FUNCTIONALISM TODAY
I would first like to express my gratitude for the confidence shown me by Adolf Arndt in
his invitation to speak here today. At the same time, I must also express my serious
doubts as to whether I really have the right to speak before you. Métier, expertise in both
matters of handicraft and of technique, counts in your circle for a great deal. And rightly
so. If there is one idea of lasting influence which has developed out of the Werkbund
movement, it is precisely this emphasis on concrete competence as opposed to an
aesthetics removed and isolated from material questions. I am familiar with this dictum
from my own métier, music. There it became a fundamental theorem, thanks to a school
which cultivated close personal relationships with both Adolf Loos and the Bauhaus, and
which was therefore fully aware of its intellectual ties to objectivity (Sachlichkeit)^1 in the
arts. Nevertheless, I can make no claim to competence in matters of architecture. And yet,
I do not resist the temptation, and knowingly face the danger that you may briefly tolerate
me as a dilettante and then cast me aside. I do this firstly because of my pleasure in
presenting some of my reflections in public, and to you in particular; and secondly,
because of Adolf Loos’s comment that while an artwork need not appeal to anyone, a
house is responsible to each and everyone.^2 I am not yet sure whether this statement is in
fact valid, but in the meantime, I need not be holier than the pope.
I find that the style of German reconstruction fills me with a disturbing discontent, one
which many of you may certainly share. Since I no less than the specialists must
constantly face this feeling, I feel justified in examining its foundations. Common
elements between music and architecture have been discussed repeatedly, almost to the
point of ennui. In uniting that which I see in architecture with that which I understand
about the difficulties in music, I may not be transgressing the law of the division of
labour as much as it may seem. But to accomplish this union, I must stand at a greater
distance from these subjects than you may justifiably expect. It seems to me, however,
not unrealistic that at times—in latent crisis situations—it may help to remove oneself
farther from phenomena than the spirit of technical competence would usually allow. The
principle of ‘fittingness to the material’ (Material-gerechtigkeit)^3 rests on the foundation
of the division of labour. Nevertheless, it is advisable even for experts to occasionally
take into account the extent to which their expertise may suffer from just that division of
labour, as the artistic naiveté underlying it can impose its own limitations.
Let me begin with the fact that the anti-ornamental movement has affected the
‘purpose-free’ arts (zweckfreie Künste)^4 as well. It lies in the nature of artworks to inquire
after the essential and necessary in them and to react against all superfluous elements.
After the critical tradition declined to offer the arts a canon of right and wrong, the
responsibility to take such considerations into account was placed on each individual
work; each had to test itself against its own immanent logic, regardless of whether or not
it was motivated by some external purpose. This was by no means a new position.
Mozart, though clearly still standard-bearer and critical representative of the great
tradition, responded in the following way to the minor objection of a member of the royal
family —‘But so many notes, my dear Mozart’—after the premier of his ‘Abduction’
with ‘Not one note more, Your Majesty, than was necessary.’ In his Critique of
Theodor W.Adorno 5