The Tugendhat Villa is a masterpiece of the Modern Movement in architecture. The German architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) applied the radical new concepts of the Modern Movement triumphantly in the Tugendhat Villa to the design of residential buildings. The villa was designed by van der Rohe for Grete Weiss and her husband Fritz Tugendhat, members of wealthy industrial families in the city of Brno in former Czechoslovakia. The architect accepted the commission in 1927 and the villa was completed by the end of 1930. The architect took charge of the project down to the smallest detail, also designing all the furniture of the house, designs that have become world-renowned. Mies van der Rohe was one of the principal architects in the development of the Modern Movement in architecture, which characterized design and construction in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe and North America. Originally from Aachen and then working in Berlin, he was influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. During the German occupation, the Tugendhat family left Czechoslovakia and the Villa was taken over by the German State in 1939. It lost most of its original furniture, and was subject to some alterations and damage. After the war, the building was taken over by the State of Czechoslovakia. The Tugendhat Villa Fund was established in 1993, and a scientific restoration of the building took place. The Tugendhat Villa is a detached house in a residential area of the city of Brno. The entrance to the house is from the street on the north side of the lot, which slopes down towards the south, forming a small garden. The building has three floors, one facing the street and three developing down towards the garden. The house has a flat roof, and each floor has a different plan. The uppermost floor is entered directly from street level and includes a terrace that traverses the house and forms a balcony on the garden side. From here one reaches a small entrance hall, family bedrooms and services; the master bedroom and dressing room are on the garden side. The garage and caretaker's lodging are at the west end of the house. From the hallway and from the balcony there are stairways leading down to the main floor, which has three parts. The first part is the main living area with a winter garden, reception room, music corner, study and library, sitting areas, dining room and services.
The second part has kitchen facilities, and the third part consists of the servants' area. The living area has large windows on two sides and is directly joined to the terrace, which is partly open, partly covered, and has a wide stairway leading down to garden level. The ground level has utility rooms and is used for technical purposes. The main structure of the house is made from reinforced concrete with steel frames. A structure of polished steel pillars supports the entire house. A steel skeleton also carries ceramic ceiling panels. The exterior of the house is rendered and painted white. Light-coloured travertine tiles are used in the staircases leading down to the garden and in the living hall there is ivory-coloured linoleum. The entrance is panelled with dark palisander wood. The back wall of the living area is made from beautiful onyx, the same division as in the glass wall opening towards the garden. The original furniture and some of the pieces were made specifically for this house, such as the so-called Tugendhat chair, in chromium-plated flat steel elements and upholstered in stitched leather. The living area was furnished in such a way that each piece had its specific place. The mechanical equipment designed and built for the house was also exceptional, including special structural solutions for the use of steel pillars, for processing the onyx wall that was brought from the African Atlas Mountains, and for the electrically operated large steel-frame windows. The house had central heating and an air-conditioning system with a regulated fine-spray humidifying chamber.
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Kát'uska Pipková (direct swap) sent from Brno (Czech Republic) on 12.01.2014
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