one of the journalists present at the party asks in an article in the next edition of Die Form, the architectural review of the Deutscher Werkbund. A debate ensues in the columns of the journal. Some correspondents claim that the whole building is a lapse of political taste, an exercise in bourgeois excess, and that the duty of modern architecture is to house the working class in decent, well-built dwellings like the Weissenhofsiedlung development in Stuttgart or the Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna or the Bata development in Zlin, not to create palaces for plutocrats. Others decry the mean-mindedness of such a critique and extol the purity of line, the austerity of design, the perfection of taste, the sensation they felt (those of them lucky enough to have been invited) of actually being inside a work of art. Still others debate the principle of combining dining area with sitting area, study and library. One correspondent even worries about the intrusion of food smells into the sitting area. ‘What if the lady of the house wishes to rearrange the furniture?’ another asks.
