#Ernst neufert book series#

Three hours of intensive labor, then, the designs are collected. The spatial requirements are known to the students. Training workshops and residential studios are to be attached to it. Then the instructor selects a few narrowly focused tasks and develops the following program in collaboration with the audience:ДЄ new building for the Bauhochschule is to be designed on a recently visited building site.

#Ernst neufert book series#

The instructor of the course speaks about the class of buildings known as вЂњschoolsвЂќ and develops a series of economic, organizational and spatial questions out of their pedagogical and human meaning that are based on examples of executed buildings from the period.

The academic catalog from 1929 described the class: The academic catalog from 1929 described the class: Schnellentwerfen (fast design), which allowed a very limited time to develop architectural solutions to a given brief. Here, a compulsory module for new students was Schnellentwerfen (fast design), which allowed a very limited time to develop architectural solutions to a given brief. NeufertвЂ™s involvement in the standardization of architectural dimensions and building practices, for which he is best known, started in 1926, when he began teaching at the Staatliche Bauhochschule in Weimar. By 1944 Neufert was in charge of planning the entire postwar reconstruction of GermanyвЂ™s war-ravaged cities. The standards he developed and promoted were duly incorporated into the NazisвЂ™ building plans, both at home and in occupied territories.

For Speer, who was then HitlerвЂ™s general building inspector for the ReichвЂ™s capital city, he worked on the categorization, standardization, and rationalization of BerlinвЂ™s residential buildings. NeufertвЂ™s collaboration with Albert Speer began in 1938. Even in terms of his career choices, Neufert exhibited what would become the main paradox of his life: an exceptional pursuit of the norm. The post he accepted under the regime was that of resident architect atВ the United Lusatia Glassworks (Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke). But even his seemingly nonconformist choice to stay in Germany was a form of conformism-a largely apolitical act. NeufertвЂ™s life story might then have echoed many of his colleagues: educated in Germany, ascending to stardom in the United States. Д®migration to the US after the Nazi takeover in 1933 would have been the logical next step. As of 2016, it is in its forty-first German edition, has been translated into seventeen languages, and has sold over 500,000 copies. It contains all the necessary information to design and execute works of architecture. There is probably no architect who has not used Neufert, whether as a didactic tool or as a volume of references. If the importance of an architect equals the extent to which his work lives on in others, Neufert is the most important of the twentieth century. His built output-a few industrial complexes, some housing projects, and the Quelle Mail Order headquarters in Nuremberg-is not much to speak of, but his name is known to every practicing architect: Ernst Neufert, author of ArchitectвЂ™s Data, more commonly referred to as Neufert. Was he an architect, a teacher, or something larger than both? In examining Neufert's ardent pursuit of the 'norm', De Graaf sheds light on the impact and enduring legacy of the author of ArchitectвЂ™s Data. In this excerpt from Reinier de Graaf's new book Four Walls and a Roof: The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession (Harvard University Press), the all-pervasive work and pedagogical practice of Ernst Neufert is put under the spotlight.