Siegfried Ebeling: Der Raum als Membran (1926–) [German]

“Time and again Der Raum als Membran [Space as Membrane], published by Siegfried Ebeling as a kind of pamphlet in 1926 in Dessau — the artistic and technological laboratory of modernism—, caught the attention of his contemporaries. We find a copy on the desk of Walter Gropius at the Dessau Bauhaus, another one with notes from the hand of the architect at the library of Mies van der Rohe. And again and again whenever the utopian Bauhaus is mentioned, the title page of Der Raum als Membran reappears. The author, however, along with his other attempts to develop a theory of biological architecture, has disappeared from common memory. Siegfried Ebeling died 1963 in Hamburg, impoverished and isolated from post-war architecture.”

Full title: Der Raum als Membran: ist ein analytisch-kritischer Beitrag zu Fragen zukünftiger Architektur, die über das nackte Bedürfnis hinausgeht und hiermit sich legen möchte in die gestaltende Hand aller Wissenschaft.

First published by C. Dünnhaupt, Dessau, 1926.

New edition
Afterword by Walter Scheiffele
Publisher Spector Books, Leipzig, 2016
Edition Bauhaus, 43
ISBN 9783944669465, 3944669460
47 pages
via Thebaus

Commentary: Walter Scheiffele (2010), Volker Frank (n.d., DE), Luis Palcorbo & Ines Martin-Robles (RA, 2014, ES), James Lowder (2015), Matina Kousidi (Architectural Review, 2015), Matina Kousidi (MD Journal, 2016), Georg Vrachliotis (Arch+, 2016, DE).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (Afterword missing, 5 MB)