AEG TRANSPARENCY

As we have seen, I have a problem with iconic architectural images.  When I was in architecture school and the AEG Turbine Building by Behrens (1908) was discussed, in every instance I was presented with this image.

Images like this were found in the text that we used, Modernist Architecture since 1900 by William Curtis.  And if you would look thru any other architectural history book that you might find in the architecture library, you would find the exact same image.

Also, we had slide libraries during those days.  Although I am not certain, I believe that the slides in the library were taken by faculty and students of the architecture school.  I certainly cannot tell you what images the slide library had of the AEG Turbine building.  As I worked in the library as a student, I do know that for every famous building there might have been 3-4 slides of it.

Although it would have been possible, for example, to purchase a book about the architect Peter Behrens, that basically would have been completely out of the question given the cost.

So you get the picture.  In those days you had libraries, consisting of books, magazines and slides as your only source of information and window into the world.  And because of that window, your ability to process and integrate these famous buildings was severely limited.  I guess that because of this very narrow bandwidth, the presentation of one iconic image of a building was the best that anyone could do.  And typically, you would know a building if you got it right on a flash card test.

As you might guess, what we ended up knowing about this building was not much.  By now, you might have started to get the hang of this and have already done a Google Image search for the AEG building.  And as you have seen, or will see, there are hundreds of images of this building on the web.  From these images, I did this transparent study of the building.  I selected the same viewpoint that is used in all of the iconic photos: a two point perspective from street level.

And this is what I learned:

Administration Wing;  The building has a flat roofed administration wing along one longitudinal side of the building.  This was a huge revelation to me.  So, it turns out that this building as a whole is not just this ultra cool roof shape that sorta mimics the shape of a turbine.  No, this building, to make it work, has a very ordinary brick flat roof section that comprises nearly 2/5 of the footprint.  You can see this banal form just to the left in the iconic image.  I, at least, never stopped to ask myself what it was.

Roof Shape;  On top of the roof is a pyramidal skylight.  This skylight runs the length of the production area.  It is not clear if this skylight was part of Behren’s original design.  Nevertheless, it shows up on very old photos, so it is there now.

Wall Geometry;  Upon close inspection, the construction of the exterior walls is not completely vertical.  There is a slight miss-alignment of the wall plane with the pinned structural steel columns.  To be fair, if you take a magnifying glass to the iconic photo, you can start to see this.  Yet without further images, it is not clear exactly what is happening.

Interior Clear Span;  Although you would expect it, the production portion of the building is a clear span.  Although decades ago that would have had to have been a guess as there was no way to confirm this.  There is also a gantry crane that ran on tracks the length of the building;  the track where it is supported is integrated with the geometry of the facade.

Of course, the biggest revelation is the presence of that flat box form.  That fact is enough for me to cry foul right there.  If this building were properly taught and presented, we should have been made aware that it existed.  For me, the knowledge of this form completely changes how good the building is.  It is not that the building is not groundbreaking just because we were not told about the other 2/3.  But we should have been.

Is it ok to have an iconic turbine shaped space with a box next to it?  Could there have been better integration of the two forms?  And if the turbine roof shape reflects the turbines being assembled below, how does a flat roof reflect the administration that happens below it?

I have often thought that transparent drawing leads to transparent thinking.  A transparent image reveals all of these factors.  Nothing should be hidden from us.  And if we all draw transparently, nothing will be hidden again.