PIUS PAHL | Peter-Jan & Tyll Pahl

This episode of bauhaus faces is about the Bauhaus educated architect Pius Pahl. After being trained as carpenter and interior designer, he decided it was time to go to the Bauhaus and become an architect. He studied with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer, who would both become essential for his approach towards designing buildings. Pius Pahl is also one of the students who made the Bauhaus move from Dessau to Berlin. After successfully graduating with his Bauhaus diploma in 1933 he went on a journey to Switzerland, Italy and North Africa before starting to work in different architecture offices. In World War II he was drafted by the military and became a prisoner of war. Although he set up his own building office in 1946 in fear for his four sons to also become soldiers in a war – it was the time of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West – Pius Pahl decided it was time to emigrate. While he wasn’t allowed to go to the US to work with Mies van der Rohe in Chicago (this was his dream) the choice fell on South Africa, because his wife Jeanette was born there and could speak English fluently. Pius, however, struggled during the first years as his language skills were underwhelming. Once he and his family had relocated to Stellenbosch and he had started – once again – his own office, Pius Pahl planned several public and private houses, adapted to the possibilities and materials there. Two of his four sons, Jan-Peter and Tyll Pahl invited me into their houses to talk to me about their father and his work.