Minimum Dwellings: Otto Neurath and Karel Teige on Architecture

Abstract

Whilst the Vienna Circle had virtually no impact on the Czech-speaking philosophical community during the 1930s, one can find a curious meeting point in the field of the theory of architecture. There is now an increasing literature on Otto Neurath as a theorist of architecture and urbanism, one who emphasized the social aspects of modern building and approached architecture from his idiosyncratic view of Marxism interpreted as a physicalistic social science. It is less well known that a young Czech architecture critic and theorist, Karel Teige, cultivated strikingly similar views during the same period — the 1920s and 1930s — albeit without any knowledge either of Neurath’s thought in particular, or for that matter the Vienna Circle in general. This essay reveals both the similarities and differences between Neurath and Teige on Marxism, science, architecture and the Bauhaus, as well as a discussion of the relations of both with their contemporaries, most importantly Adolf Loos, Josef Frank and Hannes Meyer.