Haus am Horn – A System House for the Modern Couple

Georg Muche, Haus am Horn, 1923
(A3; 42×29,7cm)

This house, a monument to the phallic guilt complex of modern patriarchal architecture, lives in a place of rich historical meaning for a certain variety of people. The hypothetical new owners, formers employees of the local financial institute which co-financed the costly renovation and restoration of this model building for the system family, exerting their ownership rights and overriding certain restrictive laws concerning historical hallmark structures, tried to add to the concept by painting the building a strange variety of pink, and placing a gaily painted totem pole of western American red cedar in the style of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America on the premises. A nice wooden smell wafts through the area which is repellent to the common clothes moth, tineola bisselliella.

Looking at photographs of the original edifice, one is befallen by a baffling mixture of internal reactions. The masculinity of the design coexists with a maternal womb-like character achieved. The legend of the immortal uterus turned into stone. A 1923 drawing by Farkas Molnár, entitled “Georg and El Muche and the Haus am Horn” reveals a certain hetero-erotic dream aspect of the original concept. Before the erection (sic!) of the building, the land served as a vegetable garden for the local school for architects. Look at this 2016 drawing. Discern the different symbolic items distributed over the picture. A pole, a hose, a ball, a wall, a building. Generic vegetation. A Mark 1 inoculator floating in the sky above the chimney.Atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the International Wedding Ring

Advertisement