Living in icons

For a week, Uwe Bresan followed students from the University of Stuttgart during their “Über Architektur schreiben” summer course. The setting was Can Lis, the home of Jørn Utzon completed on Mallorca in 1971. This is where the world-renowned architect, who would have been 100 this year, retreated to full of disappointment when, at the end of the 1960s, he was no longer the chief architect of the Sydney Opera due to disputes about its costs and construction time. The house is said to be Utzon’s secret masterpiece.

Architectural journalist Katharina Matzig from Munich has followed the traces of Geoffrey Bawa in Sri Lanka. He is regarded as the inventor of Tropical Modernism. Matzig spent the night at Bawa's posthumously completed hotel resort Anantara Kalutara. And she drank tea in Lunuganga, the architect's former country residence. Since Bawa's death, the country house together with the large garden can be visited. In addition, the complex has six spacious guest rooms and is run as a country hotel.

The Staatliches Bauhaus was founded in Weimar on 1st April 1919. Headed by Walter Gropius, the school set out to give the 20th century a new face. To this day, the Bauhaus works shape our concept of the modern age and our ideas of modernity. Before the 100th anniversary of the “most famous art school of the world” will be celebrated in 2019, we went to Dessau. This is where the school moved into its world-famous new building in 1926. We spent one night in the former workshop wing for our “Living in Icons” section.

Near south beach of Fehmarn stands one of the latest works by the exceptional Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen. The construction of the Baltic health spa celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2018. The facility disputed. Yet, despite the conversions and “amputations”, the architecture by Jacobsen and Otto Weitling is still fine, rich in details and airy. As a total artwork, it is substantially endangered. The architecture journalist Hendrik Bohle checked into one of the highrise hotel buildings to get an impression of the holiday resort.

As a professor at the technical university in Stuttgart, Paul Schmitthenner (1884–1972) was among the most influential personalities of German architecture in the first half of the 20th century. In addition, he was above all famous for his garden-city plans and his numerous residential buildings in the South German region. In 1932, Schmitthenner designed a holiday home in Tyrol for himself which until today sits enthroned in a lonely mountain meadow above the town of Imst. Uwe Bresan repeatedly visited it during the past years.

Closely experiencing architecture icons and actually living in them – this is now possible in Schloss Lauterbach designed by Henry van de Velde: “Wohnung Gretl” recently completed on the mezzanine floor in the west wing of the castle in Neukirchen is in fact the finale of more than 13 years of renovation work. After it had been fundamentally converted between 1907 and 1909 by the Belgian architect, over the past years Claus Lämmle from Büroplasz has breathed new life in the spirit of van de Velde into a holiday apartment as well.