Bruno Taut

Tucked away in the unassuming Goethe Institut on St Kilda Road is an exhibition on Berlin architect Bruno Taut. An unconventional artist with a social conscience, Taut was forced into exile by the Nazis in 1933 but he had the last laugh: today the towering council flats he created are listed as UNESCO heritage buildings and regarded as icons of German modernism.

Unless you're an architect or a Berliner, you probably won't have heard of Taut. Working in the first three decades of the twentieth century, he designed housing estates defined by a desire to raise the living standards of the working classes, incorporating features such as communal gardens and a balcony for every dwelling. These are now so ubiquitous that it takes imagination to appreciate how original his designs were in an era of squalid tenements, when natural light was seen as an uncalled-for indulgence in public housing.

The interior of the Goethe Institut is small and the show is held in the reception area, a corridor and the library, making it hard to follow the panels in order. These are informative but not extensive; there's surprisingly little mention of Taut's utopian leanings, and some of his work doesn’t feature – such as his fantastical sketches for the Alpine Architecture series – but it's still clear that this is an exhibition about a fascinating and unfairly neglected figure.

Many of Taut's designs look so contemporary you could be forgiven for thinking they were recent builds. One long, low, ultra-modern industrial design caught my eye: if I saw it on the street I would assume it was from the 70s. Taut devised it in 1914.

It's a lot harder to miss some of Taut's most famous creations. Many of the state housing commissions that he designed are still in use, painted in the bold, vibrant colours he stipulated: from royal blue and coral to crimson and yellow.

Taut’s gleeful use of colour wasn’t appreciated by everyone in his time: Le Corbusier is reputed to have snootily exclaimed “My God, Taut is colourblind!” upon seeing some of his works. But from afar today, these ‘paintbox estates’ with names like The Horseshoe and Onkel Toms Hütte (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) have an irresistibly playful look, as though left over from a more innocent age.

Unfortunately this was far from the case. After fleeing the Nazis, Taut travelled to Japan and Turkey. Although they influenced him considerably, there is no sign of his eastern travels in the Berlin architecture on display, as Taut was never able to return to work in Germany, dying in Turkey in 1938.

There's something poignant about this exhibition: its low-key venue, the generally unknown status of Taut and the fact that the range of his work presented is limited. Its modesty reflects the experiences of so many artists of this era, whose work was stifled by a repressive regime, and whom we thankfully now have an opportunity to rediscover.

Rating: 3 stars

Bruno Taut
Goethe-Institut Australien, Melbourne
November 25, 2011–March 4, 2012
For more information, visit www.goethe.de