The City Crown by Bruno Taut

Book excerpt: This book is the first English translation of the German architect, Bruno Taut’s early twentieth century anthology Die Stadtkrone (The City Crown). Written with World War I in mind, Taut developed The City Crown to promote a utopian urban concept where people would live in a garden city of 'apolitical socialism' and peaceful collaboration around a single purpose-free crystalline structure. Taut’s proposal sought to advance the garden city idea of Ebenezer Howard and rural aesthetic of Camillo Sitte’s urban planning schemes by merging them with his own ‘city crown’ concept. The book also contains contributions by the Expressionist poet Paul Scheerbart, Eric Baron and the architectural critic Adolf Behne.