If you are new to the Band, please see this post for an introduction and overview of the point of this blog. Older posts are in the archive on the right.
Cycling back over some key transitions in the development of Modern architecture from the last post, we can expose just where such an intellectually bankrupt body of “theory” laid the foundation for the dehumanizing styles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At the most basic level, it can be described as an extended category error, where contextually-determined moves in a closed discursive system are illigimately raised to the level of universal pronouncement. This appears to be an annoying human tendency - it is at the root of the various forms of secular transcendence that have plagued Western culture for centuries - but it gains extra force from the institutional nature of architectural criticism and history.
John Andrews, Gund Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Architecture and Design, 1968-1972, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
The weird concrete massing, horizontal windows, spindly columns (pilotis) and lack of clear entrance are straight out of the Le Corbusier rule book. Extending the window to the end of the facade formally reflects the "function" of the steel-framed structure by showing that the wall is not load bearing. Since the wall is not a structural support, it must not project the dishonest illusion that it is.
Form is supposed to follow function, but this seems a rather inhospitable environment to teach good design principles.
Contrast the design school with the eclectic Gothic Revival of nearby Memorial Hall.
William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt, Memorial Hall, 1870-1877, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Gothic-themed architecture has a long history of educational connotations, which is not surprising, given that universities were a medieval European invention.
Historical connotations and human-scaled design create an environment that is splendid, serious, and rooted, like the scholarship was supposed to be.
The splendid hammerbeam roof helps fuel Hogwarts fantasies in the considerably less intellectually rigorous students of the modern university.
The subjective component of aesthetic appreciation has been accepted philosophically since Kant's Critique of Judgment, so it seems reasonable to let the reader choose which better reflects the historical nature and mission of a university:
The answer is something of a litmus test.
Modernism was built on lies, but one of the biggest is the idea that art is "autonomous", a vague term that started out to mean that it did not serve church or state, but morphed into the outright rejection of any representation or reference at all. The architecture resembles abstract sculpture, governed by material logic and strict formal rules that violently disregard contextual considerations. There are utopian ideological reasons wrapped up in this, but the outcome is that architecture became a different kind of signifier.
Donato Bramante, Tempietto, 1502, Rome
The symbolism of a building has always been part of its function. By shaping the physical environment with meaningful or emotionally resonant forms, architecture establishes the character of a place and conditions the expectations of visitors. Bramante's Doric Tempietto is an early manifesto of High Renaissance Classicism that used the circular form of an ancient martyrium or martyr's shrine to mark what was thought to be the place of St. Peter's martyrdom.
What message does a soulless, incommunicative blob like the Design School communicate? That architects despise the communities they supposedly build for? That you should reconsider your career path?
When the Band calls modernism dehumanizing, it isn't only rhetoric. As noted earlier the subjective aspect of aesthetics is not a new discovery, and virtually no one would opt for structures like Andrews'. The bizarre and rigid rules of modernism forced communities to abandon their preferences for monstrous intrusions in the landscape. Prioritizing arbitrary maxims like form follows function and less is more over the texture of organic communities and the desires of their inhabitants is literally anti-human.
Rabot, 1491, Ghent
The aggression with which Modernist buildings intrude on historical landscapes does seem metaphorically violent.
The initial Modernists were radicals looking to replace the traditional notion of architecture with something completely new. These are not impartial observers, but polemicists mounting a hostile take-over of a well-defined and historically contingent cultural space. It is more accurate to define Modernist claims of universality as a rhetorical tactic within a larger strategy of deligitimizing traditional architecture intellectually (it is wrong) and morally (it is dishonest). Their approach was presented as the intellectually credible alternative, based on first principles. In this context, otherwise nonsensical "rules" can make a kind of sense, but become incoherent when projected forward in time, since the conditions that they responded to in the first place have changed.
Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Cathédrale Saint-Louis-des-Invalides ( Église du Dôme des Invalides), designed 1680, Paris
The French Royal Academy of Architecture was founded in 1671 as part of King Louis XIV's absolutist cultural policy. It promoted the Sun King's preferred form of Baroque Classicism, which was more grandly rhetorical than Renaissance architecture, but more rational and restrained than the Italian Baroque. Official architecture outlived the kings, but what relationship does this royal language of imperial triumphalism have to the world of Modernity?
Lets consider more closely what they were reacting to. By the mid nineteenth-century, "official" European architecture was dominated by academies based on a French model, that were offshoots of the aristoctatic culture of the ancien regime monarchies. The French had founded the first academy in the seventeenth-century on theoretical terms established by the Italian Renaissance humanists that first defined architecture as a distinct art form. These evolved over their several centuries of existence, but the centrality of Classical architectural forms was not seriously questioned until the Gothic Revival movement that accompanied Romanticism.
Temple of Garni, 1st century AD, Garni, Armenia
Alberti, Basilica of Sant’Andrea, 1472-90, Mantua, Italy
Andrea Palladio, Villa Capra, 1566-71, Vicenza, Italy
Carlo Maderno, St. Peter's facade, completed 1612, Rome
Francesco Borromini and others, Sant'Agnese in Agone, 1652-68, Rome
Claude Perrault, Colonnade, Palais du Louvre, 1667-70, Paris
Lord Burlington, Chiswick House Villa, 1717-29, Middlesex
Rastrelli, Winter Palace, begun 1753 St. Petersburg
Leo Klenze, Propyläen (Gateway), 1854–62, Munich
Hector Lefuel, Pavillon Sully, 1850s, Palais du Louvre, Paris
The Greek temple front is the most immediately recognizable element of Classical architecture. Here, it features prominently in the Early Renaissance architecture of Alberti, the Renaissance Classicism of Palladio, the Early Baroque of Maderno, the High Baroque of Borromini, the French Baroque Classicism of Perrault, the English Palladianism of Burlington, the Rastrellian Baroque, the Greek Revival of von Klenze, and the work of Lefuel, which is classified as either Second Empire or Beaux-Arts.
But the Beaux-Arts style differed conceptually from its earlier predecessors in important ways. The emphasis on Classisism that began in the Renaissance was based on the notion that this was the objectively correct approach to architecture. Leading figures from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries turned to the first-century treatise of the Roman Vitruvius as a guide to correct principles. The architects of the Baroque were later dismissed for their anti-classical extravagance, but they too saw themselves as merely adapting classical principles. Both Perrault's French Baroque classicism and the Neoclassicisms of the eighteenth century began as largely Vitruvian reactions to unprincipled exuberance and excess. The Greek Revival sought hustorical purity beyond Vitruvius, and drew on new arcchaeological discoveries from the eastern Mediterranean. In each case, architects drew meaning from an historically authentic style that could be adapted to contemporary use. Beaux-Arts architecture took a much freer attitude to stylistic purity.
Charles Garnier, Palais Garnier, 1861-75, Paris
Garnier's opera house is a landmark in Beaux-Arts architecture. The motifs all come from historical Classicisms, but they are jumbled together in a capricious way. There is no one "source" that the style revives.
The rise in nationalism that accompanied the Romantic movement of the early eighteenth century brought the first serious challenge to Classical principles in architecture. The ideology behind the Gothic Revival combined nationalist rejection of "foreign" (Greek and Roman) styles, an emotion-driven backlash against the Enlightenment reason that Neoclassicism represented, and a renewed interest in tradition in the face of the dislocations of the Industrial Revolution. The result were designs that rejected the Reniassance belief in the universal supremacy of antiquity for clearer references to local culture and tradition.
Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, Palace of Westminster, 1840-76, London
The decision to build the British parliament in the historical "English" style rather than a Classical import was a major boost to the legitimacy of the Gothic Revival.
Legitimating Gothic architecture shattered the illusion that Classical derivatives were the only legitimate stylistic option. Suddenly, Classical was a choice, rather than an imperative, and even the Greek Revival took place as a self-conscious historicism with other revival movements to follow.
Sir Robert Smirke, British Museum,1823-1847, London
The design is Greek Revival for its careful application of the Greek Ionic order. Note the absence of Roman arches or decorations.
Thomas Stewart, Egyptian Building, completed 1845, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond
James Keys Wilson, Isaac M. Wise Temple, 1865, Cincinnati
But as a self-conscious historical style, the Greek Revival shared the architectural stage with other historicisms like the Egyptian and Moorish Revivals.
Once period styles became subject to choice, eclecticism, or the mixing and matching of styles and motifs without consideration for their traditional usage soon followed. A revival building has to adapt a historical style to a contemporary purpose, but usually attempts to follow the rules or customs of that style to some extent, and often begins with a specific prototype in mind. Eclectic designs have no such foundation.
Charles Marville, Saint-Augustin, circa 1861-70, Paris
Frank Furness, National Bank of the Republic, 1883-84, Philadelphia
This French church combines Romanesque and Renaissance structures with some Gothic, Byzantine, and Persian undertones. Furness combined motifs in utterly original creations.
Beaux-Arts
The Beaux-Arts can be thought of as the coming together of this eclectic impulse and over two centuries of formalized instruction in the French Academy. The style represented a return to ancient inspiration, but selected themes and devices freely from the history of Classicizing architecture and combined them at the architect's discretion. Greek, Roman, Renaissance, and Baroque elements jumble together in forms intended only to signify the grandeur and permanence of the colonial-era monarchies.
Le palais de l'électricité et le Château d'eau at the Paris 1900 World fair, 1900, photographic print, 20 x 28 cm, Brown University Library
The temporary structures of World Fairs were always an opportunity for architectural extravagance. Here, Classical motifs were combined in an original way to celebrate the technical achievements of French science and engineering. Clearly, these forms were not incompatible with Modern innovations.
Henri Deglane, Albert Louvet, Albert Thomas and Charles Girault, Grand Palais for the Universal Exposition of 1900, 1897-1900, Paris
The main exhibition hall of the World's Fair building shows the free use of Classical elements and the integration of more modern glass and steel construction. The Beaux-Arts style was flexible, but there is a certain generic quality to its message of grandeur.
In America, the situation was a bit different, since the architecture of the Colonial era was further removed from the European academic scene. But here too, we see Classical inspiration used in similar ways, and the main arc of stylistic development follows a comparable pattern.
Lord Burlington, Chiswick House,
William Buckland and William Noke, Chase-Lloyd House, 1769-1774, Annapolis, Maryland
Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, 1794-1809, near Charlottesville, VA
Monticello is a straightforward application of Palladian design in the brick that was popular in Colonial Georgian architecture. It was intended to give form to the Enlightenment rationality that characterized his philosophy.
The American Federal style used a wider range of classical influences than Jefferson's Palladianism, including Roman and other Renaissance sources to create grand, yet rational designs.
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John Vardy and James Stuart, Spencer House, 1756-58, London; Charles Bullfinch, Massachusetts State House, comp. 1798, Boston
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We see the appearance of Greek and Gothic Revival architecture:
Alexander Jackson Davis, Federal Hall, the first United States Customs House, 1833-42, New York
James Renwick, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, 1858-1879, New York
The Beaux-Arts was imported to America by the gilded age tycoons who built the nation's great collections of European art. The key architect in this process was Richard Morris Hunt, Lafuel's most significant pupil and his lead assistant on his additions to the Louvre. In Hunt, the American elites had a Beaux-Arts designer of the highest quality and they set him to defining the venues for their extravagant social lives and philanthropic activities.
Richard Morris Hunt, Marble House (William Kissam Vanderbilt House), 1888-1892, Newport, Rhode Island
Hunt, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Main Wing (entrance façade, entrance hall and grand stairway), completed posthumously in 1902, New York
Hunt's Beaux-Arts designs brought European monarchical splendor to the Gilded Age. But note the precursor to Modernism: there is nothing locally distinctive to this architecture. The facade of the Met would have worked equally well at a World's Fair, a government ministry, or the Louvre when it was a palace.
In vernacular architecture, we see a similar move towards highly ornamented and eclectic designs. American builders had long history of employing adapted "high style" motifs from pattern books, but, lacking the theoretical and historical training of the Academies, used them in free and idiosyncratic ways. The Carpenter Gothic was a vernacular, pattern book version of the Gothic Revival, that later evolved into the Medieval-inspired Stick Style.
James S. and Jennie M. Cooper House, 1873, Independence, Oregon
An excellent late example of Carpenter Gothic, with its un-Classical steep roof pitch and prominent pointed arched window
Herman C. Timm House, 1873, Stick Style addition from1891, New Holstein, Wisconsin
The Stick Style got its name from the application of flat decorative strips to the exterior. These were intended to suggest the exposed beams of the half-timber construction of the Middle Ages, but while the massing of the building is more Medieval than Classical, the "sticks" are purely ornamental.
The Queen Anne style that came into vogue across late nineteenth-century North America is a vernacular, medievalizing analog to Beaux-Arts classicism, with craftsmen's pattern books providing motifs in the same manner as the repertory of Classical forms did in the Academy. The Queen Anne grew out of the Stick Style, but was much more popular and even freer in its use of ornament.
Victorian House Museum (Brightman House), 1902, Millersburg, OH
This house has the irregular massing, turret, deep porch, and intricate woodwork associated with the Queen Anne style. The features appear over and over, but always configured slightly differently.
Victorian house on Maple Street, late 19th century, Madison, NJ
The Queen Anne style was versatile; appearing on scales from this relatively modest house...
Samuel Newsom and Joseph Cather Newsom, Carson Mansion, 1884-86, Eureka, CA
... to the splendor of this timber barron's mansion. The Carson Mansion is sort of an apotheosis of vernacular eclecticism, with elements of most every major nineteenth-century domestic style.
This is the architecture that Modernism reacts against; the unprincipled application of a set of decorative elements to the exterior of a building regardless of purpose or what it is made of. When we read critics shrilling about truth to materials or form and function, they are attacking the haphazard superficiality of the Beaux-Arts, and to a lesser extent, the Queen Anne and other revival styles.
This is apparent when we see Le Corbusier appeal to "history":
He conceives of Classical architecture as an expression of pure form, and, historian that he isn't, offers a fragmented column as evidence. The reality is that the ancient Greeks painted their temples and sculpture, contrary to the dreams of classicists, and they obviously didn't build in broken fragments. Their architcture was carefully proportioned, but the purity of form Le Corbusier gushes over is his own invention. It is worth considering another page from the manifesto to really understand how odd it is that this text be given any sort of authoritative weight:
Look at the text. "There are no symbols attached to these forms" he writes beneath a picture where fragments of the symbolic sculpture are still visible, along with the distinctive column and entablature. He then strings together adjectives that contradict each other and have little to do with the image. What he is describing is not any historical understanding of Greek architecture, but a weird concept of formal purity that he projects onto blurry photographs. Most people have trouble accepting this degree of bold-faced lying, so they overlook it.
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, comp. 1929, Poissy, France
Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye is essentially his architectural manifesto, and the closest he came to recognizing his Five Points, a set of strange principles that he used as an aesthetic foundation.
1. Pilotis
replace supporting walls with concrete columns
2. Free ground plan
without supporting walls, interior is open
3. Free façade
exterior isn't structural, and needn’t look solid .
4. Horizontal window
even lighting; proves wall isn't structurally necessary
5. Roof gardens
pleasant, functional, protect the roof concrete
Richard Morris Hunt, The Breakers, 1893, Newport, RI
Why lie? The answer lies in the reason behind these arbitrary, and frankly rather stupid rules. Le Corbusier is presenting them as some sort of spirit of the Modern age, but is in fact reacting to the Beaux-Arts ornamentation of designs like Hunt's colossal summer home for the Vanderbilts. He is making a tactical, rhetorical, and historically circumstantial move, and cloaking it as a reestablishment of universal first principles that, according to the pages from Towards a New Architecture reproduced above, never actually had to exist.
What empirical grounds is there, really, to claim either of these summer homes is somehow more truthful or correct? Le Corbusier replaces the anachronistic pomposity of the Beaux-Arts with the misanthropic ravings of his own disordered imagination. But he fraudulently flips cause and effect, claiming his reaction (dishonestly presented as based in universal properties) actually expresses something epistemologically primary.
In doing so, he, and other Modernists like Walter Gropius, fundamentally transformed a traditional venue for cultural expression according to fake "principles" while claiming it occupied the same place.
Le Corbusier was not evasive, or cryptic, he was a blatant liar hiding an anti-Western agenda, but this is irrelevant in the face of the narrative-spinning powers of discourse. The equally anti-human gatekeepers in the culture industry liked the visions of Gropius, Le Corbusier, and their ilk, and established them as the architectural voices of the day that mattered artistically. The tactical universalizing posture becomes frozen, or reified, to use a popular Postmodern term, by the epistemology of academic architecture over the twentieth century.
Excerpts from Hitchcock and Johnson's epochal International Style catalog for the 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York featuring the Villa Savoye and a heartwarming housing project by Gropius.
Le Corbusier, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 1959-1963, Harvard University, Cambridge
Harvard has been a bit of a whipping boy in this post, but it isn't surprising given its importance to Modernism in America. This is Le Corbusier's only North American building, and implements all five of his principles.
Crisis of Authority
Modernism represents a crisis in authority within a defined cultural space, and the subsequent transformation of that space. Architecture as a concept was invented as an expression of the culture of ancien regime Europe, and when confidence in the pillars of that civilization failed, the entire weight of socio-historical tradition that lay behind the Beaux-Arts evaporated. The revival movements of the nineteenth century had already made it clear that the only authority remaining behind Classicizing architecture were the Academies themselves, and with the emergence of full-blown Modernism, these too passed.
Thomas Cole, The Dream of the Architect, 1840, oil on canvas, Toledo Museum of Art
Cole captures this notion of architecture as a series of period styles with his typical Romantic sublimity.
Nineteenth-century architecture can be seen as the slow playing out of the consequences of the loss of faith in the old authorities. Philosophically, Kant's critiques drove thinkers like Schlegel to work out a concept of aesthetics that modified the traditional need for defining rules with the subjective realities of artistic creation and appreciation. This can be seen in the continued use of historical styles, but in new and free ways. Socially, the Renaissance world view that led to the definition of architecture as a distinct art form also changed beyond recognition as the Industrial Revolution and the accompanying revolutions upended traditional patterns of life. This is reflected in the new building types and construction materials that defined modern society. Post-Kantian aesthetics were supposed to balance rules and innovation, but the old rules no longer seemed suited to the present reality.
George Gilbert Scott and William Henry Barlow, St. Pancras Railway Station, opened 1861, London
This is a fine example of grand Victorian eclecticism, with a combination of Moorish and Gothic revival elements. But there is no organic connection between the selection of these motifs and their context. It is superficial splendor that is only possible when the designer no longer has faith in the values that the styles were formed to express.
Note also the incongruity between the steel vaulting of the trainshed and the historically-inspired design of the wall.
Skyscrapers
The disconnect between modern realities and traditional styles became apparent as the increasing land value and organizational size in the growing cities drove the architects to build ever higher. Taller buildings concentrated more square footage on a single lot, but presented proportions that really had no precedent in the historical styles taught in the Academies.
Newspaper Row, New York City, circa 1900, photochrom, Detroit Photographic Company, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington
Late nineteenth-century newspapers were the media giants of their day, with towering Manhattan offices. Note how each is decorated with some sort of historicizing style applied to their tall, rectilinear facades. To a Modernist, the arbitrary superficiality of these designs is apparent.
Looking more closely at George Post's New York World Building, seen on the left in the picture above, problems of scale and proportion become more apparent, at least from the perspective of the theoretician. Looking first at the design for the facade, we can see Post drawing on a wide range of historical motifs.
George Post, drawing for the World Building, 1889, Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library
The crowning ribbed dome with its double columned arcade is a High Renaissance motive derived from Michelangelo's dome at St. Peter's, but with elongated proportions slightly reminiscent of the Capitol in Washington and made possible by modern steel frame construction.
The pediment and balustrade on the roofline are standard Beaux-Arts classicism, but the openings in the upper arcade alternate between Roman and narrower Romanesque proportions
The central stories combine the Renaissance Serliana (or Palladian windows) with rectangular openings topped by flat Roman jack arches, but the proportions - the flat vaults positioned well above the decorative cornice - is original.
The columns are topped with Greco-Roman Corinthian capitals throughout, but other decorative elements are of medieval or modern design.
The ornamental rectangle around the entrance is a Moorish alfiz, but the arch is round Roman, not pointed Islamic, and the columns in the opening belong to neither historical tradition.
George Post, New York World Building, 1890, destroyed 1955, seen in 1905
Post used recurring horizontal bands to divide his facade into sections of suitable proportions for his Classical motifs, but fragmented the rising lines of his tall form.
Finally, there is a disconnect between the facade design and the structure of the actual building. Note the hash marks along the left side of Post's design. These mark the interior floors, and the framing is visible through some of the larger openings. As strained as the historical architecture is, each of its "stories" is a bundle of several real floors, since attempting to articulate each one individually would require so much detailing that the effect would be lost at any distance.
Most historians credit the Chicago School with the first true skyscrapers, but even here, the problems of historical styles remained.
William Le Baron Jenney, Home Insurance Building, 1884, demolished 1931, Chicago
This was the first tall building to incorporate structural steel into its iron frame, but the exterior has a Romanesque Revival inspired design. Here too we see the need to bundle floors to accommodate historicized motifs that are already stretched beyond any meaningful allusion to tradition.
Once again, the imposition of strong horizontal elements disrupts the sense of vertical rise.
This is the problem that led Sullivan to consider the need for an entirely new decorative system suited to the unique character of tall buildings. If we consider the historical circumstances, he was dealing with forms that were generated by the nature of their materials (rectilinear steel framed construction), specific practical needs (the modern urban office), and a defining visual characteristic (unprecedented height relative to width). Historical styles were aesthetically and symbolically ill-suited to such obvious indicators of modern innovation and novelty.
Adler and Sullivan, Guarantee Building, 1896, Buffalo
It was noted earlier that Sullivan imagined the tall building in terms of a classical column, with a base, shaft, and capital, and the three part division is plain here. Rather than being arbitrarily placed around arbitrary bundles of stories, it reflects the division of the building into service floors, office floors, and the roof.
There is decoration, but the arches at the top run the length of the shaft like the flutes of a column rising towards the capital. The horizontals correspond with the divisions between floors and are set behind the verticals so as not to interrupt the impression of rising height. but lets look more closely at the "capital".
The Guarantee Building is richly decorated with coiling plant-based and geometric forms that spill over the roofline in places. Ancient capitals used plant forms, but this design doesn't have a historical precedent. As an artist, Sullivan fits with the European Art Nouveau movement, which was a turn of the twentieth century attempt to derive a new aesthetic language suited to both the fine and applied arts of Modernity.
Art Nouveau resembles Modernism for its rejection of traditional artistic styles, but differs in its recognition that human creativity needs some sort of aesthetic dimension. Art Noueau artists turned to nature for inspiration, settling on the vine-based whiplash curve as a central element. These abstract, linear forms break traditional boundaries between the fine arts to unify architecture, interior decoration, and art into a single ornamental whole in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the courtly Rococo. However, while Art Nouveau forms are similarly abstracted and linear in composition, they lack the patterned consistency and aristocratic connotations of the Rococo. Instead, the designs take advantage of modern materials and techniques to create something aesthetically attractive and rooted in nature, but suited to the fast pace and mechanical processes of modern life.
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Victor Horta, Hotel Tassel, 1892-93, Brussels
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The Art Nouveau highlights our crisis of authority, because in spite of its claims of a "natural" foundation, it is clearly an architectural novelty that gains legitimacy only from the decision of leading figures to promote it. Sullivan's famous student Frank Lloyd Wright believed his teacher was wrong not to consider local geography, and attracted his own circle of passionate followers. The Romantic notion of artist as inspired visionary, or, less charitably, as the center of a cult of personality, is all that remains when rules exist at the discretion of the creator. In this environment, Le Corbusier's weird, overwrought, oracular tone begins to make tactical sense.
Gropius's Fagus Factory, introduces pure Modernism with absolute theoretical principles governed by materials and processes. This violates the subjective aspect of aesthetics that undermined faith in the old authorities in the first place, but that is waved away rhetorically. When someone like Le Corbusier raves delusionally about the timeless beauty of simple broken stone polyhedra, he provides the aesthetic dimension to slip these inhuman monstrosities under the philosophical radar.
The best thing about rules in the Modern era, is that if you break them, you simply declare what you are doing a new rule set and launch a new "movement".
Rudolf Steiner, Second Goetheanum, 1924-28, Dornach, Switzerland
Think architecture shouldn't be limited to expressing a simple material nature? You might be an Expressionist.
Gerrit Rietveld, Rietveld Schröder House, 1924, Utrecht
Think architecture should resemble the paintings of Mondrien? You might be a Neo-Plasticist.
Konstantin Melnikov, Rusakov Workers' Club, 1927-28, Moscow
Think the expressive use of simple masses points to a bright Marxist future? You might be a Constructivist.
Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, 1914, Cologne
If you want to use modern materials to suggest energy and dynamism, you might be anticipating Art Deco.
Antoni Gaudí, Casa Batlló, redesigned in 1904, Barcelona
If you create unique fantastical forms that still captivate, you might be Gaudi.
With the exception of Gaudi, who is a true outlier, all these styles are based on moves within a discursive, art world game, rather than any aesthetic appeal to the people compelled to live with their designs. Both the Beaux-Arts and Art Nouveau could be dismissed as superficialities that pollute the true "beauty" of pure, unadorned forms. The Band has referred to this as "theory" on many occasions, but this stretches the meaning of the word even beyond the discursive formations of the Postmodernists. There isn't even the illusion of serious argumentation to support the declarations behind each movement, only melodramatic proclamations that are nothing more than pure, generally atavistic, opinion.
Adolf Loos, Haus Scheu, 1912-1913, Vienna
It is difficult to convey the blend of weird pseudo-mysticism, junk science, compounding logical fallacies, and non sequiturs that make up the purple prose of Modern artistic manifestos. Reading them now, it seems remarkable that they would generate any response but laughter, then you remember that they are still taught and read with historical reverence. Early Modernist Adolf Loos' essay "Ornament and Crime" actually states that "Lack of ornament is a sign of spiritual strength."
The piece is worth a brief look, if only to see how woefully ignorant and what shoddy thinkers these "genius"" creators actually were.
Or consider Henry van de Velde's "Credo" of 1907, where the false spirituality of these misanthropes is on full display in the use of Biblical parody to defend the violation of the age-old human need for meaning.
Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Adolf Loos, 1909, Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin
Kokoschka's style nicely captures the moral rectitude and cultural confidence of the Wiemar era. Just the folks you want to guide architectural theory.
Henry van de Velde, Boekentoren, Ghent University Library, 1933, Ghent
This eyesore on the historical skyline of Ghent was meant to stand as a Modern "compliment" to the earlier Medieval towers in the city, including St. Bavo Cathedral, seen in the background.
This must be the spiritual progress that Loos was referring to.
All these Modernisms share two things: a rejection of traditional architectural forms and a foundation on nothing more than the whims of megalomaniacal individuals profoundly alienated from their cultural homes. But do feelings of alienation give the right to violate the very material fabric of that culture?
Eugène Beaudouin, Urbain Cassan, and Louis Hoym de Marien, Tour Maine-Montparnasse, 1969-1973, Paris
More spiritual advancement. The name International Style suits this hostile globalist invader of French tradition. How did we become hostage to this?
The reality is that architecture became a category without content; a well-established artifact of cultural assumptions from a culture that no longer existed. The notion of creativity within a rule-based system had been implicit to architecture since its formation in the Renaissance, but now the rules, as well as the creativity, were exposed as subjective human moves in a game of theory. The "winner" in this context became the idea that could win the support of the narrow range of institutions and individuals that were in the process of constructing the discourse that would become the contemporary art world. Individual events like Gropius' academic placements at the Bauhaus and Harvard and Johnson's influential MOMA catalog had outsized impact in determining which voices would be authoritative.
Premier Congrès d’architecture moderne, La Sarraz, 1928, Archives de la construction moderne, Paris
Max Huber, 7 CIAM, Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne, Bergamo, 1949, Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne (International Congresses of Modern Architecture), or CIAM was started in 1928 by leading architects to promote Modernism across all aspects of design. Among the founders of this highly influential group were Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion, who wrote a seminal textbook in architectural history called Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition that was published by Harvard in 1941. Fortunately, the latest edition adds "detailed analyses of the Carpenter Center".
So Modern architecture shambled into prominence, bouyed by the historical prestige of the art but stripped of its defining principles like some luxe corpse animated by the private whims of misanthropic priests. This raises some questions: how was this possible, and where does Postmodernism come in?
Kengo Kuma, M2 Building, 1991, Tokyo
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