When visiting the Kunstschule und Kunstgewerbeschule of architect Henry van de Velde from 1904–1906 (in Weimar, Thuringia, in the middle of Germany), I was struck by the feeling that I would have loved to go to school here. What a beautiful building, what an eye for detail the architect must have had. It seems as if art, design, craft, and architecture have come together here quite naturally. I had felt this once before, in 2011, at The Glasgow School of Art by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. There is, however, a huge difference between these two buildings from the same period. The school in Weimar has been very respectfully restored and is now used as the main building of the Bauhaus University. The school in Glasgow was destroyed by fire in both 2014 and 2018; nothing remains of it. A fine opportunity, then, to offer some insight into the parallels and differences between the work of the different architects.
There is something in this Gesamtkunstwerk and the Arts & Crafts Movement that touches me every time. It marked a turning point in history around the turn of the 20th century, both in art and in architecture. In England it was a socially critical and socialist movement as well as an aesthetic trend, with William Morris (1834–1896) as its driving force and inspiration. In Germany, Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) gave shape to this change; he regarded himself as a herald of a new era. No longer looking to the past but to the future. He wanted to work in line with Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal of the new human being. For him, that meant breaking down the boundaries between art and craft. Design had to coincide with its function, and that function had to harmonise with its surroundings. He was therefore an all-round artist. He painted, designed book covers, tableware, jewellery, carpets, furniture, monuments, and buildings. One might be under the impression that he wanted to do everything himself, but that was not the case. He collaborated with the makers, just as the Arts & Crafts Movement did in England and the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna as well.
Let us first get better acquainted with Henry van de Velde (1863–1957). He was born in Antwerp and studied painting at its Royal Academy of Fine Arts and later also in Paris. He went to the countryside to paint in a Neo-Impressionist style. In 1889 he joined the artists’ group Les XX in Brussels. He met his wife Maria Sèthe (1867–1943) at the salons of Les XX. They came into contact through her teacher, the painter Théo van Rysselberghe. She had been to England and become fascinated by the Arts & Crafts Movement, buying works by William Morris (including fabrics and wallpaper) for her future husband. Her father was a wealthy industrialist, specialising in textiles. When Van de Velde abandoned painting and shifted his attention to the applied arts and architecture, she supported him in this.
The couple worked together on the construction of their own house, Villa Bloemenwerf in Uccle, near Brussels. Each room had its own function, with the large hall as the beating heart of the family in the centre. Every detail was carefully considered and designed. Practical features were included, such as a serving hatch between the kitchen and dining room and a metal plate in the middle of the tabletop for placing hot pans and dishes. This villa received both national and international attention as a total work of art, a Gesamtkunstwerk. It became a meeting place for the European avant-garde. Influential art critics visited, poets recited their poetry, musicians performed their music. Painters and architects also enjoyed gathering there. One of Van de Velde’s statements especially appeals to Jan: “When I decided to draw the plans for our house, I had no notion of architecture. I even had difficulties using the drawing board, the set square, and the T-square. I was a complete layman. I learned how to use the drawing board, but I ultimately never needed the set square or the T-square. To this day, I am convinced that the pencil, guided by the mind, is sufficient.” (from his memoirs, 1897).
His international fame grew through participation in various exhibitions: at the L’Art Nouveau gallery in Paris in 1895, Dresden in 1897, and at the Secession exhibition in Munich in 1899. In all these cases, he exhibited furniture. For the first time, his kidney-shaped desk was presented: groundbreaking in its design compared to traditional desks, with rounded corners and ergonomic comfort. This earned him many new clients in Germany. In 1900 the family moved to Berlin, where he was commissioned to design the salon of François Haby, court hairdresser to the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Remarkably, his design left the gas and water pipes visible as decorative elements. He built a reputation as a designer for dining culture in a new modern style: without lavish and historicising decorations. For cutlery and tableware, he collaborated with manufacturers in Weimar, Meissen, and Jena-Burgau.
Around 1900, a desire arose in Germany to reform the applied arts. German products were not popular at the world exhibitions. In Weimar, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche (the famous philosopher’s sister) and Harry Graf Kessler appointed Van de Velde as artistic advisor to the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Their aim was to shake off the city’s dusty image (as the city of classics, music, and art), and they saw Van de Velde as the man to achieve this. In 1902, Van de Velde had designed the interior of the Nietzsche Archive in Villa Silberblick for Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and furniture for Harry Graf Kessler. A year later, Van de Velde founded the Seminar for Applied Arts. Here, manufacturers, craftsmen, apprentices, and laypeople could meet free of charge to develop their products. They received instructions and could learn about current developments. To realise this idea, a physical space in the form of a school was needed, but such a school was not yet available in Weimar. Not everyone thought it self-evident to entrust the commission for this school to a Belgian architect and director. Harry Graf Kessler swiftly dismissed such objections. In his view, a German architect and director would never remain in Weimar for long and would soon want to pursue a career in a larger German city. Van de Velde, however, would stay.
The school was partially financed by Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst and received state support. The Großherzoglich Sächsischen Kunstgewerbeschule (Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts, which I will call the workshop building here for clarity) was completed in 1904. In 1908, the Kunsthochschule was brought into use: a building located opposite the L-shaped workshop building. The school functioned as Van de Velde’s laboratory in the field of education. Whilst the curriculum was structured, the underlying teaching and educational philosophy was progressive for its time. Teachers were required not only to teach but also to participate in the practical courses and seminars. The focus was on the character, talent, and abilities of the students, which were often already developed in craft training. Among the students, there were many women. Van de Velde called his school the first ‘citadel of modernism.’ The school also had to provide its own income through the sale of products from its own workshops. Activities included bookbinding, metalworking, pottery, sculpture, weaving, and carpet making. Van de Velde maintained contacts with manufacturers, enabling students to progress further and ensuring that the ideas were put into practice. The Grand Duke lost interest in the school, and when funding ceased in 1914, Van de Velde resigned as director. In 1919, after the war, the school reopened under the name Bauhaus. It came under the leadership of Walter Gropius, who had been recommended by Van de Velde. The teamwork between teachers and students turned out to be an excellent foundation for this experimental school.
But where does the feeling that these two buildings are different from other school buildings come from? What helps enormously is that—even during the summer holidays—the buildings are open for public, at least the ground floor. We could simply walk in and look around. The Kunsthochschule is a three-story building. It is divided into three sections, with the entrance in the middle. The entrance is modestly designed with a few steps in front of it. To the left and right of the entrance are rounded walls behind which waiting rooms are located. Partly thanks to the small turret on the roof, you instinctively know that this is the place to go inside. The central and right sections of the building have large surfaces of windows on all floors. Particularly remarkable are the windows on the third floor, which are slightly curved and follow the shape of the roof. These are the studio spaces. This gives the building - despite its size - a lighter appearance. The façades are plastered in light yellow, and the roof is covered with red baked tiles.
Upon entering, your eye is immediately drawn to the staircase. A spacious open stairway winds upwards around Rodin’s sculpture Eve, set against a façade with many windows. To the left and right of the staircase are reliefs embedded in the walls from 1979–1980. These are a replica of a 1923 relief by Joost Schmidt (1899–1948), made by Hubert Schiefelbein (1930–), and one of his own reliefs (Rhythmus). It is no coincidence that his works are placed here: he was the only professor of visual and architectural art during the German Democratic Republic era. There is a natural integration of architecture and art here - something that applies to the entire building. At the end of the corridor stands another sculpture, and through a window you can see a sculpture in the garden. Near a secondary staircase, yet another artwork appears. As you leave the building, you pass between two busts of the school’s directors, Van de Velde and Gropius, created in 1957 by Siegfried Tschierschky in collaboration with Kurt Grohmann.
If you search for ‘school’ and ‘Van de Velde’ in the internet or literature, you will find reference to the building opposite the Kunsthochschule: the building where Van de Velde had his workshop and which now also bears his name, the Kunstgewerbeschule. It was thoroughly restored in 2010. Although the two buildings now appear unified by their colours, they were originally planned as independent schools. This building is noticeably smaller, consisting of a single story with a large roof structure and many dormer windows. The side façades are more elaborately designed with stucco and natural stone. The entrance is very modest, located precisely at the bend in the building. Although the building looks highly symmetrical, once inside you discover that this is not the case. You ascend a short staircase - again between two reliefs. Here too, Hubert Schiefelbein produced reproductions in 1979, this time of reliefs by Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943) from 1923.
The staircase immediately catches your eye: an openwork stair with, behind it, a monumental wall painting from 1923 by Oskar Schlemmer, topped by a skylight. On the wall you see patterns of people moving up and down the stairs. It is hardly surprising to encounter this artist’s work here. He was a teacher at the Bauhaus and became head of the mural painting workshop in 1920. He remained associated with the Bauhaus until 1929, even after the school moved to Dessau. During the Nazi period, the mural was painted over. In 2022, Schlemmer’s painting was reapplied by Bruno Dolinski (1933–2008), a former student of the school. The versatile artistry of Van de Velde can still be found everywhere in this building - in the design of the staircase railing, the door handles, and the doors.
Now we move on to his contemporary, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928). He was the second son in a family of eleven children and grew up in Glasgow. From an early age he showed an interest in architecture and, at the age of sixteen, became an apprentice at the architectural firm of John Hutchison. In 1884 he attended evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art. Due to the industrial character of the city (by the late 19th century Glasgow was the sixth largest city in Europe), the school’s curriculum leaned more toward technology and design than toward the fine arts. The architecture course started in 1887. In 1889 Mackintosh began working as a draughtsman at the firm of Honeyman & Keppie. There he befriended J. Herbert MacNair (1868–1955). In 1890 he won the Alexander Thomson Travelling Studentship with a design for a Greek museum. The following year he travelled to Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, and London. With the drawings and watercolours from that journey, he again won a prize. He left the school at the end of the 1893–1894 academic year.
Through the school, Mackintosh and MacNair met the sisters Frances Macdonald (1873–1921) and Margaret Macdonald (1864–1933). They began working together and became known as The Glasgow Four. After the sisters graduated in 1894, they set up their own studio that embraced all forms of craft. Both men also contributed to it. The Glasgow Four came to an end in 1898. Mackintosh was friends with the German architect Hermann Muthesius (1861–1927), who was cultural attaché at the German Embassy in London. After years of research, Muthesius published his book Das Englische Haus in three volumes in 1904 and 1905. During his research, he had encountered designs by Mackintosh. Muthesius became an important promoter of his work on the European continent - not so much in Germany - especially in Austria, where Mackintosh came into contact with the Vienna Secession.
As early as 1892, the Glasgow School of Art had plans for a new building, but the funds were insufficient. In 1896 a design competition was announced, but no proposals were submitted, since none could be realised within the budget. By deciding to build only part of the structure, it became possible to begin. In January 1897, the firm Honeyman & Keppie was chosen as the winner, with Mackintosh as the designer. He did not only design the building itself: he also designed the interior and what we would now call signing- in my view broader than just signage - including boards, wayfinding, cut-outs in chair backs, tiles, and more, all based on a grid pattern of four-by-four squares. In addition, he also developed a more rounded design vocabulary with patterns inspired by nature and the human form - most notably his famous rose motif. These shapes appear as accents in railings, as cut-outs and windows in doors, as reliefs above doorways, and as the iron ornament on the tower.
As mentioned earlier, only part of the building was completed at first, in December 1899—the northeast side. It was not until February 1907 that the firm - by then renamed Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh - was commissioned to complete the entire building. In the meantime, Mackintosh had designed several other buildings and interiors, including The Hill House (more on that later), a school, and the Willow Tearooms for Miss Cranston. But the design and construction process of the school was still not without difficulty. The building was only formally opened in December 1909.
The entrance to the school is located on Renfrew Street. The part of the building to the left with the entrance (three bays) formed the first phase. With the completion of the second phase of four bays, the building achieved its balance, and the entrance now lay more or less in the middle. Along the street side, the school grounds are marked by stone piers with wrought-iron railings. To enter, you climb a short flight of steps. From the platform you can see, on both sides, the windows that provide light to the basement floor. The entrance has something castle-like, with the adjacent bay window (for the janitor) and a stair tower rising above the main mass. The façade is built of pink-orange sandstone that turns grey over time. The facades on Renfrew Street are dominated by the large windows on every floor, giving it a more industrial appearance. The rear façade, by contrast, resembles a medieval castle with only small windows.
From the facades, you can infer the arrangement of the spaces inside: classrooms are located at the front behind the large windows, while other spaces - such as the theatre, library, offices, cloakrooms, and toilets - are situated at the back and sides. What makes this building so remarkable is not just the architecture, but above all the combination of exterior and interior. This was Mackintosh’s strength. The most extraordinary spaces were the library and the director’s room. Every description does injustice to the library, for the spatial effect of the interior with its daylight is difficult to put into words. It is a two-story space with a storage loft above, which also brings daylight into the library. The bookcases, the gallery on the upper level, and the furniture were all made of American tulipwood (yellow poplar). The wood was stained dark so that it looked like oak. Mackintosh had originally intended to use oak, but for budget reasons this was not possible. The woodwork is highly detailed, for instance, the balcony posts in the corners were worked with a gouge, and these planes were painted in four different colours. Mackintosh’s characteristic square and line patterns can be found everywhere. The director’s room is in the corner of the oldest part of the building and is fitted with a large window. Here, the walls are cream-white, and the decorations are organic, with plant motifs. All the walls are panelled, so that wall and furniture flow seamlessly into each other. The furniture is made of dark wood, as in the library. This later became the Mackintosh Room, in which several of his pieces of furniture and lamps were displayed. In every space the hand of the architect can be seen, whether in the corridors, the cloakrooms, or the staircases. Inside, too, you encounter metal ornaments; even the school bell is a work of art.
But the sad truth is that nothing of it remains. We must rely on our memory and on the book Mackintosh’s Masterwork: The Glasgow School of Art (1989). In 2014, part of the building burned down. After a second fire in 2018, only some of the outer walls were left standing. The costly restoration of the library had just been completed (after the fire nothing of it was left). The school building is regarded as Mackintosh’s masterpiece, and he was Scotland’s pioneer of modernism. It was a new interpretation of architecture, with attention to detail, decoration, and furniture to create an aesthetic and functional whole. The destruction of the art school represents a threefold loss: that of a renowned educational institute, a landmark building for the city of Glasgow, and an important tourist attraction for Scotland. Now a dilemma has arisen: should the main values of the school be conserved, or should it be faithfully reconstructed? What is ethical, what is practical, and what is financially feasible? As of May 2024, disagreements with the insurance company were still ongoing, meaning it will take years before there is a concrete plan or a new building. This is not to mention the question of how such a project should be undertaken, since the building was never thoroughly documented.
There is more to talk about regarding the preservation of Mackintosh’s heritage. The most beautiful and largest residence he designed is Hill House in Helensburgh, a town northeast of Glasgow on the estuary of the River Clyde. The house was designed for Walter Blackie of the publishing firm Blackie & Son Ltd and was completed in 1903. The house was designed from the inside out. It has a very Scottish character with its rough, light-coloured, roughcast exterior. As the name suggests, the house stands on a hill. It consists of several two-story volumes, topped with a large gabled roof clad in slate. The various chimneys give the house its distinctive silhouette.
The entrance, like that of the art school, is reached by a short flight of steps leading to a walled platform. Here too you find a stair tower, giving it a somewhat castle-like appearance. The windows are large for the living spaces and small for the other rooms, always divided by mullions. Some windows are placed in striking positions, directly beside a chimney. The living room is the most beautiful space in the house, with a large bay window. Light enters magnificently in every season. The play of light and shadow continues into Mackintosh’s furniture design. The upstairs bedroom has a barrel vault and is finished in a creamy white colour. The role of Mackintosh’s wife, Margaret Macdonald, in the design of Hill House should not be underestimated. Margaret designed and created large gesso panels (a kind of plaster relief) and other decorative artworks that are integral to the interiors—for example, the famous panel The Sleeping Princess in the salon. Her work added a dreamlike, symbolic, and sometimes mystical layer to Mackintosh’s strict, geometric architecture. In this way, she created the characteristic combination of rigorous linear design with soft, organic ornament that defines Mackintosh’s style.
In 1972 the house was purchased by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) and opened to the public. At that time, alterations from the 1950s were undone, chimneys were rebuilt, and the rough plaster layer was restored. In 1982, the National Trust took over the house, which has remained a museum ever since. It would go too far here to describe the entire house in detail. It was observed, however, that the roughcast plaster was not resistant to the Scottish climate. It crumbled, and there were fears about the consequences for the interior. In 2017 it was decided to protect the house temporarily by building a Big Box around it, completed in 2019. The enclosure was fitted with elevated walkways and a visitor centre. The box has proven effective in reducing humidity, and by the end of 2023 the level was low enough to ensure the preservation of the house. But the house still stands enclosed in this structure. In the future, the original cement-based plaster (which retained moisture) is expected to be removed and replaced by a more traditional lime mortar, in order to restore the building sustainably. Until then, the interior can still be visited. Yet what is so characteristic of Mackintosh’s architecture—the interplay between exterior and interior, and the way daylight enters the rooms—cannot truly be experienced. The Big Box acts like an oversized coat, preventing you from sensing how the house sits in its environment. Let us hope that patience will be rewarded and that this work of Mackintosh will be preserved for the future.
In German, Henry van de Velde was more fortunate in this respect. For his own family he designed the house Hohe Pappeln (Tall Poplars) on the southern side of Weimar. In the summer of 1906, he bought a plot of land on the Belvedere Allee in Ehringsdorf. At the end of March 1908, seven months after construction had started, Henry and Maria van de Velde moved into the house with their five children. Like their first house in Uccle, this house was designed from the inside out and was well oriented to the sun. The house has three stories, with the top floor tucked under a large roof. Beneath the roof lay the studio. The living room once again formed the heart of the house - essentially a large hall in direct contact with the main staircase. The large children’s playroom was in the basement, which was connected via another staircase to the kitchen, the garden, and the bedrooms.
The entire interior was once again designed by Van de Velde together with his wife Maria. She was deeply involved in the design of the furniture, textiles, and colours, as well as in the layout of the house. Compared to Mackintosh’s house, it is somewhat more functional and with fewer ornaments, but here too the contrast is used between areas with dark furniture and walls and those with light furniture and walls. For both houses, their collaboration contributed to the Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art in which architecture, furniture, textiles, and art form a unified whole, created in partnership with their wives.
In 2003 the Klassik Stiftung Weimar opened Hohe Pappeln as a museum. In 2012 the foundation was able to purchase the house, and it has remained a museum ever since. It was on our list to visit, but unfortunately this year it was closed due to restoration works. Clearly, Weimar wishes to honour Van de Velde’s heritage and has the knowledge and expertise to preserve it appropriately. He has certainly been more fortunate than Mackintosh, that much is clear.
For us, both architects remain exemplary of a modern movement in their time: total architecture with a sense of aesthetics and space for craftsmanship. It is something you can still experience to this day and something from which you can still learn. Henry van de Velde himself expressed it as: “All true and living architecture has always been the direct expression of the needs and convictions of mankind at the moment of its creation … We must clothe modern ideas in modern garments - imbue our designs with sparkling imagination. Then designs will emerge, created by living people for living people - something that conveys a new experience of the sacred, of personal reflection and craftsmanship, of joy in nature, in the grace of form, and in the cheerfulness of colour.”
2025
