"In this reinforced concrete theatre, built expressly for the Werkbund Exhibition, van de Velde succeeded in creating a theatrical space which was capable of accommodating a wide variety of dramatic performances ranging from modest pageant plays to symbolist and realist pieces which were more suited to the proscenium stage. Its mass wall and reinforced concrete frame construction, rendered over so as to form an homogenous and plastic expression, was to serve as a point of departure for the postwar work of Eric Mendelsohn; above all for the small observatory that Mendelsohn built for Einstein in Potsdam in 1920. The brooding telluric mass of the Werkbund theatre, reminiscent in many respects of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical form, was to mark that point in van de Velde's career when the more animate 'form force' aesthetic of his early furniture gave way to the much more solid, not to say ponderous expression."

— Kenneth Frampton and Yukio Futagawa. Modern Architecture 1851-1945. p191.