Taut, Bruno

Born May 4, 1880, in Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad); died Dec. 24, 1938, in Ankara. German architect and theoretician of architecture.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Taut studied in Stuttgart under T. Fischer. He visited Moscow in 1926 and lived and worked there in 1931 and 1932. After the Nazi rise to power, he lived in emigration; beginning in 1933, he worked and taught in Japan and then in Turkey. Taut, a representative of functional-ism, was the leader of the Ring architectural group. He was one of the first modern architects to use glass and concrete in his constructions, which include numerous buildings in Magdeburg, where he was chief architect from 1921 to 1924, and a residential complex in the Britz district in Berlin (1920’s). Taut developed new types of educational and residential complexes, striving for laconic composition and clear differentiation of structures. He advocated the extensive use of color in architecture.