#alpine architecture

Bruno Taut, "Alpine Architecture"

Bruno Taut (1880–1938) gets labelled an Expressionist architect although it’s always a hazardous business connecting people in other disciplines to whatever art movement may be around at the time. The Glass Pavilion was a showcase structure commissioned by the German glass industry for the 1914 Werkbund exhibition in Cologne.

The glazed walls were topped by a dome of reinforced concrete ribs and a double skin of glass: reflecting glass on the outside and coloured prisms inside. In the interior, the colour effects produced by sunlight were enhanced by the reflections of the pool and water cascade on the lower level, visible through a circular opening in the floor. Two flights of glass steps enclosed with glass walls produced the sensation of descending to the lower level ‘as if through sparkling water’. The cascade was made of yellow glass, while the pool was of its complementary colour, violet. A mechanical kaleidoscope overhead projected images, an early version of a light show, intensifying the overall impression on the visitor.

http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/tsugi/CG_g-mdn_arch_e.htm

http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2011/08/24/bruno-tauts-glass-pavilion/

El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon National Park