A Personal Architecture

So far my experience with design in the studio context has largely been one of just keeping up, learning what elements have to be developed in design, how they are presented, and how to use the associated analog and digital tools.  It's been sink or swim, and while I'm staying afloat, I wouldn't say I've had a thorough control of or clear purpose in my designs so far.  Last semester my studio professor really pushed me at a conceptual level, however, and I'm really thankful that she did so.  I resonated with her rational, iterative and personal approach, and I have a sense that my work will reflect her influence in the years to come.  That said, I bring to the design process my own set of values, and these will inevitably characterize my work as well.  As I sort through the input from my professors, my peers, my readings, and my own experiences with architecture, and as I filter that input through my personal values, I am finding that certain elements command my interest more than others.  I will try to touch on these inputs, values and elements in this post.

I will credit Ms. Andrea Swartz as the studio professor whose approach has influenced me in regard to a rational approach to design.  Her assignments pushed us to consider program, structure, materiality, and environmental factors in an iterative fashion, all the while exploring the conceptual basis for our decisions in each iteration.  She called us out when we made arbitrary decisions, always pushing us to take our ideas beyond the surface level.  I now find myself experiencing a certain level anxiety when I realize I've made a decision that I cannot defend conceptually.

Andrea also imparted a value for materiality that I want to continue to explore.  She had us doing experiments with various materials from the start.  As a result I found myself playing with a welder and constructing formwork for small designs in steel and concrete.  The experience made me want to spend more time in the shop working with my hands, and it brought home the physicality and spatial presence that architecture realizes.  I loved it.  Coming from the computing field where everything is virtual, this was a breath of fresh air affirming my decision to make a career change.

In my process in studio I am seeing the value of analog methods beyond material explorations as well.   Study models are great, taking me back to my Lego-building days where I can design as I build, try things out, take them apart and start over with minimal expense.  I build using scraps as a way to short-circuit my perfectionist tendencies.  Sketching is also essential, I find, for some of the same reasons.  With a pen and trace paper I can iterate through ideas more quickly than any experiment on the computer.

This move to analog (i.e. non-digital) design makes me nervous since it's new territory; I'm so used to working on the computer.  I see the problems with designing digitally, however.  At this point the tools are too restrictive.  Most modeling programs favor a certain type of geometry; some force early definition of details that are better left out at the beginning.  They all easily consume a lot of time and changes to a design are typically painful, discouraging bolder exploration of ideas.  At some point digital tools are indispensable of course.  Parametric design can sometimes speed up design iterations and generate new ideas that would never come about through sketching.

I really value input from others in the design process--I know I need feedback from peers and mentors to hone my design and my process.  I especially love the experience of collaborating with another designer who operates on the same wavelength.  The synergy that develops in that kind of environment allows for greater leaps, fresh ideas and sped up design iterations in way that is quite exhilarating.  I speak from my experiences with this kind of synergy in my former career and I have tasted it in discussions with others in the grad program with whom I share common interests.  I hope to find this kind of energy in my career in architecture.

When it comes to my personal values in relation to architecture, I believe concepts of community will be central.  My own experience with community has been that is an unparalleled source of love and healing.  This a spiritual reality, one that I do not believe is truly possible apart from faith in God who provides the ability to love and accept one another in spite of faults and differences.  I believe this kind of community can exist in any built environment--it is perhaps its most vibrant when forced to exist in inhospitable conditions, which require individuals to depend on each other to a greater degree.

The built environment may, however, be more or less conducive to the formation of community.  Community may be able to thrive in any environment, but that does not mean it is unaffected by it.  There is also a physical, day-to-day aspect of community that expresses a different kind of spirituality, that of presence.  Our presence with one another day-in, day-out plays, I believe, an important role in individual spiritual and emotional healing, and this happens in physical space and time.  Since the built environment is a significant part of our physical existence in time and space, it will be interesting to explore what role it plays in facilitating and encouraging (or discouraging) the formation of community.  What creates a place of safety?  What makes a space desirable for gathering? for intimacy?  What are the social justice aspects?  How does this manifest itself at the neighborhood level?  Hmm, this sounds like the makings of a thesis...

Regardless of the project I believe there will opportunities for leadership, and I see myself stepping up to those opportunities and promoting the values that characterize my approach.  Each project is a chance to set higher standards, to influence the industry, to improve a community, to respect the environment, to respond in a fashion sensitive to client, site, physical context, program, and social / cultural context.  Given my desire to participate in community to this degree, I hope to one day form my own practice and be able to lead at that level as well.

Beyond the above values, there are a number of concepts and areas of interest that stimulate my thinking and excite me as avenues for future exploration.  I like the idea of

• a work of architecture being a critique of something else - be it a social construct, a movement within the arts, a political movement, an architectural style or trend, etc.
• architecture as experience (phenomenology?), as prompting something spiritual, esp. as generated by the sensitive use of materials, by the formation of space, by directing and framing views, etc.
• permanence vs. impermanence--architecture creating continuity in a community by nature of its durability and material presence while acknowledging that everything decays
• adaptability through architecture that can be repurposed (or even recycled) with a minimum of waste; related to adaptive reuse - making use of existing building stock, repurposing existing structures in innovative ways
• simplicity in design, the result of numerous iterations toward finding the most elegant and efficient solution to a design problem; related, perhaps, to minimalism
• interactivity, often related to materiality, but also as realized by technology, esp. the field of human-computer interaction in the context of architecture

Any one of these could be thesis areas.  It will be difficult to narrow my focus when that stage of my education arrives.

I have really enjoyed the readings on theory over the course of the semester, and so many of my interests are rich theoretically landscapes.  The readings I've referenced in previous posts to this blog have been very gratifying, especially the readings on Mies and on Kahn, those on the Amsterdam School and De Stijl, and the one on Semper.  My research on Hassan Fathy and Charles Correa broadened my knowledge and gave me valuable experience as I sought out sources to inform my analysis.  All of these readings have influenced my thinking regarding a conceptual basis for architecture... I'm sure there will be more to come.

In terms of aesthetics, I'm not sure exactly where my affinities lie.  They are diverse.  I like a lot of the work of firms like Morphosis, SHoP Architects and Kieran Timberlake.  I like some of Gehry's work, like the Loyola Law School.  I like modernist work such as that of Eero Saarinen at the Miller House and of many Scandinavian architects who exemplify beauty in simplicity.  I am attracted to a lot of European styles--there is something of the clean efficiency and precision of Germany that is embedded in my psyche.  I like asymmetry and abstract geometry.  I like contrasts, especially contrasts in materials and in the age of materials.  I like the detailed work of Scarpa.  There is so much to which I have yet to gain exposure; I am still accumulating references.

Suffice it to say, I feel like the whole world is before me, and I'm chomping at the bit to explore it.  I know I have a lot of work cut out for me to go there, but I'm looking forward to learning more of who I am as an architect and as an individual in the process.

The Open Plan in the Thought and Work of Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn

I am finding that I really enjoy reading architectural theory; this is a dangerous thing when it comes to writing an analysis of one or another architect’s work or development of a particular idea.  I, at least, cannot assimilate years of research and philosophizing overnight.  I enjoy getting glimpses of a broad swath of history and the responses of each architect to the forces at work around them; synthesizing and articulating the insight I gain from those glimpses is difficult.  But I will try to process out loud what I have gathered in my few readings about Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn in relation to the concept of the open plan.

Mies, it seems, approached architecture in true modernist spirit, posing a purposeful critique of past and existing modes of building and design and advancing the development of current architectural thought through his works.  Hartoonian emphasizes the role that technology played in Mies’s thought and career.  Mies saw technology as an important force throughout architectural history, a key factor in the forms architecture has taken and continues to take.  Inevitably new technology and materials will give rise to new experiments, new forms.  Mies’s works exemplify this process of experimentation and formulation over the course of his career from more conservative explorations as in his earlier houses to more extreme examples as in the Farnsworth House and the Barcelona Pavilion.

One of Mies’s earlier houses is the neoclassical Riehl House in Berlin, built in 1907.  Compared to his later works, it feels basic, almost pedestrian.  Its most distinguishing feature is a loggia of sorts integrated with a retaining wall on the side of the house furthest (and not visible) from the street.  It seems awkward to me, unexpected and oversized.  In plan, rooms are arranged around a central space and the walls are heavy boundaries between them.  It is an exploration of the traditional role of walls and columns, clearly load bearing, unambiguous.

Riehl House, Berlin (1907), Mies van der Rohe

Plan, Riehl House

Colquhoun highlights Mies’s progression away from the traditional by providing a series of unbuilt house plans from sixteen to seventeen years later in his career.  These show an increasing fragmentation culminating in the much referenced Brick Country House design with its De Stijl-style abstraction of walls as sliding planes.  Hartoonian digs into this progression in much greater detail by examining the role of the column in relation to the increasingly fragmented wall.  He clarifies the critique that is taking place—that Mies is breaking down the traditional role of the wall, which he had explored earlier, instead examining it in light of the technology that now freed the wall from its load bearing role.  This critique is most clearly evident in the Tugendhat House in the Czech Republic (1928-30) and in the Barcelona Pavilion (1929) where he places columns adjacent to free-standing partition walls.  Whereas before the wall played a clear enclosing, load bearing role, it now has an ambiguous role—is the column bearing the load or the wall?  Which space does it enclose?  The role of the column is no less ambiguous.

Plans (unbuilt); Concrete Country House, Lessing House, Brick Country House; Mies van der Rohe

Barcelona Pavilion (1929), Mies van der Rohe

Taken to its furthest extreme, Mies’s exploration resulted in the practical elimination of the wall altogether in the Farnsworth House and his proposed 50x50 House.  He questions whether the wall is necessary at all, whether it can be usurped by the column entirely.  Hartoonian talks about how this ardent exploration led Mies to a conception that left behind culture and the concept of dwelling.  Indeed, this is proved by the anxiety experienced by Dr. Farnsworth as she attempted to live in the glass box Mies built for her. 

Louis Kahn’s career also plays out a progression of thought in regard to the open plan, but he starts his work much later, with the work of Mies and Le Corbusier already well established.  He was born at the time Mies was building his earliest houses and did not receive an independent commission for a house, the Oser House near Philadelphia, until 1940.  Saito discusses how at this stage Kahn’s approach to the plan was in typical modernist vein, subdividing a single volume of space with thin interior walls, but from the get-go he is conscious of the whole picture, how the individual room integrates with the other spaces in the house.

It does not take long for Kahn to start moving away from the single, subdivided volume toward a more room-oriented approach that emphasizes the individuality of each, though he sticks with familiar definitions of those spaces.  The plan of the Weiss House (1947-50) makes this shift clear, separating programmatic zones into distinct volumes connected via a narrower entryway/passageway.  In a way, this period for Kahn is analogous to Mies’ early period, a similar exploration of established forms.

Plan, Weiss House (1947-50), Louis Kahn

Subsequently Kahn began a higher level inquiry, abstracting the concepts of the room and the house, looking for an order that would allow the components of the whole to fall into place in a logical fashion.  His use of controlling geometries in projects such as the Trenton Bathhouse (1955) and the Adler House (1954-55; unbuilt) are the beginning of his critique of the modernist approach to date in the way that they elevate the room to a defining design element.

Plan, Adler House (1954-55; unbuilt), Louis Kahn

Goldhagen quotes Kahn from the same time period: “Space made by a dome then divided by walls is not the same space…. A room should be a constructed entity or—an ordered segment of a construction system.  Rooms divided off from a single larger space must read as a completed space.”   She goes on to say that to Kahn “the important elements enclosing a space must be immediately apprehensible, from structure to surface.  For this the open plan was inadequate because partitions, which were customarily used to mark off spaces, masked a concentrated perception of the building as a ‘constructed entity’” (Goldhagen 108).

In this Kahn’s development again parallels that of Mies, though they subsequently went in different directions.  Where Mies developed a theory of architecture around the centrality of construction in terms of technology and its advance (in constant motion), Kahn developed an architecture around the relationship of construction to the observer in his place (a static perception).  Like other architects of his time, Kahn was responding to the lack of authenticity he perceived in many aspects of modernism, which Mies’ work in its ambiguity exemplified.

Kahn’s emphasis on authenticity becomes evident in later works as he experiments with different types of buildings and the way they relate to the user.  The Salk Institute (1962) combines the monumental expression of the main structures with his very human scale moves for the offices that connect to them.  At the Kimbell Art Museum (1966-69) Kahn employs vaulted ceilings resting on load bearing walls, using columns only where the program needs open space.  The open plan is absent, broken up by the bays of the ceiling—and yet it is kept light and airy, indeed human, through his innovative toplighting.

Kimbell Art Museum (1966-69), Louis Kahn

It is interesting to see the progression not only of the individual architects examined here, but also the progression in modernist thinking.  Kahn is able to pick up the pieces of Mies’s deconstruction of construction and make something human out of it.  Perhaps Mies saw a shift coming—Hartoonian notes the presence of “poetics of place” in  Mies’ mid-career houses, houses from which Kahn may well have taken important cues.

References

Colquhoun, A. (2002). Modern architecture: Oxford University Press.

Goldhagen, S. W. K. L. I. (2001). Louis Kahn's situated modernism: Yale University Press.

Hartoonian, G. (1989). Mies van der Rohe: the genealogy of column and wall. Journal Of Architectural Education, 42(2), 43-50.

Saito, Y. (2004). Louis I. Kahn houses (Shohan. ed.). Tokyo, Japan: TOTO Shuppan.

Modernist Veins

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.

Architect Valentines

Inspired by Coffee With An Architect, here's some architect loving for you on this Valentines day!

Louis Sullivan's Natural Law

Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) is an interesting case.  Amid all the uncertainty and change taking place at the approach of the 20th century, he was able to synthesize, at least for himself, a fusion of two of the main streams of thought that were prevailing in architecture.  He was both a lover of nature and a designer of the time, not afraid to explore the use of new building materials and the new forms they made possible.  The result was an architecture modern and, in a way, Gothic, channeling both Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc.

Sullivan’s style and theoretical stance reflect his exposure to particular influences over the course of his training and early work experience.  His desire for a thoughtful architecture, not one based simply imitating the orders of the past, is evident in his aversion to the Beaux Arts disposition of MIT ("Louis Henry Sullivan").  Leaving MIT, his subsequent work with Frank Furness (1839-1912) likely exposed him for the first time to the architectural thought of Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc as well as to the Gothic styles that they loved and whose influence is evident in Furness’ work as well.  It is not surprising, then, that Sullivan would come away with a love of ornament, especially as informed by nature.

Image: An Example of Ornament by Frank Furness [http://uchs.net/HistoricDistricts/images/furness_lib2.jpg]

After a stint under William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907), the architect and engineer behind the first steel-framed office building in Chicago, Sullivan interestingly decided to leave the U.S. to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  Perhaps this was a reaction to his encounter with a new world of construction possibilities under Jenney, a need to find a way to synthesize some kind of theoretical underpinning that would tie together his experiences so far.  If this was the case, he did not find his answers at the Ecole—he spent only a year there before returning to Chicago.

Bergdoll conjectures that Sullivan found his true inspiration while in Europe as a result of encountering the works of Victor-Marie Ruprich Robert (1820-1887), a lecturer at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs who had developed a “system of deriving ornament from an analytical study of plants” (2007, p. 19), which Sullivan used in his own drawings.  Ruprich Robert’s approach was new in that it treated ornament not as an exercise in historicism, but as a logical outworking of geometry from a study of nature.  His writings prefigure those of Sullivan: “’Nature is inexhaustible’, ‘in all the examples I have chosen, I ever did search the intentions of nature, as to the geometrical dispositions, and to the character of outlines’” (p. 20).  He also observes a rationalism in nature—“No two leaves on a tree are identical, ‘and however the same law has formed them. It is this law, this principle that I will point out’” (p. 20).

Images: Sullivan’s tracings of Ruprich Robert plates (Bergdoll, 2007, p. 21) [Omitted due to restrictions on online reproduction of copyrighted content.  See the images on p. 21 of the article, available on JSTOR at the following link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40033846]

Sullivan’s return to Chicago after his time in Paris is characterized both by work “towards developing an ornamental vocabulary that could harmonize with, and even give expression to, the rapid advances in the engineering construction in new kinds of … metallic frames” (p. 22) and by an extension of Ruprich Robert’s methodology to the study of human and animal forms and musculatures.  With this background he would later write his famous lines on “form follows function”, praising the examples he had observed and establishing this natural outworking as law.

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds—over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. (Sullivan 1896)

Looking at his architectural works, it is easy to see how his ideas manifested themselves in built form.  Bergdoll references the Wainwright Building in St. Louis (1891) and the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, NY (1894), but his later Carson Pirie Scott Building in Chicago (1899) is also a good example.  The Guaranty building the one that would perhaps be deemed the most organic or ornamented, with every surface intricately carved and a flowering cornice flowing out of the stems that establish the vertical thrust of the building.  But even in this organic ornament, his moves are constrained and hint at a structure behind that is far from organic or ornament, though Sullivan probably would have argued it was still the natural outworking of the material and logic of the building.  And it does seem to fit.

Image: The Guaranty Building, Buffalo, NY [https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQxxDNXMHpdtTOBkB7gLBeOTvqYc3Ww3eyWv8bsYtqIyS9zpw1atil42Pca747VOB9hF5bD6GMC4wB3qGIKy_dPmhjl_ojasVPeZM9dBsCJpaVVZmJVD23RmhdzGQMFYNg2XHIEsK0tB93/s1600/Buffalo+%2528515%2529.JPG]

The Wainwright Building and the Carson Pirie Scott building provide two inverse explorations of structure and ornament.  Whereas the Wainwright building projects from the ground in solid, unadorned columns, allowing the ornament between levels to take a background role and the most ornate embellishments to cap the building at the attic level, the Pirie Scott building is lavish at the ground level with its ornate ironwork, leaving the upper levels to express stark verticality in true Chicago style and modern simplicity.

Images: The Wainwright Building, St. Louis (left) and the Carson Pirie Scott Building, Chicago [http://stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/planning/cultural-resources/images/Wainwright_124825_2.JPG], [http://georgietourgie.webs.com/carsonp1.jpg]

Whether highly ornamental or more reserved, Sullivan’s works reveal a man not afraid to try new permutations in built form who could at the same time remain rigorous in his quest for an architecture of the new age that had integrity.  Bergdoll notes that “Sullivan's whole career might be summarized as the gradual realization of that programme, a project oriented towards an ever greater coordination of structure and ornament” (2007, p. 22).  His honest struggle with these themes left subsequent generations a wealth of ideas to ponder and take forward to the next frontier.

Works Cited

Bergdoll, B. (2007). Of Crystals, Cells, and Strata: Natural History and Debates on the Form of a New Architecture in the Nineteenth Century. Architectural History, 50, 1-29. doi: 10.2307/40033846

Louis Henry Sullivan : architect biography. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://architect.architecture.sk/louis-henry-sullivan-architect/louis-henry-sullivan-architect.php

Sullivan, L. H. (1896). The tall office building artistically considered. Inland architect & news record, 27, 32-34.

Towards a Theory of Architecture -- Viollet-le-Duc, Ruskin and Semper

Great architectural thinkers of their time, Viollet-le-Duc, Ruskin and Semper all sought to develop a unifying theory of architecture, a view or explanation that would justify the orders and styles of architecture through the ages, hoping to extrapolate from their findings a clear way forward through the chaos of the age. Le-Duc and Semper conducted their search in a fashion reflective of the scientific approach so prevalent in current thought, while Ruskin worked to establish a historically and spiritually grounded appreciation; their conclusions and theories are reflective of their methods and illuminate the path that architectural history took after them.

Viollet-le-Duc, who lived from 1814 to 1879, developed an approach to architecture in response to his love and study of Gothic architecture.  In it he saw a rationalism underlying every move and came to the conclusion that this rationalism must be evident for any quality work of architecture to exist.  Pevsner indicates that le-Duc's emphasis on reasoning behind architecture was an extension of a line of thought in France stretching back to the sixteenth century. "[Philibert] Delorme, ... [François] Derand, ... [Jean-Louis de] Cordemoy and [Amédée-François] Frézier" (Pevsner, 1969, p. 30) were architects and engineers who valued sound engineering principles and clear expression of structure; Cordemoy in particular found this value demonstrated in Gothic architecture ("Cordemoy," 2006).  With this background and intensive study, le-Duc developed a rational approach to architecture, publishing the Dictionnaire Raisonée de l'Architecture Française du XIe au XVIe Siècle ("A Reasoned Dictionary of French Architecture from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Century"), in which he demonstrates his approach in relation to Gothic architecture.

But Viollet-le-Duc was driven in this quest by more than intellectual curiosity or even a love for the Gothic--ultimately he saw a world in which no coherent approach to architecture existed, and he sought to bring a logic to it that would support the development of new architecture to the degree that the classical orders supported temple design.  Subsequent to publishing his Dictionnaire, le-Duc published his Entretiens sur l'Architecture ("Conversations on Architecture"), analyzing the great architecture of the past and showing that each era derived its greatness from underlying rationality.  Applying this understanding to the present age, le-Duc reasoned that only in operating in a rational mode could good architecture be produced going forward (Summerson, 1998, p. 150).  Summerson quotes le-Duc as follows, showing his belief that reason and principle were preconditions for quality architecture:

"If we get into the habit of proceeding by the light of reason, if we erect a principle, the labour of composition is made possible, if not easy, for it follows an ordered, methodical march towards results which, if not masterpieces, are at least good respectable works--and capable of possessing style" (p. 156).

But given those preconditions, le-Duc saw no reason that good architecture could not be produced, even if the methods and materials in use were changing.  Indeed, he embraced the possibly, going as far as suggesting how the logic of the Gothic might incorporate iron as a building material.  As long as the application was the result of rigorous inquiry and sound reasoning, it was valid.

John Ruskin's approach could scarcely be more different than that of Viollet-le-Duc, both in terms of analysis and of future development.  Where for le-Duc the quality of architecture only made sense in terms of reason, for Ruskin quality was tied instead to the man behind the architecture, his disposition and his appreciation of the virtues that Ruskin saw as being the source of all good architecture (upon which he expounded in his work The Seven Lamps of Architecture).  The logic of the structure had nothing to do with it; in fact, Ruskin seems only to have valued ornament as architecture.  Anything less than that was simply a means to end, the most basic elements required for a building to exist (Pevsner, p. 22).  He appreciated truth in materials as did le-Duc, but this in terms of the virtue of honesty, not in terms of reason (p. 16).  His understanding of the Gothic is ascertained through impressions and interpretations that are far from precise (p 24, 26).

For Ruskin, the new developments of his time represented a decline, a drifting away from the virtues he saw exhibited so beautifully in the Gothic works he admired.  Ruskin lived in the same age as le-Duc with the same forces at work in society and the arts, but while Viollet le-Duc saw opportunity for quality architecture to develop within the present context incorporating developments in method and material, Ruskin saw only the deterioration of virtues long embodied in the great architecture of the past.  It is from this place that he proclaims "We want no new style of architecture... The forms of architecture already known are good enough for us, and far better than any of us" (p. 26-27).  To Ruskin the idea that good architecture could be redefined is ludicrous; in his mind a style should simply be imposed; it is within such constraints that great architecture of the past flourished (p. 28).  Not surprisingly, Ruskin became a passionate advocate of the preservation of historic buildings, whereas le-Duc set about restoring buildings and taking re-interpretive liberties in the process.

More in the vein of le-Duc, Gottfried Semper attempted to apply a scientific approach to architecture and formulate a theory of style that could be used to both explain and generate good architecture.  Unlike le-Duc, however, Semper's thought developed out of more general philosophical streams of thought which he sought to apply generally to art as a whole.  Looking at the history of various artworks, he sought to transcend the debates of the day by deducing fundamental principles of design (Eck 2006).  Thus, where le-Duc was examining Gothic architecture for the reasoning behind specific choices, Semper was seeking the principles behind the reasoning--those which gave it purpose.

In the end he developed what he considered a mathematical formula for style, but as Eck observes, this formal approach "removed the artwork from the real world of purposes, functions, and uses."  This made art works "autonomous microcosms obeying their own organic principles of figuration"--in other words, his method considered art and architecture in a vacuum, apart from "the social, political, and cultural conditions that surrounded their making."  So while his theories developed out of a study of art throughout history, they divorced themselves from the wider context of history in the process.  As a result, Semper failed to arrive at method that would really translate to a practical architecture for his age.

The methods chosen by each of these thinkers shed light on the reason Viollet-le-Duc's ideas took hold and are considered the beginning of modern architecture.  Both Ruskin and Semper, while able to grasp the development and value of architecture through the ages with deep insight, were unable to leave the past behind in a way that was truly tractable for a society that was rapidly evolving.  In contrast, Viollet-le-Duc proposed a practical means to incorporate new developments while still endowing the architecture with integrity.  His bent was toward Gothic architecture, but he was able both to apply his approach to other architectural eras and to propose actual new designs based on his method.  Viollet-le-Duc provided the beginnings of a way forward.

References

Cordemoy, Abbé Jean-Louis de. (2006). In J. S. Curl (Ed.), A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198606789.001.0001/acref-9780198606789-e-1170

Eck, C. v. (2006). Gottfried Semper and the problem of historicism [by] Mari Hvattum. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 65(1), 136-139.

Pevsner, N. (1969). Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc: Englishness and Frenchness in the appreciation of Gothic architecture. London: Thames & Hudson.

Summerson, J. (1998). Heavenly mansions and other essays on architecture. New York: Norton.