Eric Parry on the Glashaus

I’ve only ever known Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion through photographs and drawings, and they are always in black and white. But you have to imagine it as full of colour. Having climbed the concrete steps you would enter the dome where the roof was a grid of diamonds in yellow glass. Under your feet there was glass in the floor and a set of stairs to a level below, illuminated by an oculus. There the walls were silver and gold and a waterfall cascaded over underwater lights. It was a luminous world.