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        • Hans Scharoun: Culture Is Life with a Unified Structure

        Abstract
        Hans Scharoun’s introduction to a popular work on European Baroque architecture is a unique document of a modern architect establishing a connection between his own design practice and a period of architectural history. In Scharoun’s world view the architecture of the Baroque was a period of transition, from the rational principles of Greek architecture to an expression of movement, which localized the Baroque in a historical period of absolute power and cultural fluidity. At the same time, the two-centred or multi-focal geometries (Scharoun speaks of ‘poles’) of the late Baroque in Germany reflected, in his view, a desire for unity, which resonated with his own preoccupations with intricate spatial configurations and the suppression of overriding symmetries by offering a multiplicity of these. In his short text the architect reveals the inspiration he found in the form world of the Baroque for his own projects, most notably the Berlin Philharmonie. ‘Baroque’, in this text, can be taken as an indication of an affinity and the recognition that the architect’s idea of a unified yet complex whole was indebted to the experience of spaces from a historically and culturally remote period.
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        Citation
        Grafe, C. (2011). Hans Scharoun: Culture Is Life with a Unified Structure. Baroque, OASE, (86), 72–72. Retrieved from https://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/86/HansScharounCultureIsLifeWithAUnifiedStructure

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