Architecture Ruminations on Some Fundame

Architecture
Ruminations on Some
Fundamentals
Architecture
One of the chapters of Le Corbusier’s seminal work ‘Vers Une
Architecture’ is entitled ‘Architecture, Pure Creation of the Mind’.
Many, have perhaps interpreted this statement as a support for the
idea that ‘anything goes’ in architecture, particularly in a time
when technology allows almost limitless possibilities in this regard.
What Le Corbusier actually said on the subject is as follows:
‘You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses
and palaces; that is construction. Ingenuity is at work.
But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say : “This is
beautiful”. That is Architecture. Art enters in.
My house is practical. I thank you, as I might thank Railway engineers or the
telephone service. You have not touched my heart.
But suppose that walls rise towards heaven in such a way that I am moved. I perceive
your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal, charming or noble. The stones
you have erected tell me so. You fix me to the place and my eyes regard it. They
behold something which expresses a thought. A thought which reveals itself without
word or sound, but solely by means of shapes which stand in a certain relationship to
one another. These shapes are such that they are clearly revealed in light. The
relationships between them have not necessarily any reference to what is practical or
descriptive. They are a mathematical creation of your mind. They are the language
of Architecture. By use of inert materials and starting from conditions more or less
utilitarian, you have established certain relationships which have aroused my
emotions. This is Architecture.’
Pevsner was of course paraphrasing this when he said:
‘A BICYCLE shed is a building. Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture’
What is curious about both quotes however, is the extent to which
they seem to take for granted the architect’s ability to fulfil the
utilitarian demands of ‘shelter’. Well, since the time ‘Vers Une..’
the world has experienced roughly 80 years of cold, leaky,
overheated and ‘badly maintained’ (for which we should really read
badly designed) modernist (Corb’s creations included) and varying
hues of Post-Modernist buildings that would suggest the faith
placed by Pevsner and Corb in the architect’s practical abilities has
perhaps more often than not been misplaced.
This reminds us that in fact ‘the practical house’, for which Corb
would thank his architect as he thanked a railway engineers has
throughout history been the building type that architect have had
least to do with. More often than not, such houses have been
planned and built by the simple people who lived in them with
succeeding generations learning from their forefathers by osmosis.
Today, the existence of specialist house builders continues this
separation between architects and mass housing (after a brief and
disastrous attempt at bringing them together in the 60’s and 70’s)
Figure 1. Park Hill Flats, Sheffield, 1961.
The higher building types; Palaces, temples, art galleries and the
like, have always been a different matter. In Ancient Egypt, the
high priest was responsible for the planning and erection of such
structures for which the inherent ability to inspire awe, love, hope
and fear was perhaps more important than the kinds of utilitarian
concerns mentioned earlier. The rain and sun of course had to be
kept out, but craftsman would see to that rather than the high
priest. It’s easy to see how the high priest eventually became the
architect. The thing about a high priest of course, is that he can tell
you what is good architecture and what isn’t, and you have to
listen!
Figure 2. Ancient Egyptian Temple at Karnak.
But, as I sit here 4 months unemployed having recently qualified
after 13 yrs of hard slog (almost twice the length of time it takes to
become a GP), I can tell you that there are far too many architects
in the market today to justify having ‘temple or palace design’ as
the be all and end all of your skill-set. The replacement of skilled
craftsmen by ‘operatives’ in conjunction with the practicable
measurable outcomes that the’ sustainability agenda’ demands of
modern building practice has also meant that architects have in
recent years had to learn the art of the practical and the utilitarian,
and the rise of real proficiency in this area is to my mind very
recent, emerging, with few exceptions from that generation of
architects, at least in the UK, who were training during the fall out
from the ill-fated housing experiments of the 60’s and 70’s.
Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates were both born in 1964,
which means they were 20 yrs old when Prince Charles made his
famous ‘Carbuncle’ speech to the RIBA. At the turn of the 21st
Century, about 70 yrs after Corb had talked about it, Sergison
Bates architects produced a series of designs for mass housing that
you could thank them for as you would thank a railway engineer.
Figure 3. Sergison Bates unbuilt entry for the 2001 Circle 33 Innovation in Housing competition,
Bow east London.
Figure 4. Plans and section of the Circle 33 housing competition entry. The plans cleverly offer
potential occupants flexibility and a semi external area (which can be used for drying clothes) by
separating out the circulation and the ‘habitable room’. There are 3 plan types, one of which
caters for the expansion of the family unit that is common to Asian families (of which there are a
great number in east London) as a result of marriage. This, in conjunction with the high level of
development of the drawings in general (it is clear that construction has been account for from
the very beginning) make the scheme a highly convincing ‘real world’ proposal.
At a time when some 60’s housing wasn’t just leaking but starting
to become unsafe, and when 16 yrs after HRH’s famous speech the
profession had really hit rock bottom with QSs and Project
Managers beginning to seriously encroach upon the traditional
territory of the architect, the appearance of Sergison Bates’s
housing designs in the most popular architectural journals, and
even broadsheets at the time, did indeed touch many hearts. Their
work in the field of mass housing displayed a knowledge and
mastery of the latest commercial construction techniques, coupled
with an awareness of the way in which such issues impinge upon
architectural theory. There was also an acute awareness of the
need to give prospective residents tangible benefits and a grasp of
the language that policy makers used to define and measure such
benefits. Ideologically, the non-architect designed pattern-book
Georgian and Victorian houses and housing blocks of London were
a real inspiration to them. We had really never seen their like
before in the UK. Sergison Bates were on their way to becoming
part of the new architectural establishment in the UK , succeeding
the likes of Foster and Rogers, the inveterate high priests of
modern Hi-Tech palaces and temples.
Figure 5. SBa’s Double house in
Stevenage (1998) has the same high
level of resolution as their Bow
housing scheme. It is a highly
convincing attempt to contribute to
the debate on the industrialisation
of mass housing provision in the
UK, and to addresses the
disjunction between architectural
vision and end user aspiration (of
which 60s housing was an emblem)
by acknowledging such aspiration
by accommodating it in the form of
the architecture.
Figure 6. SBa’s ingenious assisted self build housing at Tilbury (2001) addressed youth
unemployment and the skills shortage in the construction industry by giving young unemployed
to learn on the job during its construction.
But the excitement of these achievements was short lived, partly
because the housebuilders and policy makers did not share the
enthusiasm that the architectural critics had for the Sergison Bates
housing solutions (and so did not put them into production) and
partly because most architects are less interested in housing than
architectural critics. In housing, because of the inevitable link to
public provision, the constraints are many and the rewards small.
It’s much more fun and profitable to be a ‘high priest’, building
palaces and temples. Soon Sergsion Bates’s interests would also
shift to this direction and liberated from the more exacting
practical demands of housing, their subsequent proposals for
buildings of a more public nature shone more of a light on their
approach to the manipulation of the language of architecture.
From their early writings it is possible to identify certain recurring
themes:
1. A commitment to the exploration of ‘Thinking, Building &
Dwelling’ through their work.
2. The above in turn led to the crucial discoveries of the
importance of the image in the communication of
architecture and the power of association in the perception of
architecture, and the subsequent relegation of constructional
means to achieve ends dictated by these two discoveries.
That said….
3. A commitment to employing construction in a disciplined
and deliberate manner. This is important since Sergison
Bates had observed that Le Corbusier had lacked such
discipline in his practical approach to almost exactly the
same issues. This lack of discipline was probably at least
partly responsible for the technical failures of some of his
own built works, as well as those of his successors / followers
(including those who built housing in the UK during the 60’s
& 70’s).
4. Following on from (2), a belief in the over-arching
importance of the collective experience of the everyday and
the commonplace.
In the relegation of construction language to another (considered
higher) ideal, the approach of Sergison Bates and Le Corbusier has
been remarkably similar. Apart from the discipline with which
construction is employed, the only significant difference is in the
nature of that ideal; Abstract beauty for Le Corbusier; collective
taste, perception and experience for Sergison Bates, and one would
think that the choice of ideal for Sergison Bates was heavily
influenced by the period of ill fated ‘top down’ solutions to the
post-war housing crisis, where high priest architects and
corresponding pharaoh-like local authorities conspired to decide
what was ‘best’ for the public without either consulting them or
properly understanding them, with disastrous results.
In fact, it is striking that in our time the traditional institutions of
society-such as religion, tradition, central government / royal
authority even marriage and the family among other similar
things, have been taken down from their pedestal and replaced
with ‘icons’ to anti-authoritarianism in the form of hyperindividualism, anti establishmentarianism and consumerism.
Sergison Bates’s approach to architecture greatly reflects this trend
which is perhaps part of its appeal for many.
Le Corbusier’s ideal was inspired by his personal experience of the
architecture of the Near East, particularly the ancient works of
Greece and particularly the Parthenon. A glance at the history of
Ancient Greek temple design and the Parthenon is highly
instructive the cases of both Le Corbusier and Sergison Bates.
Transfiguration
It is more or less accepted that the stone Greek Temple type is
derived basically from vernacular timber construction. Thus the
evolution of the temple type is an ancient example of the raising of
the everyday and the commonplace to a transcendent position,
almost literally by the time we get to the Parthenon. Thus in a
strange way this ancient type is closely related to the work of
Sergison Bates.
But in the transfiguration of the basic
constructional elements from timber to stone, the similarity ends
since once the basic ‘conversion’ was achieved, the Ancient Greeks
realised that the newly realised stone building was not simply a
stone version of it’s timber forerunner. Another dimension of
beauty could now be glimpsed, one belonging wholly to the realm
of stone, thus began the evolution that eventually led in the end,
through the work and stewardship of sculptor Phidias (who in fact
supervised a team of architects), to the Parthenon and the erstwhile
timber shed eventually became something entirely truly
transcendent. This is what Le Corbusier was referring to when he
said:
But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say : “This is
beautiful”. That is Architecture. Art enters in.
It is evident that Corb was well aware of the evolution that would
eventually end up in the Parthenon (p. 134) having made it a
central part of the seminal thesis he recorded in his Vers Une… In
stark contrast, it is just this aspect, the magical transformation of
utility into plastic art, that has hitherto eluded Sergison Bates, they
perhaps still being in the process of raising the everyday and
commonplace to the level of the ‘special’, just as the Greeks had
had with the first temple design, a stage that Corb sees well
represented in the temple at Paestum as recorded in Vers Une...
Figure 7. The Parthenon
Figure 8. Temple of Athena, Paestum
And it also eluded Louis Kahn, who had a similar attitude to
constructional discipline as Sergison Bates and who more or less
held (like the Romans) that the important thing was the efficacy of
the structural system, a fact born out by his evincing a preference
for the Temple Paestum over the Parthenoni.
After the reconstitution of the classical lexicon through the
discovery of Vitruvius at the beginning of the Renaissance, it was
left to Michelangelo, the genius of sculpture and figurative
representation, to pick up where Phidias had left off. John
Summerson elucidates the effect that Michelangelo had in this
regard in the development of the art of architecture:
Figure 9. Raphael window
Figure 10. Michelangelo niche
After Bramante and his followers had restored the classical language, with all its grammatical
logic, to the sixteenth century, the equilibrium was at once upset by the most powerful
imagination of the age. Michelangelo mastered the architectural prose of the ancients but
made out of it a new architectural poetry, the poetry of a sculptor. Every element in this
window by Raphael in the Palazzo Pandolfini, Florence, can be described in Vitruvian terms.
But to describe this niche by Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel, Florence, 1521-24, would be
beyond the Vitruvian vocabulary: its intensity of feeling defies technical description. In
Michelangelo’s vestibule to the Laurentian Library, Florence 1525 – 34, columns retreat
irrationally into walls whose negative prominence is perversely emphasised by blind windows.
In much the same way that film critics like to speculate regarding
the ‘place’ inside themselves where a certain actor may draw a
particular performance from, much has been said regarding the
‘source’ of Michelangelo’s startling architectural creations, but the
for the purposes of this article, I believe that it is enough to draw
attention to his ability as a sculptor and the mastery over figurative
aspects and his chosen material (stone) that this gave him with
regards to what Corb referred to as the ‘plastic’ art of architecture.
Perhaps all this reveals the reason why Ruskin (who was an early
influence of Corb when he trained as an engraver of watches) was
so adamant that proficiency in sculpture (among other things) was
necessary for the man who wished to be an architectii.
Figure 11. Le Corbusier with some of his work.
Figure 12.
(1920)
‘Still Life’ by Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier both sculpted and investigated the 3rd dimension
through his ‘Purist’ painting (in which he raised ‘everyday objects’
such as bottles, and glasses to the level of being worthy subjects for
portrait art).
Figure 13. The plan of Corb’s seminal Villa Savoye in which the discoveries he made through
painting are pivotal.
Was it his awareness of the importance of these skills in the pursuit
of plastic perfection, that enabled him to first play a major part in
establishing the white flat roofed, freely planned, plate glass
windowed Modernist ‘standard’ (exemplified by works such as the
Villa Savoye), and then in his later years, when he began to identify
ever more closely with the true nature of concrete construction
rather than the image that the Modern Movement had given it
(many of the ‘white concrete’ buildings, including the Villa Savoye,
were in fact conventional masonry buildings covered in render), to
disrupt the purity of the Modernist standard through such
hauntingly poetic works, such as La Tourette and Chandigargh, in
much the same way as Michelangelo had disrupted the classical
‘standard’ 400 years before him?
Figure 14. Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye (1929)
Figure 15. Ronchamp Chapel (1954)
The passing of the baton
Following through the argument to its logical conclusion, it is only
natural to look for a contemporary torch-bearer of this narrow
tradition that seems to take in only Phidias, Michelangelo and Le
Corbusier. What may be the qualifications that one would expect
of such a torch bearer? Firstly there is the consistency of medium
itself. It could be said that Phidias and Michelangelo both built up
over many years an intimate relationship with stone so that their
knowledge of it went beyond intellectual and technical
considerations into the realm of ‘feeling’. It could be said that Corb
had exactly the same kind of relationship with Reinforced
Concrete.
(i) Knowledge, art and the middle path between
freedom and restraint
The realm of feeling, of direct experience, is where plastic art
lives, since it is surely feeling that is responsible for the
refinements that separate the Parthenon from the temple at
Paestum, that gives rise to Michelangelo’s niche at the Medici
chapel, and that is the driving force behind Corb at Ronchamp. La
Tourette and Chandigargh. It is deep knowledge manifested as
feeling that liberates the artist and their art from the safe confines
of received systems (be they the system of classical architecture or
that of modernism) in such a way so as to enable them to take their
art to a higher planes. And entering into the realm of feeling
necessarily means making it personal or even wilful and leading
one to consider questions of ‘composition’ and other such
unscientific things. The personal stamp of Michelangelo and Corb
is evident in all their work, and this unavoidable.
In today’s post enlightenment society, we are distrustful of
feeling and intuition in our design processes which means that the
above criteria are beyond a great many architects of the present
and recent past. Those who do have a recognisable ‘style’ tend not
to ally it to the innateness of a chosen constructional technology or
material (the style increasingly nowadays emerging in spite of the
construction technology involved, which would seem to apply to
the likes of Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid).
Figure 16 Museum of Transport,
Glasgow.
Concept
and
under
construction
Is the free flowing form of Zaha Hadid Architects’
Glasgow Museum of Transport reflective of the steel
structure used to construct it?
Also, there are architects who claim to dwell in the realm of
tectonic culture and who profess to stick strictly to natures of the
materials with which they tend to work, one particularly thinks of
Peter Zumthor in this regard. However, the reality is that such
architects seem to work within self imposed constraints in an effort
to achieve a certain pre conceived aesthetic and perhaps do not
approach the full range of forms that a given constructional
technology may offer.
For example, the arch is a completely valid expression of the
nature of brick which Zumthor has never employed in the brick
buildings that he has designed.
Figure 17. Is the form of Peter Zumthor’s brick Columba museum inspired by pure tectonic and
/or phenomenological concerns, or is it simply the re-use of a tried and tested formula (see slate
Vals Thermal Baths below).
Today we stand at the far end of an architectural history which
latterly seems to have been dominated by a multitude of ‘isms’ and
movements and perhaps this is why as architects we often struggle
to free ourselves from self imposed intellectual ‘straight jackets’.
The danger of this is that we nurture an inability to ask
uncomfortable, unfashionable but completely valid questions
during the course of our work.
Both Corb – who turned his back on the five points of
architecture in his later years-, and Michelangelo – who created
the light hearted Porta Pia at the end of a career which had great
significance for the subsequent history of architecture, did not
suffer from this kind of self imprisonment.
Figure 18. The Porta Pia, Michelangelo’s final architectural work.
Even when architects do probe, question and experiment to the
limits’ of technology or formal vocabulary, they tend to fall into the
trap of making such excursions their daily bread rather than the
rich cake to be consumed on special well chosen occasions that
they should constitute, thereby making themselves irrelevant to all
but themselves.
This is something that neither Corb nor
Michelangelo were guilty of, appropriate opportunities for
experimentation presented themselves and were seized upon, and
then subsequently informed the main journey.
(ii) Total architecture in the modern era
But there is something more. Le Corbusier differs from both
Phidias and Michelangelo in that he designed everyday housing for
the working classes as well as the ‘temples’ of Ronchamp, La
Tourette and Chandigargh, and virtually all building types in
between. It seems to me that for the modern architect, the
knowledge gleaned from this kind of ‘total practice’ is as important
in the making of my overall argument as the knowledge gained
from the consistent employment of a single constructional system
over many years.
To come full circle as regards this essay, the modern era of
architecture heralded the decline of the ‘temple’ building type
(religious buildings, seats of power and authority etc..) as the
staple of architectural practice and the rise of the mundane in
importance. The question arises; can a modern architect who only
knows how to design temples (which in the post industrial era
mostly constitute art galleries and museums) be considered a true
master? Well, the answer is surely’ not if architects are to retain
the relevance they enjoyed in the pre industrial era. In a world
which has come to be dominated (as Le Corbusier predicted) by
science and engineering, at the expense of religion most
conspicuously, the concept of architect as high priest has had to be
reinvented. It is not enough for architects today to retreat into the
mountains, off the beaten track of the mainstream, concerning
themselves only with ‘the higher things’ (culture, perhaps even
spirituality). Corb realised this in theory if not always in practice,
so it is arguably imperative that any successor should maintain
some kind of relationship with the mundane.
The Successor
So who it that might fulfil the prerequisites for successorship? The
purposes of this exercise, I’m going to limit myself to the Pritzker
Laureates
http://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/index.html
It is immediately apparent that the vast majority of these great
architects can be discounted as possible successors to the legacy
that I have been discussing simply because there are exclusively
builders of ‘temples’. They are architects of the extraordinary; the
mundane simply does not figure as part of there oeuvre. This fact
already makes me question the validity of this particular criterion,
but lets complete the game!
Of the list of laureates it is only, it seems to me, Luis
Barragan, Aldo Rossi, Alvaro Siza and Jorn Utzon who have
demonstrated through their built work an awareness of and
relationship with the mundane. In my opinion, of these four only
Siza and Utzon have also investigated the plastic potentialities of
constructional systems through the building of modern temples, in
the way that Le Corbusier did (and it must be said that in this, they
are joined by just about every other Pritzker laureate).
(i) Utzon
Utzon was exceptional, even among the Pritzker laureates have
distinguished himself in the arena of the mundane with his Kingo
and Fredensborg houses (where he echoed Corb in his admiration
and use of Eastern precedents)
and in the realm of the extraordinary with, most notably, the
Sydney Opera House; an iconic, soaring structure which reveals
itself to be, on closer inspection, very firmly grounded. A tour de
force in the transfiguration of ordinary -industrial- architectural
language into plastic artistic excellence, the commission for which
he won, bizarrely, almost immediately after the Kingo project. It’s
as if Utzon echoed the Ancient Greeks in raising the mundane to
the transcendent level to create a new order. Key to this
achievement was the recognition, either consciously or
unconsciously, of the importance of industry in collective modern
experience. Industry, industrial production and the portal framed
factory buildings that are absolutely central to that production;
these things are at the heart of the story of modern life as told
through the language of architecture. This lies behind the power of
the Sydney Opera House.
Figure 19. Jorn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House
Figure 20. The architectural order devised by
Utzon, one of the ‘shell’ forms.
Figure 21. Eugene Fressinet, Airship hanger at Orly. Manifestation of the post industrial
mundane or a temple to the machine?
Utzon managed the same trick later on with the Bagsvaerd Church;
a building which clearly both is and isn’t an industrial shed at the
same time. The intellectual and artistic freedom was also there
particularly in his unbuilt designs, some of which border on he
wacky, but which no doubt played an important part in his
development He is a worthy successor to the legacy so skilfully
inherited by Le Corbusier, but so is Alvaro Siza.
Figure 22. Utzon’s Bagsvaerd church,
Copenhagen (and right)
Figure 23. Jorn Utzon, Project for the Utzon home, Bayview, Sydney. The slightly ‘off the wall’
unbuilt design demonstrates that Utzon nurtured the same fundamental intellectual and artistic
freedom that we also find in the work of Corb and Michelangelo
(ii) Siza
Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza, (who strangely enough brings us
once again, full circle as he is a major influence on architects
Sergison Bates) is difficult to pin down as an architect but with
regards to this essay a couple of things are important to note about
him.
Siza started his career as the architect of the ‘everyday and
ordinary’. His early work consists of housing, community centres,
provincial bank branches, parish halls and most famously a
swimming pool. The start of his career also coincided with the
Portugal’s own search for a ‘critical regionalism’ which was led by
Fernando Tavora (for whom Siza worked from 1955 to 1958) and
his state sponsored critical re-appraisal and search for the
Portuguese vernacular.
Figure 24. Alvaro Siza, Parish Centre, Matosinhos, Portugal, 1956
This search in the context of a modern industrial economy
had to be about the ‘image’ or ‘feeling’ of such a vernacular if it was
to avoid the pitfalls of pastiche and historicism, and this is exactly
the approach adopted by Sergison Bates which I mentioned at the
earlier. In stark contrast to Utzon’s meteoric rise, Siza’s career
then developed steadily with him designing ever more significant
housing projects (including some international ones) and ever
more and significant ‘parts of the city’ including important
institutions such as schools and universities (Most notably the
work he did for the Faculty of Architecture at the University of
Porto).
Siza not so much eclectic but studious, drew on the work of many
other architects to achieve his architectural aims (in a way echoing
Corb and his study of the ancient and Near East vernacular
architecture), tailoring the precedent to the task in hand, changing
it to suit local conditions and avoiding dogma.
Figure 25. Alvaro Siza. Malagueira Residential District, Evora, Portugal, 1977-97
Figure 26. Adolf Loos, Villa Muller Roof Terrace
Figure 27.
Portugal
Malagueira Residential District, Evora,
In this way, perhaps uniquely, one can see by turns the influence of
Frank Lloyd Wright, J.J.P Oud, Alvaro Aalto, Adolf Loos and Le
Corbusier in the work of Siza, even singling out the influence of
particular works. One can also see the language employed by him
developing into something ever more personal and abstract as he
gains more experience and confidence, and as the buildings he is
asked to design gradually grow in scale and importance, this is
particularly evident in his work for the University of Porto. It is
almost as if once a precedent is absorbed, filtered and employed by
Siza, he takes something ‘personal’ from the process that remains
with him and becomes evident in his work.
That Siza is an architect who really believes in learning, from
the architects that have come before him is evinced by his own
declaration that :
‘To know architecture, is to know the work of other architects’
Figure 28. Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, Portugal. 1987-93
Faces in the concrete?
Figure 29. School of Education, Setubal, Portugal, 1986 – 1994. A quirk in the structural order
creates character, but is it in fact rooted in the necessity to provide structural bracing?
In he mid 1980s, thirty years after he began to practice
architecture, the trajectory of Siza’s career changed abruptly as he
was commissioned to design the Galician Centre of Contemporary
Art at Santiago de Compostela in Spain. This was really Siza’s first
opportunity in his long career to play the role of ‘high priest’
building an important ‘temple’. A careful study of the building
reveals several synthesising concerns of the architect:
1. The accommodation of the programme in a sensible logical
arrangement (which he achieved by ‘paraphrasing’ Louis
Kahn’s servant and served space theme).
2. The need to create a building of ‘character’ that would
provide favourable conditions for the display of
contemporary art.
3. The setting of the large modern edifice in the historic
enclave and on top of all this (largely achieved by careful
massing and employment of Granite (the material of which
the adjacent historic convent is made) as the main cladding
material.
4.
The need for the building to be true to itself.
The 2nd and 4th points are of interest for the purposes of this essay.
One can think of many architects of significant ‘temple’ type
projects – large public buildings such as galleries and museums
who seek to solve the problem of, in Siza’s words ‘ the forlorn
encounter with a blank sheet of paper’ by limiting the possibilities
open to them. One way in which this is done is by focusing on the
function of the building so that orientation, layout, façade
configuration, section and even details are driven by one factor. In
many ways it’s a safety first strategy.
The reality is, as is the case with the classical language of
architecture, there are many more valid possibilities and avenues
than such architects allow themselves to believe, and there may
also be other driving factors whose importance approaches that of
the function of the building (Siza would put ‘character’ near the top
of such a group, the importance of which he no doubt learned
during his 30 years ‘knitting’ and ‘weaving’ new city organs into the
existing built environment).
Siza’s Galician Centre of Contemporary Art is a lesson in this
reality. Once Siza finds an optimal layout and organisation for the
building, he then sets about determining how he will ‘clothe’ this
diagram with the given constructional system (which given
budgetary restraints, had to be a frame building rather than a solid
stone one. The flexibility inherent in that constructional system is
then exploited to the full in order to; a) bring about the special
effects that would have been in the architect’s mind as he finalised
the diagram and layout of the building, b) imbue the new edifice
with all the architect’s personal interpretations of the place which
make up in his mind it’s essential character and c) communicate
the essential truth of the building. Hence an example of the
fulfilment of a) is the way in which Siza employs the constructional
system to achieve long clear spans, particularly the wide entrance
portico.
Figure 30. Alvaro Siza, Galician Centre of Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
1988 – 93.
Figure 31. Long clear spans in the Galician Centre helped to provide the flexibility that was
required for an as yet undefined program.
An example of the fulfilment of b) is the way in which the architect
employs different widths of Granite cladding, seemingly in order to
‘mirror’ the irregular stone blocks of which the adjacent historic
convent is built.
Figure 32. Varying widths of granite cladding panel
The example of the fulfilment of c) that I would like to give actually
overlaps with some of the concerns of b), and that is the
employment steel members at the entrance portico to
simultaneously ‘communicate’ that the large mostly solid Granite
building is in fact largely a steel framed edifice (backed up by
employing the Granite cladding in such a way so that it’s essential
‘thinness’ can be seen), and also that the means by which the
primary structure of the steel frame is employed is essentially
hidden from you (which is hinted at by the way that a solid mass of
granite panels is seemingly impossibly supported by two slender
back to back ‘C’ channels, which in turn impossibly transfer this
apparently great load down through two steel feet which are really
too widely spaced apart to do the job.
Figure 33. Siza’s use of construction to ‘communicate’ with the Baroque convent adjacent at the
same time as communicating with the user the essential constructional truth of the building.
Figure 34. Doorway with slanted granite cladding, protected by entrance portico.
Towards the back of the portico too, there is a protruding doorway
with a sloping roof (which on a rainy day would ensure that anyone
entering or exiting would be drenched, were it not protected by the
reach of the portico), around which the granite cladding is detailed
at an ‘impossible’ angle, matching the slope of the roof and
thoroughly emphasising it’s subservient role to the form of the
building and the steel frame.
In devising all this, Siza goes much further than most
architects would allow themselves in exploiting the expressive
potential of his chosen constructional system achieving a modern
building of real character. But he doesn’t over do it (which is the
main crime of those architects who do explore the expressive
potential of the constructional systems they work with). The
strategy is a means, not an end. The back to back channels read as
a ‘split’ ‘I’ beam and echo the split pediment above the adjacent
Baroque entrance gate into the convent. The split or disrupted
pediment is an invention of Michelangelo who employed it on
several occasions. It is interesting to note I feel at this juncture,
that in the Parthenon and other similar Ancient Greek temples, the
pediment plays a substantive role; part supporting structure, part
gable end. This is not so when it is scaled down from this colossal
size to serve, in relief form, as part of a window or doorway.
Neither does the pediment in relief form ‘dramatise’ the true
‘action’ of the stone edifice it is applied to.
Could this be what lies at the root of Michelangelo’s innovations?
This seems to be the case with his light hearted Porta Pia in which
the dual functions of sheltering door case and signifying totem are
combined within the context of then recent developments in
fortification methodology, which allowed the designers of such
gates unprecedented freedom to pursue their ‘ornamental’
potential. The pediment is not entirely split but rather it’s
‘wholeness’ is disrupted, seeming to contain decorations that
would be too large for it to accommodate were it a ‘serious’ piece of
structure. Also the way that the pediment sits ‘proud’ of the main
mass of the doorway, significantly overshooting it on either side,
indicates to me that it is purely a sculptural element, rather like the
coat of arms that sits atop the central window in Michelangelo’s
top storey of the Palazzo Farnese (where there is no pediment at
all). Conversely the deep entablature and fluted pilasters read as
the substantial visual constituents of the gate, continuing up to an
attic which supports a further sculptural element above. Curiously,
the rusticated, ‘secondary’ archway, and the semi-circle inscribed
in the depth of the frieze, seem to refer, along with the fluted
pilasters, to the actual ‘forces’ which surround the opening.
Figure 35. Michelangelo's work to the Palazzo Farnese Rome (1546). The essential truth of the
window arrangement is demonstrated by Michelangelo by rendering the pediment as floating
coat of arms, purely sculptural and signatory.
What we do not find, in this or in any other of Michelangelo’s
works, is the grotesque twisting of columns that we find in the
work of his contemporary Giulio Romano, the arbitrariness of
Buontalenti or the abstract flights of fancy that we find in the work
of Borromini; or the total dissolution of classical language, so that
the whole building is rendered as sculpture, that we find in
multifarious later developments.
Something of a light hearted ‘doodle’ it may be, but even so, it
avoids the pitfalls that were to ensnare so many others. Thus in
the work of Michelangelo we can see that same, personal
interpretation coupled with the intimate knowledge of and
willingness to approach the actual limits of the chosen
constructional system in order to achieve of a specific artistic end,
once the essential ‘diagram’ of the function had been fixed, and
that same fidelity to the essential nature of that system, as we find
with not only the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art, but all
Siza’s work.
Figure 36. Buontalenti, Porta delle Suppliche,
Florence, 1577. The result of an arbitrary
rearrangement of forms on paper, rather than
the expression of fundamental truths that
characterises the work of Michelangelo.
Figure 37. Romano, Cortile della Cavallerizza,
Mantua, 1538.
The result of unbridles
imagination detached from essential truths. A
step too far that Michelangelo never took.
Since the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art, Siza has gone on
to design other most notably the recently opened Ibere Carmargo
Foundation Museum in Brazil, but he has also quite remarkably
retained a connection with mundane having built, sports centres,
further housing, an underground station, a library (in Viana de
Costello, which is an example of the mundane raised to temple
status recalling the Ancient Greek temples); A string of private
houses and two masterplans for important coastal roads among
other things.
For all his fame, Siza remains committed to the mundane, but –
the Ibere Carmargo demonstrates –when called upon to exercise
his abilities in the realm of ‘temple design’ he is superlative.
Which takes us back to the passage from Corb’s ‘Vers Une..’ Siza is
the railway engineer with whom art enters in.
It is striking and telling I believe that Siza has said that as the
architect becomes ever more a peripheral figure in the construction
industry, he increasingly feels the need to draw and sculpt and that
to draw, to sculpt and to design buildings is the same family of
activities. What could be more reminiscent of Michelangelo or Le
Corbusier?
Figure 38. Alvaro Siza, Ibere Carmargo Foundation Museum, Brazil 1998-2008. Siza has said himself that
with this design he was responding to the violent beauty of the site -with the river opposite as wide as the sea
and the wild beauty of the terrain-; the country of Niemeyer and the strong will of the client and other
stakeholders to do what was necessary to guarantee high quality. FL Wrights New York Guggenheim was
the starting point. The constructional and aesthetic system of white concrete is pushed to its limits to
produce a building a real character.
Figure 39. Alvaro Siza, Viana do Castelo Municipal Library, 2001-07. White concrete is once again used,
this time to produce a much more utilitarian building, in stark contrast to the stuccoed masonry of Corb’s
Villa Savoy which certainly lingers somewhere within it. The directness and straightforwardness of its
structural system (white concrete) lends it a certain luxury; real gold rather than the iron pyrite of much
early 20th century modernism.
Figure 40. Alvaro Siza, Sculpture
Figure 41. Alvaro Siza Sculpture
Figure 42. Alvaro Siza sketch
Conclusion
This rather longish essay has come about simply because I had
some ruminations on architecture which I wanted to record, so a
conclusion is probably not appropriate.
However I need to tie off this torrent of words and solidify it into
something that I can build on in the future. I’m aware that I’ve
covered some lofty ground and made some bold assertions and
observations, most of which have probably been already refuted or
put forward by proper scholars using proper methods and giving
proper credits, references along the way. I thought about giving
references / credits etc.. but that would quite frankly involve me in
too much of the wrong sort of work, I’m an architect not a scholar.
And it is with the practice of architecture in mind that I have
written this piece; I’m always asking myself, ‘how can I do this
(architecture) well?’. How can the mistakes of the recent past be
avoided. Potential and future clients at the very least have the
right to demand that I ask such questions. I find myself returning
to this topic in my mind repeatedly, and rather like the Gza’s
‘Liquid Swords’iii this essay is an explosion of great personal
importance which I suspect will not be repeated. You may feel that
my ‘conclusion’ thus far has been a bit indulgent, and that I wrote
this first paragraph almost as a warm up exercise, and should have
stripped it out in the final edit.
Well, I’d agree with you if it weren’t for the fact that the
compulsion I felt which has led the release of a backed up reservoir
of thoughts is fundamental to what I have learned during this
process. The importance of art, feeling and intellectual freedom in
the pursuit of architecture has been established in my own mind at
least. I believe I have correctly identified the tools. However in
intellectualising and verbalising them, I fear that I have also
distanced myself from the solution. In the way that Lasdun
decried his inability to express himself though words, I fear that
I’m a writer and not an artist in the way that Siza is and, Corb and
Michelangelo were. It’s true however that Michelangelo wrote
poetry, Corb wrote copiously and Siza has written quite a lot about
architecture. But the making of visual art, of all types was (and is)
a ‘compulsion’ for them. Even so, perhaps the saving Grace for me
is Utzon who, like virtually all architects, sketched doodled and
drew.
Ruskin expressly states the need to for a good architect to practice
the art of sculpture, but he was also adamant that a good architect
needs to be able to draw well from nature. In this Siza does
expressly agree with him by asserting the importance of developing
visual acuity through drawingiv. It is also clear that Siza uses
drawing as a way of thinking through and solving the problems of
design. In his legendary travel diary (Journey to the East) Corb
makes the same point about ‘seeing’ through drawingv and
Michelangelo’s numerous study sketches for the design of both
sculptures and buildings are perhaps a testament to him holding
the same view, as at least one book suggestsvi. To top it off there
are many more great architect ‘drawers’ and ‘sketchers’ than
‘sculptors’ (including Utzon and much of the Pritzker laureate list).
So if so many great architects have ‘got by’ only with drawing, then
how do we account for Ruskin’s insistence on sculpture as a core
activity for architects? Perhaps the increasing role that science and
technology has been playing in modern architectural production is
the reason that Ruskin saw sculpture as being more important
than modern critics do. Parts of Vers Une could almost be read as
odes to the engineer and Siza has constantly asserted the
importance of structural engineering in his architectural
production, particularly in his most recent ‘temple’ work, the Ibere
Carmargo Museum.
The rise of the engineer means that perhaps it is no longer
necessary to have such a highly developed feeling for the action of a
material as Michelangelo had for that of stone, although some kind
of feeling must be essential mustn’t it? Surely, but perhaps
appreciation for the work of the engineer, rumination on past
architectural solutions and development of architectural thought
through sketching are enough o develop it.
I’ll leave the
penultimate word on this to one of those ‘other’ Pritzker laureates
who’s more of a draw-er than a sculptor:
‘The Sydney Opera House is the summit of the 20th Century Modernism architecture.
The ideal combination of architect’s rich intellectual creativity and superb technological
imagination has been sublimed into a stunning figure. It shows us that architecture is created
by human rationality.’
Is ‘technological imagination’ the modern era’s substitute for
sculptural ability?
i
ii
Louis I Kahn, Robert McCarther, 2009 Ed, p 391
The Two Paths, John Ruskin, Preface
iii
Seminal Hip-Hop Album, 1995
Philip Jodidio
v
L Corbusier (ed. Ivan Zaknic), Journey to the East, p
iv
vi
Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Invention of Architecture (Hardcover). “Michelangelo's fame as a
painter and sculptor tends to eclipse his reputation as an architect, but his impact here was just as
profound. In this engaging and handsome book, Cammy Brothers takes an unusual approach to
Michelangelo's architectural designs, arguing that they are best understood in terms of his experience
as a painter and sculptor. Our own conception of architecture as a practice dependent on the
formulation of new ideas through drawing, and our image of the flash of brilliance embodied in the
quick sketch, have their roots in methods and functions defined by Michelangelo. Unlike previous
studies, which have focused on the built projects and considered the drawings only insofar as they
illuminate those buildings, this book analyses his designs as an independent source of insight into the
mechanisms of Michelangelo's imagination. Brothers gives equal weight to the unbuilt designs, and
suggests that some of Michelangelo's most radical ideas remained on paper. By following the steps by
which Michelangelo arrived at his extraordinary inventions, the author questions conventional notions
of spontaneity as a function of genius. Rather, she explores the idea of drawing as a mode of thinking,
using its evidence to reconstruct the process by which Michelangelo arrived at new ideas. By turning
the flexibility and fluidity of his figurative drawing methods to the subject of architecture,
Michelangelo demonstrated how it could match the expressive possibilities of painting and sculpture.”