Block, Der

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Block, Der. Group of Berlin-based traditionalist architects formed in 1928 to resist the Modernist Ring group. Its origins lay in acrimony that arose when Paul Bonatz prepared a plan at the behest of the Deutscher Werkbund for the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, in which houses with pitched roofs were proposed. Disputes followed, and Mies van der Rohe's Modernist solution was accepted. Bonatz and his colleague Paul Schmitthenner (1884–1972) withdrew from the scheme in protest, and, with other architects, including Bestelmeyer and Paul Schultze-Naumburg, formed an association which proposed to promote an architecture suited to the tastes and needs of ordinary people, and on regional and national conditions, rather than imposed upon an unwilling populace by a Leftist élite. It later became associated with German Nationalism.

Bibliography

Tafuri & and Dal Co (1986);
Teut (ed.) (1967)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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Block, Der

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