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.Until the mid-thirties, no coherent, detailed account of thegenesis and development of the Bauhaus experiment was available in the UnitedStates.Information on its architectural endeavors was especially difficult to find,so that interested architects were left to sift through relatively limited, irregularreports scattered in diverse publications and containing often incomplete and in-correct information.It is therefore safe to assume that only a small circle of peoplewere able to reconstruct an authentic image of the institution and its programs.In fact, an examination of the normative publications proves that the image theypresented of the Bauhaus, its principles, aims, and achievements, not to mentionof the entire architecture department, deviated significantly from reality.1 Philip Johnson, quoted in Franz Schulze, Philip Johnson, 68. The impressive number of reports in the American media between 1919and 1936 on the Bauhaus and its individual participants, especially WalterGropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, should not be allowed to obscure the factthat these articles represented only a small portion of the respective publica-tions total volume during this period.On the other hand, an evaluation of their in-fluence should not be based on quantity alone.In the case of the Bauhaus, thiswould be misleading, and would downplay the significance of the early phase ofits reception in the United States.Johnson s contention that the Bauhaus and itsarchitects were almost unknown in this country before his 1932 exhibition Mod-ern Architecture and book International Style is therefore highly questionable.2Even before 1932, a large amount of information on the Bauhaus, in par-ticular on the works of its leading architects, was already available.Well-curatedexhibitions referred to the Bauhaus; significant texts by renowned authors ap-peared in well-regarded and -circulated publications.Its architecture was oftenpresented with exceptionally good illustrations.The sharp contrast between thoseimages and the many traditionalist or historical images was apparent even onleafing through architecture journals and books.This was certainly true of Miesvan der Rohe s model of a skyscraper in glass and iron (1921),3 his design for a de-partment store in Berlin (1928),4 the Barcelona Pavilion (1928 1929),5 and the Tu-gendhat house (1928 1930),6 or of Walter Gropius s administration building at theCologne Werkbund exhibition (1914),7 the Fagus shoe factory (1911),8 and theDessau Bauhaus (1926).These buildings were so different from the buildings nor-mally published during the twenties in terms of phenotype, construction, use ofmaterials, and abstract formal language that these articles and images could nothave escaped the attention of competent readers.Sometimes, the designs and re-alized buildings in this new architectural idiom may have been dismissed as fol-lies, utopias, or, in the worst case, perversions.Nonetheless, it is conceivable thata handful of professionals took notice of the progressive concepts they embodied.This was particularly true at the end of the twenties, when these ideas were rein-forced by the context of the entire avant-garde movements, and the receptive cli-mate for the ideals of European classical modernism had improved.Furthermore, it is possible to cite incidents of a single significant recep-tive moment in which initial contact with a work later proved to be an essentialexperience.The prominent American architect Harwell Hamilton Harris, whodied in late 1990, had exactly such an experience at Frank Lloyd Wright s Holly-hock House in Los Angeles, which he visited as a young art student.The building ssculptural qualities impressed him so deeply that he decided to become an ar-chitect.9 Another eye-opening experience was his first encounter with Mies vander Rohe s Barcelona Pavilion in the pages of Die Form: it inspired him torephrase his understanding of architecture as a three-dimensional construct of106 planes and to design using a modular system.10 Harris belonged to the first gener-ation of American architects who recognized the importance of the avant-gardesin Europe and America and were quick to engage specific ideas.He worked for atime in Richard Neutra s office and was involved in the Lovell House in Los An-geles.Among those Americans who later achieved a superregional reputation, hewas one of the first to adopt some of Mies s fundamental design principles.Be-cause this did not entail any deviation from his own, individualistic line, butrather the selective adoption of ideas wherever they seemed logical within thecontext of his own system, a case study of his work would be a productive way toestablish the influence of Bauhaus-related ideas on American architecture
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