a local bar) constituted my first, accidental encounter
with Bruno Taut's work. In the spring of 1991, I spent a
month in Berlin, writing, as it happens, about a colorist
of a different sort, the Russian Constructivist painter
Lyubov Popova. I explored as many quarters of the city
as I could, using museums and Muthesius, admirer and
author of the 1904 paean to English vernacular houses,
Das englische Haus, as my beacons. On one such
jaunt, to the Zehlendorf district, I found myself suddenly
in a veritable forest of trees, foliage, flowers and ferns,
punctuated with buildings, tall, plain and luminous,
painted sky blue, pale yellow, periwinkle or pale green.
HYLAND
