The Future of Architecture. Since1889.
-
Jean-Louis eohen
I
~ , 1
Introduction
f
Architecture's expanded field 010 - Two thresholds 013 - The carousel 014 - The continuity 015 - Historians
in time 01 hegemonies 01 type
versus architects,
or the problem
S eds to rails: e dominion of steel
01 inclusion
02
03
The search for modern form
Domestic innovation and tectonic expression
018 - The lamp 01 style
028 - Toward a "new art" from Paris to Berlin
042 - The central
place 01 Great Britain
019 - The eminence
031 - Great Britain alter the Arts and Crafts
043 - Residential
re/orm
043 - Uni/ying
01 the Beaux-Arts
023 - Proqrarns
01 modernization
034 - Art Nouveau and the Paris-Nancy
023 - Networks
01 internationalization
036 - From Italian "Floreale"
axis
to Russian "Modern"
the urban landscape
046 - The advent 01 rein/orced
concrete
036 - The Catalan renaissance
053 - Concrete
07
08
09
In search of a language: from classicism to Cubism
The Great War and its side effects
Expressionism in Weimar Germany and the Netherlands
090 - Anglo-American
102 - A triple mobilization
classicisms
092 - German nostalgia 093 - Loos and the lure 01 "Western 097 - Berlage and the question
culture"
01 proportions
100 - Cubism and cubistics
nationalisms
103 - The spread 01 Taylorism
110 - The Arbeitsrat
103 - Commemoration
111 - Dynamism
in architecture
106 - Postwar recomposition
117 - Hanseatic
Expressionism
108 - New architects
118 - De Klerk and the Amsterdam
science
and reconstruction
between
lür Kunst
13
14
15
Architecture and revolution in Russia
The architecture of social reform
Internationalization, its networks and spectacles
162 - The shock 01 revolution
176 - Modernizing
165 - A pro/ession
renewed
180 - Red Vienna
190 - The journal
166 - The "social
condensers"
181 - The new Frank/urt
191 - Model cities and open-air
171 - Polemics
and rivalries
171 - The Palace 01 the Soviets competition
School
and propaganda
cities
185 - Taut's housing
developments
186 - French suburbs 186 - Echoes overseas 189 - Equipping
the suburbs
in Berlin
194 - Modern
as printed stage
architecture
195 - The International
Congresses
01 Modern Architecture 198 - Networks
exhibitions
enters the museums
01 in/luence
(CIAM) and historical
narratives
04
05
06
American rediscovered, tall and wide
The challenge of the metropolis
New production, new aesthetic
056 - Chicago
070 - An explosion
082 - The AEG model in Berlin
057 - Sullivan's
in white and black inventions
without
071 -_The planners'
precedent
toolbox
083 - Factory as inspiration
060 - Wright and prarie architecture
071 - Town, square, and monument
085 - The Deutscher
063 - Wright and Europe
076 - The idyll 01 the garden
088 - Futurist mechanization
067 - The skyscraper
migrates
to New York
city
077 - Zoning tor the colonies lor Europe's
Werkbund
and
metropoles
10
11
12
Return to order in Paris
Dada, De Stijl, and Mies: from subversiveness to elementarism
Architectural education in turmoil
138 - The Dada blast
153 - The Weimar Bauhaus
124 - Purist lorms and urban compositions 127 - Le Corbusier
and the modern
house
128 - Grand vessels in Paris and Geneva 128 - Perret and the "sovereign
shelter"
129 - Paris Art Deco 132 - Mallet-Stevens,
or elegant
modernism
136 - The extent 01 French modernism
152 - The Beaux-Arts
138 - The new lorms 01 De Stijl
156 - The Bauhaus
143 - Van Doesburg
156 - The Vkhutemas
builds
143 - Oud and Rietveld, Irom lurniture
161 - Innovative
to house design
148 - Mies van der Rohe's theoretical
and the alternatives
in Dessau and Berlin in Moscow
schools
in the
new and old worlds projects
16
17
18
Futurism and Rationalism in Fascist Italy
The spectrum of classicisms and traditionalisms
North American modernities
200 - A second
Futurism
224 - Wright, the return
200 - Muzio and the Novecento
212 - Literal classicism
231 - Los Angeles
204 - The regime and Rationalism
215 - Modern
232 - The skyscraper
207 - Terragni's
216 - Traditionalism
geometries
208 - An ambiguous 209 - New territories
"Mediterraneanism"
classicism
217 - Opportunism
and selt-crttlcal without
217 - Islands 01 coexistence
borders
modernism
236 - Industrial between
- lertile ground reloaded
products: lactory
and market
238 - The New Deal's housing and the European
relorm
immigration
19
20
21
Functionalism and machine aesthetics
Modern languages conquer the world
Colonial experiences and new nationalisms
250 - British reticence
272 - From Arabizing
240 - Taylorism
and architecture
241 - From ergonomics standard
to
national
243 - Dynamic
lunctionalism
in
France and the United States
modernisms
to modernizing
in North Alrica
as Czechoslovakia's
275 - Near Eastern and Alrican
brand
260 - The moderns
and Nelson
deleated
European
258 - The modern
dimensions
242 - Poetic lunctionalism: Chareau
255 - Northern
in Hungary
and Poland
01 Turkey and Iran
277 - The modernization
261 - Balkan ligures
279 - Chinese
pluralism
262 - Iberian modernization
283 - Modern
hegemony
264 - Japanese
endeavors
275 - Italian cities around the Mediterranean
in Palestine
experiments
265 - Brazilian
curves
25
26
27
Le Corbusier reinvented and reinterpreted
The shape of American hegemony
Repression and diffusion of modernism
322 - The Unité d'Habitation
338 - The second
358 - Seven Sisters
322 - 01 palaces
342 - Mies the American
359 - Socialist
345 - Wright's
359 - Khrushchev's
and houses
01 Ronchamp
324 - The surprise
325 - Indian adventures
346 - Research
326 - Invention
349 - Gropius
326 - Corbusian
and introspection
Brutalism
334 - The saga 01 Brasilia
age
last return out west
366 - Japan's
01 the Bauhaus
351 - Saarinen's
Iyricism
352 - The solitude
in Moscow
realism exported critique
360 - Aalto's eminent
and Breuer: the
assimilation
mannerisms
330 - Anglo-American
skyscraper
position
new energy
367 - Latin Americanisms
and Johnson's
anxiety
01 invention
372 - Archipelagoes
01 Kahn
353 - From experimentation
to commerce
31
32
33
lhe postmodern season
From regionalism to critical internationalism
The neo-Futurist optimism of high tech
--
424 - Scarpa,
- From nostalgia
to play
- The "end 01 prohibitions" .: - - Retrieving - America .:~
-
urbanity's
ligures
turns postmodern
e uncertain
Iront 01 postmodernism
e city - composition
or the rediscovery
01 craft
or collage?
427 - Collective
endeavor
438 - Beaubourg
establishes
439 - Composition
426 - Siza's poetic rigor in the Ticino
according
439 - Experimentation
431 - Moneo and Iberia
441 - Structure
432 - Europe as a lield 01 experience
445 - Architects
433 - Research
446 - New geometries
in South Asia
434 - Latin American 434 - A critical
personalities
internationalism
a canon to Rogers
according
according
to Piano
to Foster
and engineers
22
23
24
Architecture of a total war
Tabula rasa to horror vacui: reconstruction
286 - Front lines and home Ironts
and renaissance
The fatal crisis of the Modern Movement, and the alternatives
287 - Extreme scales 298 - An American
288 - Air raid protection 291 - Constructive 291 - Mobility
and destructive
292 - Imagining
01 military occupation the postwar
294 - Converting
age
310 - The Festival 01 Britain
299 - Literal reconstruction
or radical
modernization?
and Ilexibility
292 - Architecture
294 - Memory
techniques
world
to peace
and memorials
312 - Italian Neorealism 314 - Planet Brazil
301 - The "neighborhood 302 - The traditionalists
unit" as model at work
318 - Housing
and innovation
in North Alrica
302 - In search 01 a British model
319 - CIAM in turmoil
303 - German debates
320 - The end 01 CIAM
309 - A modernist
triumph?
28
29
30
Toward new utopias
Between elitism and populism: alternative architecture
After 1968: architecture forthe city
378 - Italy: critical
continuity
381 - Independent
together
385 - Technology:
ethos or icon?
394 - Research
cities 01 indeterminacy
395 - Venturi's
386 - Hovering
388 - Metabolism
in Japan
388 - Megastructures 389 - Technology
404 - 1968, annus mirabilis and technocracy critique
and its double
401 - From lunctionalism advocacy
408 - The input 01 the user
planning
35
Architecture's outer boundaries
Vanishing points 469 - Strategic
- Gehry, or the seduction
-
- Koolhaas,
or lantastic
-- - Nouvel, or mystery
471 - Reinvented
materials
realism
471 - Sustainable
buildings
- Herzog and de Meuron, or the principie
01 the collection
.:; - Deconstructivists - Fragmentation
geographies
01 art
recovered
and rationalists
and poetry in Japan
472 - The city reborn yet threatened 473 - Landscape
as horizon
473 - Hypermodern 474 - Persistent
city
to
34 -
the extended
405 - The shape 01 the city
396 - Grays and Whites
and global agitation
405 - Observing
media
social expectations
476 - Notes 494 - Bibliography 506 - Index 526 - Acknowledgments
and credits
Architecture's expanded field
William Morris's News from Nawhere and H. G. Wells's When
consumption.
the Sleeper Wakes, published
types and classes of users. Architecture
in 1890 and 1899 respectively,
The field al so expanded
with the rise of new ceased to be a dis-
depict a future society - a socialist utopia in the former case,
cipline exclusively in the service of the wealthy and began to
a capitalist dystopia in the latter - encountered
address broader constituencies,
protagonists
by the novels'
after a long period of sleep. If the contemporary
including municipalities,
coop-
eratives, and a wide range of institutions and social groups ..•
2
inhabitants of the planet had awakened in the early twenty-first
It also responded to the breaking down of classical codes, the
century, they would have been at a loss to recognize not just
rejection of historical imitation, and the introduction
the cities constellating
materials. Its new relations to technology, the arts, and the city
the world's surface, but also the build-
of new
ings making them up. Both cities and buildings have under-
were affected by external conditions as well as by internal anes.
gone fundamentaltransformations,
At times it had recourse to sources outside the discipline,
more so than at any time
in the past. Likewise, the quantity of building stock produced
adopting metaphors based on biological organisms, machines,
since 1900 has surpassed the sum total of that which existed
or language; at other times it found inspiration within its own
in all previous human history.
disciplinary
Not only did the population of urban areas exceed that of the
it has been impossible to limit architecture's
countryside
book to realized constructions.
for the first time shortly after the year 2000, but
traditions ..•
3
In view of all these transformations,
also the very forms of human presence on the face of the earth
books, journals, and public manifestations
reflected tharoughgoing
ture of architecture
changes. In the nineteenth century, the
train station and department
store joined the ha use, palace,
and temple in the existing inventory of building types. In the
definition in this
Unbuilt designs, as well as embodying
the cul-
in its broadest sense, have also been taken
into account. Indeed, realized buildings are always informed by ideas, narratives, and repressed memories of past projects.
twentieth century, office and apartment towers, large housing developments,
vast hangars enclosing factories and shopping
centers, and a wide variety of infrastructures dams to airports followed. Contradicting
ranging from
Two thresholds in time
the British historian
Nikolaus Pevsner, who famously wrote that "a bicycle shed is
The very delimitation
a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture,"
Rejecting a strictly chronological
the most prosaic programs came to be considered worthy of aesthetic altention. This unprecedented struction was meager compensation
.• 1
objects
begins with the period from 1880 to 1914. It finds its temporal brackets between the "short century" that the British historian
for a previously unim-
treasures, the effects ot industrialization,
urbanization, and war.
mutations were not limited to the invention of
programs responding to the new demands of production
Introduction
I
Architecture's
expanded field
definition, the present narrative
surge in con-
aginable level of destructian ot natural resources and cultural . Architecture's
"twentieth century" is open to debate.
and
Eric Hobsbawm condensed
into the years from 1914 to 1991 .• 4
and a longer span that places the twentieth century's origins within a continuum that goes as far back as the Enlightenment. This initial mament is characterized industrialization
and urbanization,
by the convergence
of
the rise of social democracy
throughout disciplinary
Europe, the emergence specializations,
of the social sciences as
and the dissemination
thought of important philosophers
of the
from Friedrich Nietzsche to
Henri Bergson. It also coincides with the rise of revolutionary art movements such as Symbolism
in poetry and the arfs, and
second millennium appeared to signal the next radical break in the culture of architecture.
It is this moment that provides the
closing bracket for this book. The automation sional labor as well as the relationship
dio and the building site. The Guggenheim
a war for world domination
Spain, completed
the triumph of
in
between the design stu-
Cubism in painting. While the European powers were fighting and orchestrating
of processes
a digital age had the effect of modifying the division of profesMuseum in Bilbao,
by Frank Gehry in 1997, was a highly visible
imperialism, designers, and the images of their work, also
exemplar of these new practices while also a demonstration
began to make inroads around the globe, thanks to the unprec-
the potential importance
edented acceleration of modes of transport and new networks of
public policy; together with dozens of other surprising
printed information, which disseminated the cultural norms of the
ings, Gehry's museum called into question the traditional defini-
leading-nations.
tion of the architectural
A pair of almost contemporaneous
events were crucial to this
of architecture
object. With architecture
and cultural organizations
of
in urban planning and build-
firms, clients,
enjoying unprecedented
mobility,
beginning: the Universal Exposition in Paris of 1889 and the
the rise of a generation of designers hyped by the international
World's Columbian
media, but initially engaged in theoretical and critical activ-
Exposition in Chicago of 1893. The Paris
fair coincided with the climactic moment of European colonial-
ity and open to utopian discourse, coincided with a crisis in the
ism, while the Chicaco fair signaled the emergence
social policies that had developed over the course of the twen-
of the New
World on the international scene. Both everits called the very
tieth century. Coming on the heels of several generations
definition of architecture
architects who had nurtured high aspirations to social trans-
addressees
into question, in its purpose - as its
became much broader social groups - as well as
formation, designers at the end of the twentieth century often
its forms. Mass production, of which Fordism became the most
relinquished
significant system of organization,
have used to achieve substantive reforms.
wide market and encouraged
led to the creation of a world-
the most radical architects to
to developers
and politicians tools that they might
The span from 1889 to 2000 does not divide easily into tidy,
search for new forms consonant with the machine aesthetic. At
self-contained
the same time, traditionalists,
account multiple, overlapping
who were often no less engaged
socially and no less hostile to eclecticism, the more comforting
sought to perpetuate
archetypes of the past by adjusting them
segments. Rather, it is necessary to take into
which culmi-
nated with Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990, and
temporalities
throughout the
century, as suggested by the historian Fernand Braudel in his historical interpretation used the architectural
o new demands. Almost one century later - after decolonization,
of
of the Mediterranean
world.
metaphor of multidimensional
to describe these multiple temporalities.
->
5
Braudel
"planes"
In twentieth-century
architecture they include state policies and their highly volatile
e end of the Cold War, which was marked by the West's
configurations;
iumph over the Soviet bloc in 1989 - the winding down of the
well as cities and regions, which undergo slow processes of
life cycles of institutions and organizations
as
010
I
011
Introduction
I
Architecture's
expanded field
3
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the
Illinois Institute 01 Technology,
c. 1945
growth and decline; and, most simply, the construction
of major
manifestoes, which have sometimes exerted their influence at
buildings and the lives of architects, critics, clients, and histori-
a distance of several decades. An attempt has been made
ans. More fleeting temporalities,
throughout the book to identify the visual documents
in which concepts and ideals
allowing
appear and disappear only to resurface a few decades later,
the clearest understanding
also play their par!. The problem of writing a history of twentieth-
tions. Together with images of completed
century architecture
within their urban contexts, pages of magazines, book covers,
is precisely that of relating these differential
rates of temporal change to specific designs and built objects.
and architects'
Given this framework, I have resisted the temptation to write a
continuously
of these resonances and reverberabuildings, sometimes
portraits help to reconstruct the complexity
changing
of
networks of signs and forms.
history of what has been known as the "Modern Movement" ever since Nikolaus Pevsner made a rather partisan identification of its "pioneers"
in 1936, celebrating Walter Gropius
as its major figurehead.
-> 6
ing the rubric of the "International New York,
-> 7
The carousel of hegemonies
I have also avoided perpetuatStyle," formulated
in 1932 in
preferring instead to shape a broader definition
In the following
pages, the different national "scenes" of archi-
tecture have been treated as porous to international strategies
of modernity that cannot be reduced to the fetish of novitas,
and debates - as contexts in which the latter were subjected to
of the new for newness's sake. From this point of view, it was
discussion,
essential not to disreqard architectural
ries with impermeable
nity based on conservative
interpretations
or traditionalist
of moder-
concepts, even if
modification,
and adaption - rather than as territo-
borders. The history of twentieth-century
architecture could be written by following the thread - or, rather,
they were frequently rejected or ridiculed by militant critics act-
untangling the knot - of consecutive
ing, as is often the case, on behalf of the leading architects.
imposed on national and regional cultures.
Resurgences of classicism and the occasional subversive erup-
consideration
tion of the vernacular are part of this bigger picture. Indeed, far
economic
from being a rigid category, and even less a sterile one, tradi-
including their military consequences.
tion - though sometimes wholly fabricated - has consistently
mendous impact on culture. In 1941 the media tycoon Henry
served as an intellectual stimulan!.
Luce declared that the twentieth century was destined to be
-> 8
An exploration of the shifting boundaries
between architecture
was characterized
United States exercised considerable
cal architects
The elevated ideals with which radi-
have often identified themselves
machine aesthetic or organicism
- such as the
- needed to be taken into
account, along with the effects of the apparently most abstract
These conflicts had tre-
the "American Century," following centuries implicitly perceived as "French" and then "English."
methods of form-giving.
The period under
and political conflicts between dominant states,
al so proved indispensable
the changing
-> 9
in crucial ways by recurrent
and the related fields of art, urban planning, and technology for understanding
systems of hegemony
-> 10
There is no doubt that the influence on architecture
- as on many other fields of culture - even before the massive increase in its power following victory over the Axis forces in 1945 and a second triumphal moment at the end of the Cold War.
-> 11
The vocabulary
of architecture
faithfully reflected
012
I
013
these shifts. After 1945 American terminology
supplemented
been perfected by the British. The architecture
of the Moroccan
the Italian language of architecture that had emerged during
city of Casablanca
the Renaissance and then was supplemented
al so to Berlin and Los Angeles, while Buenos Aires contained
by French and
British terms in the eiqhteenth and nineteenth centuries and by German terms in the early twentieth century.
was defined in relation not just to Paris but
echoes of Madrid, Budapest, Milan, New York, and Paris.
-> 12
But the hegemony of this relatively new civilization was not the only thing to have an impact on global architeclure. Considering
The continuity of type
each national scene as a porous rather than
closed real m reveals systems of domination
of varying types,
On each national scene, the groups competing
for dominance
intensity, and duration, from industrial modes of production
in architecture at times indulged in exaggerated
polemics in
lo patlerns of leisure. National scenes have remained open
order to consolidate
despite recurrent attempts by authoritarian
Pierre Bourdieu's sense of the termo ->
or xenophobic
their own "symbolic capital," in sociologist 14
It was therefore impos-
regimes to shore up their borders. Far from giving way to a
sible to limit a history of the relationships
homogenizing
century architecture to a list of aesthetic "influences"
internationalism,
national systems have con-
structuring twentieth- a term
stantly redefined themselves, shaped by the interplay of inter-
I have consciously avoided. Instead, following Hans Robert Jauss,
nal and external forces. Long before the advent of air travel and
I found it essential to analyze the reception
new information technologies,
the global circulation
of ideas
and images by way of the steamship, the telegraph, and the mechanical
reproduction
met by works and
ideas, as this often redefined the professional tects, even those working at a considerable
identity of archi-
distance from the
buildings they were interpreting and sometimes emulating.
of pictures - all nineteenth-century
inventions - shaped every local scene.
This book proposes to map the relationships
These patterns may also be detected within colonial empires,
among theoretical systems, seminal concepts, urban plans,
->
which both reached their apogee and underwent their final
paper projects, and completed
collapse in the twentieth century, then were partially perpetu-
along with individual architects, remains the central focus,
ated under postcolonial
although, once again, with their local and international recep-
conditions
after 1945. But the relation-
buildings. This last, however,
ship of the colonizer to the colonized was never unidirectional,
tion taken into account. The connection
and the hybridization that characterized
spaces and built ones was particularly strong in the twentieth
architecture
urban planning and
into constructions
plan of Chandigarh,
nations.
-> 13
Corbusier - was rooted in town-planning
I
Architecture's
expanded field
principies that had
in a kind of leap from the shelf of the "ideal project
library," as identified by Bruno Fortier,
The general
capital of the Punjab - initially entrusted
to the American architect Albert Mayer, then to Paris-based
Introduction
developed
built by the dominant power,
also operated between colonizing
between imagined
century, given that the principal types of structures were often
in many colonies, where local themes were
assimilated
15
established
construction Le
-> 16
to the reality of the
site.
The glass towers imagined by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1921, for example, were built only in the 1950s. They then
became a tiresome cliché - an easy target for critics advocat-
within an optimistic picture of the encounter between formal
ing "postmodernism"
and technological
- before being reborn at the end of the
century thanks to new technological immeuble-villa
conceived
advances. Likewise, the
by Le Corbusier in 1922, a collec-
invention and social advances ...• 22 Twenty
years later, but in a similar vein, Kenneth Frampton proposed a "critical history" of the Modern Movement, seeking to pro-
tive dwelling with individual living spaces, has contínued'to
long its "incomplete
inspire projects in the third millennium. The machine-build-
took into account the global expansion of modern architecture,
project." ..•23 Soon after, William Curtis
ing that Antonio Sant'Elia envisioned just before World War I
a perspective
would appear in a modified form in the Centre Pompidou in
America ...• 24 In 2002, Alan Colquhoun
Paris, while the contorted, biomorphic
vey no less committed to the celebration of modernism than Frampton's ...• 25
by the Expressionists
structures dreamed of
have finally become feasible today in an
rooted in his own experiences in Asia and Latin published a concise sur-
age when digital modeling has made it possible to break down
Reyner Banham, who as early as 1960 saw roots of modern
complex shapes into components
architectural
that can be calculated and
strategies in both Italian Futurism and French
Classicism, was among those to propose a more subversive
industrially produced.
reading ...• 26 Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Iyzed the relationship century architecture,
Historians versus architects, or the problem of inclusion
Dal Co also ana-
of aesthetics and politics in twentiethunderlining
the ideological
shaped the field, ..•27 which Tafuri had addressed his enigmatic but magisterial Architecture
forces that previously in
and Utopía (1973).
Until the 1970s the histories told by Sigfried Giedion, Bruno
Several generations of biographical
Zevi, Henry-Russell
pedias have allowed readings parallel to those offered by these
Hitchcock, and Leonardo Benevolo per-
dictionaries
and encyclo-
petuated a view of modern architecture that gave priority to the
historical narratives. Recently Adrian Forty attempted,
radical character of its innovations. Each narrative carried its
and Buíldíngs, to define the semantic field of modern archi-
own particular biases ...• 17 As early as 1929 Giedion was inter-
tecture by identifying some of its key terms, whereas Anthony
ested in observing
Vidler unveiled the strategies determining
"national constants." ..•18 By 1941 he spoke
in Words
many of these found-
of the creation of a "new tradition," a notion Hitchcock had
ing histories ...• 28 Yet few of these works have attempted to
proposed in 1929 ...• 19 In 1951 Zevi responded to Giedion by
reveal the continuities that characterize
highlighting
- an often broken thread, but one that runs throughout the
the historical relationship of architectural
culture
modern architecture
to politics and surveying a vast array of buildings ...• 20 In 1958
episodes discussed
Hitchcock described the "reintegration"
From Giedion to Tafuri to Frampton, these discourses
of the arts of the engi-
in this book. of archi-
neer and the architect; he also preferred to write about build-
tectural history have revealed the fact that the supposed
ings that he had actually had the opportunity
omy or objectivity of the author is a quasi-fiction.
Benevolo, he placed the development
to visit. ..•21 As for
of modern architecture
books originated from a commission
auton-
Many of these
by a particular architect
014
I
015
- in Giedion's case, by Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius - or
appears all the more obsolete thirty years after the eruption
reflected an intellectual
of the last of several short-lived
position developed
in close contact
postmodernisms.
with architects - in Tafuri's case, with Aldo Rossi and Vittorio
going so far as to extend the definition
Gregotti. Through such relationships, architects have undeni-
tion to the vast configurations
ably shaped historians' thinking and writing and at times biased
explored by, tor example, Bruno Latour,
Without
of the modern condi-
of scientific and political thought -> 30
I have ventured
their interpretations.
beyond the limits of the movements
The following pages try to place less emphasis on the creativity
own modernity to consider changes brought about by the con-
of incontestable
vergence 01 the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and
and Mies
-> 29
"masters" like Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier,
than on the sometimes
unfairly neglected work of
ing codes to the lunctional
ered through the publication
objective
ing the last two decades. The importance modern architecture
dur-
of the "masters" of
needs to be assessed as much through a
careful reconsideration
of their ascendancy
ination as through a celebration
and period of dom-
of their work. From this point
their
the rise of the nation-state. The adjustment of conservative build-
architects who had less heroic careers but have been rediscovof a plethora of monographs
literally proclaiming
requirements
01 modernization
process of the material transformation
- the
of society -
belongs to this chronicle as much as do innovations in building typology and torrn, even if the former respond more to the mandates of state power and capital than to ideal s of social relorm. It is difficult and perhaps impossible to communicate
in a single
01 view - and unlike many 01 the volumes named above - this
narrative a spectrum of experiences
book attempts to be as inclusive as possible, within the limits 01
graphs, exhibition catalogs, doctoral theses, and thematic stud-
its format and at the risk 01 occasionally
ies have not yet exhausted. Yet by alternating wide brushstrokes
plex trajectories.
I have frequently
the experimental
beginnings
oversimplilying
corn-
devoted more attention to
01 architects' careers than to their
that thousands of mono-
with specific details, I have endeavored to evoke a landscape of recurrent themes and at times to reveal different ways of think-
late periods, when their work often regressed or was simply fro-
ing about the past. Among these recurrent themes is the
zen in place by success and repetition.
passionate search by modern architects for an architecture
In order to avoid reproducing
the kind 01 epic narrative with
which many previous histories have interpreteo the theories and
considered
to be "rational" - a term that has enjoyed much
success over many decades - or in any case to be justified
designs of the most innovative architects 01 the nineteenth cen-
by a ratio related to construction, function, or economy. This
tury - reducing their immediate predecessors
search led in extreme cases to a reduction of the conception
to the dubious
status 01 "pioneers"
- I have taken a broad view 01 the untold-
ing of architectural
modernity. The continuity between the ide-
of "rational" building to little more than the implementation
als and reform strategies lorged during the first decades of the
ment guaranteeing
Industrial Revolution and those 01 the "mature" modernism
theme in twentieth-century
of
maximum
sunlight. Another recurrent
architecture
has been the relation-
the 1920s cannot be denied. Indeed, a definition 01 modernity
ship of architectural
limited to the aesthetic and design precepts of high modernism
classes - a subject taken into consideration
Introduction
I
Architecture's
expanded field
of
principies like the provision of optimal ventilation or an align-
programs to the needs of exploited social by professional
architects Throughout
for the first time in history during this periodo the twentieth century, diverse populist movements
constantly addressed this subject, whether structurally - for example, in terms of social housing - or aesthetically, by drawing on vernacular
rather than "pedigreed"
forms.
I have aspired to trace projects, alongside the dazzling accomplishments of the "rnasters" and their trailblazing
experiments
that claimed to free architecture from the weight of history, that are more reflective of the slow, cumulative, and irresistible process of modernization.
During the golden age of Hollywood
cinema, the major studios and leading producers eir movies as "A," "B," or
"e" according
categorized
to their budget. This
narrative, though most often focused on A buildings, was initially written with the intention not to neglect the relationship between the "major" architecture • orks and the "minor" architecture
of the most spectacular
of mass production, which
constituted the urban backdrop for the monumental
projects.
The physical limitations of a single volume have constrained this arnbítíon, But if the pages that follow cannot unravel all the myszsries of twentieth-century
architecture, they aim first and fore-
-nost to be an invitation to discovery and to suggest a framework in which to understand its most characteristic features.
016
I
017
Sheds to rails: the dominion of steel
The historical cycle referred to by the Scottish urban planner
The lamp of style
Patrick Geddes and his American disciple Lewis Mumford as the "paleotechnic
age" was symbolized by the invention of the
steam engine, the diffusion of the telegraph, and the expansion of the railroads ..•
1
As it unfolded, the crisis of rapidly growing
cities and the erosion of historicist architectural voked a late-nineteenth-century
languages pro-
revision of ideals that had been
At a time when national identity was developing in parallel with a passion for history, Semper and his French contemporary Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-Ie-Duc shared the beliefs that architecture must free itself from the multiple styles inherited from the past and that the logic embedded in the history of architecture, when released
formulated in response to the Industrial Revolution. Most of the
from the baggage of historical styles, would give rise to the one
theoretical
true style of the contemporary age. Semper declared, "Style is the
positions and slogans of the following decades
sprang from these precocious visions of a new culture based
accord of an art object wilh its genesis and with all the precondi-
on induslry. The effects of scientific discoveries combined
tions and circumstances of its becoming." .• 4 Viollet-Ie-Duc added
wilh Romanlicism
and belated echoes of the Enlighlenmenl
lo
in his Lectures on Architecture
5
that style was no longer merely
broaden Ihe ambilions of new nation-states thal rapidly came lo
the result of the will to create a form, but rather the logical outcome
both support and depend upon imperialism
of a given set of conditions: "As long as we are used to proceeding
and colonial expan-
sion. National and inlernalional economic growth heighlened
by reasoning, as long as we have a principie, any compositional
the demand for public policies that would satisfy the expecla-
task is possible, if not easy, and follows an orderly, methodical
tions of increasingly well-organized
workers.
path, the results of which, though they may not be masterpieces,
In 1889 an international
opened in Paris to com-
are at the very least fine, acceptable pieces of work that can have
exposition
memorale the hundredlh
anniversary
With Iheir Galerie des Machines,
11
of the fall of the Baslille. Ferdinand Dulert and
style." .• 5 Thus a locomotive or a sleamboat could be stylish in the sense meant by Viollet-Ie-Duc so long as it did not imitate a stage-
Victor Conlamin soughl lo ouldo Joseph Paxlon's Crystal
coach or a sailboat but embraced its own lechnical requirements.
Palace al Ihe London world exposition, which in 1851 had
The bold gestures represented
revealed Ihe vast gap between the mechanical
in which three-hinged
arches spanned 110 meters (360 feet),
and by the 300-meter
(986-foot) tower that would soon take
prefabricated
elegance of its
glass envelope and the eclectic ornamentation
of the industrial
objects it housed ..•
products featuring mass-produced
2
The sight of these new
decoration
had spurred
the name of Gustave Eiffel,
13
by the Galerie des Machines,
the man responsible for its
design and erection, were made possible by the use of iron,
John Ruskin to pen diatribes against the machines that were
the preeminenl
stripping workers of their rale in handcrafting
clearly visible in both these emblematic
"Caribbean
objects. But the
hut" also on view at the 1851 fair inspired the ideas
that would fuel Gottfried Semper's treatise Oer Stil in den technischen und tektonischen
Künsten (Style in the Technical and
Tectonic Arts; 1860-3) ..• 3 4
Chapter 01
I
Sheds to rails: the dominion
fully disguised
material of nineteenth-century
industry. Though
edifices, iron was care-
in other contexts, including most of the buildings
erected in Europe and North America in the middle of the century. Architectural
theorists therefore took particular interest in
the question of how to sheathe metallic structures ..•
01 steel
6
6 ~
,-
Firth 01 Forth Bridge, Benjamin
Baker and John Fowler, Edinburgh, Inchgarvie and File, United Kingdom,
1880-90
,It===~=
I el g Caribbean zecnniscnen
Hut, Irom Der Stil in den und tektonischen
5
Künsten
Slyle in the Technical and Tectonic Arts), 30ttlried
11
Vaulting 01 Large Spaces, Irom Entretiens
sur I'architecture Eugene Emmanuel
(Lectures on Architecture), Viollet-Ie-Duc,
1872
Semper, 1860-3
his 1849 volume The Seven Lamps of Architecture,
Ruskin had
the dominant status 01the methods inculcated at the École
eñounced "structural deceit" as inimical to architectural "truth."
des Beaux-Arts in Paris, which was uncontested as the lead-
e wrote, "The architect is not bound [italics in original] to exhibit
ing school in Europe and much 01the world. Among its stu-
structure; nor are we to complain 01 him ter concealing it, any ore than we should regret that the outer surlaces 01the human - ame conceal much 01 its anatomy; nevertheless, that building "11 generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers
- e great secrets 01 its structure, as an animal lorm does, although • om a careless observer they may be concealed."
-> 7
In a similar
dent body were young Americans and Central and Eastern Europeans, whose adherence to its principies would vary widely alter they returned home. The Beaux-Arts approach lavored axial composition, symmetry, and hierarchy - above all in the context 01the competitions
in which its students engaged - and
it neglected the relationship 01 buildings to the urban labric in
.~in, Semper - borrowing the notion 01 "tectonics," or the exterior
favor 01 an abstract vision that generally imposed them on empty
axpression 01 interior structure, lrom the historian Karl Bbtlicher
sites.
- proposed to differentiate the Kernform (corelorm) lrom the
Ernest Flagg underlined in a lively article written upon his return
«unsttorm
Irom France, such an approach provided ballast against the
(artform) in buildings.
-> 8
Filty years later Walter
->
10
But as the New York architect and Beaux-Arts alumnus
3enjamin no longer resorted to these kinds 01 organic images to
hazards 01 prolessional practice.
characterize nineteenth-century
The École was hardly characterized by complete unanimity, how-
Parisian architecture but rather
oorrowed a ligure lrom psychoanalysis.
In a clarilication 01 a
ever; contradictory
-> 11
positions were olten embraced even by those
staternent by Giedio'n, he noted that the engineering structure 01
who adhered to its central principies. In contrast to the carica-
e ildings played "the role 01 bodily processes - around which
tures drawn by modernist critics, many exponents 01 eclecticism
ertistic' architectures gather, like dreams around the Iramework 01
used the past not as a supermarket ter historical ornaments but
~ ysiological processes."
rather as a source lor evaluating the "true" and "correct" language
->
9
He thus updated Semper's distinc-
zon between Kernform and Kunstform using a concept proposed Sigmund Freud tor the interpretation 01dreams.
suited to each project; in this respect they differed Irom both the champions 01 a rigorous classicism and the hard-line rationalists. The Beaux-Arts "eclectics" olten proclaimed their allegiance
The eminence of the Beaux-Arts
to Viollet-Ie-Duc, tor whom a building's plan was a lunction 01 its
~~e relationship 01the outer skin to the internal structure rern-
and critic Frantz Jourdain expressed this position by praising the
purpose and its lacade deduced Irom its plan. The Paris architect z:
ed a kind 01 mystery in the great Parisian buildings 01the late
architects 01the 1889 exposition lor having "put aside senile and
- ,eteenth century, such as Charles Garnier's Opéra (1860-75)
dangerous formulas and understood that ... social requirements
=..1<1 Victor Laloux's Gare d'Orsay (1887-1900). The metal used
cannot be subjected to the tyrannical rule 01 a style," and particu-
- lheir construction was totally hidden by their lacades, which,
larly lor having understood that "it is the necessities 01 everyday
lhe case 01the Opéra, were expertly decorated with sculp::...·eand architectural ornament. These two buildings epitomized
lile that have the right to dictate the structure and to demand that it provide rational exteriors, plans, and proportions."
->
12
018
I
019
7
Postsparkasse,
atto Wagner,
Vienna, Austria, 1903, first version
01 the main elevation
DIE KOMPOSITION, IE KUNST 1ST, WIE SCHON
D
DAS WORT ANDEUTET, ElN KONNEN, SJE 1ST ElNE FAHIOKElT, WELCHE, VON
WENIGEN AUSERwAHLTEN VOLLENDUNG
ERHOSEN,
ZUR DER
SCHONHEIT SlNHLICHEN AUS. nauca VERLEIHT. 111111 11 WIRDDIESERAUSDRUCKDURCH DAS AUGE W AHRGENOMMEN, SO ENTSPRICHTDlESEP'~OKEITDEM BEORIFFE ,,an.DENDE KUNST". ti iI VON DEN BILDENDEN KONsTEN Hlt.BEN MALEREI 1.TND BlLDNEREI IHRE VORBILDER STETS IN DER NATUR,
wAHREND
DIE
BAUKUNST
OlE MENSCHLICHE SCHAFFEH5KRAFT DIREKT ZUR BASlS HAT UNO
ES
VERS'I'EHT,
DAS
VERAR-
BErrETE ALS VOLUG NEUGESTALTETES
8
ZU
Page from Moderne
Architecture),
BlETEN.
[J
Architektur
1111
(Modern
9
Postsparkasse,
Otto Wagner, Vienna, Austria, 1903-6
Otto Wagner, 1896 10 ~
History 01 Human Habitation,
section at the Universal Exposition,
Charles Garnier, Paris, France, 1889
Programs of modernization
returned to the United States alter several years abroad and dis-
The "everyday life" referred to by Jourdain had been radically
with horror, writing in 1906 that they resembled "extravagant pins
covered the skyscrapers of New York with an admiration tinged transformed since the beginnings of industrialization, Increased
in a cushion already overplanted,
manufacturing needs and expanded communication
The tension between civil engineering and architecture, so obvi-
and dis-
-->
15
tribution networks required more factories, train stations, mar-
ous in international exhibitions where historicist ornament con-
kets, and department stores, The establishment of nation-states
trasted sharply with structural innovations, was toned down
had stimulated the construction of palaces for the governing elites
somewhat in the great works of the engineers, often achieved
and large halls for parliamentary assernblies. New penal, health-
without archítects. Photographs of Eiffel's viaducts in Porto and
care, and education policies took material form in prisons, hospi-
Garabit (1876-7 and 1881-4, respectively) and of Benjamin Baker
tals, schools, and universities. Above all, the dawn of the age of
and John Fowler's spectacular bridge over the Firth of Forth
organization led to the proliferation of a new type of edifice, par-
(1880-90) 6 publicized the idea of an architecture based on the
ticularly in the United States: the large building devoted exclu-
elasticity of the frame rather than the massiveness of the walls,
sively to otfices. Traditional construction techniques relying on
Images of bridges, dams, locks, and other marvels of civil engi-
stone and brick masonry, though ingeniously reinforced with tie
neering free of any applied artistic forms inspired many careers
beams, girders, and iron frames, were reaching their limits, and
in engineering and architecture. It is no coincidence that the illus-
the invention of new types of structures became crucial.
tration opening Le Corbusier's manifesto Vers une architecture
Many contemporaries
(Toward an Architecture; 1923) is a view of the Garabit Viaduct.
recognized the new horizons opened
12
up by the great iron and glass halls built to serve the agendas 01 the Industrial Revolution and the nation-state, Decades ear-
Networks of internationalization
lier, the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol had put forward a vision 01 a new transparent, vertical architecture derived from his anal-
Once travel by steamship and the rapid long-distance
trans-
ysis of Gothic architecture and based on "one principal idea:
mission and increasingly accurate reproduction of photographs
height."
encouraged the circulation of people and images, international-
-->
13 Later in the century Émile Zola studied the concept
01 the new Parisian department sto res in writing his novel Au
ization intensified. World's fairs became mass spectacles
bonheur des dames (The Ladies' Paradise; 1883) and solicited
crowded with travelers from far-flung places, while professional
me advice of Jourdain, who would later design the Samaritaine
architects hopped on trains and boats to go see their colleagues'
Department Store in Paris, Zola's contemporary
work.
Joris-Karl
-->
16
Architectural periodicals provided plans and photo-
Huysmans observed that the new iron edifices did not include
graphs of even the most distant structures, while a genuinely
"Greek, Gothic or Renaissance borrowings; they are a new, origi-
global market for architecture took shape through major compe-
nal form, unachievable with stone, possible only with the metal-
titions, such as the one in 1898 for the campus of the University of
lurgical products of our tactories."
California, Berkeley, and those held between 1905 and 1914 for
-->
14
As for Henry James, he
022
I
023
13
Eiffel Tower, Gustave Eiffel and
Maurice Koechlin, Paris, France, 1888-9
·I-:--....,~~~JII!!!IIII'IIII..·
-~
" S.;..
ESTHÉTIQUE DE L'INGENIEUR ARCHITECTURE
11
Galerie des Machines,
Victar Contamin,
Ferdinand
Dutert and
Paris, France, 1889
12
Garabit Viaduct, Gustave Eiffel,
Loubaresse/Ruynes-en-Margeride, France, 1881-4, page lrom Le Carbusier,
Vers une Architecture
(Towards an Architecture,
1923)
the design of new capital cities like Canberra and for extensions
lacked the structural rigor of the Galerie des Machines. Rare were
to Barcelona, Berlin, and Antwerp. Photography, already a wide-
the pavilions displaying a new, more fluid aesthetic or even hinting
spread practice, became a powerful medium in the circulation of
at an organic life. The most remarkable contributions, such as the
architectural forms and the study of urban environments. In fact,
pavilion devoted to a novel evocation of a village church designed
both architects and writers seized on the young medium and
by Eliel Saarinen, who was representing Finland, served to crys-
practiced it themselves: Émile Zola photographed the Crystal
tallize the national forms for which the past century had constantly
Palace as reconstructed in Sydenham, outside London, and Frank
searched. From this time on, the most successful experiments were
Lloyd Wright returned from his first trip to Japan with a collection
to take the form of houses and modest public buildings rather than
of his own photographs of temples and gardens ...• 17 Artists' inter-
the grand official architecture of nation-states and municipalities.
pretations of modern life were no less significant. In Paris, Claude
The most coherent and revolutionary architectural hypothesis put
Monet painted memorable views of the Gare Saint-Lazare, the
forward during this period between the two Paris world's fairs was
train station closest to his studio, while Gustave Caillebotte and
probably that of the Viennese architect Otto Wagner. In Moderne
Georges Seurat took an interest in the nearby Pont de l'Europe
Architektur (1896), 8 written for his students at the Vienna Academy
and the bridge in Asnieres ...• 18 This acute attention to the met-
of Fine Arts, he advocated a Nutzsti/ (utilitarian style) that was free
ropolitan scenery would continue with the Expressionists and the
of historical references and that transposed the rhythms of indus-
Futurists. Though architects had a close working relationship with
trial society to architecture: "One idea inspires the book, namely
the practitioners of the decorative arts, it was the work of paint-
that the basis of today's predominant views on architecture must
ers that especially transformed their sensibility. There were many
be shifted, and we must become fully aware that the sole depar-
domains of internationalization. The rapid growth of colonial
ture point for our artistic work can only be modern life." ..•20 After
empires, notably those of Great Britain and France, was accompa-
his metropolitan railroad stations, which he began building in 1895,
nied by an assimilation and transformation of the visual languages
and the two buildings he erected on the Wienzeile in 1898, fea-
of colonized peoples, which the European public encountered
turing bold floral decorations on ceramics and more conservative
especially through the ephemeral extravaganzas of world's fairs.
sculptural ornament, Wagner's designs underwent a spectacular
The Human Habitation pavilions built by Charles Garnier for the
transformation. The glazing of the main hall of his Postsparkasse
1889 exposition
10 -
and strongly criticized by the academy for
(Post Office Savings Bank; 1903-6) 9 was free of any such deco-
their "Iack of taste" - opened multiple cultures to observation ...• 19
rative detail. On the exterior, the aluminum rivets attesting to the
Architects also had access to handbooks and portfolios contain-
logic of the building's on-site assembly became the ornamentation,
ing examples of building designs and ornamental motifs from, for
punctuating the still-symmetrical facade that the building turned to
instance, the Far and Near East, which they could copy or adapt
the RingstraBe.
to their own purposes. The world's fair held in 1900 in Paris was
cladding along the great monument-lined
something of a regression compared to its 1889 predecessor.
last third of the nineteenth century, paradoxically pointed forward
Henri Oeglane's Grand Palais and Charles Girault's Petit Palais
to an architecture freed from the weight of masonry.
Chapter 01
I
Sheds to rails: the dominion
01 steel
7
These rivets, which affixed the stone building's boulevard built in the
The search for modern form
By the turn 01 the twentieth century, lew progressive
architects
Toward a "new art" from Paris to Berlin
had lailed to read the work 01 Friedrich Nietzsche. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
the German philosopher
the role of "the creator" as an iconoclast, Equally rare were those architects
had affirmed
The label "Art Nouveau"
a "Iawbreaker."
-> 1
ignorant 01 the writings of
eponymous
(new art) was borrowed
from the
Paris art gallery owned by Samuel Bing and
designed by Louis Bonnier in 1895. It was applied to the experi-
John Ruskin and William Morris, which called for artistic crea-
ments carried out in Paris by architects such as Hector Guimard
tion to be rooted in manual labor. A shared cult of youth drove
and Jules Lavirotte. But the real starting point of the movement
architects and artists of the new generation to break with insti-
was lound in a series of town houses that Victar Horta built in
tutions that were now considered
as outdated as they were
Brussels beginning
tyrannica!. The 1897 "secession"
01 Viennese artists and archi-
that had been set lorth in the first issue 01 the periodical
in 1893. Here Harta lollowed the agenda L'Art
tects lrom the prevailing aesthetic culture in Austria - those
moderne
who shared the realization that there were no longer any tradi-
satisfied merely with building in the ideal, he is involved with
tions left to reject - was the most spectacular
everything that interests and touches uso Our monuments,
example of this
modern trend toward rupture with art and architecture's The movement
past.
included a group 01 young artists who, starting
in 1898, gathered around the periodical
Ver sacrum (Sacred
in 1881, which informed its readers: "The artist is not
houses, furniture, clothes, the slightest objects of everyday use are constantly revisited and transformed
by Art, which com-
bines with everything and constantly renews our entire life to
Spring), its title an allusion to a poem by the Romantic writer
make it more elegant and more noble, more cheerful and more
Ludwig Uhland.
socia!."
The unification
between architecture
and the decorative
arts
-> 3
Horta followed Viollet-Ie-Duc's
injunction to create
rational and ethically "true" architecture. To do so, he devoted
was a constant feature of the practice of these young proles-
himself to the study of plant life, which inspired the motils used
sionals, who sought in different ways to turn each edifice into
in the columns and joists of his houses. He also conceived
a "total wark of art." The latter concept derived from the musi-
designs that allowed light to reach deep into the lots on which
cal dramas of Richard Wagner, another figure venerated
his houses were set. Horta's masterpiece, which made his vision
European and North American
intellectuals.
metal, glass, wood, and ceramics a new orchestral
composition
each component
was accentuated
-> 2
by
Stone, brick,
became the instruments
of
in which the specific quality of in a variety 01 design strat-
legible to the working class, was the Maison du Peuple (People's House; 1898-9, demolished
1965)
16
in Brussels, a building
that enclosed a meeting hall and a brasserie in a metallic cage. It would remain one of the clearest interpretations
of this new
egies known as Art Nouveau in France, Sezession in Austria,
type of building commissioned
Jugendstil
tives to serve as a proletarian alternative to bourgeois gathering
in Germany, Floreale or Liberty in Italy, and Modern
in Russia.
by warkers' unions ar coopera-
places. French Socialist leader Jean .Jaures declared on the day 01 its opening: "Here dreams take the solidity of stone without losing their spiritual elevation."
Chapter 02
I
The search lar modern lorm
->
4
14
Sanatorium,
Josef Hoffmann,
Purkersdorf,
Austria, 1904-5
15
16
Maison du Peuple (People's House), Victar Harta, Brussels, Belgium, 1898-9,
demolished
Zacherlhaus,
Joze Plecnik, Vienna, Austria, 1903-5
1965
028
I
029
17 Bloemenwerl Uccle, Belgium,
18
House, Henry Van de Velde, 1895-6
Horta's compatriot
Museum 01 Decoralive
Budapesl,
Arts, Odón Lechner,
Hungary, 1893-6
Henry van de Velde, born in Antwerp and
19
The Orchard, Charles F. A. Voysey, Chorleywood,
United Kingdom,
disseminated
1899
their teacher's ideas in Bohemia. Wagner also
trained as a painter, sought an aesthetic principie that would
had an impact in Budapest, where Odon Lechner cornbined
apply to every object 01 daily lile. Looking back in 1916, he
Wagner's approach with Hungarian ornamenlal themes in such
wrote, "Ruskin and Morris tried to chase ugliness Irom man's
buildings as the Museum 01 Decorative Arts (1893-6). 18
heart; I preached that we had to chase it trorn his mind."
Having settled in Berlin, Van de Velde was invited by Count
Bloemenwerl
House (1895-6)
central double-height residencies
17 in Uccle, structured
-> 5
His
around a
Harry Kessler to establish new art schools in Weimar, the capi-
hall in the English lashion, and the
tal 01 the Grand Duchy 01 Saxony. Van de Velde both designed
he built in Germany after 1900 were treated as
creations in which "the ornamental ism." He proclaimed
buildings and put in place a curriculum
rnotií becomes an organ-
that "ornamentation
01 lorm embodied
is subject only to the
laws 01 the goal it sets for itsell: harmony and equilibrium.
as "expressive as the line that reveals the rush 01 blood beneath
It is
lhe epidermis, the breath that makes Ilesh rise, the energy that
not expected to represent anything, it must be Iree to not represent anything since without this Ireedom it could not exist."
based on a conception
in the "modern line," which he imagined 10 be
->
lifts our limbs." He added that the modern line had to transcribe 6
lhe movemenls 01 lile "whether we are devoling ourselves to
In Vienna a group 01 young architects trorn all over Central
practical daily chores or we are in a state 01 ecstasy, drunk or
Europe gathered around Otto Wagner and saw their first works
drawn into that divine dance, to which, as Zarathustra com-
go up in the Austrian capital. Joseph Maria Olbrich built the
mands, man musl constantly give himsell over so as 10 escape
Secession Building in 1898-9 to house the wark 01 radical art-
the weight 01 lile and material things."
-> 7
For the industrialist
ists. Its pediment was inscribed with the slogan, "To the age its
Karl Ernst Osthaus, Van de Velde built in the small manulacturing
art, to art its Ireedom." He also built houses that aspired to pro-
town 01 Hagen lirst the Folkwang Museum (1900-2) then the
vide an architectural
large villa Hohenhol (1908), culminating
interpretation
01 his clients' personalities.
a decade 01 work.
Josel Hoffmann undertook a search lar a geometric
While these developments
language
Duke Ernst Ludwig created the Darmstadt arlisls' colony. The
based on the square and on the interplay 01 black
and white. With the Purkersdorl Vienna, he developed surlaces,
Sanatorium
an orthogonal
(1904-5)
architecture
14
near
with white
inspired by houses he had sketched on his trav-
els in the south 01 Italy. The Slovenian native .Joze Plecnik built the Zacherlhaus
in 1903-5
using prismatic shapes; this
outside world discovered
were unlolding in Saxony, the Grand it in 1901 on the occasion 01 an
exposition there entitled Ein Ookument deutscher
Kunst (A
Document 01 German Art). Olbrich was the star 01 the show. Having completed the Secession Building in Vienna a tew years belore, he built the Ernst-Ludwig
House
was a bold departure trorn the excessive subtleties lhat had
arlisls' warkshop that dominaled
the Darmstadt colony, as well
quickly diminished
as his own house, in which he conceived
15
the Secession's
the Portois & Fix (1899-1900)
impact. Max Fabiani erected
and Artaria (1900) buildings, as
21
ter the exposition, an every detail, frorn tex~
tiles to cutlery. Peter Behrens, a painter-turned-architect
trorn
well as the more classical Urania inslilute 01 popular science
Hamburg with a more austere artistic language, lollowed suit by
(1909-10). Wagner's students Jan Kotéra and Pavel Janák
designing
Chapter 02
I
The search lar modern lorm
no less inclusively every leature 01 the house he built
22
Elvira Photo Studio, August Endell, Munich,
1897, demolished
Germany,
23 ~
Glasgow School 01 Art, Charles Rennie
Mackintosh,
21
Ernst-Ludwig
1944
Glasgow, United Kingdom,
1897-1908
House, Joseph Maria Olbrich,
Darmstadt, Germany, 1899-1901
20
Behrens House, Peter Behrens, Darmstadt,
Germany, 1899-1901
adjacent to Olbrich's. 20 Elsewhere other contemporary were more superficial, demolished
designs
including the Elvira Photo Studio, (1897,
1944),22 in Munich realized by August Endell, with
[true] architectural
tradition would remain with us still." ..•10
In practical terms, the Arts and Crafts heritage was represented principally
by the houses 01 Charles Francis Annesley Voysey,
its decorative facade treatmenl. Familiar with Heinrich Wblfflin's
whose puritanical approach resulted in what he called "mod-
psychology
est country houses." His own residence, The Orchard (1899) 19,
of art, Endell believed that a Formgefühl
sense) was at the root of all architectural
(form
designo According
to
in Chorleywood,
Hertfordshire, was an example 01 such a house,
him, "The architect must be a form-artist; only the art 01 form
with a rectangular
leads the way to a new architecture."
lectually inclined owner. Although in Voysey's view "too much
.• 8
layout designed lor a middle-class,
intel-
luxury is death to the artistic soul,' .• 11 his New Place, a resi-
Great Britain after the Arts and Crafts
dence commissioned
by the publisher A. M. M. Stedman in
The close ti es between Germany and Great Britain were exem-
Several ligures contributed to the modernization
plified by Charles Rennie Mackintosh's
scene during this periodo The lurniture designer Charles Robert
Haslemere, Surrey (1899), certainly did not lack complexity.
"House lor an Art l.over' competition schrift für Innendekoration
participation organized
in the 1901
by the Zeit-
(Journal lar Interior Decoration)
Ashbee proposed to "reconstruct" and
01the British
the industrial system rather
than rebel against it; he pointed out that in the "modern mechan-
by his attention to Olbrich's work. Around this time, the Arts
ical industry 'standard' is necessary, and 'standardization'
and Crafts movem'ent, which had been centered on William
essary," given that "the great social movement"
Morris, began taking a new direction, and William A. Lethaby
Crafts had degenerated
became its principal theorisl. A lormer assistant to the architect
tocracy working with great skill lor the very rich." ..•12 Following
is nec-
01the Arts and
into "a narrow and tiresome little aris-
Richard Norman Shaw, Lethaby lounded the Central School
his design 01 the central hall 01 the Vienna Secession's exhibi-
01 Arts and Crafts in 1888 in London, where he insisted on a
tion in 1900, Ashbee's ideas were lelt all the way to Chicago.
socially generous curriculum.
There he met Frank Lloyd Wright, who drew on Ashbee's thinking
Mysticism
In his 1892 book Architecture,
and Myth, he called lor architecture
thesis of the fine arts, the commune he also expressed
to be a "syn-
01 all the cralts." .• 9 But
a firm beliel in the present, in agreement
with his contemporaries.
As Reyner Banham noted, an exten-
sion 01 Lethaby's position may be read in a 1905 article in The Architectural architects
Review, which asks rhetorically:
live in perpetual
"Why should we
rebellion with the present? ... [I]f we
could only think of our building as an entirely modern problem without precedent
... just as the railway engine is, then, with-
out doubt ... the ruins 01 the past might crumble to dust but the
in his 1901 book The Arts and Crafts of the Machine. Another English designer, Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, locused on the interior space 01 houses, and his ideas met with such success in Germany that he was invited to join Ashbee in litting out the Grand Duke 01 Hesse's palace in Darmstadt (1897-8). More spectacular, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's activity centered on Glasgow, a city with a solid classical tradition. With Herbert McNair and the sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald, who were close to the Symbolist lounded
movement on the Continent, he
"The Four," also known as "The Mac Group." Their
030
I
031
24
Hill House, Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Helensburgh,
United Kingdom,
25
1902-3
La Samaritaine
Jaurdain,
Department
Store, Frantz
Paris, France, 1904-5
designs were shown in 1896 at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition
small cutouts, resembled
Society. Mackintosh
when suffused with daylight from the glass roof. Mackintosh's
also designed
Glasgow, including
several tearooms
"The Willow" (1903-4),
in
whose name was
work had considerable
a kind of sacred forest, especially resonance
drawn from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnet "The Willow
orthogonal
Wood." Mackintosh
there for more plantlike motifs.
scored the interior with a pattern of ver-
on the Continent,-and
shapes of his library countered
the
the preference
tical lines that was echoed in the high backs of the chairs, while the use of white lacquer contrasted The stained-glass especially
inventive. Mackintosh
on hilly terrain, their prismatic
built a handful of houses
volumes
these, Hill House, (1902-3),24 in Helensburgh,
roofed with slates. Of
publisher
was particularly
house whose walls seem to embrace white-Iacquered
home
for the way its
recalled Scottish houses of
century. For Windyhill,
William Davidson, Mackintosh
W. W. Blackie's
remarkable
walls of stone and rough concrete the seventeenth
with natural oak.
Art Nouveau and the Paris-Nancy axis
door panels and the lighting fixtures were
in Kilmacolm
(1900), a
the garden of its owner,
designed
chairs and decarated
built-in furniture and the walls with geo-
On the other si de of the Channel, Art Nouveau branched out into two principal centers: Paris and Nancy. In the capital city, critics derided the "noodle style" (le style nouille) of Hectar Guimard, whose entrances to metro stations began to appear on Paris streets in 1900. The most remarkable of them looked like insects spreading diaphanous
wings. The outcry by critics
and the hostility of the conservative
Commission
for Old Paris
prevented Guimard from realizing other such projects, including a kiosk he designed for the Place de l'Opéra in 1905. Inspired
metric motifs. But his major work, to which he devoted him-
by his encounter with Horta's buildings, Guimard had become
self intermittently
well known thanks to his Castel Béranger (1894-8), 28 a Paris
for more than ten years, was the Glasgow
School of Art. 23 He first completed which opened large rectangular incorporating
windows onto the street,
allusions to Gothic religious buildings
medieval fortresses. (1907-8)
the east wing (1897-8),
Built considerably
had a fundamentally
and
later, the west wing
different designo A gable struc-
ture with three vertical bow windows extending
much of the
height of the elevation, it was a revision of a scheme with small arched windows also designed
he had proposed
initially. Mackintosh
two large glass boxes on the roof to serve as
building noted for its poetic assemblage
of cast iron, brick,
and rough and carved stone. Guimard densely covered the building's
surfaces from its front gate, which opened onto an
evocation of an underwater grotto, to the wainscoting
of its
apartments, with a vinelike web of lines. The building's facades revealed the interior articulation
and abandoned
any vertical or
horizontal alignment. It was rare far Guimard's for the ceramicist
houses, such as the one he designed
Louis Coillot in Lille (1898-1900),
to sit
studios. But his majar focus was on the library, which occu-
quietly between parallel walls. Both the Castel Henriette in
pied two levels and included
Sevres (1899-1903,
building's
masonry envelope ..•
of wooden elements,
Chapter 02
a balcony floating inside the
I
illuminated
The search lar modern lorrn
13
This warm composition
by light coming through
demolished
in Villemoisson-sur-Orge
(1900-3)
of the Castel Béranger, displaying
1969) and the Castel Orgeval extended the vocabulary an acrobatic
assembly
of
26
27
Entrance Gate at the 1900
International
Exposition,
28
Louis Majorelle House, Henri Sauvage, Nancy, France, 1898-1901
Castel Béranger, Hector Guimard, Paris,
France, 1894-8
René Binet,
?aris, France, 1900, as featured on a publicity
blotting paper
cylindrical enclosed
turrets, elabarate windows, and conical roofs that ingenious
plans and made no concession
to
symmetry. In 1929 Salvador Dalí interpreted Guimard's designs as "nothing but the cylindrical itary symmetries."
anamorphosis
Jourdain (the son 01 Frantz Jourdain) and Henri Sauvage lar the playful
of hered-
.• 14 In fact, Guimard had already revealed
his kinship with Viollet-Ie-Duc. École du Sacré-Coeur
He confirmed
it with his
(Lectures on Architecture)
like the ones Viollet had included
twenty-five
used in her performances. Together with the ceramicist Alexandre Bigot and the glassmaker Jacques Gruber, Sauvage also built a house for the Louis Majorelle (1898-1901) 27 in Nancy. Frantz
Jourdain saw it as the culmination ist approach, a "mathematical
in an imaginary view in his Entretiens sur /'architecture time, Guimard's
American dancer l.oie Fuller, evoked the undulating fabrics she
cabinetmaker
(1898) in Paris, where he constructed
V-shaped cast-iron supports
studies." .• 15 Another pavilion at the fair, designed by Francis
years earlier. At the
unencumbered
largest building was the Humbert de Romans
01 Viollet-Ie-Duc's
rational-
solution to the problem posed,"
by any concern lor symmetry: "Sauvage applies
this same respect lor truth to his decorative work, which proves
Concert Hall in Paris (1899-1901), the roof 01 which was held
to be impeccably
in place by branching
neously with the structure, in one impulse, the consequence
impression
wood columns that created the decorated
buildings, such as the
Céramic Hotel (1904) and his apartment
the philosopher
building on Avenue
Rapp, provoked oútraqe Irom contemporaries
comparable
to
by eclecticism,
the 1900 International
Paul Souriau, the bard 01 "rational beauty,"
the Nancy artists developed
a body of work remarkable far its
vitality and consistency, with Lucien Weissenburger's representing
that elicited by Guimard's work. Though dominated
01
an idea and the corollary of a theorem." .• 16 In dialogue with
of a natural lorest. Elsewhere in Paris only Jules
Lavirotte's extravagantly
rational and which was conceived simulta-
particularly
Frantz Jourdain
elegant examples ..•
houses
17
was more than a radical critico In 1891 he
Exposition in Paris did feature a few pavilions related to the
became the lirst architect to join the Société Nationale des
new aesthetic, including the Bing pavilion by Bonnier, who
Beaux-Arts
lounded
by Auguste Rodin, Euqene Carriere, and
also designed a stunning unbuilt giant globe lar the geogra-
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.
pher Élysée Reclus and who later built two elementary schools
against his anti-Semitic
in Paris. Above all, the fair's entrance pavilion, 26 designed
Zola, whose lunerary
by René Binet, later the author of the new Printemps depart-
1903 he lounded
ment stares (1907-10), reconnected
case for Parisian innovation
01 Art Nouveau. Binet's interpretation
with the organic sources was inspired by the
monument
His most brilliant architectural Department
entilic investigations
in Paris. The exuberance
Alfred Dreylus
and was a friend of Émile he designed
the Salon d'Automne,
German biologist Ernst Haeckel, the author 01 a series 01 sciillustrated with brilliant color plates show-
He supported
accusers
in 1902. In
the principal
show-
over the next twenty years. work was the Samaritaine
Store 25 built between 1904-5 01 the wrought-iron
ing the structures of underwater organisms. As Binet wrote to
floral motifs on its front contrasted
Haeckel of his design: "Everything about it, lrom the general
side facades, whose large rectangular
composition to the smallest details, has been inspired by your
oflice buildings
along the Seine decorations
with the rationality windows
with
of its
evoked the
01 Chicago.
034
I
035
29
Riabushinsky
30
House, Fiador Shekhtel, Moscow, Russia, 1900-2
Botter House, Raimondo
d'Aronco,
Constantinople
(Istanbul), Oltoman
Empire
(Turkey),1900-1
From Italian "Floreale" to Russian "Modern"
development
since the abolition 01 serfdom in 1861, the
At the turn of the century, the intellectual
gathered together by its architects
Muscovite bourgeoisie cipation already underway spread throughout ideas manilested
and aesthetic eman-
in Austria and Belgium began to
Europe. In Italy the dominance
01 Viennese
itsell in the work 01 several architects.
was quick to take hold 01 those themes under the banner- of the
"Modern" style. Though Viollet-Ie-Duc's
reflections on a national
style in his 1879 volume L'art russe (Russian Art) remained on everyone's mind, architects now turned to popular themes
Raimondo d'Aronco was one 01 many Italian architects work-
rather than those of religious structures. The leading protagonist
ing in the Near Easl. Active in Istanbul Irom 1894 to 1909,
01 the Modern was Fiodor Shekhtel, the creator 01 the Russia
he created, in the words 01 his Roman compatriot
Pavilion at the Glasgow World's Fair (1901), which was praised
Piacentini, "a vast, variable, multilaceted acterized by an "exuberant, colorlul
body 01 work," char-
restless, impulsive"
houses on the Bosphorus
Marcello
spirit.
His
-> 18
and his designs in Pera,
such as the Botter House (1900-1), 30 were characterized
by
lor its inventiveness and its coloration. In Moscow he organized the 1902 Exhibition 01 Architecture
and Design in the New
Style, displaying Viennese and Scottish works. Shekhtel built the Riabushinsky
House in Moscow (1900-2),29
with a sculp-
the plasticity 01 their surfaces and the graphic effect of their
tural staircase that ranks high as a realization 01 European Art
metallic components.
Nouveau. He also built the Yaroslavl Train Station in Moscow
Giuseppe Sommaruga
and Ernesto Basile, active in Milan and
Palermo, respectively, indulged in monumental imagery when designing
and historicist
public structures but used more Ilex-
ible lorms lor their private commissions.
Sommaruga's
Castiglione on Corso Venezia in Milan (1903-4)
31
Palazzo
caused a
(1902) for the industrialist Savva Mamontov, the patron 01 the Abramtsevo
artists' colony, tapping into a repertory of popu- .
lar and medieval Russian lorms with the collaboration
01 the
painter Konstantin Korovin. The Modern approach was not limited to big cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. It was also
scandal - not because 01 its innovative concrete Iloors, which
adopted in the rest 01 the Russian empire, as, lor example, in
were invisible, but because 01 its rough lacade and its anatomi-
Mikhail Eisenstein's buildings in Lvov and Riga.
cally explicit decor. Two voluptuous
-> 20
sculpted lemale ligures on
either side 01 the entrance were removed under pressure lrom
The Catalan renaissance
critics and relocated to his Villa Romeo in Milan (1907-12). The latter was a sophisticated
composition
01 materials and
Catalonia presented what was probably the most remarkable
colors and probably the most apt example 01 an architecture
European scene 01 the period, experiencing
described
renaissance,
by the key terms "living organism, logic, lunction,
constructed
objecl."
-> 19
Among Basile's abundant contributions
rooted in its rediscovery
a renaixensa, or
01 its own medieval
history and the adoption 01lorms from the Orient. Several vari-
to the city 01 Palermo, the Villino Florio (1900.,..2) and the Villa
ations 01 Barcelona modernism
Igiea Hotel (1898-1900)
de Gracia, a wide bourgeois avenue in the city's extension
stood out lor their decorative whimsy.
In Russia, which had been plunging headlonq into industrial
Chapter 02
I
The search lar modern lorm
are clearly visible on the Paseo
planned in 1859 by Ildelonso Cerda. Three buildings laced off
31
Palazzo Castiglione.
Sommaruga.
Giuseppe
Milan. ltaly, 1903-4
036
I
037
32
Casa Milá (La Pedrera; the
Quarry), Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona, Spain, 1906-10
on the "Manzana de la Discordia"
(its name meaning both
"block of discord" and "apple 01 discord," playing on the double meaning 01 manzana). The Lleó Moreira Building (1902) by Lluís Dornenech i Montañer is reminiscent
of Parisian Art
Nouveau. Farther along, the Amatller Building (1898-1900) by Josep Puig y Cadalalch, who was not only an architect but al so an international traveler, archaeologist, tured medieval-style
decoration
and politician, lea-
and a stepped gable, evoking
Hanseatic merchant houses and concealing
its owner's photo-
graphy studio. Next door, the Casa Battló by Antoni Gaudí (1906), a renovation 01 an older building, was nicknamed
Casa
de los Huesos (House 01 Bones) because of the bone-shaped columns along its front facade, which opens into a stairhall clad with blue ceramic tiles. The building is topped with a carapace 01 colored ti les. The medievalizing
leatures 01 Puig's Casa Terrades, also known
as the Casa de les Punxes (House 01 Spikes) (1903-7),33 express a clear nostalgia lor Catalonia's golden age. Decorated with mosaics depicting
nationalist motifs, the edilice caused a
political scandal. A lew blocks away, Dornenech built the San Pau Hospital (1902-10), where the brick patterning is more playlul. He combined with extraordinary
an iron structure and wide glass openings
sculptural inventiveness
in the Palau de la
Música Catalana (Palace 01 Catalan Music; 1905-8),35
built lor
the Orféo Catala choir as a symbol 01 the regional renaissance. The sense 01 imagination
manilest in the decoration
01 the
Palau is even more vivid in Gaudí's buildings. A genius inventor of structural and ornamental
lorms, this fervent Catholic was
born into a family 01 craltsmen 01 Ruskin and Viollet-Ie-Duc, connection
with his materials.
and, inspired by his readings retained a direct and permanent ->
21
Alter some initial buildings
such as the Palacio Güell (1886-9), whose forms reflected
038
I
039
33
Casa Terrades (Casa de les Punxes; House 01 Spikes), Josep Puig y
Cadatalch,
Barcelona,
strong neo-Gothic
Spain, 1903-7
and neo-Moorish
inlluences
(the latter
Throughoul
Europe, mosl 01 Ihe impulses initiated by the revolt
derived Irom a trip to Tangier), Gaudí pursued two parallel lines
01 young archilecls and artists betore 1900 persisled unlil 1914,
01 research. On the one hand, he conceived
and sometimes
structures based
beyond. The rigidily 01 classical composition
on slender trames and narrow arches, tested in innovative
was lundamenlally
scale models that used strings to simulate the catenary curves
egies aimed at inventing a new urban picturesque
distributing
modaling
the structure's weight. On the other, he created an
and successlully
challenged
Ihanks to straland accom-
modern ways 01 lile. The legacy 01 Ihe Secession
exuberant ornamental language with pieces 01 broken ceramic,
and Arl Nouveau was also visible in Ihe decorative elemenls
wrought iron, and sculptures 01 his own invention.
Ihal were soon lo be mass produced - in direcl contradiclion
Every tacet 01 Gaudí's experimentation
lo Iheir movements'
with structures is repre-
sented in the galleries and the cistern at Park Güell (1900-14), 34 while his investigation
01 residential types led him to the Paseo
initially individualistic
aims. Easily imitated
and industrialized, Ihese expressions were subject to both commercialization
and the widest popular consumplion,
slrelching
de Gracia, where he built the Casa Mila (1906-10) 32 across
lo the larlhest reaches 01 Lalin America and Asia.
frorn the Casa Battló. Known as the "Pedrera" (quarry), the Casa
At Ihe same lime, the experiments
Milá evokes the rocky cliffs 01 the Pyrenees at Montserrat, a
Glasgow and trorn Moscow to Barcelona also led to the dis-
privileged
covery 01 new geometries, trorn Ihe experimental,
site tor Catalan regional identity. Inside, the steel
column-and-beam
structure supports the hanging stone
guage 01 Gaudí lo the orthogonal,
lacade, while the roof bristles with shapes covered in ceramic tiles and the underground
level serves as a parking garage.
Maria Jujol, a collaborator
01 Gaudí who later carried on his project was the Sagrada
in 1926. He linished the crypt begun by his lormer employer, Juan Martorell Montells, as well as the walls 01 the apse and the eastern lacade 01 the transept, which contains a stunning 01 statues enmeshed
abandoned replacing
in vines. Most importantly,
the Gothic system originally it with stable hyperboloids
curvatures construclion
Chapter 02
he
planned ter the nave,
- surlaces with double
- without a single Ilying buttress. The church's progressed
episodically
ongoing loday.
I
The search tor modern íorrn
Hoffmann. This polarily between expressionism lore in Ihe 1920s.
Familia Basilica, which he oversaw trorn 1883 until his death
grouping
Iyrical lan-
modular approach 01 Josel and lunction-
alism, evident in their divergent directions, would come lo Ihe
In the apartments, wavy ceilings were sculpted by Josep research. Gaudí's most ambitious
undertaken trorn Vienna to
tor a century and is still
34
Park Guéll, Antoni Gaudi, Barcelona,
35
Palace of Catalan Music, Lluís Doménech
Spain, 1900-14
i Montañer, Barcelona,
Spain, 1905-8
040
I
041
Domestic innovation and tectonic • expression
The collective search for a new "style" would never have begun
countryside
without a more profound process of modernization
type of bourgeois residence characterized
underway.
a series of stunning weekend houses - a new by a great num-
It operated on two distinct yet related planes: as a response to
ber of guest rooms. Often nestled against stone walls and fea-
unprecedented
turing striking contrasts between volumes and textures, these
construction
social needs and as a dissemination
technologies.
of new
The years between the Paris
houses were laid out in conjunction
with their gardens, gen-
International Exposition of 1889 and World War I corresponded
erally designed by Jekyll. Their relative modesty was dis-
to the zenith of British and French imperialism, to Germany's
guised by artifices, among them a play with perspective, that
belated but robust expansion, and to the emergence of the
Lutyens used to exaggerate their scale. The apparent symme-
United States on the world stage. In this competitive
try of L-shaped plan s, as at Tigbourne Court in Witley, Surrey
ment, national hegemonies
exercised contradictory
environeffects
on architects, reshaping their strategies and aesthetics.
(1899-1901),38
was no more than a visual illusion: the actual
landscape is picturesque
and irregular. At Deanery Garden
in Sonning, Berkshire (1899-1902), built for Edward Hudson, founder of the popular periodical
The central place of Great Britain
Country Life, a double-height
entry hall illuminated by a large bay window contrasts with The method of composition
developed at the École des Beaux-
Arts continued to dominate the design of public architecture, whereas a domestic architecture Georges-Eugéne
inspired by the Paris of Baron
Haussmann spread to a wide array of cities,
from Bucharest to Buenos Aires to New York. Yet the central-
the solid walls enclosing it. At the Bois des Moutiers (1898) in Varengeville, on the French side of the Channel, commissioned by the banker Guillaume Mallet, the garden descends to the sea as if in an idyllic landscape
painted by Claude Lorrain.
These English houses were studied by critics eager to under-
ity of the role played by Great Britain in the sphere of domestic
stand and replicate their essential features. One such observer,
architecture was undeniable. The principies applied to British
the Berlin architect Hermann Muthesius, published three vol-
residential design in the last decade of the nineteenth century
umes entitled Das englische Haus (The English House) 36 in
found enthusiasts among Parisians like Viollet-Ie-Duc Sédille, who praised them in 1890 ..• plans became widespread,
1
and the double-height
"English"
hall became a common feature in French homes ..• At the beginning
and Paul
The use of more open
2
of the twentieth century, Edwin Lutyens inau-
1908-11, which had a profound effect on German architecture ..• 3
37
The idealization of British material culture also domi-
nated the thinking of critics of the established aesthetic order, among them Austrian Adolf Loos, who made it the pretext for his polemical project to "introduce Western culture into Austria." .• 4
gurated a break with the Arts and Crafts movement. He exam-
In the years leading up to World War 1,Germany's rapid
ined everyday dwellings and their close relationship to their
modernization
gardens, which he was better able to understand after coming
between industry and the decorative arts diminished
and the close relationships
established
there Britain's
into contact with the landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll.
preeminence
Between 1889 and 1903 he designed
same time, relentless press coverage made both professionals
Chapter 03
I
in the English
Domestic innovation and tectonic expression
in the production
of industrial objects. At the
s
ENGLISCHE HAUS
36
Das Englische
Haus (The English House),
ermann Muthesius,
1908-11
37
Freudenberg
38 ~
House, Hermann
Tigbourne
Muthesius,
Berlin, Germany, 1907-8
Court, Edwin Lutyens, Witley, United Kingdom,
1899-1901
and the public in Germany aware of American urban and archi-
building, whose layouts were already well defined. Structures
tectural developments.
devoted to artist's studios, which had first appeared in Paris
Mimicking
published Das amerikanische 1910, introducing
Muthesius, F. Rudolf Vogel
Haus (The American House) in
the work of Henry Hobson Richardson
his successors to a German readership ..•
and
during the Second Empire, were given new interpretations, with André Arfvidson's terra-cotta-clad Studio Building (1912)
5
39
as
reinforced-concrete
on Rue Carnpaqne-Prerniere
in
Paris. Apartment or residential hotels, offering apartments with in-house hotel services for bachelors and couples without
Residential reform
children, spread throughout the United States and occasionDomestic architecture
reflected the transformations
in pro-
ally grew to the size of skyscrapers ..•
The idea of col lec-
7
cess. The reforms that took place in the United States, France,
tivizing domestic services engendered
England, and Germany were touched off by social, political,
the Einküchenhaus,
technological,
Hermann Muthesius and Albert GeBner each built an example
architectural
spatial, and aesthetic factors. At the social level, creativity was extended for the first time to a field
other types, such as
or communal-kitchen
building; in 1909
in Berlin, at Friedenau and at Lichterfelde, respectively ..•
8
it had previously ignored: housing for the poor. As hygiene became a fundamental government
concern in municipal and state policy,
Unifying the urban landscape
regulations were brought to bear on lower-class
housing projects, éxplicitly requiring the services of architects.
It was no easy task to shape a harmonious
urban landscape
The entire sphere of residential architecture reflected the deep
composed
changes in the living habits of most social classes. Bourgeois
originality, particularly under the influence of Art Nouveau ide-
residences became increasingly complex, with more rooms
als. The question of how to regulate facades was hotly debated
devoted to receiving guests, larger and more numerous openings
in most European cities and some North American ones, some-
to the outdoors, and the addition of bathrooms or, in the case
times at precisely the same time that competitions
of France, less hospital-like cabinets de toilette ..• 6 The relative
ing the facades of the year's most original buildings. The unified
of buildings by creators who individually aspired to
were reward-
amenity of different floors changed drastically with the installation
urban street wall, or einheitliche
of electrical elevators, which replaced early hydraulic-powered
advocates in Germany, while in New York the demand for visual
StraBenfront, found many
ones. These made upper levels - previously left to servants
continuity among buildings, based on the classicizing
and inhabitants of lesser means - and roof terraces more valu-
of Haussmann's
model
Paris, often went under the name of "munici-
able and stimulated the construction of ever taller buildings. The
pal improvement."
almost universal availability of electric lighting extended daytime
of 1902,
living into the night and modified the use of every type of room.
what critics like Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo had
40
.• 9 At the same time, the Paris building code
written by Louis Bonnier, encouraged
There was little uniformity. New building types augmented
perceived as Haussmann's tyrannical
established
question of uniformity generated divided opinions.
ones such as the town house and the apartment
a break with
horizontality. Thus the
042
1
043
41 Automobile
Garage, Auguste
Perret,
Paris, France, 1906-7, demolished
39
40
Studio Building, André Arfvidson,
Drawing illustrating
the new Paris urban regulations,
1971
Louis Bonnier, 1902
Paris, France, 1912
The preoccupation more lar-reaching
with hygiene at the turn 01 the century had
II the nineteenth century saw the improvement
results than just increasing the number 01
01 bank-linanced
housing projects, the early twentieth century was characterized
apartments with bathrooms and toilets. II led to a reconceptual-
by public programs beneliting white-collar
ization 01 the very lorm that buildings should take. The building
as lactory workers. The Woníngwet (Housing Law) adopted in
codes 01 major cities prescribed
the Netherlands
and courtyards
the enlargement
01 air shafts
tor ventilation, while also aiming to broaden
in 1901 called ter public linancing
built with municipal
streets so as to space out housing blocks. For example, the
employees as well
or cooperative
quality standards and imposing
sponsorship,
01 dwellings
mandating
regulatory authority. Between
New York State Tenement House Act 011901 not only modilied
1894 and 1912 France passed a body 01 laws putting in place
the lacades 01 apartment
a program of low-cost housing that was guaranteed,
blocks by requiring open spaces to
be regularly placed along the street-Iacing proloundly
walls, but al so
altered their tloor plans by mandating
yards ..• 10 The lear 01 tuberculosis
eventually linanced,
larger court-
by the state. As a result, the number 01
housing projects increased through the initiatives 01 philan-
led to a veritable obsession
thropic societies such as the Rothschild Foundation and the
with sunlight. Projects by the Paris architect Adolphe-Augustin
Lebaudy Foundation, and subsequently
Rey, notably in his housing complex tor the Rothschild
specialized
Foundation
was further developed
(1905), where the open courtyard was adopted
after wind-tunnel tem lor apartment
tests determined the optimal ventilation sysbuildings, clearly displayed this concern ..•
At the same time, the growing number 01 automobiles
and
combined
government
through the work 01
agencies. The cooperative
system
in Germany, while in the UK the system
municipal action with private philanthropy.
11
also had
The advent of reinforced concrete
a direct effect on the design 01 domestic buildings. Initial solutions based on stables that had been used tor horse-drawn
Construction
carriages since the sixteenth century were quickly replaced by
place at every
specialized
duction 01 reinforced
garages, such as the one Auguste Perret designed
on Rue de Ponthieu in Paris (1906-7, demolished by parking spaces constructed automobile
underneath
1971),41
and
new buildings. The
augured new ways 01 perceiving the urban land-
scape, blurring the perception
01 contrasts and thereby
was another lield in which transformations level 01 architecture,
rial on the planning were as profound Produced
particularly
concrete. The effects 01 this new mateand management
01 building
as its impact on architectural
by combining
construction theory.
a mixture 01 cement, stone aggre-
gates, and water with steel reinlorcement,
reinlorced
radically changing the very idea 01 the monument. In 1910
was considered
Peter Behrens declared, "Individual
a direct result 01 progress
in both chemistry
ics ..•
between the rediscovery
tor themselves. The only architecture 01 viewing our surroundings,
buildings no longer speak appropriate
to such a way
which has now become a habit, is
13
by Siglried Giedion a "Iaboratory
The lew decades
material - originally
zation were marked by the invention 01 dependable to calculate
Chapter 03
I
Domestic innovation and tectonic expression
i'".:
01 this
used by the Romans - and its industriali-
one that produces surlaces as unilorm and calm as possible, .• 12
concrete
material,"
and mathemat-
which in their simplicity
present no obstacles."
took
with the intro-
the proportions
01 the concrete
methods
ingredients
with
· A u guste ent Buildmg, Apartm 1903-4 ::>erre, t Paris , France,
42
43
Hennebique
Headquarters,
Rue Danton, Edouard Arnaud, Paris, Franee, 1901
44
Chureh of Saint-Jean
de Montmartre,
Anatole de Baudot, Paris, Franee, 1894-1904 45
Baron Empain's "Hindu" Palaee, Alexandre Egypt, 1907-10
Mareel, Heliopolis,
rigorous
precision
construction
and the development
competed
to master the techniques
Alexandre
of patent-licensed
systems. Engineers, contractors,
and architects
concrete
imagination.
to the constructive
became one of the first multinationals business, opening
(Architecture:
in the construction
branches abroad in the 1890s to assist
tion to their projects. The Hennebique
simple system of columns and beams, allowed for
adventurous
torrns.
-> 15
The company
built both historicist
edifices, such as the "Hindu" palace designed Marcel for Baron Empain in Heliopolis
(1907-10),
utilitarian structures devoid of any ornamentation
45
and totally
for its indus-
trial clients. The building that Édouard Arnaud designed the firm's Paris headquarters Bourg-Ia-Reine treatments
for
(1901) 43 appeared to be made
of smooth carved stone, while Hennebique's
striated, stuccoed
concrete
once and for all,
Beaux-Arts
with. In one, the engireinforced
forms made of brick, which subsequently
served as cladding
for the building. The material was put to its most spectacular use by Anatole de Baudot in the Church of Saint-Jean Montmartre
(1894-1904).
44
With its arches seemingly
pended in midair, the building municipal
Chapter 03
authorities
I
de
sus-
so terrified Parisians that the
nearly forced the parish priest to raze it.
Domestie innovation and teetonie expression
-> 17
the primacy of
An alumnus of the École des
Gustave and Claude, Perret broke the mold of Parisian urban architecture
with his building
Its concrete
structure was plainly visible from the street,
on Rue Franklin (1903-4),42 In 1908 the American
critic
Arthur C. David made no attempt to hide his contempt: has its interest; but the interest is assuredly
Full-Iledqed
members
participated
in the activities
rather as the
than as the finished
product."
of the Passy circle, founded the poets Guillaume
and Paul Fort; the artists Francis Picabia, Albert
Gleizes, and Raymond Voirol.
->
19
-> 18
of the Parisian art scene, the Perrets
in July 1912, which al so included
Sébastien
not aes-
has not made any attempt to give it a
raw material of architecture
Apollinaire
"As
in the frank treatment of a new material, this
pleasing aspect; and it should be considered
with wire into
reinforced
and resolves with
who had gane into business with his brothers
building
poured concrete
/e passé, /e présent
incontestable sureness the profound flaws found in the direct use of metal." -> 16
thetic. The architect
were experimented
the power
in iron. In his posthu-
concrete, which has all of its advantages,
an experiment
- and
halls;
Past and Present; 1916), Baudot referred to iron
provided an example of a roof terrace used as a garden, in
neer Paul Cottancin
had envisioned
book L'architecture,
this case for growing vegetables. Other processes
to be striving to rediscover
barely clad by Bigot's ceramics.
own villa in
(1903) explored all kinds of concrete surface
- washed, aggregated,
meeting or concert
It would fall to Auguste Perret to establish
by Alexandre
nature
to develop numer-
as little more than a "step" toward "its successor,
method, based on an
decorations
and light of the great Gothic naves and to realize what his mously published
company
in adapting the new process of concrete construc-
apparently
projects for concrete
mentor Viollet-Ie-Duc
-> 14
The French engineer Francois Hennebique's
architects
ous theoretical
in these he appeared
seemed to have reached their limits, reinforced offered new spatial possibilities
brick and terra-cotta
of its interior. Until 1914 Baudot continued
and to control a mar-
ket that quickly became global. Just at the moment that iron structures
Bigot's exposed
gave the church a warmth that offset the cavernous
Duchamp-Villon;
and the critic
"""-e.' ~.~,.,.,-,--.~~~~.
46
Woman's Club, Irving Gill, La Jolla, California,
USA, 1912-13
In 1913 Auguste Perret made his name in Paris with the Champs
1902, and he laid the first concrete road, Route 57, in Warren
Élysées Theater. 48 This "philharmonic
County, New Jersey. But Edison's effort in 1906 to mold
palace" combining three
separate halls, inspired by Louis Sullivan's Auditorium Building
individual houses and all their furniture out of a single pour of
in Chicago, had first been entrusted to the Swiss architect Henri
concrete in Stewartville, New Jersey, was a commercial
Fivaz, then to Henry van de Velde. When it came to its construc-
The engineer Ernest L. Ransome had more success in develop-
failure.
tion, however, the Belgian architect found himself competing with
ing concrete in the United States. Southern California turned out
Perret, who had been consulted concerning the concrete struc-
to be particularly fertile ground for research on the new material.
ture. Though certain aspects of Van de Velde's conception were
Irving Gill invented a tilt-slab system of monolithic walls, poured
conserved in Perret's final design, they were worked into a con-
on the ground, then hoisted to a vertical position; these were
crete cage held by four bowstring arches of a type previously
used in the La Jolla Woman's Club (1912-13) ...• 21 46
used exclusively for bridges. The outline of this structure is trace-
In New York the most interesting experiment in concrete was
able on the facade in the design of the stone facing by the sculp-
Grosvenor Atterbury's buildings at the Forest Hills Gardens
tor Antoine Bourdelle, who recruited the painters Maurice Denis,
complex in Queens (1909-13), which had a romantic touch.
Edouard Vuillard, and Ker-Xavier Roussel in an exceptional col-
European civil engineers devoted themselves to inventing new
laboration. Nicknamed the "zeppelin of avenue Montaigne" by
processes and new forms adapted to the properties of the
Germanophobe
material. The Swiss engineer Robert Maillart designed unprec-
critics, this edifice hosted the world premiere of
Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in 1913...• 20
edentedly elegant works spanning Alpine rivers and ravines,
Perret was the most radical of the architects to explore the
beginning
potential of concrete. His experiments
Tavanasa Bridge (1905).47
quickly led him to erect
with the bridge over the Inn at Zuoz (1900) and the His curved and taut forms went
factories and warehouses with slender vaults, the most widely
beyond the limits of the Hennebique
publicized example of which was built for the Wallut agricultural
in 1938, "Reinforced concrete does not grow like wood, is not
supply company in Casablanca, for French colonization
a city that was a bridgehead
in Morocco. But Perret was not the only
method; as he explained
rolled like steel, and has no joints like masonry. It is best compared
with cast iron as a material that is cast in forms, and
Parisian to experiment with the new material. Francois Le Coeur
perhaps we can learn directly from the long development
introduced
the latter something
concrete in public building with his extension to the
Postal Administration exchange
buildings
Building
in Paris (1907) and in telephone
- a new type of program - on Rue du
Faubourq-Poissonniere
(1912) and Rue du Temple (1914).
of
about how, by avoiding rigidity in form, we
can achieve a fluid continuity
between members that serve
different functions." ..•22 The diaphanous
shapes designed by
the French civil engineer Euqene Freyssinet broke radically with
After the French state bought up private patents, concrete
the language of iron and stone structures. Freyssinet built a
entered the public domain, and its use fascinated all types of
bridge in Ferrieres-sur-Sichon
innovators. In the United States, the prolific American
in Vichy (1913), among others, before going on to invent pre-
inven-
tor Thomas Alva Edison took an interest in concrete as early as
Chapter 03
I
Domestic innovation and tectonic expression
(1906) and the Boutiron Bridge
stressed concrete in the 1920s ...• 23
47
48
Champs-Elysées
Concrete
Bridge, Robert Maillart, Tavanasa, Switzerland,
1905
Theater, Auguste Perret, Paris, France, 1910-3
050
I
051
49
Seaplane
Hangars, S. Schultz, K. N. Hbjgaard and H. Forschammer,
Reval (Tallinn), Russia (Estonia), 1917
F'-' - -w_~. -.-. - , ~- ~~
50
Dom-ino
Chapter 03
House, project, Charles-Édouard
I
Jeanneret
Domestic innovation and tectonic expression
(Le Corbusier),
France, 1914
51 ~
Centenary
Hall, Max Berg,
Breslau (Wroc!aw), Germany (Poland),1912-13
Bois, who had translated German handbooks
Concrete nationalisms
French, he was a draftsman
on concrete into
in the Perret office from 1908 to
Despite its apparent objectivity, concrete design was una-
1909. In 1914 Jeanneret conceived
voidably animated by national characteristics.
relying on columns and horizontal slabs to generate a poten-
It was soon in
a construction
principie
use all over Europe, as in the stunning seaplane hangars 49
tially infinite number of conligurations
built in 1917 by the engineers S. Schultz and K. N. Hbjgaard,
The Dom-ino House 50 - its name combines
and H. Forschammer
the words domus (house) and innovation and also evokes the
for the Danish firm Christian & Nielsen
in Reval (now Tallinn), Estonia. est conception
-> 24
Though French in its earli-
- a product of the research 01 Joseph Monier,
whose name was long attached to the material in early German
of plans and facades. references to
game of dominoes - was the most striking example 01 an arcnitecture based on the building skeleton.
-> 26
In just a few decades this material born of the research 01
literature - and claimed by France for decades, concrete sub-
chemists and engineers radically altered building practices and
sequently came to be considered
the conception
"Germanic"
by conserva-
01 civil engineering
works. It also changed the
tive critics who interpreted the "brutality" 01 certain buildings
relationship
as an expression 01Teutonic hardness. In tact, the Germans
partitions, and the exterior 01 the building, leading to a break
developed their own technologies.
with the principies of both stone or brick masonry and wood or
pany devised techniques
The Wayss & Freytag com-
based on the Monier system, placing
between the load-bearing
iron structures. Though they only partially met Viollet-Ie-Duc's
so much emphasis on methods 01 calculation that Hennebique
expectations
declared his "horror at this hodgepodge
mental constructions
of science" and his
preference for the "plain old recipes" 01 the first concrete formulas.
-> 25
The most spectacular
concrete building erected in
the German empire was Max Berg's Jahrhunderthalle
in what is
regarding the "truth" 01 the structure, the experipoured in concrete promised a new tec-
tonic expression, in the sense given that term by Gottfried Semper, who saw tectonics as "a conscious attempt by the artisan to express cosmic laws and cosmic order when molding
now Wroctaw (Centenary Hall; 1912-13),51 which for a time was
material."
the most voluminous
Kernform and Kunstform
structure in the world. With a 65-meter
(213-100t) diameter, the Jahrhunderthalle
structure, the internal
-> 27
The tectonics of concrete heralded the fusion 01 01 which Semper had dreamed.
was the lirst building
to outdo the Roman Pantheon's 43 meters (141 leet). The structure consisted of four large arches bearing thirty-two radial ribs plus additional concentric
ones. Its exterior, with rather static
stacks 01 window strips, did not hint at the spectacular, almost Piranesian space inside. The ideas of the young Swiss architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret - later to be known as Le Corbusier - had roots in both Germany and France. A lriend 01 the engineer
Max Du
052
I
053
America rediscovered, tall and wide
In Oemocracy
in America
(1835), Alexis de Tocqueville
solely concerned
char-
complex of large buildings
with classical exteriors. These
as being
inspired its nickname, the White City. The primary exception to
with "the present moment": "They quickly
the dominant classicism was the entrance to the Transportation
acterized the most ambitious men in democracies achieve many endeavors, durable monuments."
-> 1
rather than erect a few particularly For many decades this was exactly
how Europeans perceived American architecture. Less impressed
Building, 56 designed by Louis Sullivan, which displayed an imaginative
use of Turkish ornaments. Certain pavilions, such
as the Japanese
He-o-den,
aroused visitors' curiosity. Yet for
with grand public buildings like the Capitol in Washington, D.C.,
many travelers, the ultimate impression of Chicago was not that
than with the nation's bridges, factories, and skyscrapers,
of Burnham's monumental
saw the latter as expressions of a technological to the New World's economic
power.
-> 2
they
sublime linked
At the time, John and
yet ephemeral city, but the "black
city" that had arisen since the great fire of 1871. Chicago's
giant slaughterhouses,
most especially its conveyor-
Washington Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge (1867-82) was prob-
belt system, conceived for the dismembering
ably the most renowned structure in the United States. After
served as models for many subsequent factories.
the U.S. census bureau officially confirmed the closing of the
more vivid were Chicago's commercial
American frontier in 1890, a new epoch began that combined
steel frames. People referred to them interchangeably
the end of westward territorial expansion
"cloud-pressers"
thrust overseas. The development tation companies
with an imperialist
of great steel and transpor-
gave rise to projects of unprecedented
scale.
and "sky-scrapers,"
of carcasses, -> 3
But even
buildings with their as both
the latter name borrowed
from that given to the tallest sail on a ship. The Parisian novelist Paul Bourget described these structures ayear after the fair in
The architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who died in 1886, had
his book Outre-Mer: Impressions
anticipated
"simple power of necessity is to a certain degree a principie
such grand projects. He left an imaginative body
of work that brilliantly deployed Romanesque
models, as in his
beauty; and these structures
of America, noting that the .
Trinity Church in Boston (1872-7). Richardson also recycled the
that you feel a strange emotion in contemplating
tectonics of the Renaissance
first draught of a new sort of art - an art of democracy
palazzo, as in his Marshall Field
Warehouse in Chicago (1885-7, demolished
1930), with its
by the masses and for the masses." The buildings
austere stone walls.
of
so plainly manifest this necessity them. It is the made
-> 4
had begun to appear in Chicago's downtown
Loop during the 1880s in response to the fourfold effect of urban
Chicago in white and black
concentration,
the development
of the steel frame, the elevator,
and the telephone. William Le Baron Jenney built the Home The 1893 World's Columbian
Exposition 55 held in Chicago
introduced American architecture
both to a national audi-
Insurance Building (1885-6, ond Leiter Building (1889-91)
ence and to the fair's many foreign visitors. Built under the
non-bearing
authoritative
made John Wellborn
direction
of Daniel H. Burnham, with gardens
designed
by Frederick Law Olmsted, the fair centered on a
Chapter 04
I
America rediscovered,
tall and wide
demolished
1931) 52 and the sec-
using a steel skeleton and partly
facades. Efficient organization
and management
Root and Daniel H. Burnham's
archi-
tectural firm the most modern in the world, to the point that the
11 OO!J
53 Auditorium
Building,
. 1" 11 ¡m ~~
54
Dankmar Adler and Louis
Sullivan, Chicago, IIlinois, USA, 1886-9, section
Auditorium
Building, Dankmar Adler and Louis
Sullivan, Chicago, IIlinois, USA, 1886-9, interior 01 opera house
55 ~
World's Columbian
Home Insurance -ET
Exposition,
Daniel H.
Chicago, IIlinois, USA, 1893
Burnham,
Building, William Le Baron
ey, Chicago, IIlinois, USA, 1885-6,
::=-:lOlished 1931
:: an 01 its offices was published
:3
in the European press,
-> 5
rnham and Root built the Rookery (1886-7), whose great
courtyard covered in glass was clad in marble and reminiscent
== 5-
ichardson's work; the Monadnock een stories constituted ad-bearing
Building (1889-92), whose
the culminating
wall construction;
achievement
01
the Masonic Temple (1890-2),
suspended within its metal skeleton with a hotel and offices. Its use 01 electricity was advanced, its ornamentation restrained. In 1892 Sullivan pronounced
dense yet
himsell in favor 01 a
moratorium on ornament, "in order that our thought might concentrate acutely upon the production 01 buildings well lormed and comely in the nude." Yet this nudity was not to be total, and
:: iefly the tallest building in the world at twenty-two stories;
his "strong, athletic and simple lorms" would be hall-concealed
= d the Reliance Building (1890-4), whose terra-cotta lacades
"in a garment 01 poetic imagery."
ere, tor the first time in architectural
history, entirely sus-
aended trorn the steel skeleton rather than carrying their own ad. These structures and those by the prolilic lirm 01 William
Ruskin and Viollet-Ie-Duc,
whereas his partner Adler knew
tect Victor Ruprich-Robert's
Flore ornementale
Flora; 1876), and he conceived
888) and the Old Colony Building (1894), were largely clus-
on vegetal rnotits, according
innovation
vhere the final break with the "dry goods box style" occurred as a result 01 the need lar the best possible lighting tor the ices. The first buildings were heterogeneous,
with the street
Sullivan was a reader 01
Semper well. Sullivan was al so familiar with the French archi-
olabird and Martin Roche, such as the Tacoma Building :ered on LaSalle Street, a cradle 01 unprecedented
-> 7
(Ornamental
his system 01 decoration, based
to a metapharical
principie 01
growth. Sullivan continued to rellect on the theme 01 germination and prolileration
until the end 01 his lile.
-> 8
In an 1896 essay Sullivan proposed to examine the question 01 the tall office building "artistically
considered."
Some 01 his
"acades more elaborate than the side elevations, which were
statements would imprint themselves
upon the minds 01 his
oarely decorated. Alter Chicago promulgated
contemporaries:
law 01 all things organic
hich limited buildings
its 1892 code,
heights to 150 leet (45.7 meters),
uildings with tour identical lacades beca me the rule. In any event, the economic crisis 01 the lollowing years would stall eir lurther rise.
->
"It is the pervading
and inorganic, 01 all things physical and metaphysical, things human and all things superhuman,
01 all true maniles-
tations 01 the head, 01 the heart, 01 the soul, that the lile is recognizable
6
01 all
in its expression, that torrn lollows lunction. This
is the law." Relerring to the "tall building," he wondered
how to
Sullivan's inventions
"proclaim
trorn the dizzy height 01 this strange, weird, modern
One 01 the structures rnost admired by visitors lo Chicago
01 a higher lile?" The solution was simple: "It must be tall, every
housetop the peacelul evangel 01 sentiment, 01 beauty, the cult
in 1893 was Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan's Audilorium
inch 01 it tall. The toree and power 01 altitude must be in it, the
3uilding (1886-9). 53,54 Covered in stone cladding that echoed
glory and pride 01 exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch
the arches and rusticaled walls 01 the Marshall Field Slore
a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that trorn
and embellished
wilh an almost symphonic
orchestralion
oi
decorative surlaces and details, it combined an opera house
bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line." He rejected the column as a uselul model, with "the moulded [sic]
056
I
057
56
Transportation
Building, World's Columbian
Exposition,
57
Louis Sullivan,
Schlesinger
& Meyer Department
Store), Louis Sullivan, Chicago,
Chicago, IIlinois, USA, 1891-3
58
Guaranty
Building,
Store (Carson, Pirie & Scott ,
IIlinois, USA, 1899-1904
Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Buffalo,
New York, USA, 1894-6
base of the column typical of the lower stories of our build-
while employed in his office: part of the Auditorium
ing, the plain or fluted shaft suggesting the monotonous,
and the Charnley House (1892), which featured remarkably
unin-
Building
terrupted series of office-tiers, and the capital the completing
playful interior volumes. But Wright was also taken by-all things
power and luxuriance of the attic," counterposing
Japanese, particularly admiring the Pavilion of the Empire at the
the lessons of
nature to the tyranny of the existing codeso .• 9
1893 world's fair. Through his contacts with the Japan scholar
With the Wainwright Building in Saint Louis (1890-1), the
Ernest Fenollosa, he discovered the writings of Edward Morse
Guaranty Building in Buffalo (1894-6),58
and Arthur Dow ..•
and the Bayard
11
For Wright, this culture offered a lesson
Building in New York (1897-9), Sullivan put his theories to the
in architecture, particularly with respect to the clear separa-
test. Perfectly legible in their vertical stacking, his structures read
tion between the floor and the roof and the central place of
as prismatic volumes crowned with a thin cornice. The principal
the tokonoma - a niche for flower arrangements,
elements of their geometry were visible on their planar facades,
replaced in his houses by the hearth or fireplace. Japan also
which were covered in organic motifs. As autonomous
provided lessons in graphics and in landscape. This would lead
struc-
which Wright
tu res, these buildings tended to fulfill the Neo-Grec ideal of the
him from the gardens he saw on his first trip there in 1905 to the
primitive temple ..•
design of his Taliesin estate in Wisconsin in subsequent years.
10
At the turn of the century, after the depres-
sion of the 1890s interrupted the construction
of skyscrapers,
Wright established
himself in the wealthy Protestant neighbor-
Sullivan designed the Schlesinger & Meyer Department Store
hood of Oak Park, which he described as "a suburb which denies
(1899-1904,
Chicago." .• 12 There, influenced by social movements that
renamed Carson, Pirie & Scott) 57 in Chicago,
establishing a new equilibrium
between the composite build-
ing's overall volume and the modular grid of the facade, which
approached
the reform of domestic space as a way to reform
moral behavior, he built his own house (1889-98).
-> 13 59
Though
featured large rectangular bay windows. The repetitive nature
symmetrical on the outside, the house has an interior that plays
of the rectilinear windows contrasted powerfully with the flo-
on the oppositions
ral explosion of the cast-iron canopy at the building's corner. In
symbolizing
Owatonna, Minnesota, where he built the National Farmers Bank
"inglenooks," a private gathering place for the family. The house's
(1906-7), and elsewhere in the Midwest, Sullivan subsequently
collective aspect, reinforcing the importance
designed boxlike structures clad in brick, the luxuriant deco-
shared dinners, prevails over its individual spaces. Establishing
ration of which seemed to be compressed
but barely contained
between two centers: the vaulted music room,
Oak Park's communal
his studio on the premises, Wright appended a square office and an octagonal
by their geometric frames.
added complexity
Wright and prairie architecture
imagination.
His success was rapid - he
designed
two designs for his lieber Meister (beloved master) Sullivan
an article in Boston's Architectural
America rediscovered,
tall and wide
to the house
reading room (1895), which
and fluidity to the overall structure.
Frank Lloyd Wright, another great American iconoelast, drafted
I
of sociability and
His houses in Oak Park and nearby River Forest reveal Wright's extraordinary
Chapter 04
life, and the fireplace with
ninety buildings
between 1901 and 1909. In 1900, Review referred to Wright's
/
59
Frank Lloyd Wright House and Studio, Frank Lloyd Wright, Oak Park, IIlinois,
60
William H. Winslow House and Stables, Frank Lloyd Wright, River Forest,
IIlinois, USA, 1893-4
USA,1889-98
"perpetual inspiration," contrasting American
usines d'architecture,"
American architecture
it with the wark 01 the "Great the typical large tactorv-like
offices; the 'author declared that "tew
and created a system based on a logic 01 growth and variation using a square-room
architects have given us more poetic translations 01 materi-
generous
als into structure."
tal juxtaposition
-> 14
Inlluenced by relormers such as William
module.
the house and the landscape overhanging
-> 17
The continuity
between
was made more intimate by the
roots, the low ceilings, and the horizon-
01 the windows. Wright's other realized pro-
C. Gannett, whose sermon "The House Beautilul" was typeset
jects 01 this period ranged Irom vast residences
like the
and reprinted by Wright in collabaration
Susan L. Dana House (1902-4)
IlIinois; the
with his client William
61
in Springlield,
H. Winslow in 1897, the architect aimed lar his houses, in
Darwin D. Martin House (1904) in Buffalo, New York; and the
Gannetl's words, to serve the purpose 01 "dear togetherness,"
Avery Coonley House (1908) in Riverside, Illinois; to more
being "Iike a constant love-song without words, whose mean-
modest buildings
ing is 'we are glad that we are alive together.' "
houses in Oak Park (1901 and 1904) and the Isabel Roberts
upper band 01 windows and overhanging
-> 15
With its
root, Winslow's house
like the Frank Thomas and Edwin H. Cheney
House in River Farest (1908). Certain houses were located on
(1893-4) 60 in River Forest initiated Wrighl's exploration 01 hor-
spectacular
izontally extended lorms. Though its relatively orderly, even
in Racine, Wisconsin. Among all 01 these, the Martin House is
terrain, like the Hardy House (1905), built on a clitt
solemn, street-side lacade contrasts with the Ireer nature 01
remarkable
the back, the entire building
ing walls and its use 01 Iree-standing
is striated with clearly articulated
horizontal bands. The lireplace is the pivot 01the structure. Here
coherence
not only tor its almost absolute absence 01 dividsupports, but also lar the
01 its geometry, which extends Irom objects and fur-
the housewile was to preside over a real m that extended to the
niture to the rooms themselves and out into the garden. The
entire interior. In 1901 Wright devised theoretical projects like
continuity between the library, the living room, and the dining
"A Home in a Prairie Town" and "A Small House with 'Lots 01
room is maintained by interstitial spaces that are like walls 01 air.
Room in 11'" lar the Ladies Home Journa/, positioning
Wright remained unlucky with his projects lor major American
himsell
as the theorist 01 a new domestic architecture.
industrialists.
The architecture
the house he designed
he elabarated
wide plains surrounding Cause 01 Architecture,"
was made to measure lar the
Chicago. In his 1908 article "In the he wrote, "The Prairie has a beauty
01 its own, and we should recognize and accentuate
this
proposed
His lormer assistant Marion Mahony completed
Chicago
provided
him with an opportunity
spatial and technological
low proportions,
noted.
quiet skylines, suppressed overhangs,
ing walls sequestering
private gardens."
Ward Willits House in Highland
I
-> 16
Starting with the
Park (1902), Wright developed
ideas he had previously lormulated
Chapter 04
heavyset chim-
low terraces and outreach-
lor the Winslow House
America rediscovered, tall and wide
in Lake Forest (1907-9) was
turned down. Yet the Frederick C. Robie House (1906-8)
natural beauty, its quiet level. Hence, gently sloping rools, neys and sheltering
lar Henry Ford, and the project he
to Harold McCormick
-> 18
62 in
to build a kind 01
manilesto, as Reyner Banham has
The elongated house, extending along the street,
is protected lrom rain and the noonday sun by projecting eaves. In the summer it is shaded by a courtyard on the north, which serves as a cool-air tan k, while its horizontal windows help ventilate it. Inside, the passages are fl.uid between the
62 63 ~
Frederick C. Rabie Hause, Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago, IIlinois, USA, 1906-8,
drawing
made in the 1920s
Unity Temple, Frank Lloyd Wright, Oak Park, IlIinois, USA, 1905-8
Susan L. Dana House, Frank Lloyd Wright, 3:: -ngfield, Illinois, USA, 1902-4
second-floor
living room and the dining room, which are sepa-
rated by the chimney, and between the ground-floor
billiard
-30m and the children's game room. Radiators, heating tubes, z:
Sunday school interact with one another like the formal components of Wright's domestic designs. The concrete mass of the walls, into which all the ducts and pipes were integrated, recalls
d lighting devices are built into the walls. Unlike Sullivan,
the sol id envelopes of Richardson's
right had no interest in purely rational construction;
instead he
interior recaptures the warm centrality of Wright's houses.
ade ornament the starting point 01 his architectural
configura-
Wright carefully studied the path leading into the house 01 wor-
ns and adapted the structure to achieve his design goals. For sxample, the nearly 30-loot (10-meter) I-beams bearing the root - the Robie House were installed lengthwise, once other motifs e the repetitive rhythm 01 the ornamented ~een determined,
without any reservations
windows) had about this seem-
houses, while the church's
ship from the street, and in his eyes it too became a "meeting place." The articulation
of the basic structure and of the sec-
ondary elements, more complex than that in Buffalo, was part of a search for design unity that seemed to constitute a metaphor of the building's purpose ..•
20
gly illogical solution. ::AJmmissioned by Darwin Martin's brother John, the adminis-
Wright and Europe
'8. ive building 01 the Larkin soap lactory in Buffalo (1902-6, cernolished 1950) 64 extended the principies 01 Wright's Prairie
Wright's principies
-ouses to an office scheme. Despite its lortress-like
architects
ance, the building was naturally illuminated - courtyard
by a glassed-
similar to the one at the Rookery, whose lobby
right was remodeling
at the time. He later described
s rnple cliff 01 brick hermetically - nditioned'
appear-
buildings
it as "a
sealed (one of the lirst 'air-
in the country) to keep the interior space
were carried forward by a group of
led by William Drummond,
John Van Bergen,
Marion Mahony, and Walter Burley Griffin and known collectively as the Prairie School. Their form of homage or excessive imitation aroused Wright's pique. Their inspirer spent 1909 and 1910 in Europe, having Iled there with his client (and lover) Mamah Cheney. He visited Josef Hoffmann's and Joseph Maria
:: ear of the poisonous gases in the smoke Irom the New York
Olbrich's buildings, which he already knew from photographs.
8entral trains that puffed along beside it." .• 19 The result 01
He also studied architectural
:::areful analysis of the building's
in the work of Franz Metzner, who was responsible for the sculp-
intended use, Larkin com-
-ned Sullivan's organic conception s: íct orthogonal
01 architecture with a
geometry. Most significantly,
c. new type of open workplace,
it represented
with steel furniture and light-
,g designed as integral to the whole and in keeping with the uasi-familial
vision 01 the company.
oon alter this commission,
tural figures at Bruno Schmitz's Vblkerschlachtdenkmal and Joze Pleónik's Zacherlhaus. Wright developed
extension of the prin-
cipies of his houses. The square masses of the church and the
From observing
in Leipzig
Metzner
a theory of "conventionalization,"
or the trans-
formation of natural forms into abstract shapes, which he later used in his concrete construction
Wright built Unity Temple in Oak
?ark (1905-8), 63 another monumental
sculpture, taking particular interest
units, or "textile blocks."
Europe not only gave Wright an important geometry lesson in the interlocking
squares and circles of the late Secession, but
al so led him to discover pre-Columbian
America ..•
21
062
I
063
64
Larkin Company
Administration
Building, Frank Lloyd Wright, Buffalo, New York, USA, 1902-6
..,¿
Javid B. Gamble House, Charles S. Greene and Henry M. Greene, Pasadena, ia, USA, 1908
66
First Church 01 Christ Scientist, Bernard Maybeck,
Berkeley, California,
USA,191O
--"
buildings he designed upon his return to the United States, as Midway Gardens in Chicago (1914, demolished
~'e visibly
1929),
shaped by these discoveries.
with pergolas, it combines
Wright in Chicago as early as 1900, but it was in Germany
industrial steel sash lor the glass wall in a manner reminiscent
was now most recognized.
He gave a lecture in
of Viollet-Ie-Duc's
a wood and concrete structure with
theoretical projects.
in at Bruno M6hring's invitation, and he saw his reputation greatly when the Wasmuth publishing
-
A large room on a square plan that extends to the outside
right. The British architect Charles Robert Ashbee had --2.~Wright
-::a
in San Diego were also
inlormed by the Arts and Crafts, while in Berkeley, Bernard Maybeck built the First Church 01 Christ Scientist (1910). 66
=::; versely, Europeans were becoming increasingly interested -:
lirst houses that Irving Gill designed
house released a
The skyscraper migrates to New York
nograph on his buildings in 1911; this followed the release
=" a limited-edition
large-size portfolio 01 his works and pro-
scts the year belore. -
->
22 Richardson
erican architect recognized s
had long been the only
in the Old World (notably in the
height 01 new construction. unstoppable.
in Europe almost exactly as in the model
';:,~ ory built by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer lor the Cologne erkbund Exhibition 01 1914.
->
23 California, though, remained
ely unknown to Europeans, despite the signilicant
works
ing the 1870s for newspapers, ished 1955).
->
24 Beginning with the construction
(1901) had served to dis-
inate. In Pasadena, the work of the brothers Charles S. and -enry M. Greene was best exemplilied
by their house lor David
01 the Tower 1914),
the steel skeleton became the rule tor skyscrapers. The cornpletion 01 the Flatiron Building
The Craftsman
Richard Morris
Building by Bradlord Lee Gilbert (1888-9, demolished
contractor
periodical
including
was
was built dur-
Hunt's building lor the New York Tribune (1873-5, demol-
-e Arts and Cralts movement, which cabinetmaker _ckley's
Unlike
In fact, vertical competition
The lirst batch 01 skyscrapers
::~-lt there. It proved fertile ground for American lollowers 01 Gustave
skyscrapers.
Chicago, New York did not pass any regulations limiting the
took center stage in accounts by visitors to the United e reproduced
01 East Coast architects focused on
lactories, silos, and, most conspicuously,
erlands, Germany, and Finland), but Sullivan and Wright
=:a es such as Hendrik Petrus Berlage. At times their designs
-,
Alter 1900 the experiments
(1901-2) 69 - built lor Chicago
George A. Fuller by Daniel H. Burnham - was an
incontestable
milestone. A 22-story vertical extrusion 01 its tri-
angular site, the building was topped with a cornice evoking the capital 01 a column as in the ideal scheme contested by
3_ Gamble (1908),65 heir of a leading soap manulacturer - a
Sullivan. It could be the tip 01 a potentially gigantic imaginary
s -lHul composition
Haussmannian
of sol id wood elements on a masonry loun-
block. Elevators and services were grouped
-~ ion. Like Wright's houses, but designed lor a gentler climate,
in the building's core, allowing the window-lit areas 01 each
-e Gamble House is largely open to the outdoors through a
tloor to be entirely devoted to offices. Standing at the intersec-
~- ies 01 porches. The Greenes devoted the utmost care to
tion 01 Broadway and Filth Avenue, the Flatiron had such iconic
--e assembly 01 the wood Irame and walls, using visible dow-
power that the magazine Camera Work saw in it the promise
_
01 a new aesthetic, and one 01 its admirers, the photographer
hat evoked the techniques
of Japanese builders. The
066
I
067
69
Flatiron Building, Daniel H.
Burnham, New York City, USA, 1901-2, photograph
by
Alfred Slieglitz
67 Woolworth Building,
68
Cass Gilbert, New York City,
New York City, USA, 1913-15
Equitable
Building, Graham, Anderson
and Probst,
USA,1910-13
Allred Stieglitz, responded to the detractors 01 this "monster
buildings between eleven and twenty stories high, and the
ocean steamer" that "it is not hideous, but the new America.
problem 01 sunlight reaching the streets was much discussed.
The Flat lron is to the United States what the Parthenon was
In 1916 the "menace" posed by the skyscraper was remedied by
lo Greece." .• 25 Other buildings, including the New York Times
a zoning regulation that controlled the bulk 01 the tall building but
Building by Eidlitz and McKenzie (1903-5), soon lurther mined
did not restrict its height on up to 25 percent 01 the site. The new
the potential 01 rare triangular sites in Manhattan's grid.
code also established sophisticated
regulations to ensure ample
With the 47-story, 594-loot (181-meter) Singer Building (1906-8,
light by requiring terraces and setbacks 01 upper Iloors. New
demolished
York was therelore able to remain the "standing city" - as the
Company's
1968), Ernest Flagg responded explicit commission
to the Singer
to create a delinitive verti-
cal structure. It was soon lollowed by the Metropolitan
Lile
Insurance Company tower by Pierre L. Lebrun (1907-9), which was grafted to a larger block and made conscious
relerence
novelist Louis-Ferdinand
Céline put it .• 27
-
that would make
such a strong impression on visitors between the world wars. Though his 1920 book L'architecture aux États-Unis (Architecture in the United States) included reproductions
01 these buildings,
to the campanile 01 Saint Mark's in Venice. Next came the
Jacques Gréber persisted in seeing American architecture
Municipal Building by McKim, Mead and White (1909-14),
little more than a rellection 01 French "genius." His younger
which was likened to a modern Colossus of Rhodes in its
colleagues did not suffer Irom this superiority complex. On
straddling
of Chambers
the contrary, they lound the cross-Atlantic scene lascinating
Municipal
Building symbolized
administration.
Street. Built on an open U-plan, the the modernization
01 the city's
Popular Neo-Gothic themes found their place
in the next victor in the ongoing race for height, the Woolworth
as
enough to launch a new path of migration, reversing that of the Americans still coming to Paris to study at the École des BeauxArts. The departure tor Chicago 01 the Viennese architect Rudoll
Building (1910-13) 67 by Cass Gilbert. Though Frank W.
Schindler and his Prague colleague Antonin Raymond heralded
Woolworth, lounder 01 the dime-store
a radical geographic shift in the centers of architecture.
chain, had insisted that
his building be fifty leet taller than the Metropolitan ing, the structure is remarkable
Lile build-
primarily lor the relinement
01 its elevators and interior circulation and the splendor 01 an entrance hall given a Byzantine atmosphere The skyscraper's
soaring appearance
Gothic decor 01 its terra-cotta
by gilt mosaics.
and the Ilamboyant Neo-
exterior quickly led the public to
refer to it as the "cathedral 01 commerce."
.• 26
Construction of the Equitable Building (1913-15) 68 by Burnham's successors
Graham, Anderson and Probst served to crystallize
gathering lears about the unrestrained
individualism
of high-
rise structures. By 1913 Manhattan contained about a thousand
Chapter 04
I
America rediscovered,
tall and wide
The challenge of the metropolis
In 1908 architect August Endell, a major proponent
01 the
German Jugendstil torrns, published a small book entitled Die der grossen Stadt (The Beauty 01 the Metropolis).
Scnonneit
services. The resulting need to design dozens of new types of buildings, from suburban train stations to clinics and public baths, stimulated the architectural
imagination ..•
3
Though he did not turn a blind eye to urban problems such
The dizzying growth in the populations
as poverty and congestion,
the housing crisis, which was already so serious in London,
Endell discovered
a new aes-
thetic potential in the industrial landscape, transportation tems, and smoky city skies, much as the Impressionists lound inspiration in the Gare Saint-Lazare
syshad
in Paris in the 1870s.
Unlike Friedrich Nietzsche, who invited Zarathustra to "spit on
of large cities deepened
Paris, Berlin, and New York that it was becoming a threat to the social arder. 70 Urban relorms related to housing, transportation, hygiene, education, and leisure were put in place during the last decade of the nineteenth century. During this era, munici-
the great city, which is the great swill room where all the swill
palities became essential torees behind building projects that, in
spumes together,"
turn, reflected on a wide range of public policies and coopera-
Endell believed that the city "gathered in
-> 1
its streets a thousand beautilul things, innumerable marvels,
tive programs. Architects
and engineers
saw vast public com-
inlinite riches, accessible to all but seen by very lew." .• 2 Though
missions take shape. Meanwhile the nascent social sciences
he regretted the absence 01 an elusive "intellectual
lound the city to be an irresistible subject. Thewritings
beauty"
01
with which scientilic thinking might have endowed the city, he
sociologists such as Max Weber and Georg Simmel in Germany
praised the beauty created by human organization
and Maurice Halbwachs in France and the research of their
and labor.
counterparts at the University 01 Chicago laid the loundations far a new critical approach to the study 01 social relationships based
An explosion without precedent
on systematic research and veriliable tacts ..• The urban development
that translormed
much 01 the Western
warld had no precedent. It resulted in (and from) increasing
raised by physicians
industrialization,
Paris during the mid-eighteenth
mass exodus Irom the countryside,
and
emigration to the Americas and the colonies. It also disrupted feudal institutions and encouraged
the emergence
01 new
4
Problems of hygiene were of primary significance.
place in philanthropic epidemics
and scientists carrying
An issue first
out studies in
century, hygiene took a central
activities lollowing devastating cholera
a century later. The paradigm 01 the healthy city was
forms of national citizenship. Vast territories were newly urban-
applied not only to strategies related to urban design, but also
ized, and existing cities became denser, pushing municipal
to the design 01 individual structures. It would dominate architec-
outward. The process 01 Eingemeindung
boundaries
(munici-
tural thought until almost the last third 01 the twentieth century ..• 5
pal integration) that ariginated in German urban areas became
Concern for hygiene - initially focused on improving the
an international phenomenon with the creation in 1889 of the
circulation
London County Council, the first metropolitan
materials that would not deteriorate and facades that could be
authority in warld
01 air, then on sunlight, and finally on construction all 01 the thinking behind housing and
histary, and in 1898 of Greater New York. As cities expanded,
washed - transformed
they were equipped
public buildings. The low-cost Paris apartments
Chapter 05
I
with communication
The challenge
of the metropolis
networks and public
designed
by
'~
v.•••••••J--Io:J"-
...L_ •. K....-li.
n.1'taot_~ n•. __ -}o_
71
Street layout, from Town-Planning
Raymond
1\'."-
in Practice,
Unwin, 1909
72
YlL
__
I&"'- __
•••.•••.• ,....
I
._•. a..,..Do •••~ "-114001_".
•. r•.••••• ,..-.
Streets in Bruges, from City Planning According
lo Artistic 73 ~
Principies,
"Hygienic"
Camilla SitIe, 1889
set-back
housing, Henri Sauvage
and Charles Sarrasin, Paris, France, 1912
70
Compared
St8dtebau
growth of big cities c. 1910, from Der
(Town Planning), Werner Hegemann,
Henri Sauvage and Charles Sarrasin
1910
73
represent one exarn-
In just a lew years, urban planning became a world rnove-
pie; they were advertised as "hygienic," even "athletic," thanks
ment. The year 1910 witnessed the nearly simultaneous
to their plans as well as to the white tiling 01 their lacades and
Town-Planning
the provision 01 recreational areas lar their users ...• 6 Elsewhere,
Stadtebau-Ausstellung
the concern to provide middle- and lower-class
Berlin, during which large cities had an opportunity
housing with
adequate ventilation and access to sunlight led to the expan-
Conlerence
in London and the AlIgemeine
(General Urban-Planning
pare their plans 01 action ...• 9 The challenge
Exhibition) in
pate growth and to regulate it not only by understanding
sion and opening up 01 building courtyards.
estate and technical systems but also by imagining architecture
The planners' toolbox used by architects, planners, and policy
makers to calibrate the extension and modernization were translormed
01 cities
by inputs Irom the natural and social sciences.
something
resembling
a collective,
technicians
through lield trips, conlerences,
Periodicals such as Oer Stédiebeu and The Town-Planning
began appearing, joining the handbooks
and advanced the emerging notion 01 "collective"
needs. As a
result, the discipline known in its parallel versions as Stadtebau in Germany, town planning in Great Britain, and urbanisme
71
edited by Josel
as the basis 01 a library lor
prolession ...• 10
in
France took on new importance ...• 7 The old method 01 creating roads and subdividing
and exhibitions.
Review (Iounded in London in 1909)
Stübben and Raymond Unwin an emergent international
and
(Iounded in Berlin in 1904)
Pressure Irom unions and political movements intensilied the housing
barderless
think tan k, bringing together policy makers, intellectuals,
demands lar a more democratic
process 01 providing
real
the luture
01 large cities. Global networks 01 communica-
tion lacilitated The very instruments
to com-
now was to antici-
Town, square, and monument
the land into lots without dilferentiating
their use or their density was replaced by a complex approach
Yet the seeming unanimity 01 relormers and technicians
to regulation and planning based on statistical data and public
shattered the moment it came to putting a specilic lace on the
supervision 01 specialized stages 01 conception and construc-
cities of the luture. Should the modern metropolis be designed
tion. Planning became future oriented and prescriptive.
by reinterpreting the picturesque
The notion 01 the urban plan became lundamental,
expanding on the classical principies of monumentality,
ing the hopes of professionals
symboliz-
lar the rational modernization
was
beauty 01 historical sites; by as rep-
resented by the Beaux-Arts obsession with axiality, hierarchy,
and extension of cities. In the early twentieth century, expan-
and historicism; ar by avoiding all nostalgia and designing
sion and beautilication
new Iramework far the future inspired by a modern mechanized
plans that had evolved over decades
were replaced by regulations based on new, "scientific"
meth-
and rationalized economy? The first position was fueled by the
odologies, including measures to divide cities into zones - the
theories proposed
term zone in both French and German was derived Irom military
Sitte in his book Oer Steoiebeu nach seinen künstlerischen
usage - and the elaboration
Grundsétzer.
01 building regulations ...• 8
a
in 1889 by the Viennese architect Camillo
(City Planning according to Artistic Principies),
070
72
I
071
74
Plan 01 Chicago,
Daniel H. Burnham
and Edward H. Bennett, Chicago,
75
World City, project, Ernest Hébrard, 1912
76
Future New York, Harvey Wiley Corbett, 1913
lllinois,
USA,1909
which attracted a growing number 01 lollowers. Focusing on
the Progressive Era.
->
13
As one 01 its most active agents,
the city in its "Sunday best" - that is, on the city center -
Burnham provided the movement with emblematic
Sitte advocated studying the streets and squares of medieval
such as the Natianal Mall in Washington,
and Renaissance
renovated on the basis of his 1902 plan, and his plan lar San
tawns as a basis for turning modern urban
into "total warks 01 art" on the model of the
campositions
Wagnerian opera he admired.
-> 11
An immediate
images
D.C., which was
Francisco, which remained unrealized after the 1906 earth-
bestseller,
Sitte's book remained the bible of urban planners for decades,
quake despite, or perhaps because 01, its arnbitious scope. Even though the 1909 plan far Chicago 74 that he and Edward
although they often reduced it to caricatural formulas based
H. Bennett prepared at the request al local business associa-
an imitatian al medieval cities. No less successful,
tians was only partially implemented,
Monument
Platz und
(City Square and Manument), published
historian Albert Erich Brinckmann
by the art
in 1908, reserved its praise
tor the Baroque and classical squares 01 Rome and Paris. The principies
put forward far transforming
Vienna were applied throughout
-> 12
Berlin, Paris, and
the rest of Europe as new
it remained ane al the
most resonant images al the era. Its visian was divided into lunctional zones, crisscrossed interconnected
al a large
with new streets and
railways, refreshed by a system of parks linking
it with the lake and surrounding crowned with a monumental
prairies, and, most especially,
city center that would have made it
nation-states like Italy and Romania were established. They also
into a "Paris on Lake Michigan."
found application
also adopted tor certain projects with more humanistic
in independent
Latin American countries,
city
-> 14
Burnham's vocabulary
was
inten-
including Brazil and Argentina; in Meiji Japan; in late Ottoman
tions, such as the Cité Mondiale (World City)
Turkey as it underwent modernization;
1912 by the French architect Ernest Hébrard for the Norwegian
territories. Unlike the picturesque,
and linally in' colonial
contrasting
lorms to which
sculptor and philanthropist
75
designed in
Hendrik Christian Andersen.
->
15
Sitte was attracted, the massive schemes at the heart of these
During this same briel but fertile period extending fram 1890
cities leatured long axes and perspectives
to World War 1, engineers, architects, landscape designers, and
cannecting
vast
esplanades dominated by colon nades and domes. Such "artis-
social relormers who were committed to solving the problems
tic" principies applied the Beaux-Arts model at the expanded
01 the big city put lorward a third set 01 principies that avoided
scale 01 the grand urban structure. Daniel H. Burnham had
both backward-Iooking
used these principies
rapid spread 01 the automobile
in Chicago in 1893 to layout his "White
City," which was imitated at the International Exposition 01 1900 in Paris and elsewhere. The classicizing
imitation and grandiose
rhetoric. The
and the development
01 met-
ropolitan railroads spurred a vis ion of the city as a gigantic machine lar traffic. The architect Euqene Hénard's "Street al the
phantasmagoria
of Chicago and other warld's
Future,'
77
presented at the London Town-Planning
Conlerence
01 Europe's historical
in 1910, elabarated
the ideas he had outlined in his Études sur
cities provided the model far countless projects by American
les transformations
de Paris (Studies on the Translormations 01
fairs and the grand urban compasitions
urban planners, wha were committed to making the metrop-
Paris; 1903), in which he proposed to set buildings back from the
olis a "city beautiful," giving spatial lorm to the ideals of
street through a system 01 redents (alternating indents). Hénard's
Chapter 05
I
The challenge
01 the metropolis
F(0E
FUTUI1E.
C'I11'· .•ur C/J l.'
78 Vienna as an unlimited metropolis, from Die GroBstadt, eine Studie über diese (The Development 01 a Great City), Otto Wagner, 1911
77
Street 01 the Future, Eugéne Hénard, 1910
future street was entirely determined
by traffic - whether auto-
Law Olmsted in Boston and other American
cities-
found European advocates
uments surrounded
Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier and the German architect Fritz
by roads. The streets had multiple levels,
Schumacher,
allowing for the stacking of mass transit, automobiles, and pedestrians ..•
16
In 1913 Hénard's New York counterpart
Harvey
in the French landscape
which
mobile or airplane - and amounted to a series of great mon-
designer
creator of Hamburg's Stadtpark - were deemed
insufficient sources of fresh air. The Spanish engineer Arturo
Wiley Corbett took the fantasy a step further and imagined the
Soria y Mata's project of 1894 for a ciudad lineal (linear city) 79
streets of a future New York
suggested an alternative pattern for the growth of Madrid. The
76
as a network of dizzying can-
yons lined with fast lanes and suspended tating subways connecting Widely reproduced
sidewalks, with levi-
to skyscrapers
at the fortieth floor.
in popular newspapers, these images soon
new suburbs were to extend longitudinally
along either side of
a streetcar making a loop around the city, Only a segment was built, but Soria expanded the concept to the regional scale
fascinated the Italian Futurists.
with a scheme of continuous
Not every city-planning
The German architect Theodor Fritsch and the British social
proposal was so enthusiastic for the
mechanical. Otto Wagner accepted the fact that the modern metropolis was no longer defined by its principal monuments
scale decentralization.
tile to the city, encompassing
Jean-Jacques
not be confused with the traffic systems serving it. In Moderne
of the theories of the Americans
he wrote that a city where anonymity was the rule
onous repetition. Speculating
of cells" governed by monot-
on Vienna's future, he proposed
in 1911 a new GroBstadt (metropolis) 780f potentially unlimited
Bellamy. He didactically
for broad-
Rousseau and
Thomas Jefferson, .• 20 Howard had developed
would become a "conglomerate
his ideas out
Henry George and Edward
expressed his opposition to both the
malevolent "magnet" of the big city and the debilitating of the countryside
19
The latest in a long line of writers hos-
cable to the cities of antiquity. But he argued that the city must Architektur,
cities ..•
reformer Ebenezer Howard reacted with proposals
or by the visual rules of the picturesque
that had been appli-
ribbons connecting
one
in a triangular diagram, touting instead the
atlraction of the "garden city." 80 This last would combine the
growth, meant to spread out like a spider's web. Composed of
advantages of the two other alternatives to become, in his view,
homologous
the type of habitat most likely to appeal to people. In his 1898
neighborhoods
in compact orthogonal
was to be arranged in a checkerboard
blocks, it
pattern around evenly
distributed public spaces and services ..•
17
book To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, he described the broad outlines of a program intended to replace the creeping metropolis with a cluster of garden cities linked to the city
The idyll of the garden city
center by railroad, each with a population whose size would be strictly limited ..•
21
Meant to be funded by philanthropic
The "tentacular cities" that the Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren
capitalists or cooperatives,
described
experiments
in apocalyptic
verses in 1895 seemed to many
the garden city drew on American
such as Olmsted's Garden Suburb in Riverside,
reformers to be places of perdition from which nothing good
near Chicago, where Howard had lived. His clever oxymo-
could come ..•
ron "garden city" - which for several decades
Chapter 05
I
18
Even the park systems designed by Frederick
The challenge 01 the metropolis
had been one
I!H[PEO~\.~ WIUU
WU.1.1Htf
GO?
T9 . Linear City, Arturo Soria y Mata, 1894
81
Hampstead
Garden Suburb, Raymond
London, United Kingdom,
82 ~
Unwin,
1905-7
Page from Une Cité Industrielle,
Tony Garnier,
France, 1917
80
The Three Magnets, from To-Morrow:
A Peaceful
Path to Real Reform, Ebenezer Howard, 1902
of Chicago's
nicknames
vanized associations,
- quickly became a slogan that gal-
municipalities,
cooperatives,
reformers,
and al so real-estate speculators
around the world. Following
the founding
Association
01 the Garden-City
in Great Britain
in 1901, similar organizations devoted to promoting such exper-
architect Tony Garnier, designs 01 which were published 1917. ->
24
An autonomous
entity in opposition
it was secular and progressive,
in
to the big city,
a more modern version of a
1901 sketch Garnier had based on a plan described
in Émile
Zola's novel Travail (Work).
imental ventures cropped up in Germany and France and reached all the way to Russia. Articles on the subject were published
as far away as Japan.
-> 22
Zoning for the colonies and for Europe's metropoles
The garden city quickly became more than a slogan. Expanding on the principies developed by Camillo Sitte, Raymond Unwin
The reform of existing cities was another goal. Alongside
gave it canonical form with his designs for the first English
attempts to improve the appearance
garden-city, which was sponsored
ing more visually harmonious
by Howard himself, built in
Letchworth I;leginning in 1903; and for Hampstead Suburb (1905-7),81
a private commission
Garden
in London for Dame
Henrietta Barnett. These refined urban compositions
were
of city centers by creat-
streets, such as the Boulevard
Raspail in Paris and the southern extension of Seventh Avenue in New York, programs were implemented
based on Unwin's observations of English and Norman villages.
launched in London at the municipality's
Soon after, Richard Riemerschmid
lollowed. In Paris "insalubrious
conceived
and Heinrich Tessenow
the garden city of Hellerau around the Deutsche
to replace slums with
hygienic housing. The first attempts at urban renovation were initiative. Berlin soon
blocks" were earmarked
and included in the Extension Commission
in 1913
Report written that
Werkstatten factory near Dresden (1909-12). Meanwhile, ground
year by the architect Louis Bonnier and the historian Marcel
was broken on the largest garden city in Europe, Wekerle in
Poete.
Budapest (1909-26). In Russia, Vladimir Semyonov adopted the
advocated
British experiments
was influenced by sociology and turned to a career as an urban
in his design for the city 01 Prozorovskoe
(1913), while Georges Benoit-Lévy drummed
up interest in the
-> 25
To a certain extent the "conservative
surgery"
by Patrick Geddes, a visionary Scottish biologist who
planner, was somewhat similar to these projects in its carelul
movement in France. None of these projects fully met Howard's
atlention to social transformations
requirements; they contributed
in most cases to the spread of
ships between "place, work, and folk," illustrated in his diagram
in the city and to the relation-
nostalgic regionalist forms and responded to different political
01the "Valley Section." 83 Geddes differentiated between what
agendas, ranging from the paternalistic to the Social Democratic.
he saw as the "Utopía" of the garden cities and a "Eutopia" that
By imitating the space of the village, they counterposed
could result from patient modification 01 existing cities.
reassuring context 01 the small community
the
to the threats posed
->
26
Geddes tried but failed to apply his ideas in lndia, at a time
by modern society, following the arguments made by the German
when the colonized territories were becoming
sociologist
planners to experiment. In 1914 the European empires were
Ferdinand Tbnnies in 1887.
to this rule was the Cité Industrielle
-> 23
A rare exception
project 82 of the Lyons
places for urban
at the height 01 their power, and the dominant nations set about
076
I
077
83
The "Valley Section,'
Patrick Geddes,
1915
84
Extension
plan for Berlin competition
85
project,
Bruno Móhring, Rudolf Eberstadt and Richard
Plan far Rabat, Henri Prost, Rabat,
Morocco,
1914
Petersen, 1910
creating new capitals. These were sometimes
a new architecture could appear. Echoing Max Weber's socio-
situated near
historical urban areas, as was the case with Edwin Lutyens
logical analysis 01 bureaucracy,
and Herbert Baker's New Delhi, which began to be planned in
increasing degree 01 organization
he linked the metropolis to the in society, with the clearest
1912 lollowing Baker's design 01the Union buildings in the South
example being the American skyscraper stacking up thousands
Alrican capital 01 Pretoria (1909-13). It evolved into a scheme
01 clerical workers ..•
combining
and New York were now points 01 relerence as pertinent as
major roads and a hexagonal plan that culminated
in Luytens's Viceroy's Palace ..•
27 86
In Rabat, the political capi-
29
For German urban planners, Chicago
London and Paris had been tor previous generations. Site 01 the
tal 01 the French protectorate in Morocco, the Beaux-Arts grad-
mass production
uate Henri Prost designed an administrative
centration 01 service jobs and services, the metropolis was more
applied the characteristics
neighborhood
01 the garden city.
85
that
Other capitals
01 manulactured
goods but also 01 the con-
than a technical challenge tor urban planners. As Endell had
were erected on new sites, such as Australia's Canberra. The
already sensed, the urban landscape,
1911 international competition
ized by the arrival 01 the automobile, was also becoming the
to build Canberra resulted in the
selection 01 the American Walter Burley Griffin over the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and the French planner Donat-Allred Agache. In Griffin's winning scheme, 87 the city encroached the. surrounding
on
areas, making repeated use 01 elements bor-
rowed Irom the Prairie Houses that Griffin had drafted as an employee in Frank Lloyd Wright's office ..• Following the competition
28
lor the expansion 01 Barcelona - won
in 1905 by the French architect Léon Jaussely, one 01 the lirst advocates 01 zoning - the 1910 competition
lor Greater Berlin
yielded what were probably the most complex strategies 01 the day. The submitted proposals spanned the entire gamut 01 ideas then being discussed on both sides 01 the Atlantic. Grandiose monumental avenues, giant train stations, and garden cities were the basic building blocks advanced by Ihe competitors. proposals were truly revolutionary: grated the surrounding 01 vegetation
Some
Bruno Mbhring's tea m inte-
region with the city through great cones
reaching into the city center,
later met with considerable
84
an approach that
success. In 1912 the Berlin critic
Karl Scheffler, asking what "the architeclure
01 the metropolis"
should be, determined that it was only in the very large city Ihat
Chapter
05
I
The challenge of the metropolis
having been revolution-
milieu and the raw material ter the avant-gardes
01 modernismo
,
COMMOI'\WEALTH cr AVSTRALlA FEDERAL CAPITAL CO!\PETITIOti
<::.ITY A~D
~-
EfiVIROI1S·
':'CALE
87
86
Viceroy Palace and its surroundings,
Plan lar Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin, Canberra, Australia,
1911
Edwin Lutyens, New Delhi, India, 1912-31
080 I 081
New production, new aesthetic
With the invention 01 the automobile,
the spread 01 electricity,
character of Dr. Arnheim in Robert Musil's novel The Man with-
advances in scientilic research - especially in chemistry and
out Qualities is based, eventually succeeded
physics - and the increasing unilication 01 the world's markets,
played a leading role in German public life. The Rathenaus
his father and
architecture
became both a factor for increasing industrial
retained Peter Behrens, whose fame had spread lollowing
productivity
and a key component
the design of his own house in Darmstadt as well as of his
developed
of new visual strategies
by big business. Concurrently, and to a certain
Exhibition Pavilion in Oldenburg
degree in response, artists and architects devoted themselves to interpreting a new stage in the machine age's evolutionary advancement.
Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumlord described
as "neotechnic"
in opposition
and steam power ..• architects
1
to the "paleotechnic"
A variety 01 relationships
(1905) and the Crematorium
(1906-7) 88 that he designed in a Florentine manner in' Hagen. The large design oflice Behrens established it
age 01 coal
between
and industry began taking shape, ranging from the
quickly became
involved in all the AEG's activities. It created electric products tor mass consumption
- fans, toasters, teakettles, and other
devices - with designs so definitive that they remain practically unchanged to this day. The company's visual communi-
01 architects into major corporations, to architects' eflorts to promote the creative coordination 01 art
cations, from posters to all types 01 printed matter, were carried
and industry at all levels, to - last but not least - architects'
mental scale, Behrens was involved in the design of all the AEG
independent
buildings throughout
complete
integrafion
and at times critical activities within building
out according to Behrens's specifications ..•
2
At a more monu-
Berlin, from factories to housing estates.
programs and cultural institutions.
Indeed, each product line called for a specific building, partic-
The AEG model in Berlin
The lirst building to be constructed
ularly if its components
required highly specialized
handling.
was the Turbine Factory
(1908-9), 89 which Behrens designed with the engineer Karl The emerging power and imperialism 01 Wilhelmine Germany,
Bernhard. Its great form resembles a temple, as if to maintain
where industrialization had taken hold later than in Great Britain
a link between the industry-minded
and France, found its economic strength in the rapid development
which Rathenau saw as replacing the Prussian monarchs' art-
01 giant companies in the fields of steel, chemistry, and electric-
oriented "Athens on the Spree" - and the models 01 antiquity ..• 3
ity. At a time when Britain dominated world commerce, the "made
Flanked by a lower building with a wall consisting of a large
in Germany" label was seen as second-rate German companies
and derivative.
were thus driven to technical and aes-
"Chicago on the Spree" -
plane 01 glass rhythmically divided by steel frames, the factory features a 25-meter (82-foot) triple-hinged
frame, beneath which
thetic innovation in order to improve the image of their products
a crane moved the rnassive rotors and stators. On the front
at home and abroad. The most remarkable example of such
facade, the polygonal shape 01 the pediment evokes the contour
a strategy was that 01 the Allgemeine
Elektrizitatsgesellschaft
of a bolt head at giant scale. Most interesting, Behréns played
(General Electricity Company, known as AEG), founded by Emil
with a paradoxical
Rathenau in Berlin. Rathenau's son Walther, on whom the
ency. The corner pylons, which look like stone piers, are made
Chapter 06
I
New production,
new aesthetic
contrast between mass and transpar-
Crematorium,
Peter Behrens, Hagen, Germany,
-306-7
89
Turbine Factary, Peter Behrens and Kari
Bernhard,
90
Berlin, Germany, 1908-9
f concrete yet carry only their own weight, leaning inward as
The staf al Ihe Behrens affice, Neubabelsberg,
Germany, 1910
which he referred to in discussions 01the designo
->
5
In Saint
tney rise. The glass plane, on the other hand, tips at an angle
Petersburg, Behrens enlisted Mies to help him build the German
:0 the
embassy (1912), a palace with a red granite colonnade rerninis-
exterior edge of the frame, as il bearing the heavy load
01 the giant rool, which in lact is supported
by the underlying
steel-trarne structure.
cent of the Kleinmotorenfabrik
lor the AEG but with a far more
luxurious interior featuring black Doric columns.
3ehrens also built the Kleinmotorenlabrik
(Small Motor Factory;
910-13), the lront 01 which is distinguished
by a series 01
Factory as inspiration
ark brick columns without capitals standing five stories tall. The Hochspannungswerk
(High Voltage Factory; 1909-10) is
a more complex structure, in which the main halls were sandiched between two taller volumes containing additional work areas. Here the study, coordination,
and control 01 production
clearly were integral to the manulacturing
process: the era of
Walter Gropius and Adoll Meyer strove to lollow the example set by their mentor, Behrens, in building the Fagus Factory in Alfeld an der Leine (1911-13).
91
Designed to produce beech-
wood shoe lasts, the factory was begun by the architect Eduard Werner in a Neo-Gothic
style. Gropius and Meyer preserved
organization was at hand. Like Charles Garnier's firm during the
Werner's masonry foundations,
design 01 the Paris Opéra in the previous century, Behrens's
Irame lor a light steel-and-glass
firm attracted ambitious young architects from all over Germany
to the piers at Behrens's Turbine Factory, Gropius and Meyer's
and neighboring
transparent
countries.
90
From 1908 to 1911 he recruited
corners contributed
but used them as the base and curtain-wall
lacade. In contrast
to dematerializing
the building,
Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer, Ludwig Mies (Iater known as Mies
and the image of a modular structure with razor-sharp
van der Rohe), and Charles-Édouard
echoed the processes taking place inside the building. This
Jeanneret (Iater known as
Le Corbusier), who constantly complained
about the tyrannical
rule of the "bear Behrens." Having recently read Thus Spake
heralded a new era in industrial architecture: longer reminiscent
outlines
lactories were no
01 castles and temples; instead, their design
Zarathustra tor the lirst time, Jeanneret identified Behrens with
became an allusion to the precise handling of materials and to
the formidable
the sleekness
Nietzschean superman.
-> 4
Behrens's success as the AEG's lead architect projects lor other industrialists
braught him
and lor the state, in which
he explored the archetype 01 the Renaissance
palace. In
of the products
manufactured
within them.
The owner 01 the Fagus Factory, Carl Benscheid, Gropius photographs
had-shown
01 another industrial world, North
America, and in a 1913 essay, "The Development Industrial Architecture,"
lacturing firm Mannesmann
sented the grain silos and factories built in the "motherland
(1911-12), an ally of AEG, basing
he entire complex, with its repetitive, apparently modular lacade
92 Gropius enthusiastically
01 Modern
Düsseldorf he built the administrative affices 01the steel rnanu-
industry." In his eyes, "The compelling
pre-
monumentality
01
01 the
bays, on the basic unit 01the office. With its metal structure cov-
Canadian and South American grain silos, the coal silos built
ered in stone, the building rellected Behrens's interest in Jacob
for the large railway companies,
Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860),
shops of the North American lirms almost bear comparison
and the totally modern work-
082
I
083
-
~yus
Factory, Walter Gropius
-~olf Meyer, Alfeld an der Leine,
DACO"rA EUWATOR
=-=---cllY,1911-13
OETii.ElOES'l.O BUNonyDORN
92
Page from "The Development
Architecture"
in the Deutscher
01 Modern Industrial
Werkbund
annual,
Walter Gropius, 1913
~;¡
the buildings of ancient Egypt. Their individuality
is so
The Deutscher Werkbund
r rnistakable that the meaning of the structure becomes over~elmingly clear to the passer-by." --ough
Other connections
-> 6
Gropius and his successors knew little of the techniques
existing within institutional
alleled personal relationships
networks par-
between architects and indus-
.3ad to operate silos, structures deeply rooted in the American
trial figures. Early twentieth-century
German art reformers
=.;;ricultural economy, they grasped the aesthetic qualities
seeking an aesthetic translormation
of daily lile longed for
-= those concrete cylinders
a mutually beneficial alliance with industry. To this end,
and boxes. The automobile facto-
es of Detroit also captivated Gropius. There is no doubt that -8 studied them while preparing
~n
his project tor Fagus. Albert
had erected a large concrete frame building in Highland
=>ark ter the Ford Motor Company, achieving the ideal of the oaylight lactory."
->
7
More than the skyscraper, which was
they lounded the Verband des deutschen (Association
Kunstgewerbes
01 German Arts and Crafts), presided over by
Hermann Muthesius. The movement's journal Oer Kunstwart what nationalistic
central organ was the
(The Guardian of Art), which was some-
in its orientation.
-> 9
The success of the
sñll beyond the reach 01 German designers, these lactories
1906 Kunstgewerbeausstellung
seemed to open the way to an architecture 01 pure economic
Dresden led to the creation in MiJnich the lollowing
(Arts and Crafts Exhibition)
aiionality. Not all German architects were ready to embrace
Deutscher Werkbund
.nern, though. Paul Bonatz, a student of Theodor Fischer's stu-
industrialists,
:Jio in Munich, chose to evoke a Roman basilica in his Stuttgart
the positions within this organization
'1ailway Station (1912-30), 94 a reinlorced-concrete
the architect Fritz Schumacher,
building
lad in stone, implicitly asserting that modern networks like railroads demanded
a monumentality
that went beyond a rather
objective
the alienation
Irequently
then a prolessor
prominent Berlin architect Hans Poelzig adopted a sig-
01
conllicted, in Dresden,
in his inaugural speech as
between the executive and the
inventive spirit, in order to bridge the existing divide."
=etishistic reliance on steel and glass.
me
(German Work Union), a lederation
state officials, architects, artists, and critics. While
delined the Werkbund's "overcoming
in
year 01 the
-> 10
Unlike their British predecessors in the Arts and Crafts movement;
01 the Kunstgewerbe
nificantly different approach to building lorm and design dur-
with whom the supporters
ing the same periodo His Chemical Factory (1911-12) 95 in Luban
lounders 01 the Werkbund were not opposed to the leading
identilied, the
(Luborí), near Poznan in Silesia, evoked the brick attics 01 build-
capitalist lirms 01 the day. Instead, they tried to ligure out a way
ings in Hanseatic cities like Bremen and Hamburg in the north 01
to cooperate with industry so as to achieve the desired reform
Germany as well as medieval lortilications and Roman aqueducts.
01 material culture. The inspiration tor the organization came
Far removed from Behrens's rhetoric 01 transparency in struc-
primarily lrom Muthesius, who had become a professor of archi-
~res like the Turbine Factory, these buildings Ilaunted their
tecture at the Handelshochschule
(Higher Trade School) in
physical mass while their richly patterned brick surfaces revealed . Berlin, and Irom the relormer Friedrich Naumann, an advocate to the attentive observer the difference between the supporting and supported
parts 01 the masonry.
->
8
01 Christian Socialism and a deputy in the Reichstag. In 1908 Naumann outlined a theory advocating
quality production
084
as
I
085
VER.AC·CUS'fAV ••AMMERS·MiiHCHEH
L. 93
.&
I1'1I1OPIRQ1oION
Ingenieur-aesthetik
(Engineering
94
Railway Station, Paul Bonatz, Stuttgart, Germany, 1912-30
95
Chemical
Aesthetics), Joseph August Lux, 1910 Factory, Hans Poelzig, Luban (Luborí), Germany
well as durability and premised on class collabaration:
"The
(Poland), 1911-12
"taste." .• 14 They portrayed French culture as a holdover Irom an
social needs of the working class can be united with the need
outdated Zivilisation that stood in opposition to the progressive
lar art 01 the progressive
Kultur 01 industry. This distinction operated on many levels.
part 01 the population
by replacing a
theary based on attrition with one based on durability."
->
11
The
-> 15
The extent 01 the Werkbund's success may be gauged by its
same year Naumann drew up most of the Werkbund statutes.
1914 exhibition in Cologne. The decision to hold the exhibition
The organization
in a city so close to France was indicative 01 the association's
grew quickly. By the time it moved its head-
quarters to Berlin in 1912, it had nearly a thousand members,
increasingly
nationalistic stance. At this point the Werkbund had
among them a growing number of businesses. Its activi-
1,870 members and a constantly growing number 01 industrial
ties expanded lurther with the spread of local groups (torty-
sponsors. Yet the exhibition buildings hardly conveyed a sense
five by 1914), the publication conferences,
01 its Jahrbücher
(yearbooks),
and exhibitions. The Werkbund worked indi-
01 unanimity . .., 16 Van de Velde pursued his ideal 01 linear lorm with a theater whose principal innovation was a tripartite stage.
rectly through the Deutsches Museum für Kunst in Handel
Gropius and Meyer's administration
und Gewerbe (German Museum for Art in Trade and Industry),
experiments they had initiated in Alfeld, with exterior staircases
lounded
housed in glass cylinders. Their building was also reminiscent
in Hagen by Karl Ernst Osthaus, another of its princi-
building continued the
pal leaders, who organized many traveling exhibitions. At the
in many ways of the City National Bank and Hotel built by Frank
instigation of the Werkbund and in imitation of the AEG model,
Lloyd Wright in Mason City, lowa (1909), particularly
companies
metrical composition
recruited architects to design their office buildings
and manufacturing
facilities. The Norddeutsche
Lloyd hired Paul
and overhanging
in its sym-
roof.
In July 1914 the Werkbund organized a conference to coincide
Ludwig Troost and Bruno Paul, who designed tour ships, while
with the exhibition. It was marked by a heated conlrontation
the Hamburg-Amerika-Line
over the notion 01 Typisierung - the creation of type, or
Though the Werkbund's
worked with Muthesius . ..,12 primary goals were to raise the "artis-
tic" level of German industrial production consumer taste, the organization
also devoted itself to promot-
ing a form of aesthetic expression and civil engineering (engineering
and to modernize
unique to technical objects
structures. This ingenieur-aesthetik
aesthetics), opposed to both classicism and Art
standardized
objects. Muthesius believed that standardization
was inevitable: "More than any other art, architecture strives toward the typical. Only in this can it find fullillment. Only in the all-embracing
and continuous
pursuit of this aim can it regain
that effectiveness and undoubted assurance that we admire in the works of past times that marched along the road of
Nouveau, provided the title lar a 1910 book by Joseph August
homogeneity."
Lux,
opposed to the notion of Typisierung, just as he was hostile
-> 13 93
who described the aesthetic effects 01 machines in
->
17
Van de Velde, on the other hand, was strictly
a discourse similar to that of Paul Souriau in France. While try-
to any Kulturpolitik
ing to dispel the German inferiority complex with respect to
cal stance given that he was in the employ 01 the Grand Duke
British industrial production,
of Saxony - and he was supported
Lux and his acolytes also sought to
combat German anxieties regarding the domination
Chapter 06
I
New production,
new aesthetic
of French
(cultural policy) - a somewhat paradoxi-
and by the individualistic
in his argument by Gropius
positions of August Endell and
96
Glass Pavilion at the Werkbund
Exposition,
Bruno Taut, Cologne, Germany,
97
Glass Pavilion at the Werkbund
Exposition,
1914, exterior
1914, interior
Hermann Obrist. The conllict revealed an inherent contradiction
architecture
within the Werkbund between the upholders 01 Kunstgewerbe,
both relorm and redemption.
Bruno Taut, Cologne, Germany,
open to daydreams, with glass as an instrument 01
or the applied arts, and those who wished to place design in the service 01 production, a concept at the heart 01 industrial designo
Futurist mechanization
The most original building at the Cologne exhibition was by Bruno Taut, one 01 the young Werkbund Muthesius. A prismatic polyhedral his Glass Pavilion
rebels hostile to
dome on a circular base,
aimed to demonstrate
96,97
ties 01 glass by incorporating
The Italian Futurists based their efforts to lound a new artistic
all the possibili-
this material in the lorm 01 win-
dows, glass bricks, and polychrome
glass mosaics ..•
Irieze running around the building's lourteen-Iacet was inscribed with slogans such as "Happiness
18
A
discourse
and a new architectural
tance himsell lrom the Jugendstil
01 a Behrensstil
perimeter
style on the sensations
- even il critics still spoke
(Behrens style) - and Perret trorn the Art
Nouveau, so the artists gathered around the poet and provo-
without glass,
cateur Filippo Tommaso Marinetti revolted against the Stile
how crass!"; "Colo red glass destroys hatred"; "Glass opens
Liberty, the Italian version 01 Art Nouveau (also known as
up a new age"; and "Brick building only does harm." Their
Floreale). This literary and artistic uprising was a response
author was the poet and novelist Paul Scheerbart, whom Taut
to the translormations
provoked
had belriended
growth 01 metropoles
such as Milan and Turin. Marinetti's
in 1913 ..•
entitled G/asarchitektur lar ideas, enumerating promising
19
In an aphorism-lilled
(1914), Scheerbart
publication
expressed simi-
"Manilesto
potential types 01 glass buildings while
a new world based on colored-glass
pro-
duced by motion and speed. Just as Behrens came to dis-
sensations and
by industrialization
and the
01 Futurism" appeared in the Paris daily Le Figaro
in 1909. Declaring war on historical cities, Marinetti wrote: "We will sing 01 the multicolored
and polyphonic
tides 01 revolution
declaring that glass had the potential to be the salvation 01
in the modern capitals; we will sing 01 the vibrant nightly fervor
society and individuals.
01 arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons;
In his novel Das graue Tuch (The Gray Cloth), published
the
greedy stations that devour smoke-plumed
serpents; lactories
same year, Scheerbart related the exploits 01 a demiurge archi-
hung on clouds by the crooked
tect Ilying over the world in an airship, building observatories
that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, Ilashing in the sun
on glaciers and glass sanatoriums
with a glitter 01 knives." .• 21
nature 01 the relationship
on lakeshores ..•
20
The
between architects and glass, which
lines 01 their smoke; bridges
In 1910 the painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni
began
01 urban events,
in the nineteenth century had centered on train stations and
expressing
exhibition halts, and more recently on model lactories like the
exalting the movement 01 crowds ano the agitation 01 the
Fagus, now shifted. By celebrating the utopian possibilities glass, Scheerbart and Taut emphasized ised by an architecture
the experiences
01
prom-
no longer obsessed with structure and
tectonics
or with its place in stone cities. They heralded an
Chapter 06
I
New production,
new aesthetic
in his paintings the simultaneity
streets. In his unpublished
"Architettura futurista, manifesto"
(1914), he evoked the possibility sionism," an architecture
01 an "architectural
impres-
01 pure necessity, in which "the
spaces 01 an edilice would provide the maximum
performance,
99
The New City, project, Antonio Sant'Elia, 1914
e a motor." He announced sm lile will necessarily
that the "dynamic
needs 01 mod-
give rise to an evolving architecture"
- ey have encountered, e expression."
their architecture
by mechanics
in the construction
in August 1914, Sant'Elia
made 01 "cement, glass, and iron, without painting and without sculpture, rich only in the innate beauty 01 its lines and reliels."
the more they have gained in artis-
lorrned as those employed
he published
and railroad
Regrettably, in his view, "Processes
letely neglected
In the manilesto
described the Futurist house as "similar to a gigantic machine"
to the needs
:: d noted that "the more ships, automobiles, s.ations have subordinated
Electric Power Plant, project, Antonio Sant'Elia, 1914
as deeply
have been com-
01 housing, roads, etc."
He called tor a radical alteration 01 the organization
01 build-
ings: "Elevators must not be hidden in stair corners like solitary worms; rather, having become useless, staircases must be abolished, and elevators must climb like iron and glass snakes
"he elevator, lollowed by the airplane, allowed lor the con-
along the Ironts 01 buildings."
quest 01 the vertical dimension:
in watercolor drawings tor La Citte Nuova (The New City), 98
crease the architectural
"The luture will progressively
possibilities
with regard to height
and depth. Thus lile will slice through the age-old e 01 the terrestrial surface, the inlinite verticality
would long remain unknown.
01 the eleva-
nying his manilesto,
:or ... and the spirals 01 the airplane and the dirigible."
-> 22
orcphetic
rellections
almost literally in his July 1914 maniluturista."
ebbia, the artist Leonardo ario Chiattone
A colounder Dudreville,
the Famiglia Artistica
its work two months earlier at
gallery in Milan, Sant'Elia had previ-
ously been inspired by the aesthetics
3rooklyn
structures
tion. Alter the Second World War, the Communist Antonio Gramsci described
accompa-
in Lacerba, had wide circulaphilosopher
Futurism, by then discredited
by its alliance with Fascism, as nothing more than a kind of "Fordist lanlare" based on the "exaltation 01 big cities."
->
24
industrial
milieu of modernization
constituted
a precedent
without which the most relined new architecture
of the 1920s
would not have emerged.
01 Otto Wagner. He had
a series 01 theoretical
ments and industrial Impressed
Yet these ideas
Only the illustrations
published
his ideas
Yet the attention the Futurists drew to machines and to the
and the architect
01 the Nuove Tendenze (New Tendencies)
group, which had exhibited
also undertaken
with the critic Ugo
He also expressed
shown in the Nuove Tendenze exhibition.
horizontal
"he young architect Antonio Sant'Elia repeated Boccioni's
-> 23
projects lor monu-
like electric power plants. 99
by images 01 such American
constructions
as the
Bridge and Grand Central Station, and even more
by Harvey Wiley Corbett's reproduced
"Future New York" - which was
in L'illustrazione
cities designed
italiana in 1913 - he imagined
like an "immense,
building site, dynamic must be exploited,
tumultuous,
agile, mobile
in every part," and proclaimed:
basements
utilized, the importance
"Rools
01
facades diminished."
088 I 089
In search of a language: from Classicism to Cubism
Some architects sought a source 01 renewal not in new tech-
Anglo-American
classicisms
nologies and responses to industrial production but rather in the discipline 01 architecture itsell. Their prelerences ranged lrom nos-
The center 01 gravity 01 monumental classicism had largely
talgia tor the classical to a radical rupture with all existing codes
shifted trorn Paris to the United States by the end 01 the nine-
and torrns al representation, even those locused on the machine,
teenth century. The scale 01 American commissions,
in order to return to the more abstract dimensions 01 designo Yet
lunded by big business, the government, or philanthropists,
despite many attempts to overturn it, the architecture taught at the
resulted in buildings - and architectural lirms - 01 unprecedenteo
whether
École des Beaux-Arts in Paris remained the dominant paradigm
size. For instance, the development 01 railroads and 01 alliances
tor the first two decades 01 the twentieth century. In tact, the École
among rail companies led Daniel H. Burnham to build Union
was responsible ter the spread 01 a genuine "international style"
Station in Washington, D.C., as a marble edilice that could be
years belore this term was coined.
visually identilied with the Capitol and the White House. In New
->
Its dissemination was a
1
belated expression 01 French dominance in matters al taste, con-
York, Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore with Charles Reed
tinuing a pattern that had developed in the eighteenth century and
and Allen Stern built Grand Central Station (1903-13). Based
was reinlorced by the school's location in a city that was still the
on a spatial concept evoking the Roman baths, its giant con-
cultural capital 01 the world.
course was erected over a network 01 underground tracks while
->
2
The growing number 01 loreign
students enrolling at the Beaux-Arts beginning in the last third al
a neighborhood
the nineteenth century, the international activities al major French
Gare d'Orsay in Paris, built on an identical principie, was the
took shape on top 01 these sunken spaces. The
academics and prolessionals, and the emigration 01 Beaux-Arts
work al Victor Laloux, the Beaux-Arts prolessor who, not coinci-
instructors also helped propagate the school's curriculum.
dentally, was the mentor to most 01 the school's American stu-
The ongoing success 01 the Beaux-Arts method was due largely
dents. Another monumental New York train station was designec
to its ability to integrate the lunctional requirements 01 moderni-
by the lirm 01 Charles F. McKim, William R. Mead, and Stanlord
zation. The analytical approach taught in Julien-Azais Guadet's
White: Pennsylvania Station (1905-10, demolished
Éléments et théorie de I'architecture
leatured a waiting room inspired by Rome's Baths 01 Caracalla
(Elements and Theory 01
1964), which
Architecture; 1905), the school's principal design treatise, pre-
and remarkable tor its powerlul exposed steel structure.
pared students to evaluate new types 01 buildings that were more
McKim and White had previously worked with Henry Hobson
complex and less grandiloquent than the great palaces studied in
Richardson. In tact, their lirst significant commission
pursuit 01 the Grand Prix de Rome,
the Boston Public Library (1885-95), which stood across the
100
with which the Beaux-Arts
curriculum has toa often been associated. ments applied to nineteenth-century
->
3 The historicist ele-
buildings slowly disappeared,
had been
street frorn their mentor's Trinity Church. Between 1870 and 1919 their lirm constructed
nearly a thousand
buildings. They
while the principies 01 symmetry and hierarchy were adjusted to
explored the principie 01 the Italian Renaissance
new lunctional and symbolic requirements - sometimes with a
a variety 01 New York buildings, including the University Club
great deal 01 imagination - until the late 1940s.
(1900), a grandiose
Chapter 07
I
In search of a language: from classicism lo Cubism
palazzo in
pile on Fifth Avenue, and the more delicate
Grand Prix de Rome project at the École des Beaux-Arts,
Charles Lemaresquier,
Paris, France, 1900
102
Heathcote,
Edwin Lutyens, Ikley, United Kingdom,
1906
103
Page from Um 1800 (Around 1800),
Paul Mebes, 1908
Morgan Library (1906). On an urban scale, they designed the
with Paul Wallot on the Reichstag in Berlin, invented new forms
campus of Columbia University in upper Manhattan, an axial
by using concrete in buildings such as the Garrison Church in
composition
Ulm (1905-10).
(1895-7).
dominated
101
by the dome of Low Memorial Library
Following in the footsteps of several hundred
107
Fischer taught Camillo Sitte's picturesque
urban precepts along with his own reflections on new build-
other architects, John M. Carrete and Thomas Hastings did their
ing types, first in Stuttgart and later in Munich. Some archi-
professional apprenticeship
tects diverged from the prevailing fixation on antiquity and,
having previously extravagant
in McKim, Mead and White's office,
studied in Paris. They went on to design
hotels and homes from Florida to the New York
metropolitan
area, as well as the New York Public Library
(1897-1911), an example of civic magnificence
in the service
even more often, the Renaissance,
idealizing instead other
moments in the history of architecture. was Um 1800 (Around 1800)
103
Mebes . ..,5 In this popular collection
A classical
eighteenth-century
Beginning
was al so underway in England.
in 1904, Edwin Lutyens set about countering
vanity of "villa-dom,"
the
launching what he referred to, with char-
acteristic humor, as a "Wrenaissance,"
a return to Christopher
prior to 1914
by the Berlin architect Paul
of delivering culture to the masses. resurgence
One of the books most
widely used by German and Austrian designers
of nostalgic images of
building types, Mebes celebrated the hon-
esty and formal restraint found in Germany's rural and bourgeois constructions particularly
at the turn of the previous century. He
emphasized
the harmony between buildings and
Wren. But Lutyens's frame of reference extended beyond the
their gardens, as well as the stylistic unity of architectural
architect who had rebuilt Saint Paul's. A self-conscious
ments, decoration,
refer-
ence to Andrea Palladio - "Palladio is the game," he wrote
In some ways this vernacular
in 1903 ..,4
an expression of the GroBstadtfeind/ichkeit
-
was evident in his designs for houses such as
Heathcote (1906)
102
in IIkley, Yorkshire and Nashdom, the res-
idence of Prince and Princess Alexis Dolgorouki Buckinghamshire
(1904-9).
in Taplow,
Erected on a terraced site, the lat-
el e-
and furniture. and bourgeois traditionalism
was
(hostility toward
the big city) that took hold among the German intelligentsia distressed about the erosion of cultural values brought on by urbanization
and internationalization.
This anxiety led to the
ter had two different facades - one in exposed stone, the other
idealization of a carefully edited past. The tendency was exem-
in stuccoed
plified by Julius Langbehn's
brick - creating contrasts of rhythm and texture
that extended the sense of counterpoint
he had previously dis-
played, but now within less of a classical straitjacket.
book Rembrandt
a/s Erzieher
(Rembrandt as Educator; 1890), which the author published anonymously.
Its purpose was to denounce the problems
affecting modern Germany and proclaim art the only possible force for resistance and renewal. The Dürerbund
German nostalgia
Association), There was no shortage of proponents
of classicism
in
(Dürer
organized by the publisher and critic Ferdinand
Avenarius (1902), and the Bund deutscher
Heimatschutz
Germany, though some slowly freed themselves from its ten-
(Society for the Preservation of the German Homeland),
ets. The Munich architect Theodor Fischer, who had worked
founded in 1904 by the teacher Ernst Rudorff, became the
Chapter 07
I
In search of a language: from classicism to Cubism
/
..
-
-_._
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-
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..
"'-
IDAS
._ ..•.... _ .._ ..". _ .. ////
W1ANñERE I
EIN BLATT ZUR EINFUEHRUNG ABENDLAENDISCHER KULTUR IN OESTERREICH: GESCHRIEBEN VON ADOLF LOOS 1. JAHR TA.lLOas
AND
GOLDMAN l.
Sccíéeé Franco ..Autrichienne industritb __
OUTPITTERS
&:SALATSCH
poUf [os uls
u.1t.KOF_
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School 01 Rhythmical -=ssenow,
Gymnastics,
MOBELSTOFFE' LYONER SElDEN- UND
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Heinrich
Dresden, Germany, 1910-12
~~
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•••• __ _.""
ECHTE UND lMI'I1ERTE GOBELINS ENGUSCHE UND FRANZOSISCHE TEPPICHE STICKEREIEN UNO APPUXATIONEN SPlTZEHVORHÁNGE
]OM:l
WIEN, l. GRABEN
105 Drawing Irom Hausbau und Dergleichen
SAMT-BROKATR
WIEN, L Kmúnuslrassc 55,
'0.
J.
SIodt
Société Franco,..Autrichienne
(House
Building and the Like), Heinrich Tessenow, 1916
106 Cover 01 Das Andere (The Other), Adoll Loos, 1903
:: incipal mediators between these ideas and architecture.
Rhythmic Gymnastics
- e Bund fought not only for the preservation
Swiss musician Émile Jacques-Dalcroze
z: dscapes, ='Tl
of endangered
but al so for farms that were altogether mod-
(1910-12), 104 which was built tor the
yet infarmed by tradition. It worked far the conservation
of
onuments as well as of rural structures, plant and animal life,
to his poetic pen-and-ink
- e architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg
Wohnungsbau
r to Der Kunstwart, a journal founded by Ferdinand Avenarius 1887 - was the most effective propagandist unstptlege
dergleichen
house. Thanks
drawings, Tessenow's architectural
language became widely accessible
- a frequent contri bu-
melded the arche-
types of the classical temple and the bourgeois
a: d traditional practices, customs, holidays, and dress.
es of Heimatschutz.
and the reformer
Wolf Dohrn. Here, Tessenow successfully
in books such as Der
(Building Houses; 1909) and Hausbau und
(House Building and the Like; 1916).
-> 7 105
for the princi-
After the success of his book Hausliche
Loos and the lure of "Western culture"
(Domestic Artistic Care; 1898), in which he argued
. r a refined and traditionalist
culture of domestic architecture,
- e nine volumes of his Kulturarbeiten
(Culture Works), pub-
Adolf Loos was another architect focused on the early architecture of the nineteenth century, particularly on the Viennese
shed from 1901 to 1917, presented a binary vision of German
buildings of Joseph Kornháusel. Praising American technical
ousing, urban landscapes, and gardens, opposing
objects he had discovered
and "counterexamples."
"examples"
This editorial device, which the radical
oderns would later put to good use, butlressed his argument
States, and combating contemporaries
both the outdated approaches
Loos set about introducing
considered the only legitimate answer to the question of rnet-
clothing and plumbing,
-opoütan expansion. It is telling that Schultze-Naumburg
the ephemeral
among the many members of the Bund deutscher Heimatschutz
stay in the United
and the arbitrary aestheticism
for a thoughtful replication of small, preindustrial cities, which he was
on a three-year
of his
of the Secession,
"Western culture," especially
its
into Vienna. As publisher and author of
broadsheet Das Andere (The Other; 1903), 106
he wrote essays in the spirit of the satirist Karl Kraus. Das Andere
ho went on to found the Deutscher Werkbund: in his eyes and
offered a radical critique of the Potemkin city erected around
ose of his colleagues, there was no contradiction
Vienna's RingstraBe in the 1860s, which Loos considered a
between
he fight for good industrial farm and ataste for harmony.
-> 6
monumental
lie, and bitingly atlacked the fashionable
styles
The most elegant yet rigorous reading of the traditional German
of Joseph Maria Olbrich and Henry van de Velde.
architecture
Despite the title of his famous lecture "Ornament and Crime"
produced during the period "around 1800" was
provided by Heinrich Tessenow. In the garden city of Hellerau,
(delivered in 1908, but first published
which was closely associated with the Werkbund, he built sev-
was not categorically
eral sets of houses that achieved an ideal of functionality simplicity
through a geometric achievement
->
8 Loos
and
he espoused an appropriate, judicious use of ornament in which
and abstract rendition of tradi-
each material was used for what it was, without pretense. In an
ional house types. He also provided Hellerau with its culminating
in 1913 in Paris),
opposed to decoration. On the contrary,
and central edifice, the School for
earlier article, "Das Prinzip der Bekleidung"
(The Principie of
Cladding; 1898), he used metaphors barrowed from fashion to
092
I
093
107
Garrison Church, Theodor
Fischer, Ulm, Germany,
1905-10
094
I
095
't .
108
Goldmann
Chapter 07
I
and Salatsch Department
Store, Adolf Loos, Vienna, Austria, 1909-11
In search 01 a language: lrom classicism to Cubism
.(.
ti.
.'
109
Kárntner Bar, Adolf Loos, Vienna, Austria, 1907
ciscuss architecture, and in "Damenmode"
(Ladies' Fashion;
-898), asserting that women were less attractive when they
rete
naked, he praised the anonymous
qualities of English
110
Steiner House, Adolf Loos, Vienna, Austria, 1910
Everything else, everything which serves a purpose, should be excluded Irom the realm 01 art."
-> 10
Many of Loos's houses, which often consist 01 cubic volumes
~shion, the ideal of which was to make the wearer totally invis-
with white surfaces and understated
Die in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.
been inspired by houses in London. They were embodiments
--DOS'S
-> 9
attachment to certain classical themes was clear in his
-1Seof Doric columns at the entry of the Villa Karma in Montreux, witzerland Jepartment
(1903-6),
and the Goldmann
Store (1909-11)
108
and Salatsch
on the Michaelerplatz
in Vienna.
openings, appear to have
the argument in his essay "Heimatkunst"
01
(Homeland Art; 1914):
"The building should be dumb on the outside and reveal its wealth only on the inside."
->
11
The exterior, in otherwords,
was meant to belong to society and the interior to the individual.
The latter building provoked a scandal because of the bareness
Differentiating the height of rooms according to their function and
of its lacade on the upper levels, a quality all the more striking
creating complex interpenetrations
since it was located across Irom the entrance to the Imperial
invented the Raumplan, or spatial plan, which revolutionized the
=>alaceand Saint Michael's Church. Soon nicknamed the
conventional vertical superimposition
"Looshaus," the building has a lacade that is divided into three
House (1910)
bands beneath its cornice line: the upper stories, containing
a single story on the street, so he developed the house toward
apartments, are based on a principie of sobriety and anonyrn-
the garden, deeming its centrifugal aspect "Japanese." Also
i1y; the two lower levels, easily visible to passersby, are clad
in Vienna, his house lor Dr. Gustav Scheu (1911-13) seemed to
in green marble. The Doric columns, also in green marble, do
conlirm the analysis 01 his work by another Viennese artist, the
not actually bear the weight of the lacade. This differentiation
composer
on the lacade echoes Louis Sullivan's similar treatment at the
ite, immediate, three-dimensional
Carson, Pirie & Scott Department
thing is thought out, imagined, composed and molded in space
an architectural
primarily of fitting out residential and
interiors. The Karntner Bar (1907)
109
of floors. In the Steiner
in Vienna, local regulations limited Loos to only
Arnold Schonberq,
who saw it as "a non-cornposconception,"
in which "every-
without any expedient, without auxiliary plans, without interrup-
dialogue with Gottlried Semper.
Loos's work consisted commercial
Store, and it also continues
110
of levels and split-Ievels, Loos
in Vienna
s a boxlike space just 7 meters deep, 3.5 meters tall, and
tions and breaks; directly, as if all the structures were transparent; as if the eye 01 the spirit were conlronted parts and as a totality simultaneously."
by space in all its
-> 12
_5 wide (23 by 11 by 11 leet). Loos combined Skyros marble, ~ yx, and wood with mirrors intended to enlarge the sense 01 the
Berlage and the question of proportions
space; the effect was also meant to intensily customers' sense 01 .snsion and disorientation. Loos became involved in designing
Trained at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute, the Dutch archi-
lOuses. Yet he did not consider the house to qualily as "art."
tect Hendrik Petrus Berlage was a reader 01 Viollet-Ie-Duc
11 his essay "Architektur"
(1910), he wrote: "Only a very small
oart of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument.
and Semper, in whom he found the basis for a practical aesthetic: the only aesthetic capable 01 yielding style as such,
096
I
097
111
Stock Exchange,
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Amsterdam,
Netherlands,
1896-1903,
elevation
112
Stock Exchange,
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Amsterdam,
Netherlands,
1896-1903,
interior
Chapter 07
I
In search of a language: from classicism to Cubism
113
Sint Hubertus Hunting Lodge, Hendrik Petrus Berlage and Bart Van der Leck,
Hoenderloo,
to the many styles of the past, In this, Berlage
in opposition
Netherlands,
1914-19
the principal facade on the Damrak, the eastern facade is more
was quite close to such French architects as Frantz Jourdain.
sedate and respects the scale of the neighboring
Visiting North America fifteen years after Loos, he returned to
principal room is the commodity
Europe full of enthusiasm for Louis Sullivan's and Frank L10yd
large steel structural frame. The grain exchange is topped by
Wright's buildings. Like his Viennese contemporary
horizontal beams, while the stock exchange, at the rear of the
rejected the ephemerality
Loos, he
of fashion, borrowing an aphorism
blocks. The
exchange, which features a
building, has lighter trusses. The difference in the spatial quali-
from Thomas Sheraton's 1794 Cabinet Maker: "Time alters
ties of these three rooms expressed Berlage's belief that archi-
fashion ... but what is founded on geometry and real science
tecture "resides in the creation of spaces, not in the design of
will remain unalterable."
facades."
After constructing
-> 13
his first buildings in a Neo-Renaissance
Berlage began to explore systems of proportions
vein,
in the Henny
-> 15
The rooms were enclosed by walls whose solid-
ity was punctuated
by the indispensable
structural bracing ele-
ments of brackets, keystones, and lintels.
House in The Hague (1898) - in this case, square propor-
The principal quality of the Stock Exchange is its serenity.
tions. His major project at this date, his third project overall, was
Berlage said that he aimed to achieve an effect of "repose,"
the Amsterdam
Stock Exchange,
111,112
designed with a Neo-
Gothic plan in 1885 and built in 1896-1903. 143-by-55-meter
(469-by-180-foot)
This enormous
edifice was based entirely
on a modular grid and the "Egyptian triangle" system of propor-
by which he meant both serenity and rest: "In the smaller works of the ancients [there) is a charming repose. In contrast, our present-day architecture gives a very restless impression. I would almost say that the two words 'style' and 'repose' are
tions, with a height-to-base
ratio of eight to five. He drew on the
synonymous; that repose is the same as style and style the same
research of his compatriots
Jan H. de Groot, J. L. M. Lauweriks,
as repose."
-> 16
The Italian architect Aldo Rossi stressed that
and K. P. C. de Bazel, who had developed this system three
the Stock Exchange "does not seem to have the typical appear-
dimensionally
ance of the cathedral of capital, of the temple of cash, which its
opportunity
in competition
proposals that Berlage had the
to study. He asserted: "1 have become convinced
that geometry, the mathematical
science, is not only of great
usefulness in the creation of artistic form but is also an absolute necessity." He hazarded a comparison:
"Why should architec-
ture - the art most frequently compared to music - something that led Schlegel to the well-known - be composed laws?"
-> 14
expression 'frozen music'
without rhythmic, that is to say, geometrical
In keeping with the rationalist credo that the plan
name calls to mind," and that strangely, in its mysterious richness, it "seems instead like a market, a store, a gymnasium; it is devoid of the glorification building had considerable
of bourgeois wealth."
impact throughout
-> 17
The
Europe, notably
on the young Berlin architect Ludwig Mies, who was in competition with Berlage for the commission
for the Krbller-Müller
House. Though the Dutch architect failed to realize that project, he would design others for this rich family from The Hague: the
should determine the elevation, the silhouelte and especially
Sint Hubertus Hunting Lodge (1914-19)
the fenestration paltern of the Stock Exchange reveal the build-
the Holland House in London (1914). In the latter he most ciearly
ing's interior organization. While there is a rhythmic quality to
put his observations
113
in Hoenderloo and
of Sullivan's work to use.
098
I
099
114
"Cubist House" at the Salon d'Automne,
Raymond
Duchamp-Villon,
Paris, France, 1912
the Auguste Rodin exhibition in 1902 - a prime example of
Cubism and cubistics
Prague's focus on Paris. As a student of Wagner, Kotéra favored Certain opponents to the idea of renewing architecture by means
linear patterns, as in his designs for the Urbánek Buildinq in
of its own linguistic codes turned in the direction of new art
Prague (1911-13) and the house of the music publisher Jan
movements
likeCubism,
the geometric
which for a time seemed to promise
rationality sought by Berlage and others. Initial
attempts at incorporating
the devices of early Cubist paint-
Laichter (1908-9). He displayed a more dynamic conception of space in the Hradec Králové Museum (1909-12). His colleague
Pavel Janák found a different precedent for Czech
ing into architecture were rather ineffective, though. In 1912,
Cubism in the sculptural forms of the Bohemian Baroque,
the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon
which he updated in his work. In 1910 Janák criticized Wagner:
exhibited the facade
and ground floor of a rather strange "Cubist House"
114
at the
Salon d'Automne in Paris. Its floor plan was conventional its Cubist touches mostly ornamental.
-7
18
and
Yet Duchamp-Villon
"It is possible to predict the future direction of architecture: ation. Artistic thinking and abstraction of the plastic realization of architectural
establish a new decor of architecture, not only in the character-
to the fore."
istic lines of our times, which would be but a transposition
of
-720
Janák proposed
renewal of architecture
concepts, will come
a complete
and particularly
program for the
of the facade, pro-
pounding the idea that a building should look like the result of a
Rather, we must penetrate the relation of these objects among
process of crystallization.
themselves, in order to interpret, in lines, planes, and synthetic
Groups in Prague such as the Association
of Visual Artists and
volumes, which are balanced, in their place, in rhythms analo-
the Mánes Society carried on heated architectural
gous to those of the life surrounding
this idea. Janák's ideas were realized by Josef Goéár,
us."
-719
His ensemble at
over
practicality, which will recede, and the pursuit of plastic form,
had major ambitions, if a 1916 letter is any evidence: "We must
these lines and forms in other materials, and which is an error.
will predominate
cre-
debates over notably
the Salon, undertaken on the initiative of the painter André Mare,
in his orthogonal glass facade for the Wenke Depattment Store
essentially remained a showcase for his own work and that of
in .larornéf (1909-10) and the House ofthe Black Madonna in
his brother, Marcel Duchamp, as well as of his friends Roger
Prague (1912), 115 whose facade combines
de La Fresnaye, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Fernand Léger,
its structural members with the crystalline prisms of its win-
the dark solids of
and Marie Laurencin. Cubism here was used not to challenge
dows. The house introduced
the spatiality of the living room or bedroom, but to create cor-
a break with the existing codes of eclecticism
into Prague's old city the idea that and the Czech
nices and pediments whose polygonal shapes were essentially
Sezession could lead to a unified aesthetic capable of rivaling
just an ornamental theme.
the Gothic or the Bohemian Baroque. Goóár's
The most fruitful encounter between architecture and Cubism
radicalized by Josef Chochol with a house in thePrague
took place in Prague. At the time, Czech architectural
of vvsehrad
ture was dominated propagated
Chapter 07
I
cul-
by atto Wagner, whose message was
by Jan Kotéra, the designer of a pavilion built for
In search of a language: from classicism to Cubism
(1911-12)
116
approach was district
and a building on Neklanova Street
in the same city (1913). Both were angular structures in which the building's entire volume contributed to highly contrasting
115
116
House of the Black Madonna, Josef Gocár,
Prague, Bohemia
House in Vysehrad, Josef Chochol, Prague, Bohemia (Czech Republic),
1911-12
(Czech Republic), 1912
prismatic effects. Chochol displayed almost Futurist leanings in his declarations
regarding an architecture
of connections
with daily life: "We first and always demand and need the fresh excitement of new artistic intensities, springing from the tumultuous and glowing mass of contemporary In 1930 the functionalist
basic, almost absurd misunderstanding specific postulates of architecture" Czech buildings.
life."
-> 21
critic Karel Teige denounced
Nonetheless,
->
"the
of the fundamental 22
exemplified
they constituted
and
by these
an original and
intense effort to replace classical certainties with the search for a new code, using Cubism as a formula in a paradoxical
effort
to distinguish the individual work.
100
I
101
The
GreatWar and its side effects
Instead of disrupting architecture
the pattern of transformation
was engaged worldwide,
in which
whose watercolors
the first industrial war
in history had the opposite effect: by accelerating tion, World War I revealed and challenged
depicted the operations
French team of camoufleurs.
moderniza-
the nationalist lean-
->
of their own
4
The second, more indirect mobilization
was that of architec-
ture itself, which was called upon to give shape to construc-
ings that had characterized the emerging architectural cultures.
tion programs for a war that had quickly become "total." Though
Some reformers of the prewar era had indeed expressed a
the design of fortifications,
certain admiration for aesthetic aspects of the technology of
expanses of territory, remained essentially a military task, pro-
which spread across unprecedented
war. Members of the Deutscher Werkbund, whose buildings
grams related to aerial forces, the war's great novelty, were
in Cologne were promptly converted into barracks in 1914,
sometimes conceived
were attracted to the extraordinary
Perret designed concrete and steel airplane hangars and shelters
rial navy vessels.
-> 1
rationality of German impe-
The Italian Futurists, for their part, hoped
by architects or civil engineers. Auguste
for dirigibles, while Euqene Freyssinet built airship hangars in
Italy would enter the war on the side of the Allies. As early as
Avord and Istres in 1916 and 1917. Continuing on from his war
his 1909 manifesto Marinetti had declared,
work after peace came, Freyssinet built gigantic parabolic dirig-
"We will glorify war
- the only true hygiene of the world - militarism, the destructive kill."
-> 2
patriotism,
ible hangars at Orly Airfield (1921-3, bombed 1944).
gesture of anarchists, the beautiful ideas which
Several members
01
the movement joined the Lombard
Battalion of Volunteer Cyclists and Automobilists.
They would
300-meter-long
and 50-meter-high
119
These
(985-foot by 364-foot) vaults
were made rigid by the wavelike configuration
of their arches,
which were built from precast components.
paya heavy price in the war: Umberto Boccioni died in 1916
The third mobilization was even more diffuse: it had to do with
after falling off a horse, and Antonio Sant'Elia was killed the
the industrial nature of a total war, in which human and material
same year by a bullet to the head.
resources are deployed under the direction of state organizations
A triple mobilization
socialists like Albert Thomas in France. Throughout
run by industrialists - men like Walther Rathenau in Germany and Europe and
the United States, the creation of major munitions and aviation At first, architects were mobilized only for battle. The time they spent in the trenches would be the determining a generation
for
of young European architects, shaping their view
of the world for decades to come. Erich Mendelsohn an architecture Architects
experience
->
3
On the Russian front,
filled his sketchbooks
118
with visions of
that would express the dynamism
of industry.
and painters on the front lines were enlisted in the
earliest efforts to create camouflage.
Among those invotved in
this effort were Franz Marc, Fernand Léger, and André Mare,
Chapter 08
I
The Great War and its side effects
factories and shipyards necessitated the hasty construction of housing developments
to shelter thegrowing
workforce. Archi-
tects took advantage of such projects to continue their pre-war research. Paul Schmitthenner's Staaken Garden City (1914-18)
117
near the munitions factor y in Spandau, west of Berlin, realized the village ideal of Heimatschutz
by using the architectural
guage of the eighteenth-century
Dutch quarter in Potsdam.
lan-
Schmitthenner organized the houses according to five given types and standardized elements like doors and windows.
->
5
118 119 ~
117
Garden City, Paul Schmitthenner,
Industrial Building, from a sketchbook,
1917
Dirigible Hangars, Eugéne Freyssinet, Orly, France, 1921-3, demolished
Staaken, Germany, 1914-18
concept after 1918 by politicians
The spread of Taylorism
metaphorical In all the warring nations, production
was transformed
new concepts related to the scientific organization Conceived
Erich Mendelsohn,
and economists,
and its
use byarchitects.
by
Commemoration
of labor.
and reconstruction
in the United States by the engineer Frederick
Winslow Taylor and described Management
(1911), ->
The first effect of the war, even before it was over, was an unprec-
in his Principies of Scientific
these concepts were known in Europe
6
edented increase in the number and size of military cemeteries.
even before the war, At the time, socialist critics had denounced
Groups such as the Deutscher Werkbund set to work designing
the "organization
them, playing a role in shaping a genuine cult of the warrior.
of overwork."
But the war-driven
need to
-> 9
make do with a reduced workforce and to incorporate women
In Great Britain, the Imperial War Graves Commission, founded
into industrial production
in 1917 by Fabian Ware, developed burial places in France and
archy orrnanaqernent workers' movements.
led to the introduction
of a rigid hier-
in"fhe factory and to strict control over ->
7
Manufactured
products, particularly
Belgium for the bodies of soldiers left on the battlefield. To assist him, Ware hired the writer Rudyard Kipling and the architects
munitions, had to meet new standards of quality, reliability, con-
Reginald Blomfield and Edwin Lutyens. They designed many
sistency, and compatibility.
commemorative
Standardization,
which had been
projects, including the cemetery of Étaples,
initiated during the American Civil War, became a general
overlooking the English Channel near Le Touquet (1918-20),
requirement and soon permeated architecture.
and the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme
the engineer Heinrich Schaechterle, Fabrikationsbüro
In Germany
(1927-32) 120 - a giant brick and stone arch that is supported by
head of the Kbnigliche
(Royal Manufacturing
Office), known as Fabo,
prompted the founding of the Deutsche Industrie-Normen,
or
several similar arches and suggests a type of classical abstraetion.
-> 10
In contrast to these serene memorial landscapes, the
ossuary built in Douaumont by Léon Azéma to commemorate
DIN (German Industrial Norms), which eventually regulated
the
the entirety of production. The Americans also intensified their
bloody battle of Verdun (1920-32),122 featuring a long concrete
efforts to make manufacturing
vault, resembles a military structure grafted onto a neo-Roman-
processes as rational as possi-
ble. After the war, French architects studied their approach order to make reconstruction The degree of organization mobilized
more efficient.
dissemination
The conduct of military operations industrial production the transformation moting planning
esque steeple. There was no shortage of references to the architectural past in memorials such as Tannenberg (1924-7) 121 in
-> 8
needed to conduct a war that
millions of combatants
to the widespread
in
Hohenstein, Eastern Prussia; its series of towers arranged in a
and even more workers led
circle, built by Johannes and Walter Krüger, evoke the Castel
of the concept of "planning."
del Monte built by the Hohenstaufens
and the organization
required a continuous
of
effort to prepare
of the territory. Wartime propaganda led to the nearly universal adoption
pro-
of this
in Apulia. One excep-
tion to this nostalgic approach was the Monumento ai Caduti (Monument to the Fallen; 1932-3) in Como, built by Giuseppe Terragni, which took an aerodynamic
form basedon
a Futurist
sketch made by Sant'Elia twenty years earlier.
102
I
103
121
Tannenberg
Memorial, Johannes
Krüger and Walter Krüger, Hohenstein,
Germany, 1924-7, destroyed 120
Memorial
122
to the Missing 01 the Somme, Edwin Lutyens, Thiepval,
France, 1927-32
Douaumont
Ossuary, Léon Azéma, Fleury-devant-Douaumont,
France, 1920-32
Even cities lar Irom the lront lines lelt the weight 01 a war that
inhabitants' desire far recognizable
turned them into arsenals and impoverished them.
mon concern among the rebuilders, it led them to propase
reconstruction
-> 11
The
01 destroyed urban areas soon became a high-
interpretations
torrns was certainly a com-
that were lar from literal. These were occasiorially
stakes enterprise. Urban planners and architects rallied to rebuild
combined with authentic technological
even belore the hostilities had come to an end, sometimes work-
tion. Notwithstanding
revolutions in construc-
the fact that iconoclastic systems such as
ing in an international context. In France the American reliel
Le Corbusier's Dom-ino project had little success, the immedi-
elfart was not just military and economic. Beginning in 1917, the
ate postwar period saw the triumph of reinforced concrete in
American urban planner Gearge Burdett Ford assisted the as so-
northeast France, particularly for industrial structures and civil-
ciation La Renaissance des Cités (The Renascence of the Cities)
ian buildings. At the same time, certain impressive structural
in the reconstruction
leats, such as the rebuilding
of Rheims,
123
a city considered
"martyred"
01 the concrete frame 01 Rheims
since the German shelling of its cathedral in 1914. Ford's zoning-
Cathedral
based plan lar that city would be the first reconstruction
preserve an idealized vision of "reconstitution."
approved in France after the war.
-> 12
plan
While the most advanced
by Henri Deneux (1924-6), had to be clad in stone to
tainly al so the case with the Grand'Place
This was cer-
in Arras, which was
French and Belgian urban planners were involved in projects lar
re-created from scratch.
re-creating destroyed cities, their realizations were lar more con-
A careful look at complexes such as the garden cities 01
125
servative. In many cases they represented the triumph 01 region-
Rheims and the railroad towns 01 Lille-Délivrance,
alist ideals. The sale reconstruction
Tergniers, built for the Compagnie
effort in Germany - where
Douai, and
du Nord under the direction
innovative architects were careful to adhere to the principies of
of the engineer Raoul Dautry, reveals that regionalism
Heimatschutz
- was in western Prussia. The showcase of this
hand in hand with standardization
reconstruction
was the city 01 Goldap, rebuilt by Fritz Schophol
In addition to these projects in areas affected by combat,
in 1919-21.
-> 13
Prussian urban centers seemed to lollow to
the letter the traditionalist recommendations Paul Schultze-Naumburg,
which were codified in the work 01the
architect Friedrich Ostendarf.
(The Reconstituted
studies 01 village buildings
City)
the exhibition
La Cité
in 1917 - in which
124
in the regions ruined by the war
were exhibited alongside Tony Garnier's Cité Industrielle the torrns 01 traditional
rural architecture
as a basis for reconstructing
and rationalization.
postwar programs included housing for veterans, who soon became a considerable
lorce on the European political scene.
In German cities, housing developments
for veterans figured
into urban expansion plans. In Great Britain, the government's
-> 14
On the other side of the front, lollowing Reconstituée
of Paul Mebes and
worked
-> 15
specific goal of providing "homes fit far heroes to live in."
-> 16
-
were widely used
urban areas.
interventions during the war years in the sphere of social policy continued with the British Housing Act of 1919, which had the
Postwar recomposition
But to see
these rebuilt structures as no more than an expression of con-
Though the damage caused by World War I was unprecedented,
servative taste would be an oversimplification.
the consequences
Chapter 08
I
The Great War and its side effects
Though the
of war went lar beyond mere destruction.
123
Plan lor the reconstruction
124
01 Rheims, George Burdett Ford, Rheims,
France, 1917
Farm buildings
shown at the La Cité Reconstituée
exhibition,
Epieds,
France, 1917
The new political geography
that took shape had a direct
impact on urban planning and architecture, the intense exchanges
that developed
beginning
New architects between science and propaganda
with
among the defeated
nations and lasted until the early 1930s. The relationships
After being "under fire" and experiencing
between Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union and between
- to borrow the titles of firsthand accounts of the front lines by
Germany and Turkey were as significant
Henri Barbusse (1916) and Ernst Jünger (1920) ~ 17
of Americanization
as the initial inroads
in Germany. During this same period,
forced migrations, population
ing generation was faced with contradictory
such as that of one million Greeks evicted
from Turkey, had drastic effects on cities, quadrupling
the "storm of steel"
the
-
the ris-
aspirations. The
aspiration to a classical "return to order," as announced
in Jean
Cocteau's pamphlet Le coq et /'arlequín (Cock and Harlequin;
of Athens in just a few years. After the collapse
1918), reflected an anxiety stemming from the loss of cultural
of the German and Austrian empires, Czarist Russia and the
reference points. This anxiety was the basis of Oswald Spengler's
Ottoman Empire gave way to new nationalist divisions and
reactionary
emerging
Decline of the West; 1917-22), which became compulsory
nation-states
such as Czechoslovakia,
and Turkey, which used architecture
Finland,
to affirm their identities.
diatribe Oer Untergang
architects such disquietude
Middle East - Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq - were transformed
uncompromised
by
modern plans and construction. As nations dissolved
and re-formed,
(The
reading for many architects. ~ 18 For many intellectuals and
Territories placed under French and British mandates in the
tions were al so transformed
des Abendlandes
coexisted with the desire for an
modernity, to be achieved through a radical
break with the outdated world that had led to the war. Faith in professional
organiza-
and relocated according
to new
the potential of science to enable humanity to transcend conflict led to the notion of experimental, scientific, or "Iaboratory"
political borders. They were run by men who had been pro-
architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. In this work the authority
foundly changed
accorded to the natural sciences was evident.
The emigration
by war, and in some cases even displaced. of thousands
neers as a consequence figured professional
of Russian architects
of the Bolshevik
and engi-
Revolution
recon-
circles in parts of Europe, while other
During the decade between the armistice of 1918 and the stock market crash of 1929, a postwar economy boosted by the spread of Fordism seemed to promise both affordable,
durable con-
groups were faced with forced relocation. Above all, their
sumer goods and high wages. The rise of newly founded
experience
organizations
on the front lines made young architects
contribute
eager to
to building a different society. Shortly after returning
like the League of Nations and the International
Labour Organization
promised to ensure a peaceful world. The
to civilian life, architects
in Germany and Russia established
development
utopian work collectives
and devoted themselves
to translating
try, and the grand spectacles
forms.
ground for the activities of the professional elites. Like political
the need for social change into new experimental
of the illustrated press, the motion picture indusof the world's fairs provided fertile
groups - but also in imitation of the strategies of public relations and advertising firms, whose growth accompanied
Chapter 08
I
The Great War and its side effects
the spread
125
Grand'Place,
Arras, France, rebuilt 1919-34
126
Portrait 01 an Architect,
Schnarrenberger,
01 Fordism and consumerism seduction
- architects
succumbed
01 using slogans to sum up their working
and, more often, their aesthetic positions.
Wilhelm
127
The Architect,
Maria Sironi, 1922
1923
to the methods
-> 19
Le Corbusier thus identilied his "Cinq points d'une architecture moderne" (Five Points 01 a Modern Architecture; Henry-Russell
1927), while
Hitchcock and Philip Johnson enumerated the
"three principies"
01 the International Style (1932). In Athens the
Conqres internationaux
d'architecture
moderne (International
Congresses 01 Modern Architecture), or CIAM, boiled down urban planning to "Iour lunctions" such quantiliable tectural periodicals
lormulations
(1933). The predilection
and the prolileration
revealed to what extent architecture
become a mass medium in its own right, particularly photographic disseminate.
reproduction ->
lor
01 archihad
now that
had become easier to achieve and
20
Architects became the heroes 01 modern times in paintings by Wilhelm Schnarrenberger
126 and Mario Sironi. 127 The strug-
gles and passions 01 the interwar architect later inspired Ayn Rand's 1943 novel The Fountainhead,
whose protagonist was
played by Gary Cooper in King Vidor's lilm adaptation. In 1924 the Dada artist Hans Richter described operating
in an "internationally
the "new architect"
organized"
as
space. According
Richter he had to possess both a "new sensuousness"
to
and the
ability to respond to a society that was "more practical and less sentimental"
in a world 01 "rapid mobility" and "precise calcu-
lations."
The architect attuned to his era soon became, as
-> 21
the Russian Constructivist architect Moisei Ginzburg noted two years later with respect to Le Corbusier, "the very ligure 01 the new man, lull 01 energy and perseverance which he deploys in delense 01 his ideas."
in the propaganda ->
22
108
I
109
Expressionism in Weimar Germanyand the Netherlands
No nation was more deeply affected by the trauma of World War I
- and a majority of artists - including
than Germany. The caste-bound
Meidner, Max Pechstein, and Karl Schmitt-Rottluff
society of the Hohenzollern
Empire was replaced by the democratic its highly decentralized
Weimar Republic and
political structure. Architectural
cies began to be shaped principally
by municipal adminis-
trations, though some national organizations financing
poli-
contributed
the
Arbeitsrat
-
put forward the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk
to
Written by Bruno Taut, this programmatic
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in 1919 and the repres-
shall no longer be the enjoyment happiness
Social Democratic-dominated
The Arbeitsrat
serious or radicalattempt
any
to transform the modes of produc-
program
laid out the new republic's
by insisting on the "public character the "unitary supervision
"socialization,"
residential
where the
of the few but the life and
of the masses." .., 1
tion. This left on the agenda only the utopia of a progressive notably in the field of construction,
statement featured
slogans such as "Art and people must form a unity" and "Art
sion of the Spartacist League, their revolutionary party, the new abandoned
- the for-
mer were clearly in control. In its "Architektur-Program,"
total work of art - "under the wing of a great architecture."
them. After the assassination of the leftist leaders
government
Georg Kolbe, Ludwig
of all building activity,"
of whole urban districts, streets, and
estates," and the creation of "permanent
model of the Bauhütte - or medieval guild - proved seductive.
mental sites for testing and perfecting
For a few years the unions considered
having the Bauhütten
effects." It demanded
participate directly in the reconstruction
of the war-damaged
of all monuments,
strategies
the dissolution
including
experi-
new architectural of all academies
war memorials,
and
that required an
north of France as part of reparations. These political and eco-
excessive quantity of materials, as well as the creation of a
nomic strateqiestound
"national
a cultural and architectural response in
center to ensure the fostering of the arts within the
Expressionism, an aesthetic orientation born in poetry and in
framework
painting, which favored dynamic forms that embodied
In April 1919 members of the Arbeitsrat
chological
the psy-
torment of wartime Germany.
of future law-making."
tellung für unbekannte Architects).
Architekten
organized the Auss-
(Exhibition for Unknown
In the catalog Gropius wrote that archltecture
was "the crystalline
The Arbeitsrat für Kunst
..,2
expression
of man's noblest thoughts,
his ardor, his humanity, his faith, his religion! ... There are no Following the empire's collapse, organized
demobilized
architects
events intended to reveal new conceptions
architectural
space. In late 1918, with a growing
workers' and soldiers'
councils
being organized,
that means, lord of art, who will build gardens out of deserts
the Arbeitsrat
and pile up wonders to the sky. [italics in original]"
in Berlin
of Walter Gropius, Cesar Klein, and Adolf
Behne. Though the council was composed
of a minority of
architects - including Otto Bartning, and Bruno and Max Taut
Chapter 09
I
Expressionism
the way for
him who will once again deserve the name of architect, for
number of
für Kunst (Work Council for the Arts) was established under the direction
architects today, we are all of us merely preparing of
in Weimar Germany and the Netherlands
..,3 Taut
affirmed in the same leaflet that the desire for the future was architecture schauung
in the making: "One day there will be a Weltan[world-view],
crystal - architecture."
and then there will al so be its sign, its ..,4
,.
. '
...
.,.,
..
.¡¡,....•.
:
...•;\.:.
.' ~~t~
.....• hS•..·· 4T¡~h~
129
IIlustration from Architekturentwürfe
(Architectural
Projects), Hermann
Finsterlin, 1919-20
128
Illustration from Die Auflósung
der Stiidte, oder
die Erde eine gute Wohnung (The Dissolution of Cities,
130 ~
Plate from Alpine Architektur
(Alpine Architecture),
Bruno Taut, 1919
or the Earth as a Good Dwelling), Bruno Taut, 1920
_
h a crystalline architecture
had been prophesied
by
adopting as his own the anti-urban arguments 01 Piotr Kropotkin
-",ul 8cheerbart, to whom the Arbeitsrat's manilesto Ruf zum
and other anarchist and socialist theorists. Taut also lounded
=-a.uen (Call to Build; 1920) was dedicated. In 1919 Taut pub-
the periodical
shed his book Die Stadtkrone
(The City Crown), 131 an urban
ion lull 01 relerences to pagodas and temples, pro pos~
to place at the center 01 the luture city a soaring tower that
Frühlicht
(Dawn) and from 1921 to 1923 devoted
his services to the city 01 Magdeburg the social program prescribed Sorne 01 the participants
in an effort to bring about
by the Arbeitsral.
in the Gláserne Kette exchanges
pru-
II }
uld embody its spiritual aspirations. The stunning plates -" his Alpine Architektur,
130 published
the same year, pro-
ed the most systematic expression 01the new architecture
ing site. This was the case with Hablik and with Hermann Finsterlin, whose projects, despite their apparently
- which the Arbeitsrat aspired, while expressing the ideal 01
programs, were mainly situated in an imaginary
::;otherhood among the peoples 01 Europe. Indeed, his depic-
Ausstellungsbauten
;;ons of the multicolored
of pyramidal
glass cupolas 01 this architecture
suspended above the Alps seemed a response to the paci-
Architekturentwürfe were unmistakably
n 01 his German compatriot Thomas Mann's 1924 novel Der
'8
(Exhibition
superimpositions
;; t texts by the French writer Romain Rolland and an anticipazauberberg
I
dently avoided putting their words into action on the buildrealistic
world. Hablik's
Constructions;
1921) consisted
01 prisms, while Finsterlin's
(Architectural zoomorphic,
Projects; 1919-20)
129
evoking snails, seashells,
and sea urchins.
(The Magic Mountain). The origins of these images
both in 8cheerbart's
writings and in the plates published
y Ernst Haeckel in his Kunstformen ature) and Kristallseelen
Dynamism in architecture
der Natur (Art Forms in
(Crystal Souls) ...• 5
The fluid and indeed elusive Expressionist
=rom late 1919 to late 1920, in another exaltation 01 crystal-
architecture
ine transparency, the utopian correspondence
contemporary
known as the
Gléseme Kette (Glass chain) brought together the Taut broth-
that was embodied
pictorial experiments
Behrens, who designed
Scharoun. The pseudonyms
lormed
several new structures
his lormer architectural
in
a world of fractured
dynamic lorms. It also attracted older architects
ers, Wenzel Hablik, Hans and Wassili Luckhardt, and Hans adopted by the authors 01 this
movement
in these projects shared with but
like Peter that trans-
language ...• 6 His headquar-
series of chain letters - among them Anlang (beginning), Mass,
ters for Hbchst in Franklurt am Main (1920-4)
was a more
Stellarius, Prometh, and Angkor - allude to the reconciliation
Iyrical version 01 his classic prewar buildings.
By rellecting
01 man and the cosmos, an aspiration typical 01 the immediate
the vertical light coming through glass rools onto multicolored
postwar periodo Bruno Taut rounded out this series 01 utopian
enameled-brick
pronouncements
with Die Auflosung
der
Steote,
oder die Erde
eine gute Wohnung (The Dissolution of Cities, or the Earth as a Good Dwelling; 1920),128
in which he imagined a great migra-
tion lrom the corrupted cities to the redemptive countryside,
walls, he created one 01 the most striking
interiors associated
with Expressionism.
Hans Poelzig's new projects responded to Taut's call tor transparency by playing with sol id masses. In his contribution the competition
tor the Haus der Freundschaft
to
(House 01
110
I
111
\ \
).'
~\
\,.. I
....
\
1t.
(
I
\
I
\
\
!
I \
\
/
i
\\
\,
/
I
r
I
r1
¡
/
,
!
/
/
,
J
/
/ /
/'
/
,/
/
"
/
/ /'
132
Great Playhouse, Hans
Poelzig, Berlin, Germany, 1918-19
131
Illustration from Die Stadtkrone
(The City Crown), Bruno Taut, 1919
Friendship; 1916) in Constantinople;
the magical grotto he
devised within the GroBe Schauspielhaus 1918-19)
132
performances;
(Great Playhouse;
in Berlin, where Max Reinhardt staged his musical and the successive
variants 01 his Festspielhaus
In 1919 Erich Mendelsohn
exhibited his wartime sketches trorn
the tront lines at the Paul Cassirer Gallery in Berlin. These consisted 01 very small India-ink perspectives houses, and hangars. He associated
01 tactories, ware-
the dynamism
01 their
(Festival Hall; 1920-1) in Salzburg, he introduced a new world
strikingly sculptural torrns, which appeared to be lrozen in motion,
01 imposing and mysterious lorms. In 1919, apropos 01 the post-
with the "elastic qualities" 01 new materials: "The living qual-
war resurrection 01 the German Werkbund, Poelzig declared:
ity 01 architecture depends upon sensuous seizure by means
"True understanding
01 touch and sight: upon the terrestrial cohesion 01 mass, upon
01 architecture is so unspeakably important
because it determines the appearance has been so disligured
01 our homeland, which
by the hall-hearted
architecture 01 recent
the super-terrestrial architecture
liberty 01 light. ... Out 01 its own laws,
lays down the conditions that govern its active
decades .... But it is not possible to reinstate architecture as a
masses."
major art overnight. This will be possible only when a coherent
geois Jewish establishment allowed him to put his ideas into
major revolution 01 souls has taken place, when the conviction
action more quickly than other architects, and his projects had
that we must create things tor eternity has gained general rec-
an impact in the United States as early as 1921.
ognition."
newspaper publisher Rudoll Mosse, Mendelsohn,
->
7
As an architect with close ties to film and theater,
Poelzig designed the set representing
medieval Prague in Paul
->
8
Mendelsohn's social connections in Berlin's bour-
the young Viennese architect Richard Neutra,
->
9
For the
assisted by
built a super-
Wegener's The Golem (1923), creating an atmosphere as dis-
structure on top 01 the Berliner Tageblatt Building
turbing as that in lilms like Robert Wiene's Cabinet of Doctor
translorming
Caligari (1920) and Friedrich Murnau's Nosferatu (1922). Poelzig
with torceful horizontal lines that overpowered the original
continued to use his Expressionist
lacade. His Hat Factory complex in Luckenwalde, Germany,
stalagmites
throughout
language 01 stalactites and
the 1920s, including
in his studies 01
(1921-3)
the corner 01 the block into a kind 01 ship's prow,
(1923) leatured concrete buildings with oblique roots that
permanent buildings íor the Berlin Fair 01 1928.
resembled tolds 01 paper, creating a spectacular
The Expressionist aesthetic 01 the immediate postwar period also
landscape.
sculptural
affected young architects whose initial works had been 01 a more
Mendelsohn's
rationalist bent. Gropius, for instance, echoed the engravings 01
tor Albert Einstein within the compound
Max Pechstein and Lyonel Feininger in his Márzqefállenen-
Observatory
Denkmal (Monument to the March Dead; 1920-1) in Weimar,
solar spectrum,
with its jagged thrust to the sky. Gropius designed Adoll
a tower topped by a cupola, and a horizontal volume into
Sommerleld's
which light beams trorn above were guided and collected tor
wooden house in Berlin-Steglitz
the same realm 01 angles and interrupted
lines, but with a
calmer symmetry. The house's construction Sommerfeld's
Chapter 09
I
business as a commercial
Expressionism
(1920-1), in
was expedited by
dealer in lumber.
in Weimar Germany and the Netherlands
most powerlul building was the laboratory erected (1919-21).
133
01 the Potsdam
Intended lor experiments with the
the lab combined
two distinct elements:
analysis. The two elements were integrated in a plastic sculptural mass whose continuous
surtace made it look as if it were
made 01 concrete rather than stuccoed brick. Though the name
.t.." .'
GUT GAP.I'\AU -.:;.':;:t.
135 Garkau Farm, Hugo Hiiring, Scharbeutz-Klingberg, Germany, 1922-6 Einstein Tower, Erich Mendelsohn,
=-
Potsdam, Germany, 1919-21
steinturm (Einstein Tower) is an unmistakable
-~ series of Bismarcktürme
reference to
(Bismarck Towers) built in many
=-'es throughout Germany before 1914, this structure erected - scientific purposes high above the city was intended, more
=
íoundly, as a kind of urban crown, responding to Taut's ideas.
--3
forward motion that this brick sphinx seems to imply
- ght be a materialization
of the élan vital described
the Glaserne Kette, took part in the reconstruction Novembergruppe
.::'" gson in his L'évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution; 1907), -'ch was translated into German in 1912. In any case, it sug-
- founded in 1918 by Bruno Beye, Cesar
Klein, Moritz Meltzer, Max Pechstein, and Heinrich Richter built the Garkau Farm in Scharbeutz-Klingberg, (1922-6).135
by Henri
of west-
ern Prussia until 1925. Hugo Hárinq, a member of the
near Lübeck
The barn and cowshed leatur~d both angu-
lar and curved shapes, adhering to the Expressionist
ideal
01 dynamic formo They were covered in exposed brick and boards, concealing
their concrete structure and latticelike wood
;38tS a completely different approach to organic form than the
Iraming, which bore a striking modernity
little visible lrom the
+ollusklike
outside. The larm's plan was determined
by its utilitarian pur-
shapes Finsterlin was drawing at the time.
- 1924 Mendelsohn 3Ilg
crossed the ocean with the filmmaker
and discovered
the United States. The experience
Fritz
revo-
_ ionized his way of thinking. He visited Frank l.loyd Wright z:
d, most importantly, absorbed a new visual culture that he ould report on in Amerika, das Bilderbuch erica, an Architect's
Picture Book; 1926).
eines Architekten -> 10
After con-
="onting the spectacle of the streets and skyscrapers ork and Chicago, Mendelsohn ~ture: '926-8) z
transformed
the Schocken department
of New
his own archi-
sto res he built in Chemnitz
134 and Stuttgart (1929) took on almost aerodynamic
ms and accentuated
the play of light. In Berlin, the WOGA
-Bisure Complex on the Kufürstendamm
(1928-9), dominated
~ the Universum Movie Theater, integrated contradictory
pro-
pose - to house and feed cattle - and laithfully lunctional
requirements
The Hanseatic cities of northern Germany were particularly fertile ground for architectural structures
research; their Gothic brick
seemed to anticipate
the vertical
Fritz Hóger designed the Chilehaus (1922-3), 138 a large block with curved, surging facades clad in dark brick and ornamented
with medieval motils. The acute angle of the build-
ing's prow seemed a response to New York's Flatiron Building, toward which the vessels 01 the Hamburg-Amerika Reflecting Hamburg's dominion architect Robert Natus replicated
the Chilehaus
-armonious
associated with Hóger in the construction
-> 11
->
Line sailed.
over the Baltic, the Estonian
in Tallinn in 1936.
urban design, the absence of which Mendelsohn
massing 01 the
shipping company offices built in the 1920s. In Hamburg,
;;;'ams into a single aesthetic entity, reflecting an aspiration to -ad deplored in the United States.
respected the
that its Iyrical exterior seemed to deny.
12 The brothers
in miniature
Hans and Oskar Gerson, of the Sprinkenhol
(1926-9), built the Ballinhaus Office Building (1926-9) more conventionally
orthogonal
using a
geometry. Bernhard Hoetger's
Hanseatic Expressionism
designs broke loose lrom the constraints of the office build-
"he young Expressionists
ony lor radical artists, revisited the vocabulary
ing. His houses (1922) and calé (1924-5) in Worpswede, a colore episodically,
alternated between theorizing and,
building. Hans Scharoun, a contributor to
rural architecture.
of the north's
Perhaps most notable were his buildings
116
I
117
137
De Dageraad
Netherlands, 136
Hendrik Petrus Berlage, 1914-17
Plan lar Amsterdam-Sauth,
on BóttcherstraBe
138
in Bremen, which resembled sculptural
Hausing, Michel de Klerk and Piet Kramer, Amsterdam,
1918-23
Chilehaus,
Fritz Hoqer, Hamburg,
Germany, 1922-3
language, also seems to anticipate Hoetger's buildings 01the
collages. These, particularly the house lor the painter Paula
1920s. Among the assistants on the Scheepvaarthuis
was
Modersohn-Becker
the young de Klerk, who designed many competition
projects
(1923-7)
141
where a rough exterior accorn-
panied an oneiric layout 01 oddly convoluted
rooms, lully
belore building the Hillehuis (1912), an apartment house echo-
exploited the resources 01 brick.
ing the complex vertical organization 01 Van der Mey's building. Most signilicantly,
De Klerk and the Amsterdam
de Klerk's three projects Ior the Eigen Haard
(Own Hearth) cooperative
School
in Amsterdam,
to 1926, created a neighborhood
built Irom 1922
in which urban lorm was
The obvious parallels between these buildings in Hamburg and
absorbed into a continuum
Bremen and those erected in Amsterdam
play 01the bricks' colors, which range írom crimson to orange;
beginning
in 1915 were not coincidental.
by Michel de Klerk Though partly attribut-
able to a shared culture 01 brick construction,
the correspond-
01 interrelated sculptural effects. The
the way they are laid both horizontally and vertically; and their diverse shapes, which vary Irom rectilinear to convex to con-
ences went deeper. To some extent, Weimar policies were a
cave, combine to create a rich world in which the modest size
continuation 01 Dutch housing legislation, notably the Woningwet
01 the housing units is partly compensated
011901, which had guaranteed
public linancing
lor working-
ings' sensuous opulence. The lacade is an undulating spec-
class housing. Regulated by a system 01 controls and standards,
tacle with unusual-shaped
Dutch housing was built through municipal or cooperative
and embroidered
pro-
lor by the build-
openings that call to mind woven
textiles. For the third building,
nicknamed
grams. The neutrality 01 the Netherlands during the war allowed
"The Ship," (1917-21)
the country to launch programs more advanced than those 01
with a mechanical
the combatant
in which the meeting hall plays the role 01 rural church while the
nations. While German cities were struggling to
reactivate their construction
industry, Amsterdam
was already
Ilush with building sites ..• 13
140
de Klerk combined
a village theme
motil. The housing wraps around a courtyard
post office serves as a locomotive pulling the entire complex, which in lact stood alongside the city's main railroad tracks.
But the German and Dutch projects also originated in a shared
Next de Klerk collaborated
architectural
scheme 01 De Dageraad (The Dawn; 1918-23),
matrix that incorporated
the Theosophical
theo-
ries 01J. L. M. Lauweriks and the teaching 01 Hendrik Petrus
ative built as a component
Berlage, which had widely circulated in Germany. Meetings 01
South (1914-17).
Architectura
image 01 low-income
et amicitia (Architecture and Friendship), a soci-
ety 01 Amsterdam
prolessionals
established
in 1855, hosted an
136
with Piet Kramer on the housing 137
a cooper-
01 Berlage's plan tor Amsterdam-
Here de Klerk presented a clear, open housing. He aligned the houses along
the street in a continuous
wave in which each unit appears to
intense debate on the question 01 Gemeenschapkunst,
or social
be woven together with its neighbor. Once again he created
art. .• 14 Johan Melchior van der Mey's Scheepvaarthuis
(House
the illusion 01 a village community
01 Shipping Companies;
1911-16) in Amsterdam, which decon-
structed and recomposed
Chapter 09
I
Expressianism
elements 01 traditional architectural
in Weimar Germany and the Netherlands
by grouping the units two
by two on a central square to lorm large houses separated tall chimneys ..•
15
by
139
Caver of Wendingen
cover designed
(Turning Points), Issue 2,
140
"The Ship,' Eigen Haard Housing Cooperative,
141
Paula Modersohn-Becker
142 ~
Secand Goetheanum,
De Klerk was the most brilliant member of a group that included Dirk Greiner, Margaret Kropholler, and Jan Frederik Staal, all of whom were committed to the genuinely collective effort required to realize the different stages of Berlage's plan. The main activist behind what would soon come to be known as the Amsterdam School, Hendricus Theodorus Wijdeveld, was responsible for its publicity organ, Wendingen (Turning Points), 139 a large-format architecture
magazine. He edited the magazine from 1918 to
1931, opening it to both experiments
that had taken place in
Russia since 1917 and new directions in Frank Lloyd Wright's work. In combination
with the Expressionist accents latent in de
Klerk's work, Wright's forms were sometimes
detectable
in the
new buildings in Amsterdam. Like many of the Dutch architects, the Austrian Rudolf Steiner had a background
in the Theosophical
founded the Anthroposophical
movement.
Society, formulating
In 1912 he a secular
doctrine inspired by Nietzsche and Goethe. For the community he established
in Dornach, near Basel, he erected the Goethe-
anum (1913-20), a building with two wood domes surrounded by houses in the shape of rocks. This edifice burned down and was replaced by the second Goetheanum a sculptural
(1924-8),142
concrete volume that held an auditorium,
a library,
and meeting rooms. The large faceted volume inserted into the pastoral Swiss landscape
majestically
conveyed the aspiration
to the total work of art that was one of the founding
precepts
of Expressionism.
Chapter 09
I
Michel de Klerk, Amsterdam,
by Michel de Klerk, 1918
Expressionism
in Weimar Germany and the Netherlands
House, Bernard Hoetger, Bremen, Germany, 1923-7 Rudol! Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland,
1924-8
Netherlands,
1917-21
Return to order in Paris
In 1924, seven years alter his permanent move to Paris, Le
In 1918 Jeanneret and Ozenlant published their Purist manilesto
Corbusier diagnosed a case 01 "acute neurasthenia" and the
Apres le cubisme (Alter Cubism). It rellected their equal interest in
symptoms 01 a "breakdown"
Greek temples and in the machines introduced into everyday lile
in the drawings that Bruno Taut
had published tour years earlier in his book Die Auflosung der
by the war. The new term "purism" was intended to "express in an
Stiidte ..•
intelligible word the character 01 the modern spirit." In stressinq the
Well inlormed about the art and architecture 01 impe-
1
rial Germany, Le Corbusier had turned his back on his youthlul
"invariable," Jeanneret and Ozenlant were not "unmoved by the
experiences there in the lirst months 01 World War 1. French art-
intelligence that governs certain machines." .• 5 L'Esprit nouveau
ists, though strongly in support 01 the war effort against Germany,
likewise displayed a keen sense 01 history and an acute attention
had generally resisted the condemnations
to the products 01 technology. It described itselt as an "illustrated
01 Cubism voiced
in more chauvinist circles in Paris, where the style had become
international review 01 contemporary activity," open to experimen-
associated with certain important German-owned
tal psychology, psychoanalysis, and economics. Politically, it sup-
collections and
galleries and branded a boche ("kraut") art lorm. Yet they also
ported Bolshevik Russia and Franco-German reconciliation ..• 6
sought during these years to rediscover the threads 01 a national
In a series 01 controversial essays Le Corbusier reminded
tradition olten identilied with classicism, whether rendered liter-
"Messrs. les architectes" to "open eyes that do not see" to
ally or as a guiding principie open to multiple interpretations.
-> 2
ships, cars, and airplanes. These provocative articles became the chapters 01 the book Vers une architecture
Purist forms and urban compositions
(Toward an
Architecture; 1923) 143, a manilesto that celebrated mechanization, affirmed the necessity 01 using "regulating lines" to propor-
In 1913, in his book Les peintres cubistes, Guillaume Apollinaire
tion buildings, and advised the study 01 ancient and Baroque
challenged architects to reclaim the torch 01 innovation lrom art-
architecture in order to absorb the "Iesson 01 Rome." .• 7 The
ists and to "construct with sublime intentions." .• 3 In 1917 a lellow
impact 01 Le Corbusier's writings was reinlorced by the power 01
poet, Pierre Reverdy, published an essay by yet another poet Paul
his theoretical projects. His Contemporary
Dermée in the lirst issue 01 his periodical Nord-Sud (North-South).
Inhabitants, exhibited at the Salon d'Automne (1922), and his Plan
In it Dermée wrote, "Alter a period 01 exuberance and toree must
Voisin lor Paris 144, shown at the Exposition Internationale des
lollow a period 01 organization, 01 arrangement,
Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition
is to say, a classic age."
-> 4
01 science - that
Such calls to order were heard all the
City lor Three Million
01 Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, 1925), described a new
way to the Netherlands and Russia, and they were also picked
metropolitan organism crisscrossed
up by Le Corbusier (still known at this time as Charles-Édouard
by the glass towers 01 a "city 01 business" - a capitalist version 01
Jeanneret) and the painter Amédée Ozenlant. In 1920, together
Taut's Stadtkrone. Le Corbusier surrounded the city with redent
with Dermée, Jeanneret and Ozenlant lounded L'Esprit nouveau
housing inspired by Euqene Hénard and with immeuble-villas
(The New Spirit), a multidisciplinary journal that served as the
(villa apartments) consisting 01 double-height
major platform lor their theories and critiques until 1925.
individual gardens, creating a radically new urban landscape.
Chapter 10
I
Return to arder in Paris
by highways and dominated
dwellings with
DES YEUX QUI ~E VOIENT PAS",
11
LES AVIONS 143
Page from Vers une architecture
an Architecture),
145
Le Corbusier,
La Roche House, Le Corbusier
(Towards
144
Plan Voisin, project, Le Corbusier,
Paris, France, 1925
1923
and Pierre Jeanneret,
Paris, France, 1923-4
124
I
125
s N
E
POLYCHROMIE
LE CORBUSIER OUARTIERS
ET P. JEANNERET
MODERNES FRUGES. A PESSAC-BORDEAUX 15
• 1927
DES MURS EXTÉRIEURS
146
Workers' Houses
Ouartiers --S
modernes
Corbusier
Frugés),
and Pierre Jeanneret,
Jessac, France, 1924-6
147
Stein/de Monzie House, Le Corbusier
and Pierre Jeanneret,
skeletal system and the Maison Citrohan three-story
Le Corbusier and the modern house
the double-height During this period Le Corbusier
layout;
living room 01 the lalter was inspired by Paris
artists' studios, For the Parisian elite he designed large houses,
injected the latest develop-
ments in painting into two domestic
Garches, France, 1926-7
the most complex 01which was built in the suburb of Garches
projects: a studio lor
Ozenlant (1922-3) and, particularly, a house lor the Basel-
lar Michael Stein (brother 01 the writer Gertrude Stein), his wife
born banker Raoul La Roche (1923-4) 145. In the lalter he
Sarah Stein, and Gabrielle de Monzie (1926-7)
radically modified his design alter seeing an exhibition 01 archi-
house's interplay 01 planar elements and cylindrical
lecture by the De Stijl group at a Paris gallery, which caused
seems to transpose the geometry 01 Purist paintings into space,
im to reconfigure the conventional on the facade as a composition walls.
-78
Inside, he conceived
promenade processions
architecturale,
arrangement
as a
promenade
lines" 01 the lacade draw on the ancient
Colin Rowe found another precedent, detecting
a sirnilarity between the proportions
01 the villa's plan and those
01 Palladio's villas, which Le Carbusier knew well,
in ancient Greece that Auguste
The
stairwells
of the golden section. Twenty years later, the
architect-critic
of
-710
Le
The weekend house that Le Corbusier built in 1929-31 far Pierre
governs the entire interior 01 the house
Savoye, a client in the insurance business, in Poissy, near Paris,
Choisy had recounted in his 1899 Histoire de I'architecture. Carbusier's
proportions
01 opaque planes and glass the house's circulation
inspired by the descriptions
on tfie Acropolis
while the "regulating
of windows
147, -79
from the entrance hall to the painting gallery, which he hung
is one 01 the canonical
with Cubist canvases that he purchased
villa sits in the middle 01 a meadow like a Ilying machine that
lor La Roche at sales
01 the Kahnweiler and Uhde collections. Around the same time,
buildings of the twentieth century, The
has just barely touched down, The boxlike structure leatures three
he built a home tor.his parents in the Swiss village 01 Corseaux
levels interconnected
on the shore 01 Lake Geneva (1923-6), A single horizontal win-
erctiitecturete.
dow provides this modest dwelling with a view 01 the moun-
through which automobiles
inside the residence differs Irom the chiaroscuro
pilotis (stilts),
could slip in and out, and the top-
floor solarium is the main level, an L-shaped Iloor built around a
ains and access to the light 01 the lake. The unshadowed luminosity
by a ramp that guides the promenade
Wedged between the ground-Iloor
01
patio and illuminated by a horizontal strip 01 windows overlook-
typical interiors just as the brightness of lactories differs lrom
ing the landscape, The vast living room is basically doubled
the hall-light 01 churches.
surface by the patio, while the bedrooms and bathroom echo
Despite his tireless courting 01 automobile
and aviation industri-
the Iloor plans 01 eighteenth-century
alists, Le Corbusier, who established a prolessional partnership
These houses demonstrated
with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret in 1922, succeeded
Corbusier
in build-
summed
Paris apartments.
the "Five Points" with which Le
up his contribution
to a new architecture
ing only a single workers' housing complex. 146 This was real-
1927, alluding transparently
ized in 1924-6 in Pessac, near Bordeaux, lor the industrialist
pilotis, freeing up the ground plane; rool terrace, affording
Henri Fruqes. Here he brought together the theoretical
sunlight and commLinion
he had been working on lor ten years, inciuding
models
the Dom-ino
ing the "paralyzed
in
to Vignola's live classical
in
orders:
with the skyline; Iree plan, replac-
plan" 01 load-bearing
structures;
ribbon
126
I
127
148
League 01 Nations competition
Geneva, Switzerland,
project, Le Corbusier
and Pierre Jeanneret,
1927
window, offering horizontal vistas; and Iree lacade, whose openings
were no longer dependent
mechanics. reinlorced
on traditional
AII these points were made possible concrete.
149
Centrosoyuz
Le Corbusier
structural by the use 01
(Central Union 01 Consumer
and Pierre Jeanneret,
Cooperatives),
ground floor punctuated by pilotis. As in his League 01 Nations project, the building combined with orthogonal
a curvilinear auditorium volume
office wings. But the innovative project - which
included a lorerunner 01 central air conditioning
-> 11
.~
Moscow, USSR (Russia), 1928-36
based on a
system 01 "neutralizing walls" and "exact respiration" - was too
Grand vessels in Paris and Geneva
technically
But domestic programs did not satisly Le Corbusier's ambitions;
shortages caused the building's construction many years. -> t4
he aimed for more important commissions. 1927 competition in Geneva
148
tor the headquarters
His lailure to win the
01the League 01 Nations
was a personal trauma. His project elevated the
advanced tor the Soviet Union at this date. Material to drag on tor
In the meantime, the Salvation Army commissioned
Le Corbusier
to design its City 01 Reluge in Paris. Realized in 1929-31, the building is a large concrete vessel whose purpose is to house
principie 01 pilotis and terraces to the scale 01 a grand pub-
the homeless. With this project, Le Corbusier was linally able
lic edilice, making the site seem to Ilow beneath the building
to incorporate
and merge with the Alpine landscape.
ture: he placed the apartment 01 the project's American patron,
ity campaign
-> 12
Despite the public-
mounted by his Iriends throughout
Europe to pro-
his lascination
Winaretta Singer-Polignac,
with ships into his architec-
at the top 01 the building and
test the rejection 01 his project, the conservative jury remained
arranged the communal spaces on the ground Iloor like the
unswayed. Le Corbusier was also thwarted in his efforts to erect
lirst-class
a Mundanéum,
piration" system ter circulating air was rendered. totally ineffec-
or World City, in Geneva; a cultural complex in
lounges of a transatlantic
liner. Though his "exact res-
the spirit 01 Hendrik Christian Andersen's World City, the project
tual by the lack of any device to extract the used air Irom the
was designed lor the philanthropist Paul Otlet using a plan based
building, the Salvation Army hostel remained a didactic exam-
on the golden section. Le Corbusier's proportions and his ziggurat-shaped
invocation 01 classical
pie 01 Le Corbusier's
museum - to be the cen-
did another important
terpiece 01 the project - spurred attacks Irom radical architects
precepts 01 large-scale realization
construction.
So
in Paris 01 this period, the
Swiss Pavilion at the Cité Universitaire (1929-33).
like the Russian El Lissitzky. Lissitzky's criticism 01 Le Corbusier's excessive historicism and monumentality
was echoed by the
Perret and the "sovereign shelter"
Prague critic Karel Teige, who scorned the "puzzling, archaic impression"
made by this "metaphysical
architecture."
-> 13
No other architect on the Paris scene was able to scandal-
Nonetheless, it was in Moscow that Le Corbusier won his lirst
ize people with innovations as much as Le Corbusier, although
major commission,
others tried. In a city where architects Irequently lormulated
headquarters
tor the Centrosoyuz (1928-36)
149, the
01 the Central Union 01 Consumer Cooperatives.
and implemented
their modern ideals in direct competition
Here he greatly amplilied the principie 01 the promenade
with one another, there was no such thing as a united front.
architecturale,
Le Corbusier's
Chapter 10
I
designing
ramps that rose six stories above a
Return to arder in Paris
mentor, Auguste Perret, opposed the younger
Pavilion 01 L'Esprit nouveau, Le Corbusier and
151
::;ere Jeanneret, Paris, Franee, 1924-5
Study lor a Freneh Embassy, projeet, Pierre
Chareau, Paris, Franee, 1925 152
Cortot Hall, École Normale de Musique,
Auguste
architect's use of the ribbon window, insisting that only "the
Perret, Paris, Franee, 1928-9
Paris Art Deco
ertical window Irames man [and] agrees with his silhou-' S." -> 15 In Le Raincy, east of Paris, Perret built Notre-Dame
The 1925 exposition
::e la Consolation (1922)
build his Pavilion 01 L'Esprit nouveau.
153,
a church commemorating
World
ar I fighters. Its vaulted nave of reinforced concrete he Id up
ramas 01 his Ville Contemporaine
slender columns is illuminated by walls of concrete-Iramed staíned glass. Perret's application
gave Le Corbusier the opportun ity to
signilicantly,
of methods developed lor
In it he displayed
150
dio-
and Plan Voisin and, most
a unit of his immeuble-villas
furniture bought Irom manufacturers'
outfitted with typical
catalogs and a prototype
"actories and other secular structures to a religious edifice
of his standard cabinets. The pavilion was an implicit critique
caused critics to describe it as "the holy chapel of reinforced
of the program 01 the exposition, whose directors, Charles
:::oncrete" and scorn it as a vulgar "prayer hangar." At the time,
Plumet and Louis Bonnier, sought to reassert French suprem-
::lerret's thinking was close to that of the poet Paul Valéry, whose
acy in the applied arts in the face of prewar competition
Socratic dialogue Eupalinos, ou I'architecte
Germany. The latter's belated invitation to participate
(Eupalinos, or the
Architect; 1921), suggested a revived classicism with national-
tacto exclusion .
. t accents.
Organized by the Union centrale des arts décoratils
-> 16
monumentality
Using the concrete skeleton to emulate Greek in his public commissions,
Perret tirelessly
Société des artistes décorateurs,
sought to implement his delinition 01 the large building as "a its unity the variety 01 organs necessary to fulfill its lunction."
->
designed the "ensembles" 17
In 1924 Perret opened an off-site studio 01 the École des Beaux-
rts near the Bois de Boulogne. It was known as the Palais de Bois (Wood Palace). Contradicting e encouraged
the school's official stance,
his followers - including
Paul Nelson, Ernb
ment stores as well as to theinterior
of finishes. In 1925 he designed
he Exposition Internationale Modernes;
the theater at
des Arts Oécoratifs et Industriels
its three-part stage recalled the one built by Henry
van de Velde in Cologne eleven years before. Next he built the stunning Cortot Hall (1928-9)
152,
a dizzyingly steep concert hall
18
Ruhlmann and
Two designers stood
cautiously modern: Francis Jourdain, who carefully created unadorned
lerentiation
->
out Irom the crowd for work that was as elegant as it was
allordable
by the interplay of light and shadow and the dif-
with depart-
designers who merged art
the team 01 Louis Süe and André Mare.
an architecture expressive
interior decorators who
01 furniture associated
and commerce. They included Émile-Jacques
Goldlinger, Oscar Nitzchké, and Denis Honegger - to practice leaturing exposed structural elements made
and the
or SAD, the 1925 exposition
gave pride of place to the successful
ressel, a framework, a sovereign shelter capable of housing in
from
was a de
interiors that were in the spirit 01 Adolf Loos but to all
154;
and Pierre Chareau, whose convertible fur-
niture pieces - notably his cylindrical
desk-bookshelf
for the
SAD pavilion's exhibit "A French Embassy"
151 -
the static nature of the main contributions.
In the same pavilion
Robert (Rob) Mallet-Stevens
contrasted with
designed a lobby with a linear,
abstract geometry that was similar in spirit to his Tourism Pavilion, also at the exposition. Four years later, he, Jourdain,
that, by using concrete cantilevers, he was able to squeeze into
and Chareau were among the founders of the Union des
the middle of a tight Paris block.
artistes modernes, or UAM, a group devoted to applying the
128
I
129
153
Notre-Dame
de la Consolation,
Auguste Perret, Le Raincy, France, 1922
J
130
I
131
.-Gl11 ~
:
-
,
-
- ~
Smoking
.
\
IJ
l.
154
-'
Room lar a French Embassy, project, Francis Jourdain,
Paris,
155
Grand Hotel Métropole,
project, Henri Sauvage, Paris, France, 1928
France, 1925
radical modern aesthetic lavored by the elite to the needs 01 a
Jean Prouvé, were involved in building rue Mallet-Stevens. The
larger populace; it held its first exhibition in 1930.
construction site was headed by Gabriel Guevrekian, an Iranian
-> 19
One 01 the most prolific architects involved in the 1925 exhi-
architect 01 Armenian descent trained in Vienna.
bition was Henri Sauvage, who created several pavilions for department
In 1923 Mallet-Stevens began working on a large villa in Hyeres
stores. Sauvage had worked on the development
of
lor the art patrons Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles
156,
who
setback terraced buildings in Paris since before the war. After
in 1930 would linance Jean Cocteau's lilm Blood of a Poet and
the war he built both a popular version - a low-income
Luis Buñuel's L'age d'or. For this house, devoted to pleasure
resi-
dence on Rue des Amiraux (1922), with a swimming pool at
and entertainment, he designed a cubic structure hovering above
its center - and a bourgeois version called the Studio Building
the city and extended by terraces. He wrote: "It is no longer just
(1926), inspired by ocean liners. He also designed a megaloma-
some moldings that catch the light, it is the entire lacade. The
niac version for a hotel on the bank of the Seine (1928)
architect sculpts an enormous block, the house."
155.
In
-> 21
Erected
Nantes, Sauvage built the imposing glass structure of the Decré
in sections between 1924 and 1928, the house included a room
Department Sto re (1931, bombed 1944). He also worked on
devoted to flowers, the design 01which was entrusted to Theo
the extension of the Samaritaine Department Store (1928, with
van Doesburg, and it overlooked a Cubist-inspired
Frantz Jourdain) in Paris, where he took a less radical approach
den by Guevrekian. In 1929 the American artist Man Ray declared
since he had to comply with urban-planning
that the "cubic lorms" 01the cháteau "brought to mind the title 01
regulations.
a poem by Mallarmé."
Mallet-Stevens,
-> 22
triangular gar-
He used it as the setting tor his dis-
turbing film Les mystéres du chateau du Dé (TheMysteries
or elegant modernism
01the
Cháteau of Dice), a tableau vivant pertormed by masked guests. In 1927 Robert Mallet-Stevens received a unique honor for a liv-
Having designed the sets for Marcel L'Herbier's L'inhumaine (The
ing architect: he had a Paris street named after him.
Inhuman Woman; 1923-4)
->
20
He would
build six houses on the new Rue Mallet-Stevens (1926-7) His own, featuring a double-height
158.
reception room, stands at the
157,
a lilm intended to promote
French lashion abroad, Mallet-Stevens
began building a cas-
tle in Mézy for the couturier Paul Poiret (1921-3), but the project
entry to the street. Next to it is the studio and residence 01 sculp-
was never completed.
tors Jan and Joel Martel, whose quarters are clustered around
on Rue Marbeul (1927), which has a structure supported
the vertical cylinder of a staircase that leads to a belvedere topped
concrete arches reminiscent 01 those in Perret's Théátre
by a circular "lid." Also on the street is a town house with a 150-
Champs-Élysées,
In Paris he built the Alfa Romeo Garage by des
and an apartment building on Rue Méchain
seat screening room, built lor the lilm director Eric Allatini, and a
(1928-9), which is a kind of vertical extrusion of the Rue Mallet-
house tor Madame Reilenberg, a pianist, featuring open living
Stevens massing system. His largest project was a casino in
spaces extended by terraces, which offer a lull panorama of the
Saint-Jean de Luz on the Basque coast (1927-8), a large rein-
other cubistic houses on the block. Many artists and craftsmen,
forced-concrete
including the glass artist Louis Barillet and the young ironsmith
first seen at the 1925 exposition.
Chapter 10
I
Return to order in Paris
building with interiors that make use of motifs
56
Villa de Noailles, Robert Mallet-Stevens,
Hyeres, France, 1923-8
157
L'inhumaine
film set, Robert Mallet-Stevens,
1923-4,
for Marcel ~ Herbier (director) 159 ~
Houses on Rue Mallet-Stevens,
Robert M'allet-Stevens,
Hotel Nord-Sud,
André l.urcat, Calvi, France, 1929-30
Paris, France, 1926-7
132
I
133
161
Apartment
Roux-Spilz,
160
E 1027, Eileen Gray, Roquebrune
Cap-Martin,
Building,
Michel
Paris, France, 1925-8
France, 1929
The extent of French modernism
lor the Radical-Socialist mayor 01 Lyons, Édouard Herriot. ..,24 Alter completing the La Mouche Cattle Market and Slaughterhouse
Having made his reputation as a member 01 Mallet-Stevens's
(1906-14), which leatured a great market hall constructed 01 steel
circle, Gabriel Guevrekian received a commission through the
trusses and inspired by the Galerie des Machines, Garnier contin-
painter Sonia Delaunay to design a town house lor the couturier
ued his work in Lyons with the États-Unis low-income housing
Jacques Heim in Neuilly (1927), reinlorcing the signilicant link
development (1921-34), a suburban complex 01 airy concrete
between architecture and lashion. No less close to Mallet-Stevens
blocks, and the Grange-Blanche
was the engineer and architect Georges-Henri Pingusson, who
pavilions connected by a network 01 underground passages. The
remodelled the lacade and neo n marquee 01 the Théátre des
structural clarity 01 Garnier's work was increasingly inllected by
hospital (1910-34), a series 01
Menus-Plaisirs (1926-9) and built the Paul Arrighi power plant in
cla,ssical nostalgia, however. A more monumental aspect 01 his
Vitry-sur-Seine (1926-32), a rare French example 01 modern aes-
work was visible in his many designs lor memorials, while Mediter-
thetics intersecting with a lull-Iledged industrial programo
ranean accents surlaced in his more intimate patio houses.
At the initiative 01 his brother Jean, at that time a painter with ties to
Trained in Lyons as part 01 Garnier's circle, Michel Roux-Spitz com-
Surrealism, André Lurcat built the Villa Seurat (1925-7), an alley 01
bined the smooth geometry 01 the moderns with more static
artist studios in Paris begun two years belore Rue Mallet-Stevens.
modes 01 composition in his Paris apartment buildings, such as
The scheme consists 01 a sequence 01 six buildings made 01 cubic
the ones on Rue Guynemer (1925-8)
volumes with corner window openings. There are clear Loosian
(1930-1). In the latter he incorporated leatures borrowed Irom
accents and above all a play with the continuity 01 the street wall.
161
and Avenue Henri Martin
. naval architecture, with a certain heaviness. Poi Abraham and
Across lrom Parc Montsouris, l.urcat built a house lor the painter
Charles Siclis provided their own interpretations, whether more tec-
Walter Guggenbühl (1927). A cube set on a trapezoidal base
tonic or more spectacular, 01 the passion lor structural expression
extended by a bow window and a pergola, its simplilied geometry
that had spread in the 1920s. Eileen Gray, an Irish designer active
and the repetitive conliguration 01 openings on its planar surlaces
in Paris, was the only woman to see her contribution acknowl-
had nothing to do with the underlying structural skeleton. This led
edged, with E 1027 (1929), 160a villa she built on the Riviera tor
the critic Marie Dormoy justly to contrast turcat's "Iake concrete" to
and with Jean Badovici, the editor 01 L'Architecture vivante. While
Perret's use 01 the material. ..,23 The purest expression 01 l.urcat's
the end 01 the decade saw an international alliance 01 radical
approach may be seen in the linear and prismatic architecture 01
architects throughout Europe, French architecture seemed to have
the small Hotel Nord-Sud (1929-30)
two laces. The lirst was embodied in the experimental, sometimes
159,
near the Corsican city 01
Calvi, which resembles a ship run aground on a reef.
provocative work that came out 01 the circle around Le Corbusier.
While the most radical laction 01 French architecture managed to
Also innovative but more commercial, the second lace, initially
consolidate its positions during the 1920s, it occupied a small lield.
revealed in the Exposition Internationale des Arts Oécoratits et
Large public and private projects continued to be awarded to more
Industriels Modernes, produced reverberations that would be lelt in
conservative lirms. One notable exception was Tony Garnier's work
North America and Britain as well as in colonial settings.
Chapter 10 [ Return lO order in Paris
Dada, De Stijl, and Mies: from subversiveness to elementarism
By the final months of World War I there were already con-
well developed, although they had a longstanding
flicting attempts to overthrow the dominant forces in art and
"machine art" announced by Vladimir Tatlin's first eonstructions in
architecture. Among the new movements,
Expressionism
interest in the
had
Russia. From Berlin, Dada seattered to Cologne with Arp and Max
roots in prewar Europe, but other contenders, which appeared
Ernst, and to Hanover with Kurt Schwitters, until Pieabia and Tzara
even before the German surrender, lacked such antecedents,
linally shifted the movement's eenter 01 gravity to Paris, where it
instead emerging from the deep crisis provoked by battles
led to the birth 01 Surrealism in 1924. The legaey 01these intense
among intellectuals
years was a vigorous impulse to challenge the·traditional eatego-
and artists.
ries 01 art and architecture. It would have widespread and lasting effeets, espeeially in Weimar Germany. The network connect-
The Dada blast
ing the members of the Dada galaxy to architectural movements Dada, the most destructive of these movements, had its moment
branched out across the map; artists and architects at the edges
between 1915 and 1923. It was characterized by the subversion
01the movement went on to play important roles in less radical
01traditional representation, a prelerence tor the new technique
groups like the Arbeitsrat für Kunst and the German Werkbund.
01 montage, and a bluntly asserted nihilism. A nomadic phenomenon that changed aceording to its setting, it was lounded in
The new forms of De Stijl
Zurich, then gravitated to New York and Germany, and linally settled in Paris ..•
1
The evenings organized at Zurieh's Cabaret
In the Netherlands,
the Expressionism
01 the Amsterdam
Voltaire by the Germans Hugo Ball, Hans Richter, and Richard
School was still the dominant force. But beginning
Huelsenbeck; the Alsatian Hans (Jean) Arp; and the Romanians
a radical movement took shape under the name De Stijl, a
Tristan Tzara and Mareel Janco were the opening act of a eollee-
term that may be traced back to both Gottfried Semper's trea-
tive revolt against the very concept 01art. The arrival 01 Francis
ti se Der Stil (Style) and Viollet-Ie-Duc's
Picabia and Marcel Duchamp in New York marked another dis-
define "the" style for modern architecture
tinctive Dada phase, particularly alter they met Man Ray. Picabia's
opposed
to choosing
in 1916
call to architects to and eonstruction
among a range 01 competing
collages 01 mechanical parts and Duehamp's Fountain, a uri-
styles). Hendrik Petrus Berlage advanced
nal that served as a "ready-made"
the Dutch context. De Stijl never became a structured
art objeet, exhibited in 1917,
(as
historical
both these ideas in move-
signaled the Dadaists' interest in anonymous production and
ment; its unstable and dynamic sphere 01 inlluenee was een-
maehines, which they derisively parodied and destroyed.
tered around a monthly journal and a slogan. This irregularity
Leaving Zurieh for Berlin, Ball and Huelsenbeck expanded their
seemed to contradict
aetivities alter meeting George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann
nect visual experience
162,
its main objective: for the artist to conto metaphysical
ideas, thereby creating
and John Heartfield, combining an ironic play on the icons 01
harmonic works 01 art and reclaiming
a central place in soci-
American eivilization with an exploration 01 photomontage tech-
ety. The search for a nieuwe beelding
or neue Gestaltung
niques. The Dadaists' involvement with architeeture was not
Neo-Plasticism
Chapter 11
I
Dada, De Stijl, and Mies: from subversiveness
to elementarism
oía highly metaphysical
- a
order - was at odds
164 ~
Les Architectes
du Groupe
De Stij/, Theo van Doesburg Comelis
and
van Eesteren exhibition,
Galerie de I'effort moderne,
Paris,
France, 1923
162
Tatlin at Home, Raoul Hausmann,
Germany
Pavilion (Barcelona
1920
Pavilion), Lúdwig Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona,
Spain, 1929, rebuilt 1983-6
138
I
139
·1.-
.
, 1
I
11.
.-I I
I
165
Factory, project, J. J. P. Oud, Pomerand,
Netherlands,
1919
with Dada's biting irony. The members 01 the De Stijl circle
In purely architectural
ultimately aspired to positive creation, even if they tirst had to
distinct palhs, with their production taking very different shapes.
go through a phase 01 deslroying
Van Doesburg was more theoretical and experimental, while
conventions.
The initial issues 01 the journal De Stijl appeared in mid-1917 in
terms, the lounders 01 De Stijl lollowed
Oud, Wils, and Gerrit Rietveld, an associate 01 the group begin-
Leiden under the editorship 01 the painter Theo van Doesburg.
ning in 1919, were more prolessionally
Contributors
experimented
included the painters Piel Mondrian, Barl van der
in three dimensions,
oriented. Mondrian also
notably on the interior 01 his
Leck, and Gino Severini; the architecl J. J. P. Oud; and Vilmos
studio on Rue du Départ in Paris (1921-36)
Huszár, who designed Ihe journal's lago. The group Ihat assem-
ject lar the Salan de Madame B. in Dresden (1926).
bled around De Stijl had already shared several experiences.
Van Doesburg's
Van der Leck had collaborated
1917 and developed
with Berlage in building the Sint
involvement in architectural
166
and on his pro-
projects began in
with the interior 01 the De Ligt House in
Huberlus Hunling Lodge in Hondersloo lar Ihe Krbller-Müller
Katwijk (1919), lurnished by Rietveld. Van Doesburg told Oud that
lamily (19J9). Van Doesburg and Oud had collaborated
the house was Ha painting in three dimensions."
on Ihe
.• 4 In 1923 he
creation 01 a colorful, rhylhmic interior lar the De Vonk Vacation
collaborated
House in Noordwijkerhout
whom he had met in Weimar, on the design 01 a concourse
(1917) and on the Allegonda Villa
with the young architect Cornelis van Eesteren,
lar the University 01 Amsterdam
in Katwijk aan Zee (1917). Oud and Van Doesburg later went
(1923). The stained-glass
ceil-
their separale ways lollowing disputes over a project lar the
ing and the Ilat planes 01 colors painted on the walls conllicted
Spangen Low-Income
with the orthogonal
Housing Development
in Rotterdam,
where the architect insisted on respecting economic that the painter could not tolerate.
limitations
geometry 01the plan, as il the chromatic
and the spatial aspects 01 the project were totally unconnected. He al so realized in collaboration
-> 2
with Van Eesteren three mod-
Van Doesburg and Jan Wils together built the De Lange House
els shown in October and November
in Alkmaar (1916-17), and Huszár and P. J. C. Klaarhamer, a
Les Architectes
Iriend 01 Berlage, joined efforts on the De Arendshoeve
moderne in Paris 164. This exhibilion
House
1923 at the exhibition
du Groupe De Stijl at the Galerie de I'efforl marked a crucial turning
in Voorburg (1916-19). During this initial phase, each member
point in postwar architecture. The models were genuine three-
01 De Stijl sought to establish his place in a collective endeavor.
dimensional
But starting in 1921, each participant began trying to achieve his
horizontal planes 01 color entirely dispensed with conventional
own synthesis 01 painting, sculpture, and architecture.
notions 01 the window. The least radical 01the three was a town
new phase, Van Doesburg became so domineering
-> 3
In this
that by the
objects in their own right, but their vertical and
house project supposedly
intended lar Léonce Rosenberg, the
time Mondrian and Oud left the group, he had totally isolated
gallery's owner, which had a realistic-Iooking
himsell. Nonetheless,
ond model, a project lar an artist's house, had welded-Iead
work by associating
he was able to establish a European netwith El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters, and
he lived lar a period in Weimar, where he was unsuccesslul
I
Dada, De Stijl, and Mies: from subversiveness
trames and planar color surlaces and recalled Mondrian's painted compositions
with black lines. The third, a project lar
a private house 169, was the most complex, and provided the
securing a teaching position at the Bauhaus.
Chapter 11
in
setting. The sec-
to elementarism
166
Mondrian
Studio, Piet Mondrian,
Paris, France, 1921-36
167
The Aubette Cinema and Dance Hall, Theo van Doesburg,
France, 1926-8. 168 ~
basis for Van Doesburg's subsequent "counter-constructions,"
in
recontruction
Schróder
1990-4
House, Gerrit Rietveld, Utrecht, Netherlands,
elements were based upon orthogonal
which "plane, line, and mass [were] freely arranged in a three-
had to accommodate
dimensional
to a counter-composition
relationship." .• 5 The models offered as synthetic a
representation
of three-dimensional
space as the axonometrics
Strasbourg,
and 2006-8 1924
relationships, this room
itself to a diagonal arrangement
of colors,
which, by its nature, was to resist all
the tensions of architecture .... If I were asked what I had in
drawn by Auguste Choisy in his 1899 Histoire de /'architecture.
mind when I constructed
They had a strong impact on architects in Paris like Robert
oppose to the material room in three dimensions
Mallet-Stevens
terial and pictorial, diagonal space." ..•7 The originality of Van
and Le Corbusier. In turn, De. Stijl annexed the
French architects'
work in the issue of its journal published
1927 commemorating
in
the group's tenth anniversary.
this room, I should be able to reply: to a superma-
Doesburg's design, which was executed by Oscar Nitzchké and Denis Honegger, two students of Perret, was reinforced by com-
On the occasion of the 1923 exhibition, Van Doesburg attempted
parisons with the undulating forms of Jean Arp's dance hall in
to provide a theoretical
the Aubette's cellar and Sophie Taueber-Arp's two-dimensional
context for his work with a manifesto
entitled "Vers une construction
collective"
(Toward a Collective
work in its tearoom. Van Doesburg ventured into the realm of
Construction). Published the following year, it declared: "The idea
urban planning with his City of Circulation
that art is an illusion divorced from real life must be abandoned.
complex of square eleven-story towers supported
The word 'Art' means nothing to usoWe demand that it be
ners by sturdy piers that opened the ground level to automobiles.
replaced by the construction
of our environment
according
to
creative laws derived from well-defined
principies. These laws,
which are akin to those of economics,
mathematics, technology,
hygiene, and so forth, encourage a new plastic unity." ..•6
project (1924-9), a at their cor-
Finally, with the help of the young Dutch architect Abraham Elzas, he built his own house-studio of Paris (1927-30). to accommodate
in Meudon Val-Fleury, south
Both in its details and in the use of pilotis a small car, it was closer to Le Corbusier's
villas than to his own more geometric
work of 1923. A hyper-
active figure, Van Doesburg used numerous pseudonyms
Van Doesburg builds
to
cloak his identity, which allowed him both to put forward quasiThe only large-scale the Aubette
167,
project realized by Van Doesburg was
Kléber in Strasbourg composition
(1926-8, resto red 2008). The diagonal
of his addition totally upturned the orthogonality
Jacques-Francois
Constructivist ideas and to indulge in Dadaist games. He founded
a dance hall, cinema, and restaurant on Place
the Concrete Art movement and later participated lishing the Abstraction-Création
of
in estab-
group, and he continued to pur-
sue a central role on the European scene until he died in 1931.
Blondel's existing building of 1778. The dis-
connection
intensified by the use of color in the University of
Amsterdam
concourse
characterized
the project in Strasbourg
Oud and Rietveld, from furniture to house design
as well. As Van Doesburg asserted, the principie of diagonal "counter-construction"
called into question the horizontality
and verticality of the architectural
box: "Since the architectonic
At the Paris exhibition of 1923, Oud showed his Purmerend Factory (1919)
165,
a project that dated from the early, more
142
I
143
170
Housing Development,
Holland, Nelherlands,
J. J. P. Oud, Hoek van
1924-7 171
Kielhoek
Rotterdam, 172
Schrbder
Netherlands,
169
Private House, project, Theo van Doesburg
Housing Development,
Netherlands,
J. J. P. Oud,
1925-9
House, Gerrit Rietveld, Utrecht,
1924, axonometic
01 the second Iloor
and
Cornelis van Eesteren, 1923
collective phase of De Stijl and contained echoes of Frank Lloyd
inlinitely expanded on all sides. Tellingly, the church builtin
Wright. In his essay "Kunst en machine" (Art and Machine;
tor the development
1917), Oud denounced
"romantic" approaches,
describing
style
Other architects
was a rigidly rectangular, factory-like
1929 box.
explored ideas similar to those ol-De Stijl.
as the result of two different trends: "the one, the technically
Robert van't Hoff was the most literal of the many Dutch archi-
industrial, which one might call the positive trend, aims at the
tects who used a vocabulary derived from Frank Lloyd Wright's
aesthetic representation
of products of a technical
ingenuity.
houses, notably in his Henny House in Huis ter Heide (1915-19),
The second, which one might, in comparison, call the negative
where he emulated a Prairie House exterior. Wright's hold on
trend (although it is equally positive in its expression!) - i.e., art -
the imagination 01 Dutch architects was equally evident in Wils's
aims to arrive at objectivity by reduction (abstraction). The unity
design for the De Dubbele Sleutel (The Double Key) Restaurant
of these two trends forms the essence of the new style."
(1918), where the exterior of the building clearly expressed its
-> 8
After a series of visually powerful theoretical projects, such as his
interior volumes. The sculptural aspects 01 Wils's Papaverhof
seaside apartments of 1917, Oud built several significant hous-
Residential Development (1919-22) in The Hague contrasted
ing developments. In the design of the Oud-Mathenesse
with the more industrial leanings of Oud's developments.
Garden
Suburb in Rotterdam (1922-3) he had to tollow existing design
The cabinetmaker
guidelines, and his contribution was limited to selecting color
ies of Frank Lloyd Wright's furniture for Robert van't Hoff, was
schemes for the doors. Only in the superintendent's
house, with
its vivid colors and orthogonal shapes, was he able to implement
Gerrit Rietveld, who had briefly made cop-
involved with De Stijl's activities lrom the beginning.
He con-
ceived lurniture prototypes composed of basic shapes - wood
the ideal of formal balance prescribed by De Stijl. Two years later
planes and standard proliles - sliced in ways that visually
Oud's facade for the Café De Unie (1925, bombed 1940) brought
extended the volume 01the objects. His most provocative piece
the new aesthetic to the very heart of Rotterdam.
frorn this period was the Red and Blue Armchair 011918, which
With his next housing developments,
Oud introduced
new ele-
he later explairíed "was made to the end of showing that a thing
ments - for instance, the treatment of his buildings' exterior walls
01 beauty, e.g., a spatial object, could be made 01 nothing but
simply as skin rather than as load-bearing
straight, machined materials."
structures. His Hoek
van Holland Housing Development (1924-7)
170
->
9
Rietveld, who rejected the inhibiting patronage 01 Van Doesburg,
is the most
Iyrical. Built near the estuary of the Maas River, the develop-
gave the most convincing
ment has rounded end-units, and the uniform line of balconies
a synthesis of the arts with his Schrbder House (1924)
reflects Oud's interpretation
in Utrecht. Located at the end 01 a row 01 banal brick buildings,
of Le Corbusier's
"reminder"
ocean liners. Though the Kiefhoek Development
about
(1925-9)
171
interpretation
of De Stijl's longing tor 168,172
the house plays with vertical and horizontal planes in three
in Rotterdam was lar larger, Oud treated it in a more elemen-
dimensions.
tal manner. He abandoned the symmetry still in use in Hoek van
each other. Sliding partitions make it possible to modily the floor
Holland, instead aligning the parallel rectangular blocks 01 the
plans of the two main levels, which are partly lit by a small sky-
two-story houses as if they formed part of a fabric that could be
light. The intersection
Chapter 11
I
Dada, De Stijl, and Mies: lrom subversiveness
to elementarism
Individually, the rooms are very small but llow into
of planes and linear elements and the
.c r-I T~ 1_' L.~
-174
Concrete
Office Building,
Berlin, Germany, 175
project, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,
1923
Otfice Building,
FriedrichstraBe
competition
project, Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, Berlin, Germany, 1921
173
Brick Country House, project, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Berlin, Germany, 1923
articulation 01 joints and railings make the house's interior
"Zur elementaren Gestaltung" (On Elemental Farm-Creatian) in G.
spaces as difficult to grasp from the inside as they are trorn the
One 01 the principal supporters 01 and contributors to G was
outside. Walls are no longer the single determining factor 01
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who published his theoretical pro-
space. Actually very compact, the house was not intended to be
ject tor a Concrete Office Building
174
in the same issue that
a manilesto tor an aesthetic reinterpretation 01 domestic lunc-
carried Van Doesburg's manilesto. It was accompanied
tions but rather, according to Rietveld, to create lormal clarity and
own manilesto "Bürohaus"
intensily the experience 01 space.
his theoretical positions, in which he declared that "Architecture
-> 10
Projects by the Vienna-
based artist and architect Friederich Kiesler, invited in 1923 to
by his
(Office Block), a lirst expression 01 will 01 the epoch," drawing an the
is the spatially apprehended
join De Stijl, seem to echo Rietveld's lurniture and to translorm
ideas 01 Berlage, the precursor he most admired, and Behrens,
it into broader, more inclusive spatial systems: the Leger- und
who had considered architecture the "rhythmic incorporation
Tragersystem, a flexible and independent hanging system lor
01 the spirit 01 the time."
gallery displays, and the Raumbühne, or space stage, were con-
invited Mies to participate in the De Stijl exhibiHon at the Galerie
(Exhibition 01
structed at the Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik
-> 13
de l'Effort moderne.
New Theater Technology) in Vienna in 1924; while the "City in
Beginning
Space" appeared at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts
projects. In a competition
Oécoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.
on the FriedrichstraBe
-> 11
A lew months later, Van Doesburg
in 1921, Mies conceived
in Berlin, he submitted
glass prism with a triangular appeared between the Nether-
lands and Germany not only through his presence on the doorstep 01 the Bauhaus but also through his participation
in the
Congress 01 Revolutionary Artists held in Düsseldorl
in 1922.
There he lounded a short-lived "Constructivist together with Hans Richter and El Lissitzky. Richter, Lissitzky, and Werner Gráff Doesburg's
International"
-> 12
In July 1923
who had attended Van
lectures at the Bauhaus, published the lirst issue
to extend the glazing 01 the nearby train station
Berlin Dadaists had illustrated constructian
world and to pro pose an or objectivity, 01 con-
struction systems. Van Doesburg published
his own manilesto
Chapter 11 , Dada, De Stijl, and Mies: from subversiveness
to elementarism
in their journal - M.ies's project
sites. Access to the upper Iloors was pravided
by
a central elevatar care, while narrow canyons lined with glass allowed light to penetrate to the interior 01 the site. The transparent lacades revealing stacks 01 offices called to mind a ing in the competition.
based on the Sachlichkeit,
structure. A radi-
seemed to materialize Allred Stieglitz's phatos 01 Manhattan
beehive - a metapharical
Its program was to dis-
(260-loot)
cal response to New York's Flatiron Building - which the
(Materials tor Elemental Form-Creation). seminate images 01 the technological
plan. The angular volume con-
over the entirety 01 its 80-meter
01 the journal G, subtitled Material zur elementare Gestaltung
architecture
175
a design lor a
sisted entirely 01 a curtain wall, without base or cornice, which
Mies van der Rohe's theoretical projects Van Doesburg lorged a close connection
several iconoclastic
entry lar a glass affice building
-> 14
term Mies used toidentify In 1922 he elabarated
the build-
a secand
version 01 the project in which the angular lacades gave way to a more Iluid and sinuous outline, praised by critics lar its "Gothic power."
-> 15
177
176
Monument
to Karl Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg,
Rohe, Berlin, Germany, 1926, demolished
Hermann Lange House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Krefeld, Germany, 1928-9
Ludwig Mies van der
1935
Alter his Concrete Office project, which was an abstract inter-
Country House began to be palpable in this sequence of open
pretation of the palazzo block that Peter Behrens had built ear-
rooms resting on a podium and evoking the garden structures
lier for Mannesmann,
of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, which Mies admired. Its stone and
Mies conceived a concrete "Country
House" (1923), about which he would declare, "We know no
glass partitions defined a free-flowing
forms, only problems of construction."
distinct from the load-bearing
.• 16 The house extended
space and were clearly
steel frame - despite a few invis-
horizontally across the site and reflected Mies's awareness of
ible compromises.
Wright's houses. His Brick Country House 173, designed the
onyx, intended as a backdrop for the king of Spain's reception
same year, was more provocative. An assemblage
by German officials. In this space - unregulated
ments, the house consisted of orthogonal free-flowing
continuum.
of brick ele-
volumes joined in a
For Mies, this "series of spatial effects"
The dominant element was a wall of golden by any axial
system, open to diagonal views, and designed to accommodate visitors' movements - the only perceptible
symmetry was the
was the result of "the wall [Iosing) its enclosing character and
horizontal one between floor and ceiling, making the vertical
[serving) only to articulate the house organism." .• 17
space of the pavilion practically reversible ..•
Up to this point, Mies's only real commissions
were for bour-
geois houses, for which he employed a traditionalist
language.
18
The promise of a new type of domestic space first glimpsed in Barcelona was brought to fruition in the house of Fritz and Grete
He was able to impose more radical views upon his clients
Tugendhat (1928-30)
only alter 1925. Initially, he used brick in an aesthetic, expres-
on a hill overlooking the city, the house reproduced the fluid floor
sive way, as in the Wolf House in Guben and especially
in the
" Monument to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1926) in Berlin, a sculptural interpretation
176
of a wall evoking the execu-
tion of the two Spartacist leaders. Beginning with his houses for the textile industrialists
Hermann Lange (1928-9)
177
and Josef
178,179
in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
Perched
plan of the Barcelona Pavilion, but this time areas had welldefined purposes, as if the partitions between rooms had been erased once the plan was completed. According to the critic Paul Westheim, Mies conceived the house as "a circulation route leading from room to room according to [the owners') style of living."
Esters (1928) in Krefeld, his use of brick ceased to be load
Westheim continued: "[T)he home must be considered entirely as
bearing. These two opulent hornes, whose facades brought to
a kind of business that, like any other business, is based on the
mind the factories of the neighboring
principie of an articulation of various functions. No room should
Ruhr region, had steel
structures, which made it possible to superimpose
very different
be isolated and cut off from the others. Even more, continuity
floor plans on two different levels: large rooms to display the
between the rooms is to be pursued. The entire space is to be
owners' collections
arranged organically, according to its envisaged uses." .• 19 As at
on the ground floor, bedrooms above.
Mies soon applied himself to a more radical annihilation
Barcelona, the living room, which overlooked the city, was backed
of traditional domestic space. The first building to undergo
with an onyx wall. The dining room was defined by a cylindrical
such treatment, the Germany Pavilion at the 1929 Barcelona
partition of rosewood. In 1930, thanks to his very public success
International Exposition 163, did not have much of a program
in Barcelona, Mies was named director of the Bauhaus in Dessau,
beyond its ceremonial
where he would radically change the pedagogy of architecture.
Chapter 11
I
purpose. The latent fluidity of his Brick
Dada, De Stijl, and Mies: from subversiveness
to elementarism
·e '
T
L" 178,179
Tugendhat
House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Brno, Czechoslovakia
e eco
{SCHOS
(Czech Republic),
S,
1928-30
150
I
151
Architectural education in turmoil
World War I had contradictory
effects on architectural
schools.
months. Even though Auguste Perret's atelier at the Palais de
A number of innovations shook them to their very core during
Bois was officially associated with the École des Beaux-Arts,
the 1920s, yet in most countries education
his students consistently received failing grades in the École's
conservative privileged
and the established
remained staunchly
centers did not relinquish their
position. At the same time, students in the postwar
project reviews and sornetirnes even had to disguise their affiliation with the atelier to have any chance of passing. In 1934
era moved more easily between schools, gravitating to the new
André Lurcat set up an autonomous
polarities represented
art historian Max Raphaél gave a few lectures, but this effort
by pedagogical
programs in Germany,
atelier, where the Marxist
Russia, and America, in search of learning that conveyed both
was also short lived ..•
the excitement of modern technologies
In the United States, where the teaching of architecture
and the energy of the
3
radical movements that had appeared in the wake of the war.
universally
based on the Beaux-Arts
The Beaux-Arts and the alternatives
attempts at modernization
was
model, teachers who had
been trained in Paris but were aware of new trends initiated in the early 1920s. Paul Philippe Cret,
who had been a student in Jean-Louis At the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the memorial to hun-
Pascal's atelier at the
Beaux-Arts, became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania
dreds of students who had died in the war served as a power-
in 1903, adjustinq .Julien-Azals Guadet's doctrine of composi-
fui reminder of the recent bloodbath. After the Allied victory, the
tion to modern programs. In 1927 Jean Labatut, one of Victor
school fell back on established
Laloux's former students, began teaching at the American surn-
routines,
180
and attempts at
renewal that had emerged before the war were shelved ..• Nonetheless, the school retained its worldwide
1
prestige for a
while, and, despite weaker enrollment by students from the
mer school in Fontainebleau,
France, which had been founded
by his master in 1923. The following year Labatut was hired to teach at Princeton University, where he would remain until the
United States, it continued to attract Latin Americans, including
1960s ..•
the Venezuelan Carlos Raúl Villanueva, and East Europeans like
tor at Fontainebleau,
4
Another former student of Laloux and an instrucJacques Carlu, started teaching at the
the Romanian Horia Creanqá, A reversal of sorts took place
Massachusetts
when French graduates,
there as head professor of architecture
including
Marcel Chappey, Robert
Camelot, and Raymond Lopez, received the Delano grants
Institute of Technology
in 1924 and remained until 1933. Jean-
Jacques Haffner, who had been at Harvard since 1922, was
created after the war by the American Institute of Architects to
appointed to Carlu's position in 1938.
draw the most brilliant young professionals to North America,
Yet by the mid-1920s, the French were beginning to lose their
thus inaugurating
a modern grand tour in which Chicago and
New York replaced Athens and Rome ..• In Paris, all alternatives
preeminence in American universities. The 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition
2
to the official mode of architectural
tia n of academic
brought new design concepts to the atteninstitutions. Eliel Saarinen, winner of the com-
training failed. The atelier opened by Robert Mallet-Stevens in
petition's second prize, was recruited by Emil Lorch to teach
1925 at the École Spéciale d'Architecture
at the University of Michigan Architecture
Chapter 12
I
Architectural
education
in turmoil
181
closed after a few
School in Ann Arbor.
180
Grand Prix de Rome project, École des Beaux-Arts,
Bernard Zehrfuss, 1939
181
Le Corbusier,
Robert Mallet-Stevens
École Spéciale d'Architecture,
There he implemented
a new curriculum
colleague, Knud Lonberg-Holm,
with his Danish
and Auguste Perret at the
Paris, France, c. 1939
ultimate, if distant aim 01 the Bauhaus is the unilied work
who had designed, but not
01 art - the great building - in which there is no distinction
submitted, a radically modernist entry to the Tribune Tower
between monumental
contest. In 1925 Saarinen designed the campus 01 the Cran-
program was steeped in a mystical, Expressionist
and decorative art."
-> 7
Initially this mood. The
brook Kingswood School (Iater the Cranbrook Academy
original faculty consisted primarily of artists: Lyonel Feininger,
of Art), and he became director there in 1932.
Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Oskar Schlemmer. Within a few years László Moholy-Nagy IlIen. The Bauhaus curriculum
The Weimar Bauhaus
ductory course developed
replaced
began with a Vorkurs, an intro-
by Itten dedicated
to the explora-
The most intense search lar new educational methods took place
tion 01 drawing, color, and materials. It continued
in Germany, often picking up where prewar efforts had left off.
geared to producing
Didactic proqrarns were developed
although not taught as such until 1927, was the ultimate goal
tion 01 architecture
in accord with the concep-
as an experimental
discipline
tor which
01 the curriculum,
in workshops
designs tor actual clients. Architecture,
which aimed ter "mutual planning of exten-
knowledge 01 modern art, psychology, and industry was nec-
sive, utopian structural designs - public buildings and build-
essary. Apart Irom art schools like the Kunstschule Debschitz
ings íor warship - aimed at the luture."
in Munich, the Franklurter Kunstschule, the Akademie tür Kunst
Europe discovered Gropius's ambitious program at an exhibition
und Kunstgewerbe in Breslau, and the Reimann-Schule
held in Weimar in 1923.
in Berlin,
by lar the most innovative program was launched in Weimar
relationship
in 1919.
tive specilically
-> 5
Five years earlier, the B.elgian Henry van de Velde,
183
-> 8
Its aim was to maintain an ongoing
between the school and the public, an objecset out in the 1919 manilesto. An integral part
who had lounded a school there, had resigned under pres-
01 the exhibition, the Haus am Horn,
sure from nationalist
Muche, provided an idea 01 the Bauhaus's architectural
attacks. He recommended
that it be
185
designed
by Georg orien-
entrusted to Walter Gropius, August Endell, or Hermann Obrist.
tation. Built on a square plan, this experimental
Though the youngest of the three, Gropius was chosen, and it
central room suggested a family life without any servants; the
was through his initiative that the Kunstgewerbeschule
kitchen was treated as a workstation
Crafts School) and the Hochschule
(Arts and
tür Bildende Kunst (Higher
house with a
and, with its panoptic
view, a site 01 visual control over the household. Bauhaus stu-
School 01 Fine Arts) were united in April 1919 under the name 01
dents, including
the Staatliches Bauhaus (State Bauhaus).
interiors. The exhibit at the Bauhaus, entitled Kunst und Technik
In his lounding
-> 6
program, Gropius described
the goal 01 the
Marcel Breuer, lurnished the Haus am Horn's
- eine neue Einheit (Art and Technology:
A New Unity), made
new school: "to bring together all creative efforts into one
clear the school's new orientation toward industrial produc-
whole, to reunily all the disciplines
tion, while the projects gathered under the title "Internationale
ture, painting, handicrafts, rable components
01 practical art - sculp-
and the crafts - which are insepa-
01 a new architecture."
He continued,
"The
Architektur"
clearly positioned
of the European avant-garde.
its experiments ->
at the lorelront
9
152
I
153
183
Bauhaus exhibition,
182
Staatliches
Walter Gropius, Weimar, Germany, 1923
Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, Dessau, Germany, 1925-6
154
I
155
184
Torten Housing
Estate, Walter Gropius, Dessau, Germany,
1926-8
185
Haus am Horn, Georg Muche, Weimar, Germany, 1923
siting 01 buildings became an important component
The Bauhaus in Dessau and Berlin
01 the cur-
riculum. The students built an apartment house in Dessau (1930) In 1924 the local government
in Saxony rejected Gropius's
during Meyer's tenure, while the school became increasinqly
program, lorcing him to move the school to a new building in Dessau,
182
a manulacturing
center closer to Berlin. Opened in
1926, the new lacility, which Gropius designed, exemplilied principies
01 lunctional
clarity and modularity
now taught in
its studios. Each element 01 the pinwheel-plan conceived
the
receptive to its director's communist
ideas.
Meyer's political activism and his conllict-ridden
relationships
with many 01 the other Bauhaus Meister (masters) led to his being lired and replaced by Mies van der Rohe in 1930. With
structure was
to supply the space and light needed lor its spe-
the support 01 his Iriend Lilly Reich, an interiors architect, Mies accentuated
cilic lunctions. The workshops, lor example, had glass rools,
the shift 01 the Bauhaus toward architecture
while the students' living quarters had vertical windows and bal-
prolessional.
conies. Gropius al so built houses lor the laculty nearby, pro-
locused
viding his staft
the extended urban labrics that interested Hilberseimer.
188
with ample dwellings designed lor artistic
work and lor entertaining. Housing Estate (1926-8),
-> 10
With the experimental
commissioned
184
Tbrten
tions at an urban scale. In conceiving lor working-class
ques-
these modest modules
down to his linear organization
assembly line,
01 the construction
built in Tbrten was a prelabricated
courtyard
houses and studying -> 13
01 Dessau, which had been taken over
by the Nazis, evicted the Bauhaus. Mies reconstituted the school as a private institution based in an abandoned
lactory in Berlin-
Steglitz until pressure lrom the Nazis lorced him to close it down
tenants in buildings made 01 precast concrete
components, Gropius emulated the automobile
Exercises ceased to be utopian, and students
instead on designing
In 1932 the municipality
by the municipality
01 Dessau, the school was able to address architectural
that
had begun under Meyer and strove to make the school more
in the summer 01 1933. This triggered
a diaspora that would c.
have lasting effects on schools around the world.
site. Also
Steel House by Muche and
The Vkhutemas in Moscow
Richard Paulick, another example 01 the Bauhaus's eftort to emulate lactory production.
Though its reverberations
-> 11
were lelt less on an international
In 1928 Gropius stepped down as director and was succeeded
scale, an equally signilicant
by Hannes Meyer. Under the left-wing Swiss architect the teach-
during the same years. Like the Bauhaus, it was based on an
ing 01 architecture became more structured. Meyer's lunctionalist
impulse to synthesize art and architecture,
agenda was encapsulated
interaction - at least during the initial phase 01 the curriculum
in a manilesto entitled "bauen" ("to
~I'Y"lAnr'1
LlI""
IUIIIIUld.
\IUlIlAIUII
LIIII""::;
""GUIIUllly!
...
organization: social, technical, economic, zation."
-> 12
I
1::; IIULIIIII\J
psychological
UUL
organi-
Ludwig Hilberseimer began oftering courses in urban
planning, and preliminary
Chapter 12
UUIIUIII\J
Architectural
research on lunctional data and the
education
in turmoil
nl\JII""1
r"\l'"lj.-IlCI':>,
MI L dllU
':>LlUlt-... JlUI.::l,
I ""GI 11IIGdl
experiment took place in Moscow
ClIIU
OLUUIU::;,
UUIIUGI
'u16
u.
and therelore on lile;
v r'I.IIUlC;1 J r cr o ,
VI
resulted lrom a merger
in 1920 between the School 01 Painting and Sculpture and the Stroganov School 01 Applied Arts. The most original 01 the initial two departments
was the Rablak, or Workers' Faculty,
_
- ------
------
- -- ------
186 188 ~
------
Studio work at Vkhutemas,
Moseow, USSR (Russia), 1928
Bauhaus stall on the rool at the opening 01 Walter Gropius's Bauhaus building, Dessau,
Germany, 1926. From lelt: Josel Albers, Hinnerk Seheper, Georg Muehe, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Sehmidt, Walter Gropius, Mareel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stólzl and Oskar Sehlemmer.
187
A studio at the Institut Supérieur
des Arts Déeoratils, Abbaye de la Cambre, Brussels, Belgium,
1930
156
I
157
189
Student project at Vkhutemas,
Moscow, USSR
190
(Russia), 1923
Lenin Institute, project, Ivan Leonidov, Moscow,
USSR (Russia), 1927
which offered accelerated
remedial classes to workers with-
191
Student project, Jean de Maisonseul,
Dokuchaev, and Krinsky, and the Constructivists,
out a high school education. At lirst glance the school's toun-
Ladovsky was the most active in developing
dation course appears similar to the Bauhaus's
method 01 teaching through his "psychotechnical
Vorkurs. Its
around Vesnin.
an experimental laboratory,"
students carried out exercises in lour basic disciplines
taught
in which he perfected a battery 01 tests and techniques
by olten ideologically
with
lrom Hugo Münsterberg's
neoclassicist
opposed
instructors: "graphics,"
Vladimir Favorsky and Constructivist
Rodchenko;
"surface/color,"
Alexander
with Alexander Vesnin and Lyubov
Popova, both also active Constructivists;
"volurne," which grad-
ually became little more than an introduction
to sculpture;
Algiers,
Algeria, 1931
derived
research in applied psychology at
Harvard University; his aim was to measure the "psychotechnic qualities 01 architects"
and their ability to perceive lorms
in space. In 1922-3 students al so began to participate
in the
constantly increasing number 01 architecture competitions
tak-
and "s pace:' which was devoted to the study and assembly 01
ing place in Moscow.
basic volumes, under the direction 01 Nikolai Ladovsky, Nikolai
projects were included in the "New Moscow" plan designed
189
In 1924-5 all 01 the school's thesis
Dokuchaev, and Vladimir Krinsky, the luture lounders 01 the
by Shchusev. Students next turned their attention to new pro-
rationalist group ASNOVA ...• 14
grams lor stadiums, workers' palaces, and communal
Alter one or two years at the school, students were divided
Specialization
among faculties specializing
tecture, public buildings, urban planning, and so on - began
in painting, typography, sculp-
tu re, textiles, ceramics, wood, metal, and architecture. In 1923 departments
devoted to music and theater were introduced; in
1924 a department
devoted to literature opened. The vertical
housing.
by individual workshops - in residential archi-
to take shape in 1925. During this phase, the school developed projects lor aviation lactories, industrial lacilities, lilm studios, and apartment and office buildings.
integration 01 individual disciplines was thus more pronounced
The projects for skyscrapers
than at the Bauhaus, where specialization
were no longer the order 01 the day. Nonetheless, certain thesis
took place later.
that were common belore 1925
Studio work remained central in laculties such as the Metfak,
projects still explored radical hypotheses lor public buildings.
which specialized in metalwork. Inspired by Vladimir Tatlin and
Ivan Leonidov designed a Lenin Institute (1927)
headed by Rodchenko, it emphasized
prophetic structure made 01 cables and luturistic electronic
and lunctional
nature. The school's more politicized, highly
production-oriented conlrontation
projects 01 a collective
students Irequently came into head-on
with colleagues they considered
to be either
technology;
190
with a
Georgei Krutikov designed a Flying City (1928).
After visiting the Vkhutemas in 1928, Le Corbusier described the school in his journal as an "extraordinary demonstration
01
"pure" or decorative artists. Students 01 the Arkhlak, or archi-
the modern credo:' adding: "Here a new world is being rebuilt"
tecture studio, were divided into olear-cut camps: the conserva-
out 01 a "mystique which gives rise to apure
technique." ..•15
tives, under prolessors Ivan Zholtovsky and Alexei Shchusev; the
During the 1930s, methods developed in the school's Ioun-
"New Academy," under Ilya Golosov and Konstantin Melnikov;
dation course continued to be used, but traditional methods
and the remainder split between two directly competing
derived lrom the Beaux-Arts were gradually reinstated and the
ments: the "Rationalists,"
Chapter 12
I
Architectural
move-
gathered around the trio 01 Ladovsky,
education in turmoil
school's utopian passions died out.
192
New Bauhaus, Chicago,
lllinois, USA, c. 1938
193
School 01 Architecture,
Liang Ssu Ch'eng, Nanjing, China, c. 1930
Innovative schools in the new and old worlds
The most consequential
migration was the one that drove
The new schools in Europe at times lavo red conllicting
American students had attended the Bauhaus in Berlin, .• 17
approaches.
but the German experience did not bear fruit in American
many of the Bauhaus teachers to the United States. A lew In 1927 Henry van de Velde lounded the Institut
Supérieur des Arts Décoratils at the Abbaye de la Cambre
schools until the wave 01 emigration
in Brussels,
the 1930s. Seven years alter a lirst exhibition organized at
187
which he would head until 1936, recruiting
the modern architects
Huib Hoste and Victor Bourgeois
and
provoked by Nazism in
the Chicago Art Club, an exhibition at the Museum 01 Modern
the urban planner Louis Van der Swaelmen. In Italy a national
Art in 1938, Bauhaus 1918-1928, lirmly established
relorm led to the creation in 1924 01 independent
sion 01 the school's history propagated
architecture
the ver-
by its founder ..•
18
laculties in the academies 01 line art, but these remained solidly
Gropius had been recruited by Harvard as chair 01 the archi-
under the control 01 conservative
tecture department
architects. In Turkey, Bruno
two years earlier and tasked by the school's
Taut, whe resettled there alter an initial exile in Japan, taught
dean, Joseph Hudnut, with the revision 01 the design curricu-
lrom 1936 until his death in 1938 at the Istanbul Academy 01
lum. Under Gropius the school de-emphasized
Fine Arts, where he pursued the relorm 01 the school's curricu-
architectural
history and locused on analytical and collective
lum begun by the Austrian Ernst Egli.
approaches
to design as well as on the modernization
The 1930s were characterized
by the establishment
01 a grow-
ing number 01 architecture schools outside Europe. Modest ateliers were opened in connection Arts in Algiers by Léon Claro, Boyer. The Beaux-Arts
191
01 studio
programs. In 1938 Mies van der Rohe was hired to head the architecture
with the School 01 Fine
the teaching 01
program at the Armour Institute 01 Chicago, which
two years later merged with the Lewis Institute to become the
and in Casablanca by Marius
model, diffracted through the prism
IIlinois Institute 01 Technology ..•
19
Other Bauhaus Meister
also took up places in new institutions. Josel Albers headed
01 Paul Philippe Cret's teaching, served as the loundation for Chinese schools. The lirst 01 these, largely inspired by the
the program at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, while
Japanese, was lounded in Suzhou in 1923, then taken over by
the Institute of Design, in Chicago.
the Central University in Nanjing
who had been an assistant to Gropius in Dessau, landed in
193
tour years later and staffed
László Moholy-Nagy
lounded the New Bauhaus, later renamed 192
In 1933 Richard Paulick,
with professors who had studied with Cret at the University
Shanghai, where he worked as an urban planner and taught
of Pennsylvania. The lollowing
at the university from 1940 to 1949 ..•
Mukden (Shenyang)
year a school was opened in
by Liang Ssu Ch'eng, another lormer stu-
dent 01 Cret. .• 16 In Rio de Janeiro, Le Corbusier's
1929 lectures
so inspired Lucio Costa that he was moved to modernize curriculum
20
In a single decade the
scattering 01 Beaux-Arts alumni around the world had been largely superseded
by the diaspora 01 the Bauhaus.
the
01 a school that had been lounded by the French
in the early nineteenth century.
160
I
161
Architecture and revolution in Russia
During the lifteen years between the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution
councils known as "soviets" changed the circumstances
and Joseph Stalin's 1932 campaign
those who remained - including architects graduating
and artistic organizations
to consolidate
intellectual
under strict party rule, Russia was a
new schools. The launch 01 a monumental
tor trorn the
propaganda
plan
laboratary lar an astonishing range 01 urban and architectural
in 1918 stimulated designs lor the ephemeral translormation
invention. Priar to 1914 the Czarist empire had kept up to date tain 01 the empire's territories, such as Finland and the Baltic
01 streets and squares as part 01 the celebration 01 the revolution and May Day. Initially limited to a display 01 banners and the erection 01 isolated sculptures, these spectacles eventu-
states, had developed their own innovative architecture. Western
ally transligured
theories were studied with great attention: John Ruskin's works
Petrograd and provided a glimpse 01 how an "emancipated"
were popular, and Russian readers had access to translations 01
workers' city might look. The most ambitious 01 these projects
books by Auguste Choisy and Heinrich Wblfflin. But develop-
was artist Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International
with translormations
in European architectural
culture, and cer-
vast public spaces such as Palace Square in
ments in Russia's own architecture had been glimpsed outside
(1919),
its borders only at world's fairs such as the 1900 Paris expo-
through its projecled
194
which explicitly competed
with the Eiffel Tower
height 01 400 meters (1,312 leet) and steel
sition and, especially, the 1901 fair in Glasgow, where Fyodor
skeleton. Built 01 "steel, glass, and revolution," in the words 01
Shekhtel's Russia Pavilion made a strong impression.
the critic Nikolai Punin, the tower was designed to hold within
Belore 1914, the experiments 01 architects like Shekhtel operating
its spiraling Iramework a cube, a pyramid, a cylinder, and a
under the "modern"
banner had developed contemporaneously
with research on tensile-steel
structures undertaken
by the civil
engineer Vladimir Shukhov and the tirst use 01 reinlorced crete by Russian builders.
->
1
con-
But the social relorms that had
hall-sphere
whose rotation was intended to represent the Ire-
quency 01 meetings 01 Ihe Communisl sleering committees.
->
lnternational's
various
2
Until 1920, conllicts between the Red and White armies led to
come to the lore in Western Europe had been only marginally
widespread
destruction, which was intensilied by Bolshevik
lollowing the revolution 01 1905, and the compre-
campaigns
against the Russian Orthodox Church. During
implemented
hensive plans that had stimulated the creation 01 new building
these uncertain years belore the Reds' power was consoli-
types in Germany and larther west were lacking, largely owing
dated, Sinskulptarkh,
to the weakness 01 municipal governments.
sculpture and architecture
a group dedicated to the synthesis 01 (which became the Zhivskulptarkh
once painters joined its ranks), tried to promote cooperation
The shock of revolution
between various disciplines. They warked logether on theoretical schemes lor "people's houses" like those built in Weslern
The effects 01 the October 1917 revolution were as immediate
Europe belore 1914, lar communal
as they were manilold. The civil war and then the Bolshevik
01 Iriendship" that paralleled the utopian programs 01 German
01 prolessionals into exile, while 01 land and the rise to power 01 new local
houses,
196
and lar "temples
repression sent thousands
Expressionism.
the nationalization
designed Ihe most evocative 01 these projects, also helped
Chapter 13 1 Architecture
and revolution in Russia
Nikolai Ladovsky and Vladimir Krinsky, who
194
Monument
to the Third International,
project, Vladimir Tatlin, Petrograd
(Saint Petersburg),
Russia, 1919
162
I
163
f-n.~'7-t' df_¿ 1IAI_....,yA .•....í_
,
196
Communal
9-,,-----.....
1920
House, project, Nikolai Ladovski,
197
(Society 01 Young Artists) exhibition, Moscow, Russia, 1921
Obmokhu
195 Komintern Radio Tower, Vladimir Shukhov, Moscow, Russia, 1922
transform pre-revolutionary Concurrent discussions
art schools into the Vkhutemas.
within the state-supported
and a few mavericks regularly participated.
Inkhuk
who had had successful
(Institute of Artistic Culture), where creative methods grounded
Fomin, a Saint Petersburg neoclassicist;
in construction
neo-Palladian;
and inspired by engineering
those based on artistic "composition"
were opposed to
and anchored in aca-
Several architects
careers before 1914 - such as Ivan Zholtovsky, a Moscow
and Alexei Shchusev, an opportunist
who in
1923 reconstituted the MAO (Society 01 Moscow Architects) -
demic tradition, clearly revealed the differences separating
continued to receive significant commissions.
ladovsky
lormed in reaction to this old guardo The ASNOVA (Association
and Krinsky from the supporters
of Constructivism.
Two groups were
The former aspired to create dynamic forms but were uninter-
of New Architects) 198 included Ladovsky, Krinsky, Dokuchaev,
ested in their relationship with materials, while the latter insisted
and, for a time, El Lissitzky. 200 This group was very influential
on adapting the model of engineering design to the sphere of
among young pea pie. It stood lar strong tectonic expression
art and architecture. The Constructivists
01 the building's structure and visual exaltation of its tunc-
exhibited sculptures
made out of metal and inspired by engineering
structures at the
Already a teacher at the Vkhutemas, the artist Alexander Rodchenko
tion. The second group, whose members were Constructivists, was lormally launched with the creation 01 the OSA (Un ion 01
Obmokhu (Society of Young Artists) exhibition 197 in 1921.
Contemporary
played a crucial role in these formative stages.
-> 3
Architects) in 1925. It was no coincidence
that
neither group's name included the term "modern," which had
In 1920 the Bolsheviks launched the GOELRO plan (named
been discredited
for the State Comission for the Electrilication
of Art Nouveau. Chaired by Alexander Vesnin, the OSA was
of Russia) to
build a network of power plants, and embarked Economic
on their New
Policy (NEP), which loosened restrictions on com-
merce. New types of architectural
commissions
- including Iac-
by its association with the Russian version
largely run by Moisei Ginzburg, whose book-manifesto
Sti/ i
Epokha (Style and Epoch; 1924) echoed Le Corbusier's theories by suggesting that a new design method should be based
tories, workers' housing, and electric power plants such as Ivan
on the study 01 machines and the application
Zholtovsky's
to architecture.
-> 4
(Contemporary
[i.e., Modern] Architecture), or SA, published
MOGES - were generated by needs related to this
national electrification
plan. There was also demand for more
office buildings in connection with revived business activity and new trading cornpánies such as Arcos and Mosselprom.
Local
of their systems
The periodical Sovremennaia
Arkhitektura
under Ginzburg's direction lrom 1926 to 1930, presented OSA's new projects, as well as numerous Western examples, in a radi-
soviets and social-action groups created within various compa-
cally new graphic formo
nies initiated projects to build housing and create workers' clubs.
Independent
->
5
architects such as Ilya Golosov, a proponent 01 a
colorlul, lormally striking architecture, and especially
A profession renewed
Melnikov rase to prominence through competitions.
Architecture
Agricultural
Konstantin Melnikov
created a sensation with his Makhorka Tobacco Pavilion at the in the USSR was shaped by constant competi-
tions in which members of different professional associations
Exhibition held in Moscow in 1923 and, two years
later, with the pavilion he designed to represent the USSR at
164
I
165
198
Izvestia
Association
ASNO VA (News 01 the 01 New Architects),
199
layout
USSR Pavilion, Konstantin
200
Skyhook,
project, El Lissitzky, Moscow, USSR (Russia), 1925
201
Zuev Workers' Club, lIya Golosov, Moscow, USSR (Russia), 1928
Melnikov, Paris, France, 1925
by El Lissitzky, 1926
202 ~
Rusakov Workers' Club, Konstantin
Melnikov, Moscow,
USSR (Russia), 1927-9
the Exposition
Internationale
Modernes.
Composed
199
des Arts Oécoratits
et Industrie/s
of two glazed triangular volumes
used their income to provide social services and housing for their labor forces, as in the Armenikend
bisected diagonally by a staircase, it was the most conspicu-
Alexander
ous structure at the Paris exhibition ...• 6 It revealed to the West
district of collective
the existence of a new Russian architecture, confirmed
which was further
by the presentation elsewhere at the fair of over one
hundred projects conceived The commissions
in the USSR since 1920.
Ivanitsky in Baku (1925-8). A fully equipped housing was established
by .
model
in Leningrad
near the Putilov Factory; the schools, communal
kitchens, and
workers' clubs around Alexander Gegello's housing on Tractor Street (1925-7) formed something
emanating from the new regime's institutions
neighborhood
like a small autonomous
city
centered on the collective workforce ...• 7
began to generate buildings. Among them was Grigory Barkhin's design for new headquarters for Izvestia, the Moscow daily news-
The "social condensers"
paper, which reached back to classical architecture for its large metope-like
oculi. Alexander Vesnin and his brothers Leonid
In the second half of the 1920s, neighborhoods
and Victor failed to realize their 1924 project for the Moscow
according
office of Pravda , a cage inspired by the metal chassis of the
tion to their counterparts
newspaper's
printing presses, which was to have functioned
as a base for billboards, megaphones,
and projectors inscrib-
to the model of collectivized
multiplied
life - in strong distinc-
in Germany and Austria. Each Soviet
building type was subjected to elaborate and specific research. In order to transform the population's
daily habits as quickly as
ing slogans on the clouds. But the three brothers did succeed
possible, buildings
in building the Mostorg Department Store (1927-9), which was
to as "social condensers,'
wrapped in a glass facade, as was Boris Velikovsky's Gostorg
changes in the everyday life of the working class. An unacknowl-
Office Building apartment
(1926). In addition to newly built traditional
buildings, many new types of complexes
including Shchusev and Nikolai Markovnikov's
sprang up,
Sokol Garden
became what the Constructivists
referred
which were meant to accelerate
edged successor to the pre-1914 "people's houses,' the workers' club became the principal place of acculturation site where the confrontation
and the
between different architectural ideas
Suburb, inspired by the planning of Raymond Unwin. There
proved most fruitful. The clubs retained the auditoriums,
were also workers' housing blocks on Usacheva Street and
taurants, and sometimes the athletic equipment of the people's
in the Shabolovka
area, which Nikolai Travin erected near the
Komintern Radio Tower (1922). up hyperboloids materialization
designed
195
The latter, a lattice of stacked-
by Shukhov, seemed to be the real
of Tatlin's tower. Shukhov was also responsible
res-
houses, but libraries were given more prominence, with a strong emphasis on literacy campaigns.
Above all, the buildings them-
selves were meant to serve as a new and more enduring form of monumental
propaganda.
The Zuev Workers' Club,
201
built
for the roof structure of two bus depots built by Melnikov.
by Golosov in Moscow, pivots expressively on a glass cylin-
Workers, the "victors" of the revolution, were at the heart of
der that houses a staircase connecting
the new urban policies. Prosperous companies
such as the
Ivanovo textile milis, Sverdlovsk steelworks, and Baku oil firms
Chapter 13 I Architecture
and revolution in Russia
the different parts of the
building. Located at the intersection of two streets, it appears as the hinge of the whole block.
203
Workers' Club, Konstantin
Burevestnik
Melnikov, Moscow,
USSR (Russia), 1927-9
204
Narkomfin
Communal
House, Moisei
Ginzburg and Ignati Milinis, Moscow, USSR (Russia), 1928-30
The five clubs in Moscow that Melnikov built practically taneously
in 1927-9 were a testament
inexhaustible
imagination
simul-
both to this architect's
and to the potential of a building
type that was in a perpetual state of experimentation.
The three
House, 204 was carried out under the aegis of Nikolai Miliutin, head of the People's Commissariat
for Finance. A veteran
Bolshevik who had studied architecture,
Miliutin commissioned
Ginzburg and Ignati Milinis to design a project to house his
balconies of the theater of the Rusakov Workers' Club 202 canti-
employees
lever over the street, while inside the seats face a stage wedged
itly taken from Le Corbusier - pilotis, ribbon windows, and roof
into a triangular
plan. The Burevestnik
terraces - the project combined
was remarkable
for its large convertible
Workers' Club 203 theater and flanking
in the heart of Moscow. Using a vocabulary
a glazed unit for communal
services with a long housing block. Most of the living quarters
tower, with a floor plan in the shape of a flower. Between the
were two- or three-Ievel "cells" whose spatial complexity
Kauchuk Workers' Club, a rather static vertical cylinder, and
pensated somewhat for their cramped dimensions.
the Svoboda Workers' Club, a horizontal cylinder with mobile
as a "transition"
walls, Melnikov's forms evolved from an almost conventional
all become "domestic communes"
monumentality
and a new, still undefined form of totally collectivized
to a search for kineticism,
an approach
he had
explic-
com-
Described
between traditional apartments, which had now shared by several tenants, dwelling,
pursued in his proposal for the Pravda Building competition
the building was remarkable for its precise design and care-
in 1924 and would further develop in his project for a theater
fui execution.
with a rotating stage in 1931.
ing in Sverdlovsk, 206 while Mikhail Barshch and Alexander
The second type of "social condenser"
was the "communal
->
8
Ginzburg followed it with another such build-
Pasternak built a more compact communal house in Moscow.
house," a residential complex with integrated services that was
AII these buildings were based on the model dwelling schemes
a direct descendant
developed
of the phalanstery, a utopian community
by Stroikom, or the State Building Committee
of the
inspired by the early socialist Charles Fourier in nineteenth-
Russian Republic, which carried out studies on how to reduce
century France. Like the "garden city," the "communal
the size of rooms and integrate services based on German
was more a slogan than a well-defined used to describe equipped
house"
concept. The term was
a wide variety of installations,
from the barely
dormitory recalling the dreariest workers' residences
and American examples. But radical projects such as Ivan Nikolaev's dormitory for students at the Moscow Textile Institute and the extremist ideas of young Constructivists
such as Sergei
of the pre-1914 period to Moscow apartment buildings with
Kuzmin, who insisted that life be regulated down to the minute,
standards that seem almost luxurious given the difficult condi-
quickly discredited
tions during the NEP. In the second half of the 1920s, full-scale
Moscow also became the site of residential buildings with less
experiments were carried out in an attempt to "reconstruct"
ambitious ideological
everyday life through the collectivization
of food services and
the very idea of the communal
house.
programs but powerful monumental
pres-
ence. These included the Dynamo Building by Fomin (1928-9),
reduction in the size of apartments; the provision of new, shared
which explored the potential of a "proletarian
facilities was intended to offset the small living unit. The most
House on the Embankment
productive of these experiments, the Narkomfin Communal
ment block built on the Moskva River across from the Kremlin.
Chapter 13
I
Architecture
and revolution in Russia
Doric," and the
by Boris lofan (1930), a huge apart-
205
Melnikov House, Konstantin Melnikov, Moscow,
..JSSR (Russia), 1927-9
206
Communal
House, Moisei Ginzburg,
Sverdlovsk
(Yekaterinburg),
USSR (Russia), 1930
"he private house that Melnikov built lor himsell 205 with the
The disurbanist
=ees he earned Irom his workers' clubs commissions
remains
houses reached by automobiles
nique, as individual residences were unauthorized:
it consists
01 the time. In 1931 the Communist
brick walls
the "irresponsible"
01 two interlocking
cylindrical
and lozenge-shaped
towers with stuccoed
windows that are reminiscent 01 peasant
ouses and the towers of Russian fortresses.
model 01 a territory dol1ed with individual was impracticable
in the USSR
Party called to account
architects who had proposed such plans,
decreeing the "socialist reconstruction"
01 existing cities. This
policy would be carried out with the participation
of hundreds
01 architects and engineers lrom Germany, who had been led to emigrate either by the economic
Polemics and rivalries
crisis in Germany, as was
the case with Ernst May, or by an al1raction to the USSR's revNith the launch 01 the USSR's lirst Five Year Plan in 1927, the
olutionary ideals, as with Hannes Meyer. From 1930 to 1935
forced march toward industrialization
these loreigners designed most 01 the new neighborhoods
ion 01 thousands assistance
ollactories
builtthe
Factory in Leningrad 01932
and hundreds 01 new cities. The
01 Western architects
endelsohn
spurred the construc-
was solicited. Thus Erich
components
and housing lor decades to come.
Krasnoe Znamia (Red Banner) Textile
The 1931 decision
in 1926-8,
made at a time when disagreements
and in the period leading up
Albert Kahn's lirm built several hundred lactories
with
shipped Irom the United States. The brutal indus-
in favor 01 socialist urban planning was
become particularly
bitter, with young architects who delined
01 rural areas raised the ques-
themselves as "proletarians"
ion 01 what lorm the country's
urban planning should take. In
course. The competing
the creation 01 a dense
network 01 medium-sized
cities - the "urbanists"
against the "disurbanists,"
who sprang Irom the OSA and were
proponents
01 a radical decentralization
eradication
01 cities. Formulated
- laced 011
leading to the total
on the occasion
01 compe-
between ASNOVA and
OSA - which had steadily escalated through the 1920s - had
rialization and collectivization
1929 and 1930 those who supported
and
delined the standards that would be applied to Soviet planning
campaigns
politicizing the architectural
dis-
lactions radicalized their positions, and
targeted several architects. Leonidov, lor one, was
harshly criticized tor the "lack 01 realism" 01 his glass prísrns, while Melnikov was taken to task lor his relentless individualism. The work 01the Leningrad architect lakov Chernikhov, whose boundless visual imagination took shape in unbuildable
"archi-
titions held in 1929 lor a "green city" near Moscow and in
tectural lantasies" 207 based on machine torrns, lurther contrib-
1930 lor the plan 01 the industrial city 01 Magnitogorsk,
uted to the characterization utopians ..• 10
dis-urbanist Okhitovich
position - as theorized - may be understood
to the communal ported ..•
9
by the sociologist
as a sell-critical
the Mikhail
01 the Constructivists
as complete
reaction
house projects they had previously sup-
The Palace of the Soviets competition
Miliutin proposed a third option: the "linear city," 208
based on the late nineteenth-century planner Soria y Mata.
concept 01 the Spanish
The project ter a Palace 01 the Soviets, intended to symbolize the return 01the Russian capital to Moscow alter two centuries
170
I
171
207
Architectural
Fantasy, lakov Chernikhov,
1931
01 a new proletarian state, served as a
and the establishment
pretext tor the Communist
Party - which up till then had cau-
The competition Communist
coincided with a 1932 decision by the
01 literary and
Party regarding the "reorganization
tiously avoided taking sides in the rival currents 01 revolution-
artistic unions." AII existing groups were dissolved - to the
ary fervor - to lormulate an oflicial position on architecture.
reliel 01 some - and architects were invited to join a central-
lor a Palace 01 Labor had been held in
An initial competition
ized union. Projects already underway were carried through
1923. Though the Vesnin brothers' proposal lor a composition
in aclimate
01 volumes leaturing allusions to Auguste Perret made the big-
the decision in the Palace 01 the Soviets competition
gest impact, Noa Trotsky won that competition
direction ter public architecture, which soon became the only
with a neo-
international
set a new
option available, moving it in the direction 01 historicist mon-
Byzantine project that was soon abandoned. In 1931 an ambitious
that remained pluralistic lor a lew more years. But
competition,
launched
as
umentality. While the Vesnin brothers were still able to real-
il in emulation
01 those tor the Tribune Building in Chicago and the League 01 Nations in Geneva, called ter a project
ize their Palace 01 Culture lor the ZIL Automobile Moscow 209 unhampered
to be built on a site along the Moskva River across Irom the
ers' club ever built - Le Corbusier was able to linish his
Factory in
- without doubt the largest work-
Kremlin. Alter a lirst round restricted to Soviet teams, notable
Centrosoyuz Building in 1936 only in the lace 01 violent attacks
Western architects,
on its radical modernity. The trends 01 the 1920s, beginning
including
Gropius, Poelzig, Perret, and Le
Corbusier, were invited to submit proposals proceedings collectives"
a veneer 01 impartiality
so as to give the
and openness.
were also asked to contribute
"Workers'
their own naive
with Constructivism, proponents
were now rejected and their most radical
marginalized,
as was the case with Leonidov, or
killed, as with Okhitovich, who died in a Gulag camp in 1937.
designs. In early 1932, three 01 the 272 projects received were
Stigmatized lor his impenitent idiosyncratic
selected: those by Zholtovsky,
was lorced into retirement at the age 01 lilty.
young American
lolan, 210 and an unknown
named Hector Hamilton. Alter another round,
lolan was awarded the commission, and Vladimir Gellreikh tial project combined auditoriums
with Vladimir Shchuko
named as his collaborators. the requested
15,000- and 5,000-seat
with a statue 01 Vladimir Lenin standing on a tall
base. Directly intervening many architectural
in the design process, Stalin made
"suggestions."
->
11
One 01 them resulted in
the statue being placed atop one 01 the auditoriums, making the project virtually unbuildable, recognized
lolan's ini-
in the late 1940s.
Chapter 13 [ Architecture
and revolution in Russia
thereby
as was inevitably
gestures, Melnikov ->
12
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Linear City, project, Nikolai Miliutin, Nizhny Novgorod,
USSR (Russia), 1930
Palace 01 Soviets, project, Boris lolan, 1931-4
)j' ..,.-
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,
.<
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209
Palace 01 Culture lar the ZIL Automobile
Factory, Alexander
Vesnin, Leonid Vesnin and Viktor Vesnin, Moscow, USSR (Russia), 1931-6
172
I
173
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Architecture and revolution in Russia
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40. BecTMHHcTepcKoe AC5C5ncTBo e JloHAoHe-68 M. 44. CoC5op Ho r pna a B napI1lt
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