The Kassel Theatre project of 1952, designed in collaboration with leading landscape architect Hermann Mattern, was a milestone in Scharoun’s work but also his saddest loss, scandalously dropped after detailed development and a start on site. It won the competition outright, much praised by the judges, and was developed for construction. Work began on digging the foundations, but then the bases of old fortifications were found, and it was stopped. Meanwhile, the city authorities had secretly developed an alternative scheme by local architect Paul Bode, who had not even entered the competition, and that was built instead. It caused Scharoun, not only the loss of his most important collaboration with Mattern, but also a loss of credibility, for, in justifying their dishonest move, the municipality’s officers claimed technical shortcomings that were, in fact, never put to the test. Scharoun’s contemporary text reveals concern with movement both inside and outside the building, for the theatre’s approach and relation to the city were part of the arriving audience’s unfolding visual, spatial and haptic experience, which continued in the foyer and entry to the auditorium. The extract opens with a discussion of the city’s history and the origins of the square Friedrichsplatz in which the theatre was to be situated.1
The Friedrichsplatz area of Kassel was formerly the zone of negotiation between two clearly laid out city-cells. Naturally the development of this free area was conditioned by topological and technical demands, but it occurred in a period when the necessity of defining such city-cells was still present, along with consciousness of the essential conditions. So the later Friedrichsplatz grew in the ‘void’ left between two individual gestalts: between the medieval town on one side and the Baroque new town on the other, each obedient to the rules of its period (Figures 1.8.1 and 1.8.2). In the formal design of the Baroque town the Duke’s concerns found expression, so in developing what had been the ‘void’, the Duke’s interests became increasingly dominant, that is to say it became a formal part of the Baroque new town, obedient to the new town’s rules. In the establishment of the new boundary, the medieval town was therefore fronted by a stage-set. But the Friedrichsplatz was initially no closed square, for the ducal influence was more a presentation of the Duke’s power over the increasingly managed bourgeois class, which was shown by the ‘suppression’ of the image of the bourgeois medieval town. So begins the tragedy of the square, which in this early condition was just a piece of landscape and a parade ground. This ‘suppression’ also applied to the adjacent Ottoneum [an early theatre], which arose during the period of the Baroque new town, but was in its content more dedicated to the spirit of the medieval town.2
Figure 1.8.1 Plan of central Kassel in 1742. The medieval town on the right still has its fortifications, and the Baroque new town on the left is identifiable by its grid. Friedrichsplatz is developing between the two, the Ducal palace, later Auepark (valley-park), is bottom right betwen rivers
Source: Adaped from period maps available online
Figure 1.8.2 Plan of central Kassel in 1835. By now, Friedrichsplatz has been formalised, with classical façades redefining its east side, but it remains open to the south
Source: Adaped from period maps available online
If we wish to remedy the blocking off of the old town, whose layout is undoubtedly of historic significance, the recovery and reintegration of the Ottoneum must also be a priority, which belongs in its essence to the area of the medieval town. The position of the Zwehrenturm [an old city gate tower from the fourteenth century] and the open space formed between the Ottoneum and the Zwehrenturm make an effective prelude to that special and characteristic spatial order, and – following tradition – can exemplify the territory of the medieval city-cell.
The creation of a new layout will not be a matter of conserving the falsified wholeness of the square, but rather of finding balance between three contrasting elements: the medieval city-cell, the Baroque new town, and the connection with the landscape beyond. What we mean by the latter needs explaining: the ‘void’ was originally an integral part of the landscape with unbroken visual contact towards the valley. Once this is understood, one sees its elementary essence as a free space with its large dimensions and the fluid treatment of its surface. So a sequence of street spaces leading from deep within the town needs to be developed, and the order of these street spaces must be determined in relation to the general layout and the form of the buildings, then further considered in connection with the transition between the square and the valley, permitting recognition of a more dynamic as opposed to static treatment.
Although the connection with the dynamic essence of the medieval city has obviously been disrupted, the forming of spaces can still retain something of its essential dynamism, even if this needs to be combined with the gestalt means of a geometric coordination system. In addition, the economic development of the city and its new traffic demands are influences on the development of the square that cannot be ignored: for it is becoming so divided by major roads that its built unity is disrupted. So in place of the old aristocratic order a new ordering must be found. Our time brings interactions between the themes of organic and geometric organisation – a struggle between traditional and landscape-related forces. This leads to a mixed deployment of powers, for on the one hand interrelated focal points must be developed, while on the other axes connected with these foci must be added which are appropriate to our lively but highly problematic period. The landscape provides focal points that are aspects of the Duke’s courtly society. Its structure expresses the social order of those times: it is a place that in the form of landscape-bound organs makes an original lively reference to the functions and the environment.
Our new, contemporary, arrangement of place and form (Figures 1.8.3 and 1.8.4) attempts on the one hand to restore the connection with the wider landscape, while assuring that, as the new buildings are added, corrections are made to increase the comparative scale. On the other hand it allows the close connection with the Auepark to be established, in keeping with the new and much broader social function of the park. But while in the eighteenth century a lively interaction of old and new themes made the whole layout attractive and meaningful, the nineteenth century brought this to an end. Hasty technical and economic development – and especially development of the industrial quarter after 1866 – no longer allowed contemporary changes to develop the city’s structure in a responsive and organic manner. With the technical and economic development, the process of making insights about the whole and of finding forms could make no progress. Then, with the return to historically derived forms, concern shifted away from visions of the whole towards narrow-mindedness, seeing only the fragment locked into its own limited situation.
It is characteristic of this age that economically important developments are unprecedented in scale and are allotted enormous sites, so that for example a single industrial complex can take up more land than was needed for the entire requirements of a medieval town. But this occurs – as if the overscaled degree of expenditure must be compensated for – at the expense of facilities for the general public. Here everything is very constrained and meanly organised. But, for public buildings too, site boundaries and site areas need to be considered. The landscape is given over to the service of technical developments, just as society and the law have to adapt themselves to technical necessities.
And yet valuable structures of a cultural or natural kind could in future be rescued from the arms of this technical–economic development. Our view addresses the relatively narrow area in which decisions might yet be made with some certainty and accomplished within a reasonable time. So it must be understood as a phenomenon of
Figure 1.8.3 Plan of the intended reorganisation adding the new theatre, by Scharoun and Mattern. This and earlier plans are set out north to top and the rectangle of Friedrichsplatz appears diagonally, the valley of the river Fulda bottom right
Source: Adapted from published site plan, original in Scharoun Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin