Tugendhat Villa: Cultural Center, Tourist Destination, and World Heritage Site in the Czech Republic

The ancient city of Brno and its environs delight residents and visitors of the Czech Republic’s South Moravian Region with such landmarks as:

• Brno Exhibition Centre;
• Brno Ossuary;
• Brno Planetarium;
• Cabbage Market;
• Capuchin Monastery;
• Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul;
• Janaček, Mahen, and Reduta Theatres;
• Masaryk Circuit;
• Masaryk University;
• Old Town Hall;
• Red Church;
• Špilberk Castle;
• Veveří Castle on the River Svratka.

They draw wildlife-lovers to such landforms as;

• Balcarka, Kateřinská, Punkva, Sloupsko-Šošůvské, and Výpustek Caves;
• Brno Reservoir;
• Brno Zoological Gardens;
• Denisovy Sady and Lužánky Parks;
• Macocha Abyss.

But the city’s most iconic site is Villa Tugendhat, respective recipient of National List of Cultural Heritage and UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1969 and 2001.

The moneyed neighborhood of Černá Pole (Schwarzstrasse, "Black-field") acts as the physical address for Villa Tugendhat. The residential section historically appeals to residents because of its location on one of Brno’s picturesque hills. The villa in fact claims many of the neighborhood’s most spectacular views of the city and the landscape. Street access draws upon the home’s top-most floor. It gives no idea of the enormity of:

• The 27,986.17 square feet (2,600 square meters) of total structural area apportioned over three levels and built into a southwest-facing, steep slope;
• The 21,527.82 square feet (2,000 square meters) of total land bordering the property of in-laws, serving as a wedding gift, and supporting a meadow’s herbaceous and woody plants.  

The north, street-level entrance to the flat-roofed, white-walled structure #45 accesses the top-most floor with:

• Balcony/terrace for child car-driving, sandbox-playing, and skating;
• Chauffeur Gustav Lössl’s (1904 – 1941?) quarters;
• Electric eye-controlled fencing;
• Family’s bath (child, master) and bedrooms (Fritz [1895 - 1958], Greta [1903 - 1970], Ernst [born 1930] and Herbert [1933 - 1980], and Hanna [1924 - 1991];
• Nanny Irene Kalkofen’s (1909 – 2004) bedroom;
• Two-car garage.

The middle floor accommodates:

• Conservatory, dining, living, library/study, music room, reception, winter garden;
• Kitchen, pantry, storeroom;
• Maid's quarters;
• Terrace.

The bottom-most floor acts as:

• Boiler room for cooling, humidifying, warming;
• Cellar for fruits and vegetables;
• Dark room for Fritz’s amateur film-making and picture-taking;
• Laundry room;
• Storage for fur coats;
• Tool closet.

The Löw-Beer Villa can be considered a family home for Grete, older brother Max Alfred (1902 – 1954), and younger brother Hans (1911 – 1993). It still can be viewed at #22:

• On what is now Drobného Street, but was then Sadová-Parkstrasse;
• Proximitous to #26, the villa built in 1862 by Ingolstadt-born German engineer and stonemason Josef Arnold (1824 – 1887) and reconfigured architecturally into Art Deco and Art Nouveau in 1909 – 1915 by Alfred’s sister Cecílie and her husband, Brno lawyer and Maloměřice Cement Works co-owner Kornelius Hože (died 1936).

It was designed by Heinzendorf-born Austrian architect Alexander Neumann (1861 – 1947) for textile industrialist Moritz Fuhrmann (1850 – 1910). It was purchased from Moritz’s sons in 1913 by Grete’s father.

All stories claim;

• Brick masonry, concrete bases and walls, reinforced ceilings, and steel column construction;
• Cedar chip- and sea salt-cleaned air;
• Ceiling-to-floor doors;
• Internal stairway access.

They face a sloping lawn:

• Adorned with garden roses and old trees;
• Crisscrossed by trails for winter skiing and sledding;
• Enriched by previous uses as a park and a vineyard.

But the middle level has particularly exceptional views -- through 16.40- x 11.48-foot (5- x 3.5-meter) roll-down/roll-up windows -- of the Art Nouveau-style mansion of #45’s neighbors to the south, Alfred Löw-Beer (1872 – 1939) and Marianne Wiedmann (1882 - ?). It indeed is thanks to Grete’s parents giving the deed and paying all expenses (5,000,000 crowns today) that Villa Tugendhat exists.

Despite her father’s Art Nouveau predilections, Grete chose Aachen-born German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886 – 1969) as Villa Tugendhat’s designer. Despite Grete’s preferences for his hard-burned brick-styled Wolf House of 1925 – 1927 in Gubin, Mies constructed the world’s first-known steel-supported residence. He consulted Berlin-born German designer Lilly Reich (1885 – 1947) and St. Petersburg-born Russian architect Sergius Ruegenberg (1903 – 1996) about:

• Furnishings from hand-woven natural wool rugs, Persian carpets, shantung and velvet curtains;
• Furniture of glass, strip and tubular steel, wicker, wood (pear-wood, rosewood, zebra-wood) with leather, sheepskin, velvet upholsteries.  

He drew upon:

• Artur and Mořic Eisler Construction Company;
• Bamberg Metallwerkstätten;
• Berliner Metallwerke Josef Müller;
• Deutsche Linoleum-Werke;
• Garden architect Markéta Roderová-Müllerová (1898 – 1981);
• Standard Flat Company.

Visitors sometimes ask whether Villa Tugendhat is a homey house or a wannabe office.  The building’s elegant functionalism can go either way. But it epitomizes Mies’s definition of a house as harmonizing:

• Construction materials;
• Geographic location;
• Solar positioning;
• Spatial configuration.

Its quintessential homeyness has as its most conversation-, nature-, and people-friendly expressions:

• Glazed milk, Makassar ebony, and white-veined onyx delimitations of dining, living, and study spaces;
• Intriguing frontage in a historic neighborhood of mansions and parks;
• Magnificent exposures to and views of moon, stars, and sun;
• Southward orientation toward gardens for sniffing, lawns for traversing, and terraces for unwinding.

What made it a one-of-a-kind dwelling indeed makes Villa Tugendhat an unforgettable venue for culture- and history-seeking guests.

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet. 

aerial photo of Špilberk Castle in Brno: Michal Maňas (User:Snek01), CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spilberk_Castle_from_plane.jpg

ulice Černopolní (Cernopolni Street): Harold at cs Wikipedia, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brno,_Černá_Pole,_Černopolní,_vila_Tugendhat_(02).jpg

Černá Pole, northeastern Brno, southeastern Czech Republic: Mr Hyde at the cs: wikipedia, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vila_Tugendhat.jpg

Villa Tugendhat: interior: Tangus, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kitchen,_Vila_Tugendhat.jpg

street level access to Villa Tugendhat: Rory Hyde (roryrory), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/roryrory/2444893699/

Villa Tugendhat: interior: Wendy from New York, USA, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tugendhat_zevnitr.jpg

Villa Tugendhat interior: Lehotsky, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Václav_Klaus_a_Ivan_Gašparovič_ve_vile_Tugendhat_2013-03-06_4836a_vila.jpg

Villa Tugendhat: Martin Strachoň (Bazi) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:V%C3%A1clav_Klaus_a_Ivan_Ga%C5%A1parovi%C4%8D_ve_vile_Tugendhat_2013-03-06_4836a_vila.jpg

Jacob Fries, "Villa Tugendhat- Mies van der Rohe & Philip Glass," YouTube, May 14, 2012, @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sD-0kEWHqA

Villa Tugendhat in December: Jean-Claude Brunner, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Villa_Tugendhat_side.JPG

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