ABSTRACT
Hans Scharoun returned to Berlin in 1918, soon after the Armistice, hoping that the Technical College would give him credit for the design and construction work he had done during the war, so that he could take advanced classes and complete his studies. Scharoun's first postwar project in 1918 was a small double house near Insterburg that resembles many interwar housing schemes, like those designed and constructed soon afterward by Ernst May in and around Breslau. Surviving paintings and drawings suggest that Scharoun first began to produce crystalline fantasy drawings in 1919, possibly inspired by Bruno Taut's proclamations on behalf of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst, his books Alpine Architektur and Die Stadtkrone, and the correspondence between Taut, Scharoun, and other members of the Crystal Chain. The single most consequential development in Scharoun's belief system after the war was his opposition to technology. Scharoun accompanied his critique of the machine and technology with a parallel critique of pure Rationalism and Functionalism.
