The development of modern architecture follows a diversity of paths much like the fast splintering veins of lightning breaking through the atmosphere seeking opportunities for discharge. There is a sense of rushing through a vast unknown where the only touch points, aside from a fast receding point of origin, are others falling through the same space. From the Arts and Crafts movement through the Bauhaus school, modernism splinters from traditional forms and craftsmanship into the unknown of the industrial age and finds every which way of responding as it reaches for some sort of release.
I spoke earlier of two root forces of thought that started the chain of reactions, Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, responding to the question of what to do with the influx of new materials and methods; their heirs in subsequent decades are many, but the earliest are probably the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau. William Morris (1834-1896) in England, squarely in Ruskin’s camp, anchored the Arts and Crafts movement with his vision for the arts as a force for the transformation of society. He established his influence through his fierce commitment to an understanding of craft and its highest forms, creating products through his workshop that were meant to educate the public in the arts (Harvey and Press 1995). His response to the mass production machine taking hold at the time translated to counterparts in other European countries, such as the Werkbund in Germany, and influenced others including Art Nouveau. It became a voice to which later movements would continually have to form an answer.
Art Nouveau was perhaps the first descendant of Viollet-le-Duc’s willingness to incorporate new materials into architecture and give them equal standing and prominence alongside traditional materials. Whereas le-Duc’s attempts at such design were less than attractive, Art Nouveau—particularly in France and Belgium--enlivened materials such as iron with fluid organic forms and lines rooted in new symbolist thinking that merged object and ornament, taking from nature but moving away from direct representation. In Paris and in Brussels this resulted in a distinct style furthered by architects such as Victor Horta (1861-1947).
But Art Nouveau was part of the same discourse as the Arts and Crafts movement; more than just a style, it was another side of the debate, with proponents such as Van de Velde (1863-1957) appreciating the ideals of Arts and Crafts, but arguing that mass production was here to stay and would have to be incorporated in the arts. Thus there were architects who straddled both movements, sometimes shifting one way or the other. Germany’s translation of the movement, the Jugendstil, for example, leaned more towards Arts and Crafts; Peter Behrens (1868-1940) exemplifies someone who shifted away from Arts and Crafts, giving structure bold expression in his own classicist way. In Holland, Berlage (1856-1934) subscribed to the rationalism and structural expression of Viollet-le-Duc, but looked down on the floral Art Nouveau of France and Belgium.
Art Nouveau set in motion a line of thinking rooted in the acceptance of the new and a departure from representation that would further evolve and find expression in many subsequent movements, including The Amsterdam School and De Stijl in Holland, where Art Nouveau was called Nieuwe Kunst. De Wit discusses how Nieuwe Kunst suggested the architect could explore the creation of communal art through either an individual spiritual process or an organic process based on the laws of nature (De Wit, 1983, p. 34-35). The Amsterdam School developed the former, De Stijl the latter, although neither was purely one or the other. It is important to note the context within which this development occurred—that of the revolutionary, utopian spirit that followed the First World War and the growth of socialist governments in Europe. The Amsterdam School in particular struggled with the tension between the ideal of a communal art beneficial to society as a whole and the role of the individual in the creation of that art. Emphasizing individual expression, members of the school subscribed to the idea that the role of the architect was to endow materials with the spirit of the age; this was reflected in the built works of these architects, in particular using brick as a highly moldable material most purely capable of carrying the individual touch of the architect. In this they connected with the larger Expressionist movement, which was also concerned with Utopian, spiritual ideals for society and an interest in the organic growth of forms; in Holland, the movement actually had the resources to see these ideas take physical shape.
The De Stijl movement developed very differently. While it shared roots with The Amsterdam School, the theories central to its formation were in a separate vein, though they were also utopian and spiritual in nature. The first principle of De Stijl doctrine was the Niewe Kunst idea that art should arise from an organic process based on the laws of nature, a law internal to itself related to the materials from which it is created. De Stijl artists were not opposed to the influence of science or technology; rather they embraced it in agreement with the Symbolist (post-representational) thought of Art Nouveau and Futurism (discussed next). The process that De Stijl artists put into practice is best exemplified by Mondrian (1872-1944), who created paintings that achieved the Symbolist idea of no distinction between figure and ground. His paintings were a reduction of his subject and its context into an abstract grid in which both had equal presence. The architecture that resulted from this line of thinking was very different in character from that of the Amsterdam School. For example, the housing developments of Oud (1890-1963) have a stark, repetitive, impersonal character, with none of the expressionist character of corresponding works from De Klerk (1884-1923).
Futurism, as alluded to earlier, also had no problem with technology’s influence on society. In fact, it took this idea to the furthest extent so far, advocating a complete abandonment of traditional forms for those that arose from new industry. This was the extreme response to the voice of the Arts and Crafts, quite unlike Art Nouveau and subsequent responses, which had sought to “rescue tradition by means of the very modernity that threatened to destroy it” (Colquhoun, 2002, p. 99). Similar to the abstraction employed by De Stijl artists in Holland, Futurism (primarily an Italian movement) sought an abstraction of reality that would blur the lines between observer and observed, between the interior and the environment, seeking to capture movement itself. But like the Expressionists in Germany, Futurist architects saw little built that followed this line of thinking. Even the most commonly associated architect, Antonio Sant'Elia (1888-1916), who produced strikingly non-traditional, harsh conceptions of buildings of the technological age, did not exemplify all the ideals of the movement in his drawings.
In Russia, the arts saw the simultaneous development of craft-oriented thinking and the embrace of the industrial age and its methods, both very much intertwined with the revolutionary thinking of the time. The most significant faces of this development were the formalist Rationalists and Suprematists and the composition-oriented Constructivists. In the vein of the Dutch Art Nouveau, the Rationalists sought the renewal of art through the discovery of psychological and formal laws inherent to it (as did De Stijl); similarly, the Suprematists took a reductivist approach to representation, though still maintaining a level of figure-ground distinction (Colquhoun, 2002, p. 122). In contrast, the Constructivists followed a more Futurist line of thinking that saw art as a construction among other constructions making up a composition, blurring figure and ground and eliminating the concept of fine art altogether. This led to an embrace of industrial methods and an emphasis on the relationship of the "artist-constructor" to technology in a political context, a sort of Russian revolutionary counterpart to the Art Nouveau dilemma in relating architect to society through mass production (Colquhoun, 2002, p. 123-125).
Leading up to World War II, as the German Expressionist movement in architecture was giving way to a more practical approach (De Wit, 1983, p. 64), the most influential movement to develop in Germany was the Neue Sachlichkeit, exemplified by the Bauhaus school (Colquhoun, 2002, p. 159). Reflecting the influence of socialism, the Bauhaus developed around a communal paradigm that sought to apply design principles at every level, from the products they designed to the architecture they built to the community in which they lived. The Bauhaus building in Dessau brought all these elements together under the vision of Walter Gropius (1883-1969), bringing artists and craftsmen under one roof to live and design together. Influenced by De Stijl and Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus embraced technological means of production and sought to unify it with the arts. The result was both designer household products and furniture as well as architecture in the form of housing projects and individual residences. Within the Bauhaus school of thought there was a tension between functionalism and rationalism, the former resulting in highly specialized forms for specific situations, the latter in more general solutions. In this the Bauhaus practitioners exemplify a divide similar to that between the Amsterdam School and De Stijl, where the former found unique, organic forms and the latter general, more impersonal forms.
These movements exhibit a range of responses to incredible changes taking place at the time, from the advance of new industrial paradigms to new scientific thought to the growth of socialism and the winds of revolution. The artists and architects and thinkers involved play off each other, selecting ideas that fit their national circumstances and rejecting others within a philosophical context struggling to identify the place of art in the new world. Modernism develops as a series of departures from existing lines of thought and leaves us with a broad but rich web of thought, the filaments of which continue to influence architectural thought today.
Colquhoun, A. (2002). Modern architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, C., & Press, J. (1995). John Ruskin and the Ethical Foundations of Morris & Company, 1861-96. Journal of Business Ethics, 14(3), 181-194. doi: 10.2307/25072636
Wit, W. d. (1983). The Amsterdam school : Dutch expressionist architecture, 1915-1930. New York : Cooper-Hewitt Museum: Cambridge, Mass.
