Bruno Taut “Atami Villa” – 1 –

Atami (a pleasant seaside resort west of Tokyo in Shizuoka Prefecture) is famous as nice Onsen area, also it attracts attention as great architectures for architecture lovers.
I visited MOA art museum and Bruno Taut “Atami Villa” (official name is Kyu Hyuga Bettei).

First talking about Bruno Taut, he was a German architect and his style is categorized Expressionism. He was active as an avant-garde architect in Berlin. He was also active as a city planner by designing housing complexes. You can live his house still now but it is difficult to live there because it is very popular.

He went to the Soviet Union but he returned to Berlin after a few years, then he headed to Switzerland in order to escape persecution with the emergence of Nazi. He arrived in Japan after Turkey and European countries, invited by Japan International Architecture. He was raised in Europe where Japonism was a heyday. Perhaps his dream came true to come to his dream country Japan.

In 1930, he arrive in Tsuruga, Fukui prefecture and he had a fateful encounter in Kyoto. He met “Katsura Imperial Villa”. He expressed the villa “It makes me almost cry, it is so beautiful…” All his ideal design was there. He was the first person who introduced Katsura Imperial Villa to the world, he wrote about it some books. I have a lot about the villa but not this time.

He lived in Daruma temple in Gunma prefecture after Kyoto, and he met Japanese crafts which uses bamboo, washi (Japanese paper), lacquerware etc. And then he got an offer from Mr. Hyuga in Atami to design the villa annex. The condition was favorable, he was able to design it whatever he wanted at any cost! I guess he was so happy and he put his energy into the project because he didn’t have any good projects as an architect at that time.

The villa annex is a great design I never seen before which has his loves a lot. The space where Japanese and Western matches wonderfully, it is of course great. Also it is very modern, it is innovative, hardly believe that it was completed in 1936. Moreover, it is very comfortable and warm (both physically and mentally) because of using natural materials I guess. I found his love to Japanese Sukiya-zukuri architectural style (Katsura Imperial Villa) everywhere.

He designed actually the cellar but there is a big window and you can see ocean from there because the cellar is a house built on a hill. It is not cellar more like a special room is known to those in the know. Actually people enjoyed playing billiard, dancing, looking at the ocean, viewing the moon… What a rich life.

In 1936, he left Japan and headed to Turkey. He got a job as a professor and he was active as an architect as well, then passed away in 1938.

I introduced about Bruno Taut today, I will write about the villa more next time.

Architectures in Germany
“Glass Pavilion”

“Horse-shoe estate”

Books about Japanese Culture Bruno Taut wrote

*The main image is from a flyer of Kyu Hyuga Villa