930 as a family home for Grete and Fritz Tugendhat. Its further history is at least as fascinating as its cultural significance, since it has become Brno’s icon of modernist housing and occupies a prominent position globally and within the oeuvre of its architect.

Our gathering “The New European Bauhaus: beauty, sustainability and cultural heritage through the prism of Villa Tugendhat” will, against the backdrop of this emblematic property, explore the goals, philosophy and perspectives of the New European Bauhaus initiative, illustrating and reimagining sustainable living in Europe and beyond. (Martin Selmayr, Head of Representation of the European Commission in Austria) 

Statement Ivo Hammer, 21.11.2022, Brno, Tugendhat House, panel

Ladies and gentlemen

I would like to thank you for the invitation to this event and to Martin Selmayr for the friendly introduction.

My short statement is based on the question:

What can we learn from monument preservation in general and from Haus Tugendhat in particular

What can we learn:

• for dealing with existing buildings

and what can we learn

• for beautiful, sustainable and inclusive new buildings?

First, a few comments on the materiality of the Tugendhat house:

The beauty of the house of Tugendhat is not only based on the 1930 new design. Its beauty is also based on its materiality: on the use of noble materials such as onyx marble, travertine, tropical woods, silk, parchment and polished chrome and nickel, and on the extremely precise craftsmanship of all traditional surfaces, the polished stucco lustro of the interior walls, the careful material-colored painting of the metal and wooden parts. Bright colors brought life, brought individual furniture, flowers and, yes, the residents and their clothing.

Many elements, such as the walls of the interior and the facade, are made with exceptionally careful, but still traditional craftsmanship. They can be maintained and repaired accordingly without great effort, without them being changed in an aesthetically or physically unfavorable manner. Stains on the interior walls e.g. For example, during the short period in which the Tugendhat family was able to live in their house, they were erased with bread; no painting was necessary.

The inner walls are not only beautiful, they are also pleasant for the room climate due to their hydrophilic porosity, which is permeable to water in liquid form, because no condensation can form on the surface and therefore no microorganisms either. (Allergies!)

The brick exterior walls are traditionally coated with rubbed lime plaster and painted with limewash. Unlike cement, which contributes 8% to global CO2 emissions, lime is largely CO2 neutral.

The facade of the house T. has been cared for several times with whitewash, also during the time when it was used as a dance school and as a children's hospital from 1945-1980. Significant damage only occurred after 1985, when the facade was coated with a modern paint containing synthetic resin as a binder. In 2011 we reintroduced the traditional form of periodic care with a lime wash.

Remarks on the current situation of the construction industry in terms of materials and technology.

We have been experiencing radical, dramatic changes since the 1960s. The historical tradition of periodic maintenance and repairs has been abandoned (as in other areas). The lack of care and repair leads to rapid wear and tear and the corresponding waste of resources and energy.

The use of historically proven materials has been abandoned in favor of incompatible materials that are physically, chemically and aesthetically incompatible with the historical structure and lead to serious damage to the old buildings (cement, artificial resin). Coatings that are not hydrophilic, i.e. permeable to water in liquid form, lead to accelerated weathering (drying speed reduced by a factor of 1000!) and destroy the historical surface in the long term. Thermal insulation, very often a fire hazard (Grenfell Tower in London!), is obsolete from an insurance perspective after 40 years, and technologically often in a much shorter time. Plastic windows and doors are not repairable.

The new buildings are based on short-term economic calculations and accelerated obsolescence. We live in concrete buildings and plasterboard walls and plastic coatings. The non-hydrophilic surfaces (in addition, mostly small and low living spaces) lead to the growth of microorganisms and promote allergies and make frequent shock ventilation necessary.

My thesis on dealing with old buildings

Monument preservation can be seen as a paradigmatic form of a sustainable, ecologically meaningful and aesthetically beautiful way of dealing with historical architecture,

e.g. with regard to the following categories:

• Maintenance of the long service life through regular care and repair with materials and methods that are compatible with the historical structure and preserve the repairability, instead of cosmetic interventions with physically harmful and aesthetically disturbing materials. The technological characteristic of the historical buildings is their hydrophilic porosity.
• Reuse of materials in reconstruction and adaptation. The recycling rate of a historical building is approx. 95%, a modern new building often only approx. 5%. (Kohler, 1996). Separability and harmless dumping of materials that can no longer be used. (Today, building rubble is hazardous waste that requires monitoring).
• Intelligent cultural use instead of short-term economic speculation. Avoidance of energy loss (calculated over the long term) and gentle adaptation to new usage requirements. The most ecological form of building is not building.

My thesis on the new buildings:

The environmental policy of monument preservation is also relevant for the new building.

The architectural monuments represent approaches to solving technical, aesthetic and other cultural and social (e. g. also urbanistic) problems. The experiences of around 15,000 years (Göbekli Tepe) are stored in the monuments, which have proven their technological suitability and their cultural suitability with their mere existence. Why shouldn't we use these sources of knowledge?

Some demands for a sustainable construction industry

• The building materials industry and materials science should focus on sustainable traditional materials such as lime, wood and clay
• While the technical standards correspond to many building materials designed in the laboratory, they are often nonsensical for historical techniques
• Tax law, tenancy law: old buildings are disadvantaged
• Funding provisions: Funding should be aimed at projects that are sustainable in the long term
• Economic research should calculate with the entire life cycle of a building, not just a part of it.
• Educational System: Architecture, its beauty, history and sustainable repair should become part of the normal educational curriculum
• Architectural training, craftsman training should include historical techniques, repair materials and repair techniques in their curriculum
• In many European countries and also internationally, university courses for the preservation of historical architecture are set up only for architects. There are no courses for conservators-restorers of architectural surfaces. (except Hildesheim, Vienna, Munich)
• Aesthetic norms: aesthetics of repair, practical value instead of novelty value

The projects that have won awards as part of the NEB are inspiring, but often standalone actions. They should go mainstream.

For a sustainable and ecologically sensible construction industry, we need

• methodically a re-use re-turn and repair-re-turn
• technologically a porosity re-turn (i.e. hydrophilic porosity, permeable for water in liquid form)