Wandering from Organ to Organ with Hermann Finsterlin - 50 Watts

(Find me at 50 Watts Books.)

Hermann Finsterlin, 1920-24, Die Stadt

These images come from Hermann Finsterlin, Eine Annaherung by Reinhard Döhl (Stuttgart: Hatje, 1988). The book is 414 pages (in German), with about 100 pages of gorgeous full-color reproductions (8.5" x 11" — it's heavy). Surprisingly, you can still find it, if you dig and pay a lot for shipping. I've also seen a Russian book which consists of only the image portion of this book. (Search for Finsterlin on Amazon.)

From wikipedia: "Hermann Finsterlin (1887 - 1973) was a visionary architect, painter, poet, essayist, toymaker and composer. He played an influential role in the German expressionist architecture movement of the early 20th century but due to the harsh economic climate realised none of his projects." [read more about his strange life]

Here are some incredible Finsterlin quotes (this passage comes from Biomorphic Architecture by Günther Feuerstein):

According to Finsterlin the interior of a building is also in the remarkable area somewhere between geology and biology: "inside the new building people will not feel that they are inmates of a fairy-tail crystal gland, but like internal residents of an organism, wandering from organ to organ: the giving and receiving symbiosis of a giant fossil womb." (Finsterlin, in Döhl) Finsterlin compares an architecture of three-dimensional curves with the "organic cavities" in our body, the incomparable curves "of the skull cavity, the thorax, the metral cavity, the alimentary canal -- or the chambers of the heart."

And immediately after this Finsterlin enthuses about an unconventional repertoire of animal inspiration: "...the namelessly splendid space lattice architecture of water-boatmen and crane flies, of frogs and toads, beetles, tortoises and dinosaurs etc., where the vaults of the body float on wonderfully tectonic columns..., what barrel vault, however modern, can be compared with the parabola of a mammalian thorax, what column can be compared with the silhouette lines of the noble limbs of animals." (Finsterlin, in Döhl)

Hermann Finsterlin, 1922, Strassenbild

Hermann Finsterlin, 1921, Casa Nova

Hermann Finsterlin, 1919, Archtitektur - Landhaus oder Intimes Sanatorium
(I want to live in the snail)

Hermann Finsterlin, 1923, Wolkenkuckkucksheim - Casa Nova

Hermann Finsterlin, 1920-24, Wolkenkuckkucksheim

Hermann Finsterlin, 1919, Das Haus der Atlantiden - Montsalvat

Hermann Finsterlin, circa 1924, Sonnenaufgang

Hermann Finsterlin, 1918 or 1919, Forscherstation - vegetarische Gaststatte

"Two examples that evoke animal associations particularly easily are his designs for a research station as a vegetarian restaurant [see above]. It is not clear what sort of creature these remind us of, but the terms body, head, pose, gesture suggest themselves. Finsterlin consistently works without any straight, horizontal and vertical lines.... 'Instead of this he puts in a plea for an organoid mobility of form, in which geological and zoomorphic patterns are fused together' (Dohl)." -- from Biomorphic Architecture by Günther Feuerstein

Hermann Finsterlin, 1919, Architektur - Das Haus am Meer

Hermann Finsterlin, 1920, Traum aus Glas - Casa Nova (aka "Sundae, Dirty Sundae")

Hermann Finsterlin, 1924-28, Architektur

Hermann Finsterlin, 1924, Grundrisse

Hermann Finsterlin, 1920s, various erotic works

There are about five pages of black-and-white thumbnails of Finsterlin's erotic works. As far as I know, these have not been published in color. They would make a fine book.

Discarded titles for this post:
--Finsterlin and The Casa Novas
--Grafitti Nineteen-Nineteen
--Finsterlin Potatoes
--House of Yes: Roger Dean builds Steve Howe's Dream Villa
--If you build it, I will come

Also see my post on Hermann Obrist. Obrist (born 1862) was likely regarded as a "father figure" by Finsterlin and other Expressionist architects. Finsterlin and Obrist both took part in a 1919 exhibition of "unknown architects" in Berlin.