Critique of an 'Artefactual' landscape: Erich Mendelsohn's engagement with the built and natural environment, 1919-1931

Among German architects active following the First World War, Erich Mendelsohn was remarkable for his written essays, public presentations and celebrated Bilderbucher (picture books) which documented conditions in the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union. Although Germany and those foreign places were as different culturally as they were geographically, Mendelsohn's depiction of them reflected his consistent sensibility both towards architecture, per se, and towards architecture as part of a visual landscape. In fact, Mendelsohn's output during that period embodied a reversal of the typically Romantic relationship between landscape and an architect's vision. Rather than drawing inspiration for new man-made forms from nature, Mendelsohn evoked a world in which technical artefacts constituted the background against which his own new architecture might emerge. Over the course of more than a decade, Mendelsohn sought to critique this 'artefactual' landscape, characteristics of which demanded an architect's service towards reconfiguration or reassembly. Comparative review of work in all three media-print, photography, building design-testifies to Mendelsohn's unique position among his Modernist contemporaries and their handling of architecture's engagement with its environment.