Collaborations with Josef Albers
Josef Albers joined the faculty at Yale as the founding Chairman of the School of Design in 1950. Albers had studied at the Bauhaus from 1920 until 1923 at which time he joined the staff as an assistant to László Moholy-Nagy. In 1925 he became a full master at the Bauhaus, the first student to do so. By 1928, he had become the head of the furniture workshops, succeeding Marcel Breuer. During this time he produced a wide variety of designs in many disciplines, including furniture, glass work, graphic design and even tableware. In 1933, with the Nazi closure of the school, Albers and wife Anni fled Germany. With the help of Philip Johnson, he secured a position as Professor of Painting at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina where he remained until 1949.
At Yale, despite an age difference of 30 years, junior professor of architecture King-lui Wu sought him out as a willing protégé and quickly befriended him. For Wu, now out of Harvard six years, Albers provided another opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge of European modernism. Parallels have been drawn to the explorations of color and perception, which Albers was then beginning in his Homage to the Square series, and the rectilinear designs of Wu’s early work. While the Rouse plan and the early “Homage’s” may seem similar, a direct relationship seems unlikely given that several of Wu’s former classmates from Harvard, now landed in New Canaan, Connecticut, were also exploring similar plans by reducing the house to its most basic form. More likely, these rectilinear compositions shared a common root in Bauhaus ideology.
At Yale, Albers and Wu often discussed issues in design and architecture. Albers had experimented with geometric design in brick previously in 1950 in a commission given to him by Gropius at Harvard, where he, along with other Bauhaus alumni, contributed design elements for the Gropius designed Harkness Commons building. The fireplace that Albers designed for the Graduate Center had made a great impression on Wu. Both men agreed that the fireplace could be a sculptural element in domestic architecture if its design was clearly discernable from that of decorative masonry or the functional aspect of the fireplace. Given his first residential commission by Ben Rouse, Wu was eager to bring these theories into form and enlisted Albers to join him.
Albers turned the full force of his talents to this design, which progressed in the summer of 1954 while he was a visiting instructor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm. Wu provided the dimensions of the individual bricks and fireplace. Enlisting the assistance of Robert Engman, a young Yale sculpture professor, to create small, individual balsa wood “bricks” which were then sent to him in Germany, Albers constructed a series of design variations. Engman reports that Albers composed at least a dozen such variants that he then photographed under various lighting conditions in order to study the interplay of pattern, light and shadow. This was no idle exercise for Albers. The creative output that resulted from these model studies was enlisted for at least three subsequent commissions: a second fireplace for the Wu designed DuPont house (1958-59), the altar wall for St. Patrick’s Church in Oklahoma City (1960), and the Rochester Institute of Technology loggia wall (1967). Wu and Albers would collaborate on two other projects, a façade mural for Wu’s Manuscript Society building (1959-60) and the placement of a large Homage to the Square mural in the Mount Bethel Missionary Baptist Church (1973), both in New Haven. Wu in turn contributed the incongruous design of a sleek, stainless steel railing for the entrance of the Albers’s completely traditional Raised Ranch home in nearby Orange, Connecticut.
Of the two fireplace collaborations, only the Rouse design was constructed as originally designed. Apparently, when explaining the sculptural fireplace concept to the DuPonts, Wu invited the couple to visit the completed Rouse house for illustration. While the DuPonts liked the overall composition of the Rouse design, they considered the degree of the brick projections too severe for their liking. Wu accommodated their wishes, making changes to the final design. While the DuPont fireplace is still a striking feature of the living room, especially benefiting from its freestanding placement, its overall form seems somewhat muted as compared to the greater dynamism of the Rouse design. It remains unclear as to who selected common firebrick for both inside and out for the Rouse fireplace, another striking feature.
In October, 2004 the little known Rouse fireplace received widespread attention when the design was reconstructed in blocks as part of the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s exhibit on Josef and Anni Albers, “Josef + Anni Albers: Designs for Living.” In a fascinating progression, the small design project that had served its intimate role as family fireplace for over 50 years had, by millennium’s end, become a noted artistic creation, worthy of institutional study and viewed by thousands of museum visitors.
At Yale, despite an age difference of 30 years, junior professor of architecture King-lui Wu sought him out as a willing protégé and quickly befriended him. For Wu, now out of Harvard six years, Albers provided another opportunity to gain firsthand knowledge of European modernism. Parallels have been drawn to the explorations of color and perception, which Albers was then beginning in his Homage to the Square series, and the rectilinear designs of Wu’s early work. While the Rouse plan and the early “Homage’s” may seem similar, a direct relationship seems unlikely given that several of Wu’s former classmates from Harvard, now landed in New Canaan, Connecticut, were also exploring similar plans by reducing the house to its most basic form. More likely, these rectilinear compositions shared a common root in Bauhaus ideology.
At Yale, Albers and Wu often discussed issues in design and architecture. Albers had experimented with geometric design in brick previously in 1950 in a commission given to him by Gropius at Harvard, where he, along with other Bauhaus alumni, contributed design elements for the Gropius designed Harkness Commons building. The fireplace that Albers designed for the Graduate Center had made a great impression on Wu. Both men agreed that the fireplace could be a sculptural element in domestic architecture if its design was clearly discernable from that of decorative masonry or the functional aspect of the fireplace. Given his first residential commission by Ben Rouse, Wu was eager to bring these theories into form and enlisted Albers to join him.
Albers turned the full force of his talents to this design, which progressed in the summer of 1954 while he was a visiting instructor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm. Wu provided the dimensions of the individual bricks and fireplace. Enlisting the assistance of Robert Engman, a young Yale sculpture professor, to create small, individual balsa wood “bricks” which were then sent to him in Germany, Albers constructed a series of design variations. Engman reports that Albers composed at least a dozen such variants that he then photographed under various lighting conditions in order to study the interplay of pattern, light and shadow. This was no idle exercise for Albers. The creative output that resulted from these model studies was enlisted for at least three subsequent commissions: a second fireplace for the Wu designed DuPont house (1958-59), the altar wall for St. Patrick’s Church in Oklahoma City (1960), and the Rochester Institute of Technology loggia wall (1967). Wu and Albers would collaborate on two other projects, a façade mural for Wu’s Manuscript Society building (1959-60) and the placement of a large Homage to the Square mural in the Mount Bethel Missionary Baptist Church (1973), both in New Haven. Wu in turn contributed the incongruous design of a sleek, stainless steel railing for the entrance of the Albers’s completely traditional Raised Ranch home in nearby Orange, Connecticut.
Of the two fireplace collaborations, only the Rouse design was constructed as originally designed. Apparently, when explaining the sculptural fireplace concept to the DuPonts, Wu invited the couple to visit the completed Rouse house for illustration. While the DuPonts liked the overall composition of the Rouse design, they considered the degree of the brick projections too severe for their liking. Wu accommodated their wishes, making changes to the final design. While the DuPont fireplace is still a striking feature of the living room, especially benefiting from its freestanding placement, its overall form seems somewhat muted as compared to the greater dynamism of the Rouse design. It remains unclear as to who selected common firebrick for both inside and out for the Rouse fireplace, another striking feature.
In October, 2004 the little known Rouse fireplace received widespread attention when the design was reconstructed in blocks as part of the Cooper Hewitt Museum’s exhibit on Josef and Anni Albers, “Josef + Anni Albers: Designs for Living.” In a fascinating progression, the small design project that had served its intimate role as family fireplace for over 50 years had, by millennium’s end, become a noted artistic creation, worthy of institutional study and viewed by thousands of museum visitors.