Interview transcription
Excerpt from the Berlin Design Guide, 2013

In your own words, what exactly is the Taut´s Home (Tautes Heim)?
The project Taut´s Home is architecture and design history you can touch - and a project by lovers for lovers: the listed house is part of the Hufeisensiedlung, which was designed by Bruno Taut in the mid-1920s and then designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. Nowhere is this legacy of the internationally famous icon of urban design as complete and well preserved as here. And visitors interested in architecture and history can now rent this as a holiday home. The minimum rental period is three nights.

Can you explain the German name "Tautes Heim"?
Well, this is difficult, since you can not translate our motto literally. The name goes back to a very popular German saying "Tautes Heim - Glück allein", which is perhaps a bit similar to "Home Sweet Home" – an idiom that identifies nicely kept surroundings as the source of true happiness. The part "Tautes" refers to the name of the architect of course, but we left out the "r" which would turn it into a rarely used old-fashioned adjective for familiar, cosy and well known. The reason we went for this word play is that Bruno Taut´s writings about interior design became so popular in the late 1920s, that people and influencers at that time in fact created a neologism "to tauten" your home, which would mean, leaving out all those aspects of overcome false representation and approaching the style of emerging 1920s modernism with a strong focus on functionality and strong vital colours.

What exactly can you experience here?
The house has the character of a journey through time. It conveys the spirit of optimism in design, architecture and society by reviving a typical 1920s interior similar to the ones proposed by the architect Bruno Taut and fellow architects from the Bauhaus era. And it does so with almost every detail and in the context of the very typical, striking colour scheme of Bruno Taut, who is not called the "master of colourful building" for nothing. Older visitors, neighbours and art-interested guests will find a lot of things familiar, be it from grandma's kitchen equipment or from design collections and reference books. Another point is the very green and contemplatively relaxed surroundings, despite the fast transport connections to the city. The Hufeisensiedlung ("Horseshoe Estate") is considered a key work of reform-oriented urban housing. Its layout follows the then popular slogan of healthy living close to the city with "light, air and sun". This can also be experienced very well here - with a view of the apple trees in front of the house.

How did the idea for this come about?
We are both very involved in monument conservation - in general and specifically on site: my wife Katrin Lesser [www.katrin-lesser.de] as a landscape architect, expert and author - me as a graphic and exhibition designer, curator and publisher with a focus on contemporary and cultural history [www.linkedin.com/ben.buschfeld]. We have lived in the estate for 15 years and know many of the houses from the inside. When we first entered the semi-detached terraced house at the end of the row in the 6th building section of the World Heritage - which was quite run-down at the time and for sale - we were amazed at how much original substance was still there. Apart from a tiled stove [which has since been rebuilt from the estate's stock] and one or two window handles, everything was actually there. That's sensational and we immediately looked for a way to preserve it and make it possible to experience it again.

How did you go about it?
The implementation is a longer story: In 2007, Katrin and I had already developed a concept for a website database. Its goal was to translate existing catalogues of measures for the preservation of historical monuments in a generally understandable way so that residents could get all the details about the preservation of their respective types of façades, windows, entrances and gardens in accordance with the preservation order themselves. This was an obvious step, because after the privatisation of the once municipal housing company GEHAG in 1998, a large part of the almost 700 terraced houses was successively converted into individual ownership from 2000 onwards. The official monument preservation authorities were completely overwhelmed with the situation and the new house owners simply lacked information. My idea was to take this already detailed knowledge out of the shelves and Leitz folders of the understaffed licensing authority and, with the help of the internet, to communicate it in a media- and target group-oriented way so that everyone has the same uncomplicated access to well-founded information. I then refined this concept more and more in dialogue with the office of Winfried Brenne Architekten [which specialises in housing developments of the 1920s], Katrin [as a surveyor and expert for the green and open spaces] and the Berlin State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, and then created corresponding design and detail concepts. A little later, together with a few other committed neighbours, we founded the "Friends and Supporters of the Hufeisensiedlung" association to acquire funding for this rather ambitious project. This acquisition took a while. But in 2009, within the framework of the federal funding programme "National World Heritage Sites", we succeeded in implementing a corresponding website with almost 2,000 house- and apartment-specific monument preservation plans [see www.hufeisensiedlung.info]

And then you wanted to know what the houses looked like inside?
Exactly. With this model project, we had implemented a - to my knowledge, with this degree of detail - new kind of online monument mediation. At the same time, we had the theoretical framework for all the details that is needed for the restoration, upgrading and repair of the houses outer skin and facades. But all the more exciting for Katrin and me now was the question of what the coloured, well-researched façades actually looked like back then. In addition, it was also clear to us: as detailed as the database might be, nothing would communicate as directly and vividly as a model project where all the repairs were carried out in a way that was highly appropriate for a listed building. When a very run-down house with a lot of original substance went up for sale, this was the chance to put this knowledge into practice. So we turned our curious gaze to the interiors and asked ourselves what Bruno Taut had planned or envisaged for them. This was also a major undertaking, because the design of Taut's interiors during the building period had never been systematically researched before. All previous research had simply stopped at the flat door. This is where a lot of research and heart and soul went into the next two years. First, we removed all layers that were not from the building period, renovated and restored everything, and then had the individual layers of paint examined by a restorer. Our goal in each case was to restore the colourful first version from 1929/30. For the experts, the most astonishing features here were certainly the occasional red struts of the staircase banister and the blue ceiling in the kitchen. We then continued our research and looked for furniture and fittings that were typical of the period and as original as possible. If there was nothing suitable, we redesigned objects based on historical photos and had the carpenter construct them. Except for the insulation of the concrete monopitch roof, which is in keeping with the preservation order, we did all the design and planning work ourselves and - where possible - also undertook much of the craftsmanship ourselves. However, there were individual construction tasks that we subcontracted to specialised restorers and craftsmen. The whole thing took exactly two years. We hope to recoup the costs over a longer period of time by renting out the building as a habitable museum with house, interior and garden. Since we have not received any public funding, renting out the house is two things: on the one hand, it is an idea for an even more vivid presentation, and on the other hand, it is a kind of "business model" for our quasi purely privately operated museum and show house.

What was the biggest challenge in the project?
A planning challenge resulting specifically from the claim and the "business model" was to find the right balance between modern user comfort for our overnight guests and the highly authentic interiors, furniture and equipment from the 1920s. To do this, we had to consider where to install which technology and, if necessary, cleverly hide it. A second challenge was the search for historically sound models and original furnishings. This is very difficult and revealing, especially in Bruno Taut's case, since he - unlike Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, for example - did not propagate a modern design line in the Bauhaus style in a sweeping and quite simple manner. Rather, Bruno Taut tried to pick up people's existing taste in furniture and to lead them from there onto more modern paths. This reflects very directly the furnishing taste of the Weimar Republic, the early reform-orientated ideas of emerging modernism and the transition to "New Objectivity", "Classical Modernism" and the "International Style". We also wanted to show this ambivalence and how 1920s formal idioms and legacy emerged slowly. To furnish the house puristically only with some Bauhaus-like re-editions or - as in most holiday homes 'pragmatic, practical, sufficient' - to operate with energy-saving lights, ceramic hobs, Ikea & Co. would have been too simplistic and inaccurate for us. In fact, we had to make relatively few compromises. In terms of construction, it was very exciting to see how the "magnesite flooring", typical at the beginning of the 20th century, was touched up and recreated in the kitchen according to a historical recipe (half wood / half stone) by one of the last experts still practising this. And then, of course - as with every building site - there were the two typical challenges of planning and construction management. Here the pitfall is always in the detail. Fortunately, we were both able to contribute certain professional skills, contacts and a fairly high degree of prior knowledge about the settlement, and thus we also complemented each other well professionally: Katrin as a garden architect, scientist and site manager - me as a designer with photography, programming and PR experience.

What are the details you like most?
Well, the house is a lot about colours. My two personal favourite objects are probably blue: on the one hand, the small tiled stove in the yellow chamber facing the garden, made of tiles glazed in a beautiful deep ink blue. The other is the intense, bright, slightly reddish cobalt blue of the bedroom walls. And this especially in the interplay with the large folding bed - reconstructed by us from old photos and realised by the carpenter with contrasting components. But also the garden with several replanted fruit trees, the wild rose hedge and the perennial beds has grown very nicely in the course of this spring. A very special piece is, of course, the crochet picture "Tautes Heim - Glück allein" (Tautes Home - Happiness Alone) made by Katrin, which is to be understood half programmatically, half ironically, and which we have virtually declared our motto as well as our brand and domain name. And my very latest favourite piece is a recently acquired and refurbished Bakelite radio by Mende from 1932 with a beautifully typographed luminous scale - plus an Mini audio jack "hidden" at the radios backside ...

Interview transcription Excerpt from the Berlin Design Guide, 2013

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Interview transcription
Excerpt from the Berlin Design Guide, 2013