Taurus, the sacrificial bull, is even-tempered, good-natured and slow to anger, however, on occasion, is prone to violent outbursts of rage. Saddam Hussein is a Taurus. So is Sigmund Freud. This explains the Taurus' interest in the subconscious. But as a general rule the Taurus is more interested in the material and the corporeal than the intellectual.
With a cultivated sense of aesthetic, both Bruno Taut and Gordon Bunshaft, although two incredibly different architects, possess the Taurus loves of color and jewel-like form and structure. This is reflected in Taut's Glass Pavilion for which he is most known. A crystal-come-acorn form emerges out of a concrete base, its fractal like form spiraling upward toward the sky—an influence on Mies' glass skyscraper projects. If ever an architectural jewel Bunshaft's Beinecke Rare Books Library glows like fire, eternal embers house the words of time. The building looks great on postcards and harkens back to Mies translucent alabaster wall used in the Tugendhat House.
Bunshaft, from the industrial working class town and architectural bastion of Buffalo, New York, arrived in Manhattan and found himself working for the man; S.O.M. Despite his own success he remained, with the stubborn loyalty of a Taurus, working for the firm for the remainder of his architectural career. Yet like the Bull, Bunshaft also knew how to take charge and get what he wanted. He nominated himself for the 1988 Pritzker Prize, and won.
Bunshaft was a conceptual and structural innovator disguised in corporate attire. His Beinecke Library, Lever House, Marine Midland Bank, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, each left distinctive mark on modern American architecture. The Taurus is competitive. Having learnt his lessons from Mies, Bunshaft arrives on Park Avenue with Lever House several years before the Seagram Building, revolutionized public space in New York.
Bunshaft and Taut shared a passion for art and color. Many of Bunshaft's buildings reserve space for the public display of art. Bruno Taut spent his career torn between the disciplines of painting and architecture yet found ways to marry the two together.
A utopian visionary, yet was grounded in the pragmatics of practice, Taut was heavily influenced by the English 'Garden City'. He designed and built social housing estates for which he is relatively unknown, often painted in a bright range of colors, combining modern construction materials, specifically steel and glass block, with traditional German use of wood and masonry. This is exemplified in his Horseshoe Housing Estate—the Hufeisensiedlung, 1925. Here, the semi circular form encloses a communal garden with a sunken lake. Flat modern roofs contrast with the traditional pitched roof of the houses that surround them. This Estate represents Taut's idealization of country life at the edge of the city, along with a late 19th century sense of eclecticism.
Taut was affiliated with the Deutscher Werkbund. As an agrarian Taurus and grounded as an earth sign, he was heavily invested in the notion of toiling, yielding and fertilizing through creative endeavor, working toward the betterment of the German 'Volk'.
As one of the most influential conceptual artists of his time, Dan Graham first emerged in the 1960s alongside the Minimalists. His work crosses multiple mediums including performance, film and video, exploring shifts in individual and group consciousness and the limits of public and private space. This has evolved into the installations and pavilions for which Graham is most internationally famous. All his projects are democratically rooted in everyday urban life.
Jessica Russell studied and practiced art in Melbourne, Australia, where she also worked in film and television before relocating to New York where she currently studies architecture at The Cooper Union.