Beginnings of Modern Architecture

The road to defining a modern architecture was filled with various contrasting ideas. This blog will contrast the Muller House by Adolf Loos with House 22 by Richard Docker. Both where influential to the modernist movement yet they both had their own unique and varied ideas for reaching the goal of creating one common architectural style.


Adolf Loos developed a system for planning spaces called Raumplan. Raumplan was characterized by the organization of varying volumes of space, eliminating a central hall and replacing it with a stair case, placing windows to allow necessary light and frame specific views, and having a minimal exterior enclosure that was meant to reflect a difference from the public outside and the private interior. This Raumplan system is most evident in Loos’ Villa Muller located in Prague, Czech Republic.






Villa Muller Facade



In Villa Muller the procession of room goes from low ceilings to gradually higher ceilings and eventually up a stair case to a double high sitting room. This system of compression and release is also a big element in many of frank Lloyd Wright’s Designs also being designed thousands of miles away in the same time period. As you move through the spaces in the in Villa Muller the journey allows views into different rooms due to the varying volumes of spaces. Once at the top of the house there is a roof terrace with a large opening in the wall to frame a view of the Prague cathedral in the distance.






Villa Muller section showing raumplan



The simplistic plane exterior façade is in great contrast with the material rich interiors of the building. The outside is basically a large white cube with punched windows highlighted by a yellow paint trim. This appearance of being cold and uninviting was the intention of Adolf Loos. He purposely made the exterior to function only as in enclosure to create and emphasize a separation between the public outside and private inside. The unornamented yet material rich inside emphasizes Loos opinion on how people should lead two different lives, a public and private one.








Villa Muller interior



Loos despised ornament, in an essay titled Ornament and Crime from 1908 he stated that ornament should be striped of objects in order to culturally evolve, optimize the use of resources and eliminate waste. While I agree with him that ornament doesn’t optimize our resources I don’t agree with him on that fact that having it make us less evolved people. I also believe that while he eliminated ornament from his building in a traditional sense, he still created ornamental interiors by his use of materials, so one could argue that materials are in fact still ornament.

Richard Docker was one of nineteen architects to design a house for the Werkbund Exhibition of 1927. The houses that were built were located in Weissenhof Estate which is a housing development in Stuttgart, Germany built for the exhibition. While some of the houses still exist, many others were destroyed in WWII. Adolf Loos was supposed to be a member of the Werkbund and design a house for the competition but backed out do to disagreements with the Werkbond.

Richard Docker’s House 22, designed for the Werkbond Exposition, was designed with the intent to create a piece that was part of the Weissenhoff Estate. The goal was to present the estate as a whole rather than as collection of different architectural works. Docker once said, “Just as the individual space, the room, the piece of furniture, the aperture, the material, the construction system, etc., are interdependent members of a specific whole, the building itself is only one stone in the manifold structure of an urban organism.”

In the layout of the house, the rooms are created by an intersection of the same geometric rectangular shape. While the intersection of spaces is similar to loos’ design, it is different in that it is only an intersection in plan view; there is not a change in volumes like Loos. Also, because of the intersections of rectangles, a main passage route is created. From this hallway you can access multiple rooms. This is another difference between Docker and Loos because Loos would design his houses to be moved through in a progression from area to area without the use of a corridor.

Yet another difference between the two architects and their respective works is that Docker makes a connection between public and private. In our progression through House 22 there is a central main entry path that leads through terraced gardens and continues up onto a covered terrace that leads into the living room. This whole path of movement is visible to the public. This public journey to the main entrance bears much resemblance to one of Loos’ plans by moving from space to space and the uses of elevation changes, but this also contrast with Loos in that he would not divide his public and private in such a manner. In conclusion both the Werkbund and Adolf Loos greatly contributed to the modernist movement. Though they had separate ideas for modern architecture they both helped to push the envelope on modern design.

Art Neoveau’s influence on modern architecture

Art Nouveau became a prominate architectural style through 1890 to 1910. The style of architecture inspired by natural forms and structures. Architects tried to harmonize with nature, and took a wholistic approch designing every detail down to the furniture. This period was the paradoxial shift in architecture that influanced modern architecture. This was an intense quick change in thinking. Decoration became more then a suplimental addition to beautify the project; it became intergrated into the structure. Alan Colquhoun defines the Art Nouveau movement as merging ornament with classical form of an object, “animating it with new life” (Colquhoun 17). William Curtis elaborates on this point saying that Art Nouveau was the first style to begin to utilize the new technologies to their full potential. Merging form and ornament allows the buildings to be fluid and and full of motion. This gives the building a single experience instead of or just an assemblage of parts.  This is evident in the staircase detail below by Victor Horta. Three key players in the art nouveau movement were Victor Horta, Henry Van der Velde, and Henry Guimard.

Victor Horta was heavily influanced by Viollet- Le- Duc. He started out designing neoclassical buildings which was just a slight variation of Viollet Le Duc’s style. As Horta delveoped his own architecural style he built upon Viollet Le Duc’s principles to develop the begings to Art Nouveau. This style started to blend expose structures with organic motifs. This style started to give an open and flowing plan with every element of the planned and intergral to the design.

staircase of the Maison & Atelier by Horta 

Henry Van der Velde began his career as a painter. As a designer architecture seemed to be his next logical step. His background as a painter lead him to a different mindset then other architects of the time. Henry Van der Velde’s goal was to to create a daily life influanced and surrounded by art. He gave lectures on his theory of intergration of structure and ornament to premote his new ideas on architecture.  This self promotion pushed him and his theories to the forefront of the Art Nouveau Movement.

                                                                                                                                                   

Henry Van der Velde Chair

Hector Guimard brought the Art Nouveau movement from Belgium to France. This let this new style of architecture to influence and be viewed by a new society. Guimard had a strong relationship with Vioolet – Le – Duc. Guimard’s earliest works were soley based off Viollet – Le – Duc’s works. His first major work (Castle Beranger in Paris, France) was a modificated interpertation of Horta’s apartment’s in Belgium. Perhaps his most famous works were his Paris metropolitan stations.

 Castel Bonranger Gate Detail

Castel Bonranger by Guimard

                                                          

                                                                     Paris Metro Station

  Victor Horta, Henry Van der Velde, and Hector Guimard helped to merge pervious separate ways of thinkning into one wholistic idea. Before their influances structure and ornament used to be separate entites. The Art Nouveau movement though it was short lived blended structure, ornament, interior design, and environment in to one unified entity. This helped to push the limits of design and technology. So though short lived the the art Nouveau movement altered the contempory approch to design at the time paving the way for modern architecture.   

Reflections over Semper, Ruskin, and Viollet-Le-Duc

           The three minds of the 19^th century that greatly contributed to the modern architecture movement are Gottfried Semper, John Ruskin, and Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. In this blog I will compare the individual beliefs, styles, and view on architecture of these three men, and will identify the significant elements of their theories, the approach to building and restoring architecture, pointing to a key architectural project or work. Discuss the criticisms and debates surrounding their work.

            Viollet-Le-Duc and Ruskin both were both fond of Gothic architecture, but with two completely different reasoning’s. Ruskin favored Gothic style because he approached it with an emotional view and admired the free expression of the artist for the ornamental decorations. Gothic Architecture also embodied the organic relationship between worker, guild community natural environment and god. This drove Ruskin to adopt the idea that a building only becomes architecture once its ornament surpasses that of that of the core functions of the building. Ruskin introduced his study: a work entitled The Seven Lamps of Architecture, which defined seven moral qualities he saw in architecture (sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and obedience). I would have to disagree with Ruskin about ornamentation defining architecture, because although art is nice if a structure fails to complete its primary functions then it can’t serve its purpose the entire structure becomes just something to look at. Ruskin fervently advocated preservation of structures, stating that restoration is “the most total destruction a building can suffer” (Pevsner 38), He went on to found Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

            Viollet-Le-Duc admired Gothic Architecture for the logic in the design and construction of them. This leads him to an opposite viewpoint that focused on science and reason behind the building and not for its ornamentation stating that a building’s looks should not contradict its function but rather have a purpose, as good architecture is only defined as being rational. I tend to agree with Viollet-Le-Duc and can tell his ideas were later adopted by Louis Sullivan who stated “form follows function.” Viollet-le-Duc is passionate about the restoration of buildings, but takes his restorations past general repairs to the point that he reinterprets the building in a state that it was not originally before in a state that it was not originally before. Viollet-Le-Duc believed in expressing materials including iron which he held in high regards for its aesthetic potential and structural qualities.

Viollet-le-Duc’s most famous restoration work Medieval Fortress of Carcassonne (1853), demonstrates the criticism and debate surrounding his methods.  To restore the fortress, Viollet-le-Duc disregarded the historical time period of its construction and applied an architectural style of a different region altogether, constructing colorful pitched roofs onto the fortress.  Opponents of this interpretative restoration like Ruskin view this as destruction of historical work; others see it as an artistic statement of the potential of a building. In my personal opinion I find it to be a great way to reconstitute a structure so it can meet the standard for its modern functions and styles.

  

            Semper admired Greek architecture for its social and political values while condemning Gothic architecture. Semper organized his thoughts into “The Four Elements of Architecture.” He said that all build form was divided into four categories: the “hearth” (the communal prerequisite for architecture and the basic social point for families, it is the germ of civilization and is the central element around which the other three group themselves), “substructure” (used to raise the hearth off the damp ground), “roof” ( to protect the fire from rain), and “enclosure” ( to keep out weather, and conceived of as general non load bearing walls). From this idea came today’s modern curtain walls. Semper agreed with Viollet-Le-Duc in in that they both believed that a building should always show its structure and in a style that used tectonics. According to Semper, architectural style was only true if “its forms were motivated by construction, material, and the prevailing socio-economic, cultural, and climatic conditions.” (Zucker 9) Semper sided with Viollet-Le-Duc on the restoration verse preservarion debate. Ruskin and Semper disliked the use of iron and favored the use of stone construction.  Semper believed iron would lead to the development of a new style bad for an architect’s creativity.  Besides stone, he used local materials, such as plaster and paint in the Semper Opera instead of marble.