served as a guideline for future developments. In fact, he uses his descriptions of the
new experiences of space to constitute the foundation of the new architecture,
which he recognizes in the idea of Durchdringung(figure 7). The term is used in dif-
ferent constellations. First and foremost it is used as a description of various spatial
configurations: the penetrating of a fairly well-defined volume by an element of much
smaller proportions, as for instance with Mart Stam’s design for the Rokin in Am-
sterdam in 1926;^22 the intermingling of spaces on various levels through the partial
absence of floors, or of interior and exterior space through the use of transparent
walls, as in a number of Le Corbusier’s houses (figures 8 and 9);^23 the interpenetra-
tion of equivalent volumes so that the building is composed of various juxtaposed
volumes that are interlocked in such a way that the borders between one and the
other are no longer clearly defined, as in Gropius’s Bauhaus.
For Giedion, Durchdringung thus refers to an essential characteristic of the
new architecture: its capacity to interrelate different aspects of space with one an-
other.^24 Giedion was not the only one to attach such an importance to the idea of
Durchdringung. László Moholy-Nagy, who was the book designer of Bauen in
Frankreich, also took the idea of spatial interpenetration to be the hallmark of the fu-
ture architecture. In his own book from 1929, Von Material bis Architektur, which is
2
Constructing the Modern Movement6
Robert Delaunay, Tour Eiffel, 1909–1910.
(Emanuel Hoffmann-Stiftung, Basel;
photo: Oeffentliche Kunstsammlung
Basel, Martin Bühler.)