A new novel set within the looking glass

On a steep slope overlooking Brno stands a modernist architectural masterpiece: the Tugendhat House. It is this remarkable building that provided Simon Mawer with inspiration for his most recent novel, The Glass Room, short-listed for this year's Man Booker prize, one of the world's most prestigious literary awards.

"Anything that is interesting is a possible subject for a novel," says Mawer. "And the temptation to fill the house with a family of my own creation became overwhelming. It was the next best thing to actually living in the house."

Villa Tugendhat was the brainchild of Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, who, along with Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the most important architects of the 20th century. Stark and austere, the villa exemplifies understatement rather than ornament: unsurprising given that Mies was famed for his use of the aphorism, "Less is more."

The house's most striking feature is its ground floor: one free-flowing, open space connected to the outside by floor-to-ceiling glass walls. It is this vast living area that became the basis for the glass room that features so prominently in Mawer's book.

"My initial impression of the Villa Tugendhat was as vivid as subsequent ones," says Mawer. "I had the sensation of actually walking into a work of art. Usually with three-dimensional art, you walk around the piece, perhaps looking into it but rarely actually entering it. ? It was, and is, an astonishing experience."

Novels cannot be inhabited by buildings alone. So it is unsurprising then that it was only after uncovering more about the former occupants of the house that Mawer's imagination really caught fire.

"My experience of the house was influenced by what I knew about it. On that first visit, I knew almost nothing. On subsequent visits, I had discovered something about the Tugendhat family, and my perspective changed."

The Glass Room initially follows the fortunes of the young newlyweds Viktor and Liesel Landauer. Like the real-life Tugendhats, they commission a charismatic architect - who believes ornament to be a crime - to design them a unique home. Viktor, a firm advocate of pokrok and inovace (progress and innovation) is keen the building should embody the spirit of optimism prevalent in the young Czechoslovakia of the interwar period.

"We have a new direction to take, a new world to make," he declares. "We are neither German nor Slav. We can choose our history."

As the political events of the 1930s take a disturbing turn and Viktor's vision of "a world of peace and trade where the only battles fought are for market share" proves false, cracks also begin to surface in the Landauers' marriage. Viktor embarks on an affair with a pretty Viennese milliner. Liesel, on the other hand, seeks solace in a lesbian dalliance with her feisty confidante Hana Hanáková. While the couple may once have been delighted with "der Glasraum, der Glastraum" (the glass space, the glass dream), it eventually becomes the setting for Liesel's nightmares, which force her to witness her husband's infidelity.

Ultimately, the real main character of the novel is the eponymous glass room itself. Once the Landauers are forced to flee, we watch as new figures carry out their assignations within its walls as the building itself serves first as a laboratory where the Nazis conduct genetic experiments, a sanatorium and finally a museum. As the novelist Ian Sansom recently wrote in The Guardian, "The Glass Room is not merely a piece of architecture within a book: It is the architecture of the book."

The Glass Room has recently been translated into Czech, which Mawer finds pleasing.

"To me, that seems like a stamp of authenticity," he said. "If it can impress a Czech publisher sufficiently, then I must have got some things right."

The Tugendhat Villa managed to survive the ravages of war and the clumsy attempts at restoration during the communist era. However, despite its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the building remains in need of extensive repair. Renovations have been planned since 2004 but have been repeatedly delayed. They are now scheduled to begin early next year.

The renewed interest in the building created by Mawer's novel may help focus attention on its plight and ensure that the efforts made to preserve it as a source of inspiration for future generations are finally realized. Then again, perhaps this is too much to hope for.

As Hana Hanáková warns toward the book's conclusion, "Don't be fooled by the Glass Room. It is only as rational as the people who inhabit it."

Lisette Allen can be reached at
features@praguepost.com