Twenty-Five+ Buildings Every Architect Should Understand: Revised and Expanded Edition [3 ed.] 1032532394, 9781032532394

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TWENTY-FIVE+BUILDINGS

every architect should understand

R E VISED A N D E X PA N DED EDITIO N

‘What a wonderful book.’ ‘Great drawings and interesting analysis.’

Mike, Amazon.co.uk Wintermutt, Amazon.co.uk

‘Even if you are an architect you can surely find some details you missed or forgot about these masterpieces.’ matteo f., Amazon.com Architects live by ideas. But where do they come from? And how do they shape buildings? There is no one right way to do architecture. This book illustrates many. Its aim is to explore the rich diversity of architectural creativity by analysing a wide range of examples to extract the ideas behind them. Twenty-Five+ Buildings Every Architect Should Understand is a companion to Simon Unwin’s Analysing Architecture: the Universal Language of PlaceMaking (most recent edition, 2021), and part of the trilogy which also includes his Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect (second edition, 2022). Together the three books offer an introduction to the workings of architecture providing for the three aspects of learning: theory, examples and practice. TwentyFive+ Buildings focuses on analysing examples using the methodology offered by Analysing Architecture, which operates primarily through the medium of drawing. An underlying theme of Twenty-Five+ Buildings Every Architect Should Understand is the relationship of architecture to the human being, how it frames our lives and orchestrates our experiences; how it can help us give form to the world and contributes to our senses of identity and place. Exploring these dimen­ sions through case studies that illustrate the rich diversity of twentieth- and twenty-first-century architecture, this book is essential reading, and hopefully an inspiration, for every architect. In this new edition, supplementary analysis and discussion has been added to each of the twenty-five case studies, drawing attention to their influences from and on other architects. A number of extra shorter analyses have been included too, following the practice of presenting extra small dishes interspersed among main courses in high-end restaurants. These additional short analyses account for the + sign after ‘Twenty-Five’ in the title of this edition, and double the number of buildings analysed to around fifty.

Simon Unwin is Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He has lived in Great Britain and Australia, and taught or lectured on his work in China, Israel, India, Sweden, Turkey and the United States. Analysing Architecture’s international relevance is indicated by its translation into various languages and its adoption for architecture courses around the world. Now retired, Simon Unwin continues to teach at The Welsh School of Architecture in Cardiff, UK. i

Reviews of Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand ‘This is one of the fourteen essential books for architecture students.’

Lawrence J Blake, Amazon.co.uk

‘I received this book as a gift for Christmas, and I must say it is a delight. The line drawings are clear and interesting, and the way the author moves through each building explaining design choices, such as the setting, form/shape etc. is wonderful. Recommended.’

Mike, Amazon.co.uk

‘This book is a systematic study of basic architectural styles. It’s well organized and well written… I’d recommend to any architecture student.’

sojourner, Amazon.com

‘This book is really a good work… Simple, clear, but not an easy book…’

matteo f., Amazon.com

‘This is an amazing book that every architecture student should read. It gives an insight into Modern and mid-90s architecture with in-depth analysis.’

Pía, Goodreads.com

‘Enjoyed reading more about Mies. I didn’t know that the Barcelona Pavilion related to a nearby classical building or that Mies allowed its columns to slip off of the grid when necessary. Also really enjoyed the Eileen Gray E-1027 house and its relationship with Corb’s Cabanon.’

Josh, Goodreads.com

‘A book I can highly recommend to everybody!’

Cédric, Goodreads.com

Endorsements for Twenty-Five Buildings… (2nd edition) ‘Simon Unwin’s new case studies stretch his original analytical agenda beyond its more conventional architectural history and theory parameters: it broadens the topic to open up themes and concerns very immediate to current architectural debate. A must-have for all teachers of architecture and their students.’

Claude Saint-Arroman, Goldsmiths University (Research), School of Architecture, University of East London, UK

‘Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand illuminates a different perspective on understanding and decoding the theories and philosophies of architects through their works across the globe, signifying the regional context in the design process. This book is an exemplary contribution from Simon Unwin to the academic and practical interest of architecture.’

T.L. Shaji, Professor, Department of Architecture, College of Engineering, Trivandrum, Kerala, India

‘Unwin’s writings and drawings harmonize so well, and treat their manifold subject with such surgical precision and care, that they enable the reader who has not visited (in most cases never will visit) these exemplary projects, to feel as though we have entered into them, and felt with our own bodies their widely diverse and often intimate choreographies.’

Ted Landrum, Archi-Poet, University of Manitoba, Canada

‘In Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, which expands on the first edition Twenty Buildings, Simon Unwin continues a “go slow” approach to architectural analysis. Eschewing flashy photographs, Unwin uses the classic architectural tools of exquisitely drawn two-dimensional plans, sections, and elevations to analyze systematically each of the twenty-five buildings. A valuable work not only for students of architecture, but for anyone wanting to understand the process of creating spaces for human habitation and enjoyment.’

Marie-Alice L’Heureux, Architect, Associate Professor, University of Kansas, USA

ii

Some reviews of analysing ARCHITECTURE (all editions) ‘The most lucid and readable introduction to architecture I have read.’

Professor Roger Stonehouse, Manchester School of Architecture

‘What is striking about the book is the thoughtfulness and consideration which is present in each phrase, each sentence, each plan, each section and each view, all contributing to an overarching quality which makes the book particularly applicable and appropriate to students in their efforts to make sense of the complex and diverse aspects of architecture… Unwin writes with an architect’s sensibility and draws with an accomplished architect’s hand.’

Susan Rice, Rice and Ewald Architects, Architectural Science Review

‘Simply the best! I have just gone through the first three chapters of this book and find myself compelled to write this review. I can simply say it is the best and a MUST to everyone in the field of architecture. Students, teachers, and practitioners alike will all find inspirations from this book.’

Depsis, Amazon.com

‘The text has been carefully written to avoid the use of jargon and it introduces architectural ideas in a straightforward fashion. This, I suspect, will give it a well-deserved market beyond that of architects and architectural students.’

Barry Russell, Environments BY DESIGN

‘Probably the best introductory book on architecture.’

Andrew Higgott, Lecturer in Architecture, University of East London, UK

‘Analysing Architecture by Simon Unwin is one of the finest introductions in print to architecture and its technique.’

thecoolist.com/architecture-books-10-must-read-books-for-the-amateur-archophile/ (October 2014)

‘Simon Unwin’s Analysing Architecture is required reading – a primary textbook… Beautifully illustrated with drawings from the author’s own notebooks, it also manages to balance legibility with depth: this is a superbly lucid primer on the fundamental principles of architecture. I recommend this book wholeheartedly, for readers both new to architecture, and experienced architects as well. A joy to read, a thing of beauty.’

G.B. Piranesi, Amazon.com

‘One would have no hesitation in recommending this book to new students: it introduces many ideas and references central to the study of architecture. The case studies are particularly informative. A student would find this a useful aid to identifying the many important issues seriously engaged with in Architecture.’

Lorraine Farrelly, Architectural Design

‘Simon Unwin’s sketches are fascinating. He includes simplified and thematic drawings, floorplans with associated views, details and three-dimensional drawings to illustrate the principles of “identification of place”. He doesn’t judge architects, but discusses works in their context through thematic perspectives. It is exactly what he says it is; one broad system of analysis. A comprehensive and valuable overview of architecture as a whole.’

TheGriffinReads, Goodreads.com

‘Unwin chooses to look at the underlying elements of architecture rather than, as is more usual, at the famous names, styles, movements and chronology of the genre. This rejection of the conventional art-historical approach can lead to interesting conclusions… It is all presented cogently and convincingly through the medium of Unwin’s own drawings.’

Hugh Pearman, The Sunday Times

‘Excellent in every way – a core book, along with An Architecture Notebook.’

Terry Robson, Teaching Fellow, University of Bath, UK

iii

Analysing Architecture Notebooks These Notebooks are supplements to Analysing Architecture: the Universal Language of Place-Making, Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect and the present volume. Metaphor: an exploration of the metaphorical dimensions and potential of architecture Curve: possibilities and problems with deviating from the straight in architecture Children as Place-Makers: the innate architect in all of us Shadow: the architectural power of withholding light Keep an eye on routledge.com/Analysing-Architecture-Notebooks/book-series/AAN for further additions to this series. Other books by Simon Unwin





Analysing Architecture: the Universal Language of Place-Making An Architecture Notebook: Wall Doorway Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect The Ten Most Influential Buildings in History: Architecture’s Archetypes

ebooks (available for iPad from Apple Books) Skara Brae The Entrance Notebook Villa Le Lac The Time Notebook The Person Notebook Simon Unwin’s website is at simonunwin.com Some of Simon Unwin’s personal notebooks, used in researching and preparing this and his other books, are available for free download from this site. Supplementary material relating to all Simon Unwin’s books may be found on Instagram at: www.instagram.com/analysingarchitecture (@analysingarchitecture) Simon Unwin’s YouTube channel is @analysingarchitecture www.youtube.com/@analysingarchitecture Recent interviews with Simon Unwin can be found online at: newbooksnetwork.com/analysing-architecture-1 www.buzzsprout.com/1848499/11423100

T W E N T Y- F I V E + B U I L D I N G S e v e r y a r c h i t e c t s h o u l d u n d e r s t a n d iv

TWENTY-FIVE+

BU ILDINGS

every architect should understand R E VISED A N D E X PA N DED EDITIO N

v

Designed cover image: Simon Unwin Third edition published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Simon Unwin The right of Simon Unwin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2010 Second edition published by Routledge 2015 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 9781032532394 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032532356 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003411055 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003411055 Typeset in Georgia and Arial by Simon Unwin

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for Emily

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CON TEN TS

INTRODUCTION Casa de Chá da Boa Nova (Siza) Mongyo-Tei (Kansetsu Hashimoto) CASA DEL OJO DE AGUA (Dewes and Puente) NEUENDORF HOUSE (Pawson and Silvestrin) BARCELONA PAVILION (Mies) TRUSS WALL HOUSE (Ushida Findlay) ENDLESS HOUSE (Kiesler) FARNSWORTH HOUSE (Mies) Glass House (Johnson) Robie House 1 (Wright) LA CONGIUNTA (Märkli) CABANON (Le Corbusier) Hōjōki (Kami no Chōmei) ESHERICK HOUSE (Kahn) inc. Vanna Venturi House (Venturi) House VI (Eisenman) The Box (Moss) Temple of the Four Winds (Vanbrugh) MAISON À BORDEAUX (Koolhaas) DANTEUM (Terragni) Louisiana Art Museum (Bo and Wohlert) FALLINGWATER (Wright) VILLA SAVOYE (Le Corbusier) House of the Silver Wedding, Pompeii KEMPSEY GUEST STUDIO (Murcutt) Australian aborigine place-making Place-making on the beach SEA RANCH (MLTW) Place-making in the home VILLA E.1027 (Gray) inc. Tempe à Pailla (Gray) Apollo Pavilion (Pasmore) SANKT PETRI KYRKA (Lewerentz) Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut (Le Corbusier) Royal Villa, Knossos VILLA BUSK (Fehn) VILLA MAIREA (Aalto) Fathy House (Fathy) THERMAL BATHS (Zumthor) Changeability RAMESH HOUSE (R.S. Liza) Mud House, Kerala BARDI HOUSE (Bardi) Robie House 2 (Wright) Fun Palace (Price) VITRA FIRE STATION (Zaha Hadid) MOHRMANN HOUSE (Scharoun) Moll House (Scharoun) Schminke House (Scharoun) BIOSCLEAVE HOUSE (Gins and Arakawa) Turn End (Aldington) ENDWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BIBLIOGRAPHIES INDEX

3

9

10

11

23

33

53

63

77

95

96

97

107

118

119

126

130

133

136

137

147

156

157

169

182

183

189

190

191

200

201

213

214

215

225

226

227

237

244

245

252

253

262

263

273

274

275

285

291

296

297

307

308

313

314

320

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TWENTY-FIVE+

BU ILDINGS

every architect should understand R E VISED A N D E X PA N DED EDITIO N 1

Casa del Ojo de Agua, narrative (not quite true) section (see pages 11–22)

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I N T RODUC T ION

A

rchitects must have ideas. That is what we live by. Ideas are our stock in trade; but they do not come from noth­ ing. Ideas usually develop out of what has gone before, by imitation, modification, contradiction… This book analyses a range of works of architecture to draw out the ideas that shaped them and explore where they came from. The buildings analysed are necessarily of the past but this is not a history book. It is a book about how architecture works. You cannot understand architecture merely by looking at photographs. You cannot understand architecture just by reading words. You cannot even fully understand architecture by experiencing buildings in reality. Many books on architec­ ture confine themselves to words and/or photographs. But the only way to approach an understanding of architecture that will help you do it is through the medium used in its creation – drawing. ‘One uses one’s eyes and draws so as to fix deep down in one’s experience what is seen. Once the impression is recorded by the pencil it stays for good, entered, registered, inscribed… To draw oneself, to trace the lines, handle the volumes, organize the surface… all this means first to look, and then to observe and finally perhaps to discover… and it is then that inspiration may come. Inventing, creating, one’s whole being is drawn into action.’ (Le Corbusier) *

Long ago architecture was made by drawing directly on the ground, maybe first with a stick and then by digging trenches or piling stones into walls. For centuries architecture has been drawn at a small scale on paper before being built. Now the same happens on computer screens. These are the fields, the grounds – earth, paper, screen – where architects have created and continue to create architecture. There is no one right way to do anything in architec­ ture. It is not possible to write instructions (formulae, rules, checklists…) for how to do architecture without restricting its possibilities, any more than it is possible to write instructions for what to say or write without constraining the possibilities of language. When as small children we begin speaking, we learn the workings and possibilities of language by listening to and imitating how others (parents, friends, teachers…) use it, comparing their words with our experience of the world. Gradually we find our own voices, using language to say things in different ways, with growing fluency and subtlety. Learning the workings and possibilities of architecture is comparable; it is cultivated by studying the multifarious ways others have done it and by trying them out for ourselves.

* Le Corbusier, trans. Palmes – Creation is a Patient Search (1960), quoted in Le Corbusier, trans. Žaknić – Journey to the East (1966), 1977.

Drawing lies between the mind of an architect and the architecture that mind creates. That is why drawing is called a ‘medium’. Architecture resides in the drawings (and nowadays in the computer-generated models) of buildings. It is in draw­ ings that you find the intellectual structures architects give their designs. It is through drawing that you, as an architect, give form to your ideas. It is appropriate therefore that it is through drawing too that you should study and imitate how others do architecture so that you can learn to do it yourself and gradually find your own architectural voice. ‘Originality may often express itself suddenly but never without some previous experience with form… Imitation is a method of assimilation. In accepting it as such the student gains knowledge and experience and is quicker thereby to discover his own originality.’ (Rowe) **

In learning to do architecture, the study of plans and sections takes precedence even over visiting buildings. Visits to buildings are enjoyable and provide a chance to see how products of architecture, conceived through the abstraction of drawing, change the real world and make places for life. Visiting buildings gives you the best chance to experience architecture in relation to the world of light, sound, setting, weather, people… and to assess the effect and performance of the abstraction when made real. But to understand the underlying architecture of buildings, you need to study them in and through the medium of drawing. T H I S E DI T ION This book began its life in 2010 as Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand. Five further case studies were added in the 2015 edition. Those twenty-five buildings remain the core content of this third edition. They are presented not as being the only twenty-five buildings every architect should understand, nor as the twenty-five ‘best’ buildings ever. Such assertions would provoke argument about the dimensions of ‘quality’ and ‘greatness’; but those are not my primary concern. This book is for those struggling to do architecture. I am interested in exploring the scope of architecture – its powers and possibilities – rather than trying to establish criteria of quality or trace historical movements. The twenty-five buildings analysed were chosen to illustrate a variety of architectural ideas and to test and

** ‘Comments of Harwell Hamilton Harris…’ in Colin Rowe, ed. Caragonne – As I was Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays, 1996.

3

demonstrate the analytical methodology offered in Analysing Architecture (the fifth edition of which was published in 2021 with the subtitle the Universal Language of Place-Making). In particular they were chosen to explore a range of relationships between architecture and the person; the person being, as I have suggested elsewhere, the essential ingredient of architec­ ture, and certainly of architecture considered as place-making (in the particular sense defined in Analysing Architecture; i.e. ‘place is to architecture as meaning is to language’). The geographical spread of case studies extends from Brazil to Japan, Australia to the USA, Scandinavia to Mexico. The temporal spread is less broad, being confined mainly to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, though reference is made to relevant examples throughout history from earliest times to the present. In this third, revised and expanded, edition I have sup­ plemented most of the original twenty-five case studies with extra content. This additional material discusses the buildings in relation to their wider ideological context, making compar­ isons and drawing contrasts with relevant examples. Often it also focuses on the situations in which the architecture places the person (as an antidote to contemporary preoccupation with visual identity). Interspersed amongst the twenty-five main case studies I have also included a number of shorter analyses, like the ‘amuse-bouches’ smart restaurants offer diners between courses. (Hence the + in the book’s title.) Bibliographical references for each of the case studies are collected together towards the end of the book. As I have already remarked above, this book is teleolog­ ical rather than historical in that it analyses end products of architecture not so much to illuminate history as to discover, explore and illustrate architecture’s strategies and powers. A RC H I T E C T U R A L I DE A S ‘Remember the impression given by good architecture, that it expresses a thought.’ (Wittgenstein) *

To add another layer of complexity… architecture is, like drawing, itself a medium; one through which we change the world, hopefully to make it better – more comfortable, more beautiful, more efficient… – according to our aspirations and beliefs. While drawing mediates between the mind and the architecture it wants to create, architecture itself mediates between the life accommodated and the world around. In architecture we do not deal in ‘truth’, we deal in propositions (dreams, visions, narratives, philosophical arguments, political manifestos) though sometimes those * Ludwig Wittgenstein, trans. Winch – Culture and Value (1977), 1998.

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propositions focus on what we think might count as ordi­ nary everyday pragmatism (‘reality’). Architects often try to suggest that their particular proposition is the ‘truth’ of how the world should be… ‘Individually and collectively, we need stories. It is a universal impulse. We need some galvanising, sense-making framework, a narrative, in order to instil order and a sense of purpose to our lives.’ (Malik) **

… but different architects (like politicians, philosophers and poets) propose different answers; and they can become frustrated when the people they design for fail to use (or appreciate) their buildings in the ways they think they should. Architecture is a matter of proposition and evaluation… where imagination interacts with (hits up against) the challenges of the world in all its multifarious complexity. Architecture depends on giving form to ideas and launching them into the world as buildings (cities, houses, temples, gardens, land­ scapes…) to see how they fare. We tend to think ideas are expressed in words. Archi­ tectural ideas, however, are expressed in drawing and man­ ifest in material construction, formal composition, spatial organisation… and, underpinning all, place-making. Archi­ tectural ideas are the intellectual structures (you might call them self-generated, intrinsic ‘laws’) by which buildings are designed and conceived. In his 1893 essay, ‘The Fantastic Imagination’, George MacDonald theorised about how to write stories, fairytales in particular. He suggested that however fantastic and far from natural reality a story might stray, to be plausible it must consistently obey its own intrinsic laws (as set down by its author)… ‘Obeying laws, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.’ (MacDonald) ***

MacDonald’s use of an architectural metaphor is reveal­ ing. It reminds us that it is architecture that turns a pile of stones into a church, i.e. that architecture is the mind’s share: the sense, the order, the organisation of form, the ideas that a mind applies to material in the design of a building. MacDonald, Queen Victoria’s favourite writer of fairytales, lived in the nineteenth century. In the twenty-first century, a pile of stones might itself be considered a work of art – in that merely the decision to throw the stones into a pile, or even to leave a found pile of stones undisturbed, might be asserted to be a generative idea. But the point of MacDonald’s parable remains valid: that the creative activity of human ** Nesrine Malik – We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths

Behind Our Age of Discontent, 2019.

*** George MacDonald – ‘The Fantastic Imagination’ (1893), in The

Complete Fairy Tales (ed. Knoepflmacher), 1999.

beings depends upon (is strengthened, given backbone, by) the generation and application of ideas that give discipline (con­ sistent form, sense… even if it is a sense hermetically sealed in its own realm) to their work. This argument holds even if the operative idea applied is one of formlessness, indiscipline, mystery, chance, emptiness, irresolution… But without an idea (without the involvement of the mind) nothing, not even the undisturbed pile of stones, can be said to have form. It is in the mind – the realm of ideas – that architecture (whether of a building, a story… or of a pile of stones) originates. And it is through drawing, on whatever ground (even if only that cave wall of the imagination), that such ideas are forged. A N A LY SI NG A RC H I T E C T U R E The present book is related to another. Analysing Architecture first appeared in 1997 and has subsequently been published in second (2003), third (2009) and fourth (2014) and fifth (2021) editions; the last with the subtitle the Universal Language of Place-Making. It has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Persian and Portuguese. As one reviewer on Amazon.com commented (gratifyingly and reassuringly), Analysing Architecture ‘establishes a systematic method for analyzing architecture’. Writing it I felt resonance with the observations of the early twentieth-century British architect William Richard Lethaby. ‘Modern builders need a classification of architectural factors irrespective of time and country, a classification by essential variation… In architecture more than anywhere we are the slaves of names and categories, and so long as the whole field of past architectural experiment is presented to us accidentally only under historical schedules, designing architecture is likely to be conceived as scholarship rather than as the adaptation of its accumulated powers to immediate needs.’ (Lethaby) *

My aim was to begin to formulate a methodology for exploring the powers of architecture in ways analogous to the ways in which the workings of language and the structures of its products have been explored academically (as grammar and syntax) for many years. And to do so on the premise (as stated in Analysing Architecture) that ‘place is to architecture as meaning is to language’ – i.e. that the fundamental burden of architecture is identification of place. These arguments are explored in more detail in the relevant chapters of Analysing Architecture but they also inform the analyses that follow. One aim in assembling the twenty analyses in the first edition was (as I have said above) to assess further the applica­ bility of the methodology set down in Analysing Architecture by applying it in more depth than was possible in the case * W.R. Lethaby – Architecture, 1911.

INTRODUCTION

studies that were then at the end of that book, and to a diverse variety of examples from different countries and dating from various times during the last eight decades of the twentieth century. Architecture has never been more diverse than dur­ ing that period. In the second edition five more buildings were analysed, reaching into the twenty-first century and widening the geographical spread of examples. And now in this third edition additional material has been added to situate each of the case studies in relation to like-minded and contrasting work by other architects as well as to provide shorter analyses of an even greater range of examples. The first two of these are the Casa de Chá de Boa Nova on page 9 and the Mongyo-Tei on page 10, preceding the first of the main case studies – the Casa del Ojo de Agua. ‘Architecture is open to analysis like any other aspect of experience, and is made more vivid by comparison. Analysis includes the breaking up of architecture into elements, a technique I frequently use even though it is the opposite of the integration which is the final goal of art. However paradoxical it appears, and despite the suspicions of many Modern architects, such disintegration is a process present in all creation, and it is essential to understanding.’ (Venturi) **

C HOIC E OF E X A M PL E S Of course there are rather more than twenty-five buildings that any architect should understand to underpin their flu­ ency in the language of architecture and connoisseurship of the canon of great works. The collection here is diverse but not random. Not all are ‘great’; some may be familiar, others less so. All are of a size and complexity of brief (program) that might be presented to architectural students during the early years of their architectural education. As well as the two main criteria identified above, two particular themes have informed the choice of examples analysed: these can be characterised by the words space and the person. These words label themes around which many architectural ideas cluster. And, as the person cannot do other than occupy space, these themes are of course intertwined. SPAC E You might think that there is only one sort of space. In a sense there is. But architects mould and engineer space according to various ideas. We might leave space open to infinity or close it off from everywhere else. We might empha­ sise its horizontal dimensions or its vertical. We can give it focus and definition or leave it vague and amorphous. We can excavate it from solid matter or even from itself. We might give it a specific direction or make it suggest and provoke ** Robert Venturi – Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966.

5

labyrinthine wandering. Architects can make space that is static, dynamic, or both at the same time. We can make space that works in straight lines and right angles or space that curves and flows. We can make space that is neither here nor there but in-between. We can make space that is inaccessible… or inescapable. Architects have even tried to warp space. T H E PE R S ON Space is indeed the medium we (human beings and other creatures) occupy. And the second theme informing the choice of examples analysed in this book concerns the different ways in which architects think of people (including themselves, and maybe other creatures) as ingredients/beneficiaries/ victims(?) of architecture. In the presence of music the person is called the ‘performer’ or ‘listener’; in sport the ‘player’ or ‘spectator’; in theatre the ‘actor’ or ‘audience’; in television maybe the ‘presenter’ or ‘viewer’… But in architecture we do not have a specific word for the person who experiences (either from within or without, actively or passively) a build­ ing: ‘user’ is too functional; ‘visitor’ too transient; ‘dweller’, ‘resident’ or ‘inhabitant’ too domestic; ‘man’ or ‘woman’ too gender specific; ‘owner’ too possessive; ‘experiencer’ too ugly. And although it seems some buildings are designed primarily for spectacle, the term ‘spectator’ is too detached, excluded from the inclusive accommodating experience works of architecture (should) offer. In the following analyses I have had to resort to using the word ‘person’, which may occa­ sionally sound a little clunky. A person sees, hears, touches, smells (and occasionally tastes), walks around, uses, occupies (inhabits), and may be emotionally affected by a work of archi­ tecture, whether he or she is a member of an audience, family, workforce, congregation, tour party, school class or whatever. Architects also use the person (body, human form) as the model for their architecture, whether in its biology, dimen­ sions, geometry, skeletal structure, articulation, mobility… I have not covered all of these in the following analyses, but the variety of ways architects have sought to accommodate the person, or found inspiration in the body and psyche, has influenced my selection of examples to analyse. TIME It is a subtle distinction, but the analyses presented here are aimed not so much at identifying the actual historical gestation of the selected buildings, as at drawing out ideas they present to the mind analysing them. The analyses are teleological in that they focus on the architectural end products rather than on (though not to the exclusion of) his­ torical record of the design process (which is often obscure, 6

incomplete or non-existent). This book has been written (not so much for the historian as) for those who are expected to generate architectural ideas (students and architects), and so it focuses on the general workings of architecture and the possibilities that the buildings analysed suggest, rather than on history for its own sake. History, though it surely informs and may influence, holds no necessary authority in creative matters. ‘Time’, as the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi suggests… ‘Linear time is an invention of the West, time is not linear – it is a marvellous tangle in which, at any moment, ends can be chosen and solutions invented, without beginning or end.’ (Bardi) *

… ‘is a marvellous tangle…’ and never conforms to narratives as neatly as historians sometimes like to suggest. A NO T E ON M E T HOD S OF S T U DY The analyses in the present book seek to extract ideas evident in particular works of architecture, and they do so in awe of and respect for the astonishing (miraculous) ability of the human mind to conceive intellectually. There is no other faculty that makes human beings more human than our ability to have ideas. The question of where ideas come from and how they come into being is a mystery that science (even Artificial Intelligence) has made no progress in answering. But perhaps ‘where they come from’ can be partly answered by suggesting that our critical and mischievous playfulness, when it encounters the ideas of others, has an ability to mod­ ify, reinterpret, contradict and reinvent them in such a way as to produce what passes for new ones. Certainly it is difficult to find ideas that are radically and essentially novel. Usually they may be interpreted as developments from, or contradictions of, ideas evident in the work of others or prompted by Nature. Creative influence and friction between ideas is endemic in the following analyses. Each of the case studies begins with a building and tries to understand (infer) the thought processes and decisions behind its conception. As far as is possible, the reader (of the drawings as well as the words) is put in the position of the architect. The question is asked: what moves did I make when designing this building? Trying to answer this question gives insight into the workings of architecture and the various ways it might be generated. The analyses are not presented in chronological order. There is a benign mischief to this. It is consciously intended to subvert the orthodox historical interpretation usually overlaid on the discussion of architecture. I do not mean to

* Lina Bo Bardi, in Carvalho, ed. – Lina Bo Bardi (1993), quoted in Olivia de Oliveira – Subtle Substances: the Architecture of Lina Bo Bardi, 2006.

suggest that such interpretation is irrelevant. But I do share the concern, expressed a century ago by W.R. Lethaby, that the labels and classifications of architectural history can distract from appreciation of the fundamental powers of architecture as the medium through which people build their world. In preparing analyses we are dependent necessarily upon published material. In working from published sources the analyst is likely, if not certain, to encounter inaccuracies in drawings and possibly be thrown off course by the occasional cases where photographs have been printed the wrong way round. Even architects’ own drawings usually (not some­ times) differ from what is built because variations are often made during construction or because architects sometimes would prefer to record idealised (‘Platonic’) versions of their buildings. This is a practice that goes back at least to Andrea Palladio in the sixteenth century, whose version of the house known as the Villa Rotonda published in his Four Books on Architecture (1570) is different from the actual building to be found on a hill just outside Vicenza. Amongst the analyses present in this book, for example, the plan of the Cabanon pub­ lished by Le Corbusier in Volume Five of his Œuvre Complète is different from the plan of the shed as built. In the following analyses I have tried to draw attention to where the real might diverge from the Platonic, but probably, since I am interested in what I have called (following the fairytale theorist George MacDonald) ‘the mind’s share’, I have focused more on the Platonic than the real. Interrogating published material is part of the analytical process. And redrawing the plans and sections of buildings under scrutiny is an essential part of that interrogation. It is through redrawing that the analyst is able to correct the frequent mistakes found in published material and acquire a deeper perception of what the architect has been up to and how decisions might have been made. It is of course impossible to get inside the mind of an architect (other than your own) but it is arguable that you may get closer by redrawing their architecture than by reading the words they write or say. This is not to suggest that architects intend to be disingenuous in the ways they sometimes obfus­ cate or elaborate their architecture with words. But, as has already been observed, it is impossible to explain architec­ ture fully verbally. Architecture is a means by which thought is ordered and applied to the world but it is fundamentally different from verbal language; despite wordsmiths’ wishful thinking to the contrary, there are some intellectual places verbal language cannot reach. The analyses that follow show that architects do not always do the obvious, straightforward and direct thing. Sometimes it seems that architecture consists in wilful devi­ ation from some undefined norm. If the variety of approaches INTRODUCTION

exposed in the following pages does not make the task of design easier, it will perhaps illustrate some of those powers available to you as an architect, and make anyone who wants to design buildings aware of some of the possibilities and potential of this richest of all arts. L E A R N I NG This book intends not only to provide ready analyses of specific buildings but also to show how, more generally, the ideas gleaned might be experimented with by students of architecture. Readers will probably learn more about the workings of architecture by doing their own analyses than merely following those offered here. But, together with Ana­ lysing Architecture, my analyses aim to suggest the sorts of things you-the-analyst might look for when studying the work of others and that you-the-architect might try in your own design work. Understanding how other architects have made deci­ sions helps you understand what is possible in your own work. Understanding the variety of ways in which architects have made decisions, the variety of criteria they use, introduces you to the problem of deciding your own values and priorities in design. In the following case studies you will see that in each of the twenty-five+ buildings a different approach to design was adopted, different values and ideas were in play. By looking carefully at the work of others you can ask yourself the questions: ‘do I find this way of designing interesting, pertinent, sustainable… or vacuous, irresponsible, selfindulgent…?’; and, ‘can I learn something from this that I can use (emulate) in, or makes me reflect critically on, my own work?’ The answers to such question are yours. T E R M I NOL O G Y The following analyses use the methodology and conceptual framework offered in Analysing Architecture: the Universal language of Place-Making. Nevertheless the present book may be read on its own. The only slight problem may relate to abbreviations used for some concepts that are explained in detail in the earlier book: • ‘identification of place’ – the realisation that archi­ tecture, distinct from other art forms, begins with the desire or need to establish a place in the world; • ‘basic elements’ – wall, floor, roof, defined area of ground, pit, platform, doorway, window…; i.e. the basic elements of the language of architecture (as spatial organisation); • ‘modifying elements’ – light, temperature, scale, ventilation, texture, time…; i.e. elements that come 7

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

into play once a work of architecture is built, and which modify experience of it; ‘framing’ – the realisation that architecture relates to activities and objects (even moods) by framing them; and that by doing so helps to make sense of them; ‘using things that are there’ – the idea that architec­ ture (except in astronaut’s space) never exists in a vacuum and that it therefore can exploit elements of its surroundings, such as a tree or elevated ground, an existing wall or the reflection of light off a lake; ‘elements doing more than one thing’ – the way a wall might be both a barrier and a pathway, as in the case of the curtain wall of a castle; the way that a window might offer views both outwards and inwards as well as admitting light; ‘primitive place types’ – place types, usually with their own accepted names, timelessly part of human inhabitation of the world, e.g. bed, altar, hearth, pulpit…; ‘temples and cottages’ – a complex spectrum of attitudes architects adopt towards aspects of the world (site, materials, climate, people, history, the future…) ranging, roughly speaking, from an attitude of asserting control (dominion) to one of acceptance (submission) or responsiveness; ‘geometries of being’ – geometry that is innate to materials, the ways in which they are made and constructed, to human form and movement…; ‘six-directions-plus-centre’ – our human tendency conceptually to organise the world around our own personal centre in terms of six directions – forwards, backwards, right, left, up, down. ‘focus’ – a point or object in a work of architecture around which we might gather (e.g. a hearth) or towards which we might be drawn (e.g. an altar); ‘axis of penetration and projection’ (a.k.a. ‘doorway axis’) – the axis, often generated by a doorway, that penetrates inwards (maybe to a focus, as in the case of the altar of a church) or projects outwards across the world. ‘ideal geometry’ – geometry that is imposed onto materials, the ways in which they are made, onto human form and movement…, i.e. perfect squares, circles, rectangles with particular mathematical proportions, computer-generated formulae… (the geometry of school maths lessons);

• ‘axis of symmetry’ – the centreline of a mirrored (symmetrical) composition; • ‘grid’ – a regular matrix, usually rectangular, used to give compositional discipline to the design of a plan; • ‘stratification’ – the organisation of buildings in the vertical dimension, the differing relationships between different levels of a building and the ground; • ‘space and structure’ – the various relationships between structural order and spatial organisation; • ‘parallel walls’ – spatial organisation based in the use of parallel, and usually load-bearing, walls; • ‘transition, hierarchy, heart’ – the progressive zoning of the spatial organisation of a building, e.g. between public and private, sacred and secular, etc.; • ‘the in-between’ – architecture is often (if not always) concerned with separating (differentiating) an inside from the general outside; places that are neither fully inside nor fully outside are in-between; • ‘inhabited wall’ – walls that are so thick that space for places has been excavated within their thickness; • ‘refuge and prospect’ – the relationship between small places of concealment or retirement and their views over the surroundings or an arena. • ‘hidden’ – those parts of a building that are, for one reason or another, concealed – as in the case of the lavatories of a public building, the dressing rooms of a theatre, the private bedrooms of a residence… • ‘archi-grammar’, also ‘spatial syntax’ – the equivalent in the architectural arrangement of spaces (places) and elements to the grammatical arrangement of words in language; related to the essential role of both archi-grammar and grammar is establishing sense in both architecture and language respectively. This glossary of terms used gives some indication of the nature of the analytical framework used in the following case studies. Other terminology is, I hope, self-explanatory but if explanation is sought it may be found in Analysing Architec­ t ure: the Universal Language of Place-Making. A nd please don’t accept my analyses uncritically. Approach them with a curious mind. Bring your perceptions and dis­ coveries to bear. Extract your own ideas from them. Draw them. Try them out in design. It is by putting your own brain in gear that you will become more fluent in the language of architecture and find stimulation by exploring its infinite and wonderful possibilities. Simon Unwin, April 2023

8

CAS A D E C H Á DA B OA N OVA , L e ç a d a Pa l m e i r a , O p o r t o – Á l va r o S i z a V i e r a , 19 5 8 – 6 3

2

d b c

‘When you enter a building there’s a moment when you come to a stair and you have to stop. Then you must make the effort to position your feet, and then hold onto the handrail, otherwise you will fall. For this reason it’s a crucial episode in a building and this is always extraordinary.’

Álvaro Siza Viera – A Pool in the Sea, 2018.

CASA D E C H Á DA BOA N OVA

restaurant

The building is more about experience than appearance. It caters for all the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and the touch of sea breezes on the skin… The stepped and turning climb to the entrance is reminiscent of the ascent to the Propylaea of the Acropolis in Athens. The informal pathways amongst the rocks, including the one to the nearby chapel, are like those in a Japanese stroll garden, making you pick your steps carefully.

kitchen under roof

m

cloaks

rec ep

tion

c

roo

The Casa de Chá nestles amongst the rocks like a sea bird warming its eggs. Entering is a sequence of experi­ ences rather than an abrupt transition. When you arrive you are ‘invited’ up towards the hidden entrance by steps (a) that turn one way then the other… The doorway itself is sheltered in the shade of a deep roof overhang (b). Its shallow step may be the formal thresh­ old, but there is another to come, after you have negotiated the preliminaries with the receptionist. Having made you climb to the top of the rock, Siza is about to make you go down again to reach the restaurant. And at the top of the stair down you realise that there are a number of factors at play.

The Casa de Chá is situated on a rocky headland facing the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent to a small chapel where its architect was married.

b

pathway to chapel

w.c.s

te a

As I was preparing this edition of TwentyFive+ Buildings I visited Oporto (Porto) in Portugal. I took the chance to visit the Casa de Chá. When my wife and I arrived it was closed. But while looking around, it opened, and I managed to persuade them to find a table for us to have lunch. The meal was quite an experience. As you would expect in a Michelin starred restaurant, the food was sophisticated, and served as a performance. Before and between courses, we were provided with complimentary small and tasty ‘amuse-bouches’. The generosity of the experience prompted the idea that I might do the same in this book, offering shorter analyses of poetic buildings before and between the main ‘courses’. It seems appropriate that the first of these amuse­ bouches should be the Casa de Chá da Boa Nova itself.

section through entrance and stair

terrace

1

a

These factors include light and lines of sight. Approaching the top step, you are first aware of a line of sight (1) drawing your eye to the sunlit rocks and ocean outside – a scene framed by the glass wall at the bottom of the descent (c). Then you become aware of a second line of sight (2) drawing your eye through a horizontal slit to the blue of the Atlantic sky. As a venue for afternoon tea, the interior of the Casa de Chá orig­ inally had no electric lighting. It was lit only by light directly from the sky or reflected off the rocks and the water. Considerately, Siza illuminates your descent with light gathered by a scoop in the ceiling above (d).

When you reach the bottom of the stair you turn right into the restau­ rant or left into what was formally the tea room (now also part of the restau­ rant). Both are oriented (more properly ‘occidented’) to views of the rocks, and the crashing waves of the ocean beyond, sparkling in the afternoon sun. Siza’s commitment to sensual experi­ ence (rather than mere appearances) is reinforced by the ability, in clem­ ent weather, to lower the restaurant’s glass walls into the ground, exposing diners to the full majesty of the sounds, smells and constantly changing light of the dramatic setting. 9

M O N GYO -T E I ( Te a H o u s e), H a k u s a s o n s o V i l l a , Kyo t o – K a n s e t s u H a s h i m o t o, 1916 I have included the Mongyo-Tei in previous books – as a case study in the fourth edition of Analysing Architecture, and as an illustration of different kinds of geometry in the fifth – but since it complements Álvaro Siza’s Tea House on the previous page, it seems appropri ­ ate to offer it as a second amuse-bouche.

1 f

a e

section

a 1

e f

d

b

c

plan

According to tradition, guests at a tea ceremony should arrive and enter according to a set sequence of stages. On arrival they stay in a ‘waiting pavilion’ (a; in the Mongyo-Tei this is incorporated into the single building, but often it is separate) until the host invites them further. (In the Mongyo-Tei, from here they can also appreciate the view through to and across a pond; see page 167.) Then the host takes them out by a different opening (b) to wash their hands at a small basin in the rocks (c). After this, they remove their shoes and climb into the tea house proper through a crawl doorway (d) and the ceremony is performed (e). At some point, the host will invite the guests on to the balcony (f) to admire the gardens. (Guests at the Casa de Chá da Boa Nova step out onto the terrace to admire the rocks and ocean.) 10

Both tea houses frame the ceremonies and consumption of refreshment. Both are exercises in the relationship between architecture and Nature. There are differences in character between the Casa de Chá da Boa Nova and the Mongyo-Tei but there are also elements in common: • both are set amongst rocks and relate to water – though the drama of the Casa de Chá’s rocky headland and the crashing waves of the Atlantic contrasts with the tranquil ­ lity of the composed irregularity of the Mongyo-Tei’s set­ ting and its calm reflective pond; • both are sheltered by low and deeply overhanging roofs – interlocking tiles for the Casa de Chá, thatch for the Mongyo-Tei – that contain their interiors in shade; • both frame views and manage lines of sight, incorporat­ ing views from threshold through to waterscapes beyond (1 in the plan and section on the left); • both involve all the senses – light and colour, sounds, smells, flavours, texture and breeze… as well as move ­ ment and other emotional senses; • in both, sunlight reflects up into the interior from water and rocks, creating patterns of light on the ceiling; • and both orchestrate the guest’s sequential experience of approach, entrance and arrival.

CA SA DEL OJO DE AGUA

11

C A SA DEL O JO DE AGUA a weekend house in the M exic an jungle A DA D E W ES and SERGIO PU ENTE, 19 8 5 – 9 0 In which we shall see that: • architecture as place-making does not necessarily require full enclosure of space by walls and roof; • modifying elements (as identified in Analysing Architecture) can be essential ingredients in a work of architecture; • vital context – sounds, air movement, vegetation… – rather than being consigned to the outside, may be fully admitted into the experience of a made place; • dynamic progress through the experiences of a work of architecture may follow simple syntactic form (equivalent to the syntax of sentences in language); this observation also prompts exploration of the effect of breaking syntax to make more complex compositions; • the vertical dimension can play a significant part in the experience of a work of architecture; • historical precedents may be interpreted creatively to generate original and poetic work.

L

ook at the drawing alongside. It appears that some parts of this building are missing. But this is not a cutaway drawing. It is of a house with two floors, one wall (instead of the usual four) and no roof; though the floor of the upper room acts as a roof to the lower, or vice versa. The two rooms of the Casa del Ojo de Agua (House of the Waterhole, which I think is the equivalent in Spanish of a bolt-hole or weekend house) were designed as a bedroom and a dining room. The other spaces of the house – kitchen etc. – are accommodated in a separate building nearby, also designed by Ada Dewes and Sergio Puente. B A SIC E L E M E N T S; I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E The Casa del Ojo de Agua is an example of how the idea of a house might be rethought from first principles. Although it will be seen to be reminiscent of a particular historic prece­ dent appropriate to Mexico, its form is a composition of basic elements of architecture composed in relation to context and content. Rather than accept the orthodox architectural idea of ‘house’ the architects have reassessed each element accord­ ing to what it does and whether or not it is actually needed. The elements of an orthodox house that are absent from this design have been omitted for particular reasons that make the house a more interesting place to be. 12

The best way to understand the architecture of a build­ ing is by analysing its conceptual build-up or composition. The order in which you explore the conceptual build-up of a work of architecture is not necessarily the same as the order in which the building was actually constructed physically. Such analysis is also usually something of a post hoc rational­ isation because the processes of design are rarely simple and straightforward; they depend on ideas that sometimes seem to come from nowhere and refinements that can go through many iterations. Nevertheless, analysis reveals ideas manifest in the resultant work (1–7).

b

a

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3

The Casa del Ojo de Agua begins with an almost rectangular platform built adjacent to a large mango tree on a steep hillside. For clarity I have left out most of the context but you should imagine this platform amongst large exposed rocks and surrounded by dense vegetation (as in the section on page 2 and the drawing on page 9). It also stands just above a stream running at the bottom of the slope. Small tributaries to the stream flow alongside the platform. The platform is the starting point for the house – the first architectural move. It relates to the tree and the stream that are already there and represents the generative moment when things change. It establishes architecture in the midst of the forest, rocks and stream. It manifests the presence of the mind of the architect. It identifies a place where things can happen – a ‘chora’ (see the quotation from Plato, below right). The platform, in its small way, in its simple horizontality, changes the world. The platform identifies a place for human habitation. It is by creating this level area, amongst the general irregularity of the ground, that habitation is made possible. The platform makes a horizontal surface, which is a more comfortable place to be – you can stand there steady and certain of where you are. You can move around on the platform easily. It makes possible the use of furniture, which usually needs a flat surface to stand on. The platform defines a place distinct from the world around, a rudimentary temple dedicated to human presence.

The next move in the conceptual generation of the architecture of this house is the provision of two sets of steps. Steps in chevron lead down the slope to the platform; and a long straight flight stretches down from the platform to the stream. The steps, acting as pathways to and from the platform (in both directions), extend its presence into the land around. They establish thresholds – specific points of entry to and exit from the platform. They also make the platform into an in-between place, a point of stasis on a route between the upper part of the hillside and the stream below, and vice versa. Imagine stepping down onto the platform, pausing to survey the scene, and seeing the flight of steps suggesting/offering a precarious descent to the stream below. Imagine too the effort of climbing back up the long flight of steps, reaching the level surface of the platform – the temple above – where you can pause and rest. This platform is the bedroom of the house. It establishes its heart.

The first two moves are elemental, timeless in their architectural power. The third is more particular. The corners of the platform are taken away: to make a small place for a shower (a); and to provide access down to a lavatory under the top of the long flight of steps (b). This move avoids disrupting the platform’s relationship to the forest around. These ablutions are accommodated in – conceptually excavated within – the fabric of the platform. The architects arranged these in such a way that the simple formal composition of the house was disrupted as little as possible, and certainly to avoid any walled enclosures (rooms) at the same level as the bedroom. Even with nothing more added to this rudimentary composition of basic elements, we can begin to imagine inhabiting this simple work of architecture. We can begin to think about the acts of domestic life we might perform on this stage, with an audience of Nature – its plants and creatures – all around.

CASA DEL OJO DE AGUA

CHORA ‘We must start our new description of the universe by making a fuller subdivision than we did before; we then distinguished two forms of reality – we must now add a third. Two were enough at an earlier stage, when we postulated on the one hand an intelligible and unchanging model and on the other a visible and changing copy of it. We did not distinguish a third form, considering two would be enough; but now the argument compels us to try to describe in words a form that is difficult and obscure. What must we suppose its powers and nature to be? In general terms, it is the receptacle and, as it were, the nurse of all becoming and change.’

Plato, trans. Lee – Timaeus (c. 360 BCE) 16, 1971.

13

4

5

6

The fourth move returns to the elemental, evoking the timeless powers of basic architectural elements. A wall is built across the uphill threshold onto the platform, screening it from the approach, providing privacy for the bedroom but also making the platform even more like a stage on which the performances of domestic life happen. A doorway frames the threshold from the chevron steps, providing it with an access point for entrances and exits. Stepping through that doorway you emerge into the presence of the forest. The panoramic view the wall screens is dramatically revealed when crossing that threshold. Such is one of the powers of a doorway: to elicit an emotional response. A small opening near the top of the wall accommodates one large branch of the mango tree, tying the tree’s canopy into the form of the house. Another doorway – free-standing – frames the threshold to the steps leading down to the stream. This doorway is not through a wall – a wall here would separate the platform space from the forest. This doorway is a small temple in itself, composed of no more than two pillars and a triangular pediment. Two columns stand either side, further onto the platform, like sentinels. These frame the free-standing doorway but also suggest transitions to the two sets of steps down to the shower and lavatory. These basic elements are composed about a central axis generated primarily by the two sets of steps and doorways.

The sentinel columns play a role in the spatial organisation but they are also structural – an example of elements doing more than one thing. Together with the wall, they help to support the bedroom’s roof which is also the house’s upper floor. This upper level has its own doorway through the building’s one wall, reached by a short set of steps bridging over the chevron steps that lead to the lower doorway. Though clearly a room, this upper floor has just the one wall with its doorway, and no built roof. The upper floor is the house’s dining room. The inner surface of the wall, in the dining room and in the bedroom below, is plastered as if it were an interior wall. The other walls of these two rooms are provided by the abundant trees around, though the three open faces of the bedroom are also provided with mosquito mesh screens. The ceiling of the dining room is the canopy of the mango tree. Neither the upper floor nor the platform below is quite rectangular; both taper in width away from the wall (see the plan on the opposite page). Presumably the perspective effect of this taper is to make the spaces appear on entering through the wall a little larger than they are. Returning up the steps from the stream, and passing through the doorway, the bedroom would seem slightly more compact than it is. By a simple arrangement of basic architectural elements a powerful poetic relationship between person and context has been orchestrated. Such is the power of architecture.

In a more conventional arrangement the house would have four walls, with windows and a roof. The character of the rooms and their relationship with their surroundings would be very different. Inside, the sounds of the surrounding forest – bird song, rain falling, leaves dripping… – would be suppressed. The view, no longer panoramic, would be framed by rectangular hole-in-the-wall windows. The poetry of the relationship between occupant and context would be radically diminished, destroyed.

14

The Casa del Ojo de Agua is as simple in its conception as a child’s drawing of a house, but without three of the walls and with no roof other than that provided by the trees. It has no chimney either. But, judging by the quotation on the opposite page, perhaps it should.

above

in-between

below 7

Finally, in addition to the mosquito mesh enclosing the bedroom, the dining room is provided with a thin steel rail as a balustrade. Glass blocks are let into the floors; those in the floor of the dining room help to light the bedroom below. In his description of the Casa del Ojo de Agua in Modern House (1995), John Welsh suggests the glass blocks in the floor of the bedroom allow views of one of the tributary streams passing under the house. You can see that the shower, down some steps in the corner of the bedroom, is screened from the forest only by the mosquito net, allowing you to feel that you are washing yourself (in your natural state) in the midst of the (primeval) forest, with its perfumed air and sounds, rather than in a claustrophobic cubicle. Privacy can depend on location rather than enclosure. The lavatory (which requires complete privacy) is tucked away inside the slope of the top few steps (see the section above). This is the only cave-like space in the building. This apparently simple house provides a rich mix of experiential relationships with its surroundings. ‘It got very cold and we slept under piles of rugs and furs. When we woke up in the morning the mist of the jungle was rolling through the room – it was magical.’

Richard Bryant, architectural photographer, reporting on a night spent in the Casa del Ojo de Agua, in ‘A Life in Architecture’, Architects’ Journal, 1 April, 1999.

CASA DEL OJO DE AGUA

stream

section

a

a'

plan

S T R AT I F IC AT ION; T R A NSI T ION, H I E R A RC H Y A N D H E A RT The Casa del Ojo de Agua is more or less symmetrical about one central longitu­ dinal axis (a–a' in the plan above). This axis stretches through the chevron steps and the steps up to the dining room, through the bedroom and doorway at the top of the long flight of steps, out into the forest and down to the stream. Along this axis there are various levels (see the section above). At each level your sense of relationship with the ground and surroundings is different. The dining room is at the uppermost level, open to the canopy of the mango tree above and to the forest on three of four sides. Here, raised amongst the trees and screened by the back wall, you have your most direct immersed relationship with the enveloping forest. The bedroom is at the middle, in-between level. It has a ceiling above but is open to the forest on three sides. That openness, veiled by the mesh of the mosquito net, is punctuated by the columns and the free-standing doorway. Although the 15

sounds of the birds and rain easily penetrate the net, this space, also raised, feels more an inside space. This is where you have your more private reflective relationship with the forest and its changing atmosphere. The stream is below, at the lowest level. This is the objective of your descent down the steps. The arrangement produces a hierarchy of spaces, with the dining room and bedroom vying to be the heart of the house. That status probably alternates according to weather, time of day and occupation: entertaining dinner guests on a dry warm evening, the heart would be the dining level; alone in the house during a downpour, it would be the bedroom. The Casa del Ojo de Agua has three main thresholds; each has a different effect on the person crossing it. First there is the threshold from the hill – the approach to the house – up the short flight of steps, across the bridge and through the doorway ‘into’ the dining room where you find yourself on an elevated platform amongst the trees. Second is the threshold – again from the hill but this time down the chevron steps, under the bridge and through the doorway – into the bedroom, where you find yourself in the space more like an enclosed room. Then (third) there is the free-standing doorway. Standing on its threshold, the precarious steps fall immediately before you. Each threshold changes your relationship with the forest. Each threshold elicits a different emotional response: excitement at emerging on to a stage high in the trees; relative relaxation at entering a refuge; trepidation at the top of the precipitous steps. The house as a whole is a transition. As you pass into and through it your relationship with Nature changes; your perception of the vegetation and wildlife around you is trans­ formed, intensified and orchestrated by the architecture. Pas­ sage through the single wall separates you from everywhere else and introduces you to the special world of the house and its intimate relationship with the forest. Emerging from the free-standing doorway to descend the steps you see the forest with different eyes. It is as if you are presenting yourself at the gates of Nature for judgement. PR I M I T I V E PL AC E T Y PE S Appropriately, since it is in Mexico, the Casa del Ojo de Agua is reminiscent of a Mayan or Inca temple (right) with its long flight of steep steps leading up to a doorway into a cell at the top. Whereas such temples were places of sacrifice – with severed heads thrown bleeding down the steps – the Casa del Ojo de Agua is a temple to the things we do in a dining room or bedroom, with table and bed as altars to eating and to sleeping… These, together with a shower and a lavatory, are the principal primitive place types framed by the house. 16

Mayan or Inca temple

‘A RC H I- GR A M M A R’ Sense is a concept we usually associate with verbal language. The words and punctuation of the present sentence make sense, but they could be rearranged to produce nonsense: punctuation make, words The the nonsense they of and could. present produce be sense sentence to but rearranged The effect of broken grammar is unnerving, irritating, unsatisfactory. Without the grammar there is no meaning. The assemblage of words becomes more a puzzle, a challenge to our sense of sense. As the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested, meaning in language resides less in the individual words themselves and more in the grammar of the ways in which those words are put together. Something similar can happen in architecture. The equivalents of words in architecture are the basic architec­ tural elements of floor, wall, roof, doorway, pathway etc. The equivalents of meaning (at one conceptual level at least) are places, individually and in combination: a place for entering, a place for eating, a place for sleeping, a place for exiting, a place for descending to a stream etc., all arranged/composed in plausible strings or sequences. Even though it is hardly a conventional house, the elements of the Casa del Ojo de Agua are arranged to make architectural sense. But we could rearrange them to make architectural nonsense (right). The nonsense in this drawing is in various dimensions. There is constructional nonsense in that some elements defy gravity and constructional prag­ matism. But there is also spatial nonsense: steps leading nowhere; doorways out of place; spaces that deny rather than accommodate habitation. There may be visual/sculptural interest in such an arrangement, but it does not frame places to accommodate (at least not easily) the various activities of, in this case, domestic life. (The spatial sense of buildings is destroyed too when they are demolished or bombed. Like people, works of architecture can ‘lose their lives’, ‘be killed’, ‘murdered’.) By contrast the actual Casa del Ojo de Agua (opposite) is ‘archi-grammatical’. It is like a neat, well-constructed sentence which progresses along its longitudinal axis. You approach, either ascend or descend steps, pass through a doorway which is like a colon: then you find yourself in another situation. Ascending to the dining room you reach a full-stop – the balustrade around the edge of the platform. Going down you pass through another colon: the doorway into the bedroom. From there, there is a further (optional) expe­ riential clause through another colon: you can pass through the freestanding doorway and descend to the stream below. CASA DEL OJO DE AGUA

In language, nonsense and the breaking of grammar are used in various ways. Lewis Carroll wrote nonsense poems such as Jaberwocky (1872) – ‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.’ – which, because of its grammar and evocative invented words, still manages to conjure images in the mind. James Joyce, in Ulysses (1922), wrote whole chapters without punctuation – ‘… I tasted one with my finger dipped out of that American that had the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time we took the port and…’ – mimicking the ways thoughts stream unstructured through our conscious minds. As in language, architectural nonsense can be used as a literary device or for philosophical comment. (See the adden­ dum to this analysis.) But in the Casa del Ojo de Agua, despite it being an unusual house and missing some of the elements we would expect in an orthodox house, we are presented with what we can recognise as the architectural equivalent of correct grammar and plausible sense. 17

C ONC LUSION (201 5) The Casa del Ojo de Agua may have the elemental simplic­ ity of a child’s picture of a house but its subtleties derive less from simplicity of pictorial appearance and more from understanding that the elements of architecture are, each in their own way, instruments for modifying the relationship between the person and his or her surroundings. These sub­ tleties derive too from assessing, at a fundamental level, the need and desirability of each of the elements that normally (in orthodox examples) go together to make a house, and then deciding which enhance and which would detract from the experience. For example: • the four walls of an orthodox house are, in the Casa del Ojo de Agua, edited down to one; the wall is useful as a screen on the approach side of the house to preserve a degree of privacy, but elsewhere walls would have been a barrier separating the occupant from the forest, its light, sounds and atmosphere; • the absence of three of the walls reveals the platform – the floor which is almost always hidden in orthodox houses – as a plinth or stage that lifts the human occupant above the natural ground, with consequent pragmatic advantages, but also as an expression of the generic human capacity to transcend Nature; • the roof that an orthodox house would have is omitted in the Casa del Ojo de Agua; the shade needed in a hot climate is provided by the canopy of trees; the bedroom provides a refuge from rain when needed; a roof is not necessary, it would have increased the separation of the interior from its surroundings, pre­ venting a view up into the canopy of leaves, branches and filtered sunlight; • the Casa del Ojo de Agua has two kinds of doorway, pragmatic and symbolic (though all doorways are in a way both at the same time); on the uphill side of the house the doorways are pragmatic in that they are needed to allow access through the screen wall into the bedroom and on to the upper dining level; but the temple-like doorway at the top of the flight of steps down to the stream is not needed for practical rea­ sons – there is no barrier to penetrate other than the flimsy mosquito netting; this doorway is primarily symbolic, framing the threshold of the descent from the platform to the stream and presenting a focus for the ascent back. The Casa del Ojo de Agua is not so much a deconstruc­ tion, distortion or fragmentation of ‘the house’ (its orthodox architectural form) but more a return to first principles, assessing each element of the house and its relationship with 18

others, according to its role in orchestrating – modifying, intensifying, mediating – the relationship between the occu­ pants and their surroundings. Such is the house’s role as an instrument of mediation between its human occupants and the forest. But the Casa del Ojo de Agua is also tied physically into its site: by its relation­ ship with the slope; by the hole that allows a branch of the mango tree to grow through; by the steps that reach down to touch the stream; by its admission of the sound of birds and running water; by its lack of a barrier to the splashing of rain and the vegetation’s humidity and perfume. This house is an object lesson in reassessing the orthodox and designing architecture from first principles as a composition of basic elements in collaboration with context. 2 02 3 I chose to analyse this building because it looked interesting and I wanted to find out why. This is often the case with the buildings I analyse. I do not know what I will find; I just suspect I shall find something. I empathise strongly with the sentiment expressed by Henry David Thoreau in his account of Life in the Woods – Walden (1854) – below. Sometimes I choose a building to analyse because architectural critics and historians tell me that it is ‘important’. And, being rather insubordinate by temperament, I want to find out whether I agree; or whether by analysis I can discover a different root of importance than that promulgated by those critics, histo­ rians or even the architects themselves. My purpose is, as it always has been, to find aspects of the general workings of architecture so that I can point them out to student architects; so you can try them for yourselves. In the case of the Casa del Ojo de Agua, the main aspects revealed by analysis are (for me at least) that: 1 architecture can concentrate on putting the person in a particular situation (here in relation to a jungle context) almost to the total exclusion of its own appearance as an aesthetic object; 2 a conventional composition of basic elements – platform, walls, doorway, steps, columns, roof… – can be edited, perhaps with some omitted altogether, to orchestrate/intensify identification of place; ‘The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.’

Henry David Thoreau – Walden, (1854), 1981.

3 just as sense in verbal language depends on grammar, so spatial sense in architecture depends on what we might call ‘archi-grammar’ (the sensible arrange­ ment of elements and spaces in relation to each other and our experience of them); 4 and, as a corollary… just as a writer can play with or even subvert grammatical sense in language for poetic effect, so too might an architect play with or subvert archi-grammatical sense in architecture; 5 original architectural ideas can be generated by reinterpreting old/traditional works of architecture; (this is a lesson that will be encountered repeatedly in the following pages). ‘Putting a person in a particular situation’ is a partial way of defining ‘identification of place’. With regard to the first of the above aspects of the workings of architecture illustrated by the Casa del Ojo de Agua, think more generally about some of the basic situations a person might encounter. Various extremes are shown in these sketches. The Casa del Ojo de Agua is a combination of a few.

Architecture situates the person in both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions. Situation is not about appearance but about provoking feeling, eliciting emotion in the person. (See also the quotation from Sverre Fehn and my accompanying diagram on page 172 of Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect, second edition, 2023.)

A person can be hidden, incarcerated, protected… within a walled enclosure…

A person might withdraw into the dark bowels of the earth (top image)…

… or exhibited, displayed, exposed… on a stage or platform.

… be taken out across a body of water (middle)… … or marooned on an island.

In a more extreme sense, a person might be lost in a mine or forgotten in a dungeon (left)… … be given a privileged viewpoint at the top of a tower (above)… … stood precariously at the edge of a precipice (near right)… … or at the base of a cliff (far right). Any work of architecture might be positioned conceptually somewhere in the midst, or as a combination, of these extremes.

CASA DEL OJO DE AGUA

19

Think about alternative ways in which the Casa’s composition of basic elements might be re-edited – adding walls in different positions (perhaps with windows), a (maybe partial) roof supported by columns, additional doorways… – with different effects on the relationship between habitation and surroundings. For example, an extra doorway positioned at the bottom of the steps (above) would subtly change their relationship with the stream. One at the foot of the dining room steps would start to define a lobby.

In what circumstances might the addition of a side wall be beneficial? Maybe to mitigate a persistent wind from one direction, or perhaps to preserve privacy from neighbourly intrusion. How would such a side wall affect the atmosphere of both the dining room and the bedroom. The side wall could play a structural role, making one of the columns redundant. How would the changes – side wall and removal of column – affect the dynamic of entrance and the syntactic flow of the archi-grammatical spatial sentence?

A thought experiment… (architects do them all the time). With regard to the second and third of the aspects of the general workings of architecture illustrated by the Casa del Ojo: consider how its composition of elements might be amended whilst maintaining (but perhaps editing) its archi-grammatical sense. Five of innu­ merable possibilities are illustrated above. Be aware of the subtle ways in which an additional wall, doorway, column or roof changes the sense/meaning of the house; as does removal of an element. The analogy with language is the most useful way of thinking about this: move, change, remove or add a word in a sentence and the meaning/sense of the sentence changes in a subtle, or perhaps radical, way. It is the same in architecture. When conducting this thought experiment, make sketches to help your imag­ ination envisage the effects of alternative changes. Remember too the common devices you discover that might be useful in your own work: the use of a wall to screen off something you do not want to see or to shelter a place from wind; the use of a doorway to create a constriction in experience followed by a dramatic revelation (right); the use of upper floors to progressively increase the person’s separation from the ground (opposite page, top)… 20

What happens if we remove a significant element – the back (or is it front) wall for example? How would this change the experience of entering the house? Maybe you would keep the lower doorway as access through the mosquito netting? How does being able to see the vegetation on the upper slope, as well as all around, affect the feel of being in the house, at both the bedroom and dining room levels? How do the two extra columns needed to support the upper floor change the dynamic of the bedroom space?

To a person passing through it, a doorway gives back what a wall takes away. If you removed the back/front wall of the Casa del Ojo de Agua you would dilute the drama of passing through the doorway. Even so, if you kept the doorway (without the wall) you would still elicit that emotional frisson associated with passing over a threshold.

above

on top

in-between, upper

in-between, lower

underneath

below

You could add another floor, set back so its supporting columns, directly over the columns below, determine its edge. This extra floor becomes a roof for the dining room and a sheltering porch over the upper doorway. It creates a balcony on the middle floor too, from which Juliet might be wooed by Romeo. This extra, highest, floor would have a different atmosphere from those below, taking the person even further up into the canopy of trees. Access to it might be like from a submarine, via a wall ladder and through a hatch…

Try another thought experiment… Generally speaking, the Casa del Ojo de Agua adheres to what we have called archi-grammatical sense in the layout of its elements and sequence of spaces. But how might you challenge, bend or even break that sense for poetic effect? Per­ haps because their primary purpose is to conduct us from one place to another, three of the basic architectural elements that have, through history, had their sense broken are the doorway, pathway, and stair. An example, drawing on the timeless metaphorical relationship between death and the doorway, is at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, designed by John Soane in 1811 (right). CASA DEL OJO DE AGUA

You might excavate the ground under the lowest floor to create a room of a very different character from those above: much darker and more enclosed. Now the stratification has six levels, each with its own distinctive relationship with the surroundings. These range from: ‘below’ (down by the stream); ‘underneath’ (the hidden room, a cellar isolated from the rest of the world); ‘in-between, lower’ (a summer bedroom?); ‘in-between, upper’ (dining room?); ‘on top’ (up with the birds amongst the tree canopy); and ‘above’.

Notice too that each level is reached by a different type of stair or ladder. But what might the hidden room be used for: storage, sleeping in winter, a photographic darkroom…? (You would probably want to screen off the view of the lavatory through its doorway!) None of these five amendments is intended in any way to suggest that Dewes and Puentes’ design needs improvement – it has its own poetically condensed perfection. My purpose is only to illustrate the possibilities of variation. mausoleum

gallery

gallery

Attached to the Dulwich Picture Gallery is a mausoleum (plan above) housing the tomb of its benefactor together with those of his friend and his friend’s wife. The mausoleum appears as a grand porch (left) with doorways on three sides. But this is a porch of death rather of life. The doorways do not allow passage in and out. They are reminiscent of the false doorways found in the mortuary temples of the ancient Egyptian pyramids. This is an example of archi-grammatical sense being broken for poetic reasons. 21

upside-down stair cupboards table

section

Throughout the history of architecture there have been innumerable exam­ ples where architects, wittingly or not, have contravened archi-grammatical sense. Consider this example (left) – a house designed in the 1970s by Peter Eisenman (see also pages 130–32). Among its notorious oddities, House VI has a dining table wedged between columns, making seating awkward, and an upside-down stair in the ceiling above (dashed in the plan). On the upper floor, it has a glazed gap down the middle of the master bedroom, which makes accommodation of a double bed difficult and allows a view up into the bedroom from the living room below. The views from some of the windows are blocked by screen walls. And the wall cup­ boards in the kitchen are too high to reach without a step-ladder. So, to return to the second thought experiment, how would you alter the design of Casa del Ojo de Agua to break archi-grammatical sense for poetic or intellectual reasons? Maybe by blocking a doorway, or adding a fourth set of steps?

kitchen dining

living room bedroom above

plan

Although not defying archi-grammatical sense to the extent that human beings cannot use it at all, Eisenman’s House VI does present challenges, such as: an awkward dining space crowded by two columns; an upside-down stair; a double bedroom divided by a glazed gap in the floor; views blocked by walls; and kitchen cupboards that are difficult to reach. It is a house in which life is subjugated to the indifferent authority of a composition of elements arranged according to a complex geometric conceit (see pages 130–32). Although this was a hard authority to impose on the clients who paid for the house,* the design might be interpreted as an exploratory test of the appropriate extent to which ideal geometry (at play in architecture since prehistory) might be imposed as frame for human life. At the end of a television interview with Eisenman, the American architect Robert A.M. Stern commented: ‘Eisenman replaces our traditional notion of home with a mathematical puzzle. This American dream house celebrates geometry. It celebrates perception and the architect’s own psyche. The one thing it does not celebrate is the sense of place.’* * Suzanne Frank – Peter Eisenman’s House VI: the Client’s Response, 1994. For photographs of House VI see: archdaily.com/63267/ad-classics-house-vi­ peter-eisenman (Feb. 2022).

22

It is thought that in prehistoric times, when an old person died in the house they had inhabited all their lives, their body would be interred under the floor and the doorway of the house sealed. The house died too, and became their mausoleum. The same might be applied to the Casa del Ojo de Agua.

Interring the body and sealing the doorway transforms the house into a mausoleum, a temple to the memory and presence of the dead person. The upper doorway might be barred too, but with a view through to an added stairway to heaven?

These are ways in which the archi-grammatical sense of an architectural composition might be broken in ways that intensify poetic meaning. Exploiting them is dependent on your fluency in the universal language of place-making. Their range is limited only by your imagination. With regard to point 5 on page 19… the design of the Casa del Ojo de Agua may have been influenced by the form of an ancient Mayan temple; but that does not preclude it being, itself, an influence on future original architectural compositions. All architecture depends on what has gone before.

N EU E N DOR F HOUSE

23

N EU E N DOR F HOUSE a holiday home on the island of M allorc a J O H N PAWSO N and C L AU DIO SI LV ESTRIN, 19 87– 9 In which we shall see that: • architecture may be composed as a piece of spatial music, with varying rhythms, paces and passages of crescendo, transition, quiet calm, climax…; • the wall – a basic element in the universal language of place-making – has many powers; • a person can be put in more types of situation by architecture than those sketched on page 19; • given due space, perspective is a visual modifier in the music of architecture; • and geometry is an intellectual modifier…; • architecture can (in contrast to the Casa del Ojo de Agua) isolate the person from surrounding Nature; • but even when providing seclusion, architecture may modify appreciation of the world around by axis, framing, compression and release…; • vernacular architecture is the locus of the universal language of place-making.

M

usicians write études to explore what is possible within a particular set of musical parameters. John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin’s house on the island of Mallorca is an architectural étude. The possibilities it explores are those of the wall. Using little more than this most basic of architectural elements, the architecture of the Neuendorf House takes the person through a series of experiences (right; 1, and 2 oppo­ site). The house has an introduction (a) – a slow drawn-out crescendo. It has a moment of transition (b) – a change of key, an instant when mounting anticipation is replaced with momentary trepidation. Through the transition the mood changes – movement along a clear direction is replaced with relative stasis in a courtyard (c), it slows, uncertain, trying to find a centre. The climax (d), which projects the mind into the far distance, is a moment of revelation. Experiencing the house is the spatial equivalent of listening to a passage of music.

As an object, the Neuendorf House appears as a minimalist fortress with high bare walls coloured Moroccan red. But the house is more powerful when interpreted as a sequence of experiences. Its seemingly simple composition of basic architectural elements produces a narrative that can be compared to a piece of music composed in space rather than sound. It begins with a drawn-out introduction. 24

WA L L A S V E R B If architecture is language, then the wall is a verb. ‘To wall’ is the process of building – placing stone upon stone, brick upon brick – but a wall remains a verb, architecturally, even when it is finished; that is when a wall’s doing role as an instrument for managing space properly begins. A wall properly achieves its status as an architectural verb once it is built. Walls are often thought of as dumb and immobile. (‘It’s like talking to the wall!’) They may be, but they do things. They are powerful. They control the ways in which we use space; they lay down the rules by which space is organised and experienced; they stop us going some places, they guide us to others, they enclose us and protect our privacy and possessions. The Neuendorf House is an exercise in what you – an architect – can use walls to do. The architecture of Pawson and Silvestrin, who since building this house together have worked separately, is usually characterised as austere, minimalist. They make buildings with as little furniture as possible and no decoration. Spaces are as simple and as bare as they can be.

c b

d

a

Ascending widely-spaced steps, the approach to the house (a) builds a crescendo of anticipation culminating in a moment of transition (b) that leads into a courtyard of sequestered calm (c). As you enter, there is a bench along the wall to your left. In front are wide openings into the shady and precisely composed interior rooms. On your right is a firstfloor balcony. The climax is a view back out to the world around (d) – a framed perspective of a long narrow swimming pool, backed by trees and the distant horizon across the sea to the south east.

1 section x–x' along the stepped entrance path

a

x

b

c

x'

d

tennis court north (approx.)

2 plans: ground floor and (inset) upper floor

x'

swimming pool

x

3 south-west elevation

A blank wall pierced only by the entrance slot and one tiny square window; its surface glows red in the afternoon sun.

4 south-east elevation

The loggia opening from the courtyard to the pool and a row of small windows concealed in a visor-like a slit. roof terrace

bedroom

courtyard

dining room

5 section x–x' through the entrance slot, courtyard and dining room

(The roof terrace is reached by the house’s single stairway.)

NEUENDORF HOUSE

The Neuendorf House is completely without ornamen­ tation. It walls are bare and rectangular, coloured Moroccan red by mixing earth pigment with the cement. They glow warm against blue Mallorcan skies and behind deep green Mediterranean trees. There are almost no windows. Those there are are mostly small rectangular holes in the walls on the upper floor. One wall has none. The entrance wall (3) has just one tiny window. A third wall has a regularly spaced row of them, like an insistent beat. And in the fourth wall, facing over the swimming pool (4), the tiny square windows are like eyes hid­ den in the shadow of a horizontal visor-like sl0t, or arhythmic monotones on a simple musical stave. More than austere, the architecture of the Neuendorf House is severe, even daunting. Inscrutable on its hilltop, it is more like a fortress than a house. Except that it has a tennis court, a terrace for sunbathing and a swimming pool, it makes few concessions to the fact that it is for vacations. By contrast with the Casa del Ojo de Agua, this is a house in which walls separate occupants from Nature, the presence of which is consigned to that strictly controlled and tightly framed view out along the length of the swimming pool. 25

8 apparent geometry

9 apparent geometry overlaid on plan

GE OM E T RY

thirds to make nine smaller squares. The courtyard seems to occupy four of these with the living accommodation – dining room, bedrooms, utility spaces etc. – taking up the other five. On the south side, the middle third is the loggia facing the swimming pool. The courtyard too appears to be divided into thirds, with its entrance slot situated on one of the ‘third’ lines. But if we overlay that simple geometry on the plan we see that it does not fit (9). The large square seems to include the benches on the south elevation. The courtyard square is too big. And as usual, the precision of the geometry is con­ fused by the thicknesses of walls. It is often impossible to determine exactly what geometry an architect has applied, but a tentative alternative analysis is shown below left (10). It includes a Golden Section rectangle in the dining room too. A possible analysis of the south elevation, based on squares and thirds as well as √5 and √2 rectangles, is shown below (11). Ideal geometry can be an intellectual frame, a help in making decisions about the relative positions and sizes of things when no other deciding criteria are apparent. In the Neuendorf House it appears to have been used to achieve the repose and calmness – the harmony, to continue the musical metaphor – thought to belong to spaces and forms that are proportioned according to simple geometric ratios.

The form of the house is strictly orthogonal. Apart from a curved wall screening off the bathroom upstairs and the wind­ ing stair hidden away excavated from its own block of solid matter, everything is rectangular, perfect, sharp-edged. The approach path is straight, climbing regular wide-spaced steps. The roof-line is horizontal, the walls vertical. The swimming pool is a long rectangle stretching along an axis. The small windows are square. Even the bath is a rectangular block. Musical harmony is geometric. Octaves double a note’s frequency and can be achieved by halving the length of a gui­ tar string. Chords have thirds and fifths. Architects seek har­ mony with geometry too. As you might expect, the Neuendorf House appears to have been designed on an ideal geometric matrix (8) with the main block based on a square divided into

10 more complex geometry

26

11 speculative geometry of the swimming pool elevation

The story of the Neuendorf House is told with basic architectural elements: pathway, defined area (platform and pit), doorway and wall. Primary amongst these is the wall. As a verb the wall does many things, has many powers: to guide; to screen; to define; to enclose; to support… as well as to receive sunlight and shadow.

B A SIC E L E M E N T: WA L L Although the Neuendorf House might be interpreted as an abstract composition of elements – a ‘masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light’ (to quote Le Corbusier) – its architecture operates in other dimensions too. Most notably it involves the modifying element of time, the time it takes… It is not a building merely to be looked at, but experienced. As has already been suggested, it is a building that takes the person by the hand and leads them on a journey. As has been mentioned, the instrument by which the Neuendorf House orchestrates experience is primarily the wall. And as with music, the journey is emotional. The journey begins when the house sends out – meta­ phorically – a telescopic pathway to meet you on arrival. It is a hand outstretched; the hosts have come to collect you at the entrance to their estate to bring you to the house. The path, with steps widely spaced, determines your line of approach. The wall alongside guides you forward, managing what you see and what you do not. Just as the host might, the wall takes you by the arm and gently accompanies you on the climb. On your right as you begin the ascent is the pit of the tennis court within its own high blank walls, accessed down a stair confined in a narrow space between two parallel walls (compare the Danteum, pages 147–55). The wall of the tennis NEUENDORF HOUSE

‘I know of no more beautiful effect than to be secluded on all sides, insulated against the turmoil of the world, and to see above, free, the sky. In the evening.’

Friedrich Gilly (1797), quoted in Fritz Neumeyer – The Artless Word, 1991.

court, along with the wall that accompanies the pathway to the house, suggests a gateway into the castle’s domain. (See the drawing on page 23.) The stepped pathway with the perspective of the wall alongside, gradually diminishing in height as you climb higher, is focused directly on the tall narrow slot in the wall of the house in front of you. It is a geometrically perfect crevice in the cliff face that is the wall of the house. The wall is a barrier but the slot offers the possibility of penetration. This slot is the focus of the perspective, and your goal. Apart from one tiny square window high on the right (3 on page 25) this wall has no other features. In the evening it blazes with the reflected orange light of the setting sun. You approach the wall and its slot with anticipation, perhaps trepidation. The climb is slow and slightly arduous. The architect, like a film director, engineers suspense. As you near the slot there is one last step up onto a platform. Then, between the walls, there is another, the threshold into the courtyard. As you tend to at any threshold into someone else’s world, you hesitate. The wall has, until you were near, hidden what is inside. Now you can peer through the slot to see if it is safe to enter. It takes a slight effort of will to go in. Once you pass through the wall you are in a different place. A threshold is a fault-line. The courtyard is separated from the world, almost completely. There is nothing natural about this space. It is a space of the mind, of geometry, a bare frame. Here the performances are not of the mindless processes of Nature but of human will and relationships. You look up and see the blue or starry sky. The walls of the house are around you, but they are hardly less severe and uncom­ promising than the external walls. There are two rectangular openings in front of you, leading into the austere dining room with its altar-like table at its centre. On the upper floor to your right is a balcony. Perhaps someone greets you from there. Becoming more confident, and looking around at the enigmatic space in which you find yourself, you wander fur­ ther into the square courtyard. You see, under the balcony, a 27

broad opening. You position yourself to look through it and are confronted by the climax of this journey orchestrated by architecture: a view back out into the world, transformed, with the axial perspective of the long swimming pool stretching into the far distance. The house frames you at its very centre as you are spell­ bound by the perspective – the perfectly level surface of the water reflecting the sky with the deep dark green of almond trees beyond – all set like a perfectly composed picture within the rectangle of the loggia, a subtly moving image projected onto a wall that is not there. As a coda, following the climax of the piece, you go through the wide doorway into the loggia, between the court­ yard and the pool. You find at its edge two very high steps that make it uncomfortable, if not impossible, to descend to the terrace and swimming pool outside. You are caught in the mind-world of the house. It insists you remain in its matrix as a spectator of the framed moving image of the pool and landscape outside. (Intermediate steps were later installed to make the descent from the loggia to the terrace easier.)

The top of this wall is horizontal so its effective height diminishes as you get nearer to the house; it becomes less dominating. The house is contained within a square enclosure of walls all the same height. These walls define a special zone separated from everywhere else, a zone which is artificial, determined by the minds of its architects, by geometry.

P OW E R S OF T H E WA L L Architects are like gods. They make worlds for people to inhabit. In the Neuendorf House, John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin are manipulative gods. Like puppeteers, they dangle people by strings, playing with their emotions, leading them along pathways and across thresholds, testing and astonishing them. Like composers and film directors they build suspense, provoke uncertainty, and then provide resolution. Architec­ ture is the means by which they do this. And in this house their chief instrument of manipulation is the wall. First there is the wall that greets you at the beginning and guides and accompanies you on the climb up the steps towards the house with its tantalising entrance slot.

28

The tennis court alongside the approach path is a walled enclosure too. It is accessed by steps channelled down a narrow passage between two parallel walls. These become higher as you descend. They release you at the bottom into the space of the court, defined by its high walls and with the sun casting deep slanting shadows.

The only way through the barrier of the walls of the house, the only access into the enclosed courtyard, is through that narrow gap – the slit. The high walls define this fault line between outside and in. Inside, the courtyard is walled on two sides by the living accommodation. Through one of these is a large opening, the loggia, establishing the axis that strikes out into the landscape and framing the perspective of the long swimming pool.

This wall is thicker than the rest, making the whole building appear more substantial. It also plays its part in a relationship between the inside, the controlled outside of the courtyard, and the narrow entrance slit that gives a view of the approach path. The one curved wall in the house screens the bathroom upstairs. Walls provide back rests to the benches too… and a parapet around the roof terrace.

C ONC LUSION (201 5) Elsewhere small square openings in the walls make tiny pictures of the world outside.

As well as providing the screens onto which the light of the sun and shadows are projected, walls screen (in a different sense) the interiors. The wall between the courtyard and the dining room is perforated by two large openings. NEUENDORF HOUSE

The Neuendorf House is an object lesson in using walls to do things, to orchestrate experience. Everything the person does in and around the house relates in some way or other to a wall. The Neuendorf House also makes it clear that archi­ tecture involves the element of time. It takes the visitor time to approach, discover and explore the spaces and events the house offers. It is in time that the shadows cast by the Mal­ lorcan sun move across the Moroccan red walls. It need not be comfortable; it may presume the lifestyle of a monk; but this is a house that would be incomplete with­ out the person. It mediates between the person and the sur­ rounding landscape. It represents a transaction between the minds of the architects and the experience of its occupants. 29

2 02 3 In the original edition of this book I chose this building as a case study because it offers a contrast to the previous building, the Casa del Ojo de Agua. Both are to be found in John Welsh’s book Modern House (1995). Whereas the Casa del Ojo de Agua uses architecture to intensify the relationship between the person and the surroundings, the Neuendorf sequesters the person from them. Apart from that monocular loggia striking a line of sight out over the swimming pool to the south-east, the house encloses its occupants in a hermetic world of almost completely flat surfaces – vertical and horizontal – and geometrically ordered spaces. Like a strictly orthogonal skull, it manifests the ordering and controlling power of the minds of its architects. This is an internal world that does not toler­ ate clutter nor the vagaries of wear and weather. It demands the psychological security of pristine perfection. Whether it succeeds in its demand depends on the occupants – whether they submit or rebel – and on vigilant maintenance.

release compression release

release

compression

A person can be presented with a pathway that draws and guides them towards a goal…

SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON As well as containing the person in an intellectually ordered domain, the Neuendorf adds a few more examples to the inventory of ways in which architecture may situate the person illustrated above. First, in a situation type illustrated on page 19, it hides the person away from the world in high-walled enclosures: the courtyard and the tennis court in its pit. The swimming pool is a pit too, filled with water (top right). The person is situated in other ways too (right), sometimes involv­ ing compression before release into a new space. In such ways, architecture is a foil to life, a set that complements and enhances the performances – actions and interactions – of its occupants, and providing them with opportunities of transition, seclusion, revelation, appear­ ance, immersion… This house would be a good location for a fashion shoot.

… or placed in a specific position in relation to a axial perspective of parallel lines.

compression

release

A long thin swimming pool is a pathway too… as is the stair down to the tennis court…

… which leads the person down, disappearing before making an entrance onto court.

H I S T OR IC A L PR E C E DE N T S; P OE T IC DI S T I L L AT ION No novelist would welcome another altering their book, no artist their painting, no Fabergé his bejewelled egg… But a question hangs over whether the work of an architect, which has to be lived in rather than just with, should enjoy the same creator’s jealousy, the same sacrosanctity. Like a sea shell, the Neuendorf House is complete in itself. It is hard to think of a change that would not weaken its hermetic intellectual form. There may be melodic counterpoint between the irregular move­ ment of inhabitants – the dance – and the orthogonal frame and flat surfaces of the house – the stage – but that stage does not lend itself to amendment in response to changing needs and desires. Could we roof the courtyard or add a wall, let alone add an extra room or two, without corrupting Pawson and Silvestrin’s design? 30

a

section through a hypothetical Moorish courtyard house

The question of amendability is not one that can be answered easily. Much great architecture, and most of the examples analysed in this book, fall into the ‘hermetic intellectual form’ (temple*) category. But historically much humble or traditional architecture (sometimes called vernacular – the cottage category*) has lent itself to amendment according to the changing circumstances of its inhabitants; and the results of such responsive amendments are often reckoned to be ingredients of its habitable charm. Though modern in its minimalist freedom from stylistic decoration, the Neuendorf House nevertheless draws on historical precedents from hundreds, even thousands, of years ago. The domestic courtyard, for example, dates back some eight thousand years and was subsequently developed in classical times by the Greeks and Romans.** Appropriately, since Mallorca is part of that Mediterranean world, Pawson and Silvestrin’s design, with its seclusion from the world, seems to draw on the Moorish courtyard houses of northern Africa (above) and southern Spain as represented in Mallorcan traditional building. The Neuendorf House might be interpreted as a distillation of such courtyard houses to their elemental form. And it is in this interpretation that some hints at plausible amendments may be found… even if they do break the sacrosanctity of the architects’ minimalist design. Most of these amendments are subtle ways of addressing climatic challenges. Others are to do with aesthetic contrasts between colourful and plant-filled enclosed spaces, and the presentation of modest plainness to the outside world.

This section (left) through a hypothetical Moorish house has many of the features found in traditional courtyard houses in north Africa and southern Spain. It has a wind-catcher (a) to bring cooling breezes down into the lower levels of the house. A cool cellar that can help reduce the temperature of the principal spaces above. There are pools and a fountain to assist cooling by evaporation. The courtyard has trees and many plants for the same reason, as well as to provide colour, perfume and gradual change as they grow, flower and fade. Some provide fruit. There is also a shade cloth that can be drawn across the courtyard at the hottest times of day. Rooms opening from the courtyard have high ceilings and high-level vents to allow warm air to escape and let filtered light in. The courtyard also has a shady loggia along its sides keeping the walls of the rooms out of the sun. On the roof there is a pergola to provide shade whilst also allowing breezes. It might also support vines. All these modifications, except perhaps the cellar, could easily be added to the Neuendorf House. But something stops it happening… Is it reverence for the architects’ vision? Is it born of ascetic self-denial? Would the Neuendorf House be ‘improved’, and in what ways, by, for example, retractable shade cloths over the courtyard, plants and a fountain at its centre, wind catchers…? I shall leave you to decide whether such amendments would enhance inhabitation of the Neuendorf House, or whether they would be an insult to the sacrosanctity of the architects’ vision.

PE R SPE C T I V E; A X I S OF PRO J E C T ION As can be seen on the title page of this case study, the pathway up to the Neuendorf House focuses on the slit entrance into the courtyard, drawing the visitor towards it. But the doorways of the house – i.e. the slot entrance to the courtyard and the loggia looking along the length of the swimming pool – both generate axes of projection rather than of penetration. (See page 193 of Analysing Architecture, 2021.) Neither aligns with a focus within the house. Both set up scenes looking outwards with strong axial perspectives. The axis looking outwards from the slit entrance is of the long slow widely-stepped approach pathway (right). That of the other opening is of the swimming pool projecting towards the ocean in the distance and a vanishing point on the horizon (next page). As would be expected, both these openings with their strong axial perspectives are favourite subjects for architectural photographers recording this house. They both produce striking visual images. NEUENDORF HOUSE

axis A * For discussion of the ‘temple’ and ‘cottage’ categories see the chapter ‘Temples and Cottages’ in Analysing Architecture: the Universal Language of Place-Making. ** See the chapter on Courtyard in The Ten Most Influential Buildings in History: Architecture’s Archetypes.

31

B section through courtyard and swimming pool

axis B

As well as (like a skull) enclosing a sequestered interior, the Neuendorf House (with its eyes) projects lines of sight out into the world. Its architecture is reminiscent of British and continental neoclassical country houses or religious buildings that seek to project, by means of a doorway axis, their presence and power out into the world and to establish linkage either with something remote (the rising sun, a sacred mountain, the birthplace of a god…) or with infinity. In the Neuendorf House, axis A – through the entrance slot – establishes a practical linkage with the approach pathway and the gateway at its start. Axis B, across the swimming pool, engages with infinity. (See the chapter on Axis in Analysing Architecture (2021); and the following analysis of Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion.)

axis B view from the loggia out across the swimming pool to the horizon

axis A (on previous page)

ground floor plan (rotated 90 o from page 25)

Showing an axis of projection from dining room and courtyard out through the slot entrance (A, and on the previous page) and another out from the courtyard across the swimming pool (B). 32

The generation of axes of projection is one of the ways in which the Neuendorf House deviates from the precedent of the Moorish house. On the right is the plan of a traditional courtyard house from Marrakesh.* You can see that although there are doorway axes contained within – relating to the pool of water (a) at the centre of the courtyard – the axis of the main entrance (b) does not project out into the world. Where the privacy of the interior of the Neuendorf House is maintained by the narrowness of the entrance slit, that of the Marrakesh house is protected by a cranked lobby – a simple labyrinth or chicane entrance – a common feature of Moorish/Islamic houses. The modest domestic seclusion of the Moorish house contrasts with the desire of some public institutions – religious and secular – to project their presence, authority and ownership out into the world by the architectural power of the doorway axis.

a

b

plan of a Marrakesh courtyard house with cranked entrance * In Brian Edwards et al, eds. – Courtyard Housing: Past, Present & Future, 2006.

BA RCEL ONA PAV IL ION

33

BA RCEL ONA PAV IL ION built as the G er man Pavilion at the Barc elona Univer sal E xposition MIES VAN DER ROHE (with LILLY REICH), 1929 (rec onstr ucted in the 1980s) In which we shall see that: • insides and outsides are not always clearly defined; architecture can set a frame where we move from one to the other and back again without definite thresholds; • architecture can respond to context spatially (even if not stylistically); • reinterpreting historical precedent can produce ground-breaking architectural ideas; time-honoured spatial compositions can be broken apart and reassembled in new ways; spatial sense can be replaced with labyrinthine uncertainty and opportunity; • though generally non-verbal, architecture can be influenced by historiography and art theory; architecture can be (political) philosophy explored and expressed in spatial organisation; blocking an axis can be a manifesto for political revolution; • apparent architectonic truth can be represented by theatrical lies.

M

ies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion at the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1929, known simply as the Barcelona Pavilion, was designed and built some twenty years before his Farnsworth House (see pages 77–94). Though the Farnsworth House is a significant work of architecture in the twentieth century, the Barcelona Pavilion is even more so. It is one of the seminal works of all time. Its power and influence has grown rather than dissipated in the ninety years since it was first built. The pavilion’s broad context – Europe midway between the two World Wars in which Germany was a principal pro­ tagonist – was infinitely more charged politically than that of the later Farnsworth House built in the peaceful sylvan land­ scape of rural Illinois. As a contribution to an international exposition, set in juxtaposition to pavilions of other countries, the Barcelona Pavilion was intended as a symbol for a nation that had reinvented itself – as what is historically known as the Weimar Republic – after the social and cultural upheaval of the First World War. These challenges and conditions, perhaps assisted by the short time in which the project had to be designed and completed, stimulated Mies to produce one of the most sophisticated works of architecture in history. Only a few years after the pavilion was built, in 1933, political power in Germany was taken by the National Social­ ist movement and its leader Adolf Hitler. The Nazis rejected Modernism as an expression of German identity in favour

34

Barcelona Pavilion with roofs removed (dashed) to show internal layout

of an austere and monumental classicism; their domestic architecture derived from traditional folk architecture (see the analysis of Hans Scharoun’s Mohrmann House on pages 285–96). Mies moved to the United States in 1937. From inception to completion Mies had less than a year to negotiate a site for, design, and supervise the construction of the Barcelona Pavilion. The commission provided him with an opportunity to bring to realisation in built form architectural ideas he (and others) had been exploring during the preceding decade. These ideas concerned the use of new materials and construction techniques, as well as (and no less than) a reinvention of architectural space. After the horrors of the First World War, these were ideas that promised a new cultural language of architecture, a fresh way of making sense of the world (or at least acknowledging its uncertainties).

Mies van der Rohe’s development of these ideas was conditioned by his self-education in classical architecture and philosophy, and fed by contemporary archaeological discoveries. It exploited the possibilities of materials such as steel and large sheets of glass put together without applied ornament. In the Barcelona Pavilion, Mies also employed more traditional materials, used in architecture of all times, such as travertine (a sedimentary rock quarried in Italy and used by Mies in relatively thin slabs as paving and to clad some of the walls), polished marble (two types – one from Greece, the other from the Valle d’Aosta in north-west Italy – both with a strong ingrained pattern, also used as relatively thin wall veneers) and rare onyx (from North Africa, used for one particular wall at the core of the pavilion). A RC H I T E C T U R E A S P OE T RY A N D PH I L O S OPH Y The Barcelona Pavilion is a poem in architectural form. Its underlying theme relates to how Western culture could achieve, through expression in space, the ‘destiny idea’ (as Oswald Spengler had called it after the First World War in his then popular book The Decline of the West) towards which it had (according to Spengler and other theorists of history) been striving for nearly a millennium. Whether or not that political/historical aspiration was ever met, the Barcelona Pavilion has influenced generations of architects not only as an example of fluid spatial composition and minimalist detail­ ing using highly finished materials but also as an example of how an individual architect can promulgate ideas through the medium of architecture that achieve the status of philosoph­ ical propositions and political manifestos. The pavilion was dismantled almost immediately after the Exposition. For the following half-century its existence persisted only in a collection of black-and-white photographs and some preparatory design drawings. But, in its absence and consequent mythic status, the building’s reputation grew through the following decades until the 1980s when, after the fiftieth anniversary of its first manifestation and leading up to the centenary of Mies’s birth in 1986, moves were made to recreate it. The building now standing on the original site at the western end of the Gran Plaza de la Fuente Mágica in Barcelona is a carefully researched reincarnation.* The Barcelona Pavilion is one of the most enigmatic, engaging and hence most extensively discussed buildings in all of architectural literature. The related bibliography at the * For an account of the research into the original Barcelona Pavilion and of

its reconstruction in the 1980s see:

Ignasi de Solà Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos – Mies van der

Rohe: Barcelona Pavilion, 1993.

B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

end of this book has room for no more than a small selection of the many essays and books that attempt to understand what it is about. USI NG T H I NG S T H AT A R E T H E R E When the opportunity is there, the first architectural decision in any project is to decide on a specific location. Orientation and relationships to what is already there are essential ingre­ dients in every work of architecture that is built (or does not move). Although the Barcelona Pavilion is often presented in published drawings as an abstract composition free of context (and which would therefore be more or less the same anywhere) it was, in its original form and in its recreation (though missing one significant element), tied firmly into its location. Mies negotiated with the Exposition authorities to obtain a particular site in preference to the one they had allocated. His choice shows how he was attracted by features that were already there and to which he related his own design, using them as part of the overall composition. The Exposition was held in and around the monumen­ tal buildings, designed according to Beaux-Arts principles (generally neoclassical, arranged according to axes of sym­ metry) rising up grand flights of steps to the Palau Nacional, a museum of Catalonian art. According to de Solà Morales,* the Germans were first offered a site for their pavilion at the bottom of the steps. Mies rejected this in favour of a site at the western end of the Gran Plaza de la Fuente Mágica (1). This site had features conducive to the architectural ideas Mies wanted to explore. It gave him something to work with; he did not design the Barcelona Pavilion in a vacuum (2–13).

Pueblo Espagñol SITE to Plaza España Palau De Victoria Eugenia

Gran Plaza De La Fuente Mágica

Palau Nacional 1

35

2

3

2 Apart from the way the site looks out across the esplanade of the Gran Plaza, there were four existing elements that contributed to Mies’s design. First was the slope, upwards away from the Gran Plaza, which would place the pavilion on a raised level like a precious object on its own podium. Second was the route through the site, rising up some short flights of steps aligned with the central axis of the Gran Plaza and leading upwards towards the Pueblo Español (a permanent exhibition of traditional Spanish buildings). Third was the massive north wall of the adjacent Palau Victoria Eugenia, almost always in shadow. And fourth was a row of Ionic columns also centred on the axis of the Gran Plaza, but now gone. These elements formed what may be called a ‘Miesian’ composition in their own right. A Miesian composition might be defined as consisting in distinct architectural elements – in this case a route, a wall and a row of columns – arranged in an orthogonal relationship but not touching. It is understandable that Mies saw here a setting sympathetic to his own ideas. 3 Mies’s first design move was to establish the platform – a stage on which to perform his architecture. Veiled from the Gran Plaza by the curtain of Ionic columns, this platform was rectangular and bedded into the slope. It was oriented at right angles to the wall of the Palau Victoria Eugenia and parallel to the row of Ionic columns but was not centred on the axis of the Gran Plaza. Drawings prepared for the scheme (some of which are published in de Solà Morales, 1993) suggest that Mies mused on whether this platform should be thought of as a discrete platform (as shown in 3) or as the equivalent of a rocky outcrop/ledge emerging from the sloping ground (4) and with its surface reaching to the steps. The platform needed its own access steps, also avoiding the Gran Plaza’s axis. The rule of asymmetry – playing with an axis rather than following its authority – is essential to the seminal character of the Barcelona Pavilion. In a Beaux-Arts scheme both the platform and the approach steps would have been aligned on the axis (5, opposite page). Although Mies acknowledged the axis of the Gran Plaza – he did draw it onto his design drawings – he dealt with (related to) it in more subtle ways. 36

4

6

7

6 The platform as built. Its rectangle is modified in a number of places: to accommodate an office (at the back left corner); and to avoid its travertine cladding running into the slope (the two nibs extending sideways at the front corners of the platform). Generally these deviations from the rectangle are not noticed when you visit the pavilion; it appears a discrete and rectangular platform. On its upper side, away from the Gran Plaza, the paving stops at the notional edge of the platform’s rectangle rather than reaching to the bottom of the steps. Though this might appear to be a minor detail, it is significant; this threshold (a slight step) between the paving of the platform and the ground’s surface affirms the platform as (notionally) a discrete entity and reinforces the sense that the pavilion exists in its own special realm somehow apart from the real world. Mies’s musing on extending the paving to the steps suggests he was thinking about the platform as part of the route from the Gran Plaza up towards the Pueblo Español. He decided against emphasising this role, though it was not dismissed completely. 7 The superstructure of the pavilion stands on the platform. The drawing shows it as a composition related to the features already there. The route provided a line of movement on which the pavilion could create an event. The massive wall of the Palau Victoria Eugenia provided the pavilion with a backdrop, almost always in shade and appearing in many iconic photographs of the building as a glowering ‘sky’ enhancing the pavilion’s brightness. And the line of Ionic columns separated the pavilion from the Gran Plaza de la Fuente Mágica. Approaching across the plaza (see the drawing on page 33), the columns would have created a sense of mystery and anticipation, reinforcing the pavilion’s otherness, its difference from the Beaux-Arts buildings around. Once on the pavilion’s platform they would have been the equivalent of the trees along the riverbank by the Farnsworth House (see page 83), providing a screen through which the outside world was seen. 5

B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

(The orientation of these drawings is rotated approximately 60° to the right in relation to the site plan on page 35.)

37

x

b

y

y' a

x'

8

9

8 The Miesian composition of existing features, along with the platform, constitute the first basic elements of the Barcelona Pavilion. The Ionic columns defined a threshold between an outside and an inside – between the open esplanade of the Gran Plaza de la Fuente Mágica and the pavilion’s own special domain. They gave the pavilion a detached portico, such as one would see on a neoclassical building (cf. the Altes Museum, below and on page 47). Subsequent elements are arranged on the horizontal surface of the platform – the blank sheet of paper Mies created as the artificial perfect ground for his composition of walls, columns, pits, roofs… This composition may be de-constructed into its component elements (9–11). (This is not the order in which Mies conceived the design nor is it the sequence in which the pavilion was constructed, but building up the composition in steps helps describe how the design is organised conceptually.)

9 The first element is a flat rectangular roof (the dashed rectangle ‘a’ in the plan above) floating parallel to the platform’s top surface and supported on a grid of eight evenly spaced columns. There is also a smaller roof (b) over the area to be occupied by the office. Spatially, these roofs establish a horizontal layer of space – suspended between ground and sky – within which Mies will make his spatial composition with walls. As well as being like a classical temple, the roof on its columns is an aedicule that might also be thought of as another classical building type, a propylon (opposite page, middle right) across the route. Although this aedicule is symmetrical in itself, it follows the rule of asymmetry in that it is positioned off the axis of the plaza x–x', which passes approximately two fifths the way across the first inter-columnar space. Also, its own central axis is not contiguous with that of the Gran Plaza, but turned through 90 degrees (y–y').

loggia

stair (see right)

Altes Museum, Berlin, K.F. Schinkel, 1820s (see also pages 47–9)

38

loggia stairs of the Altes Museum, screened by layers of columns

y inner courtyard ‘megaron’ courtyard

b a

page 49). This wall may be compared to the wall behind the throne in the megaron of Tiryns (b, below). In the 1929 Exposition the pavilion was inaugurated by King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Maybe Mies considered placing his specially designed chairs against this wall as thrones? In the event, contemporary photographs show a table (an altar) against this wall on its central axis, with a pair of chairs to one side. Ludwig Glaeser reported that ‘the principal function (of the pavilion) was the inaugural ceremony in which the Spanish King was to sign his name into a “golden book”. The table for the book stood against the onyx wall, which clearly identified the ritual center’ (Juan Pablo Bonta, 1979, page 208). All the walls to the courtyard are clad in the same travertine stone as the platform. All those to the ‘megaron’ are clad in the coloured and highly patterned marbles and onyx mentioned above. This difference suggests Mies wanted a qualitative difference between the two zones. The rarest and most valuable stone – the onyx – was reserved for the ‘altar/throne’ wall (wall b).

z

propylon 10

10 The next element is the solid (non-glass) wall. Most of these solid walls wrap around the edge of the platform, forming a fragmented enclosure – like a temenos around its temple or a courtyard in front of a Mycenæan or Minoan megaron (right). But two shorter walls, without corners, stand free. The longer of these (at ‘a’) does not merely play with the plaza’s axis, it blocks it. On its own, this wall asserts the underlying principle of the spatial composition. By interrupting the axis of movement it makes a place to linger, to wander rather than merely pass through. Together with the arrangement of the access steps up onto the platform, this wall controls the way a person is allowed to enter and experience the building. It identifies its portico, but with no doorway. While the position and orientation of the access steps insist that you cannot ascend to the platform along the line of the Gran Plaza’s axis, this wall prevents you, once on the platform, regaining that axis; it insists you go either to the left or the right. The age-old use of architecture to establish a reliable axis – a datum you can hold onto through uncertainty (as provided by many religious and authoritarian buildings) – is contradicted. In its subversion of time-established orthodoxy, wall ‘a’ is akin to a political resistance manifesto expressed in architecture. With this wall, the formation of the labyrinth of the Barcelona Pavilion has begun. To the left is the courtyard open to the sky, to the right a megaron under its roof – a classic juxtaposition, but in this case one where walls have been relieved of their traditional roles of supporting a roof and isolating a completely enclosed space from everywhere else, and reinforced in their roles as screens and instruments for managing movement through space. The shorter free-standing wall ‘b’ stands inside, under the roof, alongside the central axis of the ‘megaron’. In all the composition, this is the wall that comes closest to establishing a heart for the pavilion. It appears to be positioned on the centre line of the platform as a whole (without subtractions), i.e. midway between lines y and z in figure 10 (see also Sophia Psarra, 2009,

B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

A building that straddles a route and makes a place of entrance by extending and sheltering a transition between an inside and an outside. (Palace of Minos, Knossos, Crete.)

megaron p2 a

b

courtyard

p1

megaron

The megaron with courtyard at the heart of the palace of Tiryns.

A visitor had to go through two propylons (p1 and p2) before

reaching its portico (a) and the king throned within against wall ‘b’.

39

f

ii

e i

d

h

g

c y

z

11

12

11 The next elements in this compositional build up are the walls of clear but tinted glass. Positioned alongside but not between the structural columns, these introduce views through from one space to another: from the platform access steps into the megaron (c); from the interior of the megaron to the inner courtyard (d); and from the interior of the megaron up the slope towards the steps towards the Pueblo Espagñol (e). They also form, in concert with the solid walls, the closest the pavilion has to doorways (i and ii). These are the points at which the original pavilion had removable doors used for closing the pavilion up at night, and where the present pavilion has permanent doors. (Permanent doors – instruments of discrimination and exclusion – are anathema to the ideas of fluid space and uncertain separation of inside and out that are intrinsic to the pavilion’s design and its political manifesto, but they are necessary for security.) The glass walls also contribute to the labyrinthine quality of the pavilion, breaking up the routes around and through it, making it more of a place to wander than to arrive at a centre or heart. A further glass wall encloses the front of the office (f), allowing it a supervisory view over the courtyard.

13 The glass and polished stone walls are like mirrors. So too are the surfaces of two rectangular pools of water, a small one almost filling the inner courtyard and a large one out in the main courtyard. These pools add to the labyrinthine quality of the pavilion by creating inaccessible areas where you can only stand at the edge, look across, and maybe look down at your own reflection against that of the sky above. Reflection is an essential element in the Barcelona Pavilion. Overlapping and confusing reflections make the visual experience of the pavilion complex. With the pavilion being approximately twice the eye-height of a person, they also, as noted by Robin Evans in ‘Mies van der Rohe’s Paradoxical Symmetries’ (1990), introduce symmetries not apparent in the building’s drawn composition. Whereas the two halves of a symmetrical building can be said to be mirrored about a central axial line (usually vertical), in the Barcelona Pavilion symmetries are literally mirrored, vertically and horizontally, in the reflective surfaces of the glass, polished stone walls and water. The composition of walls of different types, together with the pools, completes the labyrinth of the Barcelona Pavilion. The final two elements indicated in 13 are: a statue (s) standing on a plinth in the small pool, apparently shielding her eyes from the sun and visible in many photographs framed in doorway ‘ii’ (14); and a black carpet reinforcing the place-making role of the ‘altar’ wall. The statue provides a focus of attention and a symbolic representation of the (generic) person to whom this ‘temple’ is dedicated (see also Bonta, 1979, page 208). In shielding its eyes from the sun the statue draws attention to the upward direction that the general horizontality of the design denies. In the surface of the pool she is reflected upside down, drawing attention to the downward direction too. The black carpet by the altar wall is the equivalent of the hearth in the ancient megaron; it defines a special area of ground on which the table stood. The sandy yellow

12 The last wall to be added to the composition, conceptually that is, is a double wall of translucent white glass (g) blocking the axial view from the interior of the ‘megaron’ out to the courtyard and similarly blocking any exit from or entry to the megaron along that axis. The double wall also creates a blind portico (h), with no doorway, looking out to the courtyard and shaded by the roof. The double wall has a roof-light over its inaccessible cavity, so that it glows. It contains artificial lighting so it glows in the dark too. Psarra (2009, page 49) finds that the double translucent wall ‘g’ is positioned halfway between the edge of the roof and the beginning of the platform’s access steps, i.e. midway between lines y and z. 40

GE OM E T RY OF M A K I NG

s

carpet

13

of the travertine stone pavement and cladding, the black of the carpet and the red of the curtains used to reduce the sun through the east-facing glass wall, approximate to the yellow, black and red of the German national flag. In 1929, Spanish and German flags were flown on the two flagpoles shown in the drawing on the title page of this analysis. Nowadays, they carry the flags of Barcelona and of the European Union.

14

B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

The Barcelona Pavilion is a stage set in more ways than one. We have seen that it occupies its own transcendent realm separate from the world around (like the stage of a theatre). We have seen too that it sets the rules for a particular type of action; insisting that people explore its space like a labyrinth rather than follow the established axis of conventional public architecture and asserted by the Gran Plaza, the line of Ionic columns and the existing flight of steps. In its construction the pavilion is like a stage set too; nothing is quite as it seems. The platform is not a solid foun­ dation of stone but hollow. The walls are not built of blocks of stone but consist of veneers of thin stone hung on a steel framework. The roof, with its smooth white soffit, betrays no clue of its structure. This is a building of surface rather than substance, appearance rather than constructional ‘truth’. The pavilion also ignores the conventions of tradi­ tional building construction, as evident in the reconstructed folk architecture in the Pueblo Español nearby. Unlike the Farnsworth House (analysed later in this book, pages 77–94), the Barcelona Pavilion is not an exercise in clear and unequiv­ ocal structure and construction. It has even been observed that there is visual confusion about whether the columns or the walls are supporting the roof (Evans, 1997, pages 240–41). Both are not necessary; either could support the roof alone. Nor were the columns solid; but composed of four steel angles sheathed in chrome covers (below; polished stainless steel was used in the reconstruction).

The statue (left) – ‘Alba’ (Dawn) by Georg Kolbe – standing on its plinth in the smaller pool represents the person, for whom the Barcelona Pavilion is a temple. By shielding its eyes from the sun it draws attention to the upward direction; by its reflection in the water it draws the eyes downwards too. 41

15

In the Farnsworth House the rectangular travertine paving sets a geometric matrix disciplining the positions of the main elements (see page 85). At first sight it seems that the same happens in the Barcelona Pavilion (15). But if you look more closely you can see something more subtle. The eight columns supporting the roof, for example, are evenly spaced in themselves and aligned along one longitudinal paving joint, but they do not always hit the lateral joints. The end columns do but the middle ones do not. It is as if there is a syncopated rhythm between one beat that belongs to the paving and another belonging to the columns. They reinforce each other at the ends but are at odds in the middle. The same sort of thing happens elsewhere. The mullions of the large paned glazing by the access steps begin on a lateral joint but never hit a lateral joint again. The mullions of the glass screen by the inner courtyard, which is not aligned along a lateral joint, hit longitudinal joints at each end but not along its length. The impression is musical. It is not that there is no rela­ tionship between the beat established by the square paving and other elements. It is more that there are complex rela­ tionships; off-beat and conflicting rhythms such as one might find in a contemporary piece by Igor Stravinsky, whose ‘Rite of Spring’ (1913) began to be more performed in the 1920s. Though we cannot compare the primitive drama and violent rhythms of Stravinsky’s music with the calm sophistication of the Barcelona Pavilion, Mies’s building, in its own cool way, possesses a comparable conflict of varying rhythms overlaid one on another. As will be seen in the Farnsworth House, Mies was concerned with dimensional ordering derived from materials and the ways in which they were put together rather than with the imposition of the ideal geometry of mathemati­ cal proportions found in neoclassical Beaux-Arts architecture. 42

C ON T E M P OR A RY I DE A S A N D I N F LU E NC E S Creativity depends on ideas. The Barcelona Pavilion is replete with them. Although it appears, and was, startlingly novel, the design did not crystallise in a vacuum. It was informed by Mies’s understanding of classical architecture, his reading of philosophy and his interest in contemporary movements in architecture and the arts. Mies was generally taciturn about his influences and, like most artists/architects, kept quiet about his working methods. We are left to speculate on where he found the ideas he used in his work. DE S T I J L , N E OPL A S T IC I S M De Stijl was a 1920s Dutch group of painters, architects and furniture designers which included Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld and J.J.P. Oud. They were influenced by the publication in 1911 of the work of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in his Wasmuth Portfolio published in Berlin in 1910 (see page 96), but took his ideas on planar spatial organisation to more abstract levels. In his book Architecture and its Interpretation (1979), J.P. Bonta used the Barcelona Pavilion as a case study. He devoted a number of pages (pages 161ff.) to discussing various architectural critics’ views on the relationship between Mies van der Rohe and the De Stijl group. The conclusion Bonta drew is that critics were aware that Mies was not formally associated with the De Stijl group and that occasionally there was friction between him and it. But they also thought the De Stijl influence on Mies’s work was clear. Mies denied it. But when you look at van Doesburg’s spatial studies (16), done around 1920, the debt seems obvious.

Walter Gerts House, 1906 (as included in the Wasmuth Portfolio)

De Stijl was influenced by the work that Frank Lloyd Wright published in Europe in 1910. His use of projecting planes, arranged orthogonally but without axial symmetry, to suggest rather than delimit spatial enclosure, seems conceptually related to the more abstract compositions of artists and architects such as van Doesburg (left) and Mies (below). See also the Internet discussion at: wrightchat.savewright.org/viewtopic.php?t=13500 (Mar. 2022). 16 Van Doesburg spatial study

Van Doesburg’s studies were part of a movement to lib­ erate space from the straitjackets of traditional and classical ways of defining it. This movement, also represented in the paintings of Piet Mondrian and the furniture and buildings of Gerrit Rietveld, was called Neoplasticism. In 1924 van Doesburg wrote a manifesto, ‘Towards a plastic architecture’. It seems so relevant to the Barcelona Pavilion that I have included it in full on the following page. As you read it, it is easy to see it as a recipe for the Barcelona Pavilion, so close are its precepts to those we infer in Mies’s building. The rejections of ‘form’ in paragraphs 1 and 5 of the manifesto are rejections of the formulaic ways of design promulgated by Beaux-Arts neoclassical architects. Mies himself

17 project for a Brick Country House, 1924

18 house for the Berlin Building Exhibition, 1931

B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

43

Theo van Doesburg, trans. Michael Bullock – ‘Towards a plastic architecture’, (1924).* (Emphases are in the original.) 1 Form. Elimination of all concept of form in the sense of a fixed type is essential to the healthy development of archi­ tecture and art as a whole. Instead of using earlier styles as models and imitating them, the problem of architecture must be posed entirely afresh. 2 The new architecture is elemental; that is to say, it develops out of the elements of building in the widest sense. These elements – such as function, mass, surface, time, space, light, colour, material, etc. – are plastic. 3 The new architecture is economic; that is to say, it employs its elemental means as effectively and thriftily as possible and squanders neither these means nor the material. 4 The new architecture is functional; that is to say, it develops out of the exact determination of the practical demands, which it contains within clear outlines. 5 The new architecture is formless and yet exactly defined; that is to say, it is not subject to any fixed aesthetic formal type. It has no mould (such as confectioners use) in which it produces the functional surfaces arising out of practical, living demands. In contradistinction to all earlier styles the new archi­ tectural methods know no closed type, no basic type. The functional space is strictly divided into rectangular surfaces having no individuality of their own. Although each one is fixed on the basis of the others, they may be visualized as extending infinitely. Thus they form a coor­ dinated system in which all points correspond to the same number of points in the universe. It follows from this that the surfaces have a direct connexion to infinite space. 6 The new architecture has rendered the concept monu­ mental independent of large and small (since the word ‘monumental’ has become hackneyed it is replaced by the word ‘plastic’). It has shown that everything exists on the basis of interrelationships. 7 The new architecture possesses no single passive factor. It has overcome the opening (in the wall). With its openness the window plays an active role in opposition to the clos­ edness of the wall surface. Nowhere does an opening or a gap occupy the foreground; everything is strictly deter­ mined by contrast. Compare the various counter construc­ tions in which the elements that architecture consists of surface, line, and mass are placed without constraint in a three-dimensional relationship. 8 The ground-plan. The new architecture has opened the walls and so done away with the separation of inside and outside. The walls themselves no longer support; they merely provide supporting points. The result is a new, open ground-plan entirely different from the classical one, since inside and outside now pass over into one another. 9 The new architecture is open. The whole structure con­ sists of a space that is divided in accordance with the various functional demands. This division is carried out by means of dividing surfaces (in the interior) or protec­ tive surfaces (externally). The former, which separate the various functional spaces, may be movable; that is to say, the dividing surfaces (formerly the interior walls) may be replaced by movable intermediate surfaces or panels (the same method may be employed for doors). In architecture’s next phase of development the ground-plan must disap­ pear completely. The two-dimensional spatial composition fixed in a ground-plan will be replaced by an exact con­ structional calculation – a calculation by means of which the supporting capacity is restricted to the simplest but strongest supporting points. For this purpose Euclidean mathematics will be of no further use – but with the aid of calculation that is non-Euclidean and takes into account the four dimensions everything will be very easy.

10 Space and time. The new architecture takes account not only of space but also of the magnitude time. Through the unity of space and time the architectural exterior will acquire a new and completely plastic aspect. (Four­ dimensional space-time aspects.) 11 The new architecture is anti-cubic; that is to say, it does not attempt to fit all the functional space cells together into a closed cube, but projects functional space-cells (as well as overhanging surfaces, balconies, etc.) centrifugally from the centre of the cube outwards. Thus height, breadth, and depth plus time gain an entirely new plastic expression. In this way architecture achieves a more or less floating aspect (in so far as this is possible from the constructional standpoint – this is a problem for the engineer!) which operates, as it were, in opposition to natural gravity. 12 Symmetry and repetition. The new architecture has elim­ inated both monotonous repetition and the stiff equality of two halves – the mirror image, symmetry. There is no repetition in time, no street front, no standardization. A block of houses is just as much a whole as the individual house. The laws that apply to the individual house also apply to the block of houses and to the city. In place of sym­ metry the new architecture offers a balanced relationship of unequal parts; that is to say, of parts that differ from each other by virtue of their functional characteristics as regards position, size, proportion and situation. The equality of these parts rests upon the balance of their dissimilarity, not upon their similarity. Furthermore, the new architecture has rendered front, back, right, left, top, and bottom, factors of equal value. 13 In contrast to frontalism, which had its origin in a rigid, static way of life, the new architecture offers the plastic richness of an all-sided development in space and time. 14 Colour. The new architecture has done away with painting as a separate and imaginary expression of harmony, sec­ ondarily as representation, primarily as coloured surface. The new architecture permits colour organically as a direct means of expressing its relationships within space and time. Without colour these relationships are not real, but invisible. The balance of organic relationships acquires visible reality only by means of colour. The modern painter’s task consists in creating with the aid of colour a harmonious whole in the new four-dimensional realm of space-time – not a surface in two dimensions. In a further phase of development colour may also be replaced by a denaturalized material possessing its own specific colour (a problem for the chemist – but only if practical needs demand this material). 15 The new architecture is anti-decorative. Colour (and this is something the colour-shy must try to grasp) is not a decorative part of architecture, but its organic medium of expression. 16 Architecture as a synthesis of Neoplasticism. Building is a part of the new architecture which, by combining together all the arts in their elemental manifestation, discloses their true nature. A prerequisite is the ability to think in four dimensions – that is to say: the architects of Plasticism, among whom I also number the painters, must construct within the new realm of space and time. Since the new architecture permits no images (such as paintings or sculptures as separate elements) its purpose of creating a harmonious whole with all essential means is evident from the outset. In this way, every architectural element contributes to the attainment on a practical and logical basis of a maximum of plastic expression, without any disregard of the practical demands.

* Included in Ulrich Conrads – Programmes and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, 1970.

44

in 1924 wrote, ‘Form as an aim is formalism; and that we reject’, but he also realised the semantic problem, since any building – including the Barcelona Pavilion – has form. Mies pondered this semantic problem. In 1927 he wrote, ‘My attack is not against form, but against form as an end in itself ’ (the emphasis is Mies’s) (see Philip Johnson, 1978, pages 188–9 and pages 192–3). What it seems Mies was saying was that any project should be seen as an opportunity to think things through afresh, allow the particularities of the case to lead the design rather than resort to established formulaic responses. Certainly this is what Mies did in the Barcelona Pavilion… or was it? He had experimented with this way of managing space before – in his 1924 project for a Brick Country House (17 on page 43) – and would do so again – in the model house he designed for the Berlin Building Exhibition in 1931 (18). These suggest Mies was developing (his own) formulaic way of designing rather than allowing circumstances to produce their own solutions. The Barcelona Pavilion certainly offered a way of designing that could be, and was, used by other architects. Paragraph 2 of van Doesburg’s manifesto declares the new architecture should be ‘elemental’. With its distinct plat­ form, walls, roofs, pits… each with its own material, colour, detailing…, the Barcelona Pavilion is clearly elemental. In paragraph 3, van Doesburg’s word ‘economic’ might be equated with ‘minimal’ in twenty-first-century usage. And the word ‘plastic’ in paragraph 6 (and the title) means mouldable, capable of being given shape (according to needs, conditions and material) rather than made of what we now call ‘plastic’ (the synthetic material used in the manufacture of many products). In paragraph 5 van Doesburg suggests that ‘plastic’ architecture should be ‘functional’. Since the Barcelona Pavil­ ion has no more than a cursory function – to accommodate its own inauguration and the signing of a book – this might be considered an aspect in which Mies’s building deviates from the precepts of Neoplastic architecture. But the pavilion has fundamental characteristics that make it more functional than van Doesburg’s own spatial studies. Mies’s building stands on the ground under the influence of gravity with a clear up and down and horizontality, where van Doesburg’s study has neither ground nor gravity. The composition of Mies’s elements, unlike that of van Doesburg’s, is neither abstract nor random but carefully arranged to manage movement and to orchestrate people’s experience of space. If these characteristics of Mies’s design do not make it exactly functional, they do make it real, human, existential, phe­ nomenological in that it accommodates and incorporates the person, human scale, mobility, senses and emotions in ways that could be neglected in abstract formalism. Maybe that is what van Doesburg meant by ‘functional’? B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

Van Doesburg’s reference to the ‘window’ in paragraph 7 of his manifesto suggests that windows should not be seen as objects of attention in themselves (as they can be in the façade of a neoclassical building) but thought of in terms of what they do, i.e. allow light and views through to space beyond. Paragraphs 8, 9 and 11 refer to the Neoplasticists’ aver­ sion, shared by Mies, to the enclosed cell in favour of ‘openness’ and the gradual spatial blending of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ rather than spaces boxed-in by floor, ceiling and four corner-joined walls. Paragraph 10 suggests that time is as essential a dimen­ sion in architecture as depth, width and height. As a stage on a route and as a labyrinth, the Barcelona Pavilion provides a frame for movement and incorporates the dimension of time. Paragraphs 12 and 13 reject axial symmetry (because it was a key characteristic of neoclassical architecture and a symbol of authoritarianism) and ‘frontalism’. We have seen that asymmetry and blocking the axis were motives in the design of the Barcelona Pavilion, and that, although it could be said to have a front to the Gran Plaza, it does not have a façade. Finally (leaving paragraph 16 to speak for itself), par­ agraphs 14 and 15 suggest that colour and ornamentation in architecture should only be allowed if they are ‘organic’. The only colours and ornamentation in the Barcelona Pavilion, apart from the red of the curtains, are the natural organic colours and ingrained patterns of the various stones and tinted glass. In this too Mies follows the Neoplastic precept. OSWALD SPENGLER’s The Decline of the West The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler was published, in two volumes, in the years after the First World War. Due to its mechanistic view of the cyclic nature of history and because Spengler came to be associated with Hitler’s National Socialism, it is now a largely discredited text. But in the 1920s Spengler’s writing enjoyed huge popularity. Its apparent erudition seemed to explain something about how history worked and the culture of the times. The Decline of the West was particularly popular amongst architects because it presented architecture as a key cultural indicator. The fundamental driving conceptions of all great cultures and civilisations – their ‘destiny ideas’ – Spengler argued, were evident most strongly in the ways in which they conceived and dealt with space, i.e. in their architecture. Oskar Schlemmer, a teacher in the Bauhaus in the 1920s, noted in his diary how powerful Spengler’s arguments seemed. When Erik Gunnar Asplund was appointed director of the School of Architecture in Stockholm in 1931, he used Spengler’s arguments as the theme for his inaugural lecture. And Mies himself betrayed having read Spengler when he wrote in 1924, ‘Greek temples, 45

46

K NO S S O S The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a period of heroic archaeology. One of the most celebrated excavations was Arthur Evans’s work at Knossos, the ancient Palace of King Minos on the Mediterranean island of Crete. The excavations received great publicity at the time because they appeared to have unearthed the labyrinth at the heart of the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur. Evans’s findings were published, in seven volumes, through the 1920s and into the 1930s. Though public interest in the findings may have centred on the association of the ruins with myth, architects were fascinated by the plans Evans was publishing of the palace buildings. They did, however, have a problem with reconciling their avowed proclamation of a new epoch with an interest in ancient architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, denounced ancient architecture as ‘pagan poison’ (Wright, 1930, page 59) even though it is clear he learnt from it.

Hall of the Double Axes

throne

19

part plan of the Royal Apartments, Knossos compared with plan of Barcelona Pavilion

light well

Roman basilicas and medieval cathedrals are significant to us as creations of a whole epoch rather than as works of individual architects… Their true meaning is that they are symbols of their epoch. Architecture is the will of the epoch translated into space’ (in Johnson, 1978, page 191). Spengler’s work was influenced and informed by many of his German philosophical antecedents. He drew on the thought of Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche and many others. Hegel, for example, wrote of architecture: ‘Its task lies in so manip­ ulating external inorganic nature that it becomes cognate to mind, as an artistic outer world’ (Hegel, 1820s, page 90). Architecture then, rather than being merely a matter of prag­ matics, should better be seen as a manifestation of a person’s and, by extension, a culture or civilisation’s world view – the way in which it makes sense of the space of its world; (i.e. a spatial-organisational equivalent to verbal language.) Spengler gave a number of examples of how different civilisations had dealt with space. The destiny idea of Greek civilisation was the body in space, as exemplified in Hellenic sculpture and architecturally in the classic Greek temple set in open landscape. Byzantine architecture turned this idea inside-out and produced the architecture of the cave, the basilica, with its focus on the interior. Egyptian architecture, further back in time than either Greek or Byzantine, derived from the idea of the route or pathway; its pyramids for the dead were the end-points on a journey through temples and along causeways leading from the Nile (the source and supporter of life). The Chinese destiny idea was supposedly dependent on wandering; its houses were, Spengler suggested, like mazes. And, the destiny idea of Western culture was its fascination with and drive towards infinite space (cf. van Doesburg, paragraph 5, on page 44). According to Spengler this was no recent fascination; it stretched back to medieval times and was evident in such buildings as the Sainte Chapelle in Paris (thirteenth century) with its tall stained glass win­ dows in place of solid walls. ‘The window as architecture,’ (this is Spengler’s own emphasis) ‘is peculiar to the Faustian soul’ (an idea from Nietzsche) ‘and the most significant symbol of its depth-experience. In it can be felt the will to emerge from the interior into the boundless’ (Spengler, 1918, page 199). It is evident in some of the less transparent things that he said that Mies considered his Barcelona Pavilion not just to be an intriguingly novel composition but to be a philosophical proposition on the management of space as a manifestation of modern culture and its fascination with infinite (unen­ closed, boundless) space. Spengler had implied that destiny ideas emerged within their cultures organically, without selfconscious intent. Mies promoted his consciously. The Barce­ lona Pavilion is informed by the idea of ‘emerging from the interior into the boundless’.

There is something pagan about the Barcelona Pavil­ ion; maybe because it derived from the Minoan architecture of Knossos. One of the first plans from the excavations to draw attention was that of the palace’s Royal Apartments (19 opposite). The Cretan palaces had no fortifications; they seemed to accommodate democratic city states living in peace with each other. Plans such as those of the Royal Apartments appeared to affirm this view. Axial symmetry, though present, was modulated rather than emphasised by the architecture. The throne, as in the megaron of the Mycenæan palace of Tiryns, did not sit on an axis but against a side wall. Space was layered by screens of columns and pillars. There was no sharp division between inside and outside but a sequence of zones of increasingly interior character, with the most inte­ rior part in some cases apparently open to the sky. Some of these features seem driven by a desire on the part of kings to avoid facing the glare of the openings to the bright outside whilst sitting on their thrones, and a need for cooling cross ventilation in the heat of the Cretan summer. But visiting these palaces – Knossos, Phaestos, Hagia Triada… – one is struck by the aesthetic investment made in achieving views from high-status apartments out to the god-inhabited land­ scape beyond: the ‘will… (to) the boundless’ Spengler might have called it. Spengler himself had observed that Minoan art ‘subserves the habit of comfort and the play of intellect’ (1918, page 198). Placing the plan of the ‘megaron’ of the Barcelona Pavilion alongside that of the Royal Apartments (19), and discounting the thickness of walls and columns, the resem­ blance is evident. The roofed area of the pavilion has similar proportions to the principal part of the Royal Apartments. The inner courtyard of the pavilion is comparable, and again almost identical in proportion, to the light well of the Hall of the Double Axes. And the pavilion’s ‘altar’, like the Knossos throne, is set against a wall to one side. It is as if the pavilion is a de-constructed and reassembled (mirrored and reinter­ preted) version of the Royal Apartments.

20 Schinkel’s Altes Museum, Berlin, 1823–30

B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

K A R L F R I E DR IC H S C H I N K E L One of the most discussed influences on the work of Mies van der Rohe is that of the nineteenth-century German neoclas­ sicist Karl Friedrich Schinkel. The possible allusion of the row of Ionic columns in Barcelona to the loggia of Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin (20 –22) has already been mentioned (page 38). Apart from their shared adherence to orthogonal discipline, two particular characteristics of Schinkel’s work seem to have interested Mies: his desire to provide the peo­ ple who lived in or visited his buildings with subtle spatial experiences; and the relationship of his buildings with their landscape settings. In being to do with content and context, these two characteristics diverted the focus of architectural concern away from the design of façades as two-dimensional graphic compositions and towards ideas exploiting the three dimensions of space together with a fourth, that of movement in time. This implied a richer and more complex conception of architecture, one that was not merely preoccupied with issues of style and proportion. The stair and entrance to the Altes Museum make a case in point. On the one hand you can look at the front elevation of this building (20) and see a regular row of Ionic columns sand­ wiched between a podium and an entablature. The elevation is something that we relate to as spectators, from outside. But by the evidence of his own buildings, Mies’s interest in those of Schinkel was not in their superficial stylistic appearance but in the way in which space might be managed in relation to the person and to the landscape. As you climb the steps and pass between the columns into the long loggia, entering the layer of space defined by the platform beneath your feet and the roof over your head, you are no longer a spectator, you become an essential part of the architecture – a participant in its spatial experience. Schinkel plays on this and provides you with options. You may pass through into the circular space – the domed rotunda (21) – at the heart of the building and then into the galleries. Or you can turn left or right up flights

21 section showing the domed rotunda

47

of steps that take you under the landing above, around a half-landing and then up to the floor above where you can look out through the double layer of columns to the Lustgarten (22, and page 38) or inwards into the rotunda. This is one example of how Schinkel used architecture as an instrument to orchestrate experience and relationships with the landscape/outside world. The stair and landing of the Altes Museum was one of the great in-between spaces in all architecture. (It is a pity that it was, in the 1990s, enclosed by glass screens between the columns.) Other Schinkel buildings appear to have influenced Mies. The Charlottenhof is a villa set in the extensive grounds of the Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam on the outskirts of Berlin. Compositionally – raised on a platform with a megaron relating to a partly enclosed courtyard (23–4) – the Barcelona Pavilion’s resemblance is clear. Just as in the case of the pavilion, the ‘temple’ (house) of the Charlottenhof sends out from its right-hand side an arm, in this case a pergola, to enclose one side of the garden. The pergola strikes out from the main building into the outside world – a precursor of the Miesian wall as in his project for Brick Country House. This arm, in the case of both the Charlottenhof and the pavilion, wraps around at the end, defining a stage with a view across open space.

22 Altes Museum loggia

23 section through Charlottenhof

25 The plan of the Charlottenhof is an instrument for manipulating the person’s experience of space; it allows the person to attain the axis at the higher level.

24 plan of the Charlottenhof – an instrument for manipulating the person’s experience of space

These engravings are from K.F. Schinkel – Collected Architectural Designs, 1819–1840. They depict designs that were realised but not exactly as drawn. Both have also been modified since, in ways that affect their architecture.

25 Schinkel’s Charlottenhof, Potsdam, 1826–9

48

x

x' 26 plan of the Barcelona Pavilion (an earlier version than the one built) – also an instrument for manipulating the person’s experience of space

But there is another characteristic of the Charlottenhof, more profound than mere compositional resemblance, that influenced Mies. It is similar to that noted above in the case of the Altes Museum and relates to the recognition that architec­ ture is not merely a matter of visual appearance and sculptural form but also an instrument for orchestrating experience. In the case of the Charlottenhof, the house is not just an object sitting in the parkland of the palace, it establishes a zone of transition. It too is a propylon, a gateway through which you pass from the general ground level of the parkland up onto the elevated stage of the garden. By means of his design Schinkel draws out a route that manipulates the person, taking him or her from the parkland, through a doorway, up a flight of stairs, across a landing, through another doorway into a saloon, across the saloon, out through a doorway into a portico, and finally out into the garden where you can wander to the end and look back (just as in the Barcelona Pavilion). Because there is a centre post to the main doorway and the stairs are divided, the person is denied the axis of the composition until the upper level. The architecture implies/asserts that the principle associated with the axis – its backbone – belongs to the morally, intellectually, socially and politically more noble, superior level. Mies conflates these ideas in the Barcelona Pavilion, but in a way that contradicts rather than reinforces the dominant axis. In some of his earlier development drawings for the project, he drew onto the plan the axis of the Gran Plaza (x–x' in 26, which I have redrawn). In the general compositional resemblance between the pavilion and the Charlottenhof, the axis of the former is at right angles to that of the latter. Both buildings can be thought of as propylons. But whereas Schinkel reinforces the axis of authority and nobility, the Mies of the Weimar Republic (though he was to create symmetrical buildings later in his career) denies it, creating his labyrinth. In both cases the intention is to use architecture to manage B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

movement in support of a philosophical proposition or politi­ cal comment. But it is also a way of designing that engages the person with the architecture, rather than consigning them to the role of remote spectator or to follow an axial track. C ONC LUSION (201 5) Analysing the Barcelona Pavilion reveals the extensive and subtle dimensions and powers of architecture. This celebrated building sets a benchmark it is difficult for other architects to reach. It shows that a work of architecture may be startlingly novel and yet at the same time, based in ancient ideas. It suggests that new ideas may be generated by the modification or contradiction of old ones; and that originality can emerge from deep study and understanding of historical precedents. It demonstrates that architectural concepts may be derived from abstract philosophical ideas and that the design of a building may be a sophisticated philosophical proposition in its own right, expressed in the composition of elements and the organisation of space rather than in words. The Barcelona Pavilion illustrates an essential aspect of architecture – relation to the person. It is a building that is almost completely without function and yet it retains its status as a work of architecture rather than as one of sculp­ ture. The key difference between architecture and sculpture lies in architecture’s accommodation of the human being. 49

Mies’s design recognises the person not merely as a spectator but as an ingredient. The game Mies plays is not an abstract composition (like that of van Doesburg in his spatial studies); it is a game in which people – the visitors to the pavilion (though they are often left out of architectural photographs of the building) – are the pieces manipulated, manoeuvred, steered (though they are free to wander) by the architecture. Each wall is positioned not merely for compositional reasons but to deflect people’s movement and orchestrate their expe­ rience. The pavilion makes people pause on a route so that they may experience the spatial pleasure of architecture; so that they may experience a kind of architectural space that is different from that organised according to an axis of symme­ try, projection, penetration. The Barcelona Pavilion is a warp field – reinforced by its reflective surfaces – where traditional conceptions of space dissolve. In place of a directional route it substitutes a labyrinth replete with mirages. And, as is appropriate in a building that originates in a political purpose, Mies managed to imbue his design with political meaning. As well as being a beautiful and strikingly novel building, the Barcelona Pavilion was also a manifesto. Though there is doubt as to whether such things can be consciously promoted, Mies van der Rohe was intent on exemplifying the ‘destiny idea’ of a new age, of a new culture. To see the Barcelona Pavilion only in photographs is to miss its fundamental power. It is a building that demonstrates, despite the contrary being commonly implied in architecture related criticism and discussion, that architecture is not even primarily a visual medium. Architecture is about a great deal more than merely making buildings look good. It is about making sense of space. And, over the centuries, it has done this for different cultures in different ways. Oswald Spengler died in 1936 at the age of fifty-five. I do not know whether he saw or was even aware of the Barcelona Pavilion, let alone what his opinion of it might have been. But the passage below, taken from The Decline of the West (1918), seems to describe how Mies van der Rohe worked and what he sought in his design for this 1929 German pavilion, whilst also anticipating what he achieved. ‘Before my eyes there seems to emerge, as a vision, a hitherto unimagined mode of superlative historical research that is truly Western… a comprehensive Physiognomic of all existence, a morphology of becoming for all humanity that drives onward to the highest and last ideas… This philosophic view – to which we and we alone are entitled by virtue of our analytic mathematic, our contrapuntal music and our perspective painting – in that its scope far transcends the scheme of the systematist, presupposes the eye of an artist, and of an artist who can feel the whole sensible and apprehensible environment dissolve into a deep infinity of mysterious relationships.’

Oswald Spengler, trans. Atkinson – The Decline of the West (1918), George Allen & Unwin, London, 1932 (1971), p. 224.

50

2 02 3 The Barcelona Pavilion is a contender for being a building that all those who study architecture would deem essential in their list of ‘buildings every architect should (try to) understand’. The aesthetic and intellectual subtleties that derive from its compositional simplicity are endlessly engaging. Whilst apparently hermetic in composition, the Barcelona Pavilion establishes an idiom of formal and spatial organisation with novel and seemingly infinite possibilities. SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON The Barcelona Pavilion adds to our growing inventory of types of situations into which architecture may place the person. The first of these to be mentioned here might have been iden­ tified when we were analysing the Casa del Ojo de Agua (page 19), but historically it should properly be credited to Mies’s 1929 design. In stark contrast to the situation where the per­ son is enclosed within four walls (cf. the Neuendorf House, pages 23–32), the Barcelona Pavilion keeps open, visually at least, the horizontal dimensions whilst sandwiching the person between two horizontal planes – platform and roof.

1

2

3

Rather than enclosed in a box, the Barcelona Pavilion situates the person in space sandwiched between two horizontal planes – the platform and the roof (1; see also page 96). This allows the possibility of openness to the surroundings through 360 horizontal degrees (2). The roof needs support (3), but the highly reflective mirrored finish of the pavilion’s slim columns suggests Mies wanted these to disappear as much as possible.

If the vertical dimension – stretching between the hellish below and the heavenly above and only incidentally passing through the mundane stratum in which we live – is divine, then the horizontal dimension – across which we move and which we divide and organise with architecture – is human. The Barcelona Pavilion deals in the horizontal, quin­ tessentially human stratum of space. But Mies situates this not at grade – the natural earth level – but on the transcendent level of a platform just as a Greek temple, the architectural frame of a god (right), is situated on its crepidoma. In doing so, Mies infers that the human being, if not supernaturally godly, occupies a level above the natural. The next type of situation Mies creates for the person is one of increased complexity in relationship with the sur­ roundings and of moving around (below and right).

cella crepidoma section columns

box (cella)

axis doorway

focus

plan

Simplified, between platform and roof, a Greek temple is a box (cella) surrounded by columns, with an axis generated by its doorway and the effigy of a god as focus. In the Barcelona Pavilion, Mies reduced the number of columns to a minimum, broke apart the box, discarded the axis and displaced the focus. 4

5

6

7

B A RC ELO N A PAV I LI O N

As illustrated on page 39, Mies orchestrates the person’s experience of the Barcelona Pavilion’s horizontal stratum with a composition of walls arranged independently of the roof, its structure and its geometry (4, 5). These walls close off some of the 360 degree panoramic view from the platform and situate the person in a labyrinth with no clear centre or datum. Furthermore this labyrinthine situation is made more complex and subtle with additional walls of glass that allow lines of sight whilst preventing lines of movement (6, 7). These, together with pools of water, introduce yet another layer of complexity: that of reflection and spatial ambiguity (above), putting the person in a situation characterised by uncertainty… about edges, thresholds, boundaries… about what is here and what is there… what is inside and outside… about whether the architecture provides the psychological security of a centre. 51

And related to this increased complexity is the idea that architecture might not make sense of the world spatially for us but reflect/represent its inherent confusion.

If the axis and focus of the Greek temple (or Christian church or Islamic mosque…) provide us with a datum and centre to which we can relate, and thereby give spatial sense to our world, then the Barcelona Pavilion displaces the focus (centre) and tangles the axial line (that of the Gran Plaza and steps) into a knot of alternative lines of passage. In this way it puts the person in a situation akin to that of Dante waking up in the dark forest where the right way was not clear (see the later analysis of the Danteum, pages 147–55) except that the world of the pavilion does not seem gloomy, mysterious and threatening but light, clear and inviting; less a labyrinth of threat than one of choice and opportunity. S AC RO S A NC T I T Y When standing on the stage created by Mies’s design, you have left the ordinary world and entered a new reality, one that is lighter, brighter, refreshingly different from the stodgy old architecture of the past, one that replaces authoritarian direction (exemplified in the architectural axis) with enlight­ ened personal choice, exploration and individuality. The Barcelona Pavilion is possibly the most sacrosanct work of architecture created in all history. Even the Parthe­ non, another obvious contender, has been subject to contin­ uous change through the centuries: having been transformed into a church and then a mosque, blown up, relieved of its sculptures, drastically restored… Even so, its underlying Platonic form (which all works of architecture have – in the imagination of their architects and as drawn in their perfect state on paper or computer) is no doubt sacrosanct. The perception of the Barcelona Pavilion as unim­ peachably sacrosanct has been strengthened by the decades 52

when it existed only in photographs and drawings. But the mystique it enjoyed when absent has not been diminished with its resurrection. In the sixteenth century the mathematician John Dee mused on the locus of mathematics. He decided that it existed in a middle realm, between the worldly and the divine (see also page 139 of Analysing Architecture, 2021). Architecture, Dee decided, is a ‘thing mathematical’,* i.e. belonging to that middle realm. That is how most historians and critics have treated the Barcelona Pavilion, as if it exists (even in its real form, let alone its Platonic) on a supernatural plane transcend­ ing the quotidian world around. Those treatments almost always discuss the building without reference to the ways Mies tied it into its context (as illustrated in the preceding pages). Many if not all architects would like their designs to be sacrosanct when realised (not threatened with change by others) but often that desire hits up against the pressures of reality: does it work (accommodate its purpose effectively, keep out the rain, stand safe…); do people, generally, like it (how it looks, what it frames, what it contributes to the commonweal…); is it obstructing beneficial change…? The Barcelona Pavilion is free of these pressures. On its plinth it stands aloof and protected like a precious work of art, an experiential installation, a stage for silent wandering in the gallery/museum that is this part of the city of Barcelona.

a b

Of course Mies van der Rohe used the spatial-organisational idiom that informed the Barcelona Pavilion in other projects too. For example, he designed a house for the ‘Dwelling’ section of the 1931 Berlin Building Exposition (above). Here he took the spatial language of the pavilion, which had little or no functional content, and used it to frame domestic purposes. You can see that the activities of a house – dining, living, sleeping… – find their places amongst the loose but orthogonal assembly of wall planes and glass screens. Notice too that the walls, as in the Barcelona Pavilion, are in counterpoint to the rectangle of the roof (dashed in the drawing) and its grid of fifteen columns; some walls are under, some extend beyond it. Being a house there were some purposes that did not feel comfortable in the general openness of Mies’s spatial organisation: the bathroom is hidden in its own cubicle (a); the kitchen, along with the maid’s accommodation (b) is hidden away too. * John Dee – Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara, 1570. (See also page 111. I have modernised spelling and punctuation in the quotation.)

T RUSS WA L L HOUSE

53

T RUS S WA L L HOUSE a house in the Tsur ukawa subur b of M ac hida - Cit y, Japan K ATH RY N FIN D L AY and EISA KU USHIDA , 19 93 In which we shall see that:

T

•

though the majority of buildings across the world are orthogonal (mainly to harmonise with the geometry of making) some architects challenge the ubiquity of the rectangle and flat planar surfaces by making buildings with complex three-dimensional curves;

•

this approach might make it seem that architecture is primarily sculptural, concerned principally with the presentation of three-dimensional form to the eye, but it has experiential consequences too, which include the fourth dimension, time;

•

relationships between architectural frames and the human six directions can be complex rather than harmonious, orthogonal, axial;

•

curvaceous spatial arrangements can make movement through them seem like choreography; architecture can make you dance;

•

but such choreographic channelling can leave little latitude for actual dancing (which requires free space).

he Truss Wall House ties a knot of lines of passage in a different way to the Barcelona Pavilion. Rather than providing choice with a loose, mainly horizontal, labyrinth it channels movement within a distorted upwards spiral. This small residence sits on a tiny site in a dormitory city on the outskirts of Tokyo in Japan. Its name derives from the way in which it was constructed. It was designed by Kathryn Findlay, an architect from Scotland, and Eisaku Ushida from Japan. The Truss Wall House is distinctive because of its cur­ vilinear form. It is like an architectural squiggle interposed amongst the orthodox rectangular/orthogonal geometry of the suburban villas around it, and set alongside the linear (uni-dimensionally dynamic) forms of the river to the west and road and railway to the south. In its curved form the Truss Wall House is unorthodox, or at least it challenges the presumed authority of the orthog­ onal that has tended to prevail in architecture since human beings left caves. The authority of the orthogonal (discussed in Analysing Architecture, 2021, in the chapter on Geome­ tries of Being) derives from: the geometry of making (i.e. it is easier to build orthogonally using standard building materials such as bricks and straight lengths of timber); and from the six-directions-plus-centre implicit in the human form. The Truss Wall House challenges both of these: first by employing a construction method based on spraying concrete into and onto an armature of steel reinforcement bars preformed into

54

river

ra

il w

ay

curved ‘trusses’; and second by recognising that human beings are not constricted to being static cross-shaped creatures; they move in winding ways; they dance. I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E; PR I M I T I V E PL AC E T Y PE S The house is on three floors (4–2 opposite). These accom­ modate the usual places associated with domestic life in unambiguous function-related form. They are identified as non-rectangular rooms within a cave-like interior. The house is entered up a few steps from the road. The entrance floor (3) is therefore the middle of the three floors. Here there is a semi-circular sitting area under a sky-lit dome, a fixed dining table and a kitchen for cooking and washing, with its own access to a lane alongside the house. The only free-standing pieces of furniture are some dining chairs (not ‘Space is to be experienced most directly by movement; on a higher level, by the dance. The dance is at the same time an elemental means for realization of space-creative impulses. It can articulate space, order it.’

Lázló Moholy-Nagy – The New Vision (1938, 1947), 2005.

roof terrace

1

shown); everything else is built-in, fixed, as it would be in a ship. From this level you can go: – through a small paved courtyard, up a curved external stair onto a roof terrace (2) where there are seats and solar panels; this is a place from which guests may survey the city around, with views to the distant hills, and watch trains go by; – or down, to the sleeping floor (4) which is partly sunk into the ground, and where there is a master bedroom with a double bed, a children’s bedroom with two bunks, and a bathroom with separate lavatory (w.c.). To simplify services the bathroom is directly below the kitchen. S T R AT I F IC AT ION; T R A NSI T ION, H I E R A RC H Y, H E A RT; L IGH T The vertical organisation of the house is different from that of an orthodox house with its day rooms (into which visitors might be invited) on the ground floor and more private bed­ rooms upstairs. The arrangement of the Truss Wall House allows access from the day rooms to the roof terrace without passing through the more private zone of the bedrooms. The day rooms are nevertheless directly accessible, if up a few steps, from the street. This arrangement also means that the most womb-like spaces on the lowest level are used for sleep­ ing, whilst the day rooms receive, through the courtyard and the roof-light over the sitting area, more light from the sky. The rooms on the lowest level are lit through small windows like the portholes of a ship, and through windows into a tiny triangular light well on the south side of the house (‘a’ in 4 and 5, on next page). TRUSS WALL HOUSE

2 roof level: terrace

dining kitchen sitting

courtyard

3 middle floor: entrance, living rooms

w.c. bathroom bedroom

bedroom a

4 lowest floor: bedrooms

55

b

a

5

6

There is stratification of light levels as well as spatial experience. The sitting area is lit through a skylight; the bedrooms through the tiny triangular light well (a) with a wall that screens them from the street.

The dining area is lit through the courtyard which is also screened from the road and railway by a high wall; a light shelf (b) shades the interior from direct sunlight but also reflects light on to the ceiling and hence deeper into the space.

The heart of the house is the sitting area (though it does not look particularly comfortable as a place to relax). The entrance steps and passageway, together with the courtyard and steps up to the roof terrace, create an S-shaped route taking the visitor from the road up to the higher level. This route passes through a series of different experiences: up the steps into the tunnel-like entrance; turning left where the interior is revealed, past the sitting and dining areas, through the glass screen to the small courtyard, and up the curving steps to the roof terrace. It is as if the building makes you perform a dance, a spatial pirouette. A small stair deviates from this route to take you down to the bedrooms and bathroom on the lowest level.

7

GE OM E T RY This framing of domestic activity is achieved in a conventional house by means of right-angles, flat vertical walls and a ceiling. Ushida Findlay’s curvaceous building is expressive and sculptural as well as being organised according to prac­ ticality and to orchestrate experience. The Truss Wall House contravenes the geometry of making in favour of something else. That ‘something else’ is not ideal geometry. The lines of this building are dynamic, related to movement. It is as if the architects have taken the site as a blank piece of paper and drawn a squiggle (7) in three dimensions, spiralling up into space and down into the ground. A squiggle is fluid but not random. Its curves are related to the geometry of the hand and arm. Various artists, design­ ers and architects have explored the decorative possibilities of line derived from movement and related to gesture, par­ ticularly since the movement known as Art Nouveau towards 56

8

It is as if the plan of the Truss Wall House is based on a doodle or squiggle, a gestural technique associated with Art Nouveau design (below) and with Abstract Expressionist painting. (See also Endless House – the next analysis.)

9

11

12

the end of the nineteenth century. One was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish architect who worked in Glasgow. He produced decorative elements seemingly generated from squiggles in two dimensions, as in this pattern (8) from a fire­ place in the Cranston Tea Rooms, and in three, as in the finial (9) from one of the window brackets on the north elevation of the Glasgow School of Art. Pablo Picasso too experimented with the free line derived from movement. While a camera shutter was open he quickly drew in the air with a light (10, below); the image, which for a split second occupied threedimensional space, was captured on the film. (To see some of these experiments, Google ‘picasso light drawing’.) The Truss Wall House is gesture set in concrete. Its com­ position, if all three levels are overlaid and imagined in three dimensions, can be compared to a Mackintosh decoration (11 and 12). The house derives from a flourish, a flamboyant gesture. If an ancient Greek temple frames the concept of a static body standing in space (13) then the Truss Wall House represents a body in movement (14). Mackintosh’s squiggles and Picasso’s light drawings occupy space but do not accommodate anything. Being

a house, the Truss Wall House accommodates the places associated with domestic life. These places are inserted into the curves of the spatial flourish (12). It is probable that the generative squiggle was drawn with some notion of what the lines might demarcate in terms of places – the entrance and the sitting area are cases in point, and the loops of the roof terrace and of the bedrooms clearly delineate places. Architecture relates to the body in other ways. The Truss Wall House relates to the movement of a hand drawing; it channels the occupant in motion too. In the Bauhaus, the innovative design school in 1920s Germany, while Paul Klee was ‘taking a line for a walk’, Lázló Moholy-Nagy and Oskar Schlemmer were interested in the body moving in space. Schlemmer did drawings that took the Leonardo da Vinci image of Vitruvian Man (next page) a step further by showing the person’s potential for movement (15) and suggesting that through movement the body projects its dynamism into space (16). He designed costumes for dancing and other constructions that represented movement. The Truss Wall House is a construction that represents movement in space. Not only are the routes through it like

10 (See also page 44 of Curve, 2019, in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.)

TRUSS WALL HOUSE

13

14

57

15

16

In his drawing known as ‘Vitruvian Man’ (top) Leonardo da Vinci depicted the (male) human form and its geometry as basically static and frontal – with outstretched arms. Oskar Schlemmer reinterpreted human form in terms of its capacity for movement, its ability to dance and project its dynamism in space.

Schlemmer recognised that the human form projects its energy out into the space around it (top). Schlemmer used his understanding of the dynamic potency of the human form to design special costumes depicting movement and for dance (lower image).

58

the arms of a posing ballet dancer (17), the three-dimensional layout of the house involves the person in moving through space as if dancing, as if leaping and twirling into the air, and down again. C ONC LUSION (201 5): A PROBL E M A N D A QU E S T ION

17

‘The dancers crisscrossed (the) spaces, slicing time to bits and pulling it together, elbows and knees shuffling like pistons, pushing slowly back and forth, creating time, exhaling, inhaling space. The square room had no end. One didn’t know where the dance started, where the music.’

Frederick Kiesler – Inside the Endless House, 1966. (See also the following case study.)

The Truss Wall House poses a problem and provokes a question. First, the prob­ lem. Because it contravenes the geometry of making, the house involved a difficult process of construction, with a dense and complex armature of reinforcement – the steel trusses – covered with concrete and finished by hand. This is a building process for which there are no standard components or well-established crafts. Second the question… about the relationship between human movement and the form of buildings. The Truss Wall House is a representation of human movement – the hand in drawing and the body dancing. An alternative is to think of a building as a frame for movement rather than a representation of it. The Truss Wall House channels rather than accommodates free movement. When the sprinters in Martin Creed’s ‘Work No. 850’ (2008) ran full-pelt the length of the Duveen Gallery in London’s Tate Britain (18), they would never take a perfectly straight line down the axis of the space; sometimes they had to deviate around people wandering through the galleries. The line they took played

18 Martin Creed’s ‘Work No. 850’

TRUSS WALL HOUSE

59

19

21

around the architectural axis rather than being dictated by it. It would only be in the constrained circumstances of a formal procession – in a church for example – that people might try to follow the axis of a space exactly. Normally we wander through such spaces, crossing an axis occasionally, dancing around it rather than being tied to its line. 60

20

When we dance it is either in the open landscape or within the freedom of a rectangular room (19), when we act out a drama it is in the open circle of the orkestra of an ancient Greek theatre or the rectangle of an open stage. Two examples: in 2007, a drug-affected Dutch driver trying to escape from a chasing police car drew with his tyres a chaotic tangle of lines within the bounds of a rectangular field (20, above); when a waitress waits on tables in a café she performs dances in infinite permutations as she moves between the tables (21, left). It is arguable that architecture’s relationship with move­ ment is as an interplay between the irregularity (freedom) of that movement and the regularity of the frame provided; similar to the interplay between a melody, the framework of a musical scale and the rhythmic discipline of a beat. That interplay is reduced rather than liberated when built space tries itself to mimic free movement. The gestural form of the architecture constrains the free movement of the occupant. Do the curved spaces of the Truss Wall House determine movement rather than provide latitude? Do they offer the flexibility, in terms of accommodating furniture and human movement, of an orthodox rectangular room? What is more, evidence that the authority of the six­ directions-plus-centre (see Analysing Architecture, 2021, pages 116–21) is not arbitrary may be inferred from fact that in the curvilinear Truss Wall House – which generally tries to avoid straight lines and rectangles – the floors, steps and shelves are nevertheless horizontal for practicality, doorways and beds are rectangular (to accommodate the varying sizes and movements of people) and the dining table has parallel sides.* Even so, if the Casa del Ojo de Agua (pages 11–22) is a sentence, then the Truss Wall House is a choreographic line, described according to the trajectory of a dancer’s pirouette.

* See also Curve (2019) in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

2 02 3 The Truss Wall House presents itself as a piece of sculpture, picturesquely suited to photography and publicity in the media of architectural journals. These aspects of architectural design are important factors in architectural commercialism. Nevertheless, there is more to Ushida Findlay’s design than that. One aspect of that difference is the relationship between architecture and movement. SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON All the situations (in which architecture can put the per­ son) that we have identified in the previous case studies have been orthogonal. The first characteristic of the Truss Wall House is that it puts the person in a situation that is curvy. It breaks that reciprocal resonant link between the six directions inherent in the form of the human being and the conventional rectangular orthogonal architectural space – i.e. the room (house, church, tomb, mosque…) with horizontal floor, ceiling and four vertical walls at right angles. It replaces the rectangular frame for occupation with one that is more akin to a biological interior – a womb, stomach, heart… (right) – or one made by natural processes – a mollusc shell, a cavern eroded and smoothed by wind and water… The situation the Truss Wall House puts the person in is also one that creates a more complex relationship with the vertical dimension than when a building has just one or more horizontal floors. The Truss Wall House does have horizon­ tal floors but they are not stacked vertically one above the other. From the entrance steps you go up and around left to the main living floor. From there you can either wind down to the sleeping floor or proceed through the courtyard and sweep up the stairs to the open roof level sitting terrace. The route winds around and over itself free from the conventional orthogonal order influenced usually by structural geometry. The desire to escape from structural geometry, for sculptural and spatial aesthetic reasons, is what leads to the Truss Wall House’s complex construction using large quantities of steel reinforcement encased in sprayed-on concrete.

Even Mies van der Rohe’s spatial idiom, with its simple labyrinthine opportunities for wandering, creates a framework of walls and columns, sandwiched between horizontal roof and floor, that is essentially orthogonal. The curves of our movement are in counterpoint to the rectangularity of the layout.

dining sitting

The Truss Wall House creates a labyrinth in a different way from the Barcelona Pavilion. First, it is curved not orthogonal. Second, it provides less opportunity for wandering. It situates the person in something akin to a biological interior – birth passage or alimentary canal… With its blending of interior and exterior spaces it is also redolent of the Klein Bottle (below), described on Wikipedia as: ‘a non-orientable surface… a two-dimensional manifold against which a system for determining a normal vector cannot be consistently defined’ (April 2022). More interesting to the architect at least is that the Klein Bottle has an interior that becomes an exterior without a clear threshold.

R E L AT I NG A RC H I T E C T U R E T O DA NC E By dance, think not only of art-conscious and aesthetically inclined movement but of the ways in which we all interact with the geometry of our surroundings as we go about our everyday lives. We dance about the house as we get up, make breakfast, pick lettuce, play with the children… We dance about the city as we make our way about the shops and decide TRUSS WALL HOUSE

Klein Bottle

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‘At the still point of the turning world… there the dance is.’

T.S. Eliot – ‘Burnt Norton’, 1936.

To dance we need space. The dancing floor outside the Palace of Minos, Knossos (Crete, c. 1500 BCE; above) provides space. All dance floors through history do the same, offering a flat and open surface for free movement. The Truss Wall House, whilst its route is comparable to a pirouette, does not.

on a restaurant… Architecture frames our dance. The question is how. Should architecture determine the progress and form of the dance or should it provide latitude for the dance to find its own form and place? The question is philosophical; it is comparable to the extent to which rule systems should channel and restrict our general freedoms to do what we like. On the open desert we have freedom to move in whatever direction we like… But that means our world has no form and no shape. We are lost. It is architecture that sets shape and form for our lives. Architects (of laws, sports, buildings…) can adopt a spectrum of attitudes to spatial determinism.

The labyrinth (above) determines a clear and incontrovertible pathway; the ‘dance’ is laid down by the architect’s authority. Deviation is impossible without breaking the fatal rule the labyrinth lays down. Freedom is usurped by discipline… and perhaps the psychological security that your path (through life) is set by a greater authority than your own free will. Much architecture adopts a middle way (above right), providing a spatial geometric order within which the dance is framed but free to find itself. 62

A columned hall provides a geometrically ordered frame for dance.

‘I have moved from the geometry of the one-dimensional’ (sic) ‘surface to the half plastic (relief), and thence to the fully plastic art of the human body… There is… a geometry that applies to the surface of the dance floor, though only as part of and a projection of spatial solid geometry.’ Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Tut Schlemmer, trans. Krishna Winston – Letter to Otto Meyer, June 12, 1920, in The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer (1958), 1972.

E N DL E SS HOUSE

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E N DL E S S HOUSE an unbuilt projec t for a house based in inf init y FRIED RICH / FR ED ERICK KIES LER , 19 47- 61 In which we shall see that: • architecture can be fantastical, occupying a hermetic intellectual realm separated from reality; • an architect might seek to create a multi-dimensional place detached from the mundane but somehow manifesting a richer human condition; • architectural ideas can be rhetorical, didactic, counterorthodox… but maybe, as a consequence, be also difficult or impossible to realise;

elevation

• such architecture raises questions about heroism and hubris.

‘when i conduct the orchestra of space by grace of the Unknown the endless house

has ins and out

without a door

or wall

they change at will

from void to fill yet standing still they cannot budge or billow-bulge until I split with light reality-illusion it’s simply done by magic fusion of what is not

what can

but does not want to be

yet must obey oh! stay succumb! don’t play me dumb my scribble nibbles crumbs of mine and Gods and Devils

fall

in line’

Frederick Kiesler – ‘when i conduct’, 1960.

64

plan of accommodation raised above the ground

T

he Japanese artist Katsuhiro Yamaguchi has drawn connections between the Truss Wall House (previous analysis) and a project from some thirty years earlier that was never built (Yamaguchi, 1993). The earlier project was called the Endless House. The architect Friedrich (Americanized as Frederick) Kiesler worked on it for much of the last twenty years of his life. (He was born in 1890 and died in 1965.) When, in 1961, a lady called Mary Sisler, from Florida, expressed interest in Kiesler’s project, the design of the house was developed to a state in which it might have been built, but nothing came of it. During the years Kiesler worked on this project he produced numerous drawings and models. The project for the Endless House emerged out of a collaboration between Kiesler and some of the Surrealist artists, especially Marcel Duchamp. In 1947 Kiesler designed two exhibitions: ‘Blood Flames’ at the Hugo Gallery in New York; and the ‘Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme’ held at the Maeght Gallery in Paris. Two years later, in a then new architectural magazine called L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, he published his own manifesto – ‘Manifeste du Corréalisme’. Kies­ ler’s Correalism was something of a reaction against Surrealism’s immersion in the psychological realm of dreams. Kiesler argued that human beings and Nature are not separate (divorced, distinct entities… as suggested by, for example, the Biblical story of Adam and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden) but part of an integrated system, and that architecture should reflect this.

1a

b

c

L I N E S OF A RC H I T E C T U R E In the fifteenth century, the Florentine architect Leon Battista Alberti wrote that architecture is a matter of ‘lineaments’: ‘The whole matter of building is composed of lineaments and structure. All the intent and purpose of lineaments lies in finding the correct, infallible way of joining and fitting together those lines which define and enclose the surfaces of the building.’ Alberti tended towards the view that the lines of archi­ tecture should be determined by the figures and proportions of ideal geometry: squares; circles; √2 rectangles; and so on. But there are other views. Some may be summarised… First there is the view that the lines of a building should be governed, or at least strongly influenced, by the size and characteristics of the materials from which it is built (1). This is the view expressed in the American architect Louis Kahn’s dictum ‘a brick knows what it wants to be’. It is exemplified in: the brick wall or column (1a) whose geometry is a function of that of the brick itself; the native American teepee (1b), the shape of which is a function of leaning poles against each other; the African hut (1c) that influenced Mies van der Rohe

2a African village

ENDLESS HOUSE

d

(see page 84); and Mies’s own Farnsworth House (1d), the form of which is, to a large extent, a function of the properties of structural steel. This is the view explored in Analysing Archi­ tecture under ‘Geometry of Making’. Those who subscribe to this view claim moral authority for it on the basis that such forms appear to arise from, or at least be in harmony with, the innate properties of the materials being used. The properties suggest the ways in which the materials may be put together and consequently the lines of the resulting building. Second there is the view that the purpose of buildings is to accommodate life, and that their lines should therefore follow what might be called the lines, or patterns, of inhab­ itation. An example might be that of an African village (2a) in which, although the forms of component parts might be influenced by the geometry of making, the geometry of the whole composition is more conditioned by the social structure and practices of the community that live in it. Another example of architectural form being condi­ tioned by inhabitation would be a house by Hans Scharoun (2b; this is the Mohrmann House, analysed on pages 285–95) in which the shapes of domestic life – eating together, sitting by the fire, playing the piano – hold precedence over the geom­ etry of building the fabric. Protagonists of this view claim that its moral authority lies in its origination in the ways that life occupies space and identifies place.

2b Mohrmann House

65

3a

3b

4a

4b

66

A third view would be Alberti’s: that the lines of archi­ tecture need not be constrained by the geometry of making nor by the patterns of life. The human intellect can strive for higher ideals, even perfection, as apparently provided by the perfect geometric figures of the square, circle and rectangles with specific proportions. This is the view described in Ana­ lysing Architecture under the heading of ‘Ideal Geometry’. It is exemplified in Alberti’s own design for the front of Santa Maria Novella in Florence (3a), and in Louis Kahn’s Esherick House (3b; see pages 119–25). The authority ascribed to this view derives from the apparently incontrovertible rightness of geometric figures derived from their mathematical formu­ lation – the observation that they are not arbitrary but offer (a version of) perfection. A fourth view is that geometric figures are too abstract and that the lines of buildings should be related to the size and characteristics of the human figure. Thus a doorway should be just the right height for average-sized people to pass through and a bed the right size for them to lie upon (4a). A traditional Japanese house (4b) would fall into this category since the sizes of the rooms are related to the sizes of the tatami mats on their floors, and the size of a mat is related to that of a person lying down. Ceiling heights, veranda widths, steps… are also carefully modulated according to human scale. This view’s claim to authority is similar to that of views one and two. A fifth view would be to combine the third and fourth by suggesting that since it is arguable that geometric figures can be discovered in the human form, as illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci and Le Corbusier (5a and b), a codified system of proportions and dimensions for architecture can be derived from the human form, as Le Corbusier did in his Modulor dimensioning system (see pages 112–13) and used in various designs including his Cabanon (5c opposite; see pages 107–17). This view combines the claims for moral authority of views three and four.

5a

b

7a

5c

A sixth view (there are more!) is that the principles of architectural geometry should be subverted, perhaps because they introduce an unreal certainty. According to this view, parallel lines are made to converge or diverge, vertical walls are twisted or broken, geometric figures are denied independ­ ence and clarity and are made to conflict. By this method sensational forms arise. Moral authority for this source of the lines of architecture is either eschewed or based in claiming resonance with a complex and contradictory world. Alvaro Siza and Zaha Hadid, for example (6a and 6b), subvert ortho­ dox geometry by fragmentation and distortion. (Zaha Hadid’s Vitra Fire Station, is analysed on pages 275–84.) These various views of the role of geometry in archi­ tecture are rarely discrete. Works of architecture are often informed by a combination of them. For example, Le Corbusi­ er’s Cabanon (above), though informed by his Modulor system

6a Bires House, Alvaro Siza, 1976

ENDLESS HOUSE

of dimensions, does not ignore the geometry of making; and a native American teepee manages quite well to accommodate the social circle of people sitting around a fire. Each view has at various times had claims made for its own overriding authority – moral or otherwise – over the lines of architecture. Perhaps because architecture is complex, too complex for any one view to finally prevail, the field is always open for a fresh view of the role played by geometry in architecture. A seventh view (I said there were more) is that the lines of architecture might be derived from those of natural creations without reducing them to geometric figures and proportions; i.e. that buildings might be like trees and plant tendrils, bones and skeletal structures, shells and rock for­ mations… The Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, for exam­ ple, constructed balconies on his Casa Batlló in Barcelona derived from the skulls of fish (7a). He also made columns in the crypt chapel at the Colonia Guell that, made of rough hewn rock, resemble the trunks of trees in a forest (7b, next page), though the plan (7c) displays that blend of order and irregularity found in Nature. An aspiration associated with this view is that people might build as animals do, naturally and unselfconsciously, or even that buildings might be made to grow as if by natural process like a shell around a mollusc or a pupa around a caterpillar; as if Human architecture is a

6b Vitra Fire Station, Zaha Hadid, 1990-93

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7b

form of ‘original sin’. The moral authority thought to belong to this view of how the lines of architecture should be gener­ ated is perhaps based in an attempt to escape or deny human wilfulness, seen as the root cause of wrong; to return to the innocent state of animals. Either that, or the natural lines of broken stone and fish skeletons are found to be more beautiful than those constructed by human geometry. There are two corollaries to this seventh view. One is current in architecture in the first decade of the twenty-first century: that computer software may be sophisticated and subtle enough to emulate natural processes in response to variant conditions. Parametric software, for example, enables architects to modify form by inputting factors such as grav­ ity, loading, sunshine… and assessing how form effectively modifies itself, as a natural plant might respond to changing conditions. In this way forms thought of as natural – the growth of plants, the film of bubbles distorted by breeze and gravity, waves in water, the complex growth curves of shells and bones – might be emulated in building. The other corollary has a longer pedigree. It concerns how human wilfulness might be obviated or lessened in the hand that draws to produce lines that seem more natural or more convincingly similar to the lines of Nature – plant tendrils, the flow of water, the flight of a bird through the air, the growth of a shell or tree. ‘Free’ drawing allows the hand (and arm) to move without conscious control, and introduces the element of chance (presumed to be the sister of Nature). Beginning with a free swirl of lines, for example, it is possible to construct a plausibly natural looking tree (8). This was a method used by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, as mentioned in the analysis of the Truss Wall House (see pages 56–7). It was also used by Hector Guimard in, for example, the gate to the Castel Beranger in Paris (9). 68

7c

8

9

Kiesler fits this seventh view of how the lines of archi­ tecture might be generated. His desire to find a natural way of creating architecture, uncorrupted by human will, is indicated in the following passage, taken from the beginning of his 1949 essay, ‘Pseudo-Functionalism in Modern Architecture’. His first three sentences appear to be a direct contradiction of Le Corbusier’s dictum – in Towards a New Architecture (1923), 1927 – that ‘the plan is the generator’: ‘The floor plan is no more than the footprint of the house. From a flat impression of this sort it is difficult to conceive the actual form and content of the building. If God had begun the creation of man with a footprint, a monster all heels and toes would probably have grown up from it, not a man… Fortunately the creation proceeded otherwise, growing out of a nuclear conception. Out of a single germ cell which contained the whole and which slowly developed into the separate floors and rooms of man. This cell, owing its origin to the erotic and creative instinct and not to any intellectual mandate, is the nucleus of the human edifice.’

In the same essay Kiesler expresses his antipathy to orthogonal architecture, finding it at odds with ‘polydimen­ sional’ life: ‘The ground plan is only a flat imprint of a volume. The volume of the principal activity to be expected in the house is not taken into consideration; instead, squares and rectangles, long ones, short ones, bent ones, are juxtaposed, or something jumbled – and then superim­ posed in storeys (elevation plan). This box construction is not in keeping with the practice of living. A house is a volume in which people live polydimensionally. It is the sum of every possible movement its inhabitants can make within it; and these movements are infused with the flux of instinct. Hence it is fallacious to begin with the floor plan. We must strive to capture a general sense of dwelling, and configurate accordingly.’ Kiesler describes the possibilities of free drawing in his 1959 essay, ‘Hazard and the Endless House’: ‘Drafting is grafting vision on paper with lead, ink, or – or. Blindfolded skating rather than designing, significantly keen, directed by experience and will, and channelling one’s feelings and thoughts, deliberately proud of pruning them to clarity and definition. Chance drawing and sculpting or painting is an ability to let go, to be entirely tool rather than a guide of tools. It is to design with one’s whole body and mind, never mindful of either. No, it is not sketching, the bastard version between chance and will.’ Some of the study sketches for Kiesler’s Endless House are scribbles (similar to my scribble, right, 10).

Oswald Spengler had similarly questioned whether the presumed authority of the orthogonal (rectangular) in architecture was in fact arbitrary: ‘The idea of the three directions is an out-and-out abstraction and is not contained in the immediate extension-feeling of the body (the “soul”). Direction as such, the directionessence, gives rise to the mysterious animal sense of right and left and also the vegetable characteristic of below-toabove, earth to heaven. The latter is a fact felt dream-wise, the former a truth of waking existence to be learned and therefore capable of being transmuted. Both find expression in architecture, to wit, in the symmetry of the plan and the energy of the elevation, and it is only because of this that we specially distinguish in the “architecture” of the space around us the angle of 90° in preference, for example, to that of 60°. Had it not been so, the conventional number of our “dimensions” would have been quite different.’ Oswald Spengler, trans. Atkinson – The Decline of the West (1918, 1922), 1932 (1971).

10

It seems the form of the house (below) was produced, like my drawing of a tree opposite, by the selective editing of a squiggle; the free movement of the hand producing free curves that could not be determined by conscious decision.

T H E HOUSE The design of the Endless House went through many itera­ tions. The most finished is the one Kiesler prepared for his client Mary Sisler in 1961 in anticipation that his project would be built. This 1961 design, like previous versions, consists of a cluster of interlinked pods supported off the ground on inhabited columns or pedestals (11, 12). (In some versions – one of them illustrated on pages 566–7 of Kiesler’s Inside the Endless House for example – these pedestals, as a concession to the geometry of making, are more orthogonal than those in the version illustrated here.) Kiesler thought of his Endless House as independent of the ground. He said (in a television interview in 1961) that ‘it can just as well be on the ground or could be floating on the water or on sand’. Presumably, if it were not for gravity, he would have liked the house to float in the air (just as his ideas sought to float free of the orthodox constraints of, for example, orthogonal geometry). ENDLESS HOUSE

11 east elevation

12 west elevation

The identities of the places in the house are not com­ pletely clear from the published drawings. Each of the three pedestals (15, next page) has an entrance. The sweep of the drive indicates that the main entrance is in the middle 69

pedestal. It contains the grandest of the stairs up to the mid­ dle floor, and a room that is probably a cloakroom. It also contains what appears to be a garden store accessible from outside. The southern pedestal has a stair leading up to the kitchen, and another space that is presumably for storage. The northern pedestal seems more a way out to the garden by way of an external stair that sweeps down under the pod from the parents’ room on the middle floor. At the head of the grand stair on the middle floor (14) is a large living space, with a hearth at its centre. The parents’ room leads off this and appears to have a pool. The living space also gives access to the kitchen, through the dining space. The final space on this floor is a combined bedroom and bathroom for children. A stair from the living space leads up to another bed/bathroom on the top floor (13). And from that room there appears to be a further external stair climbing up onto the roof of the pod but going nowhere. (This ‘stair to nowhere’ has been edited out of the version illustrated in Inside the Endless House, presumably again as a concession to reality.) The free form of the house is reminiscent of cave systems carved out of rock by running water (16) or of the grottoes built by landscape architects in the eighteenth century (17). The space of the Endless House is, however, carved not out of solid matter but from space itself.

elevation

bed/bathroom

13 top floor plan

living hearth

dining

parents children seclusion 14 middle (main) floor plan

16 cave

15 ground floor plan

17 an eighteenth-century grotto

70

18 movement dynamics

kitchen

‘The Endless House is called the “endless” because all ends meet, and meet continuously. It is endless like the human body – there is no beginning and end to it. The “endless” is rather sensuous, more like the female body in contrast to sharp-angled male architecture.’

Frederick Kiesler – Inside the Endless House, 1966, p. 566.

I N F I N I T Y A N D PL AC E S (‘ SPAC E -N UC L E I ’ ) There are many intertwining routes around, into and through the Endless House. Like the Truss Wall House this house is about movement as well as sculptural form. The form of the house sets the lines of the free movement of the hand that drew it but its spaces also frame the movements of its inhabitants. The last drawing opposite (18) is a superimposition of the house’s three floors with possible lines of movement weaving in and out, up and down. The house seems a comment on the restlessness of twentieth-century life. Kiesler explained (in that same 1961 television inter­ view) that the underlying idea of the house was the mathe­ matical sign for infinity:

∞

The house also seems to have some conceptual affinity with the Möbius Strip (19) and the Klein Bottle (20), both being objects with a single – i.e. endless – surface.

19 Möbius Strip

20 Klein Bottle (see also page 61)

ENDLESS HOUSE

But, more than anything, Kiesler was concerned to emphasise the relationship between the Endless House and life, rather than its abstract characteristics. He wanted to accommodate life in what he thought of as an appropriate rather than constraining way. He wrote: ‘All ends meet in the “Endless” as they meet in life. Life’s

rhythms are cyclical. All ends of living meet during twenty-

four hours, during a week, a lifetime. They touch one

another with the kiss of Time. They shake hands, stay,

say goodbye, return through the same or other doors,

come and go through multi-links, secretive or obvious,

or through the whims of memory. The events of life are

your house guests. You must play the best possible of

hosts; otherwise the host of events will become ghosts.

They will. Yes, they can, but not in the “Endless House”.

There, events are reality, because you receive them with

open arms, and they become you. You are fused with

them and thus reinforced in your power of self-reliance.

‘Machine-age houses are split-ups of cubicles,

one box next to another,

one box below another,

one box above another,

until they grow into tumours of skyscrapers.

‘Space in the “Endless House” is continuous. All living

areas can be unified into a single continuum. ‘But do not fear that one cannot find seclusion in the “Endless”. ‘Each and every one of the space-nuclei’ (places?) ‘can be separated from the totality of the dwelling, secluded. At will, you can reunify to meet various needs: the con­ gregation of the family, of visitors from the outer world, neighbours, friends, strollers. Or again, you’ll womb yourself into happy solitude. The “Endless” cannot be only a home for the family, but must definitely make room and comfort for those “visitors” from your own inner world. Communion with yourself. The ritual of meditation inspired. Truthfully, the inhabitants of your inner space are steady companions, although invisible to the naked eye, but very much felt by the psyche. Those invisible guests are the secret-service men and honour guard of your being. We cannot treat them as burglars. We must make them feel comfortable. They represent diligently the echoes of your past life and the projection of a promised or hoped-for realm of time-to-come… ‘The “Endless House” is not amorphous, not a free-for-all form. On the contrary, its construction has strict bound­ aries according to the scale of your living. Its shape and form are determined by inherent life processes.’* * Friedrich Kiesler – Inside the Endless House, 1966.

71

Whatever psychiatric or culture-specific interpretations might be imposed on his writings, Kiesler, in his architec­ ture, was evidently intent on giving concern for life (the life of the free individual – himself) the highest priority; a higher priority, for example, than the geometry of making or ideal geometry. In this, like other examples analysed in this book, Kiesler’s architecture was (an attempt at) philosophy explored through the medium of space and its organisation, its lines. How successful the Endless House would have been at satisfying Kiesler’s asserted aspirations, under the tests of realisation and inhabitation, remains uncertain. DE V IC E S A N D R I T UA L Kiesler wanted to re-invent architectural space as a way of waking people up, reinvigorating their existential awe, making them appreciate the spiritual ceremonies of life. He believed his originality would be therapeutic.* He wanted to do this with devices in his house too. ‘In the “Endless House” nothing can be taken for granted, either of the house itself, the floor, walls, ceiling, the coming of people or of light, the air with its warmth or coolness. Every mechanical device must remain an event and constitute the inspiration for a specific ritual. Not even the faucet that brings water into your glass, into the teakettle, through your shower and into the bath – that turn of a handle and then the water flowing forth as from the rock touched by Moses in the desert, that sparkling event, released through the magic invention of man’s mind, must always remain the surprise, the unprece­ dented, an event of pride and comfort.’** Kiesler has not been alone in recognising the ritual potential of architecture, its details and devices. Juhani Pallasmaa has suggested that ‘The door handle is the “hand­ shake” of the building’ (Pallasmaa, 2005). Aldo van Eyck saw a doorway not merely as a practical device but ‘a place for an occasion’ (quoted on page 247 of Analysing Architecture, 2021). And Philippe Starck, with unusual ways of turning on water and switching on electrical devices (in his New York hotels for example), has certainly indulged in ‘the magic invention of man’s mind’. One device Kiesler wanted to install in the Endless House was a ‘colour clock’. A magazine article by Kiesler on an early version of the Endless House was published in Inte­ riors in November 1950. This article focused on the house as an instrument for the manipulation of light, both natural and artificial:

* See also the analysis of the Bioscleave House on pages 297–306. ** Friedrich Kiesler – Inside the Endless House, 1966.

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‘The curving shell of the house provides excellent vantage-points for carefully distributed, built-in filament and gaseous light sources, which send out vertical, diago­ nal, and horizontal beams adaptable to varied purposes… We now have at our disposal three technical means of controlling daylight: (1) Dimensioning of the cut-outs – more commonly referred to as windows – through which daylight enters the building. We can make them large or small, round or rectangular. (2) Shielding the aperture of path of the light with a diffusing skin of glass, plastic, or a translucent woven material. (3) Masking the aper­ ture with one of any number of disguises to temper or deflect the light.’ Kiesler described the workings of the colour clock: ‘Daylight is transmitted through a prismatic glass crystal of three basic colours, gradually shifting to each in turn from dawn to dusk. The rays are filtered into the interior through a convex mirror, and the dweller can gauge the hour by the colour of the tinted light around him. Instead of depending solely on a mechanical clock, splintering his life into minute particles of time, he becomes aware of the continuity of time and his own dynamic integration with natural forces.’ A diagram of one of the crystals of the colour clock (21) shows that it was intended to consist of prisms, lenses and

21 the colour clock of the Endless House

(Kiesler’s own diagram is on page 50 of Bogner, 2003.)

mirrors. At dawn, for example, light from the east would shine in through a prism that would colour it red; that light would then be dispersed into the room by a concave mirror. In the evening, something similar would happen with the light from the west, except that it would be coloured green. In-between, the colour of the light would gradually turn from the red of dawn, through the blue of midday, to the green of evening. C ONC LUSION (201 5) The Endless House might be classified as a manifesto for freedom: freedom from both the geometry of making and ideal geometry; freedom from the orthogonal and from the axis; freedom from the ground surface; freedom from the constraints of inhabiting box-like rooms; it even suggests an aspiration to freedom from gravity, and a (Buddhist?) embrace of time as cyclical rather than linear. Above all, this house must be counted a manifesto for freedom from orthodoxy. Underlying all these attempts at freedom was Kies­ ler’s desire to achieve creative freedom from the conceits of the conscious mind itself (and maybe from the original sin attributed to them by some ideologies) and to return human life to a state of blissful innocence (if it is within the powers of architecture to do such a thing).

ENDLESS HOUSE

Which, if any, of these freedoms is possible is open to argument. The principal freedom Kiesler’s house achieved, though this was one he did not seek, was freedom from the challenges of actually being built and inhabited: freedom from the vicissitudes of climate, from wear and tear, from the effects of time, from the criticisms of those who might live in his spaces. As it is, Kiesler’s ideas remain pristine in the imagina­ tion, where they continue to pose questions about architec­ ture’s relationship with reality. Does reality hold necessary authority over architecture or is it an architect’s duty to push the boundaries, to propose ideas that transcend reality, to ascribe to Rose Sayer’s (Katharine Hepburn) philosophy, expressed in the film The African Queen (John Huston, 1951), that ‘Nature… is what we are put in this world to rise above’? The published images of the Endless House, especially those of Kiesler’s many developmental models (below), make the building appear sculptural. There is no clearly defined semantic boundary between ‘architecture’ and ‘sculpture’ except perhaps to say that the primary burden of architecture is to identify (recognise, define, accommodate…) place (as described in Analysing Architecture, 2021, pages 11–20). This might also be the case with some sculpture (to which extent it might be described as ‘architectural’) but traditionally

73

sculpture is more concerned with moulding, carving, con­ structing, assembling… objects that stand in rather than frame space, and might be located wherever. During the generation of his design for the Endless House, Kiesler never seems to have had a specific site in mind (see addendum below) only to have had some idea of its ideal orientation (so that his colour clocks would work). But nevertheless to dismiss his house as merely sculptural is, by the evidence of his writings included in this analysis, to misunderstand his intention; it is clear that Kiesler saw his house not as three-dimensional shape-making but as space-and-life-accommodating. Even so, with its interiors like river-worn caverns and endlessly looping spaces it is difficult to see the Endless House as being comfortable to live in. When I add a few figures (people) to a drawing of one of Kiesler’s models (previous page), they look more like speleological explorers than settled residents. Kiesler’s messianic vision is one of restless, terraphobic wandering in a dystopian womb. A DDE N DU M Latterly, when Mary Sisler came forward as a potential client for the house, she did offer him a site which he found unin­ spiring. ‘I have never seen a more devastating looking and uninspiring landscape in my life’, he said.* He responded by designing a site plan that attempted to preserve the detach­ ment of the house from the limitations of reality by isolating it on an island in an artificial lake.

‘With the Endless House, Kiesler essentially modelled an anticipated future in which architecture as “place” would be rendered inconsequential and relegated to the service of an enigmatic and fluid endlessness.’

Hani Rashid – ‘An Endlessness Shadow’, in Bollinger et al, eds. – Endless Kiesler, 2015.

2 02 3 As a professor in a school of architecture that was a part of a school of art, I sometimes had the pleasure of supervising Fine Art PhD students. Their projects were always intellectu­ ally challenging and entertaining. Discussions were intense and fine-grained. After a while, I noticed a common factor. Whenever discussions approached a point where the student might begin to ‘know what they were doing’ their devotion to the unknowable, the unsure, the uncanny as a key quality in art, made them (metaphorically) run a mile. They did not want their work to be conceptually crystallised; they wanted it to be endlessly fluid, forever in a state of becoming. When applied to a work of architecture, where a client would like to know what they are going to get and when it will be completed, this desire for continuing fluidity (though jeopardy is always present) can be problematic. Even if cities, gardens, homes… might be said to be in a state of constant flux, for a specific architect working on a specific project to be built by a specific contractor for a specific client… life for all involved is made easier if the project is crystallised, so that they do (as far as possible) ‘know what they are doing’. To have it otherwise courts practical difficulties and legal conflict. Kiesler’s Endless House reminds me of the predicament of wanting, and yet not wanting, an end. It seems he wanted his project to manifest endlessness in various ways. SPAT I A L E N DL E S S N E S S

When Kiesler had to contemplate realising the Endless House on a real site, he proposed isolating it on an island. The arcshaped structures near the bridge house garages and servant accommodation. On a smaller island, reached by stepping stones, Kiesler proposed a dolmen, a picturesque idea betraying possible primitive prehistoric influences on the form of the main house. * See Gerd Zillner – ‘Fredrick Kiesler’s Endless House. An Attempt to Retrace an Endless Story’, in Bollinger et al, eds. – Endless Kiesler, 2015.

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First was a desire for spatial freedom inherited from the Neoplasticists in the early 1920s (see pages 42–3). Like them he wanted to escape/transcend formality and topographical meaning. As hinted at by Hani Rashid (founder of Asymtote Architecture) above, Kiesler may well have rejected outright the key precept of the theory of architecture promulgated in my own book Analysing Architecture, i.e. that meaning in architecture is founded in identification of place. In 1925, after conceiving various early ‘space’ projects – including ‘Space Stage’ (1924) and ‘City in Space’ (1925), Kiesler wrote of the latter: ‘The Country-City: the division of city from country will be abolished. The Time-City: time is the measure of the organization of its space. The Space-City: it floats freely in space in a decentralized federation dictated by the ground-formation… What are our houses but coffins

towering up from the earth into the air? … And our cities? Walls, walls, walls... We will have no more walls, these armouries for body and soul, this whole armourized civilization; with or without ornament. We want: 1. Transformation of the surrounding area of space into cities. 2. Liberation from the ground, abolition of the static axis. 3. No walls, no foundations. 4. A system of spans (tension) in free SPACE. 5. Creation of new kinds of living, and, through them, the demands which will remould society.’* T E M P OR A L E N DL E S S N E S S The Persian wisdom of the phrase ‘This too will pass’ suggests that, given time, all things – good and evil – come to an end. Thus things occupy their own temporal compartments. Averse to spatial compartmentalisation, Kiesler wanted to dissolve temporal frames too. (See the quotations on page 71.)

• a system of spans (tension) in free (unlimited) SPACE; • creation of new kinds of living, and through them, the demands which will remould society. F OR M L E S S N E S S Futile though the attempt must always be in this material world, his desire for different kinds of endlessness suggests the best interpretation of the Endless House is that Kiesler was trying to make it four-dimensionally formless. In the 2023 additions to the other case studies in the present book I have made a point of illustrating the different kinds of situations in which their architecture places the person. In Kiesler’s case it seems he wanted to offer the person the freedom – intellec­ tual, emotional and physical – of being in a situation devoid of the forms inflicted on all of us by others. A situation in which they would find themselves. The diagram any of us would draw to try to illustrate this vision of unbounded freedom is likely to resemble the amoebic plan of the Endless House:

E X PE R I E N T I A L E N DL E S S N E S S A few years after his ‘City in Space’ installation, Kiesler was involved in developing ideas for the Film Guild Cinema in New York (1929). Advertised as ‘The First 100% Cinema’, it sought to break the frame of the screen and dissolve the solid limits of the cinema space. Images would be projected onto walls and ceiling in an attempt to give the audience a totally immersive experience. The aspiration of offering experience free of the mun­ dane limitations of the physical world seems to anticipate that of Meta’s (Mark Zuckerberg’s re-branded Facebook) Metaverse project a century later, where for example, thanks to the technological developments of the Internet, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented Reality… ‘Learning won’t be limited by geographical location — a student in Mumbai could attend a seminar hosted by a Professor in Frankfurt; a middle school class in Wyoming could take a field trip to Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Giza. Indeed, they could experience these landmarks as they would have been at the time of the Druids and Pharaohs.’ ‘(The Metaverse’s) defining quality will be a feeling of presence, like you are right there with another person or in another place.’** … and so achieve what Kiesler might appreciate as: • liberation from the ground, abolition of the static axis; • no walls, no foundations; * Frederick Kiesler – ‘Manifesto of Tensionism’, (1925).

** Nick Clegg – ‘Making the Metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and

why it matters’, 2022.

ENDLESS HOUSE

Kiesler’s curves are reminiscent too of the 6000-year-old temples on Malta (below), where the concave walls of the large side apses would, in dim ceremonial light, have given worshippers the illusion of unbounded space… (rather like Dr Who’s Tardis, which is bigger within than it appears from outside).

temples, Mnajdra, Malta, c. 4000 BCE

75

But of course, except in fiction and perhaps cyberspace, the notion of anything other than the illusion of four-dimensional formlessness is a logical impossibility. Even in madness there is form, however complex and unstable it might be. Experi­ encing the interior of the Endless House it is likely that we would be all too aware of being confined within a construct of Kiesler’s mind. C ONC E P T UA L E N DL E S S N E S S Through life we may intuitively want, or are maybe conditioned to expect, ends and resolutions. There is something satisfying about a piece of music that climaxes in resolution on its home chord, about a crime mystery solved in the last chapter, about the successful completion of a course of study, about placing the last piece of a jigsaw, about solving a mathematical equation, about serving a nicely prepared recipe, about finishing a crossword or sudoku… Examples are legion. As human beings, it seems, seeking culmination draws us forward… and resolution satisfies, if only temporarily. By the many drawings and models he made it is clear that Kiesler was certainly drawn forward by his idea for an Endless House, but as can happen in any creative discipline, proponents can develop a mysterious debilitating fear of/aversion to completion that perhaps can only be explained by professional psychologists. As the architectural theorist Beatriz Colomina has observed, perhaps ‘the Endless House could remain endless only by never being finished’.* I N F LU E NC E Pedro Gadanho (sometime curator of contemporary architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York) has speculated: ‘When it came to the possibility of finally accomplishing his long-cherished End­ less House project, Kiesler has perhaps sensed that pragmatic and technological contingencies could dwarf his ideas – much as the parallel realization of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House’ (see following case study) ‘had the end result of dragging this architect’s idealism through the muddy, inferior dramas of court actions and popular condemnation… While other early modernists easily fell for definitive manifestos and clear-cut postulations, Kiesler’s preference for never -ending reformulations and pseudo assumptions has not only allowed him to retain the rebellious aura of the avant-garde, but also made him eventually align with more nuanced contemporary visions of an incomplete alternate modernity.’** ‘Never-ending reformulations’ of ‘incomplete alternate modernism’ may well be an acceptable constitution of a modus operandi for critics, curators, theorists of architecture but much less so for practicing professional architects intent on realising actual works of architecture in the real world. The lack of resolution evident in, even essential to, Kiesler’s endlessness cer­ tainly creates the ideal circumstances for the propagation of mystique, mystique that can be seductive to those who wish to claim such for themselves too. Some might engage in futile attempts to resolve what Kiesler himself could or would not. * Beatriz Colomina – ‘Space House, The Psyche of Building’, in Ian Borden et al, eds. – Intersections:

Architectural Histories and Critical Theories, 2000.

** Pedro Gadanho – ‘Open-ended Matter’, in Bollinger et al, eds. – Endless Kiesler, 2015.

*** See also Metaphor, 2019, in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

76

Others may associate their work with that mystique hoping some will rub off but find they can only come near to the shadow rather than the substance of Kiesler’s (often impenetrable and arcane) philosophy. Architecture that does claim some influence from Kiesler’s Endless House, for whatever reason, usually emulates its curvaceousness in sculptural form and circulation, rather than its concep­ tual ‘endlessness’ (in whatever sense). DY S T OPI A There is something ineluctably dysto­ pian about the Endless House, maybe intentionally, maybe not. I do not know whether the writer Samuel Beckett knew of Kiesler’s project, but his short 1972 novel The Lost Ones is reminis­ cent.*** There, hundreds of human souls are confined in a cylindrical cham­ ber condemned to wander endlessly and aimlessly…

Beckett’s The Lost Ones describes a claustrophobic rubber-lined chamber (height 18 metres, diameter approx. 16 metres) where hundreds of people trudge clockwise in eternal circles. Some queue to climb ladders or hide in passageways in the walls. Though a way out might theoretically be possible (through a notquite-reachable hatch in the centre of the ceiling), none may actually escape this endless purgatory. ‘The coming of the ‘Endless House’ is inevitable in a world coming to an end. It is the last refuge for man as man.’

Frederick Kiesler – Inside the Endless House, 1966.

FA R NSWORT H HOUSE

77

FA R NS WORT H HOUSE on the banks of Fox R iver near Plano, Illinois, USA MIES VA N D ER RO H E, 19 5 0 (designed c.19 4 5) In which we shall see that: • quintessentially Modern architecture can derive from traditional vernacular precedent; • architectural ideas can be poetically and intellectually powerful even if the buildings they produce turn out to be pragmatically problematic; • the pragmatic problems, though perhaps making a work of architecture difficult to use, do not necessarily undermine the potency of the underlying idea;

section

• partly because of this, a work of architecture might find a meaning to its existence that is different from what its architect intended; • architecture does not fall on one side or other of those commonly accepted contrived binary divisions between ‘art’ and ‘science’, Nature and mind, judgement and measurement – it straddles all (and has its own modus operandi which cannot be confined to either art or science).

plan

I

t would be hard to find a building simpler in form. Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House is made of materials – principally rolled steel sections and large sheets of plate glass – that became available for building only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but this small weekend house in rural Illinois has the elemental simplicity of a primitive shelter. Its underlying architectural idea is to accommodate life in the space between two identically sized rectangular horizontal planes – a platform floor and a flat roof – supported and held apart by eight steel columns. This simple idea manages to be novel (contemporary) and at the same time to make allusions to the past. The apparent simplicity of the house has many subtleties. The Farnsworth House is elegant, and the counter­ point of its white-painted structure and disciplined geometry with the irregularity of its sylvan riverside setting is engaging and beautiful. The building is also replete with poetry that appeals to the intellect, deriving from the resonance of its form with ancient architectural precedents.

78

PR I MI T I V E PL ACE T Y PES; BA SIC EL E ME N TS Mies van der Rohe’s brief was to make a house for his friend, Dr Edith Farnsworth, to enjoy at weekends and other recre­ ational times. The house contains the usual accommodation: a hearth as a source of warmth and focus for general occu­ pation and sociability; a bed for sleeping etc.; a kitchen; a dining table; two bathrooms; and various cupboards. Only the cupboards, bathrooms (together with a space for services) are enclosed. Other places assert themselves in the open rec­ tangular plan. The form of the house is perhaps not usual. Its outer form consists of distinct and mostly unequivocal basic architectural elements. ‘The most important assignment of life: to begin each day afresh, as if it were the first day – and yet to assemble and have at one’s disposal the entire past with all its results and forgotten lessons.’

Georg Simmel – Posthumous Fragments and Essays, 1923 (quoted in Neumeyer, 1991, p. 96. (Simmel’s book was in Mies van de Rohe’s library.)

1 The Farnsworth House consists of basic architectural elements presented in a straightforward way. First is a pair of horizontal rectangular planes – a floor raised above the ground as a platform and a sheltering roof of the same dimensions directly above it. Conceptually (if not in their actual construction) these two planes are identical; it is as if one plane has been split into two to create a place – a zone for life – in-between. These two planes define the living space of the house. They establish the special place of the human being, separate from and floating above the natural surroundings but protected from the forces of the sky by a roof. In being rectangular these planes introduce into the setting a clear manifestation of the four horizontal directions intrinsic to the human form (Analysing Architecture, 2021, pages 116–18).

1

2

2 Maybe, in a world without gravity, Mies would have liked these two planes to have floated purely and simply, stable in space; but of course they had to be kept up and firm, and so are welded between eight vertical and evenly spaced columns, four along each side. The planes and the columns are white – the pure colour, and one that does not conflict with the changing colours of Nature. Like a classical Greek temple constructed of steel rather than stone, the Farnsworth House celebrates its (human) distinctness from its surroundings. 3 The third stage in the design, conceptually, is a glass wall separating an interior, physically but not visually, from the outside world. This glazed compartment does not fill the whole space between the floor and roof planes but leaves two sevenths of it open as an entrance porch or portico (again similar to a Greek temple) that may be used as a sitting terrace, sheltered from rain and shaded from sun.* From outside during daytime the glass walls reflect the surrounding trees. With lights on at night the glass box becomes a display case, and internally the reflections in the parallel glass walls create mise en abymes. 4 The next stage is a second platform, set against the house on the side facing the river. Its height is a little less than half that of the main floor. It creates a transitional level between the natural ground and the human realm of the house. This platform too may be used as a sitting terrace, in this case open to the sky and shaded only by the canopy of trees. Flights of steps – four and five small horizontal platforms that resonate with the general horizontality of the floors and roof – bridge the changes in level.

3

Each of these stages in the composition of basic elements is made with a sense of practical needs: to lift the living space off the ground (the Fox River sometimes floods) and protect it from the rain and sun; to create an interior protected from wind and containing warmth; to provide outside sitting places; and to manage a hierarchical transition from outside to in. The disparate and particular functions the house has to accommodate – sleeping, cooking, eating, bathing… – have not as yet been taken into account. This is not a building where outward form follows the functions of occupation; there is a presumption they will fit in the open (free) space between the rectangular planes and within the glass compartment.

4 * There was an intention also to enclose the ‘portico’ with mosquitoexcluding screens. These screens were present when Dr Farnsworth occupied the house in the 1950s and ’60s. There is a photograph showing the screens in place in Werner Blaser – Mies van der Rohe, 1972, page 124.

FA R N SWO RT H H O U S E

79

‘I was in the (Farnsworth) house myself from morning till evening. I had never known till then what splendid colours nature can display.’

Mies van der Rohe, quoted in Blaser – Mies van der Rohe, 1972.

wall and create an implied threshold between the lounge space and the bedroom. Outside the main doorway into the glass compartment is the sheltered sitting terrace (f). The approach crosses the lower terrace (g).

5

In the actual design, the bathroom to the right is slightly different from as shown, to accommodate a deep cupboard in the kitchen. (Maritz Vandenberg – Farnsworth House, 2003, page 14, shows a preliminary plan apparently with an enclosed kitchen.)

c f

a b

d e

g

S Y M M E T RY A N D A S Y M M E T RY It is worth noting other interplays between symmetry and asymmetry in the house: the glass compartment is positioned symmetrically in relation to six of the eight main columns; the steps rise from ground to platform to platform on the axis between the four ‘portico’ columns; the hearth is on the axis of the (almost) symmetrical core where it crosses the long axis of the house as a whole (5), emphasising its role as the symbolic heart of the house; the main doorway is positioned asymmetrically in its glass wall, giving preference to the lounge space over the kitchen. C OM PA R I S ON W I T H T R A DI T ION

6 identifiable places in the plan

SPAT I A L ORG A N I S AT ION The spatial organisation of the Farnsworth House interior is best considered in plan. Mies provides for the more private functions by inserting a core (5) consisting of three cells – two bathrooms with a plant room in the middle. Along the north side of the core are ranged the kitchen fittings; on the south side is the hearth with cupboards above. Though the core itself is, to all intents and purposes, symmetrical, its asymmetrical position within the glass compartment is instrumental in organising the interior space of the house. Its position nearer to the north glass wall than the south and slightly nearer the east wall than the west, creates four implied zones of different sizes (6). The largest of these zones is the entrance space (a) which in this arrangement contains the dining table but which may also be used as a study or guest bedroom. The lounge space (b) is by the hearth. The narrow north space (c) is the kitchen with implied thresholds at each end – from the entrance space and from the bedroom (d). Alongside the bedroom is a dressing space (e) screened from the lounge space by a high block of cupboards; these cupboards act as a free-standing 80

The distinction of Mies’s treatment of space in the Farnsworth House may be better understood by contrasting it with how the house might have been if it was designed in a more tradi­ tional way and built in masonry rather than steel and large sheets of glass. I have tried drawing such a plan (7, opposite). This traditional version would have a pitched roof and its walls supported on strip foundations in the ground. The core is in the same place, though some form of ventilation would be needed for these rooms. (In the actual Farnsworth House this is provided through the flat roof.) I have moved the dining space and the bedroom to the south side of the house overlooking the river. This has the effect of requiring the front door to be further from the steps, leading into a north-facing entrance hall with access to the kitchen, a w.c. and the dining room. The dressing room is consequently, and reasonably, now on the north side of the house, with its cup­ boards along one wall. I have also extended the lower terrace along the whole riverside front of the house and provided it with a shrubbery. The roof over the upper, sheltered, terrace is now supported on timber posts. Comparing the masonry plan (7) with the actual plan (8) highlights significant aspects of Mies’s treatment of space. Most immediately apparent is the enormous dispar­ ity between the areas of ground taken up with load-bearing structure. In the masonry version the roof is supported on thick walls all around the perimeter, and partly on some of

the internal walls too. In the actual Farnsworth House this is reduced to eight I-section columns (plus four more short columns for the lower terrace). The consequences of this radically alter the nature of the house. Imagine how your experience of the two houses would be different. In the masonry version there is a sense of interior space being contained (confined) by walls rather than sand­ wiched between floor and roof and vis­ ually open to the surroundings. In the masonry house light enters and views out are through hole-in-wall windows; whereas in the actual house the whole perimeter is glass. The Farnsworth is a house with­ out walls, allowing uninterrupted views of the landscape all around. Inside, the traditional masonry house is a sequence of box-like rooms defined by internal walls with doorways from each to the next. The Farnsworth House is open except for the core that contains the bathrooms, the cupboards that define and screen the dressing space, and the furniture. Its only actual doors – between the sitting terrace and the glass compartment – are glazed and trying to be part of the glass wall. The Farnsworth House is com­ posed in an architectural language of openness, freedom of movement, light and visual contact with the surround­ ings. The house, which may seem from the outside like a vitrine for a life (maybe a display case for a precious object), refusing to allow it privacy except by drawing curtains, is intended also as a habitable garden pavilion, gazebo or belvedere – a sheltered place from which to watch and muse upon the landscape, the river flowing by and the changing light and seasons. In the Farnsworth House the panorama beyond the glass fills the eye’s field of view, constrained by the horizontals of the roof and floor, and subdivided only by the structural columns and slim vertical glazing bars. FA R N SWO RT H H O U S E

7 the Farnsworth House as a masonry building

8 (this is the plan as arranged under the ownership of Peter Palumbo)

R E F L E C T IONS There is one significant way in which this last observation is not quite true; the panorama from inside the house is not unobstructed. The glass reflects. Immedi­ ately next to the Farnsworth House, as seen from inside, there are at least four or eight other Farnsworth House interiors – mirages, each seen, from various angles, through the looking glass (9, on following page). Far from being a nuisance, this characteristic can be interpreted as part of the poetry of the house, projecting multiple images not only of the interior but also of the occupant out into the world, in a way different from but comparable to that in which Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 144) projects, by means of its axes, the pres­ ence of the person out into the landscape. Both buildings may be interpreted as temples to the human being, instruments for projecting the presence of the person out into the world. I can only imagine what it might be like to be in its lit interior at night, with the reflections in the parallel glass walls stretching to infinity – a mise en abyme. And from outside, when bright sunshine illuminates the nearby trees, the house can become a mirror box. 81

Fox River 9 mirror images of the interior

10 site

‘I discovered by working with glass models that the important thing is the play of reflections and not the effect of light and shadow as in ordinary buildings.’

In the perspective Mies drew of his design for the Hubbe House of 1935 (which I have tried to replicate in the drawing,

Mies van der Rohe (1922), quoted in Johnson, 1978.

USI NG T H I NG S T H AT A R E T H E R E The plan of the Farnsworth House is often published without context; it is a house that seems, in the abstract and pristine purity of its geometric form, to stand separate and aloof from the real world. But Mies’s design is actually carefully related to its surroundings. As with the Barcelona Pavilion, Mies located the house precisely (10; the positions of the trees are approximate). It is oriented east–west, with the sleeping space at the eastern end for the rising sun and the sitting terraces towards the west for the evening and sunset. The house is placed under the protection of a large existing maple tree, partly shading its southern face from the midday sun. Also, it sits (like a precious object, or at least the display case that contains a precious object) within the external ‘room(s)’ established by the trees and woods around; Mies created an orthogonal but free plan within the house, but the house itself is set in the context of the irregular free plan of the spaces amongst the trees. The house is placed neither too close to nor too far from the river. It could have been positioned right on the bank with its feet in the water – the lower platform a landing stage for a boat – but then its relationship with the land would have been different. As it is, the house has a particular relationship with the river. From inside you see the river through a screen of trees (11). That this is significant is indicated by the recurrence of this idea in Mies’s drawings for other houses. 82

12, opposite) he was keen to demonstrate the aesthetic and poetic relationship between the house and the river (a symbol of life’s passing?) with its sail boat (see the quotation from Guardini on pages 93–4). In this house, as in the Farnsworth, there is a zone that mediates between the house and the riv­

erbank. In the Hubbe House it is a paved area under the roof; in the Farnsworth it consists of the upper and lower terraces. This idea seems to derive from Japanese architecture. It is illustrated in Edward S. Morse’s book Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings (13 and 14) which had been published in the USA in 1886 and inspired American architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, whom Mies acknowledged as an influ­ ence on his own work. One of Morse’s illustrations (13), which I have reversed for comparison with the drawing of the Hubbe House, shows a room with an open wall giving a broad view of the landscape outside. Interposed is a veranda or engawa (‘Yen-gawa’ in Morse’s labelling of a similar section, 14), which is typical of traditional Japanese architecture. This engawa provides the occupants with a space that is neither inside nor out but in-between. Culturally, in Japan these were well-used spaces, providing inhabitants with the opportunity to be in their house and part of the outside world at the same time; a place to contemplate the beauties of a garden. They suggest an attractive relationship, in which the person is neither excluded nor incarcerated by the house but still protected and framed. Mies’s design offered Dr Farnsworth the opportunity to sit in such a place, attached to her house but out in the world, warmed by the sun, cooled by the breeze, watching the river flowing by, juxtaposed with Nature.

11 relationship with the river

12 Hubbe House

Mies’s perspective drawings tend not to depict buildings as objects but, by his choice of point of view, place you as viewer within the space of the house. The realisation that architecture is about human occupation of space is significant in Mies’s work, notwithstanding its apparent abstract character.

14 (from Morse - Japanese Homes…, 1886)

FA R N SWO RT H H O U S E

13 (from Morse – Japanese Homes…, 1886)

GE OM E T RY OF M A K I NG Looking at the pristine rectangularity of the Farnsworth House it can seem surprising that Mies was averse to using what I have called (in Analysing Architecture) ‘ideal geom­ etry’ – the geometry of perfect circles, squares and pro­ portional rectangles (see the middle quotation, top of page 92). His (moral) preference was for rigorous structural and constructional discipline (‘truth’), which has its own innate geometry – which I have called the ‘geometry of making’ – rather than the arbitrary imposition of abstract mathematical shapes however irresistible the authority of their perfection might seem. In the Farnsworth House you can search in vain for squares and proportional rectangles. Its geometry is based in the discipline of structural simplicity and the dimensions and nature of its particular materials, conditioned by a gen­ erous sense of human scale. 83

The drawing alongside (15) illustrates the underlying structural geometry of the house. Eight steel stanchions, four along each side, are deeply bedded, for stability and rigidity, into heavy concrete foundations sunk into the ground. Four long steel beams are welded to these stanchions, two at floor level, two for the roof. Between these are fixed, at equal spac­ ing suited to the spanning capacity of the concrete planks or metal trays to be placed upon them, joists that support the substructure and surface finishes of the roof and the floor. (A drawing showing the make up of these substructures may be found in Vandenberg, 2003, page 20.) Everything appears governed by sense alone. The long quotation, below right, indicates the inspi­ ration and authority Mies found in traditional architecture, built by what he called ‘unknown masters’. In The Artless Word (1991, pages 117–18) Fritz Neumeyer reports that in December 1923 Mies delivered a lecture at the Berlin Bund Deutscher Architekten in which he illustrated various exam­ ples of traditional architecture (an Indian tent, a leaf hut, an Eskimo house, an Eskimo summer tent, a north German farmhouse) as exemplars for contemporary architects. Mies argued for their simplicity and directness, but using modern materials – steel, glass, concrete. According to Neumeyer, at around the same time Mies had open on his desk a copy of a recently published book – Das unbekannte Afrika (The Unknown Africa) by Leo Frobenius (1923) – which illustrated traditional buildings (and other artefacts) from various regions of Africa. On the right (16) I have drawn one of Frobenius’s examples, a Pfahlbauten or pile building from the southern Congo (Frobenius, 1923, Figure 127). The basic structural principle of this building is shown in 17a opposite; it consists of upright forked sticks deeply bedded, for stability and rigidity, into the ground and supporting a cross pole. It is hard to think of a simpler form of structure more appropriate to the material being used; even the forks in the uprights are provided by the way trees branch. If the same directness of approach is transferred to stone it results in something like a trilithon, such as is found in Stonehenge (17b); here two massive stones are bedded into the ground with a lintel resting across them. The structural principle of the peristyle of a Greek temple (17c) is similar except that the uprights are not bedded into the ground but rely for their stability on the precision of their flat bases rest­ ing on a flat platform. These examples suggest the structural concept Mies was working to in the design of the Farnsworth House (17d). The principle is the same; but steel is stronger than either timber or stone and ‘wants to’ span further (it also ‘likes’ cantilevers). And a weld, rather than forks or resting, is the jointing method appropriate to the material. 84

15

16 pile building from the southern Congo

‘Where can we find greater structural clarity than in the wooden buildings of old? Where else can we find such unity of material, construction and form? Here the wisdom of whole generations is stored. What feeling for material and what power of expression there is in these buildings. What warmth and beauty they have! They seem to be echoes of old songs. And buildings of stone as well: what natural feeling they express! What clear understanding of the material! How surely it is joined! What sense they had of where stone could and could not be used! Where do we find such wealth of structure? Where more natural and healthy beauty? How easily they laid beamed ceilings on their old stone walls and with what sensitive feeling they cut doorways through them! What better examples could there be for young architects? Where else could they learn such simple and true crafts than from these unknown masters? We can also learn from brick. How sensible is this small handy shape, so useful for every purpose! What logic in its bonding, pattern and texture! What richness in the simplest wall surface! But what discipline this material imposes! Thus each material has its specific characteristics which we must understand if we want to use it. This is no less true of steel and concrete.’

Mies van der Rohe (1938 – his inaugural address as Director of Architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology), quoted in Johnson – Mies van der Rohe, (1947, 1953), 1978.

17a

17b

The geometry of making disciplines the proportions of the plan of the Farnsworth House too. As can be seen in 13 on page 83 and 18 on this page, the sizes of the rooms in a traditional Japanese house were determined by the unit of the tatami mat; rooms might be eight or six or even two tatami mats in size. In the Farnsworth House (19) the size of the travertine floor slabs determines the proportions of the plan, the spacing of the columns and the positions of the other elements. Each slab is 33 inches by 24 (a proportion of 11:8). The plan of the main portion of the house is 28 slabs long by 14 wide (a proportion of 2:1). The plan of the lower platform is 20 slabs long by 11 wide. The columns are 8 slabs

17c

17d

apart with 2-slab cantilevers at each end. The steps occupy the middle four slabs between the portico columns. The glass wall between the interior and the portico is positioned on a slab-joint line. The core is positioned in relation to the grid of slab-joint lines, which provides the governing framework for the design of the whole house. In these ways the house is disciplined by geometry, but it is not the abstract geometry of perfect squares or mathematical proportions. Its geometry is disciplined by the innate geometry of one of its own compo­ nents, the module of the floor slab, lending the whole design something akin to genetic integrity. T E M PL E S A N D C O T TAGE S

18 Japanese tatami mats

19 travertine slabs

FA R N SWO RT H H O U S E

Conditioned by nineteenth-century Romantic poetry and twentieth-century commercial advertising we perhaps tend to think that traditional vernacular architectures result from a submissive, or at least providential, relationship with Nature. This is not the only interpretation. Traditional architecture, such as that mentioned above, may be interpreted as exempli­ fying human ingenuity in providing for needs using limited available resources. That is, traditional architecture may be interpreted as heroic – as a symbol of the human mind pre­ vailing, by invention and the application of skill, over natural circumstances. The quotation opposite suggests that this was Mies’s interpretation. It is in this way that the Farnsworth House can be seen as both a ‘cottage’ and a ‘temple’ (to use the terms discussed in Analysing Architecture, 2021, pages 277–90). In form, the house is clearly a ‘temple’. It is regular. It does not impinge on the landscape. It is hermetic in its own form. Unlike a cottage or a country house it has no garden, no walled enclosure, not even a pathway that connects it to the ground and world beyond. It tries its very best to hover above the world rather than be part of it. (It is a cliché to suggest it is like a spacecraft that has just touched down.) Its materials are perfectly straight or flat, made not by manual skill but by machine. Its walls may be all glass, but its interior is pro­ foundly separate… like the intellect inside its skull. 85

It seems self-evident that Mies, whilst driven to try to achieve the same direct simplicity evident in cottages (and other traditional architecture), was equally fascinated by the poetic potential of the temple. His own architectural educa­ tion, like that of his contemporaries, was rooted in neoclas­ sicism. Certainly the Farnsworth House has the underlying syntax of a temple – an enclosed room or cella with, through its doorway, a related porch, portico or pronaos. This is a classic syntax shared by the African pile-building illustrated by Frobenius (20a) and the ancient Greek temple’s progenitor, the megaron (20b). Even the Farnsworth House’s right-angled approach (20c) seems redolent of the approach to a Greek temple such as that of Poseidon at Sounion (opposite page), as analysed by Rex Martienssen, a South African architect and academic (and follower of Mies), in his special issue of the South African Architectural Record (May 1942, three years before Mies was designing the Farnsworth House) entitled ‘Space Construction in Greek Architecture’. Greek temples too are lent a genetic integrity by the application of a dimensional module deriving from one of their c omponent parts; in their case the column and the space between columns (intercolumniation). The Farnsworth House seems to borrow ideas from the Greek temple in other ways too. Intriguingly, the proportions of the glass box are comparable to those of the Temple of Poseidon, and those of its platform to the cella of another Greek temple, the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina (20d). The latter temple has a column ratio of 12:6 (2:1, the same as the ratio of slab length to width in the Farnsworth House). The core of Mies’s design also seems to be like a variation on the cella of the Greek temple, shifted off axis and with the antae or wall projections moved around to the sides where they help to define not porches but the kitchen and living spaces. In the Farnsworth House, it seems that Mies saw life occupying the peristyle – the space between the cella and the outer columns. As suggested by Antony Gormley (opposite page, top left), a plinth or platform elevates, distinguishes and cele­ brates what is placed on it. In a Greek temple the celebrity was a god or goddess. In the Farnsworth House it was supposed to be, we might surmise, Dr Farnsworth. But she lost faith in her architect and seems to have had a love–hate relationship with the house (see pages 88–9). It has been suggested in various places (including Vandenberg, 2003, page 15) and mainly by apologists for Mies, that her aversion to the house stemmed from a failed intimate relationship with its architect. There may have been other reasons too, some to do with the fractiousness that developed between client and architect but perhaps also related to difficulties posed by the architecture of the house itself. Farnsworth complained of always feeling as if she was on display. 86

20a

20b

20c

pronaos cella

20d Temple of Aphaia, plan

An ancient Greek temple, like the Farnsworth House, helps to tie the surrounding landscape together by establishing a centre with the four cardinal directions of its four-sided orthogonal form projecting out into the world around.

‘Through elevation on to the plinth and removal from the common ground, the body becomes a metaphor, symbol, emblem – a point of reference, focus and thought.’

Antony Gormley, 2009.

Gormley was talking about ‘One & Other’, a 2009 art work in which a succession of people occupied a vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square, London – each for one hour, over one hundred days.

E X PL OR I NG VA R I AT IONS It is as interesting for architects to muse on how the work of others might be modified as it is for composers to write vari­ ations on musical themes by others or for philosophers to test other people’s arguments. Such creative interaction with the work of other architects can be a source of ideas and develop an understanding of how architecture works more generally. It would be impertinent, even irreverent, to suggest that the Farnsworth House – this seminal building – could be different in any way. Its fabric is elegant and distilled to its purest essence and, like a finely honed poem, cannot be improved, except to obviate its practical problems. (Periodic flooding remains a challenge for the building.) But archi­ tecture is not merely a matter of a building’s fabric and the elimination of condensation and leaking roofs; it involves context and content too. As illustrated opposite, one of the models from which the Farnsworth House derived (the theme on which it is itself a variation) was the ancient Greek temple. The Platonic Greek temple does not stand isolated in its landscape; it is protected in a sacred precinct (temenos) enclosed by a wall. The same

is true of the shrines of Hindu temples in India, which are protected from the outside world by high walls around their sacred compounds; and of the traditional tea-houses of Japan ensconced in their exquisite gardens. In Doorway (2007, pages 18-19) I recounted the story of a recluse on a Scottish island, the core of whose existence was a battered caravan (his temple and inner retreat), who realised that he had to protect his solitude by the assertion of bounda­ ries some distance away to deter intruders. Precedent suggests that sacred pavilions (temples) need protection, sequestration from the world. Although the Farnsworth House has its own territory and is surrounded by trees, its peace and solitude for Farnsworth were never sacrosanct: all those curious and intrusive architect visitors, and her failed attempt to spend New Year’s Eve alone in the house (see the following two pages); also, her decision to sell the house in 1971 was prompted by the realignment of a nearby road, bringing it closer to the house and reducing her peace and privacy even more. While she lived in the house it seems Dr Farnsworth had to protect her solitude by cultivating a reputation for fierceness (Vandenberg, 2003, page 24). Mies’s architecture explored openness and a relationship with infinite space; a precinct wall would have radically altered (destroyed?) the intended architecture of the Farnsworth House by cutting it off from its uninterrupted relationship with its surroundings. The idea of a glass house in a secret walled garden is, even so, intriguing. Mies himself designed a number of court­ yard houses in the 1930s. Below (21) is the plan of his House with Three Courts (1934). (continued on page 90)

House with Three Courts, 1934

The Temple of Poseidon at Sounion (analysed by Martienssen)

See also: youtube.com/watch?v=QxPPAyvdg04 (@analysingarchitecture)

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Mies’s House with Three Courts uses the spatial strategy of the Barcelona Pavilion but encloses it within a four-walled rectangular enclosure. This radically changes the relationship between the house and Nature; everything within the walls (except the sky above) is human, artificial; Nature is excluded The perimeter wall would, however, allow multiple separate houses to be attached in groups or rows. 87

M I E S VA N D E R RO H E ’ S PL ATO N I C H O U S E , A N D D R FA R N S W O R T H ’ S R E L AT I O N S H I P W I T H I T In the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Start the Week’ (Monday, 24 November 2008) Malcolm Gladwell, the American writer, voiced an ancient way of interpreting the world, when he claimed that from the many houses we encounter each of us develops in our mind an idea of the quintessential, or Platonic, house – termed ‘Platonic’ because it was a tenet of the philosophy of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato that the world could be seen as consisting of always imperfect variations on ideal essences – the ideal essence of ‘dog’, of ‘tree’, of ‘human being’, of the letter ‘A’… even of abstract concepts such as ‘how to live properly’. We carry this idea of the Platonic house around with us, perhaps amending it when we encounter something – an inglenook, a window seat, a walled garden… or a perfectly cubic room, a grand portico, an extensive formally laid out estate… – that we would like to incorporate in our personal Platonic (ideal) house. Our Platonic houses are the evolved ideals, perhaps originating from extremely early experiences in our lives and developing through life and through education and discussion with peers, against which we each measure the (always in some way imperfect) actual houses we see, experience and live in. Even though Plato suggested that ideal essences exist independent of variations in human values and understandings in some transcendent realm, a more relativistic view (especially applicable to human artefacts rather than natural creatures) would accept that images of the ideal house might vary between cultures, social groups and between individuals with varying life experiences. But for whom and how might the Farnsworth House be deemed to approach a Platonic ideal? The Farnsworth House may have approached Mies van der Rohe’s ideal conception but it seems to have been a mismatch with that of Dr Farnsworth and her reasonable desire to inhabit her own house in practical and psychological comfort. Like any ‘temple’ worthy of the label, the Farnsworth House paid scant regard to the physical or emotional needs of its human inhabitant. Its practical failings are detailed in Vandenberg, 2003, and in Dr Farnsworth’s personal journal written some years after the house was built. These failings include overheating in the sun of summer, with the large maple providing inadequate shading for the large glass walls, and the ventilation offered by two small hopper windows at the east end proving less than sufficient. In the depths of winter the heating system was not up to its task and condensation dripped down the glass walls. The hearth too proved to be more symbolic than practical, filling the interior with smoke and ash. Together with leaks in the flat roof, these failings were Farnsworth’s justification for not paying Mies his fees, and formed the basis of court actions between client and architect in 1953 (see Vandenberg, 2003, page 15 and Farnsworth, personal journal).

It is reported (Vandenberg, 2003) that, with the intro ­ duction of air conditioning and other improvements, these physical problems (apart from the periodic flooding of the river) were solved by the person who bought the house from Farnsworth in 1971, Lord Peter Palumbo (though he sold the house at auction in 2003 and it is now run as a museum, historic property and occasional wedding venue). It seems, however, that the more significant problems with the house were psychological rather than practical; those that chal­ lenged expectations of how a house should be, and made it difficult to inhabit. The quotation below is from Lewis Mumford’s book The City in History (1966). It is an expanded version of a similar paragraph, which included the comment about the ‘private toilet’, in his earlier book The Culture of Cities published in 1940, some half a decade before the Farnsworth House was designed. But this later amended and expanded version, from ten years after the house was built, acquires added conviction because the criticisms appear aimed directly at its openness ‘to the untempered glare of daylight and the outdoors’, at its failure to cater for ‘the coordinate need for contrast, for quiet, for darkness, for privacy, for an inner retreat’ and against ‘the fact that (in it) the only place sacred from intrusion is the pri­ vate toilet’. (In her entertaining personal journal, Farnsworth records her attempt to spend the night of December 31, 1950 at the house, when it was nearly complete. Her single bare light bulb turned the glass house into a beacon, prompting distant neighbours to take sympathy and insist she see the New Year in with them.) It is as if Mies had managed to achieve the Platonic ideal, not of Mumford’s perfect house, but of the idea of a house he condemned as some form of ‘anti-house’. While she lived there, Farnsworth apparently attempted to transform the house from Mies’s concept into her own dwelling, from ‘a propaganda issue into a home’ (Farnsworth, personal journal). Vandenberg (2003, page 15) passes on a report on a 1958 visit to the house by Adrian Gale (himself an architect who worked with Mies in the USA in the late 1950s and later became head of the Plymouth School of Architecture in the UK). He found it ‘a sophisticated camp site rather than a weekend dreamhouse’. And when the future purchaser of the house, Peter Palumbo, visited Farnsworth in 1971 he bemoaned the presence of the mosquito netting around the upper terrace (which had been part of the original design, but seemed in some way to dilute the house’s purity of material and form) and found that Farnsworth had attempted to provide the house with a traditional ‘cottage’ garden complete with roses and crazy paving (Vandenberg, 2003, page 15 and Hughes, 2003). And yet, despite its failings, the Farnsworth House remains an acknowledged master-work of twentieth-century, if not all-time, architecture.

‘In the past half century architecture has turned from enclosure to exposure: from the replacement of the wall by the window. Even in the dwelling-house, as Henry James* was quick to note on his visit to the United States in 1905, all sense of intimacy and privacy was being forfeited by throwing one room into another, to create a kind of exposed public space for every moment and every function. This movement has perhaps now reached the natural terminus of every such arbitrary interpretation of human needs. In

opening our buildings to the untempered glare of daylight and the outdoors, we have forgotten, at our peril and to our loss, the coordinate need for contrast, for quiet, for darkness, for privacy, for an inner retreat… Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from intrusion is the private toilet.’

88

Lewis Mumford, 1966.

* Henry James – The American Scene, Chapman & Hall, London, 1907.

‘We agreed we had never seen anything like it and that the two horizontal planes of the unfinished building, floating over the meadows, were unearthly beautiful under a sun that glowed like a wild rose.’

Edith Farnsworth, personal journal.

‘I have been having some shadowy doubts concerning the sanctity of the rectangle… Of course it isn’t Mies that vocalizes the rectangle – he is the rectangle!’

Edith Farnsworth, personal journal.

So what is it that is happening when a building can be lauded as a great and seminal work of architecture and yet at the same time reviled as a failure, impractical and impossible to inhabit comfortably? Certainly the Farnsworth House is not the only instance in the history of architecture, particularly in the twentieth century: Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye of 1929 (see later analysis) suffered a comparable if more protracted fate, failing as a house and finally finding the meaning of its existence as a ‘museum’ house; and Zaha Hadid’s celebrated 1994 Vitra Fire Station (see later analysis) proved impossible to use as a fire station and latterly became a venue for cocktail parties and a museum of classic chairs. Rather like the celebrated court case in which a 1920s Tennessee school teacher was prosecuted for teaching a Darwinian version of evolution, as portrayed in the film Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer, 1960), Farnsworth v. Mies in 1953 seems to have touched on broad philosophical issues, in this case concerning the nature of architecture and the duties of an architect. In her personal journal, Farnsworth wrote disparagingly of Mies on the witness stand: ‘You can’t imagine what an exhibition of ignorance he put on! He didn’t know anything about steel, its properties or its standard dimensions, nor about construction, or high school physics or just plain common sense. All he knows is that guff about his concept and in the Kendall County Courthouse that doesn’t go down.’ So perhaps in the end Farnsworth hung herself and all those who do not quite understand what it is that architects do. For on what else can architecture ultimately depend except ‘that guff…’? It might have lessened Mies’s discomfort on the witness stand if he had displayed to the court some knowledge of steel and construction, but that would not have changed the fundamental truth that such knowledge can never in itself generate the ‘thought’ (concept, idea) that ‘good architecture’, as Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, ‘expresses’ (see page 4). At its essence architecture is not about knowing how the heating system works nor like Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974) having an implausibly intimate knowledge of the electrical wiring of a skyscraper. At root, architecture, like some types of philosophy, is about generating ideas and exploring propositions. But unlike in philosophy, in architecture this is done not through the medium of words but through form, construction and the organisation of space. Poets, novelists and playwrights are not expected to have intimate knowledge of desktop publishing software, industrial printing processes and theatre lighting because it is through these that their work will reach the shelf of a bookshop, a reader’s armchair or the stage in front of an audience. We accept that their stock in trade consists in ideas and the skill of expressing them in words. The techniques of building, though their understanding may stimulate and support architectural ideas, are merely the means by which such ideas are realised. Like all great modes of human creativity – and architecture is arguably greater in its reach and effect than any other because its products frame just about everything we do (certainly including the writing and shelving of books, reading in an armchair and staging drama) – archiFA R N SWO RT H H O U S E

‘Perhaps, as a man, he is not the clairvoyant primitive that I thought he was, but simply a colder and more cruel individual than anybody I have ever known.’ Edith Farnsworth, personal journal.

tecture depends fundamentally upon the ability of the human imagination to generate ideas to do with the organisation of space and the identification of place (see Analysing Architec­ ture, 2021, pages 11–20). Even so… we are left with a work of architecture that is, by some accounts, unfit for purpose. In her personal journal Farnsworth implicitly supplies what might offer another facet of this conundrum. She writes, with some irony and thinly veiled sarcasm, of the many archi­ tects who came to see the house even before it was complete: ‘Architects came from various European countries… Most of them were fulsome in their words of praise and wonderment at the miracle which was taking form in that rural spot; one or two of the German ones exclaimed, “Master!” and crawled across the terrace to the latter’s feet where he sat on a low aluminium deckchair, impas­ sively awaiting the throaty plaudits of the visitors, “Grossartig!”, “Unglaublich!”.’ ‘Magnificent!’ ‘Unbelievable!’ It seems that Farnsworth had come to see the house as a ‘temple’ not to herself but to its creator. However amusing and attractive that pricking of the pomposity of an evidently arrogant architect’s ego might seem, as an explanation of how this house might be judged unimpeachably good and irredeemably bad at the same time, it somehow misses the point. In 1971 Peter Palumbo, a respected and aesthetically acute man, paid large sums of good money to buy the house and put it into good repair. In 2003, the art critic Robert Hughes spent a night in the house and said in a BBC television programme about his experience that its ‘very artificiality… makes you see its opposite… even more clearly. Without that house it’s just trees; with the house it’s a landscape, an idea about the world.’ It was clear from the programme that, although he knew he could not live in the house, Hughes respected it greatly as a work of architec­ ture. And at the end of 2003 a very large amount of money was raised by various charitable bodies to save the house from being dismantled and moved elsewhere. What stronger evidence could there be that this is a building which is not merely respected but seriously loved? So how can we make sense of the apparent conundrum? One approach is to distinguish idea and effect from purpose and expectation. The house is loved because it is elegant and a powerful example of how a work of architecture can act on us and intensify our perceptions of the world around. But this conflicts with our usual expectation of a house as a refuge. In his book The Experience of Landscape (1975), Jay Appleton argued that our aesthetic appreciation of our surroundings is conditioned by a primal need, as an aid to survival, to be able to survey our surroundings (to keep an eye out for threats) without being seen. The Farnsworth House allows its inhabitant to survey the land around, but as a display case it does not provide a refuge, it rather draws attention. There is a mismatch between idea and effect, purpose and expectation. Architectural ideas can have lives of their own; sometimes it takes time for them to find the meaning of their existence. This is a building that does not succeed as a refuge but which works well as a temple, whether to its inhabitant, to its archi­ tect, or to those weddings for which it is presently advertised. 89

section

work area (forge)

hearth

storage

bed

puja room (private)

fuel

social area

plan traditional house, Western Ghat, India

The African house illustrated in Frobenius and on page 84 provides refuge with its enclosed cell. This other traditional dwelling (above), in the Western Ghat mountains of Kerala, India, has an uninterrupted relationship with its surroundings. Its syntax i s comparable to that of the Farnsworth House in that it comprises a roofed structure open to the landscape; the glass walls are not needed here because the climate is warm. This house too has a core, comprising two small rooms. Most of the life of the house is lived in the undivided space between the core and the structural columns, under the shelter of the roof and with a view of the landscape around. But the core plays a role that is different from that in the Farnsworth House. Here, rather than containing merely utilitarian functions of bathroom (private toilet) and heating plant, the core consists of a storeroom and a puja room, which is the spiritual heart of the house. The puja room is a dark cell into which the inhabitant withdraws from the world for prayer and worship. It provides the house with its inner retreat, its refuge from the world. The content of a house consists in the life it accommo ­ dates as well as the disposition of its spaces, furniture and fittings. In this regard, the experience of the quintessential American hermit, Henry David Thoreau, whose example the 90

Farnsworth House certainly evokes, seems relevant. In the 1840s, Thoreau decided to live alone in a small hut in woods by a lake – Walden Pond – near Concord, Massachusetts, to see if he could live simply. He wrote an account of his experience (Thoreau – Walden, 1854). His solitude was protected by the density of the surrounding woods as well as by his hut’s isola­ tion from the town. But crucially, and this was an important part of his experiment, he changed his mode of living. His hut contained nothing but a hearth at which to cook his food, a bed in which to sleep, a chest in which to store his few belongings and a table at which to sit and write; he also had one extra chair for any visitor with whom he could enjoy philosophical discussion. His hut was his refuge but he lived as much of his life as possible out in the woods and on the pond. Sometimes he sat on his threshold – meditating on life, the universe and everything – enjoying being at home and in the world at the same time (see quotation below). He set a model for a simple life away from the cares of business and society. The Farnsworth House, with its spare and pared down furniture, its simplicity, invites a similar change in mode of living from its inhabitant. As a philosophical proposition, the house pur­ ports to require the occupant to live simply and meditatively, in communion with Nature, in a quasi-religious relationship. If the occupant resists, the house, it seems, will not forgive. This may be interpreted as a dictatorial attitude on the part of the architect. It is didactic but no more dictatorial than the asceticism suggested by a monk’s cell. And the situation of the Farnsworth House is more generous, aesthetically richer and more hedonistic than that. ‘There were times when I could not sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise until noon, rapt in revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiselessly through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.’

Henry David Thoreau – Walden, (1854).

Imagine, given ideal weather conditions, sitting like Thoreau on the threshold of his hut (or like an ancient Mycenaean King in the portico of his megaron, or a Congolese villager on the steps of her pile house, or a Mediterranean farmer by the doorway of a simple dwelling, or a person in Japan on their engawa…) on the porch of the Farnsworth House… meditating on the sylvan surroundings, the fluttering birds and leaves, the river flowing by, the sun moving slowly across the sky… Imagine this and you can see how architecture, even the rigorously regular architecture of Mies van der Rohe, is not only (or even primarily) about form and appearance, but setting the frame, identifying places for sometimes deeply poetic experience.

C ONC LUSION (201 5) For some buildings it seems as if the presence of the human being is merely incidental. One might cite Peter Eisenman’s House VI (see pages 130–32) and Eric Owen Moss’s The Box (pages 133–5) and Zaha Hadid’s Vitra Fire Station (pages 275–84) as three amongst many possible examples. It is as if in relation to such buildings the person may be there but is excluded from the architecture; left outside even when inside; expected to be content with admiring the visual complexity and intellectual ingenuity of the work as an onlooker (spec­ tator) rather than as a participant (ingredient). This is an accusation that cannot be levelled at the Farnsworth House. Even though it might not work as a comfortable and commo­ dious home, its essential and indispensable ingredient is the person. Without the person it is incomplete. Though it does look well in a photograph – its pure white geometry set against the dark green of the trees and floating above the greensward and floods – by all accounts, even that of the disillusioned ‘Schulze: One sits in a vitreous prism of pure form and contemplates, in stillness, an ever-changing nature. Farnsworth is a shrine. ‘Freed: Or a temple. Or a metaphor for a house, not a house in the psychological or physical sense… A wonderful thing that house.’

Franz Schulze – Mies van der Rohe: Critical Essays, 1989, p. 196.

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Dr Farnsworth as well as of Robert Hughes (see page 89), the house is most powerful when experienced, when it acts upon the person as an instrument by which perception of the surrounding landscape is intensified. Behind his arrogance and apparent coldness, behind the severe discipline of his tectonic language, it seems that Mies could achieve profound humanity in his work. The Farnsworth House is perhaps best described as a temple. Possibly he did originally intend it as a temple to a person for whom he felt affection but with whom he was to fall out. Certainly, as most architects would, he saw it as a temple to his own creative genius. But over and above either of these, maybe in ways that he himself could not verbalise, it turned out to be a temple to the human being. That is why the house is loved – because it provides something more than just an object to look at and admire. For its occupant, as an instrument and as a gift, it changes the world. As the Farnsworth House’s glass walls, steel columns, roof and travertine floor mediate between the contained person and the surrounding landscape, they ‘Nature too shall have its own life… we should attempt to bring nature, houses, and human beings together into a higher unity. If you view nature through the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it gains a more profound significance than if viewed from outside.’

Mies van der Rohe (1958), quoted in Neumeyer – The Artless Word, 1991, p. 235.

91

‘The building art is man’s spatial dialogue with his environment and demonstrates how he asserts himself therein and how he masters it.’

Mies van der Rohe (1928), quoted in Neumeyer – The Artless Word, 1991, p. 299.

‘What finally is beauty? Certainly nothing that can be calculated or measured. It is always something imponderable, something that lies between things.’

Mies van der Rohe (1930), quoted in Neumeyer – The Artless Word, 1991, p. 307.

together frame that person (the representative of all human­ ity) as a precious object, project that person’s presence out into the landscape, and transform that person’s aesthetic and poetic appreciation of the world around. With breezes shifting the branches of the trees, light changing through dawn to noon to dusk to night (when the stars come out) and with the annual cycle of the seasons – floods, falling leaves, winter snows, burgeoning spring – this is not a house in which to live a quotidian life. It is a temple that, like a moral creed or a poem, sets down tenets for reflec­ tion and aesthetic contemplation. 2 02 3 In photographs the Farnsworth House is almost always shown empty, as if it is an object, a sculpture. But it was clearly, as I have already suggested, intended to be a frame for a per­ son and the domestic life they would lead in and around it. Without the human content the architecture is incomplete. SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON

‘Infinite space is the ideal that the Western soul has always striven to find, and to see immediately actualized, in its world around.’

Oswald Spengler, trans. Atkinson – The Decline of the West (1918, 1922), 1932 (1971), p. 175.

Even when the inhabitant is not there, the frame repre­ sents them. For example, around 1880, the artist Edgar Degas first exhibited his ‘Little Dancer Aged Fourteen’ as an empty vitrine. The frame established her presence even before she was there. (See also ‘Degas’ Vitrine’, on page 7 of Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect, second edi­ tion, 2023). Degas’ empty vitrine was a work of architecture (now lost), and effectively akin to the Farnsworth House, a frame for a person even in that person’s absence – an assertion of that person’s place in the world. All houses can be seen as frames for their inhabitants even when they are not at home, but not all are as clear, simple and direct in the way they perform the role of situating the person as the centre of the world as the Farnsworth House. One other house is comparable in the way that it achieves this: Andrea Palladio’s celebrated Villa Rotonda (below), built in the sixteenth century, and recognised as one of the great works of humanist architecture. It too lifts the person onto a pedestal and projects their presence across the world. The Villa Rotonda and the Farnsworth House might be counted two of the greatest temples to the human being, certainly in western architecture.

The Farnsworth House puts the person in a situation compa­ rable to that of an ancient Greek god framed in its temple, a reference focus in the landscape, with a panoramic presence in its surrounding countryside.

Villa Rotonda, near Vicenza, Italy, sixteenth century

section of the Temple of Aphaia, with cella removed

Like the presence of a god in its temple, the inhabitant of the Farnsworth House is put in a frame that consists of a platform, a roof, and a perimeter of columns. The ‘god’ inhabitant is all-seeing (in the horizontal dimensions of the human world at least) but their presence is also amplified by the frame, and made a focus of attention in the world around. 92

Sometimes the way a work of architecture situates the person suggests different ways in which it might be used. The Farnsworth House is now marketed as a wedding venue. Whereas the internal arrangement does not lend itself par­ ticularly well to this purpose, the sheltered entrance deck apparently does. It appears from some of the photographs on the website* that this element – to all intents and purposes a stage – may often be where the actual marriage ceremony takes place, with families and guests seated as an audience on the grass (opposite). * edithfarnsworthhouse.org/rentals/ (October 2022).

T E C H NOL O G Y A N D N AT U R E On page 85 I referred to the notion that vernacular traditional architecture can sometimes be portrayed as a product of Nature. In the ‘Temples and Cottages’ chapter of Analysing Architecture I quoted the nineteenth century critic John Ruskin suggesting that: ‘Everything about (a mountain cottage) should be nat­ ural, and should appear as if the influences and forces which were in operation around it had been too strong to be resisted, and had rendered all efforts of art to check their power, or conceal the evidence of their action, entirely unavailing… It can never lie too humbly in the pastures of the valley, nor shrink too submissively into the hollows of the hills; it should seem to be asking the storm for mercy, and the mountain for protection: and should appear to owe to its weakness, rather than to its strength, that it is neither overwhelmed by the one, nor crushed by the other.’ This may be an attractive and poetic view of the rela­ tionship between Nature and human agency (Ruskin gave himself the nom de plume ‘Kata Phusin’ – ‘according to Nature’) but it is not one to which an architect may subscribe. It is nevertheless a conservative (with a small ‘c’) attitude that influences many people’s perception of their relationship with the world. It is an attitude subscribed to by religions and by much commercial advertising, especially with regard to ‘organic’ produce. It is an attitude that affects planning decisions that suggest that established character or natural topography should always hold precedence and authority over new development. In my experience it can be an attitude that leads students of architecture to express a desire to produce work that imposes itself as humbly and unobtrusively as pos­ sible, sometimes even to the extent that they want to make their proposal disappear by hiding it underground. The Farnsworth House is now offered as a wedding venue. Its entrance platform lends itself to being used as a stage for the ceremony. It is part of the dialogue between works of architecture and those who use them that they might be occupied in different ways from that intended by their architects. Some architects though, as discussed in previous case studies in this book, believe their work and the way in which it is used should be sacrosanct. Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, was notoriously dictatorial about the ways clients should live in his houses. The interrelationship between works of architecture and those that encounter, look at, use them… is, however, more complicated than with paintings, sculpture, music, drama…

FA R N SWO RT H H O U S E

This is not the attitude behind great architecture of the past. The Parthenon, for example, is acknowledged as a great work of architecture, as is Palladio’s Villa Rotonda, but neither would or could have been achieved under the adoption of the attitude Ruskin ascribed to the mountain cottages of England’s Lake District. Nor was it Mies’s attitude, even though, as seen above he appreciated the quality of traditional architecture (in Africa, and in other parts of the world too). In his book on Mies’s thinking – The Artless Word (1991) – Fritz Neumeyer has extensively explored the intellectual and philosophical influences on Mies. One he mentions is Romano Guardini, a professor of Christian philosophy and near contemporary of Mies. They knew each other in Berlin in the 1920s, before Mies had designed the Barcelona Pavil­ ion. Between 1923 and 1925 Guardini published a number of Letters from Lake Como (not translated into English until 1994) subtitled ‘Explorations in Technology and the Human Race’. One memorable image from those letters is of a sail boat scudding across the waters of the lake. Guardini contemplates the relationship it represents between the human being and Nature, mediated as it is by what we term technology. ‘Take a vessel sailing on Lake Como. Though it is of con­ siderable weight, the masses of wood and linen, along with the force of the wind, combine so perfectly that it has become light. When it sails before the wind, my heart laughs to see how something of this sort has become so light and bright of itself by reason of its perfect form… Do

‘We note how little a building is something finished, and how much it is something always in process of becoming.’.’

Romano Guardini, trans. Bromiley – Letters from Lake Como (1923–5), 1994, p. 16.

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you not see what a remarkable fact of culture is present when human beings become masters of wind and wave by fashioning wood and fitting it together and spanning linen sails? In my very blood I have a sense of creation here, of primal work of human creativity. It is full of mind and spirit, this perfectly fashioned movement in which we master the force of nature.’* Though Mies was not concerned with wind and water in the same way as innumerable generations of sail boat builders, it seems to me that it is the relationship between human ingenuity and Nature to which Guardini alludes that informed Mies’s attitude to design. It is an attitude evident in the traditional vernacular architecture that Mies appreci­ ated. It is profoundly different from Ruskin’s suggestion of capitulating to the superior power of Nature. It is an attitude that transcends my binary differentiation between ‘Temple’ and ‘Cottage’. T H E SPAC E BE N E AT H As I was revising this chapter one of my valued correspond­ ents drew my attention to a book entitled Treacherous Transparencies (2016), written by Jacques Herzog with pho­ tographs by his professional partner Pierre de Meuron. It has the subtitle ‘Thoughts and observations triggered by a visit to the Farnsworth House’. A section of the book had taken my correspondent’s memory back to a student trip to the house in 1953. The students had not been allowed to ascend the platforms of the house and were left at ground level looking at the space beneath. Herzog writes: ‘The oppressive feeling of being caged and on display or of being like a guard in a lookout, surveying the surround­ ings, is intensified by the fact that the house is raised 5'3" off the ground. In addition to the glass transparency of the pavilion, with all the attendant questions of privacy or the lack thereof, we found ourselves more and more involved in trying to understand the curious effect of being raised off the ground. The house was meant to float above the ground – an important axiom of mod­ ernism since the days of the Vkhutemas’ (a Moscow art and technical college founded in 1920) ‘and the Bauhaus, when young architects were fascinated by all manner of flying objects: they wanted to defy gravity, to achieve lightness instead of weight. Mies’s pavilion expresses this lightness. But the elegance of “floating” is coupled with an extremely inelegant and uncontrolled space under the house, which Mies obviously overlooked. The space

* Romano Guardini, trans. Bromiley – Letters from Lake Como (1922–5), 1994.

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is neither high – you can’t stand upright underneath – nor low, like the clapboard houses in American suburbs, where there is room at most for mice and rats. No, here the height is purely functional: it was meant to protect the house from the Fox River floods. We know that the height was miscalculated and that the house has been flooded several times. This is an unfortunate technical and functional error. But what interests us still more is the disregard of human scale; Mies was utterly blind to the disproportionate distance between house and ground. The floor of the building reaches to your chin or neck; you can enter the space only by bending down and crawling in… It is, of course, naked earth because nothing can grow there but you could feel sheltered and safe, perhaps even safer than in the glass pavilion… Mies… wanted purity, neutrality, and abstraction; he wanted to transcend style and time. But something else resulted. Physical exposure in the glass pavilion is challenging enough, and the stress of being exposed is increased – whether consciously or unconsciously – by the presence of this spectral nonspace under the building.’** Whether it is fair to criticise Mies, whom I am sure Her­ zog and de Meuron would accept as one of the trailblazers of twentieth-century architecture, for something perceived as a weakness, I shall leave you to decide for yourself. But a year or so later, when Mies designed his Fifty-by-Fifty Foot House (see page 292) he did drop its floor to ground level. And Philip Johnson’s 1949 Glass House (opposite)*** – almost certainly inspired by Mies’s 1945 design for the Farnsworth – was also built at ground level. Even so, neither of the latter two houses have that transcendent air of the Farnsworth. The elevation of the living floor of a house above ground level has distinguished historical precedent, as the piano nobile (the ‘noble floor’), replete with poetic/philosophical symbolism regarding the stature of the human (mind) in the natural creation. The crepidoma of an old Greek temple contains no accommodation. The under-storey of the Villa Rotonda was the practical domain of the servants; the ground floor of a Congolese pile dwelling housed animals; but the undercroft of the Farnsworth is a shadow zone, and that might be its best claim for poetic meaning. But my correspondent, as well as Herzog and de Meuron, sees it as a non-place (i.e. un­ architectural by my definition of architecture as ‘identification of place’). In an ordinary weekend lodge the space would house canoes for escaping the floods; but somehow such a prosaic use would defile the Farnsworth’s chaste purity. ** Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron – Treacherous Transparencies,

2016.

*** See also pages 102–3 of Metaphor, 2019, in the Analysing Architecture

Notebook series.

G L AS S H O U S E , N e w C a n a a n , C o n n e c t i c u t – Ph i l i p J o h n s o n , 19 4 9 Although the construction of the Glass House pre-dates that of the Farnsworth House by a year or so, it is usually accepted that Philip Johnson was inspired by a model of the quintessentially Miesian house back in 1945. Johnson himself lived in his house until he died in 2005. Clearly the Glass House and the Farnsworth House are related. Their architectural language is similar but not identical. Perhaps their relationship is comparable to the way in which no two individuals speak their own shared ver­ bal language in quite the same way. But even so, despite superficial similarities, there are also some fundamental differences in the underlying strategies of the two designs. First the similarities. Both are vitrines, glass boxes with 360º panoramic views of their sylvan surroundings. Both have steel structures supporting apparently flat roofs and framing plate-glass walls. Both have free, though orthogonal arrangements of furniture. Both have service cores contain­ ing and hiding away private lavatory and bathing functions as well incorporating hearths. (Johnson’s is circular.) Both houses have axial symmetry too; though here lies the first difference. Where the Farnsworth house has one displaced main longitudinal axis through its entrance, with a second axis at right-angles relating only to the core with its hearth (see page 81), the Glass House, though not square, has two major doorway axes implying an equal division of the plan into four quarters which are in counterpoint with the six-part division implied by the structure (right). The func­ tional organisation of the space and the position of the core seem to play over these two geometries in a relaxed way. But there is another geometry hidden in the Glass House that must also be taken into account. Though the house was built with a floor of bricks laid in a herring-bone pattern, it is thought that it was designed with 8½" floor tiles in mind. Such a layout fits both the axial and the structural divisions of the house (right, upper middle), and reveals a hidden 7x4 square grid (right, lower middle). The pertinence of this grid seems affirmed by various elements: the position and sizes of the kitchen and the bedroom storage units; the centre of the service core being on one of the lateral grid lines; and the positions of many items of furniture in pub­ lished plans (though these could be moved). This hidden grid of squares provides the genetic integ­ rity of the house. But it also betrays an ideal geometry that would have been eschewed by Johnson’s mentor Mies van der Rohe, as he did in the Farnsworth House. The grid of squares can also be applied to the elevation of the Glass House (right, bottom). Another difference between the Glass House and the Farnsworth House is the one mentioned on the opposite page: the absence of the space beneath. I shall leave you to muse on the effects of this difference between the two houses. It is a pragmatic difference; but it also affects phe­ nomenological experience of the house and relationships with the land outside. It might also be thought, as implied opposite, to differentiate the poetry of the two houses, their relationships with historical precedent and with beliefs about the place of the human being in Nature. Though apparently similar, the Glass House and the Farnsworth House are not the same. They manifest different attitudes to geometry and to the philosophy of design. 95

RO B I E H O U S E 1, Ch i c a g o – Fr a n k L l oyd W r i g h t , 19 0 9 (s e e a l s o p a g e 2 7 3)

section through the main range of the house

plan of main living floor

simplified section parti diagram

Sometimes it is possible to draw comparisons between buildings that at first sight seem very different. Frank Lloyd Wright built the Robie House in 1909. A year later it was published along with a number of his other works in the so-called Wasmuth Portfolio (Berlin, 1910). This publication is thought to have influenced the development of Modern architecture in Europe (including Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Theo van Doesburg, Willem Dudok…). One aspect of that influence was the works’ (including the Robie House) incipient suggestion of a planar rather than volumetric con­ ception of architecture. And when confined to the horizontal, this planar conception allowed architects to think in terms of the free plan – spatial organisation free of compartmentali­ sation by box-like rooms defined by structural walls. As illustrated in the three drawings above, the Robie House can be reduced to such a horizontal planar concep­ tion. Its main floor (a piano nobile raised above the sur­ roundings) has an openness that stretches from one end of the main range to the other. And simplifying the section to its most fundamental space defining elements produces a parti diagram applicable to Mies van Der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and the Farnsworth House. 96

the horizontal planes of the Robie House

L A CONGIU N TA

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L A CONGIU N TA

a galler y for the sc ulpture of Hans J osephsohn, G ior nic o, S wit zer land PE TER M Ä R K LI, 19 92 In which we shall see that: • architecture can isolate the person, totally, from the world around, including from the heavens above;

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• historical sources and influences can be tweaked and transformed but remain relevant; • the geometry of formal and spatial dimensions can be ordered harmonically, in ways akin to music; • poetry in architecture relates to sensitive and imaginative composition of architectural elements to identify places, just as poetry in language depends on sensitive and imaginative composition of words, images, metaphors… to convey meaning;

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• some think of architecture as the overcoats buildings are dressed in, but buildings can also be stripped bare; though this too can be interpreted as a fashion statement. plan

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aybe all temples are female. This one certainly is. La Congiunta in Italian means ‘the female relative’, presumably a (potential) mother, suggesting a womb – a receptacle for a child conceived and brought to fruition through long gestation. Artists often refer to their works as their children. Peter Märkli’s building is a receptacle for a collection of sculptures by Hans Josephsohn. La Congiunta stands alone in a field amongst vineyards in a narrow valley close to the village of Giornico in the Ticino district of Switzerland. It is a long, grey, windowless, concrete box. This austere building is a destination for pilgrimage. It was intended for those wishing to admire Josephsohn’s sculpture. It has become a destination for pilgrims intrigued by Märkli’s architecture. The building has some of the key characteristics of pilgrim architecture. It stands apart. It is enigmatic. It is a shrine. Its interior offers a refuge, away from the world; but this is a refuge with no prospect. The pilgrim has to commit time to travel there and has to make extra efforts to find the building and to gain entry. As if negotiating with a guardian

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of the doorway, visitors to La Congiunta must obtain a key from the owner of a local café; and then, to find the entrance to the building, which faces away from your approach, you must walk along the whole length of the building’s blank walls. Like an old church it has no electricity (no lighting), no heating, no services, no lavatory. But, also like an old church it does have mysterious daylight, and it has a crypt; in this instance an undercroft used in connection with local vine growing. La Congiunta is a long building; its length resonates with the length and narrowness of the steep-sided valley (1). Its long and narrow field lies next to the river, between the railway and the old road, the Via Cantonale. Including a lane that provides walking access to the building, four lines of movement – railway, lane, river and road – draw four almost parallel lines. (There is an express-way too, the E35, shown to the left of the drawing, which also generally follows the line of the valley heading north from Italy to the Gotthard Tunnel.) The lines are divided and defined by layers of trees. The long and narrow La Congiunta fits into this grain. Approach is from the village just to the south. The building’s entrance is at its northern end.

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B A SIC , C OM BI N E D A N D MODI F Y I NG E L E M E N T S La Congiunta is built of solid in situ concrete – concrete poured while liquid into moulds (formwork) erected on site and removed once the concrete has set (gone off). This is not a building that considers the comfort of people, except perhaps to shelter them from snow and rain; it is a temple for sculptures that are indifferent to cold and damp. Internal daylight (there is no artificial light in the main part of the building) enters through clerestory strips – glazed in translucent plastic which softens sunlight and prevents sharp shadows – running the full length of the build­ ing’s three sections (4–2 above). This arrangement seems to have been influenced by Märkli’s interest in the elemental quality of Romanesque church architecture (5). At the end of the building furthest from the entrance there are four side ‘chapels’, each with its own centred square roof-light. Josephsohn’s enigmatic and apparently visceral work is disposed mainly on the walls, with three free-standing sculptures on pedestals in the last and highest of the building’s three main chambers. Even on a bright sunny day the work is displayed in a soft even greyish light (slightly browner in the small side chapels). The interior is monochrome like a cave. L A C O N G I U N TA

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In lectures, Peter Märkli has analysed this Romanesque church (S. Pietro, Tuscania) to explain his interest in the potential of elemental architecture. Its section, with the raised central roof allowing clerestory light into the nave, seems to have influenced that of La Congiunta, though Märkli’s spare structure of slim steel beams spanning between concrete parallel walls does not require the intermediate support of columns between nave and aisles found in the Romanesque example. 99

6a west elevation side ‘chapels’

entrance third cell

second cell

6b plan

If the Farnsworth House (previous analysis) denies the wall in favour of openness to the landscape, La Congiunta is a building that (re-)asserts the wall’s archaic power to enclose and separate (isolate, insulate, divorce…) a place from everywhere else. It is a series of cells linked by doorways with a single entrance at one end. Apart from the light entering from above, there is very little more to this building. Its basic architectural elements are very few. Its floor (concrete grey and level) is raised a couple of feet above the slight slope of the ground outside (soft green and gently sloping) but this is apparent only at the entrance. Whereas the Farnsworth House’s floor, supported on its columns, floats above the ground, the walls of La Congiunta go down into the ground. As in the case of the Farnsworth House there are no made paths leading to the building; its base is immersed like a ship in a sea of grass. There is a small step like a ledge at the entrance to help (suggest) you climb inside. The entrance doorway has a simple industrial metal door fixed to the outside surface of the concrete wall. The roof projects slightly over the full width of the entrance wall like a vestigial porch. Everything is as simple, minimal, reduced, condensed… as it can be. As you walk around the building to the entrance, its sharp corners screen off the landscape of trees and distant mountains with a grey nothingness. And as you enter you are cut off from the landscape completely. Once inside the grey interior you can clang the door behind you or leave it open to retain a bright but distinctly separate glint of green and sunlight. Each of the door-less doorways between the cells has a raised threshold which, like in a Hindu temple, makes you conscious of stepping from one space into the next, from one frame into another. In La Congiunta the dif­ ferences between the frames – the cells – is only subtle. The thresholds do not offer dramatic changes in states of being. The first cell (4 section c–c’, on the previous page) is short in length and medium in height; the second (3 section b–b’) is 100

first cell 7

Inside La Congiunta the outside world is no longer relevant. Its interior is like a cave system (7 above). Only at the entrance, as in a natural cave, is the outside apparent. The only other influence from outside is the light from the sky filtering through the roof.

long but the lowest in height; the third (2 section a–a’) is the same length as the second but also the tallest of the three. The four side chapels are almost square in plan and have a height between that of the first and second cells. You sense there is a harmonic proportioning discipline governing these dimensional relationships. GE OM E T RY OF M A K I NG Apart from the plastic clerestory, the sheet metal roof and the slight steel roof structure, La Congiunta is a building of a single material – in situ concrete. In Analysing Archi­ tecture the geometry of making is described in terms of the construction of materials such as bricks and sawn pieces of timber which are assembled by addition, i.e. by placing one piece of material on or attaching it to others. The geometry that governs in situ concrete is different. You might think that this initially fluid material would lend itself to freer shapes; but usually its form is determined by its mould, the formwork into which it is poured; and this formwork, whether of timber or steel panels, is conditioned by its own geometry of making. As money was gradually forthcoming for La Congiunta, different parts were built in stages. In situ concrete has to be constructed incrementally anyway. It is poured in lifts. The combination of formwork and lifts leave joints in the surface of the resultant concrete. These lines are apparent in the walls of La Congiunta (6a, and 12–15 on page 102). They give the building the appearance of being layered, like strata in a geological formation. They do not align exactly across the three sections of the building; each takes its datum from the top of its wall rather than from either the shared ground or

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floor level. This too suggests there is some proportioning dis­ cipline at play in this building, one that relates to the heights of the blocks rather than to a module suggested by the lines in the concrete. I DE A L GE OM E T RY The interior of La Congiunta may be like a cave system (7, opposite) but this is a cave system conceived by a human mind and constructed by human ingenuity; as such, it is rectangu­ lar. The cave-like quality of the interior is reinforced by the monolithic nature of the concrete walls, floor and thresholds, as if the spaces have been scoured out of solid rock. The human (intellectual) character of the rectangular spaces is enhanced, given measure, by the geometric proportional discipline that Märkli has imposed upon them. When looking for the underlying proportions of a building it is notoriously difficult to know whether you have found the right ones and it is very easy to persuade yourself that you have discovered a proportional relationship that is not actually there. In particular, the thicknesses of walls and other parts of the building confuse matters, as do inaccuracies in construction. It is rarely certain whether measurements should be taken from the inside face of a wall, the outside face, or the wall’s centre line. And there are always some differences between the Platonic accurate form of a building constructed by drawing on paper (or on a computer) and the building constructed in real materials. I apologise to the architect if in this case I have made mistakes or misrepre­ sented his intentions. It is clear, however, that Märkli does use proportion in his design. I shall not speculate as to whether he ascribes symbolic significance to the numbers on which L A C O N G I U N TA

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his proportions are based or sees them primarily as imbuing his composition with a visual harmony equivalent to the aural harmony of music. Some of the proportions apparent in La Congiunta are indicated in the drawings above (8–10). The tallest of the blocks, furthest from the entrance, appears to have propor­ tions, measured externally, of eight units high by six units wide (10). The side chapels add a further four of these units to the width and are five units high. The entrance and middle blocks are six and four units high respectively (8 and 9). The position of the clerestory appears to be determined according to proportions measured internally (9). Here the width of the space is divided into nine, with three ninths given to the clerestory, and two ninths and four ninths to the right and left aisles respectively. The position of the doorways, with their shared axis, follows a different proportional rule. For these the width of the space seems divided into five (8), with the doorway axis on the two-fifths line. These arrangements mean that the axis of the doorway is not (quite) aligned with that of the clerestory (6b). And, obviously, neither the clere­ story nor the line of doorways are aligned with the central axis of the cells themselves. Only the four side chapels have centrally aligned doorways and roof-lights. All the doorways are the same size and have a proportion of eight by three (11, on the following page).

‘The cave-like circulations are defined by surfaces that reject conventional definition as walls, ceilings or floors. These concrete surfaces contribute to the creation of poignantly empty spaces.’

Irina Davidovici, writing about Gigon/Guyer’s Kirchner Museum in Davos, Switzerland (1989–92) in Forms of Practice: German Swiss Architecture 1980–2000, p. 218, but she could have been writing of La Congiunta, which she uses as a comparison.

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T R A NSI T ION, H I E R A RC H Y, H E A RT

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The effect of the general asymmetry of Märkli’s design may be understood by comparing it with how the building might have been if designed around one central longitudinal axis (18) and with a progressive increase of ceiling height from

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Märkli’s architecture in La Congiunta avoids acknowl­ edging the geometric central axis of the three main cells of the building. This is evident in the asymmetrical positioning of the clerestory and the line of doorways. Märkli even refuses to allow the clerestory and doorways to share an axis of their own. There is a third element in the game Märkli plays with axes. This involves the positioning of the vertical joints in the concrete, both internally and externally. On the entrance elevation (12) the vertical line in the concrete is positioned to mark the doorway axis. On the eleva­ tion at the other end of the building (13) the line is positioned to mark the axis of the clerestory. Inside the building the lines in the concrete are positioned over the two doorways but neither marks the axial centre line. Over the doorway from the entrance gallery into the middle gallery (14) it is shifted to the left. Over the doorway from the middle gallery into the tallest gallery (15) it is to the right. The vertical joint line in the wall at the end of the tallest gallery appears not to be on any axis. The result is that, as one looks down through the line of doorways, the vertical lines in the adjacent concrete do not align (16); they oscillate first to the left, then to the right, and then to the left again. As there is counterpoint in the music of the Barcelona Pavilion (see page 42), so too here.

the entrance inwards (17 and 19). When transformed in this way the building becomes more like a traditional Christian church. It acquires a staged progression from entrance to – if we move one of the side chapels to the end of the building – a sanctuary – as the culmination of the axial route through the building. And discarding one of the side chapels and posi­ tioning the other two as transepts would create the familiar, if elongated, cruciform plan of a Christian church. In this church-like arrangement, the sculptures would probably be arranged like art work in a church, on both side walls of the cells and in the transept chapels. Maybe one spe­ cial work would be positioned in the sanctuary, on the axis and visible in the distance through four doorways from La Congiunta’s threshold, providing a focus and terminus to the route similar to the altar and reredos of a church. Even though the allusions to church architecture are clear, in the building as Märkli designed it (20) the hierarchy is not so definite and hierarchical. It avoids a single focal cul­ mination in a sanctuary. In the building as built each of the four side chapels has equal significance. Also, the asymmetry of the route from the entrance, though powerful because of the axial alignment of the doorways, gives the space a bias to one side, with a route (a pathway) to the right-hand side and space for the exhibits to the left (21). This bias is then, in the final cell, counterbalanced by the doorways into the side chapels. Of course, as you look at the sculptures, you deviate from the axis established by the building. But at each doorway you are brought back to it before stepping over the threshold into the next cell. This is not a building that takes you to a spiritual goal but one that takes you further into a psychological world divorced from the natural world outside. After the chapels you retrace your steps to re-emerge into the vividly colourful world outside.

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CONCLUSION (2015) I am sure that more proportional relationships could be found in this building than have been identified in this analysis. The instances identified are sufficient to indicate how Märkli’s mind was working when drawing its plans and elevations, and also to hint at how such games may be played in architecture. A difficulty lies in deciding when such games change from playing an effective part in your experience of a building into an architect’s private indulgence. Experience of an aligned series of doorways is always powerful. When they culminate in a focal point – an altar, an object or a monarch on a throne – an additional power is brought into play. But it remains a moot point whether more subtle proportional refinements contribute to the aesthetic appreciation of a building or merely help architects make decisions about dimensions that might otherwise seem arbitrary. Märkli’s use of number-based proportion contrasts with Mies van der Rohe’s refusal to do so. Mies’s refusal was an aspect of his rejection of Beaux-Arts architectural princi­ ples. Märkli’s use of them derives from a belief in principles of visual and spatial harmony, stretching back to ancient architecture, that transcend the geometry of making. Both architects, however, used flat roofs; both avoided the awkward diagonal introduced by the gable or hip of a pitched roof. It is L A C O N G I U N TA

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intriguing to muse on why, and whether there are differences in Märkli’s reasoning from that of Mies. Mies argued that freedom in spatial planning required a flat roof, but it is clear that he also liked the geometrical purity of two horizontal planes (as in the Farnsworth House) without the visual disruption of the composition caused by a pitched roof. He might have suggested that the flat roof offered an improvement on the Greek temple, reducing it to base and entablature and omitting the pediment. Märkli’s reasoning seems different. In La Congiunta he is not interested in a free plan. Its main body of three cells is defined by two long parallel walls onto which it would be easy, as in his example of the Romanesque church, to construct a pitched roof. Märkli’s use of the flat roof seems to derive more from his interest in geometric proportion. Numbers may be applied to rectangles – as formed by horizontal ground, two vertical walls and a horizontal roof line – easily and can be composed readily through drawing. When diagonals are introduced such proportions become confused. The power of Märkli’s building lies in its starkness, the alien severity of its rectangular concrete faces set in the rich greenery, blue skies, distant mountains, bright sun and dark shadows of southern Switzerland. It lies too in the way that entering it takes you away from that rich landscape into a monochrome grey, evenly lit series of caves inhabited by 103

enigmatic, but apparently tortured, sculpture. Such effects are timeless, and are reinforced by La Congiunta’s elemental simplicity. La Congiunta is another example of the ways architects can develop original work from an understanding of the language (the metalanguage) of architecture derived from studying examples from the past. In this case, as in all the examples in the present book, Märkli ignores stylistic appear­ ance to find inspiration from Romanesque architecture at the primal (elemental) level of walls, doorways and thresholds, light, axes and proportions… In doing this, he demonstrates the power that carefully considered spatial organisation has to elicit emotional response. In this regard, Märkli’s archi­ tecture is poetic. 2 02 3 A RC H I T E C T U R E A S A L A NGUAGE In an interview with Beatrice Galilee in 2008, Märkli said: ‘Our profession is an old language and it has a grammar. And about this people don’t know anything. So how is it they can do a building if they do not know the grammar? In the primary school you have a thing like an “A”. Per­ haps then you have “apple”. A long time later you try to write a love letter. I think you have learned the language ten or eleven years until this moment. For me it’s the same. It’s very important that you give yourself time to learn this profession from the beginning.’* This is a quotation I have repeated in a few of my books. I like to think that Analysing Architecture is an exploration of what Märkli refers to as the ‘grammar’ of architecture, in its widest sense. But that does not mean that if you read it, you will immediately acquire the language of architecture (any more than you would know French just by reading a French grammar or listening to some French people in conversation). Just as he goes on to say, it takes years of practice and interac­ tion with others to become fluent in your own mother tongue and reach the level of proficiency where you might write a poem or love letter, a research paper or a legal contract. It is the same with architecture. It takes time, a great deal of trial and testing, interaction with others, exploring and experi­ menting… to develop anything near fluency in the universal language of place-making. If anything, that language has even more dimensions to it than a verbal language. To some extent everyone understands it – as a user/inhabitant we live/work/ play in architecture all the time – but to be able to compose

* Peter Märkli, quoted in Beatrice Galilee – ‘Peter Märkli’, in Iconeye, Number 059, May 2008.

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and propose architecture for the use of others, to become a professional architect, is a different matter. It involves awak­ ening the capacity for architecture that has probably been dormant in you since childhood, and developing it consciously by analytical study and design practice. Of course no one architect uses all the universal language of architecture, just as no one speaker or writer, however proficient, uses all the vocabularies and syntactical structures of verbal language, even of the one they call their mother tongue. Selection of which parts of the language of architecture to employ, just as writers and speakers take care in the words and sentence structures they use, is part of the skill. And the ways architects, writers, musical composers… tend to employ and re-employ strategies, ‘vocabulary’, ‘syntax’ across multiple works contribute to what we call personal ‘style’ or ‘voice’. And the ways in which they become shared in common give rise to traditional, regional, national and his­ torical styles in architecture as in other creative disciplines. The universal language of place-making is evident in both the Farnsworth House and La Congiunta – as it is in all the case studies in this book and architecture everywhere – but Märkli’s selection is very different from Mies’s. Both buildings can be said to be elemental in that they both use basic elements of architecture (as illustrated in Analysing Architecture) in direct straightforward ways. But whereas the dominant elements of the Farnsworth House are platform, column and roof those of La Congiunta are the roofed enclos­ ing wall – i.e. the combined element cell – and the doorway. SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON And because of these elemental choices the situations in which the two buildings put the person are very different. Both lift the person up off the ground, but whereas the Farnsworth situates the person in a display case with a panoramic view of her surroundings, La Congiunta hides her away in a series of enclosed boxes. The experience is very different. SPAT I A L S Y N TA X Just as the syntax of a sentence is dynamic, taking you from capital letter to full stop (period), so too in architecture. La Congiunta, in a way comparable with Casa del Ojo de Agua, takes you along a straight linear route, punctuated by doorways. But whereas the central axis of the Casa del Ojo de Agua continues down the steps, and notionally across the stream and into the forest, that of La Congiunta is abruptly stopped by an end wall. Continuation is at right-angles with four sub-clauses taken through doorways into the chap­ els, where they are again stopped by walls bearing relief

The syntax of La Congiunta consists of a simple sequence of rooms connected by doorways, the first three of which are aligned with a shared axis. That axial route takes you to four more doorways in the third room, at right-angles to the axis. All lines of movement, punctuated by the doorways, are terminated abruptly by blank walls, those in the side chapels bearing relief sculptures.

sculptures approximately on axis with the doorways. It is this syntactical route that manages your encounters with Josephsohn’s sculptures.

GE OM E T RY It is almost always by its geometry that we recognise human presence in the land­ scape. When archaeologists search a field with ground-penetrating radar or from the skies, they recognise traces of human inhabitation by the circles, rectangles, grids… that mediate between mind-ordered places and the natural landscape. Imagine the way the circle of a prehistoric henge framed a perhaps chaotic festival celebrating a solstice, and the dawn- or dusk-lit surroundings. There is no doubt that in thousands of years archaeologists will recognise where La Congiunta once was by the shadow its geometry will leave in the ground. Where the structural geometry and geometry of making of the Farnsworth House were intended to frame the irregular life of Mies van der Rohe’s client, the musical geometry and geometry of making of La Congiunta isolate the irregular sculptures of Hans Josephsohn and the irregular movements of visitors from the irregular Ticino landscape around. Both the Farnsworth House and La Congiunta establish a frame of regular geometry set in irregular landscape. This is something that Kathryn Findlay, in the Truss Wall House, and Friedrich Kiesler, in his Endless House, resolutely did not. If anything they wanted to place the person in a situation where they would be free from what they perceived as the straitjacket of regular geometry, whether ideal geometry or the geometry of making.

Both the Endless House and the Truss Wall House sought to free life from the straitjacket of orthogonal geometry.

L A C O N G I U N TA

‘I WALKED INTO A ROOM AND I LOOKED AT THE THINGS IN THE ROOM AND THEN I WALKED OUT AND THEN I WALKED INTO ANOTHER ROOM BUT THERE WASN’T ANYTHING THERE SO I PASSED STRAIGHT THROUGH AND INTO ANOTHER ROOM BUT THERE WASN’T MUCH IN THERE EITHER EXCEPT SOME BITS AND BOBS SO I WENT INTO ANOTHER ROOM WHERE THERE WAS A BIG WINDOW SO I LOOKED OUT OF THE WINDOW AND THERE WAS A MAN OUTSIDE FIXING HIS CAR SO I WATCHED HIM FOR ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES AND IT WAS QUITE INTERESTING.’*

The idea of dynamic spatial syntax similar to that of La Congiunta is expressed in the dry wit of artist David Shrigley (above) though in Märkli’s building none of the rooms is empty – they contain Josephsohn’s sculptures – and there is no culmination in a view through a window. Just as a thought experiment – something architects are always doing as part of the design process – consider how your experience of La Congiunta would be different if there were windows looking out into the Ticino landscape. Where would you put one or more windows and for what reasons? What other amendments might you make?

David Shrigley’s work was exhibited in the Städtisches Museum in Mönchengladbach designed by Hans Hollein and completed in 1982. Like La Congiunta some of its galleries are top-lit plain-walled boxes with doorways but no windows. Even so the spatial syntax is very different, with square compartments entered from their adjacent corners in a labyrinthine rather than axially directed arrangement. * From the exhibition ‘Strange I’ve seen that face before’ held at the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach in 2006.

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The regular geometry of architecture is almost always interposed between two realms of irregularity. Generally it mediates between the irregularity of the external landscape and the irregularities of internal occupation. The bunker-like orthogonal geometry of La Congiunta too mediates between two realms of irregularity: that of the dramatic Ticino landscape and the irregularity of its content, which comprises the sculptures and the movements of those who come to see them.

OBV I AT I NG V I SUA L I DE N T I T Y

A Greek temple wears its identity like an overcoat. By its nakedness, La Congiunta is suggesting that architecture is not about outward appearance… Does it succeed, or is its nakedness itself a statement about appearance? Does it wear its nakedness like an overcoat?

Rachel Whiteread draws attention to space by making it concrete, literally. Märkli does something similar. From the outside La Congiunta appears as if it is a cast of the internal (orthogonal) space of a burial mound, with the earth of the mound removed. 106

Since ancient Greece and before buildings have been treated as billboards displaying signifiers of identity (left). I hope that these case studies (together with Analysing Architec­ ture) persuade you otherwise, but often these external visual identity signifiers (styles) have been treated, especially by architectural historians, as constituting the essence of archi­ tecture. As a polemical manifesto, Märkli intentionally strips La Congiunta bare of any such stylistic signifiers, leaving the external appearance of the building as a stark sunlit and shaded blank canvas. The building also seems comparable to near contem­ porary works by the artist Rachel Whiteread. Her 1990 work ‘Ghost’ (left) was a cast of the internal space of one room of an abandoned Victorian house. Her Turner Prize winning ‘House’ (1993) took the idea a step further and consisted of a concrete cast of the interior spaces of an entire house. Part of the uncanny blankness of La Congiunta is that it too appears as if it is the remnant cast of the interior space of an orthogonal cave. It suggests that architecture is engaged in the process of carving out space for the identification and ordering of place from the general space of the world around. As such, in the case of La Congiunta, architecture is essentially internal, and external appearance is redundant… or so goes the argument.

CA BA NON

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C A BA NON an arc hitec t ’s vac ation c abin at Cap - M ar tin, on the south c oast of Franc e LE CO R BUSIER , 19 52 In which we shall see that: • though static, a cabin can be the vehicle for journeying (intellectually) far and wide; • a cell is an outer skull in which life is contained and ordered – an expression and reinforcement of being; • a mind may seek to condense into its outer skull a ‘truth’ it believes informs the universe; • the mind may see that ‘truth’ in genetic geometry and devise a system of dimensions; • as such it is a creed, and becomes a manifesto for how architecture should be done; • and a cell becomes the universe… informed by its architect’s geometric system. . ‘I love this area. And I always wanted to build a little house here. The idea came to me during a fifteen day trip on a steamer. My cabin measured three metres by three, including the closet and bathroom, fifteen square metres in total. Not a square centimetre wasted! A small cell on a human scale, where all functions were catered for. My cabin at Cap-Martin is even a bit smaller than my luxury cabin. What especially scandalises my visitors is the w.c. open to the room. Yet it is one of the finest objects industry has produced.’

Le Corbusier, quoted in Bruno Chiambretto – Le Corbusier á Cap-Martin, 1988 (my translation).

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he idea of a refuge from the world, the monk’s cell, even the garden shed as a place of escape for a pipe and med­ itation, has an ancient and venerable heritage. The cell – an enclosed (small) volume of space, separated by its walls and roof from everywhere else – is one of the fundamental and most powerful elements of architecture. Its power derives from its phenomenological effects. Stepping from the open air into a cell and closing the door, you are transported into a radically different situation, one that can take a moment to adjust to; inside may be quiet, dark, still, and perhaps infused with the perfume of timber. There are obvious metaphors with the womb, and with the skull – the interior of your own head. Going into a small cell has a psychological effect. Inside, you can relax, take a breath, think, reflect, perhaps pray. At the beginning of her book The Private Life of the Brain (2002) Susan Greenfield writes of the powerful effect just a few words can have on our emotional state. Our experience of architec­ ture can have emotional effects too. Antonio Damasio refers to them at the beginning of his book, The Feeling of What Happens (2000):

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‘I have always been intrigued by the specific moment when, as we sit waiting in the audience, the door to the stage opens and a performer steps into the light; or, to take the other perspective, the moment when a per­ former who waits in semi-darkness sees the same door open, revealing the lights, the stage, and the audience. I realized some years ago that the moving quality of this moment, whichever point of view one takes, comes from its embodiment of an instance of birth, of passage through a threshold that separates a protected but limiting shelter from the possibility and risk of a world beyond and ahead.’ The cell, the shed, the refuge… offers the third perspec­ tive: the possibility of passing through a threshold in the opposite direction – from exposure to seclusion – as a return to a protective metaphorical womb. In the Bible there is the story of Elisha, who, having been recognised by the woman of Shunem as ‘an holy man of God’, has a room made for him where he can stay whenever he visits. The woman pleads with her husband:

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‘Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick.’* These four elements became the basic requirements for a monk’s cell: the bed for rest; the chair, table and lamp for intellectual work – the study of the Scriptures, the revelation of truths about the workings of the world, i.e. for exploring God’s universal design. Elisha repaid the husband’s kindness by prophesying that the woman would become pregnant. The early nineteenthcentury English visionary poet and artist William Blake made a drawing (above) of Elisha, in his room, telling the woman that she will give birth to a son. The bed, strangely, is absent; and he could have interpreted ‘on the wall’ in various different ways… But the table and chair are there; and the lamp hangs from the ceiling, like a light bulb over a cartoon character’s head, shining the light of revelation out into the world. Blake shows Elisha’s room against the inside wall of a cavernous rectangular interior space, which suggests Blake saw the light of imagination illuminating its own world, i.e. the world as constructed (made sense of, ‘architected’, philosophically explained…) by itself. Le Corbusier built his Cabanon – his ‘Elisha’s Cell’ – against the outside wall of a restaurant owned by friends – Étoile de Mer (Star of the Sea) – on the south coast of France, at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin near Menton (above right). Le Corbusier wrote that he built it for his wife: ‘J’ai un château sur la Côte d’Azur qui a 3,66 mètres par 3,66 mètres. C’est pour ma femme, c’est extravagant de confort, de gentillesse.’ (‘I have a country house on the Côte d’Azur, 3.66m by 3.66m. It is for my wife; it is extremely comfortable, and accommodating.’)** CABANON

I N T R IGU E The clutch of buildings which includes the Cabanon is like the setting for a Greek tragedy. There is not space here to tell all the stories with their ramifications (some of which are unclear) but they have the classic ingredients of pride, jealousy, sexual intrigue, misfortune, murder and possible suicide. In the above drawing ‘a’ is the Cabanon and ‘b ’ the restaurant to which it is attached and linked by an internal connecting doorway; ‘e’ is a small atelier that Le Corbusier added later, a refuge from his refuge; and ‘c’ is a block of unités de camping built by Le Corbusier in the 1950s (see page 116). The most interesting building in the group is ‘d’. This is the Villa E.1027 designed in the mid-1920s by the Irish architect Eileen Gray for her lover Jean Badovici (see pages 201–12; the enigmatic name of the villa is a coded form of their initials). Le Corbusier admired this villa, and was invited to stay there in the mid-1930s. Some accounts imply he felt professional envy that he had not designed it himself. When Gray left * 2 Kings, 4:10.

** Le Corbusier – letter dated 26 June 1953, available at:

college-niki-de-st-phalle.fr/index.php/matieres/arts-plastiques/147-j-ai-un­ chateau-sur-la-cote-d-azur (Dec. 2022) (my translation).

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Badovici, Le Corbusier was invited back, this time to paint murals in the house. Gray subsequently complained it was as if the house had been raped. The house’s history did not finish there. In the Second World War it was occupied by Italian and German troops, and damaged by gunfire. After the war, the next owner was murdered by vagrants he had taken in. In 1965 Le Corbusier drowned off Cap-Martin, having previously suggested to a friend that to die swimming off that coast would be a good way to go. The villa has recently been renovated (2014).

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C ON T E N T S Through history there have been many examples of cells that frame the existence of great intellects. They belong to all cultures and times. The cabin at Walden Pond (1), built by Henry David Thoreau, belongs to the 1840s. It was here that the American writer and philosopher experimented with living the simple life in contact with Nature. The Hut Ten Feet Square (2) was built in the beginning of the thirteenth century by the Japanese writer Kami no Chōmei; he described it in ‘Hōjōki’ (see page 118). Both Thoreau’s cabin and Kami no Chōmei’s Hut Ten Feet Square were inspired by a desire to reduce life to its barest essentials and thereby to find a spiritual purity associated with simplicity. Both houses have the same basic ingredients as Elisha’s ‘little chamber’ – bed, chair, table, lamp – plus, because they were in climates with cold winters, a hearth for a fire. Kami no Chōmei probably sat at his desk on a rush mat rather than a chair; Thoreau had one extra chair for a guest so he could enjoy philosophical conversation. He also had a chest for storage. The Cabanon has a similar inventory (3): a bed, or two (a); a fixed table for work (b), with a couple of box-like stools; and a cupboard for storage (c); but no hearth. Le Corbusier added a small sink for washing his hands, which is fixed to the hidden side of the tall element at the left of the drawing (d), and a lavatory, in the small cubicle on the right corner of the drawing (e). You enter the Cabanon along a short passage­ way from the doorway (f). The doorway into the restaurant next door is from this short passage too (g) and, with its high threshold and curved sill and head, looks like a doorway on board ship. The cabin’s main door (h) slides sideways; it has a secondary mesh door to keep out mosquitoes. The Cabanon has three shuttered windows and two ventilation slots – only one of each ( j and i) is visible in the drawing, the other slot is in the lavatory cubicle. The window shutters are hinged down the middle; one half has a painting by Le Corbusier, the other is a mirror, which in both cases can be adjusted to reflect light and the view into the interior of the cabin. 110

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3 Cabanon, an interior layout

GE OM E T RY Whatever the intrigue surrounding the clutch of buildings of which the Cabanon is part, the interior of this shed is a temple (a shrine) to a particular kind of geometry. In 1948, just four years before he built his cabin, Le Corbusier wrote a book called The Modulor. It was an account of a project which he claimed to have been working on for forty-five years. It was a project to find a mathematical basis for design based on no less than the mathematical structure of the universe and of its greatest creation – human form. In this book he wrote: ‘Mathematics is the majestic structure conceived by man to grant him comprehension of the universe. It holds both the absolute and the infinite, the understandable and the forever elusive. It has walls before which one may pace up and down without result; sometimes there is a door: one opens it – enters – one is in another realm, the realm of the gods, the room which holds the key to the great systems.’* It is difficult to know where mathematics is. It is something only our minds apply to the world; and yet at the same time it seems to be outside of our minds, out there, logical, predictable, pure, reliable, authoritative. As far back as the sixteenth century the British mathematician John Dee (see also page 52) suggested mathematics occupies a place in-between Nature and the supernatural. In the above quotation Le Corbusier first says it is ‘conceived by man’ and later that it ‘holds the key to the great systems’, suggesting that mathematics is a human creation but also lies at the heart of natural creation. How can it be both? The uncertainty about exactly where mathematics resides – in the human mind or

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in Nature – adds to its mystique. Its logic, perfection and incorruptibility lend it an apparently unassailable authority. John Dee – who identified architecture as one of the ‘Sciences Mathematicall’ – and Le Corbusier agreed that there is a vital relationship between mathematics and the creative activity of design, that geometry constitutes the medium through which architecture is generated. In The Modulor Le Corbusier laid out a mathematical system for dimensions in architecture. It was based on the square (4a, below). From this he generated a Golden Section rectangle (4b). Then, drawing a line perpendicular to line g–f at point f, he found point i (4c). This he found to make a double square, so he drew the line k–l to divide them (4d). The result­ ant figure he found (decided) agreed with the basic underlying proportions of the human figure (4e): the navel is on the mid line of the two squares; the top of the head at the top line of the original square; and the up-reaching hand touches the top line of the upper of the two squares. In this way Le Corbusier claimed to have found a system for dimensions derived from the human frame. This exercise was similar in intent to that carried out by Renaissance artists and architects, such as Leonardo da Vinci (5, next page), interpreting the descriptions of the relationships between the human form and geometry in the third of The Ten Books of Architecture by the first-century BCE Roman architect Vitruvius. But Le Corbusier claimed his system (6) was better, more accurate and more subtle; that it related to actual human postures – sitting, leaning, reaching etc. (9); and that it generated dimensions for useful parts of architecture – seats, sills, tables etc. – rather than merely abstract proportions that were not necessarily related to human scale.

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From this he generated a Golden Section rectangle.

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Rectangle g–i–j–h is a double square. Line k–l divides the two squares.

Le Corbusier found (made) the human figure fit this geometric diagram, with the navel at the mid point.

* Le Corbusier – The Modulor (1948), 1954.

CABANON

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5 Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci

6 Modular Man, Le Corbusier

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Having developed his abstract geometric figure, Le Cor­ busier had to find its (give it some) real dimensions (7). After various attempts he came up with a series of dimensions based on 113 centimetres as the height of the navel and 70 centime­ tres for the height of the base line of the original square. Using the principles of the Fibonacci sequence (approximately) he developed this into a series: .01, .02, .04, .06, .10, .16, .27, .43, .70, 1.13, 1.83, 2.96… (metres) with each number being added

to the previous to produce the next. This series he called the ‘Red Series’, which gives a (rather generous) value of 1.83 metres for the height of the top of the (man’s) head. Next he doubled 1.13 and generated another series from the number 2.26, the height of the up-reaching hand: .01, .03, .04, .08, .12, .20, .33, .53, .86, 1.40, 2.26, 3.66, 5.92… (metres). This he called the ‘Blue Series’. These two series of numbers generated a diagram that has become as iconic as it is enigmatic (8). Le

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Corbusier had it cast into the concrete walls of some of his buildings, giving the system added precision by expressing the dimensions in millimetres, but strangely changing the exact dimensions depending on whether they were measured in metres or centimetres. (The system is not as precise as its mathematical presentation might suggest.) The next step in the process was to select various of the dimensions, generated geometrically and authorised by their relation to the stature of the human body, and apply them to architectural elements related to particular human postures (9). In this way Le Corbusier determined the height of a low seat, a normal seat, an arm rest, a work surface, a window sill, and a high leaning surface. While the dimension 2.26 metres seems to offer a reasonable ceiling height, that of 1.83 metres is more problematic, being too low for the head of a doorway if also the height of a (rather tall but not abnor­ mally so) person. Le Corbusier’s aim was to produce a scale of dimensions, related to the human form but regulated by mathematics, that would lend visual and spatial harmony to architecture; a harmony equivalent to that available in music, its own harmonies reducible to geometric proportions. In his book The Modulor Le Corbusier gives some examples of furniture layouts governed by this scale of dimensions (10). This is the scale of dimensions according to which Le Corbusier designed the interior of the Cabanon (11). The ceiling height is, as the system dictates, 2.26 metres. The overall dimensions of the plan were declared by Le Corbusier himself as being 3.66 metres by 3.66 metres. 2.26 and 3.66 are sequential numbers from his Blue Series. The interior is arranged according to four rectangles, each nominally 1.40 metres by 2.26 metres, arranged in a spiral around a .70 by .70 metre square (dotted in 11) which is represented by a movable low table on castors. These dimensions are nominal because, as in all applications of geometry to architecture, difficulties arise with the thickness CABANON

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The Modulor offered a system of dimensions by which all elements of an architectural project might be determined. If its specifications were followed, so the argument goes, an aesthetic and pragmatic harmony with the human form would be achieved. Le Corbusier proposed that mass-produced modular furniture should be sized accordingly (above). His Cabanon was an exercise in the Modulor’s dimensional stipulations (below).

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of the fabric. Should the dimension be taken from one face of a wall or the other, or from its centre line? In the Cabanon the overall dimension of 3.66 metres does not accord with the overall external dimensions nor the internal; it includes the thickness of one external wall in each direction. The spiral of rectangles (12) divides the interior into zones for different purposes. Two, in the darker part of the cabin, are allocated to sleeping; a t hird to dressing; a nd the fourth to work. The washbasin is in the work area. The entrance passage and lavatory occupy an additional area, out­ side the square but (of course) dimensioned according to the Modulor. The spiral of rectangles also seems to determine the positions of other elements, such as the doorway into the res­ taurant and the tall unit to which the washbasin is attached. All other components are regulated by the dimension­ ing system of the Modulor. Windows, work surfaces, shelves,

cupboards… all have dimensions dictated by either the Red or Blue Series. Even the stools, which are like simple packing crates, have dimensions selected from the series. As a coun­ terpoint the worktable is a parallelogram in plan, rather than a rectangle, with its angles apparently determined also by the Modulor framework. In practical terms, its angle allows a little more space for the dressing area. In the version of the plan of the Cabanon published in the Œuvre Complète (Volume 5, 1946–52), this worktable is positioned at right angles to the wall but with one edge angled to orient the person sitting at it towards the adjacent window. The dimensions of the Modulor are used vertically too (13). Overall the sectional dimensions are arranged according to a square which is extended to a Golden Section rectangle and then to a double square (14); the extension of the square to the Golden Section rectangle determines the extent of

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‘Je me sens si bien dans mon cabanon que, sans doute, je terminerai ma vie ici.’ (‘I feel so at home in my cabin that, without doubt, I shall end my life here.’) Le Corbusier, quoted in Bruno Chiambretto – Le Corbusier á Cap-Martin, 1988 (my translation).

15

a raised section of ceiling. The ceiling is stepped to allow access to storage in the roof space. The higher part is .43 metres higher than the main part at 2.26 metres above the floor. Notice that the double-square of the section appears to be measured to the inner face of the restaurant’s wall. Even the plywood panelling on the walls, holding in the glass fibre insulation, follows the dimensions set by the Modulor; a rail runs at mid height determining the heights of the window sills. The main doorway is the one element, as suggested by the problem identified in regard to 9, not to obey the Modu­ lor, or at least not to accept the same datum (the floor) as the other elements. At 1.83 metres its height would be too low, so its head is at 2.26 above the ground level outside instead. The doorway into the restaurant does, however, have a head height of 1.83 metres and a high threshold at .20 metres. The combination, as well as making it feel that you are on board ship, makes you take care entering and leaving the cabin by this doorway – a device used in sacred places for thousands of years to instil reverence when entering a shrine. C ONC LUSION (201 5) The shrine-like nature of the Cabanon’s interior (the meta­ phorical inference of a ship’s cabin – Odysseus’s – travelling on the sea of life is surely appropriate) is reinforced by the entrance passage which creates a chicane, or simple labyrinth entrance, such as those used in ancient times to contain spirits inside their temples. The Cabanon is not a sociable building: CABANON

there is no veranda for idle reflection or watching the world go by; no place for sitting and chatting; the windows are small and have high sills. The sociability of eating takes place elsewhere, next door in the restaurant. The austerity of its interior may be relieved by colourful paintings and mirrors (reflecting the self) but this is a place apart, a cell (monk’s, traveller’s, prisoner’s?) for ascetic concentration. Robin Evans, amongst others, has pointed out that the Modulor system of dimensions is based on a geometrical inaccuracy (see Evans – ‘Comic Lines’, 1995). The diagrams on pages 111 and 112 may appear to work when constructed graphically but they do not when checked by calculation. Evans provides a diagram showing the inaccuracies. Le Cor­ busier himself acknowledged the problems but did not seem worried. Maybe he realised that all such systems are con­ trived, and depend for their efficacy on internal consistency rather than external authority. What mattered to Le Corbusier was that he had concocted for himself a geometric/architec­ tural game, one that he could play over and over again in dif­ ferent permutations, and one in which he could (sometimes) avail himself of the author’s privilege of ignoring the rules. The Cabanon provided Le Corbusier with a refuge in the landscape and a prospect across the Mediterranean Sea (15). Appleton (The Experience of Landscape, 1975) has shown this is a common theme in our relationship with the world. But perhaps the distinctive power of the Cabanon lies in its establishment of a small box of space in which the rules of Le Corbusier’s geometric/architectural game hold sway. It is 115

a carefully constructed mathematical solution, or a honed philosophical argu­ ment, true to itself within the confines of its own medium. In this the cabin fulfils the requirements set down by George MacDonald in his essay on ‘The Fantastic Imagination’ (1893), which I referred to at the outset of the present book (page 4). In his Œuvre Complète, Le Cor­ busier refers to the Modulor as ‘révéla­ trice’ (‘one who reveals’, feminine, maybe ‘muse’). He referred to it elsewhere as ‘that ingenious slave’ (Modulor 2, page 257) illustrating his tendency to give his system of dimensions a personal­ ity – that of a goddess ready at hand to help in the challenges of design. It is tempting to think that when he said that the Cabanon was made for his wife – even though some of his early sketches include her* – he was being disingenuous. With its single beds and the austerity of a monk’s cell, it is hardly the sort of room that you would make for a lover or life companion. This is a cabin in which to be alone, voyaging across an ocean of reflective creativity. Perhaps he meant he had built it as a shrine to his intellectual ‘wife’, his muse and benevolent goddess, the Modulor. 2 02 3 ‘… there is a door: one opens it – enters – one is in another realm, the realm of the gods, the room which holds the key to the great systems.’**

So in what situation does Le Corbusier’s Cabanon place the person? In a box, yes. But it is a box with a particular charac­ teristic. To some extent all architecture puts the person inside the brain of the architect; in the case of the Cabanon it is a particularly exacting brain, one that imposes a dimensional matrix on its occupant. A year or so later than the Caba­ non, Le Corbusier designed some holi­ day units for the owner of the Étoile de Mer. He described these as ‘unités de 116

g

f

part elevation

camping’ (above and right). These too were designed according to the dimen­ sional discipline of the Modulor. The floor area of each was even smaller than that of the Cabanon. All the interior was designed to be open, two bed spaces (a and b) were suggested by built-in parti­ tions and a central column supporting a wash basin (c). One of these bed spaces, adjacent to the windows overlooking the Mediterranean, was also provided with a rudimentary desk/table (d) with a view. It is not clear how Le Corbusier provided toilet facilities. Maybe guests were expected to use those in the café; but there is also an enigmatic object (e) included in Le Corbusier’s original plans which, bearing in mind his comments quoted on page 108, might well have been a w.c. open to the room (as in a prison cell); alternatively, maybe the small cupboard (f) at the base of the sanitary column contained a chamber pot? A high shelf (g) was provided for storage of baggage. These unités de camping were built as a row of five, but not exactly as intended by Le Corbusier. Changes had to be made according to the client’s wishes and also to save money. The row was positioned further from the retaining wall at the rear, with a greater cantilever. The realised interiors are much simpler, without some of the par­ titions, omitting the screen by the door. And most of the timber cladding on the exterior walls was omitted exposing the framework of timber beneath.

section

d

b c a

e

plan

The unités de camping were not built exactly as designed by Le Corbusier. They are positioned with a greater overhang than in the section above, supported by a simple concrete frame. Also the timber cladding is not as shown in the elevation.

* See Bruno Chiambretto – Le Corbusier á CapMartin, 1988, p. 37. ** Le Corbusier, quoted in Olivier Cinqualbre and Frédéric Migayrou, eds. – Le Corbusier, The Measure of Man, 2015.

The Cabanon is one of Le Corbus­ ier’s smallest projects. The individual unités de camping were even smaller. But he used the Modulor in his largest projects too. It seems that for Le Cor­ busier his Modulor system should be appreciated as akin to a genetic code for architecture, a scheme of dimen­ sions, based in the human form, that would hold – intellectually and possibly aesthetically too – all parts of a work together as an integrated whole. Like the Renaissance artists who constructed diagrams of Vitruvius’s description of an ideal man, thinking it might identify some truth about God’s design for the universe, so too Le Corbusier seemed to think that, because he had derived his system from Nature, that he was similarly offering an authoritative insight into Nature’s workings of which architects everywhere could avail them­ selves of in their own work. Of course the workings of the universe, even just the dimensional ones, are infinitely more complex than can be encapsulated in any geometric scheme like Vitruvian Man or the Modulor. Nevertheless his system did provide Le Corbusier with a code by which all decisions about a work of architecture could be made. As his own god, he gave himself his own rules for the game of design. Some of the largest projects in which Le Corbusier used the Modulor were the Unités d’habitation, the first of which was built in Marseille in the early 1950s (right). As can be seen in the drawing alongside, the proportions of the building are composed according to an array of Golden Section rectangles of various sizes. And the components, from smallest to largest, from furniture to the almost sculptural forms on the roof – where there is a kindergarten and running track – conform to the stipulations of the Modulor. He even recorded the building’s genetic code as a low relief diagram cast into the concrete wall near the entrance (right). CABANON

Unité d’habitation, elevation with Golden Section rectangles

Unité d’habitation, section showing two overlapping apartments

The Cabanon, one of Le Corbusier’s smallest projects, is contemporary with one of his largest realised projects, the Unité d’habitation in Marseille. The dimensions of both buildings, small and large, are governed by the Modulor system, illustrating what Le Corbusier wanted to be seen as its universal applicability. The elevations of the Unité are proportioned according to the Golden Section (top), the core proportion of the Modulor. (I have identified just a few instances in the drawing.) And the interiors of the apartments (above) – including

the built-in fittings and furniture, stairs, ceiling heights, partition walls, doorways… – are in accord with the Modulor scale of dimensions based on the Fibonacci sequence. To advertise and celebrate the building’s geometric/anthropometric genetic code, Le Corbusier had a Modulor diagram (below) cast, full-size, in the concrete wall adjacent to the Unité’s entrance. The inclusion in the diagram of numerous Modular men emphasizes the fact that even in such a large building the system is based firmly in the scale of the (male) human being.

Unité d’habitation, Modulor relief cast into the concrete wall

117

‘ H Ō J Ō K I ’ ( H U T T E N FE E T S Q UA R E ) – K a m o n o Ch ō m e i , 1212

118

N

garden

porch?

W

shelf for baskets and instruments

desk

window

E

bed

brazier

woods

image of Amida Buddha and reliquary?

holy water shelf

sliding door

setting sun wistaria clearing

Kamo no Chōmei was a Buddhist monk. Disenchanted with the world of human society he decided to live a simple life alone in the mountains. In ‘Hōjōki’ he describes the hut he built for himself in later life, bringing out the intimate emo ­ tional and poetic relationships that can pertain between a person and the frame they make for themselves: ‘Now that I have reached the age of sixty, and my life seems about to evaporate like the dew, I have fashioned a lodging for the last leaves of my years. It is a hut where, perhaps, a traveller might spend a single night; it is like the cocoon spun by an aged silkworm… With each remove my dwelling grew smaller. The present hut is of no ordinary appearance. It is a bare ten feet square and less than seven feet high. I did not choose this spot rather than another, and I built my house without consulting any diviners. I laid a foundation and roughly thatched a roof. I fastened hinges to the joints of the beams, the easier to move elsewhere should anything displease me… Since first I hid my traces here in the heart of Mount Hino, I have added a lean-to on the south and a porch of bamboo. On the west I have built a shelf for holy water, and inside the hut, along the west wall, I have installed an image of Amida. The light of the setting sun shines between its eyebrows. On the doors of the reliquary I have hung pictures of Fugon and Fudō. Above the sliding door that faces north I have built a little shelf on which I keep three or four black leather baskets that contain books of poetry and music and extracts from the sacred writings. Beside them stand a folding koto and a lute. ‘Along the east wall I have spread long fern fronds and mats of straw which serve as my bed for the night. I have cut open a window in the eastern wall, and beneath it I have made a desk. Near my pillow is a square brazier in which I burn brushwood. To the north of the hut I have staked out a small plot of land which I have enclosed with a rough fence and made into a garden. I grow many species of herbs there. ‘This is what my temporary hut is like. I shall now attempt to describe its surroundings. To the south there is a bamboo pipe which empties water into the rock pool I have laid. The woods come close to my house, and it is thus a simple matter for me to gather brushwood. The mountain is named Toyama. Creeping vines block the trails and the valleys are overgrown, but to the west is a clearing, and my surroundings thus do not leave me without spiritual comfort. In the spring I see waves of wistaria like purple clouds, bright in the west. In the summer I hear the cuckoo call, promising to guide me on the road of death. In the autumn the voice of the evening insects fills my ears with a sound of lamentation for this cracked husk of a world. In winter I look with deep emotion on the snow, piling up and melting away like sins and hindrances to salvation. ‘When I do not feel like reciting the Nembutsu and cannot put my heart into reading the Sutras, no one will keep me from resting or being lazy, and there is no friend who will feel ashamed of me. Even though I make no special attempts to observe the discipline of silence, living alone automatically makes me refrain from the sins of speech; and though I do not necessarily try to obey the

porch?

lean-to

S

rock pool

woods

Some of Kamo no Chōmei’s description of his hut is open to variable interpretation, but here is my best attempt at composing its plan. Like Le Corbusier’s Cabanon it is about three metres square. Though his mode of life would have been rather different, involving work and socialising in the adjacent café, we can imagine Le Corbusier’s relationship with his Cabanon as being similarly intimate and personal… even monk-like. His engagement was also modulated by its ‘Modulor’ geometry.

Commandments, here where there are no temptations what should induce me to break them… ‘When I first began to live here I thought it would be for just a little while, but five years have already passed. My temporary retreat has become rather old as such houses go; withered leaves lie deep by the eaves and moss has spread over the floor… ‘Only in a hut built for the moment can one live without fears. It is very small, but it holds a bed where I may lie at night and a seat for me in the day; it lacks nothing as a place for me to dwell. The hermit crab chooses to live in little shells because it well knows the size of its body… ‘I have built for myself and not for others…

‘This lonely house is but a tiny hut, but somehow I

love it.’* * trans. Donald Keene, in Anthology of Japanese Literature to the Nineteenth Century, 1968.

E SHER ICK HOUSE

119

ESHER ICK HOUSE a house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania LOUIS K A H N, 19 59 – 61 In which we shall see that: •

architectural planning deals with hierarchies of space/ place; (Kahn was interested in the interrelationships between what he called ‘served’ and ’servant’ spaces);

•

the games architects play with ideal geometry can be complex, with different figures overlaid one on others, even to the extent of creating a complicated cat’s cradle of hidden geometrical construction lines;

•

usually the aim is to achieve a spatial and formal equivalent to musical harmony; but maybe too it just offers a crutch for making design decisions;

•

even though the primary concern of an architect might be geometric integrity or complexity, this does not necessarily exclude the possibility of narrative poetry.

More generally, we shall also see that a number of US architects in the latter half of the twentieth century sought to explore different ways of subverting conventional strategies of architectural design – whether based in Classicism or Modernism – and complexifying its reliance on ideal geometry. They also challenged the primacy of architecture’s relationship with function and sought to downplay the importance of the presence of and inhabitation by the human being. Later in this chapter we shall look at three such examples: a seminal house designed for his mother by Robert Venturi; an infamous house conceived by Peter Eisenman; and a contorted sculptural addition to a conventional industrial building by Eric Owen Moss.

Esherick House, axonometric

T

he Esherick House has one bedroom, a dining room and a double-height living room. Alongside these there are the usual ancillary spaces: lobby, cloakroom, boiler room and kitchen downstairs; shower room and dressing room upstairs. The stair divides the double-height living room from the two-storey part of the house. The stair’s landing

served

servant

1 Comlongon Castle, Scotland, plan

120

2 Trenton Bath House, 1955, plan

‘ SE RV E D’ A N D ‘ SE RVA N T ’ SPAC E S

bedroom

living

dining

The Esherick House has a clear spatial organisation based in some of Louis Kahn’s ideas about structuring space. The house is arranged in zones of two different types: the main living spaces and the ancillary spaces – ‘served’ and ‘servant’ spaces. The distinction is considered one of the key architectural ideas – along with blending ideal geometry with the geometry of making – associated with Louis Kahn. In developing the idea, Kahn was reputedly influenced by Scottish castles – such as Comlongon (1, opposite page) near Dumfries – with their thick stone walls containing subsidiary niches and rooms (‘servant’ spaces) around a large hall (the ‘served’ space). It first emerged in his Trenton Bath House project of 1955 (2).

3 section

dressing

television

bedroom stair + gallery

shower

living (double height)

4 upstairs

servant

served

servant

served

6 simplified plan – parallel walls

PA R A L L E L WA L L S; I N H A BI T E D WA L L S; T R A NSI T ION, H I E R A RC H Y, H E A RT

garden south porch kitchen

dining

living

lobby cloakroom

north porch

5 downstairs

creates a gallery looking down into the living room. There is a chimney stack at each end of the house: one serving a hearth in the living room; the other the boiler and a hearth in what was intended (apparently) as a television space off the main bedroom upstairs (though this was changed into a bathroom). ESHERICK HOUSE

The plan of the Esherick House is divided into two zones by three parallel ‘walls’ (see the simplified plan of the house, 6), two of which are inhabited by ‘servant’ spaces. The spaces between these walls are the main ‘served’ living spaces. The thicker of the inhabited walls (on the left in the plan) accom­ modates the cloakroom, boiler room and kitchen downstairs (5), and the shower room and dressing room upstairs (4). Assembling all the wet areas – cloakroom, kitchen and shower room – all in one part of the house simplifies the provision of services and drainage. The thinner inhabited wall accommodates the stair and two recessed porches with doorways: from the public street (to the north, at the bottom of the plan); and out to the garden (on the south of the house, at the top of the plan). At the front of the house – the elevation facing the public road – the doorway is in the side of the porch and leads into the lobby. This arrangement creates a transitional sequence from the outside to the inside of the living room (5). In the other 121

(permeable) inhabited wall containing the stair and gallery. The television space, with its hearth, is like a traditional inglenook off the bedroom (8). The sides (partly glazed walls) of the main ‘served’ spaces (living room, kitchen, bedroom) are inhabited walls too, but these are less deep and are timber and glass insets into the concrete walls. They have windows but are also con­ structed with deep enough reveals to contain cupboards and book stacks. The ground floor of the north (public) elevation has narrow windows to preserve privacy. The south elevation to the garden is more open. All may be modified by opening or closing timber shutters in various permutations.

7 simplified section

porch the doorway leads straight out into the garden from under the gallery. Upstairs (4, previous page), these porches become small Juliet balconies, both accessed from the gallery. The third of the parallel walls is a plain, vertical and rectangular wall with a single window at its centre. Though simple, this wall (the most basic of architectural elements), which frames the hearth of the living room – the heart of the house – is the culmination of the plan’s arrangement (the house’s hierarchy of spaces). The rest of the house faces towards this wall with its hearth and window. The house is bookended by two chimney stacks. The simplified section (7) illustrates the integrated relationship of the three main served spaces, modulated by the perforated

television ‘inglenook’ servant

served

I DE A L GE OM E T RY Kahn’s belief in the authority of organising (architecting) space with geometry is evident in the plan of his Trenton Bath House (2, page 120), which is composed of a cross of five overlapping squares. This arrangement, with its four pyramid roofs (over each arm of the cross; shown dashed in the drawing), manages to combine ideal geometry with the geometry of making. A few years later, when he came to design the house for Margaret Esherick, his uses of ideal geometry became more complex. Apparently simple but subtle in its spatial arrangement, the Esherick House is designed on an intricate matrix of ideal geometry (9). This geometric matrix governs the positions of and relationships between just about every part of the house. It is based upon squares, √2 rectangles and Golden Section rectangles. The external walls of the house form a √2 rectangle (10, opposite). The extent of the living-room chimney stack seems governed by a Golden Section rectangle (11) delimited by the external face of the kitchen end wall but the internal faces of the long walls. One side of the square from which this Golden Section rectangle is constructed determines the position of the living-room side of the thinner inhabited wall (containing

servant

served

8 simplified axonometric

122

9

10 √2 rectangle

11 Golden Section rectangle

the porches, stairway and gallery). If this square is divided into three in both directions (12, below), the lines appear to determine the positions of, for example: the lowest step of the stairway; the internal extent of the thicker inhabited wall; the position of the wall dividing lobby and dining room; and the positions of various window jambs and mullions. Other posi­ tions seem determined by centre-lines or by further division of these squares into three. To complicate matters, the plan of the house seems to contain another matrix of different-sized squares (13). The proportional relationship between the smaller and the larger squares might be √2. The thinner inhabited wall is one of these smaller squares thick, and the two main living zones of the house are each two of these squares wide. These smaller squares also determine the sizes of the porches, though they determine different faces of the innermost walls in each case, and the uppermost step of the stairway. If we overlay these different geometries – the squares, the √2 rectangles, and the Golden Section rectangles – we get that complex cat’s cradle of lines determining the var­ ious parts of the house (9, opposite). This complex overlay

of different geometries constitutes an architectural equiv­ alent of what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in ‘1837: Of the Refrain’ (1980), called the ‘song’ we hum to fend off uncertainty: ‘A child in the dark, gripped with fear, comforts himself by singing under his breath… Lost, he takes shelter, or orients himself with his little song as best he can. The song is like a rough sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and stable, center in the heart of chaos… it jumps from chaos to the beginnings of order in chaos and is in danger of breaking apart at any moment… Now we are at home. But home does not pre-exist: it was necessary to draw a circle around that uncertain and fragile center, to organize a limited space… The forces of chaos are kept outside as much as possible, and the interior space pro­ tects the germinal forces of a task to fulfil or a deed to do.’ The geometry of the Esherick House is neither simple nor resolved. The house may appear ‘a calm and stable center’ but its intricate geometry suggests that ‘the forces of chaos’ have not been entirely ‘kept out’; it is in danger of ‘breaking apart at any moment’.

12 division into thirds

13 another layer of squares

ESHERICK HOUSE

123

14 square, √2 rectangle, Golden Section rectangle…

15 … emanating from the hearth in the living room…

Ideal geometry determines the section of the house too. We can construct the three figures that underlie the organ­ isation of this house – the square, the √2 rectangle and the Golden Section rectangle – from the same point (14). In the Esherick House all of these may be drawn from its focus, the hearth in the living room (15). The square determines the side of the stairway and the centre-line of the porches. The √2 rectangle determines the position of one of the mullions in the dining room and bedroom windows. The Golden Sec­ tion rectangle determines the centre line of those windows. In addition, the sections of both the dining room and the bedroom are Golden Section rectangles. If we turn the construction of the three figures around, we find that they similarly focus on another ‘hearth’, a false hearth cut into the outside of the base of the chimney stack at the other end of the house (16). In this, geometry becomes not only an organising principle for the form of the house but also a factor in its poetry. The geometric matrix of the house emanates from, originates in the two hearths. One of these is in the present, used by the occupants of the house. The other is from the past; like a remnant of a deserted house.

16 … and from a false hearth on the outside of the other chimney stack

C ONC LUSION (201 5): A C OM M E N T ON T H E P OE T IC S OF T H E E SH E R IC K HOUSE The design of the Esherick House is an exercise in geometry as a discipline for spatial organisation and dimensions. The fact that some of that geometry has its origin in the hearths (the real and the atavistic) imbues the design with meaning; it reinforces the symbolic identity of the house as a home. The chimney stacks are (as chimneys always are) exter­ nal manifestations of this identity – symbols (markers) of home. Their arrangement in the Esherick House reminds us of the gable stacks of some American settler houses (17). It is even the case that in some remains of settler houses a hearth is left outside by the removal of an extension or the collapse 124

17 a settler house with chimney stacks at each end

18

of a house no longer inhabited. Such hearths, and remnant chimney stacks, are ghostly reminders of the pioneer families they once warmed. They stand as memorials. Above the hearth in the Esherick living room there is a window (18, one of the most celebrated features of this house). This is the window cut through the hearth wall towards which the rest of the house is oriented. It was designed to give a view from the living room and gallery to the chimney stack out­ side, with glimpses of the trees beyond. The window frames a living picture like an abstract work of art on the wall, with the play of light on the surface of the stack changing through the day and night. This window is reminiscent of the Japanese device of using architectural openings to frame a tree (rustling in the ESHERICK HOUSE

In his design for the Esherick House, Louis Kahn manages to imbue what appears to be an exercise in abstract geometric composition with music and poetry. The music is in the spatial and formal harmonies that derive from his intricately overlaid geometries. And poetry of the house alludes to the history of settlement in the American landscape and focuses on the hearth as the spiritual and social centre of the home. But Kahn manages this through a modern expression of concrete and flat roof, and without romantic sentiment. He blends the modern with hints of the past. This is a settler home for the twentieth century.

breeze or changing colour with the seasons) or a portion of the landscape (see the Mongyo-tei on page 10, and also Sverre Fehn’s Villa Busk, the subject of a later analysis in the present book, pages 227–36). The Esherick House window framing an abstracted view suggests an air of sanctity. Just as the chancel arch in a church gives a view into another world, this window gives a view into the beyond or perhaps the other country inhabited by ghosts from the past. The stack is redolent of a prehistoric standing stone, a grave marker, an obelisk… The composition of hearth, window and chimney stack give the living room (the whole interior of the house) something of the atmosphere of a chapel… a chapel dedicated to domestic life and to American identity. 125

2 02 3 Robert Venturi’s mother’s house – the Vanna Venturi House – stands not far from the Esherick House in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. The two houses were developed around the same time, in the period between 1959 and 1963. It has been suggested, in a Masters disser ­ tation by Sam Rodell of Washington State University (submitted in 2008), that Venturi claimed the idea for the detached end chimneys on the Esherick House. The house does contain poetic allusions (references) that are rare in Kahn’s other work. Other buildings by him are poetic in more abstract ways. Perhaps the external false hearth was Venturi’s idea too. Here, for the pur­ poses of comparison is my analysis of Venturi’s Mother’s House (based on the case study included in editions 1 to 4 of Analysing Architecture).

front elevation

plan

VA N NA V E N T U R I HOU SE Robert Venturi designed this house for his mother. It was built at Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, in 1962. At about the same time, he was writing a book called Com­ plexity and Contradiction in Architecture, which was published in 1966. The design of the house is related to the argument of his book. C ON DI T IONS

The site of the Vanna Venturi House is flat. Around its boundaries it is enclosed by trees and fences. It is accessed through a neck of land, and the house is positioned to present its gabled front to the approach. References for the Vanna Venturi House: Andreas Papadakis and others – Venturi Scott Brown & Associates, on Houses and Housing, 1992. Robert Venturi – Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966.

126

At the time of both the house and the book the teaching and practice of architec­ ture were dominated by Modernism. Venturi, rather than accepting the prevailing orthodoxies, questioned and rebelled against them. His arguments are set out in detail in his book. He rejected the quest for simplicity and resolution associated with Modernism (arguments for which are found particularly in the writings and works of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn), in favour of complexity and contradiction, which he argued made products of architecture more witty and less boring; more appropriate (poetic) reflections of the complexities and contradictions of life, and more stimulating, intellectually and aesthetically. Venturi used the design of his mother’s house to express his reaction against the orthodoxies and seriousness of Modernism. In it he consciously avoided what might be considered right answers and contrived conflicts in the arrangement of forms and the organisation of space.

B A SIC E L E M E N T S OF A RC H I T E C T U R E Even in his choice of basic elements Venturi expressed his reaction against Modernism. The distinctive palette of elements used by orthodox Modernist architects included: the flat roof; emphasis (exter­ nally) of the horizontal floor; the column (piloti), allowing the opening up of the ground level and free planning; and the glass wall, which reduced (visually) the cellular division of space internally and between inside and outside. Modernist archi­ tects also tended to play down the formal importance of the hearth, and of its external expression in the chimney stack. In his mother’s house Venturi directly contravened every one of these rules of Modernism. The roof is pitched; the horizontality of the floors is not expressed externally; there are no columns (except one – an expedient to hold up the roof over the dining area, which is omitted in some pub­ lished plans of the house), and the house is firmly set on the ground; there is a glass wall (between the dining area and a covered terrace) but in the main elevations Venturi prefers to make windows (almost caricatures of traditional windows) in the walls; he also gives emphasis internally to the central hearth and externally to its chimney.

classical temple with gables at ends

SPAT I A L ORG A N I S AT ION A N D GE OM E T RY

Vanna Venturi house with gables on long walls

There are quirks in Venturi’s design that are well discussed elsewhere in critiques of this house: his mannerist touches (the broken pediment of the front elevation for example); his (counter-Modern) use of ornament (the appliqué arch super­ imposed on the clearly structural lintel over the entrance); the ingrowing bay-windows in the downstairs bedrooms and veranda off the dining area; the stair going up to nowhere from the upstairs bedroom; and so on. But Venturi’s attitude of complicating and contradicting orthodox ways of doing things is perhaps most architectural in his spatial organisa­ tion of the house and in the ways he deals with the various kinds of geometry. The design of the house begins with two parallel walls, which define the area of ground inside of the house. As discussed in the ‘Parallel Walls’ chapter of Analysing

Architecture, these tend to establish a longitudinal axis that sets up a dominant direction within the plan and also begins to order relationships between inside and outside. But Venturi contradicts the orthodox architecture of parallel walls in a number of ways. First he positions the walls perpendicular to, rather than parallel with, the principal axis of the site (see opposite page), which is the axis of entrance. Then he contradicts the arrangement of gables found in ancient parallel-wall buildings (temples) by placing the gables of his complex roof on the long sides of the rectangular plan (above). In ancient temples it was the geometry of making that influ­ enced the three-dimensional geometry of the roof, resulting in triangular pediments at each end. Venturi’s contradictory arrangement, together with his avoidance of columns, results in the front of his mother’s house being like a pediment on one of the ‘wrong’ sides of a rectangular plan, and resting directly on the ground. As can be seen in the sections (next page), the geometry of Venturi’s roof is complex: there are slopes in three differ­ ent directions; it does not always reach the walls that should be its support. (This happens over the entrance and at the ingrown balcony outside the upstairs bedroom, and reinforces the sense that these very two-dimensional walls are masks, screening rather than expressing the inside – another counter

VA N N A V ENT U RI H O US E

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short section

long section facing the hearth, stair and entrance

to the Modernist suggestion that barriers between inside and outside should be broken down.) Venturi’s contradiction of orthodoxy informs his plan too. In his own explanation of the house in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Venturi describes his plan as deriving from, but a distortion of, ‘Palladian rigidity and symmetry’. As Rudolf Wittkower has shown in Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (1952), Palladio’s villa plans, whether square or rectangular, were generally arranged according to a division into three in both directions; they were given a dominant central space, surrounded by subsidiary rooms. Below, for example, is Palladio’s Villa Foscari.

a Palladian version of Venturi’s plan

If Venturi’s mother’s house had been designed by Palladio, its plan might have been like this. As in the Villa Foscari, the Vanna Venturi House is divided into three sections along its width, with a larger space in a central position and smaller rooms to the sides.

Villa Foscari, Andrea Palladio, 1560

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But in his design Venturi distorts the Palladian layout. He keeps the basic two long parallel walls that define the extent of the interior of the house. But: first, he makes the porch recede into the house rather than project out from it; second, he moves the staircase and hearth to cluster around and block the entrance axis, so that anyone entering has to turn to the right; and third, the stair itself is kinked and varies in width. You can also see in the elevation on page 126 that he breaks the triangular pediment gable around the entrance with a vertical gap, and confuses the lintol by overlaying the curve of an arch.

If Venturi’s design had followed this Palladian pattern, it might have turned out something like the plan on the opposite page, with a large room in the middle and secondary rooms arranged symmetrically at the sides. There might have been a portico protruding at the front. Windows would, as far as possible, have been arranged symmetrically within rooms. The staircase and fireplace might have occupied equivalent positions in the two halves of the plan. Venturi broke this Palladian discipline in various ways, establishing and then destroying symmetry; creating then denying axes. The contradictory move he appears to make first (opposite, bottom right) is to bring the stair and the fireplace together, and to position them centrally so that they block the axis of entrance. In the Palladian plan that axis would be open, as a line of passage leading into the main central space (and also as a line of sight out into the surroundings). Venturi, having set up the axis, denies it with a closed and opaque solidity. This move does other things too. It creates a porch, but one that recedes into the building rather than projecting out from it. It also gives Venturi another opportunity for complexity by setting up a situation in which entrance, stair and hearth all vie to occupy the same part of the plan. The orthodox form of each is changed in some way in response to this (contrived) competition for space: the hearth is moved off axis to allow room for the stair; the stair is narrowed halfway up conceding space to the chimney stack; and the entrance doorway, which itself has been usurped from its axial position, pushes the adjacent wall to an angle that nudges into the stair. The angle of this wall seems intended to acknowledge the line of passage into the house, now made diagonal, miti­ gating slightly the blocking effect of the stair and hearth. The line of passage is further managed by the quadrant curve of

the closet wall, turning an axial Palladian line of entry into a chicane. Elsewhere in the plan (below) partition walls are posi­ tioned both to accord with and to distort Palladian orthog­ onality. The wall between the living room and the bedroom (to the left on the plan) is at a right-angle to the parallel wall grain; whereas the walls that run across the plan, which help delineate the small bedroom, the bathroom, entrance and kitchen, are afflicted by a spatial warp, seemingly caused by the position of the stair and fireplace. Finally, the positioning and nature of the window and door openings presents Venturi with even more opportunities for architectural contradiction. Venturi refuses clarity in differentiating the ends and the sides, putting a mix of types of opening in each elevation of the house. All architecture is to some extent philosophical, in that it makes sense of the world for us in spatial (rather than verbal) terms. But Venturi’s architecture, particularly in the Vanna Venturi House, is philosophical and polemic. It illustrates how architecture can contain cultural commentary. Where Modern houses expressed a vision of a new way of life, open to the countryside and sunshine, unimpeded in the horizontal directions, the house Venturi built for his mother uses archi­ tecture dialectically, to put forward an argument against the puritanism of Modernist architecture. Venturi composes the house like a philosopher might construct an argument, taking each of his antagonist’s arguments in turn and contradicting it explicitly in his own terms. He is the court jester who, by his gainsaying, warns the king against the treachery of simplicity and reminds him of the complexity of truth. In these aspects, Venturi’s complexity which contradicts orthodoxy contrasts with Kahn’s more abstract geometric complexity.

bedroom

bedroom

living

dining

loggia

kitchen bathroom

Within the limits of the two main parallel walls, Venturi plays with the positions of the walls and supplementary elements. He refuses to allow them to be dictated by ideal geometry or even orthogonality. A classical designer might say that the plan has no discipline, no underlying framework controlling its layout. That was Venturi’s ideological point, as he made clear in his 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. He wanted to disrupt as part of a process of reinvention, to simultaneously break classical and Modern rules of architecture just to see where it might lead.

VA N N A V ENT U RI H O US E

Venturi breaks classical orthodoxy too by refusing to adhere to the conventional rules for the positioning of windows. None are positioned axially or symmetrically. One is even placed with one of its sides on the central axis of the house, which would be unacceptable according to Classical design principles. There is a mix of windows that are holes in walls and others that are (Modernist) glass walls. Some are pushed into corners, or pulled inside the outer boundary of the house to create inlets and a dining terrace. The result is a conscious subversion of both Classical and Modern architecture. 129

HOU SE V I If an architect is a god – in that he or she makes a world for us to live in – then the architect of House VI is acknowledged to have been a jealous god, indifferent (and unapologetically so) to the needs and comforts of the Adam and Eve who were to live in the small world he made for them. House VI was designed by Peter Eisenman and built in Cornwall, Connecticut, in the first half of the 1970s (and largely reconstructed in 1990 by Will Calhoun with advice from Madison Spencer of Eisenman’s practice). It was, as the name implies, his sixth house design and the fourth to be built. The ‘Adam and Eve’ – the clients of this weekend house – were Suzanne and Dick Frank, who, because of their experiences trying to inhabit it and because of its notoriety, have written about and photographed the house.* They also paid for its reconstruction.

dining

darkroom

section

study

T E M PL E S A N D C O T TAGE S House VI is a temple. It is even nearer to the temple extreme of the temple–cottage spectrum (see Analysing Architecture) than an ancient Greek temple. Its naming as a ‘house’ implies that the building identifies a place to live, which to some extent it does. But any intention to accommodate places for inhabitation was eclipsed by the priority Eisenman gave to its complex geometric composition. Eisenman’s attitude has been described by Suzanne Frank (in her book) as ‘arrogant’, though she also seems to have come to accept that it was a principled arrogance. The features of this house usually cited as evidence of Eisenman’s arrogance are: a glazed strip down the centre of the bedroom floor that prevented use of a double bed and provided a view from the living room below into the privacy of the bedroom above; a column in the dining area that made it difficult to insert a dining table, and which stands as an extra guest at any meal; kitchen cupboards that, because of the need to obey the geometric discipline of the house, are too high to reach without a step-ladder; and a number of single high steps, particularly on the ground floor, that make moving around awkward. Also, much of the fabric suffered deterioration due to the weather, necessitating reconstruction within twenty years. Apart from indifference to the physical and psycho ­ logical comfort of its human occupants, the chief temple characteristics of this house are: its ideal geometric dis ­ cipline, which transcends any geometry of making; t he concealment of visible evidence of the way in which it was

* Suzanne Frank – Peter Eisenman’s House VI: the Client’s Response, 1994.

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entry

bath

bedroom

upper floor plan

kitchen dining

living

entrance floor plan

entry

The drawings opposite illustrate the house at the time of reconstruction. Eisenman’s original idea, illustrated in Frank’s book, was to have a double-height (almost cubic) living space, with the bed consigned to an alcove (the present study) on the upper floor.

constructed (it is actually a timber frame clad with plywood panels that have been rendered and painted to hide the joints); its denial of the orthodox rules of structural order (the house has a famous external column that does not reach the ground); and its conceptual detachment from the earth (Dick Frank’s darkroom makes a basement but this is recessed to make the house seem to float above a ground surface that slopes down steeply under it). Nevertheless, the house does follow a rigorously orthogonal geometry, which accords with the verticality of gravity and the geometry of the stock timbers used, and which counterpoints the intrinsic six-directions-plus-centre of its human and canine occupants. But this too is subverted by the inclusion of an inverted stair­ case in the ceiling over the dining area, suggesting that the house, like an etching by M.C. Escher, could be turned over and still retain its validity as a work of architecture. I DE A L GE OM E T RY

‘One way of producing an environment which can accept or give a more precise and richer meaning than at present, is to understand the nature of the structure of form itself, as opposed to the relationship of form to function or of form to meaning.’

Peter Eisenman – ‘Cardboard Architecture: House I’, in Five Architects, 1975.

HOUSE VI

To analyse the geometry of House VI it is perhaps most appropriate to look at the Platonic drawings that Eisenman produced and which he would probably accept are the purest representation of the architecture of the house, uncorrupted by the inconveniences of gravity, weather and human occu­ pation (i.e. ‘function’, see quotation left bottom), and the una­ voidable imperfections of construction with real materials. Eisenman’s own drawings are meticulous in their attempt at precision. They are reproduced in Suzanne Frank’s book. Near the end of Analysing Architecture (2021), in the chapter ‘How Analysis Can Help Design’, I suggested hav­ ing a piece of squared paper available as an underlay when drawing in a notebook, analytically and conceptually. This graph paper is particularly useful idea to have in mind when studying Eisenman’s House VI, though the house is so com­ plex that neither the plans nor sections yield easily to simple geometric analysis. The house is designed on a conceptual spatial frame­ work that is a three-dimensional cubic grid, or rather a set of overlapped cubic grids. The generative process appears to begin with a crate of 3 x 3 x 2 cubes of space defined by square section ribs (upper left). By repeating, superimposing and shifting this grid a complex armature is produced (lower left). This complex armature is then taken as the starting point for the excisions, completions and transformations that will turn it into the house. Many of the ribs are amputated, but the complex armature of cubes remains as a ghost (next page). Some of the interstitial spaces of the armature are turned into the rooms of the house – the living room, bedroom, kitchen, etc. Some of the surviving ribs become structure – though Eisenman, by his column that does not touch the ground, is 131

The elevations of House VI are reminiscent of the early twentieth century Neoplasticist paintings of Piet Mondrian. In a comparable way to Eisenman’s resistance to allowing the accommodation of life to hold precedence in the practice of architecture, Mondrian held that painting had higher aspirations than portraying reality. Both assert their respective disciplines as essentially and transcendentally abstract. (This is the ideological opposite of my own conviction of the primacy of place-making.) * Peter Eisenman – The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, 2006.

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keen to send the message that this is primarily an intellectual structure, and only secondarily a physical structure. Some of the faces of the armature are glazed to become windows whilst others are filled to become screen walls. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, whilst some of the ribs are left solid others are treated as absences and become slots of light – the glazed strip in the bedroom floor is one example. In his drawings and in the house itself Eisenman colour-codes the various layers of this complex composition. The outside is in shades of grey; the stair to the upper floor is green; the inverted stair over the dining space is red, and so on. Eisenman submitted his PhD* dissertation at Cam­ bridge University in 1963. Its subject was ‘The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture’. House VI is informed by this work. Its complex armature may be interpreted as a development, in the direction of complexity and multi-dimensionality, of those used by architects such as Gerrit Rietveld, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Giuseppe Terragni and others, which were themselves developments from the formal frameworks of neoclassical architecture (e.g. Alberti, Bramante, Palladio) and further back to the classical architecture of ancient Rome and Greece, and the precepts of Vitruvius. In this way, Eisen­ man’s work can be positioned relative to a very long historical continuum of architectural ideas related to ideal geometry. An acerbic critic might conclude, ‘In the final analysis we can easily identify the “god” in whose honour the temple House VI was created’, or even that its architect was more the ‘serpent’ in this particular ‘Eden’. (‘Eve’ first met Eisenman by a photocopier in the Avery Library at Columbia University rather than by the ‘Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil’.) But Eisenman might defend himself by suggesting that his House VI is rather a temple to the religion of architecture, which through geometry in its purest form transcends the mundane and occupies a middle being – that which John Dee identified as (see page 111 and the chapter on ‘Ideal Geome­ try’ in Analysing Architecture) in-between the Natural and the supernatural, above the earth but lower than Paradise. When striving for the divine, Eisenman might claim, earthly needs are a drag. In the reconstruction, the clients managed to find an accommodation with their house, which is what most of us do with the conditions – life situations – in which we find ourselves. Architecture is usually considered one of the prime means of finding an accommodation with sometimes challenging natural conditions; but in this case it was the architecture that set some of the challenges the clients had to cope with. For example, Eve reconciled herself to using a step-ladder to reach the apples in the kitchen cupboard; and Adam constructed a double bed to bridge the fissure in the bedroom floor.

T H E B OX

GE OM E T R I E S OF BE I NG

The last of this small collection of American works of archi­ tecture in the second half of the twentieth century is The Box designed by Eric Owen Moss and built in 1994. It is part of a refurbishment scheme in Culver City, California. The Box comprises a small self-contained composition of fractured or abstracted geometric forms inserted into an existing industrial building. The main space – the box itself – is a conference room (initially it was intended as a party room for a restaurant), supported above the roof of the existing shed (above), reached by a contorted stair from below. The complex geometry and uniform grey material of The Box contrasts with, and seems an alien intrusion into, the ordinariness of the original building.

In designing The Box, Moss made few concessions to utility. This is, seemingly intentionally, not a building for dwelling in the sense implied by Martin Heidegger when he wrote in his essay ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ that ‘We do not dwell because we have built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers’. This is architec­ ture as abstract form. It has a horizontal floor, on which it is

I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E The Box identifies itself as a place, not so much by the way it accommodates or frames a particular use, but by standing out from its surroundings: by the oddness of its appearance within its context. It is a temple that exists in its own world, separate from mundane reality. It hovers as a strange sculp­ tural ornament above the roof of the boring, earth-bound shed below. It has its own distorted structure that intrudes into, and breaks, the shed’s standard orthogonal structure. The Box is a cell that floats above and apart from the world, a place to which you ascend to see the world around from an abnormal vantage point. The Box stands aloof from the world in space. It also distinguishes itself as strange by its attitude to pragmatic use, by the way it is made and by the way in which it has been composed architecturally. In each of these, the design of The Box challenges many aspects of what in Ana­ lysing Architecture I have called the ‘Geometries of Being’, and plays the game of fracturing and drawing abstractions from ‘Ideal Geometry’. THE BOX

133

possible to walk, to stand, to place furniture; it has a stair of dimensions sufficient for a human being, giving access from below; it has openings that allow in light sufficient to see what one might be doing, and views to the surroundings; it keeps out the weather. But these few concessions to dwelling are eclipsed by other concerns. The way The Box is constructed, and its materials treated, challenges the geometry of making. Its irregular geometry presents difficulty in assembling standard materials, and its uniform grey finish gives the false appearance that the building is all made of one, indeterminate, material. Construction joints are concealed, except where simple sheets of glass cover openings in the corners of the cell. Some necessary structure is evident, but this too breaks the usual discipline of structural geometry. Also, the six-directions-plus-centre, which resonate with those of the human form and which are evident in most orthodox four-walled rooms, are unsettled by the disturbed geometry of The Box. The building’s composition is based on ideal geometry, but in a disturbed and fractured form.

The Box is composed of simple geometric forms: the cylinder, hemisphere and cube.

I DE A L GE OM E T RY The diagrams on this page and the next illustrate the underlying geometric com­ position of The Box. The composition begins, conceptually, with a cylinder, a hemisphere and a cube (above). These are fundamental geometric forms in archi­ tecture and could have been composed as a domed circular chamber set in a cubic building (right, upper; rather like the Villa Rotonda). But Moss assembles them in a different, unusual, way. The dome (hemisphere) sits above the cylinder, as usual, but the cube is balanced on top of them (right, lower). The next stage in Moss’s conceptual process is to fragment, distort and unsettle these simple geometric forms (opposite page). Sections of the cylinder are removed. The hemisphere is reduced to a structural armature, which suggests the space occupied by a dome rather than being a dome itself. (This armature provides the structural support for the floor of the cube.) And, most significantly, the cube, which would ordinarily be aligned with the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the world, is canted unequally in two of those dimensions, disrupting its resonance with its context and content (the building on which it sits and the world around it, as well as the people who might occupy it). To complicate the geometry further, part of the cube is missing, the part that would have been below the horizontal floor. A complicated irregular staircase, which starts from within the cylinder, finds its way up to the space of the cube. It passes through the roof, and is for a short stretch open to the outside air before being 134

These Platonic forms could have been put together in the traditional way, as in a domed cell (above, upper), but Moss assembles them oddly, with the cube balanced on the hemisphere (lower).

enclosed again and finally reaching the floor of the cube. The breach in the roof of the original building, through which the staircase and the structure supporting The Box pass, is covered by a simple glass platform supported by a timber structure. The last touch of the design is that two negative cubes are cut from the corners of The Box, to give light. These openings are made weatherproof with the simple tacked-on glass covers mentioned above. As a work of architecture, The Box is an exercise in broken and re-assembled geometric forms. This approach contradicts many of the orthodox ways of doing architecture, and gains attention because of its difference. The result is a sculp­ tural object that is noticed because its irregular form contrasts with the orthodox geometries of the surrounding buildings. This is a seductive form of architecture, stimulating because of its games with geometry and aesthetic complexity. But it is a form of architecture that is hermetically sealed from its users who, even when they are inside, are excluded. They are not considered or engaged by the architecture but asked to stand as admirers of its sculptural form.

The Box can be described as a novel composition of conventional forms.

THE BOX

An irregular stair starts in the cylinder and winds its way up to the cube.

The Platonic solids have been fragmented, distorted and disrupted. The plans (below) show the difficulty of conveying the complex composition in conventional drawings.

top

ground

135

section

section with Cesariano’s Vitruvian Man

plan

plan with Vitruvian Man

T E M PL E O F T H E FO U R W I N D S

You can see also that Cesariano generated a grid of squares related to human proportions – a simpler and less flexible version of what Le Corbusier did with his Modulor. Like Eisenman, Vanbrugh developed the square grid into a three-dimensional crate which, like a genetic instructions, governs the positions and dimensions of the building’s key elements in plan and section. Apart from the greater complexity of Le Corbusier’s geometric system, another difference is that Vanbrugh’s does not derive from human scale but from aggrandized proportions, perhaps to appeal to his noble patron. Vanbrugh died before the temple was built.

The Temple of the Four Winds is an earlier example of architecture generated from a three-dimensional geometric armature. It was designed in the early eighteenth century by Sir John Vanbrugh for the grounds of Castle Howard in Yorkshire. It is an example of architecture containing the ghost and the abstracted geometry of human form; in this case that described by Vitruvius (see page 112). rather than Le Corbusier. Leonardo da Vinci was not the only Renais­ sance artist to try to represent Vitruvius’s description of the ideal human frame. Vanbrugh appears to have drawn from another attempt, that of Cesariano. I have superimposed Cesariano’s drawing on the section and plan of the Temple of Four Winds (above right). You can see that the propor­ tions and significant elements coincide. 136

You will find some more analyses of the ideal geometry of this building on the @analysingarchitecture Instagram page, between June 25 and July 16, 2021. See also page 125 of Exercises in Architecture, 2nd edition, 2023.

M A ISON À BOR DE AU X

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M A ISON À BOR DE AU X a house for a man c onf ined to a wheelc hair R EM KO O LH A AS, 19 9 8

In which we shall see that: • architecture can concern itself with confounding sense and expectations… rather like writing jokes or riddles; • through various means architecture can pay covert homage to architect heroes that have gone before; • sophisticated conceptions can suffer from quotidian problems when confronted with the challenges of reality; • architects sometimes try to excuse the failings of their buildings post hoc by blaming circumstances that maybe should have been foreseeable.

‘Every morning their supervisor… instructs them in “nonsense” – meaningless, enigmatic jokes and slogans that will sow uncertainty in the crowds.’

Rem Koolhaas – Delirious New York (1978), 1994.

A

s in Palladio’s Villa Rotonda, Le Corbusier’s Cabanon and Van­ brugh’s Temple of the Four Winds, this unusual house by Rem Koolhaas near Bordeaux is haunted by the geometri­ cal ghost of human form. But more of that later. The house, designed by the Dutch architect in the 1990s, stands near the top of a hill in the south-eastern out­ skirts of Bordeaux. It has views across the city and the valley of the Garonne river. The house was designed for a client confined to a wheelchair after a car accident. It incorporates a hydraulic platform, capable of moving between the levels of the house and large enough for the wheelchair-bound client to use as a work space. With this in mind, the platform moves up and down alongside a tall book-stack. 138

S T R AT I F IC AT ION It may not look like one but, appropriate to its hilltop site, the Maison à Bordeaux is arranged like a medieval castle. It has an entry courtyard like a bailey, off which there is some secondary accommodation for guests and the housekeeper. Along the courtyard’s south-western side stands a three-storey range for the client and his family. The levels – stratification – of a castle are an important part of its architec­ ture. Because of the need for defence, the walls of its bailey isolate the courtyard from the outside world. The principal buildings were founded on solid rock, with dungeons in caves beneath. The main living rooms were usually a floor above ground level. And the battlements had extensive views across the landscape so that approaching enemies could be spotted. The walls had loopholes for bowmen to release arrows at attackers. The arrangements are similar but not identical in Rem Koolhaas’s design. The general principle he follows is to question and subvert the orthodox or obvious; to contradict the norm. This is an acknowledged method for generating novelty. The three levels of the house are pulled apart in this drawing (1, opposite). Though simplified (some of the internal divisions of the upper floors have been removed), it shows that the spatial character of each level is different. These dif­ ferences can be compared to the stratification of a castle (2 and 3). The lowest, courtyard level of the house is embedded in the slope of the hill. The nature of caves and dungeons excavated out of rock is that they do not have to follow the geometry of making that conditions built structure. Spatially their form may be freer. This happens in the lowest floor of the Maison à Bordeaux. (See also the floor plan 12 on page 142.) Here there are: a cave or wine cellar; a store; a

curved staircase in a cave-like grotto; and a spiral stair (just like a tower stair in a castle). It is as if these spaces are excavated from the ground of the hill. Attached to them are a wash-room and a room for the technology of the house, and in front, separated from the court­ yard by a glass wall (some clear, some translucent), are a laundry, kitchen and a media room for the children of the house. The main doorway enters at the narrowest part of the plan. The door is an electrically operated panel of metal opened by means of a large illuminated joystick alongside in the courtyard. The moving platform gives access (wheelchair access) to all levels. It is only when it is at the lowest level that it is possible to enter the wine cellar. The person who controls the platform controls access to the wine. The upper two floors invert the arrangement found in a castle. In a cas­ tle (3) a hall with thick walls and small windows supports an open roof from which the surrounding landscape may be surveyed. In the Maison à Bordeaux it is the first (middle) level that is open to the surroundings. As in the castle it is the main living floor for the family but, protected only by glass screens and curtains to shade the sun, it has open views to the woods and across the valley to Bordeaux. Koolhaas uses the slope of the hillside. The living level is a storey above the courtyard but level with the grassy top of the hill. This floor, open to the landscape, is sheltered and shaded by the floor above. It is an arrangement

children’s beds parents’ beds

terrace

office

The bookstack running vertically behind the moving platform is not shown.

living space

spiral stair moving platform

grotto media room entrance (under wall)

wine cellar kitchen laundry

courtyard

housekeeper

guest

1

reminiscent of that suggested by Le Corbusier in his ‘Five Points Towards a New Architecture’ (1926). Le Corbusier argued that buildings did not need to take up ground space; by the use of col­ umns (‘pilotis’) ground and space could be allowed to flow continuously under them (4). He argued for roof gardens too. Koolhaas does not provide a roof garden on the Maison à Bordeaux. The uppermost floor contains bedrooms. In

4

Le Corbusier argued that buildings should be lifted on pilotis so that space could flow beneath.

bedroom level top of the hill

living level service level

2 section

MAISON À BORDEAUX

courtyard

housekeeper

3 medieval castle section

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comparison with the medieval castle, this is the level with the thick (concrete) walls and the small windows (loopholes). As will be seen in the plans on the following pages, this floor is divided into two, with half for the children’s rooms and half for the parents. The moving platform gives access to the parents’ half while the children’s half is reached by the spiral stair contained in its cylindrical drum. The two halves are separated by a slot – a divide between the generations. The parents’ rooms have a veranda facing the morning sun. The accommodation on the top floor is contained in a concrete box that appears to float above the open middle level. At its western end there is a large circular panel – centrally pivoted – echoing a similar circular panel in the courtyard wall. The first is operated by a winding handle; the latter swivels freely. The upper one opens a view towards Bordeaux; the lower, like a Moon doorway in a Chinese garden, frames a flickering view of the trees outside. T R A NSI T ION, H I E R A RC H Y, H E A RT The section (2, previous page) shows the various levels of the house. The entrance into the courtyard cannot be seen. The gateway is under rather than through the wall (5 and 6), and the driveway is steep. This gateway marks the threshold between the outside world and the controlled world of the house. Everything inside is precise and geometrical – deter­ mined, designed by a mind; everything outside is irregular and natural. In this the house is similar to a neoclassical house from the eighteenth century. In Doorway (2007, page 98) I analysed an eight­ eenth-century neoclassical house in Scotland designed by William Adam, called The House of Dun (7 and 8). It was common in such houses to manage the route of approach to influence visitors’ perceptions of the world in which the owner lived. Even though The House of Dun faces south – towards

5

140

entrance gate, under the courtyard wall

the sun and the main road – the approach to the main entrance was manoeuvred around to the north elevation. This was so a visitor would approach the main doorway in shade, rise onto the piano nobile and then progress through the house to the sunny Saloon with its view over the sunlit garden, thus giving the impression that the owner and his family live in a world of privilege, sunnier and better-appointed than the ordinary world outside. Something similar happens in the Maison à Bordeaux. Having entered the courtyard by climbing the steep drive­ way, you are on the northern side of the three-storey block of accommodation. As in the neoclassical house the menial accommodation – kitchen, storerooms, wine cellar etc. – is on the lowest level. Entering, you rise to the open middle level – its piano nobile – into the sunshine and with the view. As in the neoclassical house, it is as if you have been invited to enter into the better-appointed world inhabited by the owner. Architecture is an instrument for manipulating our perception of the world in this way. It is by means of architec­ ture that an architect mediates between the person and their surroundings, orchestrating experience, eliciting different emotional responses. And it has the potential to change how we see the world. SPAC E A N D S T RUC T U R E I have mentioned that the design of the Maison à Bordeaux is influenced by Le Corbusier’s idea of a ground floor open to its surroundings. In analysing the Farnsworth House I also wondered if Mies van der Rohe would have liked to make his floor and roof planes float without visible means of support. In the Maison à Bordeaux Rem Koolhaas has (almost) done this. If he is emulating Le Corbusier’s open ground level, he has done so without the help of pilotis.

7 House of Dun, section

6

There is a film about the Maison à Bordeaux – ‘Kool­ haas Houselife’ (Bêka and Lemoîne, 2008) – which follows the housekeeper in her daily chores. One section of the film – ‘it’s going to fall’ – is devoted to her puzzlement at how the concrete box of the uppermost floor is supported. Koolhaas, in collaboration with his engineer Cecil Balmond, uses archi­ tectural sleight-of-hand to make it appear as if the concrete box has no structural support. It seems only to be held down – prevented from floating away like a balloon – by a rod attached to a large steel I-beam across its roof and anchored into the ground of the courtyard. The way this is done is best illustrated in a drawing (9). The concrete box is actually supported in three places: by the cylinder of the spiral staircase; and by an L-shaped piece of structure that is propped by a steel stanchion rising from the kitchen area below. The stair cylinder supports the large I-beam across the roof, from which the concrete box appears to hang. The anchoring rod does little; perhaps stabilising the box against rocking. The sleight-of-hand in making the building appear to be without support works in various ways. At the open middle level the cylinder of the spiral stair is clad in highly polished mirror-like stainless steel, reflecting the landscape around, obfuscating the cylinder’s appearance as a structural column. The L-shaped structure is stepped out into the grassy plateau at the top of the hill, and therefore appears detached from the house itself. The only clearly visible piece of structure within the house is the stanchion rising through the lower two floors, and this appears, on the main living floor, to be part of the book-stack that stands alongside the moving platform. All these devices conspire to make it seem that the building has no visible means of support. MAISON À BORDEAUX

8 House of Dun, plan

steel rod

9

The structure of the Maison à Bordeaux is arranged to make it appear that the heavy top floor has no structural support. Even more dramatically, it looks as if it is being held down rather than up; prevented from floating away by a steel rod tethering it to the ground. 141

MODI F Y I NG E L E ME N T S: T I ME A N D MU TA BIL I T Y

I DE A L GE OM E T RY The three floor plans are alongside (12 – courtyard level; 11 – open middle level, living space; 10 – uppermost, bedroom level). On the lowest level you can see the driveway entering the courtyard under the wall and curving around towards the front door. There is a bridge over the gateway, like the wallwalk of a castle, leading to the door of the housekeeper’s flat. You can also see the free excavated form of the wine cellar, store, stairs and media room. You can see too how the moving platform controls access to the wine cellar. The dot within the dashed square in the courtyard is the rod that appears to hold down the large I-beam across the roof. In the middle floor you notice the apparent lack of structure, and the tracks (dashed) of the movable curtains and walls. You can see where the large section of south wall can 142

children

bed

bed bed shower patio (open to below) bath

parents

It takes time to explore this building. And it is a building that changes with time; it changes with the time of day and the seasons. These are characteristics shared with most build­ ings. But the Maison à Bordeaux is also a building that can be changed, quite radically. If you look closely at the various published photographs, you will see variations; sometimes a wall is in one place, sometimes in another; lights hang from the ceilings in different locations; parts of the building shift. Many parts of the house may be moved so that it can be set up in different configurations for different situations and conditions. In addition to the two circular panels already men­ tioned and the platform that moves between the three floors, the principal movable elements of the house are the glass walls and long curtains of the main living level. Using tracks in the floor and ceiling these may be arranged to provide appropri­ ate shelter from wind and rain, and shade from the sun. For example: a large portion of the south wall can slide along into the open terrace to shelter it from south-easterly breezes; a smaller portion of solid wall can slide in the other direction, onto a track outside the floor plate of the house, to open the office space to the grassy plateau on the top of the hill. The long curtains can also be arranged in a variety of places to shade different parts of the interior from the Gironde sun at different times of day. The mutability of the house means it may be used in different ways in different circumstances and respond to the variations of the seasons. In some of the published plans the terrace at the western end of the house is termed the ‘summer dining room’ w ith the interior space over the kitchen labelled ‘winter dining room’.

bath

bed

bed platform veranda

10 top floor

summer dining

living

winter dining

platform office

11 middle floor

media room

house­ keeper courtyard

w.c. store

drive kitchen

wine cellar

platform laundry

12 courtyard/entrance floor

patio guest

slide over the open west-facing terrace to shelter the summer dining room, and how the small solid piece of wall can slide aside to open the office to the sunny hill top. The book-stack alongside the moving platform is aligned with the L-shaped structure and steel stanchion (I-shaped on plan). The platform rises to the top floor where the parents’ area is open plan and separated from the children’s zone by the generational chasm – labelled ‘patio (open to below)’ in the plan (10). The children’s zone is divided by diagonal walls and reached by the medieval castle spiral stair near its centre. The children’s zone has a long narrow patio where imaginary arrows may be shot through the loopholes. The parents have their veranda open to the morning sun. A glance at the plans suggests they are ordered accord­ ing to some underlying geometry. The courtyard is a Golden Section rectangle and the open middle floor is a double square (13). We have seen this combination in a previous analysis – the Cabanon by Le Cor­ busier (pages 111–12). It is the geometric relationship at the heart of the Modulor (14). Rem Koolhaas has often expressed his respect for Le Corbusier. Koolhaas, however, does not use the Modulor arrange­ ment as a way of instilling his design with human scale (as Le Corbusier had intended); he uses the proportions at a super-human scale, as if in homage to his hero. The following analysis is based on no more than a hunch… but if we superimpose the geometric framework of the Modulor – the Golden Section rectangle and the double square, circumscribing the figure of the Corbusian man – onto the middle floor of the Maison à Bordeaux (15), we see that a number of significant parts of the building fit. This works particularly if we invert the figure in the double square of

the living accommodation. In the courtyard the curve of the driveway fits neatly into the part of the Golden Section rectangle left after half the original square is taken away. The navel line seems to determine the position of the stair up from the grotto and the chasm between the parents’ and children’s zones on the uppermost floor. The dimension of the up-stretched hand, if rotated through ninety degrees, gives the width of the housekeeper’s flat and guest room. In the double square, the console against the glass wall between the living space and the terrace (between the winter and summer dining rooms) is positioned on the mid line. The head of Modulor man, perhaps significantly, occurs on the moving platform (for the head of the household in his wheelchair). And even the up-stretched hand seems to push the office’s movable wall outwards.

13 the middle floor is arranged on a double square and a Golden Section rectangle

15 the geometrical human form (according to Le Corbusier) haunting the Maison à Bordeaux

MAISON À BORDEAUX

14

143

Projecting a square from the combined bases of the double square and the Golden Section rectangle (16) gives the overhang of the uppermost floor (17). And the positions of the L-shaped structure and the large I-beam across the roof seem determined by centre-lines between significant lines in the Modulor diagram. We suspect that other major elements in the design are also determined by the underlying geometric framework provided by Koolhaas’s super-human enlargement of Le Corbusier’s system of proportions. C ONC LUSION (201 5): A NO T E ON T H E ‘PA R A NOI D C R I T IC A L M E T HOD’ If you Google ‘funniest joke’ you get directed to a Wikipedia article on a piece of research conducted by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in 2002. The joke voted for as funniest was: ‘A couple of Mississippi hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency ser­ vices. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm soothing voice, says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?” ’ Joke theory suggests that the effect of a punchline depends in part on surprise and contradiction; it upsets expectation, and you smile because you feel you should have seen it coming even though you are simultaneously aware that it conflicts with the obvious. Even anti-jokes work in this way. The punchline ‘To get to the other side’ in response to the question ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ works (perhaps once) because you expected it to be cleverer and funnier, and you smile because it is so obvious. Countering Mies van der Rohe’s dictum ‘Less is more’, Robert Venturi wrote in 1966, ‘Less is a bore’. Architects can work like joke writers by upsetting expectation and challeng­ ing or contradicting orthodoxies, by resonating with irony and the contrary rather than attempting to find resolution. Like religion, humour deals with uncertainty, the ina­ bility to subject everything to consistent logical explanation. Unlike religion, humour celebrates, plays with and exploits uncertainty, incongruity, complexity and contradiction. Much of architecture is without humour. A large part of its literature over the past two centuries or so has argued about how to identify the right way to design, to eliminate vagaries and to find the simple, direct and appropriate way to do architecture. In the nineteenth century when, due to extensive travel to other cultures, European architects 144

16

17

experimented with architectures from other times and other parts of the world – ancient Greek, medieval Gothic, Chinese, pre-industrial vernacular… – critics such as John Ruskin suggested that, behind all these multifarious variant styles, there must be a ‘true’ architecture. Aspiring to the holy grail of truth in architecture, architects worried about the right architecture for their own cultures, their own countries, the particular tasks in hand, the materials they had available, even the weather. The search for truth in architecture resulted in the emergence of Modernism in which the styles (of the past and borrowed from other cultures) – condemned as cosmetic and false by Le Corbusier who, in his 1923 book Towards a New Architecture, described them as ‘a lie’ – were rejected in favour of an unornamented elemental architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright, in a 1910 passage that would have influenced

European architects such as Mies van der Rohe, wrote: ‘The true basis for any serious study of the art of Architecture still lies in those indigenous structures; more humble buildings everywhere… It is the traits of these many folk-structures that are of the soil. Natural. Though often slight, their virtue is intimately related to environment and to the heart-life of the people. Functions are usually truthfully conceived and rendered invariably with natural feeling.’* Wright promoted concepts such as ‘truth’, ‘natural’, ‘heart-life’ and ‘simplic­ ity’. By contrast, Rem Koolhaas has promoted an architecture of make-believe, artificiality, confusion, surprise and complexity… and humour; suggesting these are more in tune with the times, and the only response to the futile enterprise of achieving ‘truth’ (especially in architecture). In his writing Koolhaas has tended to quote Salvador Dali rather than Wright: ‘I believe that the moment is at hand when by a paranoid and active advance of the mind, it will be possible to systematize confusion and thus help to discredit completely the world of reality.’** This passage sums up the ‘Paranoid Critical Method’ for dealing with the world (18). Dali was a member of the Surrealist movement in painting. His own work explored the strangeness of dreams, juxtaposing incompatible elements and distorting human form into grotesque malformations. It was art that sought to undermine the asserted certainties of the time based in a growing acceptance of (and dependence on) the authority of science. Koolhaas’s attitude also echoes that of Robert Venturi who published, in 1966, his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, in which he questioned the fundamental precepts of the Modern attitude to design. It contains his riposte to Mies van der Rohe – ‘Less is a bore’. It also offered Venturi’s creed: ‘I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoher­ ence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intrica­ cies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience which is inherent in art. Everywhere, except in architecture, complexity and contradiction have been acknowledged, from Gödel’s proof of ultimate inconsistency in mathematics to T.S. Eliot’s analysis of “difficult” poetry and Joseph Albers’ definition of the paradoxical quality of painting.’*** Rem Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux is a complex and contradictory building informed by a desire to upset expectation, to sow uncertainty, to disregard any promotion of predictability claimed by scientific (or pseudo-scientific) formulae for action (including design). The house achieves this subversive identity by means of its mutability, its sleight-of-hand and its hints at a make-believe world made possible only by the artificial art of architecture. Whereas a quest for architectural truth can have the effect of contracting the horizons of architecture – drawing-in its limits until they become banal – ideas of complexity and contradiction (or of the Paranoid Critical Method) dissolve those limits, making anything possible, irrespective of rationality or orthodoxy. And in the process propagate an architecture that engages the person by means of surprise, puzzlement and humour.

* Frank Lloyd Wright – ‘The Sovereignty of the Individual’ (1910), 1960. ** Salvador Dali – La Femme Visible (1930), quoted in Koolhaas (1978), 1994. *** Robert Venturi – Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966.

MAISON À BORDEAUX

18

Dali’s ‘diagram of the inner workings of the Paranoid Critical Method: limp, unprovable conjectures generated through the deliberate simulation of paranoic thought processes, supported (made critical) by the “crutches” of Cartesian rationality.’ Koolhaas (1978), 1994.

2 02 3 The book and film mentioned on page 141 – ‘Koolhaas Houselife’ by Bêka and Lemoîne (2008) – provides a tangential critique of the Maison à Bordeaux. It is a critique that poses questions about how architecture is judged and valued by different groups of people. In particu­ lar it draws attention to differences in appreciation between different groups: architects; to some extent their clients; and especially those that profess no special knowledge or understanding of architecture (at least not of architecture that is given critical praise by the archi­ tectural media). In this particular film the archi­ tect is Rem Koolhaas, the client(s) (pre­ sumably at their own request) remain(s) anonymous, and the non-professional is the Maison’s housekeeper Guadalupe Acedo (along with her husband and a few other tradespeople). Mme Acedo appears most; she takes us around the house as she goes about her daily tasks. The book that goes with the film includes a Foreword by Joseph Grima (a British architect born in France). He begins: ‘Paradoxical as it may seem given architecture’s increasingly mediaoriented inclinations, an entire 145

archipelago of narratives remains uncharted: everyday life in the contemporary architectural masterpiece. Koolhaas Houselife… shows up not only the absurdity of the frenzied, agonistic rush to be the first to publish new architecture…; it highlights how accustomed we have become to forming our ideas about buildings new and old through the window of clinical, perfectly-photoshopped images.’ But the film also raises questions that have been encoun­ tered in previous case studies (and will be again in those to come) in the present book, i.e. to do with the relative valency (and sacrosanctity) of an architect’s ideas in relation to the performance – practical and aesthetic – of the resulting build­ ings when exposed to the realities of occupation and weather. The film begins with a group of architectural enthu­ siasts being brought by bus to visit the house one rainy day. They are asked to remove their shoes at the doorway, as if entering a shrine or mosque. We see little more of their visit. The next scene is of the housekeeper adjusting books on the shelves as she rides upwards on the moving platform between levels. Later we see her drawing curtains, struggling with a vacuum cleaner up the tight spiral stairs and, as mentioned on page 141, musing on how the top floor seems to defy gravity. Much of the film, however, concentrates on problems with rain. Large windows leak and water dribbles in at a variety of puzzling locations. The concrete of the curved stair up to the terrace from the entrance is shown to be suffering because, although it seems sheltered by the topmost floor, driving rain soaks it periodically. Throughout, Mme Acedo is dutiful but bemused by the building. The impression tacitly given is that the house has been conceived without a thorough and rigorous grip on the practical demands of reality – use, maintenance and weather. The DVD also contains a short edited interview with the architect, conducted after he had been shown the film. His responses are candid. He begins by asking if the rain was a ‘coincidence’. Next he expresses surprise that the cleaner is using ‘generic techniques’ (old-fashioned?) in such an ‘excep­ tional’ building; he would do it differently. But he admits it might have been a good idea to ‘devise some sort of protocol’ for cleaning as part of the design. He observes that this is an example of ‘two systems colliding – the Platonic conception of cleaning and the Platonic conception of architecture’. Finally he explains (or is it a matter of blame) that current market con­ ditions affecting architecture make ‘how it looks’ supremely more important than ‘how it works’. This situation he says is a ‘real tragedy’. He suggests that current architecture suffers from a ‘triple insistence on a lack of reality’; the three neg­ ative factors being the media, the market, and computers. This results in a ‘hellish situation’ in which architects find 146

themselves compelled to: neglect the requirements of reality under pressure to attract media attention with superficially sensational (‘exceptional’) designs; conform to international commercial expectations (the market); and do so in the unreal methodology of computer design technology. ‘Architecture is becoming more and more like the virtual images’ conceived/ generated in computer programmes. Generally, Koolhaas presents himself, and ‘all architects’ in the early twenty-first century as victims of these prevailing circumstances that are undermining, maybe fatally, the engagement of architecture with the realities of the physical world and life as it is lived. Leaving aside the thought that Koolhaas might be accused of being disingenuous by claiming to be a victim of circumstances, the issues exposed by the film and interview, redolent of Dr Farnsworth’s disenchantment with her house and Eisenman’s disregard for the comfort and utility of House VI, illustrate an abiding issue besetting architecture at least since the nineteenth century. In his interview Kool­ haas explains that one of the problems for architects is that our work is always hypothetical, i.e. it has to be conceived in abstract and foreseeing all the issues/problems that might arise once it is realised is close to impossible. But that is perhaps not an acceptable excuse for neglecting to consider reasonably foreseeable problems. Back in the 1870s and ’80s an English architect and critic, John T. Emmett, wrote a series of six articles in The Quarterly Review condemning what he saw as the parlous state of British architecture. In 1972, perhaps with some criti­ cal intention of his own, the architectural historian John Mor­ daunt Crook republished these essays which, he said, ‘shook the English architectural establishment to its foundations’ when they first appeared. Like Koolhaas nearly a century and a half later, Emmett evoked the image of ‘two systems colliding’ – that of the architect and that of the common ‘hon­ est’ workman (somewhat romantically identified by Emmett with a Medieval craftsman rather than a housekeeper). Also like Koolhaas he condemned the pernicious influence of the market and of the media with its ‘ “knowingness” (that) is, however, only that half-knowledge “that puffeth up”.’ Comput­ ers were of course not available back in the 1870s, but Emmett finds his third factor, in what he too might have called a ‘triple insistence on lack of reality’ in academic drawing aimed at picturesque effect (how it looks) rather than engagement with reality (how it works). He concluded one of his essays, entitled ‘The Bane of English Architecture’, asking bleakly (and apparently futilely): ‘Can this absurdity continue… May it not be something other than “a fierce spirit of hatred” that induces us to tell the devotees of the Profession… what a mean and disappointing course of life they have before them?’

DA N T EU M

147

DA N T EU M an unbuilt memor ial to Dante A lighier i, intended for M ussolini’s Rome GIUSEPPE TER R AG NI, 193 8 In which we shall see that: • like a poem or programme music,

architecture can take you through

the sequential episodes of a

story;

• in architectural storytelling the

situations in which you find

yourself are not confined to your

imagination; even when they are

intended to evoke abstract

transcendent realms – such as

hell, purgatory and heaven – you

find yourself in real physical

circumstances;

• architectural narratives are not

dependent on pre-written stories;

they can have their own themes,

to do with light, containment,

exposure, invitation, sequence,

transition, trepidation, arrival,

discovery…

• the narrative potential of

architecture is one of the biggest

losses in architecture encountered primarily through photography and computer

generated imagery.

T

‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita.’

Dante – ‘Commedia’ (‘The Divine Comedy’) (1300); first three lines with literal translation.

he next building had no problems when confronted with reality. Like Kiesler’s Endless House it has suffered the advantage of never being built. The Danteum exists only in drawings: plans and sections, perspective visualisations prepared by its architect Giuseppe Terragni and models made by enthusiasts. As well as taking the visitor through the story of ‘The Divine Comedy’, the Danteum is an exercise in the imposition of ideal geometry on form and space. Though it was designed for a specific site on the Via dei Fori Imperiali, in the midst of the ruins of ancient Rome not far from the Colosseum, it is a work of architecture that exists in that special and strange abstract world of mathematics (see the quotation from John Dee on page 139 of Analysing Architecture, 2021) as it would have done even if it had been built. The Danteum was commissioned by Benito Musso ­ lini – Italian fascist dictator of the 1930s – as a memorial to Italy’s greatest ever poet Dante Alighieri, author of the ‘La Commedia’, known in English as ‘The Divine Comedy’ (written around 1300 CE). This long poem is a description of its narrator’s imaginary journey through the realms of death

148

(‘In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood that the straight path was lost.’)

– Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso – guided in parts by the spirit of the Roman poet Virgil. Terragni’s design was intended to evoke, in abstract architectural terms, a representation of the progression of these levels of hell and heaven. Apart from a library on its lowest level (and not included in the sequential route) the Danteum has no spaces that might be recognised as functional. The building would have been something like a monumental art installation, in which the visitor would be taken through a series of spaces equivalent to the sections of Dante’s poem. There were proposals to orna­ ment the spaces with free-standing and wall-mounted relief sculptures representing souls in torment. At the culmination of the route through the building, in a section called Impero (Empire – a dead end on the top floor of the building), there would have been a depiction of the Imperial Eagle. Mussolini intended this building to be a political statement, a monument not only to Dante but to Italian nationalism and to Fascism. Terragni, who (maybe significantly) designed the Danteum with its Impero as a dead end, died at the front during the Second World War, the outbreak of which in 1939 had stopped his building being realised.

I DE A L GE OM E T RY A N D B A SIC E L E M E N T S Paradiso

Impero

1 top level

The square is a geometric figure repeated throughout the plan, sometimes informing sections of floor or openings in ceilings.

In designing the Danteum, Terragni used a limited palette of basic architectural elements: wall; column; platform; roof. There are stairs and roof-lights but only one doorway (which is not the main entrance) and, appropriately for a built representation of hell, no windows. Some of the walls, with regularly spaced long vertical slits, seem to have been caught in the process of metamorphosing into columns; or maybe it is the other way around, columns are metamorphosing into walls. (Perhaps these too are tormented souls.) Everything is arranged orthogonally; this is an underworld entangled in geometry. The organisation of the Danteum according to ideal geometry (like some other examples in this book) is complex and many layered (1–9).

Purgatorio

doorway Inferno

2 intermediate level

4

La Commedia’s opening forest is a square of one hundred columns. The Inferno is a composition of squares decreasing in size according to the Golden Section ratio.

The plan of the Danteum is based on a √2 rectangle; this includes an entrance space screened from the Via dei Fori Imperiali by a high wall. Access is at either end rather than through a doorway.

‘dark wood’

library

statues of tormented souls courtyard

way out

Inferno

way in

3 entrance level

5

The plan contains a number of other geometric figures overlaid on each other in complex ways.

The main body of the building is based on a number of overlapping Golden Section rectangles of varying sizes.

DANTEUM

149

9

The section is organised according to Golden Section and √2 rectangles too.

6

Subsidiary spaces in the Danteum are proportioned and dimensioned according to a bewildering array of smaller Golden Section rectangles…

Purgatorio

Inferno

7

… and √2 rectangles. The Inferno and Purgatorio spaces are overtly divided into sections, by varying floor and ceiling surfaces, according to the classic diagram of the Golden Section rectangle (8). In the case of the Inferno, each of the squares on which the Golden Section rectangles are based has a column at its geometric centre. The Purgatorio has square openings to the sky (not indicated in the plan above but visible in the axonometric on page 148) conforming to the same Golden Section geometry.

The complex geometry of the Danteum makes it seem as if the whole building is tightly bound (imprisoned) in a matrix of incontrovertible, implacable and unforgiving mathematics. Maybe for Terragni, mathematics was hell, or perhaps asso­ ciated with the militaristic discipline of Mussolini’s fascism and the discipline of war. Thomas L. Schumacher, in his monograph The Danteum (1993), which includes some of Terragni’s internal perspec­ tives for the project (see page 153), offers a slightly different interpretation from mine of the underlying geometry of Ter­ ragni’s design. Nevertheless, he too sees the square and the Golden Section rectangle as the basic geometric foundations of the building’s formal composition. The mathematical structure of the Danteum reflects the mathematical structure of Dante’s poem. Schumacher has noted: ‘The poem is divided into three canticles of thirty-three cantos each, plus one extra in the first, the Inferno, mak­ ing a total of one hundred cantos. Each canto is composed of three-line tercets; the first and third lines rhyme, the second line rhymes with the beginning of the next tercet, establishing a kind of overlap, reflected in the overlapping motif of the Danteum design.’ The Danteum is, therefore, an example of an architect taking an organisational structure from a different art form as a strategy for architectural decision making. T H E PAT H WAY T H ROUGH T H E DA N T EU M Terragni’s building is the architectural equivalent of pro ­ gramme music, i.e. music with a story to tell. The parts of the Danteum relate to the canticles of ‘La Commedia’. The journey, for visitors in Mussolini’s Rome, would have started on the Via dei Fori Imperiali (then the Via dell Impero) from which it would have been hidden by a high screen wall. (Follow the route through the Danteum on the following three pages.)

8

150

* Thomas L. Schumacher – Surface & Symbol: Giuseppe Terragni and the Architecture of Italian Rationalism, 1993.

Paradiso ‘dark wood’

10 section

library ‘dark wood’

Inferno

statues

courtyard

12a Necromanteion

labyrinth entrance

11 entrance level plan

Via dell Impero

Visitors to the Danteum would first have slipped out of the public realm behind the screen wall and found themselves passing through a simple, narrow but open to the sky, labyrinth entrance into the generous sunlit courtyard (17a on page 153). There they would have been greeted by the statues of the souls in torment on their plinth. The entrance sequence was designed to take the visitor out of the real everyday world of the city and into another realm, sterile but imbued with architectural poetry, and governed by intricate but implacable geometry. Entering would have elicited a sense of trepidation and dislocation – threshold shock. The journey according to Dante’s poem would not have begun until the next stage, when the visitor would walk from the courtyard into the shade of the hall of a hundred columns – a representation of the ‘dark wood’ in which Dante finds himself at the beginning of his poem (see the quotation on page 148) and of the poem’s one hundred cantos. Terragni’s architecture, although modern in its lack of ornament, is replete with references to ancient architectures. The labyrinth entrance may be a reference to that at the Necromanteion in western Greece (12a, see Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 240). The columned hall is reminiscent of both the Egyptian hypostyle hall and of the Greek Telesterion (hall of the mysteries) at Eleusis (12b, see Analysing Architecture, page 169). The columned hall was lit through narrow gaps in the floor of Paradise above (10), divided into squares each supported by one of the ‘canto’ columns. It would have made a geometric version of sunlight filtering through a dense canopy of leaves. From the columned hall visitors would have been able to go down to the library to consult the collection of editions of Dante, or, following the route of the poem, down some steps behind the tormented souls. Here they would encounter the one doorway in the building – Terragni’s representation of the gateway into Hell over which, in Dante’s poem, was written ‘Lasciate ognis speranza, voi che entrate’ (‘Abandon all hope, you who enter’). With a frisson of uncertainty visitors would have stepped across the threshold into the Inferno (17b), finding it a dark space with those columns arranged according to the Golden Section. These free-standing columns are reminiscent of those found in the pillar crypts of ancient Egypt and Crete (e.g. in the Royal Villa, Knossos, (12c, and page 226). Applying the timeless reading of columns as

DANTEUM

12b Telesterion, Eleusis

vicarious representatives of ancestors, the Inferno columns may also be read as petrified souls locked for eternity in Hell, and like Lot’s wife who was turned to a pillar of salt when she disobeyed the injunction not to look back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

pillar crypt

12c Royal Villa, Knossos

151

c Purgatorio

Purgatorio Paradiso

b

a

d

Inferno

13 intermediate level

14 top level

The Danteum is narrative framed architecturally. The doorway (a) from which there is no hope of return is key moment in that narrative. The entrance to the Inferno (17b) symbolises the final punctuation of life, the moment of death, the point of no return. Rather than try to emulate the fires of Hell, Terragni makes the Inferno gloomy and oppressive, with a dark glowering ceiling and those ominous ‘petrified soul’ columns. The floor is generally flat except for a lowered section in a far corner. The escape from the Inferno is not clear. One whole wall is perforated with identical openings with short flights of steps up. All but one, the last, meets blank masonry. The last, in the corner and screened by a wall (at b), access behind which is concealed by a group of columns arranged according to the Golden Section pattern of the floor, leads up more steps to a space different in character, the Purgatorio (17c). The Purgatorio’s geometry is just as severe as that of the Inferno, but whereas the latter is dark and gloomy, the Purgatorio would have been lit by light (the light of hope?) entering through square openings in its ceiling, framing the sky (heaven) and casting square shadows slowly tracking, like the beam of sunlight from the oculus of the Pantheon (the searchlight of God), across the wall and floor. The Purgatorio space too was composed according to the Golden Section, but here the spiral is inverted and the floor, rather than descending as in the Inferno, rises in squares to form a small geometric mountain – a weak symbol of the possibility of salvation.

The exit from the Purgatorio is again in the far corner (c). It leads up more stairs – the general route through the Danteum is a spiral (16) rising to the Paradiso (17d). This is a space defined by glass. The columns and the roof they support, divided again into squares, are all of glass. It would have made for ethereal architecture. By reflection and refraction the glass columns would have been intended to transform other people in the space into shimmering spirits. (There is another image of how the Paradiso might have looked in reality, together with an account of how the building came to be designed, on the ArchEyes/Timeless Architecture website.*) After the Paradiso, visitors could have gone (or just looked) down the dead-end of the Impero (17e) to admire the Imperial Eagle. Then they would have returned to Paradise to exit the building through a small opening (d) leading to a long stair between two high walls back down to the Via dell Impero and the views across to the reminders of the glories of ancient Rome in the ruins of the forum, the pine trees and houses of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum just along the road (15). As I have already suggested, this building was intended as a political statement, expressing pride in the Roman imperial past as a model for present (1930s) imperial aspirations, as well as a celebration of Dante’s poetic masterpiece.

Colosseum

site intended for Il Danteum

Via de Triumphal arch of Severus

* archeyes.com/the-danteum-giuseppe-terragni/ (Dec. 2022).

ll Impe

ro

Basilica of Maxentius

Palatine Hill Capitoline Hill

15 ancient Rome

152

16 spiral route

17a courtyard

17b Inferno

This is just one of Terragni’s versions of the courtyard (with the souls in torment omitted). The picture is imagined from near the entrance and shows the ‘dark wood’ of columns supporting the Paradiso. You would have wandered in the forest, unsure of which was the right way, eventually to find the steps down to the doorway into the Inferno (behind the wall shown on the right in the above drawing).

The Inferno is geometrically organised according to the Golden Section (see page 111). Maybe it would have been dark and gloomy, lit only by the light from the doorway (at which all should ‘abandon hope’). The exit to the Purgatorio is in the far left corner, screened by a wall at the end. Escape is obscured by the cluster of columns in the far right corner, which are arranged at the centres of the Golden Section squares.

17c Purgatorio

The Purgatorio, also organised according to the Golden Section, and open to the sky. The exit, to the Paradiso, is in the far right corner, after climbing the low geometric mountain of Golden Section squares.

17d Paradiso

17e Impero

The Paradiso with its glass columns, intended to be ethereal; but would not quite have appeared as shown in Terragni’s drawing. The entry to the Impero is in the far right corner.

The Impero is a dead end, open to the sky and split by a line of double columns. Presumably you would have approached the Imperial Eagle down one side and returned up the other.

DANTEUM

153

C ONC LUSION (201 5): A NO T E ON I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E The defining factor in all architecture is that it identifies place, organises space. In reality if not in photography, it also involves the element of time. It is easiest to think of place in terms of function, prac­ tical purpose: a place to light a fire; a place to cook; a place to sleep; a place of refuge protected by walls, door and roof from enemies and inclement weather; a place to play football, cricket or chess, and so on. But like the Barcelona Pavilion, the Danteum has no practical purpose (other than the library in its basement). Both buildings show that architecture can transcend practical purpose and yet still constitute a place (i.e. still be architecture rather than sculpture); and that place may be characterised by subtle factors such as dislocation, transportation, abstraction, choice, light, geometry… – the creation of strange other worlds (separate from the wilderness the world would be without architecture). Maybe this is done with poetic intent, to create atmosphere or mood, to establish a shrine of some sort, to elicit emotional responses in those who enter those other worlds. In the case of the Danteum the creation (identification and organisation) of place involved narrative as well as elicit­ ing emotional responses from those who would experience it. In its case the two cannot be detached from each other. The Danteum would have been a place to follow a celebrated story and to be prompted into feelings of trepidation, uncertainty, depression… perplexity, elevation, aspiration… enlighten­ ment, wonder, amusement… respect (or fear, for the political authorities of the day)… and finally (unlike the inhabitants of any of Dante’s levels of Hell) to escape back to the ordinary and everyday with an altered perception. The Danteum follows, and abstracts in architectural form, a poem written by Dante hundreds of years earlier. It turns the architecture (intellectual structure) of the poem into built and spatial form. But in doing this its architect, Giuseppe Terragni, also implies that architects may write their own poems – spin narratives, generate philosophies, elicit emotional responses… – and tell them in architectural (built and spatial) form rather than in words. 2023 SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON The narrative potential of architecture is perhaps the saddest casualty of the contemporary appreciation of architecture mainly through the medium of photography and computer imagery. In this book’s first case study – the Casa del Ojo de 154

Agua – we saw that it is possible with architecture to draw out a pathway, passing through a sequence of places (functional and atmospheric) and punctuated by doorways, steps etc., which is analogous to a sentence in verbal language. The Dan­ teum shows that architecture can not only compose sentences, but can aspire to telling whole stories. Just as programme music – e.g. Lietentant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf (both by Sergei Prokofiev) – tells, in music, a story previously written down, so the Danteum represents ‘The Divine Comedy’ in an arrangement of architectural elements: columns, walls, door­ ways, steps, rooms, light… It also suggests that architecture can do more than either music or writing (which prompt the listener or reader to identify with the story imaginatively): it can cast the person as the (actual rather than vicarious) protagonist, and put them in narrative situations with real physicality and atmosphere. Maybe, if it had been built, its calm and measured spaces would not have provided you the visitor with the full drama and terrors of ‘La Commedia’, and Virgil would not have been there with you as a guide. But even so the Danteum illustrates the potential of architecture to frame narratives to fully engage the person as an ingredient rather than as a mere spectator. Just as when you write a story or an essay you take your readers by the hand and lead them through, in their imaginations, a sequence of episodes/images/ideas, you can architect a plan which, when realised, will take the person through, in physical reality, a sequence of episodes/atmos­ pheres/ideas. Writing, music, dance, computer games… and architecture, all involve the essential element of time. Writers and cinematographers structure their stories, composers orchestrate their music, choreographers plan their dances, computer games designers conjure up their worlds… all on matrices – storyboards, scores, choreographic charts, dia­ grams… – which are universally architectural in that they provide intellectual structure and spatial organisation to order and manage the work in hand. It is only to be expected that this symbiotic relationship can be reciprocated and that architecture of real space itself spins stories. And whereas all those other art forms can evoke emotional response in the imagination, only architecture (and here I include art installations) can elicit such emotions – anticipation, trepi­ dation, expectation, resolution, shock, fear, embarrassment, exposure, amusement, arrival, surprise, discovery, comfort, peace… – in real time and space. There are various factors and dimensions to the rela­ tionship between architecture and narrative. Even though the Danteum takes a previously written narrative as the basis for its spatial composition, this is not essential. Architecture can frame its own narratives, compose its own atmospheric poems, test the person with different challenges, prompt a

variety of emotions, orchestrate experiences on different levels involving more of our senses than is directly possible in any other art form. For examples… All religions frame the narratives of their liturgies with architecture: think of the progression of a wedding or a funeral service, the narrative structure that each religion sets down for such events, and how it relates to specific places – entrance, approach (aisle), culmination (focus, altar, arch…) – in the temple, church, mosque… Archaeologists tell themselves stories of past lives and civi­ lisations based on sometimes scanty architectural remains excavated from the mud. Museum curators lay out narratives within the frames of exhibition galleries – room by room, through one doorway after another, glass case by glass case – setting out the creative journey of an artist or the life of an historical figure or ancient culture. In all, whether as protagonist or spectator, functionary or attendant…, we find ourselves incorporated in the narrative thread composed as an architectural combination of script and physical setting. A FATA L E X A M PL E It might be said that educational courses in creative writing teach their students, aspiring writers, about the architecture – the intellectual structure – of narrative. Many strategies are promulgated, for example on the storyplanner.com website. Such strategies, even from the time of Aristotle, advise the writer to structure a story according to particular factors, such as: the beginning – the entrance to the story, described under the ‘Take off your pants!’ outline on storyplanner.com as ‘What boots your character out of everyday reality?; the quest, ‘What makes your character seek his goal?’; reversal, ‘What happens to thwart your character?’; ‘What makes things (even) worse?’ before; the resolution or climax, ‘What happens in the final scenes… to reveal the theme of your story?’ The example top right illustrates how a real passage of architecture – the entrance to Dunnottar Castle on the east coast of Scotland – can frame a situation that can get pro­ gressively worse as each hurdle is overcome. It’s a narrative you amuse yourself with when you visit the castle, but histor­ ically it would have been fatal. The architect of this entrance intended to impose a narrative of death on attackers. Imagine yourself as one of a band of attackers. First you must run up a long steep stone stair (B; slippery in rain or ice) carrying your claymore and a shield (on your left arm), which will make you puff. As you approach the heavy reinforced timber door (A) at the top, you realise muskets are trained on you from loopholes to the right (C; so your left arm shield is of no use). In the unlikely event of evading the lead shot and braking down the reinforced door, you find D U N N O T TA R C A S T L E

The entrance to Dunnottar Castle on the east coast of Scotland frames a narrative of attack and defence. But, unlike a prescripted story, its ending would have been uncertain.

yourself facing the muzzles of two cannon (at D) ready to blow off your head. Trying to reach them to neutralise their threat you stumble on the irregular steps (E) and are promptly set upon by guards emerging from either side (G and G). Next is a narrow steep pathway up to the main castle atop a rocky headland surrounded by sea. If you make it that far (to F) you will find yourself pelted with heavy stones from above. All the creative writer’s key elements are present in this architecturally framed narrative. It could be a computer game. The story begins when you decide to launch yourself up the steep steps. Your quest is clear: to take the castle. Then begins a series of expected challenges – the steps, the reinforced door, the armed defenders… – and unexpected thwartings: the muskets to the right; the cannon trained on your head as you breach the door; the irregular steps; the hidden guards; the boulders from above… Each makes your situation worse and even worse… hopeless? You can picture it in an Indiana Jones movie directed by Steven Spielberg. Eventually, in your tourist imagination you achieve your goal, you reach the castle. But in the military reality of the past, with the defenders projecting their own narrative in opposition to yours, the outcome of the story would not have been subject to the authority of any pre-written script. 155

The Sound

d

e

c

lake

b

a

LO U I S I A N A A R T M U S E U M , D E N M A R K The plan of this building spins a storyline too, though rather more benign than the scary entrance to Dunnottar Castle on the previous page. When its architects, Jørgen Bo and Vil­ helm Wohlert, were invited to prepare its design they spent months walking the site, determining the narrative thread they would follow. Their client, Knud Jensen, had helped by stipulating three key episodes: the beginning should be the old existing house (a); there should be a gallery overlooking the lake (b); and the culmination should be the view across The Sound towards Sweden (c). Bo and Wohlert handled the transitions between each of these as accomplished architectural storytellers. The subjects of the story are land­ scape and art. You the visitor are the protagonist, the hero. The architecture lays down the script. As envisaged by Jensen, you are taken from the every­ day world by entering the old house (a). You wander through some of its rooms before being taken down a few steps and out into the landscape. Even so you are not then fully outside but in a sheltered glazed walkway – your guide. 156

This is the plan of the gallery in its 1958 form. It has been modified and extended at various times since, but the original storyline remains mainly intact.

After an angled right-hand turn, you see the path stretching ahead; but it is blocked by a white wall – a frame for a work of art. It draws you forward. When you reach it you see another right turn which orients your eyes to the land­ scape outside before a quick left, with the pathway again blocked in the distance by another wall framing an art work. It’s the same chicane again. But after this one you see a doorway ahead. Like all doorways, it invites, entices. Reach­ ing and passing through, you look left, over a double-height gallery (b) and glass wall to the beautiful lake. You go down the steps to the lower level to admire the view (and the Gia­ cometti sculptures). You have reached the heart of the story. But then the reversal. You are taken in and out of the landscape twice – into two top-lit galleries screened from the outside (c and d) – before you emerge into the final room (e) with its climactic view across the sea. * See also page 70 of Analysing Architecture: the Universal Language of

Place-Making, 2021.

Photographs of the museum are available at:

louisiana.dk/en/museum/architecture/ (Jan. 2023).

FA L L I NGWAT ER

157

FA L L I N G WA T E R the house over a water fall in r ural Pennsylvania FR A N K LLOY D W RIG HT, 193 3 – 6 In which we shall see that: •

architecture can begin with a detailed analysis of the places already apparent on the site…

•

but it also depends on the imposition of an architectural idea – the mind’s share;

•

one of the common ideas that introduces a counterpoint between architecture and Nature is geometry… in this case a square grid;

•

the grid creates a framework for spatial organisation – like the rhythmic beat of music;

•

but an architect might also intend to create a composition that is picturesque.

‘We start with the ground… The ground already has form. Why not begin to give at once by accepting that? Why not give by accepting the gifts of nature?… Is the ground sunny or the shaded slope of some hill, high or low, bare or wooded, triangular or square? Has the site features, trees, rocks, stream, or a visible trend of some kind? Has it some fault or special virtue, or several? In any and every case the character of the site is the beginning of the building that aspires to architecture.’

Frank Lloyd Wright – The Future of Architecture (1953), 1970.

T

axonometric

here is a story told that when Frank Lloyd Wright was given the commission for Fallingwater by Edgar Kauf­ mann he drew nothing for nine months (Robert McCarter – Fallingwater, 2002). Then he invited the client to see the design for his new weekend house, and proceeded to complete sketch drawings, from which the built house hardly deviated, in the two hours while Kaufmann was driving to see him. If this is true, it is evidence that Wright had gestated a clear architectural idea for how the house should be composed, and that what he did while his client was driving to see him was apply that idea, through drawing, as a mediator between the site and his brief (program) for a weekend house. Wright’s architectural idea, expressed in words, was: to identify a place for a fire on the rocks beside a waterfall; and to allow a house – composed of rectangular horizontal planes resembling formalised rock strata – to grow from that hearth,

158

in layers cantilevered over the water. This idea was Wright’s premise for a negotiation, played out on his drawing board, between: the conditions and opportunities provided by the site; the desires of his client’s brief for a place to live; and the discipline of his architectural idea. That is what an architect does: comes up with an idea by which the desires contained in a design brief might be recon­ ciled with their conditions, physical and otherwise. Ideas do not emerge automatically from brief nor from site, but from an architect’s imagination in response to either, neither or both. Some architecture is effective because it seems alien to its site. Some architecture has a submissive relationship with the site. And in some cases there is a harmonious relationship between the existing characteristics and features of a site and what an architectural idea adds to them (see the chapter ‘Temples and Cottages’ in Analysing Architecture).

rocky outcrop

roadway

old dry stone wall entrance

boulder ‘altar’ boulder

oak tree

rock ledge

Bear Run bridge waterfall

lower rock ledge

1 site

I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E; USI NG T H I NG S T H AT A R E T H E R E In architecture, the first decision is to choose a site. Some­ times while wandering through the countryside you encounter places – a clearing in the woods, a ledge of rock alongside a stream, a recess in a cliff face with a view of the sea – that seem to invite you to settle, if only for a moment. Whereas most parts of the countryside – pathways, open moors, beaches – tend to keep you moving, such settling places persuade you to stop. Maybe they do this by offering a sense of protection, enclosure, a refuge; maybe they are light, warmed by the sunshine; maybe they offer a viewpoint, from which to enjoy a prospect; or perhaps just a place to sit and rest. Recognising and inter-relating with such places is a fundamental act of architecture. Identification of place by recognition is a con­ ceptual seed from which architecture grows. The site on which Fallingwater was built (1) must have seemed such a place to Frank Lloyd Wright. In the way that you can make sense of it as a place to be, untouched except by the mind, it is a work of architecture in itself. Architecture as identification of place does not necessarily entail building (see FA L L I N G W AT E R

Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 19). With its composition of bridge, stream, waterfall, trees and rocks… this site is also reminiscent of a Japanese garden. Through his career Wright was influenced by Japanese architecture and garden design. (See Kevin Nute – Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, 1993.) This place in the woodland of south-west Pennsylvania has some key elements: first there is an almost horizontal rock ledge; across this slab of rock flows the river – Bear Run – which falls from the ledge as a waterfall. The river flows from under a bridge that leads onto an old roadway; the roadway runs along a rocky outcrop with a rough dry-stone wall between it and the rock ledge. On and immediately to the west of the rock ledge there are large boulders. The sun shines into this clearing surrounded by trees on the sloping sides of the river valley. One of the boulders stands like an altar near the centre of gravity of the rock ledge. Two trees stand as sentinels marking an entrance onto the ledge from the roadway. On the opposite bank of the river there is a lower rock ledge – a place from which to admire the waterfall with the site of Fallingwater as its backdrop. Not only is this site like a Japanese garden, it is a theatre too, with a stage – the upper rock ledge – ready for a (an architectural) performance. 159

entrance

hearth (on ‘altar’ boulder)

platform

2

Wright began his architectural performance with a camp-fire on the top of the altar boulder, making it into a hearth (2 above). This was the germ of the seed from which the rest of the house grew. The boulder provided the foundation for the focus of the house and for the chimney stack that would be its structural support and symbolic centre. Around this hearth Wright constructed artificial versions of the natural rock ledge – adding strata to the geology of the site – concrete slabs cantilevered out over the river. These slabs provide the horizontal surfaces for the living accommodation and the outdoor terraces of the house. From the main living floor, a suspended stair descends to a small platform just above the level of the water. Wright retained the two sentinel trees; the entrance into the house is between them. The rough dry stone wall at the back of the site is replaced with a series of fragmented walls. The last of these, rising with the slope of the roadway, butts up against another boulder. In these ways the house grows from and is tied into its site. GE OM E T RY; T E M PL E S A N D C O T TAGE S As is generally the case in Wright’s designs, the composition of Fallingwater in plan is governed by a regular grid, in this 160

case 5 foot by 5 foot. Wright takes the orientation of the grid from that of the bridge, which is approximately 15 degrees west of north (3). As part of the project the original wooden bridge was reconstructed 15 feet wide. A grid is powerful in mathematics and geography because points may be plotted on it and given coordinates – X and Y – i.e. identified by a precise location that can be defined by means of numbers (see Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 146). The grid is a device for making sense of space and ordering irregularity. In architecture a grid has more powers. Grids help architects make decisions about the location of and rela­ tionships between elements. By its regularity a grid lends design a graphic integrity (maybe comparable to the rhythmic integrity lent to a piece of music by its beat). On a site like this one by Bear Run it imposes an orthogonal layer, abstract and quintessentially human (intellectual), upon the irregular topography (Nature). It measures the world for the architect. It begins the process of adding a different kind of architecture to that which a mind recognises as already present in the found layout of a site. It adds a geometry that can be attuned to both the geometry of making and to the ideal geometry of squares and rectangles proportioned according to simple

hearth

3

and special ratios. If the ruler, or scale rule, is the architect’s equivalent of a magician’s wand (because both the rule and wand are instruments of power) then the grid is a prime agent of the ruler; it helps an architect perform magic. There are many, perhaps infinite, ways in which a grid might be used in laying out a plan. When great tracts of the flat lands of North America were laid out as real estate they were merely divided into rectangles (until the curvature of the earth disrupted this simple strategy). The Greek architect and city planner Hippodamus, when he laid out the city of Miletus (4, on the west coast of modern Turkey), imposed a regular grid on the irregular topography of a promontory, with the result that straight alleys pass up and down the hilly terrain. Something similar happens in Manhattan, New York. Wright, however, plays a different game. At Fallingwater the

Grids have been used to overlay architectural geometry on irregular landscape for thousands of years. They provide a matrix for spatial organisation, as when Hippodamus planned the city of Miletus in the fifth century BCE.

‘Kindergarten training… proved an unforeseen asset: for one thing, because later all my planning was devised on a properly proportional unit system. I found this would keep all to scale, ensure consistent proportion throughout the edifice, large or small, which thus became – like a tapestry – a consistent fabric woven of interdependent, related units, however various.’

Frank Lloyd Wright – ‘The New Architecture: Principles’ (‘The Modular of the Kindergarten Table’), from A Testament (1957), reprinted in Kaufmann and Raeburn – Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings, 1960.

FA L L I N G W AT E R

4 Miletus

161

kitchen

front door hearth

5

grid is there only as a ghost. Wright uses it selectively, to give his design discipline. You can see from the drawing above (5) that the hearth on its boulder occupies two of the squares in width but, according to the published drawings, not quite a full square in its depth. Some of the walls have one face on a grid line, others have the other; yet others are centred on a grid line. The entrance sequence occupies a zone two squares wide, and the front door of the house, with its three steps down, is one square wide. The extent of the terraces on this level are determined by grid lines, except the westernmost end seems to come on a half grid line. The stairs down to the water platform occupy one square’s width. The kitchen is three squares wide, and its doorway is positioned with its centre on a grid line. Another aspect of the way in which Wright uses the grid in this instance is that although it imposes discipline, he allows that discipline to interact with (rather than ignore) the topography. Hence the grid begins with the altar boulder and accommodates the hearth with its chimney stack. The staggered walls of the house along the roadway, whilst obeying the orthogonal grid, also relate to the line of the old dry-stone wall. The lines of the external walls step in right angles linking the house to its bridge, formalising the natural line of the 162

river bank. The cantilevered terraces stretch out to the very brink of the waterfall. The stairs descend to the middle of the

buttresses

6 section

river. Intellectual sense and discipline interplay with natural features. The architect is responding to opportunities at the same time as imposing order of his architectural idea. The result is a plan in which human-determined walls and natural features are in complex harmony (7); neither one nor the other prevails. The person – the inhabitant of this house – lives and moves within and around this subtle frame, adding their own geometry and movement.

structural rhythm

dining table

7 structural rhythm

8 elevation

The south elevation of Fallingwater (8) shows that the house has another rhythm to it, that of structure. Hidden in the shadows under the lowest slab there are some buttresses helping to support its outrageous cantilever (6 and 8). These FA L L I N G W AT E R

buttresses are spaced at two-and-a-half grid squares apart, i.e. 12 foot 6 inches. One centre line comes under the hearth (7), treating the altar boulder as a structural support for the chimney stack; the next is under the open space of the living 163

path up to guest house (built later)

bed

master bed bed

9 upper floor

study

10 top floor

164

area coinciding with that of the built-in dining table; a third lines up with the top of the stairs down to the water; and a fourth with the wall alongside the entrance. This structural rhythm, to continue the musical analogy, counterpoints that of the spatial grid of 5 foot squares. The result is a complex inter­ play of ideal geometry and natural topography. In Palladio’s Villa Rotonda (Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 144) the ideal geometry of the building is, apart from its orientation, independent of the setting. In Ernest Gimson’s Stoneywell Cottage (page 165 and Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 63) the building’s form is strongly influenced by its setting, though there is an interplay between the irregular topography and the building’s geometry of making. These two buildings represent the ‘temple’ and the ‘cottage’ type in terms of the different attitudes to setting they manifest. The distinction is not so easy to decide in the case of Fallingwater; it is both ‘temple’ and ‘cottage’ (or perhaps neither). The 5-foot-square grid disciplines the upper floors too (9 and 10). The floor plans are far from identical. Wright changes the layout radically on each level, though he does follow some rules in addition to adhering to the discipline of the orthogonal grid. For example: the chimney stack rises vertically through all floors, a datum and reference point for each; attached to the chimney stack is a tower containing the kitchen on the living level, a bedroom on the middle level, and the study on the top level; the rooms on all levels open to the south and sun; all have external terraces; all are screened from the roadway by the staggered and fragmented parallel walls. Otherwise, within these rules, the form of the house varies at each level like a formalised, geometrically regular, version of a geological rock formation.

11 Fallingwater

I N F LU E NC E S If the composition of Fallingwater is simplified into its component planes (11) it is easy to see its relation to 1920s Neoplastic ideas as expressed, for example, in Theo van Doesburg’s spatial studies (see page 43) or Gerrit Rietveld’s Schröder House in Utrecht, Netherlands (12). Fallingwater is less abstract than van Doesburg’s studies. It is more tied into the world. Its planes to the south emphasise the horizontal strata of the rocks and of human movement; they open to the sun. Fallingwater is also more thoroughly three-dimensional than the Schröder House; in the latter the planes seem like scales attached to a box, whereas in Wright’s design the planes stretch right through the building, vertically as well as hori­ zontally, and out into the landscape. The Neoplasticists were influenced by the publication of a portfolio of Wright’s designs in Berlin in 1911 – available as ‘Wasmuth Portfolio’ volumes 1 and 2 on the Internet at the University of Utah’s Marriot FA L L I N G W AT E R

12 Rietveld’s Schröder House, 1924

13 Ward Willits House, 1901

165

13 (repeated)

14 A Welsh farmhouse with a central chimney stack.

Library: lib.utah.edu/portal/site/marriottlibrary/ (Jan. 2023). This included his designs for the Prairie Houses such as the Ward Willits House (13) and the Robie House (page 96) so it could be argued that, in Fallingwater, Wright was influenced by a European development of his own earlier architectural ideas. The projecting planes of Fallingwater are clearly a development from those of the Robie House, though more complex and site-related. The idea of the central hearth has poetic connotations – emphasising the idea of home. It also refers to traditional architecture, maybe even that of Wales (14), from which Wright claimed ancestry.*

But perhaps the most significant influences in Fallingwater are those Wright acquired from Japan. As Kevin Nute has shown (Nute, 1993), these influenced Wright’s architecture throughout his career; and Wright lived in Tokyo from 1916 to 1922. It is from Japan that Wright acquired the idea of inbetween space (discussed in the analysis of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House on page 82) as exemplified in the terraces and overhanging roofs of the Prairie Houses and of Fallingwater. It was in Japan that Wright saw subtle interplay

15

16

17

18

‘Thin mist shelves’, similar to the way in which mist is depicted in traditional Japanese painting.

* See Jonathan Adams – The Architecture of Defiance, 2022.

166

between the regularity of human constructions and the irreg­ ularity and changefulness of Nature. This is evident in the relationship between Fallingwater and its site, as discussed earlier in this analysis, and in the way that the irregular top of the altar boulder, which is the hearth of the living space, penetrates through the floor like an island through the sur­ face of water. This device is reminiscent of Japanese Zen rock gardens and of the introduction of gnarled pieces of timber into otherwise regular Japanese rooms (15, from Morse, 1886). Japanese designers also played with compositions of hori­ zontal planes, as in the so-called ‘usu kasumi dana’ or ‘thin mist shelves’ and small garden bridges (17 and 18, also from Morse). Fallingwater is a bridge that stretches across Bear Run but does not touch the other side. Perhaps Wright also thought of it as early morning mist caught between the sides of the narrow valley. Certainly he was striving to achieve the sensitivity to human aesthetic sensibility and wit, and their relation to Nature evident in traditional Japanese architecture (16, and the Mongyo-tei, right; see also page 10). Traditionally Japanese architects and garden designers were interested in creating pleasing compositions that could be viewed either through the rectangular openings of build­ ings or from particular viewpoints. At Fallingwater Wright had steps specially cut to provide a way down to the lower rock ledge on the other side of Bear Run. The classic photographs of the house are taken from this point (see the image on the title page of this analysis, page 157). It was as if Wright was standing back to admire his own work in its setting, and offering others an opportunity to do so too.

Mongyo-tei elevation

The Mongyo-tei (right, and page 10) does not look like Fallingwater; but it does share some architectural ideas with the house cantilevered over Bear Run thousands of miles away in Pennsylvania. Whether or not Frank Lloyd Wright saw this particular tea-house when he was in Japan, it displays some ideas he too used in siting and designing Fallingwater: • • • • • •

it projects over water (straddling land and lake); it is approached over a bridge; it is designed as place from which to appreciate the surroundings; it is designed to be looked at from various vantage points, including the bridges and a rock ledge (x); it is designed with the help of geometric grids; it incorporates irregular (natural) elements, boulders, trees…

The aim, in both Fallingwater and Japanese traditional architecture, is to achieve a synergy between that which is contributed by the human mind and that which is contributed by Nature to achieve a composition that neither could do on its own. It is a conception of architecture that benefits just as much from dappled sunlight flickering through spring green leaves and the sound of troubled water as from the neat geometry of a building’s form and the precision and craftsmanship of its construction. In the grandest sense, this is a conception of architecture that presents human beings and Nature in aesthetic collaboration.

FA L L I N G W AT E R

x

Mongyo-tei site plan

167

C ONC LUSION (201 5) Both Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion and the Farnsworth House are more contextu­ ally sensitive than they are sometimes made out to be. But even so they can be seen to stand aloof from their sur­ roundings, each in its own abstract bubble – in the world but separate from it. The relationship between Fallingwa­ ter and its setting is, even though it too seems abstract in form, more integrated with Nature. Its bubble is penetrated not only by the craggy boulder that emerges through its floor as the base of the hearth, but also by the ever-present roar of the water falling over the edge of the rocky ledge. As mentioned above, this integra­ tion with Nature is born of an attitude which Wright probably acquired from Japan. It is an attitude he did not always have the opportunity to apply. It is not evident in all his buildings but is strongly so in this house, which is widely regarded as his best… or at least his most well-known and popular. The attitude, which should be added to those explicitly discussed in the chapter ‘Temples and Cottages’ (Analysing Architecture, 2021, pages 277–90) does not see the mind and Nature as opponents, contesting agen­ cies vying for dominion, but as col­ laborators, each contributing to the ever-developing whole, each content to work with and exploit to best advantage what the other contributes. Fallingwater may not be as sen­ sitive and subtle, nor as incrementally responsive, as some of the great Jap­ anese tea-houses that have matured over the centuries in their symbiotic relationships with the gardens in which they sit. But realising their influence on Wright gives insight into what he sought to achieve. And that attitude – of symbiotic and incremental evolution, involving mind and Nature – remains a high, if tantalising, aspiration. 168

This is the picturesque composition of the perspective drawing Wright chose to display behind himself when he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine on January 17, 1938. The composition is influenced by Japanese painting. Irrespective of the house’s other characteristics, it shows how important the framed view of the house’s threedimensional form in relation to its dramatic setting was to Wright.

2 02 3 It is not an idea usually associated with descriptions of architecture of the first half of the twentieth century. It’s more associated with landscape architecture of the eighteenth and nineteenth. But Fallingwater can quite readily be described as picturesque. When asked in what situation this famous house most puts the person, the answer has to be the situation of spectator. Fallingwater is an architectural performance on a stage. Whatever other factors Wright took into account in his design, he clearly considered its picture-framed appearance from outside particularly important. The images (many by Marion Mahony Griffin) in his 1911 ‘Wasmuth Portfolio’ show that he had always considered the picturesque composition of his designs important. In relation to Fallingwater he tried a series of perspective drawings from different viewpoints before deciding on which was the best (above). And as noted previously, he ensured steps were carved in the rock down to the rocky shelf from which that best (most picturesque) view of the house could be had (admired). Put briefly, the picturesque approach to design places importance on how the result will look as a picture. Some denigrate such an approach as superficial, more concerned with remote appearances than with engaged experience. With regard to painting, John Ruskin, the eminent nineteenth-century critic, called it ‘the degradation of Contemplative Landscape’.* The picturesque approach in archi­ tecture certainly has the effect of casting the person as a spectator of form rather than an involved ingredient of place. But it is nowadays an approach that feeds the visual priorities of photograph and computer-image oriented media. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theorists of the Picturesque movement in art and architecture (explored in Christopher Hussey’s book The Picturesque, 1927) argued that its appeal derived from two principal factors: the ‘beautiful’ and the ‘sublime’: the former dependent on softness, light, colour, prettiness… and considered formal composition; the latter on the ruggedness, drama, even the sense of threat and foreboding provided by grand wild Nature. These can be said to apply to Fallingwater’s picturesqueness too. The woodland setting in sunlight is beautiful; the roaring torrent sublime.

V IL L A SAVOY E

169

V I L L A S AV O Y E a house in the Poissy subur b of Par is, Franc e LE CO R BUSIER , 1929

In which we shall see that: • architecture can derive from

ancient precedents but be

reinvented to be quintessentially

Modern;

• architecture (as seen in previous

case studies) can draw out a

route; Le Corbusier called it an

‘architectural promenade’;

• in this case the route runs

between ground and sky, from

shadow to sunlight, from the

everyday to the transcendent,

from animal to superman, from

human to god;

• architecture can be a

manifestation of, a proposition

about, our place in the scheme of

things – the world, Nature, the

universe, the gods.

‘That house looks as though it hated the ground, with vast vanity trying to rise superior to it regardless of nature, depending on a detachment called “classical” for such human values as habit and association of ideas could give to it.’

Frank Lloyd Wright – The Future

of Architecture (1953), 1970.

T

he Villa Savoye, though much photographed, was not conceived to be picturesque. Le Corbusier had other ideas on his mind, to do with our potentially transcendent relationship with the world. In the quotation above, which occupies the space of one of the ellipses in the quotation at the beginning of the anal­ ysis of Fallingwater (page 158), Frank Lloyd Wright was not specifically referring to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye but to the American Colonial house. Wright wanted to cultivate the idea of an American architecture rooted in American ground in contrast to an architecture imposed by colonial powers. It was a matter of asserting independence and identity. Even so, it is tempting to suggest that Wright was also taking a swipe at his main rival for the title of ‘greatest architect of the twentieth century’ – Le Corbusier – whose Villa Savoye, in contrast to Fallingwater’s strong relationship to its topography, stands aloof from the ground on columns called pilotis. 170

The difference between the two architects’ attitudes to the ground – exemplified in Wright’s Fallingwater and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye – neatly highlights one of the quandaries of architecture: should architecture be something that human beings impose on the world – an expression of human transcendence over Nature – or should it be responsive to what the world offers – a symbiotic interplay with provi­ dence? It is not a quandary that requires a definitive answer. Architecture through thousands of years has been produced according to either attitude, with many nuanced variations. (I have discussed this at more length in the chapter on ‘Temples and Cottages’ in Analysing Architecture.) For example… the Villa Savoye does have a fireplace; but it is far from being a dominant core element founded on a natural boulder as it is in Fallingwater. It is, by contrast,

a small brick box with a concrete lid and a tube-like flue. Differences such as these – aloofness or engagement with the ground, and the importance of the hearth – suggest, symbolise, or may be interpreted as representing different views about our relationship with the world. Architecture is philosophical. It makes propositions about how to make sense of, and how to relate to, the world. Sometimes such propositions are instilled in buildings unthinkingly, as in most traditional architecture when things are done in the ways they always have been. Sometimes architects are conscious of the philosophical dimensions and potential of what they do, and contrive their propositions as political or social arguments. We are perhaps used to thinking of philosophy as something that is done with words; architects (whether formally trained and professionally accredited or not) do it with space and matter, by framing and organising places for life. For Frank Lloyd Wright in Fallingwater the challenge of architecture lay in finding a symbiotic relationship with the landscape, exploiting the rocks and waterfalls that were already there. For Le Corbusier in the Villa Savoye it lay in transcending, rising above the land to make a place apart. I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E Nowadays the Villa Savoye stands in a field isolated from the wider landscape by a ring of trees that also screens adjacent buildings (1). When it was built the house stood in open meadow on the top of a gentle hill and visible from all around. In 1911, eighteen years before the Villa Savoye was built, Le Corbusier had travelled through eastern Europe to Turkey, and then returned home through Greece and Italy. The trip was his equivalent of the Grand Tour undertaken by wealthy British gentlemen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Great buildings – Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Parthenon in Athens, the Pantheon in Rome and the remains of Pompeii… – made a deep impression on him and gave him ideas for his own work. He recorded what he saw in a series of personal notebooks (see Le Corbusier, 1987, 2002). Although

lodge

1

V I L L A S AVOY E

2 The Acropolis, Athens (after Le Corbusier)

the setting of the Villa Savoye is less dramatic and less craggy, and although its appearance was starkly original for its time, it seems clear that Le Corbusier was influenced in its design by his encounter with the Parthenon. In the sketchbook Le Corbusier used in Athens there is a drawing of the Acropolis showing the Parthenon (the main temple) and the Propylaea (the gateway) with the small temple of Nike Apteros which stands like a sentinel at the entrance to the temenos (sacred enclosure). My copy of Le Corbusier’s drawing is above (2). Redrawing it, what he seems to have wanted to record was: the elevation of the temples above the everyday world around; the regular geometry of the buildings against the irregularity of the craggy rock and scrubby vege­ tation; the bright whiteness of the marble temples against the blue sky and the play of sunlight and shadows in and amongst their geometric masses; and the grandeur of a transcendent realm – the world of the gods, superior beings. In Vers une architecture (1923; translated as Towards a New Architecture in 1927) Le Corbusier illustrated the Parthenon in a chapter entitled ‘Architecture: Pure Creation of the Mind’. He wrote of the temple’s Doric order: ‘We must realize clearly that Doric architecture did not grow in the fields with the asphodels, and that it is a pure creation of the mind.’ In the same chapter he included another of the drawings from his sketchbook (which I have redrawn at 3, next page). It shows the Parthenon on the Acropolis silhouetted against a distant view of the sea. This drawing is less about recording a particular scene and more about recording the realisa­ tion of an idea. As suggested in the quotation on the Doric, architecture was a medium in which the human mind could break free of Nature – to rise into the realm of the gods. This drawing shows the temple as a representation of the human intellect, towering over an unformed world. The Villa Savoye stands like a temple in its temenos. It even has its own little temple of Nike Apteros – the gardener’s lodge which Le Corbusier positioned alongside the entrance onto the site (see 1). In Volume 1, 1910–29, of his Œuvre 171

3 The Acropolis, Athens (after Le Corbusier)

complète there is a drawing (redrawn at 4) illustrating the image of the house in Le Corbusier’s mind. Its caption reads ‘La villa est entourée d’une ceinture de futaies’ (‘The villa is surrounded by a belt of mature trees’). Though the Villa Savoye does not have the benefit of the same majestic setting as the Parthenon, there is a clear link between the way in which Le Corbusier imagined his design and his memory of the Greek temple in its landscape. The villa stands on a hill. It is a pure geometric form set in irregular Nature and lit by the sun. It has columns, and establishes a place above the world. S T R AT I F IC AT ION The Villa Savoye, like the Parthenon on its Acropolis, is an architecture of levels. ‘Acropolis’ means ‘high city’, the sacred precinct above the ordinary everyday city. There are hierarchical levels in the architecture of the temple too (5). The superstructure of the temple is lifted off the ground by a platform, the stylobate; this was the level of the priests. On the stylobate stand the columns which support the entabla­ ture, the lintels spanning from column to column. The upper part of the entablature is divided by the triglyphs (thought to represent the ends of beams as they would have appeared in ancient timber temples) into panels containing deep relief sculpture – the metopes. The Parthenon metopes depict bat­ tles between lapiths and centaurs (heroes versus creatures that were half man half horse), i.e. between civilisation and barbarism. Around the inner wall of the Parthenon there was

4 Villa Savoye perspective (after Le Corbusier)

172

5

also a carved frieze (for now in the British Museum in London) depicting the soldiers lost in a battle against the Persians in the fifth century BCE. With its lapiths and soldiers the entablature represents the level of the heroes. At the ends of the temple above the entablature are the pediments. These contain sculptures of the gods and were the highest in the hierarchy represented by the levels of the temple. The Villa Savoye has a comparable stratification (6). It has no stylobate, only the gravel drive out of which the columns rise. This is the level of the motor car, the entrance and the servants. Above that, supported on the columns like an entablature, is the box containing the main living areas. With its long horizontal window like the row of metopes on the temple, this is the level of the heroes (the residents). Above that is the roof garden/solarium, the equivalent of the temple’s pediment. This is the level at which the residents are closest to the sky and the sun; the level at which they aspire to the status of gods. Le Corbusier sketched the section of the house. (I have redrawn his sketch at 7 opposite.) He shows the house with

gods

heroes servants

6

four levels: the solarium; the level of habitation; the pilotis level which belongs to the motor car; and a fourth level below ground, the cellar or cave. Between these he draws a squiggle representing a spiral stair that stretches from underground to the roof garden. He also draws a ramp from the ground level to the first floor. If we accept that, like the Greek temple, the Villa Savoye is a layering of different states of being, then this section includes the level of the cave – the cellar.* The house may be interpreted as a representation of the ascent of human beings from darkness to light, from the primitive to sophisticated civilisation and upwards to the divine, from (to borrow a phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883–5) ‘animal to superman’. Le Corbusier was of course not the only architect in his­ tory to explore the idea that architecture, as a product of the intellect, transcends the natural world, and that architecture can layer, vertically, different states of being. Andrea Palladio expressed the same in his Villa Rotonda (8) which, in a way similar to the Villa Savoye, stands on top of a mounded hill (outside Vicenza in north Italy) surveying the countryside all around. The lowest layer of this house was for the servants (the underclass) and menial activities too. The main floor was for those who thought of themselves as superior, noble. And the dome represented the heavens above – the realm of the gods. In Palladio’s design this divine level was inaccessible to humans; but not in the Villa Savoye. For Le Corbusier the uppermost level represented humanity’s aspiration, its destiny. I DE A L GE OM E T RY (‘R E GU L AT I NG L I N E S ’ ) Le Corbusier devoted a chapter of Towards a New Architec­ ture to what he called ‘regulating lines’ (1927, pages 65–83). Clearly, the idea that architectural composition should be governed by geometry was an idea from neoclassical design that Le Corbusier did not reject. The composition of the Villa Savoye is replete with ‘regulating lines’ and allusions to (rather V I L L A S AVOY E

The stratification of the Villa Savoye may be compared to that of the Parthenon. The residents live at the equivalent of the entablature, the level of the heroes. Rising to the solarium on the roof they aspire to the status of gods.

solarium

habitation pilotis

cave 7 (after Le Corbusier)

This sketch of the section of the Villa Savoye is also a diagram of the ascent of human beings from the cave to the heights of aspiration, from ‘animal to superman’.

gods

nobles (heroes)

servants 8

The section through the Villa Savoye is also comparable to that of Palladio’s Villa Rotonda. It too has three levels: that of the underclass; that of the heroes on the piano nobile; and that of the gods above. * There is a comparable stratification in the house Le Corbusier designed for his parents on the bank of Lac Léman at Vevey in Switzerland in 1923. (See my ebook Villa Le Lac, Le Corbusier, available for iPad from Apple Books.) The earlier house has no pilotis. But it does have cellar below, and a roof deck above the living level, where you can imagine yourself as the divinely protected Odysseus on the deck of his ship peering out across the water…

173

9

10

11

13

12

than imitations of) historic precedent. The underlying geom­ etries architects use in their designs is notoriously difficult to pin down (and some might argue that they constitute a private game in any case) but it is usually clear that ideal geometries are present. Some apparent in the Villa Savoye are shown on this page and opposite; others are included in Analysing Architecture (2021, page 155). Intriguingly, the entrance elevation of the Villa Savoye fits quite neatly into that of the Parthenon (9). Both are based on two √2 rectangles placed side by side (11). The end eleva­ tions of the Parthenon can also be interpreted as a cat’s cradle of Golden Section rectangles (10). In the Villa Savoye the sides of the panel in which the doorway is set seem to be determined by a Golden Section rectangle too (11), though there does not 174

14

seem to be a nest of them as in the Parthenon. Le Corbusier seems to have used geometric strategies of his own (12) The plans are clearly organised according to the four-by­ four square grid of columns (13 and 14), though as shown in Analysing Architecture (2021, page 175) the columns deviate from the discipline of the grid for practical reasons around the ramp at the centre of the plan and inside the garage. The north–south dimension of the middle floor is, however, slightly longer. The overhang is determined by a √2 rectan­ gle (15). On the ground floor the position of the start of the

17 roof

15 middle

ramp seems to be determined by the square inside a Golden Section rectangle drawn between one end of the building and the other (16). And the size of the courtyard on the middle floor, together with the width of the ramp and the positions of various of the screen walls on the roof, seem determined also by √2 and Golden Section rectangles (17). This brief analysis does not exhaust the various ways in which Le Corbusier ordered the Villa Savoye according to ideal geometry. The use of ideal geometry is one aspect of the way in which, for Le Corbusier, architecture could be considered to represent the potential of the human intellect to transcend Nature. MODI F Y I NG E L E M E N T: T I M E For Le Corbusier the two principal modifying elements of architecture were light (together with its partner, shadow*) and time. He had appreciated the contribution to architecture of both these elements in the ancient buildings he visited during his 1911 travels. He wrote about light in the houses of Pompeii: ‘The Pompeian did not cut up his wall-spaces; he was devoted to wall-spaces and loved light. Light is intense when it falls between walls which reflect it. The ancients built walls, walls which stretch out and meet to amplify the wall. In this way they created volumes, which are

16 ground

V I L L A S AVOY E

* See the chapter ‘Le Corbusier, Architect of Shadows’ in Shadow (2020) in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

175

18 House of the Tragic Poet.

19

the basis of architectural and sensorial feeling. The light bursts on you, by a definite intention, at one end and illuminates the walls. The impression of light is extended outside by cylinders (I hardly like to say columns, it is a worn-out word), peristyles of pillars. The floor stretches everywhere it can, uniformly and without irregularity… There are no other architectural elements internally: light, and its reflection in a great flood by the walls and floor, which is really a horizontal wall.’* He wrote about the axis as extent in time rather than the means of balancing a visual composition: ‘An axis is perhaps the first human manifestation; it is the means of every human act. The toddling child moves along an axis, the man striving in the tempest of life traces for himself an axis. The axis is the regulator of architecture. To establish order is to begin to work. Architecture is based on axes.’** And again he used an example from Pompeii, the House of the Tragic Poet (18), the plan of which he sketched: ‘The axis here is not an arid thing of theory; it links together the main volumes which are clearly stated and differentiated one from another.’*** If the House of the Tragic Poet had been built strictly according to a straight axis its main spaces would have been arranged something like as shown in 19. The actuality is more complex and subtle. Le Corbusier suggests it is richer because it incorporates the axis of movement of the person rather than obeying the mindless authority of a geometric rule. In 19 the loosely related axes of the main spaces are shown alongside a couple of possible routes through the house. * Le Corbusier – Towards a New Architecture (1923), 1927, pages 185–6.

** ibid. page 187.

*** ibid. page 189.

176

21 middle

20 ground

The Villa Savoye is a version of the House of the Tragic Poet, though the axis of movement runs from ground to roof rather than from front to back. The villa has, like the Pompeian house, a geometric axis around which a route – an architectural promenade – meanders (20, 21, 22). Like the Pompeian house the route has a beginning and an end. Like in the Pompeian house there are different possible routes around the axis. In the Villa Savoye the main axis is represented by the ramp at the centre of the plan. This is the datum to which the route always returns.

Erechtheion

Parthenon

22 roof

Le Corbusier’s realisation that architecture involved experience of time also came from his admiration of the Parthenon on the Acropolis. In ancient Athens this compo­ sition of buildings was built around a processional route that passed through the Agora at the base of the hill, up a ramped approach to the Propylaea (gateway) and into the temenos (sacred precinct). Then it ran alongside the Parthenon (the main temple) before turning at its eastern end to stand before its doorway and the goddess inside (23). The arrangement at the Villa Savoye, if not so grand, is comparable (24). As you go through the gateway you pass the lodge that stands alongside like the small temple of Nike Apteros on the Acropolis. The trees with their trunks like columns stand in place of the Propylaea. The pathway leads into the ‘sacred precinct’ of the Villa Savoye – the meadow encircled by its belt of trees. Then you pass alongside and under the ‘temple’ – the house itself – to reach the doorway at the far end.

Propylaea

Nike Apteros Agora 23 Acropolis, Athens

MODI F Y I NG E L E M E N T: L IGH T lodge

Le Corbusier designed the Villa Savoye to show that he was a Pompeian in his love of light too. He described* another house in Pompeii, the ‘Casa del Noce’ (sic; actually Casa del Nozze d’Argento – House of the Silver Wedding; see page 180): ‘Again the little vestibule which frees your mind from the street. And then you are in the Atrium; four columns in the middle (four cylinders) shoot up towards the shade of the roof, giving a feeling of force and a witness of potent methods; but at the far end is the brilliance of the garden seen through the peristyle which spreads out this V I L L A S AVOY E

24 * Le Corbusier – Towards a New Architecture (1923), 1927, page 183.

177

street (light)

sunlight

fauces (shadow)

sunlight

atrium (light)

tablinum (shadow)

peristyle (light)

exedra (shadow)

25 section through a typical Pompeian house

light with a large gesture, distributes it and accentuates it, stretching widely from left to right, making a great space. Between the two is the Tablium (sic), contracting this vision like the lens of a camera. On the right and on the left two patches of shade – little ones. Out of the clatter of the swarming street which is for every man and full of picturesque incident, you have entered the house of a Roman. What was the function of these rooms? That is outside the question. After twenty centuries, without any historical reference, you are conscious of Architecture.’ Something similar happens in all typical Pompeian houses (25). The house takes you from the street into a nar­ row shaded passage (fauces). This leads to the atrium which is lit from the sky and has a small pool (impluvium) to catch rain. This is where visitors would be met and children play. In the distance and through the tablinum is a sunlit peristyle garden with a fish pond. And at the end of the house there is a secluded sitting alcove (exedra). Other rooms (cubicula) were ranged around these axially linked courtyards. In the Villa Savoye (26) the building takes you in under its shade into a hallway with a low ceiling. The ramp (ramp 1 in 26) takes you up to the first floor. The route becomes pro ­ gressively lighter as you rise alongside the glazed wall to the first-floor courtyard on your left. You reach a landing, with the stair spiralling back down to the ground floor and up to

window

sunlight

solarium

ramp 2

saloon

shadow

the roof (solarium). When you pass through the doorway into the saloon you are in the realm of sunlight; it streams through large glass sliding doors. Through those glass doors there is the courtyard provided with a fixed table and its own windows through the perimeter wall of the upper floor (which are visible in the perspective drawing on the title page of this analysis). This courtyard, on the first floor, is a living room without a roof. It is open to the sky, and most importantly to the sun. The route continues from the courtyard up the ramp (ramp 2 in 26) to the roof where, in the solarium, you can submit yourself completely and, because of the screen walls provided, as nakedly as you were born, to the sun (the provider of life and health). At the top of the ramp is another fixed concrete table, again provided with its own window approximately over the Villa Savoye’s front door. It is as if Le Corbusier has treated the house as an architectural piece of music, finding reso­ lution by bringing listeners back to where they started, but transformed by the experience. This window, between one outside and another, seems surreal. It is a reference back to a similar composition of fixed table and window that Le Corbusier provided in the garden of the Villa Le Lac (28 and

courtyard

hallway

shadow

ramp 1

26 section through Villa Savoye

The Villa Savoye frames a transition from shadow to sunlight comparable with that of an eighteenth-century grand house (left). 178

27 section through House of Dun

sunlight

29

28 ‘l’échelle humaine’ (human scale)

29 above; previously mentioned in the note on page 173). There the window and table identify the garden as living room, as much part of the architecture of the house as any of the internal rooms. The window also manages the view of the dramatic mountains across the lake. Le Corbusier did not have such powerful scenery in the western suburbs of Paris, but the window on the roof of the Villa Savoye does similar things: it establishes the solarium as a room (external but internal to the architecture) and manages the view. The route vertically through the Villa Savoye is compa­ rable to that already mentioned (in the analysis of Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux, page 141) found in country houses of the eighteenth century, where visitors were taken from outside into shade and then into sunshine to give a good impression of the privileged place where the host lived (27, opposite). In the case of Le Corbusier, this device – the use of architectural composition to take the person on a journey of experience – is usually known as an ‘architectural promenade’. It was used a few years later, with the addition of narrative allusion, by Terragni in his design for the Danteum (see pages 147–156). But as the examples of the Acropolis in Athens and the Roman house in Pompeii suggest, this particular architectural device is not original to the twentieth century. Light and its relations with time has always been an element of architecture: at least since the Egyptians built ceremonial routes leading to their pyramids and ancient Britons arranged their henges to mark the passing of the seasons.

C ONC LUSION (201 5): T H E ROL E OF I DE A S It is arguable that the essential characteristic of the move­ ment in architecture of which Le Corbusier was a leading protagonist – usually called Modernism – was a rejection of the established ways of doing things, especially in Europe. It was about having new ideas, reinventing architecture. Le V I L L A S AVOY E

The garden window at Villa Le Lac, which Le Corbusier used to identify the garden as a living room and to manage the view of mountains across Lac Léman. (An analysis of Villa Le Lac is available in an ebook of that name available for iPad on Apple Books.)

Corbusier made the point himself in Towards a New Archi­ tecture (1927, page 179), contrasting what he thought should happen in architectural design with what had been happening in one of the most esteemed French schools of architecture of the time: ‘To make a plan is to determine and fix ideas. It is to have had ideas. It is so to order these ideas that they become intelligible, capable of execution and communicable. It is essential therefore to exhibit precise intention, and to have had ideas in order to be able to furnish oneself with an intention. A plan is to some extent a summary like an analytical contents table. In a form so condensed that it seems as clear as crystal and like a geometric figure, it contains an enormous quantity of ideas and the impulse of intention. In a great public institution, the École des Beaux Arts, the principles of good planning have been studied, and then as time has gone by, dogmas have been established, and recipes and tricks. A method of teaching useful enough at the beginning has become a dangerous practice.’ Stated in these terms Modernism was a negative or con­ tradictory (even subversive) movement. It rejected established ways in favour of freedom. And with that freedom architects were presented with the challenge of generating new ideas. The Villa Savoye is a symbol of that freedom. It is so unlike a house. In his book Précisions (page 136) Le Cor­ busier wrote: ‘The visitor moves about the house, wondering how it all works, finding it hard to understand the reasons for what he sees and feels; he finds nothing of what is generally known as a “house”. He senses that he is in something else, something quite different. And I do not think he finds it uninteresting.’ The villa also shows Le Corbusier’s ability to generate ideas. But he did not design in a vacuum. He did not sit with 179

a blank sheet of paper and think ‘I must come up with an original idea’. In the challenging spirit of Modernism he did it by taking established ideas and reinterpreting them, sometimes coming up with novel combinations, sometimes turning them on their head. His ‘Five Points for a New Architecture’, published in his own magazine L’Esprit Nouveau in 1926, are a case in point (right). Le Corbusier did various drawings to show how a new architecture could be generated by the use of: 1. pilotis; 2. flat roofs with gardens; 3. free plans; 4. free façades; and 5. horizontal strip windows. They were all made possible, he wrote, by the (French) invention of reinforced concrete (béton armé). The Villa Savoye, built a few years later, follows these principles broadly. Le Corbusier’s ‘Five Points’ are presented as contradic­ tions of the orthodox ways of doing things. The new way of doing things is presented as having the benefits of ‘economy, hygiene and freedom of movement’ instead of ‘unhealthi­ ness, inefficien(cy) and waste’, but it is achieved by inverting the established ways of doing things. Orthodox houses have solid ground floors on substantial foundations: Le Corbusier gets rid of the ground floor. Orthodox houses do not have gardens on their roofs: Le Corbusier plants trees on the roof. Orthodox houses have small or vertical windows: Le Corbusier demands long horizontal strip windows. Orthodox houses have structurally ordered elevations and plans divided by structural walls into rooms: Le Corbusier suggests free ele­ vations and free plans (free, that is, of their structural roles). The resulting ideas are seductive (perhaps because of their subversive novelty). Le Corbusier argued that each of the proposals in the ‘Five Points’ would be for the betterment of architecture. Garden space for growing and enjoyment would be doubled rather than subtracted; views would be opened, internal daylighting enhanced; practical arrangements optimised…

NEW (good) OLD (bad)

The first point was that a grid of reinforced concrete columns (pilotis), integral with floor and roof slabs, frees walls of their structural role so they can define spaces in new ways.

The second and third were: that pilotis would allow space to flow under a building; and that flat roofs could have gardens on them, replacing the ground area occupied by the building.

The fourth point was that reinforced concrete columned structure frees the elevation from its structural role too, allowing new patterns of fenestration.

And the fifth was that those new patterns could include horizontal band windows, which would even out the lighting in an interior (below) as well as broaden views of the outside world.

2 02 3 Le Corbusier was counted (and counted himself as) a hero. Perhaps even more seductive for other architects than the actual ‘Five Points’ was the notion that architecture could be reinvented and that orthodoxy should henceforth be anathema. A corollary of this was that architects should see themselves as purveyors of original invention rather than of conventional wisdom. The seductiveness of this idea is one of the reasons why the present book is as it is; why its case studies are so plural in their underlying ideologies for design. (Compare our contemporary desire for novelty with the adherence to convention evident in the first-century CE Pompeian houses on page 182.) 180

‘The Five Points for a New Architecture’ (after Le Corbusier)

The above drawings are based on Le Corbusier’s own as presented in the 1910–1929 volume of his Œuvre Complète. We can read each of the points as a subversion of conventional ways of doing things presented as offering supposedly novel benefits for our inhabitation of architecture. Not all were novel, nor did they always prove as beneficial as promised: piloti-supported under­ crofts can be gloomy; flat roofs can leak; large areas of glazing can cause solar overheating and/or excessive heat loss…

The Villa Savoye was rarely occu­ pied as a house. It has become a desti­ nation for students of architecture, a museum of architectural ideas. Le Corbusier wanted his ideas to be original, especially in regard to the historicist (Beaux-Arts) styles of archi­ tecture prevalent at the time. But seen globally, those ideas can be found, often used more appropriately/successfully, in timeless traditional architectures responding to various climatological conditions across the world (right). But it has been the desire for sub­ version that has been taken up by later generations of architects. Subversion of the Modernist conventions that derived from Le Corbusier’s own subversion of the prevalent (Beaux-Arts) conventions of his time is, for example, evident in other buildings analysed in the present book, such as Eisenman’s House VI (below left) and Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux (below middle) as well as, for that matter, in the latter-day subversion of Beaux-Arts conventions evident in Robert Venturi’s Mother’s House (pages 126–9) and Eric Owen Moss’s The Box (below right). This is the strategy (of subverting the prevailing tradition) that appeals to some architects in pursuit of fame.

Lifting Queensland houses up on stumps clears them of flooding, snakes and termite attack, as well as creating a cool shady living space beneath.

And it seems plausible that Le Corbusier got the idea of horizontal band windows from the traditional houses he sketched in Anatolia.

Eisenman’s House VI (see also pages 130–2)

Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux (pages 137–46)

Moss’s The Box (see pages 133–4)

V I L L A S AVOY E

The free planning made possible by unburdening walls of their structural role is evident in this timeless traditional mud house in Kerala, India. (See page 262.)

Roof terraces, sometimes shaded, have been used to catch cooling breezes in the hot climates of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East since ancient times.

(after Le Corbusier) See Enis Kortan – Turkish Architecture and Urbanism through the Eyes of L.C., 2010.

181

H O U S E O F T H E S I LV E R W E D D I N G , P O M PE I I , c . 3 0 0 B C E , 4 0 – 3 0 B C E The House of the Silver Wedding was named after a royal anniversary at the time of its discovery in 1893. It occupies the northern corner of Insula 2.2 of Regio V, close to the unexcavated portion of Pompeii. It is the house Le Corbus­ ier referred to as ‘Casa del Noce’ (see page 177). Here are some architectural observations. The insula (city block) does not have the regular geom­ etry that would suggest it was preplanned. Like field pat­ terns in an old landscape, it looks like the result of ad hoc land disposals and exchanges over the three centuries of its development. Maybe the grand house (of the Silver Wed ­ ding) once possessed the whole block, and sold off parcels to others over the years for them to build smaller houses. Though no two houses are identical (which would have been another symptom of pre-planning) all follow a similar pattern, presumably in emulation of grand houses (here and back in Rome). None presents a demonstrative elevation; all have blank walls to the street. Each is entered through its own portal and a narrow passage (fauces) leading to a court­ yard lit from the sky (atrium; A in the plan below). Alongside the entrance in most cases is a pair of rooms probably for business. Along the shopping street these are, as one would expect, often stores or food stalls (tabernae). Almost all the atriums have a pool (impluvium) fed by rainwater from the opening in the roof (compluvium). In the standard pattern, across the atrium from the entrance is a space for welcom ­ ing guests and perhaps displaying possessions (tablinum).

In the grand house (below) this leads axially through to a rec ­ tangular peristyle garden around a fishpond, but because of space restrictions and irregularly shaped plots such a formal spatial arrangement was not possible in the lesser houses. Even so, all but one of these (which may not actually have been a house) do manage to have an open space (x in the plans) – either a less geometric columned court or just a yard – at the far end of the house from the entrance. As well as providing the houses with a spatial hierarchy, these courtyards were essential for ventilation and light. It was the quality of light and shadow, particularly in the atrium, that impressed Le Corbusier when he visited the Casa delle Nozze d’Argento. Its original builder chose the north-east corner of the block presumably to be away from the shopping street, but maybe also to achieve the effect Le Corbusier described: i.e. entering from a shady street to see the sunlit peristyle across the atrium with its impressive columns (see pages 177–8). Although Insula 2.2 was not pre-planned, it does illus­ trate ideas architects can play with, e.g.: architecture without elevations; passage from shade to light and from public to private; a block-filling patchwork of spaces open and closed to the sky; axial hierarchy; theme and variation… See, as just two examples: John Soane’s 1831 plan of the Bank of England – projectsoane.com/story/ (Jan. 2023); and Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa’s house in Sri Lanka – slideshare. net/YatharthThakkar/geoffrey-bawa-house (Jan. 2023).

shopping street T

T

T

A

T

T

Key to plan, right (I may have misattributed some spaces, for which apologies, especially to archaeologists). White spaces are open to the sky. The House of the Silver Wedding is shown with black walls. Its main spaces are: 1 fauces (entrance); 2 impluvium (rain collection pool in atrium); 3 tablinum (for welcoming and display); 4 oecus (grand room for entertaining); 5 summer dining room; 6 exedra (for chatting enjoying the peristyle); 7 plunge pool associated with a suite of three adjacent bathing rooms – i apodyterium (changing), ii tepidarium (warm room), iii caldarium (hot room); 8 kitchen; 9 winter dining room; 10 external triclinium (for dining in the garden). There seem to be some nine other houses (grey walls) in the insula, all with similar spatial organisation: each has a narrow entrance from the street leading into an atrium (A) and another open space (x, either a peristyle or yard). Along the shopping street to the south (at the top in the plan) are some small shops, food stalls (T for taberna).

182

T

A A

A

x

A

x

A

view from the entrance, through the atrium and tablinum to the peristyle garden beyond

T

T

x

x

x x

A 4

6

5 i ii iii

peristyle

7

x

8 garden 9

x x

3

x

atrium 10

2 A

north

A

1

For discussion of how Pompeian houses were occupied see: Andrew Wallace-Hadrill – Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum, 1994.

K E MPSE Y GU E ST ST U DIO

183

K EMPSEY GU EST ST UDIO a c onver ted shed in N ew South Wales, Australia G LEN N M U RCUT T, 19 92 In which we shall see that: • existing fabric can be reinterpreted architecturally and modified for a different use; • architecture is related to the intrinsic conditions of a site – prevailing climate; movement of the sun; existing vegetation; cultural precedents…; • architecture can be poetically adjusted to harmonise domestic life with those different categories of conditions; • like a compass, spatial organisation can be related to the four Cardinal directions; • architecture does not need to be grand and demonstrative, but may be sensitive and considerate; Murcutt’s favourite axiom is ‘Touch this Earth lightly’, a sentiment associated with Australian aborigine culture as well as religions across the world and the politics of ecological sensitivity everywhere.

‘I also learned something about the beauty of simple space, and about containment, security, prospect, refuge and materiality.’

Glenn Murcutt, quoted in Beck and Cooper – Glenn Murcutt: A Singular Architectural Practice, 2002.

I

n the 1970s the Australia-based architect Glenn Murcutt designed a house in open countryside near the small town of Kempsey in New South Wales. He designed it for a lady called Marie Short. In the 1980s he acquired the house for his own use and extended it. In the 1990s he converted a traditionally built timber shed, south of the main house, into accommodation for guests. This small apartment is the Kempsey (or Murcutt) Guest Studio. Those reading this in the northern hemisphere should remember that in the southern hemisphere at noon the sun shines from the north. USI NG T H I NG S T H AT A R E T H E R E A consequence of using something that is already there is that some of the fundamental factors in relating to context are already determined or are there to be played with, exploited, modified, counterpointed. An architect can have creative dialogue with factors already in place. In the case of the Kempsey Guest Studio, what was there was a small, rectangular, traditionally built, timber shed. A shed – a simple rectangular cell – is one of the coherent sets of basic combined elements of architecture (see Analysing

184

Architecture) consisting at the very least of a floor, walls, roof and doorway (and perhaps a window). Its power is simple but very strong. It identifies a place by framing it within a structure that defines a space, shelters it from the sky and separates it from everywhere else. Even a tiny shed creates a human world within and in relation to (or separate from) its natural surroundings. It imposes its geometry on Nature’s irregularity, and projects that geometry outwards into the world. The shed is the basis of the temple. I have not found much information on what this shed was like before it was made into the Kempsey Guest Studio, but it was obviously the sort of building that is constructed for practical purposes, using materials readily available, and without what are sometimes called architectural pretensions – that is, without ornamentation, ideal geometrical propor­ tions or sophisticated poetic ideas. This was a shed built to shade, shelter, protect…, to secure farm equipment, fertilisers or produce. It was no doubt built in as straightforward a way as possible to achieve the strength and practicalities required. All over the world works of architecture have been constructed in this way and with this attitude. They often exhibit regionally identifiable characteristics related to the ways in which available materials can be used, to climatic

challenges, and using construction techniques and details that have evolved by builders learning from predecessors in the same locality (or the locality from which pioneers have travelled). Sheds are rarely complex spatially; but in the case of houses, regional characteristics usually include the ways in which use and the organisation of space relates to culture, to domestic customs, practical requirements… and to mores, aspirations and beliefs. Architecture, after all, is not just about constructing material form but framing life too. GE OM E T RY OF M A K I NG Because of their lack of pretension and their abiding con­ servative attitude, the builders of such traditional, regional architecture usually obeyed, as best they might, the geometry of making. Their concern would most likely have been to build for use rather than show, particularly when erecting a humble shed. Such directness of effort and use of materials has its attractions. It suggests a quality that has sometimes been called the architectural equivalent of truth, though in architecture ‘truth’ is a slippery concept (see pages 144–5). The shed at Kempsey was no doubt built by a European settler – a farmer. The drawings alongside are the section (1) and plan (2) of a small house also built for a European settler in the outback of south-east Australia. Its construction is similar to that of the original Kempsey shed, though the latter had no veranda, nor a hearth with stone chimney stack. This small house illustrates the ways in which the geometry of making disciplines construction. It is rectangular because that is the easiest, no-nonsense, way to build. It has parallel sides, with the roof spanning from one to the other. The floor and walls are rectangular because the planks of wood are themselves long thin rectangles. The structure of the roof is composed of rafters laid parallel to each other about 2ft (600mm) apart, supporting battens laid at right angles to the rafters, onto which the rectangular sheets of corrugated metal roofing are fixed. The only place where a geometry other than that of making comes into play is in the triangular gable of the roof, the geometry of which is determined by an equally pragmatic need to shed rain water. The structure of this small house, disciplined by the geometry of making, provided the reference frame for the lives of those who lived there. The Kempsey Guest Studio began with a similar though even simpler frame. There is a reference in Françoise Fro­ monot’s book on the work of Murcutt to his having ‘closed off its ends’ (Fromonot, 1995, page 148), so the plan of the shed may have been something like this (3), completely open at each end, or maybe with the walls returning at the corners to form wide doorways (4). The dash-dot lines dividing the plan into three indicate the positions of the simple triangular KEMPSEY GUEST STUDIO

1 settler house, end elevation.

2 plan.

trusses supporting the roof; themselves supported by posts. The walls are vertical thick timber planks. In its renovated state the shed’s timber floor is supported off the ground on short posts. I do not know whether the shed was originally built with a timber floor. With or without, its character and use would have been different. Without a floor it would have been more suited to be a shelter for wheeled farm equipment, allowing a tractor to be driven in and out. With a floor it may have been used for shearing sheep in the

3

4

185

shade and out of the dust, and for storing wool. The floor would have been supported off the ground on posts both to keep it out of the rain in occasional wet weather and, more importantly, to reduce attack from termites. Murcutt himself reports that, when he first saw it, the shed had, in the past, been converted into ‘a rural worker’s flat and tractor shed… At Christmas, (it) was the local dance hall. Some of the floor was propped in the 1930s and 40s’.*

guest studio

SI X-DI R E C T IONS -PLUS - C E N T R E; T R A NSI T ION, H I E R A RC H Y, H E A RT

186

Marie Short (Murcutt) House

5 site plan (north at the bottom)

S

view over landscape

doorway to the sunrise

E

‘servant’ pod

The shed sits south of the main house (5), amongst a loose clump of trees and under a particularly large one, probably planted to give it some shade. It is oriented roughly north– south. This orientation makes the shed into a compass, with each of the four sides of its rectangular plan facing one of the Cardinal points – North, South, East and West (6). Each of these directions has its own characteristics and potential, related to the passage of the sun and to elements in the sur­ rounding landscape. Murcutt’s refurbishment responds to and exploits these differences (6). To the North, he extends the shed onto a veranda for sitting in shade or sun. This veranda creates one of those special types of space (place) found in architectures across the world – an in-between space, where you are neither inside nor outside, where you are both at home and in the world at the same time. The ancient megaron was like this too (see the analysis of the Farnsworth House, page 86). In the case of the Guest Studio the veranda faces the main house some distance away (on slightly higher ground) and catches the evening sun from the West. This is a type of space particularly attuned to the landscape and climatic challenges of the Australian outback, as illustrated by the traditional settler house with its verandas (previous page). To the South, the shed is given a large window which gives views of open brightly sunlit landscape. To the East, and in the South and most private corner, Murcutt opens a broad doorway facing the sunrise. Here the roof overhangs slightly and there are steps down onto the earth. This is a place for breakfast while the air is still cool. The West of the shed faces other buildings and the large shade tree. On this side (in a way redolent of Kahn’s ‘served’ and ‘servant’ spaces, page 120) Murcutt attaches a pod containing a shower, lavatory and hand basin. This pod allows the main space of the shed to remain free and open. Gas cylinders and the water heater are also attached to this service pod. Differentiating the purpose entrance from that of the veranda, he makes part of the pod into a small porch giving access to a corner doorway into the main room. This

W

entrance veranda

6 simplified plan

N

* Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper – Glenn Murcutt: a Singular Architectural Practice, 2002.

is the most protected corner of the building. Murcutt made the studio accessible for people in wheelchairs, so this porch is approached by a ramp, angled to align with the line of approach. Together, the approach path through the trees, the ramp passing by the veranda as it lifts you gently onto the higher plane of the shed’s floor, the porch which draws you in, and the threshold of the doorway create a transition sequence taking you from the open air into the private interior. The plan of the shed is shown in more detail in 8. The pod is divided into four areas, each with its own function: the porch, a washing place and coat store, a lavatory and hand basin area, and a shower. Screened from the main house by the rest of the pod, this shower has a large corner window,

(shaded) by a simple rectangular corrugated metal roof canted upwards away from the main part of the studio (7), with a gutter between the two roofs. Internally, the layout is suggested by the structure of the roof; the two trusses, dashed in 8, zone the space into three: entrance; sitting in front of a stove placed centrally on the West wall; and dining (breakfasting) with a view out through the broad doorway facing East. The kitchen equip­ ment and work surface are placed like furniture along the West wall, with a window over the sink. Two beds, which can be rearranged, stand alongside the East wall. It can be seen in the plan that the veranda adds a fourth zone, equivalent in dimensions to each of the internal three. It too is shaded by a simple rectangular corrugated metal roof similarly canted up away from the main part of the studio. Whereas the middle zone inside would be the heart of this small dwelling in the winter, the open-to-the-air veranda is the heart in the sum­ mer. It is provided with insect screens. MODI F Y I NG E L E M E N T S In south-east Australia the summers can be very hot but winter nights cold. Murcutt’s Guest Studio is designed to work without air-conditioning and has a stove for winter heating. Aboriginal Australians do not build many buildings. Some tribes build sleeping shelters, sometimes called mos­ quito huts, of sticks and large sheets of bark.

7 section

shade tree

mosquito hut

8 plan

with its sill just above waist height, that may be opened to the air of the outdoors. The plan of the pod is irregular in shape, as if its space had been excavated from the general space outside the shed, like a cave. Its irregular plan is sheltered KEMPSEY GUEST STUDIO

These small structures illustrate the principles of shelters in the hot Australian climate. The platform lifts the sleeping place off the ground, into the air and away from snakes and other animals. The roof provides shade but is open at the ends for ventilation. In 1942, the architect Jean Prouvé followed the same principles in his design for a tropical house (9, over page), though his structure was steel and hot air inside the house could escape through a vent in the roof. Prouvé also provided verandas to shade the walls. 187

9 Prouvé’s tropical house

Murcutt follows similar principles in the design of his Guest Studio (10). Though the building can be closed to keep in warmth when necessary, in the summer the windows in the South elevation and the doorway onto the veranda can be opened fully to allow free ventilation. The studio stands on posts or stumps (touching the earth lightly) so that air can flow under it too. The roof of the veranda and the glazed gable of the North elevation are arranged so that the sun at noon in the summer is kept out whilst in the winter, when its angle is lower, the sun and its warmth can reach deep into the interior (11). C ONC LUSION (201 5): PRO SPE C T A N D R E F UGE In the short quotation on page 184, Murcutt uses the two words ‘prospect’ and ‘refuge’. These concepts are linked in a book by Jay Appleton, published first in the mid-1970s, called The Expe­ rience of Landscape. In brief, Appleton argued that our aesthetic evaluation of the world around us is fundamentally influenced, if not governed, by the sense of advantage we feel when concealed in a protected refuge with a wide prospect of our surroundings. That way we can watch out for threats. (See also pages 89 and 193.) Prospect and refuge are funda­ mental to architecture. Even a small shed establishes a centre, a home in the wide world, a datum against which you know where you are. We make centres 188

10 summer sun winter sun

breeze

11

with our beach camps when we spend a day by the sea. More permanent centres have to be built in more substantial ways, but still they change the generality of the open landscape by establishing somewhere specific – a place. Places hold psy­ chological emotional power as well as providing physical comfort. We gravitate towards them. We occupy them. We enjoy the containment and security they offer. We enjoy sitting at their entrances, anchored but able to take refuge if necessary, surveying the prospect of the world around. To establish a place is the fundamental power of architecture. (See the chapter ‘Architecture as Intellectual Structure and Identification of Place’ in Analysing Architecture, 2021.) In addition to providing a refuge with various prospects – each related to the different opportunities offered by the four Cardinal points of the compass (sun, view, shade, access…) – Murcutt imbues his design with a sense of climate; and (in contrast with Le Corbusier’s Cabanon) a sense of integration with (rather than sequestration from) the world around. He provides the possibility of shade and ventilation to ameliorate the heat of summer, and shelter and closure for the cold winter nights. He demonstrates that the envelope of a building can, in this case through human agency, be an instrument for managing environmental comfort in response to widely varying conditions. Murcutt also shows that features related to that role contribute to the subtle architectural aesthetic of a building/place. ‘Layering and changeability: this is the key, the combination that is worked into most of my buildings. Occupying one of these buildings is like sailing a yacht; you modify and manipulate its form and skin according to seasonal conditions and natural elements, and work with these to maximize the performance of the building.’

Glenn Murcutt (1996), quoted in Karissa Rosefield – ‘Happy Birthday Glenn Murcutt!’ at: archdaily.com/407155/glenn-murcutt-turns-77 (Jan. 2023).

AU S T R A L I A N A B O R I G I N E PL AC E - M A K I N G Architecture as the universal language of place-making operates at all levels of our interrelationship with our surround­ ings, from the humble and ephemeral to the sophisticated and permanent. Some of the most engaging examples are those we make when we live on the land, when our relationship with place is immediate, and not obscured by cultural separation from Nature. Some of us rediscover this immedi­ acy in our relationship with landscape when we make places camping in the woods or spending a day on the beach by the sea (next page). Others have lived in cultures with timeless relation­ ships with the land. Places Australian aborigines make – their architecture – are subtle and sophisticated as well as practical. Some provide the spatial settings for complex rites and ceremo­ nies (right), or manifest the presence of sacred beings (below).

‘A site is a place. The power that created the world is located here, and when a person walks to this place, they put their body in the locus of creation. The beings who made and make the world have left something here – their body, their power, their consciousness, their Law. To stand here is to be known by that power.’

Sylvia Kleinert and Margo Neale – The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, 2000.

SACRED

PROFANE

1 fires lit either side of axis

audience of tribe’s members

sunset

direction of main camp and women’s camp

entrance from the west 2 elder brother marks out the ground

3 ‘widi’ dancers enter, dance, and move to Z 4 assembled widi dancers dance towards audience

5 fire lit to reveal wanigi cross on at W end of ground

6 widi dancers stand along axis

7 wanigi cross carried over the heads of the widi dancers to the E end 8 initiate touches wanigi cross with his chest

Some types of place manifest and define the presence of a totem; in this case a Wollumqua Mound made by the Warramunga tribe becomes a snake totem. (See Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen – The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904, pages 232–6.)

9 wanigi cross set up at E end

10 circumcision takes place 11 brother with burning widi pole announces circumcision by dashing it to the ground 12 boy’s mother puts out her firestick to symbolise his death as a child 13 all is wiped away to return site to desert scrub; but it remains a dangerous and forbidden place

circumcision on a human operating table

simplified circumcision ceremony (after Mervyn Meggitt)

In some tribes circumcision is performed on an operating table constructed from members of the boy’s family. As a place for ritual, this too is a work of architecture made of people. It supports the ordeal in more ways than one.

Typically, the architecture of a ceremonial site will begin with the clearing of ground. Remnants of scrub and rocks will be swept to its edges to create a visible boundary. This threshold divides the sacred inner realm from the profane rest of the world.

AUSTR ALIAN ABORIGINE PLACE MAKING

The audience – members of the tribe not involved – will stand or sit outside watching. There may be additional elements: poles, crosses, fires… as in the above example. The architecture of the site sets the script for the ceremony. 189

PL AC E - M A K I N G O N T H E B E AC H Architecture is evident even in the ephemeral places we make for ourselves when we spend a day on the beach. Here are three examples, all of which are variations on a single architectural idea – and archetype that we associate generally with the ancient Greek temple. Its fundamental core is a cell (cella), rectangular, with a doorway for access.

In this example, a young man has instigated a temple to his friend/ girlfriend/wife/partner by digging a trench in the form of a temple plan. These are the walls. And even though there will be no roof, he has conformed to the geometry of making – i.e. rectangular – that would make the construction of such a roof relatively easy. There was no need of a doorway, since the trench is easy to cross; but he has given it narrow one… to establish the axis.

And last, here is a more elaborate example, in which the basic archetypal temple plan and its axial relationship with the remote has been elaborated with additional features, just as happened in the evolution of Greek temples in ancient times. First, the cell becomes a secluded sanctuary (for a god or someone changing into swimming gear) – here a pop-up tent. Second, the sanctuary is given a forecourt – for human occupation. A shade roof is provided by parasols. And sentinels are posted as guards. 190

The reason for the doorway is made clearer in this example. Again it is not necessary for practical access, though it does represent the possibility of entrance and exit. More significantly the doorway also generates the axis; in this case making a link between a rock (altar) embedded in the sand and the ocean’s remote horizon. The couple’s towel is spread, on the axis, like a catafalque before an altar (though here with their feet towards the sea).

SE A R A NCH

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SE A R A NCH a set tlement of ten residential units on Califor nia’s nor th c oast M O O R E, LY N DO N, TU R N BU LL, W HITA K ER , 19 6 5 In which we shall see that: • architecture can compose groups of dwellings into coherent settlements… • … where there are levels of refuge – from full exposure to intimate enclosure – combined with enjoyment of prospect (across the ocean); • dwellings in a settlement can speak the same architectural language but be individually different; • they can be furnished with a kit of parts arranged in a variety of permutations; • in these ways architecture can frame community and individuality at the same time.

‘The first purpose of architecture is territorial… the architect sets out the perceptual stimuli with which the observer creates an image of “place”. The architect particularizes. He selects an appropriate temperature range and builds devices for maintaining it, controls the intensity and direction of light, discriminates specialized activity patterns, organizes movement and subjects the building process to a clarifying pattern. By directing all these factors to a controlling image, he builds the opportunity for people to know where they are – in space, in time and in the order of things. He gives them something to be in.’

Donlyn Lyndon, 1965.

M

y drawing above makes the setting of Condominium One appear too comfortable, too lush with trees, too calm. The Sea Ranch is a stretch of land along the Pacific coast about one hundred miles north of San Francisco. The landscape there is rugged, the rocky edge of the land beaten by crashing waves and scoured by cool north-westerly winds. The trees on the left of the drawing are part of a hedgerow of cypress trees, one of many along that part of the coast planted to break the strength of the winds. Condominium One was, in the mid-1960s, the first of a series of developments to be built in this landscape. Its architects were Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull and Richard Whitaker 192

(MLTW). They worked in collaboration with Lawrence Hal­ prin, a landscape designer commissioned as master planner by the developers Oceanic Properties. The overall aim of the development was to provide communal vacation and weekend properties. The initial intention was to do this in the form of a series of condominiums along the coast, interspersed with clusters of individual dwellings in a similar architectural language. Joseph Esherick, another architect, built a series of demonstration houses – called the Hedgerow Houses because they sought shelter from the wind by nestling against the hedgerows – shortly after Condominium One. Subsequently the ideals of the development, which were enshrined in

guidelines and policed by a design committee, began to break down and now the area does not enjoy the integrity of develop­ ment promised by the early schemes. At times Condominium One was blamed for opening the door to such development. But its value was recognised in 2005 when it was put on the USA’s National Register of Historic Places. Its quintessential image is as a small bastion of humanity standing in the face of rugged Nature. Its composition is reminiscent of a clutch of farm buildings, or a traditional fishing village, set right on the edge of the continent with views across the open sea to the western horizon. Its poetry is potent, evoking notions of pioneers eventually reaching the Pacific coast, timeless rela­ tionships with the land and sea, Henry David Thoreau and his ideas of independence and individuality, John Steinbeck and his heroic stories of early twentieth century working (or unemployed) life in farming communities of the far west… It also evokes ideas of simple but hedonistic lifestyles, the resources to own and enjoy a weekend home, the desire for escape from 1950s stuffiness and an aesthetic freedom asso­ ciated with the decades after the Second World War and with the beginnings of the hippy generation. In their 1974 book The Place of Houses, the architects confessed that ‘the condomin­ ium building was the initial attempt to make a community’. I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E 1 Condominium One’s comparability to a group of farm build­ ings or a traditional fishing village is due less to stylistic influence and more to a common focus on practicality and simplicity. The avowed aim of the architects was to identify a place in a direct and simple way, without extravagance or show, in harmony with surrounding conditions. In Analysing Architecture (2021) there is a key chapter entitled ‘Architecture as Intellectual Structure and Identifica­ tion of Place’. One of the books that influenced the thinking behind this chapter was the just mentioned book The Place of Houses by Charles Moore, Gerald Allen and Donlyn Lyndon. In various ways this book makes the case that the essential purpose/raison d’être of architecture is that it establishes a place (places). This is where architecture began thousands of years ago, and where it always begins: with the need/ desire for a safe and comfortable place to sleep, to light a fire, to cook and eat, for ritual and so on. It is in this spirit that Condominium One was built. It is a way of thinking that is shared by farm buildings and fishing villages – buildings built with practicality as a higher priority than the display of intellectual or aesthetic sophistication. Place identification is, a priori, essential to life. We always, from conception to eternity, occupy a place. Before birth, the womb; after death, the tomb; and in-between, many others. We cannot walk SEA RANCH

through the landscape without continually making sense of our surroundings in terms of places. Some are ephemeral; some we try to make more permanent. Lawrence Halprin, the developer’s master planner for The Sea Ranch, was in accord with this way of thinking about how people relate to the world around them. In a drawing rem­ iniscent of the arguments put forward by Appleton in his book The Experience of Landscape (1975), Halprin illustrated the ways we interpret and project ourselves and our activities into the world around. Though sketched in 1980, Halprin included the drawing in his own book, The Sea Ranch … Diary of an Idea (2002). It shows a stretch of the rocky coastline at The Sea Ranch, with distinctive features annotated.* As has been mentioned on page 188, Appleton argued that we evaluate our experience of landscape in terms of pros­ pect and refuge. They originate in survival. We feel safer if we can survey a prospect from a refuge, such as an open field from the cover of a forest or the sea from a cleft in a cliff. That way we can see if strangers, possible enemies, are approaching. In Halprin’s drawing of the coast at Sea Ranch, the features he includes are given identities related to refuge and prospect. These place identities infer an active relationship between people and land-/seascape. For example… Halprin’s drawing depicts the view from the cliffs over two large rocks in the sea – Castle Rock and Lion Rock. The latter, the higher of the two, Halprin annotates ‘Place for dominance – and protection; the head of the tribe… watch tower; King’. The twin peaks of Castle Rock he labels ‘Places of Power’, and the dip between them he describes as ‘The place for rela­ tionships – partners’. Behind the Castle Rock he identifies a space of ‘mystery, danger, withdrawal’. Smaller rocks in the sea Halprin labels respectively as ‘a place to make offerings of things to the sea’ and ‘a place for group initiations – rites & ceremonies’. A rocky pool he sees as a place for ‘self puri­ fication, mikveh – Baptism’ and a tunnel through the rock as ‘a place for birth rituals’. On the cliff is a ‘witnesses’ space on the bluff’; a precipitous path down to a tree by the water is ‘processional down’; and reaching the tree we would ‘end processions; enter the new’. Such interpretation of the landscape involves recogni­ tion of the inherent characteristics of features and how they might relate to human activity and settlement. When the architects decided the site for Condominium One they worked in the same way. The composition is positioned with the same sense of place in the landscape as a small fort on a headland. It stands on sloping ground, a refuge at the top of the cliffs,

* You can see Halprin’s drawing at the ‘Journey to Sea Ranch 1962–1970’

website:

searanch.ced.berkeley.edu/s/sea-ranch/media/1893 (Jan. 2023).

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open to the path of the sun from dawn to sunset, and with a prospect across the craggy rocks to the wide ocean (1). Its back is protected by the rising ground on the inland side of the main coast road. But Condominium One is not a military fort, so it sacrifices part of its prospect across the coastal plateau to the north in favour of some shelter from the wind, which is provided by the adjacent hedgerow. The building is also positioned where the coast road comes closer to the edge of the land, easing access. A service road winds down the slope from the main road, taking a route through the cypress trees. This route prevents the service road from being too visible. (One of Halprin’s precepts for the whole development was that it should damage the land and its appearance as little as possible.) The trees also form a gateway or tunnel through which you pass to reach the settlement. It has the effect of creating a sense of arrival, detaching the weekend residences from the hundred mile drive from San Francisco and from the everyday world. You emerge close to the edge of the cliff in another world, with your fantasy castle before you, ready for your vacation. I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E 2 Identification of place operates at all scales. It involves not only the recognition of a suitable location for building, taking advantage of places that are already there, but also making interventions, adding elements, that modify the location in favour of the intended purpose. This involves building. Condominium One is positioned not only in relation to the cliff edge and the existing hedgerow, but also on a patch of land that, although steep, is not quite as steep as elsewhere in the vicinity. Even so it stands next to a mound. This complex variety of ground slopes contributes to the layout of the devel­ opment. The less sloping ground from the north allows easy vehicular access. The steeper slope created from the mound down to the cliff edge allows units at the back of the devel­ opment to enjoy views over the roofs of those nearer the sea. You can appreciate the variation in ground slopes from the contours in the drawing opposite (2). North is to the top left. The ocean and setting sun is at the bottom. The devel­ opment is arranged around two courtyards, one for cars and one for people. The cars get a courtyard on the less sloping ground to the north and without a view of the sea. The ten residences for people are arranged mainly (all except one) around the courtyard to the south, tumbling down the steeper part of the ground. Their arrangement was decided initially, according to the architects, using sugar cubes. This southerly courtyard has a deck for sunbathing, sheltered from the wind, but otherwise its ground surface follows the steeper lie of the land. Notice the difference in the contours between the car 194

1 site plan

courtyard and the residential courtyard. The back walls of the car shelter act as retaining walls, allowing the ground surface to be made more level for the cars. All the residential units receive sunlight and have views across the sea or along the coast. Units 1 and 10 at the top of the site have views over the lower units (4). Unit 10 has a tower alongside enhancing the condominium’s image as a fairy tale fort. Even though all units have views, their privacy is main­ tained; they are arranged so none has a view into another. Together the units form an integrated composition; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Scattered across the land as individual units they could not have made a courtyard. Brought together they create this extra outdoor room to be shared by all. TRANSITION, HIERARCHY, HEART… LEVELS OF INTERIOR Apart from the approach road and by the feet of people, the condominium does not extend its alteration of the ground surface beyond its outside walls. The natural ground comes right up to the small concrete plinth above which its unfin­ ished (unvarnished, unpainted) rough vertical timber clad­ ding rises. Inside this threshold between the natural and the human the architects created a hierarchy of places. In The Place of Houses (1974, page 32) Moore wrote: ‘For some time we had been especially concerned with making several degrees of “inside”, marking first a place in the landscape, then progressively segregating places outdoors and in, so that the user could be continually

car courtyard

residential courtyard

2 plan

The plan of Condominium One has its own clear and consistent grammar. The first characteristic is that it overlays an orthogonal geometry on an irregular and uneven site. That geometry, however, is not in the form of a strict grid of squares or other rectangles, which might become a straitjacket. Within its orthogonality the plan of Condominium One also has flexibility. Even so, no element deviates from the rectangular. The second characteristic is that all of the ten units are similar but each is different. In this a comparison can be made with the houses of Insula 2.2 in Pompeii illustrated on page 182; though in their case adherence to rectangularity is less strict. Just as the Pompeian houses share features and spatial arrangements in common – atrium, tablinum, peristyle, etc. – so to do the units of Condominium One (see the following pages). The third characteristic is that the individual units combine as a group. Taking into account as well as modifying the lie of the land, the dwellings are connected so as to enclose and protect the two courtyards from the rugged and challenging surroundings. In this the group can be compared to a fort or mutually protective settlement. All the units are entered from these courtyards. Looking outwards, every unit has a view of the ocean, in all but one case (Unit 3) from a glazed outshot sitting place. In these ways, the plan of Condominium One manages to combine the benefits of collective settlement with the desire for individual identity. Neither military nor anarchic, its composition is relaxed in its coherence.

3 elevation from the sea

4 section through the residential courtyard

aware of his location, from the altogether natural and unprotected outside to the sheltered, secluded, and pro­ tected inside.’ These degrees of inside are punctuated by sequences of thresholds. First there is the point where the driveway passes through a fence defining the car courtyard. Three of the units are entered from there; the one at the top of the site (Number 10) by passing under the tower. Next there is a covered way

with steps leading through to the residential courtyard. The remaining units are entered from here, each with its own lobby or porch space. From the residential courtyard there is a gateway towards the sea, a threshold back out to Nature. The degrees of inside do not stop there. Each unit is based on an open cube of space (like the sugar cube) open to its pitched roof, and extended at the sides with outshots, lean-tos – ‘saddlebags’ as the architects called them. These

SEA RANCH

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saddlebags are in most cases sun spaces with views of the sea, and make places that are in-between inside and outside. Each cube of space with its saddlebags contains, like a large piece of built-in furniture, a small two-storey ‘building’, also clad in vertical timber (smooth in this case, and painted), containing the kitchen with a bathroom above. In various patterns, each of these interior buildings has a stair attached, in some instances straight and others dog-leg. The final element in most of the units – seven out of the ten – is a small temple – an aedicule – supporting a platform for the bed(s). This too is reached by the stair, with a bridge to the bathroom (5). Beneath this aedicule is the heart, and the hearth, of its unit. This is the inside of the inside, the cul­ mination of the spatial hierarchy. Some of the aedicules have sitting pits, others do not. The three units without aedicules (Numbers 2, 4 and 8) have mezzanine floors instead, also with hearths and sitting places underneath. A VO C A BU L A RY OF E L E M E N T S 6

No two units are identical and yet all share the same language, a vocabulary of elements composed in differing permutations in each case. The composition is described in the diagrams on the following pages. As evident in, for examples, Pompeii (page 182) and Skara Brae (see Analysing Architecture), this characteristic – dwellings with variations of a shared archi­ tectural language – is evident in settlements through history.

The conceptual evolution of Condominium One begins with the ten ‘sugar cubes’ of space arranged on the sloping land. All the cubes have a basic timber frame (stick) structure based on six posts (7) with rails and bracing supporting the thick plank cladding; the planks are thick enough and therefore stiff enough not to need intermediate rails. Notice that the corner posts are moved in-board to allow, in some instances, corners to be open; and that some posts are shared, as between Units 7 and 6 and Units 2 and 3 and 3 and 4. The cubes do not seem to be arranged according to an underlying ideal geometry. Their form is governed more by the geometry of making, and maybe a sense of composition. Two additional single-storey car shelters define the space of the car courtyard. Together with the encirclement of the two courtyards and the desire for views of the ocean, it is this geometry of making, with its economy and yet flexibility of construction, that governs the three-dimensional form and spatial arrangement of the group of units.

5

7

196

view to sea

8

10

Additional sections of building join the cubes together. Following Kahn’s precept, some of these ‘serve’ the ‘served’ spaces of the residential units. There are passageways, entrance lobbies and porches; there are also fences, steps and the tower, which breaks the cubic geometry. There is a panel of timber over the gateway towards the sea making it more a picture frame defining the view out to the horizon (9, indicated on the plan above) and strengthening the sense of threshold between the human and wild realm of Nature. These linking sections are made using the same constructional language of materials and details to give the whole composition a consistent integrated appearance. The weathered timber cladding is all the same colour and its rugged patinated texture reinforces the Condominium’s character as a rural, visually agricultural, settlement even though its occupants would be citydwellers on vacation. The architecture also frames nostalgia and make-believe.

The saddlebags too are ‘servant’ spaces attached to the outside of the cubes. Charles Moore had experimented with this idea in some of his early houses, for example the Bonham House designed in the early 1960s (11). In Condominium One the saddlebags create in-between spaces that although inside have a character of being outside because they are outwith the main structure and living spaces. Highly glazed and with roof-lights, they are sunny and enjoy expansive views of the ocean and rocky coastline. Some of the quintessential images of Condominium One show people sitting in these spaces looking (wistfully) out to sea. Others show the counterpoint – the protective refuge of the units’ interiors; living spaces framed by aedicules and warmed by hearths.

9

11 Bonham House

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12

The saddlebags with their semi-external character create a counterpoint to the aedicules which create an interior within an interior. This too is an idea Charles Moore had experimented with earlier, for example in the first house he designed for himself (13). In this house one of the aedicules frames the living space while the other frames the (unenclosed) bath and shower. The aedicules in Condominium One all frame sitting spaces adjacent to hearths or heating stoves, and support bed platforms above. They are related too to the larger internal ‘buildings’ that house the kitchens and bathrooms. Together all these components constitute a vocabulary of elements (14, opposite page) disposed in different arrangements and permutations in the individual units. As traditional communities have through thousands of years of history, the architects created an idiomatic architectural language to be used in a variety of ways. Opposite I have compared it to traditional house design in another region – Wales. The development of regional languages of architectural components and syntactic arrangements is common to cultures across the world.

13 Moore House I

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CONCLUSION (2015): A NOTE ABOUT THE DREAM The overall form of Condominium One is architecturally a cottage. Irregular in composition, its occasional regularities – the underlying square sugar-cube plans of the residential units – derive more from the geometry of making than from ideal geometry. The composition accepts the lie of the land and provides for the physical and emotional needs and desires of people, sheltering them from the external elements and providing them with homely centres. But if cottages are gov­ erned by response, and temples by the assertion of control, then there is something of the temple here too. This group was not prompted by need and conditioned by local resources. Its language was determined by its architects and policed by a design committee. The only activity with which it is associated is that of leisure. If it is like a fishing village or a group of farm buildings then it is no more than that. It could be denounced as a pretence, a dream, a fantasy, a fairytale… a romantic allusion (and illusion). It could be celebrated as such too. In published accounts of The Sea Ranch development, Halprin and the architects MLTW bemoan the fact that the principles and the precepts realised in Condominium One (and in Esherick’s Hedgerow Houses) have not survived the pressures from the market for individual villas dotted around the landscape, each isolated in its own plot of land. Their project had social as well as architectural agenda, which failed in the face of actuality. Maybe their aim ‘to make a com­ munity’ was a step beyond what architecture can do. Maybe architecture is more a product of community rather than an instrument by which community may be created. Discuss.

T H E SE A R A NC H A RC H I T E C T U R A L L A NGUAGE

Container: the square (cubic) envelope of a unit; openings (doorways, windows etc.) inserted at any point around its perimeter; roof-lights in its roof.

aedicule: framing a place downstairs; a platform for the bed upstairs

sitting pit: a place to sit

kitchen, with bathroom above: access may also be through one of the sides

hearth

stair

outshot/bay window: for sitting and watching the sea

The components of this kit of parts can be arranged in various ways so that each residential unit is individual whilst at the same time sharing a common architectural language.

14 kit of parts/vocabulary

This is what tends to happen in traditional architecture around the world. Houses will be individual (rather than identical) but share a common architectural vocabulary.

SEA RANCH

(Below) TRADITIONAL HOUSE PLANS IN MID-WALES Five examples of sub-medieval timber houses, illustrating the shared language of elements and planning.

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PL AC E - M A K I N G I N T H E H O M E We don’t know what the outside of the house in the above picture looks like. One upstairs window looks as if it is deeply inset from the general plane of the elevation while the study projects outwards. There is a minstrels gallery upstairs too (complete with a pipe organ) but it is far from clear how you might get to it, especially from the stairway shown. What happens above the stair/inglenook is impossible to inter­ pret. We imagine the gallery the stair does reach would give access to bedrooms but there are no doorways and appar­ ently no ground floor rooms to support them; so where does that gallery lead? That side of the house varies in depth too, with the dresser alcove shallower than the inglenook. None of these discrepancies really matter, however, as the drawing was clearly prepared with a particular purpose in mind: to illustrate how a home is composed of variety of different places, each with its own activity and identity. It was prepared as one of the illustrations to a book by the Arts and Crafts/Garden City architects Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin in the early twentieth century – The Art of Building a Home (1901). The general message of the book was that the aesthetic value of a home lay not only in out­ ward appearances but more in its commodiousness – how it accommodated the many activities, pastimes, interactions of domestic daily life. Exploring the above image you can imagine yourself reading a newspaper by the fire, writing a letter in the study, playing hymns on the organ, eating a family meal around the table at the centre… and displaying the flowers picked from your garden on the window sills. This is more a house to be inhabited than to be looked at. Framing life rather than pro­ jecting appearance is its raison d’etre. (Though it does both.) 200

This is not the plan of the interior shown above. It is of a more modest house Parker and Unwin designed ‘for a Derbyshire site’. It is also included in The Art of Building a Home. The concern for accommodating domestic activities is evident here too. The living room is more complex than merely a rectangle of space. There is a large inglenook with seats lit from behind for reading and warmed by the fire. There is a piano (rather than an organ) under the stair and a desk for intellectual activity. The family table with its built in benches nestles against a screen stopping draughts from the front door. There is another, summer, seat under a long (perhaps south-facing) window overlooking the terrace, which has its own outside seat built into the side of the house and positioned for conversations with passing neighbours. The path to the door is lined with hedges. No doubt a garden for flowers and vegetables lies around the other two sides of the house. This is a plan that tells the story of the lives that will be lived in it.

V IL L A E .1027 201

V ILL A E .1027 an arc hitec t ’s vac ation house at Cap M ar tin, on the south c oast of Franc e EI LEEN G R AY (and J E A N BA DOVICI), 1926 – 9 In which we shall see that: • that architecture can aspire to frame ‘the simple life well done’; • in this, habitation is given priority over appearance; • even so, appearances can have metaphorical effect; here alluding to ocean voyages… • … as well as to traditional regional architecture; • … while at the same time exploiting the possibilities of new materials.

‘There is a set of small books that are English nursery classics. Their interest for architects is in their detailed and imaginative exposition of a way of life. However, architects might be surprised at any suggestion that there was a connection between the houses of Beatrix Potter and those in the post war style of Aalto and Le Corbusier: between the house of Mrs Tittlemouse and that or Mr Shodhan in Ahmedabad… In Beatrix Potter’s interiors, objects and utensils in daily use are conveniently located, often on individual hooks or nails, and are all the “decoration” the “simple” spaces need, or in fact can take… Here then, we find basic necessities raised to a poetic level: the simple life well done. This is in essence the precept of the whole Modern Movement in architecture.’

Alison Smithson – ‘Beatrix Potter’s Places’, in Architectural Design, Volume 37, December 1967.

H

ere is the villa on the south coast of France near which Le Corbusier built his Cabanon (pages 107–17). If you are reading these analyses out of order you can see the spatial relationship with the Cabanon and the general setting of Villa E.1027 in the drawing on page 109, (only part of the villa is visible, at d). Eileen Gray’s villa, which she designed for her lover Jean Badovici (with his collaboration), was the first of the buildings on this craggy patch of land between the railway and the rocky coast of the Mediterranean. The restaurant and unités de camping, as well as the Cabanon, came later. It is sometimes difficult to relate what architects say and write to what they do in their architecture. An exception is the ‘Description’ Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici wrote of Villa

202

E.1027 for a special issue of L’Architecture Vivante devoted to the house on its completion in 1929. (Badovici was the editor of the journal.) So clear is this as an exposition of the way in which the house was designed that it is worth including a large part of it on the following two pages. Reading it we notice Gray and Badovici’s insistence on the primary importance of personal experience, convenience of use and the potential for poetic engagement in designing a house. Though Villa E.1027 is radically different in appearance and material character, you will draw comparisons with the Parker and Unwin interior discussed on page 200. Both are concerned with framing life commodiously. In both the aim, facilitated by architecture, is ‘the simple life well done’.

E I L E E N GR AY A N D J E A N B A D OV IC I , DE S C R I P T ION OF V I L L A E .1027 (19 29) ‘External architecture seems to have absorbed avant-garde archi­ tects at the expense of the interior, as if a house should be conceived for the pleasure of the eye more than for the well-being of its inhab­ itants. If lyricism can be dedicated to the play of masses brought together in daylight, the interior should respond to human needs and the exigencies of individual life, and it should ensure calm and intimacy. Theory is insufficient for life and does not respond to all its requirements. It is necessary to free oneself of a tendency with obvious failings and seek to create an interior atmosphere that is in harmony with the refinements of modern life while uti­ lizing current technical resources and possibilities. The thing con­ structed is more important than the way it is constructed, and the process is subordinate to the plan, not the plan to the process. It is not only a matter of constructing beautiful arrangements of lines, but above all dwellings for people… The need to distinguish oneself, to be original at all costs, leads to suppressing the most elementary concern for practical comfort… ‘The interior plan should not be the incidental result of the façade; it should lead a complete, harmonious, and logical life. Rather than being subordinated to the external volume, it should on the contrary control it. It should not be pure convention, as in the eighteenth century, but on the contrary, as in Gothic times, a homogeneous whole built for man, to the human scale, and bal­ anced in all its parts… ‘If in regarding the dwelling as a living organism we have been led to adopt the current formula of the “living room”, we at least sought to plan the room in such a way that each of its inhabit­ ants could, on occasion, achieve total independence and an atmos­ phere of solitude and contemplation. The entrance is done away with, as befits a region where the windows and doors are rarely closed; but on the other hand one has sought an architectural layout that separates the interior from the exterior. One avoids making a door when one fears that it may open at any moment, evoking the possibility of an inopportune visit. For the same rea­ son, this arrangement has also been adopted for the rooms. ‘The four essential issues on which we have focused atten­ tion are: 1. The problem of windows, for which we have created three types. 2. The problem, often neglected and thus very important, of shutters: a window without shutters is an eye without eyelids. Otherwise, all the current combinations lead to the same result: insufficient ventilation when the shutters are closed. Our method leaves a large area for the free passage of fresh air while blocking excess light. 3. The problem of the independence of the rooms: everyone, even in a house of restricted dimensions, must be able to remain free and independent. They must have the impression of being alone, and if desired, entirely alone. This has led us to position the walls so that the doors remain out of sight. 4. The problem of the kitchen, which should be easily accessible yet sufficiently isolated that no odours can penetrate the living spaces. We have separated the kitchen from the rest of the house: one can only go from one to the other by passing through the entry threshold, which is only possible in an exceptionally mild climate. ‘As to the seaside character of the house, it results inevitably from the ambiance, from the materials imposed by this ambiance, and from the views of the sea. ‘The Entry. – This is a large covered space: a sort of atrium; it is large, accommodating, and not like the small narrow doors that only seem to open reluctantly. Ahead is a large blank wall, suggesting the idea of resistance, but clear and distinct. To the right is the main entry, to the left the service door. ‘The door to the right leads to the main room: a partition screen obstructs views that might penetrate from the exterior to the interior when the door is open. ‘Built into the wall of the stair to the left is the niche for hats, a half cylinder in transparent celluloid, with its shelves made of

V I L L A E .1 0 2 7

loose-knit twine nets, so the dust cannot settle. A tube along the length of the partition accommodates umbrellas dropped there freely and effortlessly. In a drum by the entry a system of runners carries hangers for umbrellas. Under the hat niche is a deep cup­ board for storing extra chairs that one uses only for entertaining. ‘The Large Room. – The house has been built for a man who loves work, sports, and entertaining. Although it is very small, its layout should permit the occupant to welcome friends and enter­ tain them. Only the “camping” style allows this otherwise excep­ tional difficulty to be resolved: one has resorted to it without thinking for an instant that it might result in a normative method, or that it will be the style of tomorrow, but simply as a convenient response to an exceptional circumstance. ‘To allow for entertaining numerous guests one has made a convertible room of 14 x 6.30 metres. Because this room is to be used for other purposes, a low wall at its end that allows the entire ceiling to be visible from any point conceals a dressing area, com­ plete with shower, linen chest, cupboard, etc. ‘Against the full wall is a large divan of 2.20 x 2 metres, where one can stretch out or sit, rest or converse comfortably – an indispensable item that can be converted into a bed. The cushions can be placed around it like satellites to extend the divan by 4 cm., providing comfortable and relaxing seating. ‘Opposite the dressing area, an alcove shelters a small divan at the head of which is a flat storage unit containing pillows, mosquito netting, tea kettle, and books. A flexible table with two pivots allows for reading while lying down. A white lamp mounted between two panes of blue glass provides rational light. ‘At the head of the small divan a double door gives access to a covered terrace sufficiently large to hang a hammock. A metal door is embedded in the thickness of the wall, as well as a shut­ tered door with pivoting slats, to allow practical ventilation and to give the sleeping figure the impression of being outdoors when the first door is left open. A pierced opening high in the fixed part of the glazed frame at the foot of the bed provides for excellent cross ventilation on warm summer nights. ‘Above the small divan, a thin cable at arm’s reach allows the mosquito netting to be extended at night. ‘The fireplace against the window allows one to enjoy fire­ light and natural light at the same time. ‘The furnishings – chairs, screens and pile carpets, the warm leather colours, low metallic lustre, and depth of the cush­ ions – all contribute to an atmosphere of intimacy. A marine chart, lit at night, brings an ingenious note, evoking distant voyages and encouraging daydreams. Even the carpets are reminiscent of marine horizons, through their colour and form. ‘When viewed from within the room, the entry partition consists of a series of racks that end in a deep vertical segment of a celluloid half cylinder, which encloses a column of gramophone records. This is the music corner, and the felicitous arrangement of the partition serves to amplify the sound. ‘The tea table is made of tubes that can be retracted, and it is covered with a cork sheet to avoid the impact and noise of fragile cups. It includes disks for fruits and cakes, and a narrower end on which to rest the cup that one is about to offer. ‘The terrace adjoining the large room serves as an extension to that space when the window panels are folded up against the pillars. Its full balustrade has been replaced by one in cloth that can easily be removed to allow one to warm one’s legs in the winter sun. The cloth canopy is made of four independent pieces to resist the strongest mistral winds; it allows cool shade in the summer when the sun is blazing, and full exposure to the sun’s heat in win­ ter, while being sheltered from the wind. ‘On this terrace, which gently slopes toward the interior and has a gutter under the glazed doors to accommodate run-off, a heavy brush-weave carpet for the terrace garden provides a note of gaiety. The fleeting patterns of sun and shadow play freely

203

about, and the breeze flows in from the far horizon. It is a pre­ ferred location where one can, according to the hour and the mood of the weather, either hide from or stretch out in the full sun. ‘When the seas are rough and the horizon gloomy, it suffices to close the large southern windows, draw the curtains, and open the small northern window that overlooks the garden of lemon trees and the old village, to seek a new and different horizon where the masses of greenery replace the expanses of blue and grey. ‘The space used to serve and clear the dining room can be transformed into a bar. The bar’s horizontal surface of striated aluminium, which is used for serving meals, can be folded up against a pillar, while a second serving table has pivoting draw­ ers. The dining table is surfaced in cork to avoid the noise of plates and place settings. The table is supported on legs of tubular steel that can be extended or adjusted effortlessly. ‘At the end of the table, a leaf and two runners covered in leather provide a place to set down a serving tray. During the summer one can either push the table onto the terrace, or, by slid­ ing the terrace doors open, expose the dining room to the exterior. ‘The bar ceiling is split diagonally in two panels, one of which is higher than the other, allowing the lighting to reach the bottles. The fixed part of the table on which one prepares the drinks is lit by a circular device fixed to the ceiling. The bar also has a box for lemons and one for plates. A pair of doors can be closed to allow the service spaces to be completely isolated from the living spaces. The maid would pass directly from the kitchen to her room on the lower level. ‘The Table-Units. – Each has a table that can serve as a writ­ ing desk. For entertaining, all these tables can be brought to the large room, stretched out, and – since the supports can be adjusted one inside the other – made into a very large dining table that is lightweight but perfectly stable. ‘The principal bedroom includes a boudoir/studio with a small private terrace on which is a daybed in the open air. A dressing cabinet in aluminium and cork conceals the washstand and, when opened, forms a screen; although very shallow, it con­ tains all the drawers and bottles necessary for grooming oneself. A washbasin is there in case the bathroom is being used by friends. Service can be provided directly from the bathroom, which adjoins this small bedroom. From this room one can go directly to the gar­ den via a small external stair; the independence of each room is assured, despite the small size of the house. There is a level of com­ fort that one would expect only in a much larger dwelling. ‘The room is sunny from morning to evening, and, owing to its shuttered windows, the light and air can be regulated at will, as with the shutter of a camera. ‘The bed, sheltered against two full walls, has coloured sheets so that the mess is not noticed when the bed is unmade. Owing to the layout of this room (through shifting alignments), the doors are invisible from the interior. ‘In the part arranged as a studio are a writing table, metal chairs, a filing cabinet, a low hanging light diffuser of frosted glass, and a private terrace with a daybed. ‘This room has a small bookshelf; a bed with a plywood headboard against the wall, where there are built-in lamps, one in white and one in blue that dims to serve as a night light; a mov­ able bedside table with two segments and a luminous watch face; electrical outlets for a kettle and bed-warmer; mosquito netting in transparent celluloid, the fabric of which extends along an extremely thin steel cable with a guy rope, which eliminates the heaviness and inelegance of ordinary mosquito netting. The linen cupboard below the window is placed at the height of the hand, so that the bottom can be reached effortlessly, without bending over. It is hung from the wall, which allows the tiled flooring under­ neath to be easily cleaned. Completing the furnishings for the dressing area are a waste basket, a stool, shelves, a washbasin, a disk for jewellery, and a dressing cabinet made of aluminium – a beautiful material providing agreeable coolness in hot climates. ‘The tile flooring is grey-black for the studio and grey-white for the room. 204

‘Although very small, the bathroom is fully fitted with use­ ful accessories. Ventilation is assured by a slatted door, like the sleeping alcove in the large room, and by a large frame that opens above the bathtub. Above the doors are cupboards for suitcases to take advantage of the square metre of space taken up by the door. A step allows them to be reached easily. ‘A cupboard in the bathroom wall contains a shelf for shoes and dressing gowns (with a special system of drying racks), and a large cupboard for underwear and pyjamas has a chamfered corner to facilitate ease of movement in the room. ‘The tub is an ordinary bathtub covered in an aluminium casing, which gives it an agreeable appearance and strikes a glis­ tening note in the tone of ensemble. The bidet is covered with a seat of foam rubber. The toilet, located near both the living room and the bedroom, is outside under the entry canopy, in a drum; it is ventilated through the roof. ‘The kitchen layout has been suggested by the customs of the peasant women of the region who prepare their meals outside dur­ ing the summer and inside during the winter and bad weather. It can be transformed into an open-air kitchen by a partition made of glass panels that fold flat. When this partition is opened, the kitchen is nothing more than a paved alcove in the courtyard, with a coal store, a niche for wood, a washstand, an electric ice chest, a water softener, a zinc-covered cabinet for bottles, a folding table, and an oil-fired oven. Inside is another oven for the winter. ‘The Stair. – The stair has been built using the smallest pos­ sible dimensions, but with large, deep steps that are grooved to be comfortable underfoot. The stair shaft is much larger than the spiral staircase, so that the volume seems light and airy. Around the spiral stair, which serves like a stepladder, are a series of cup­ boards that are ventilated, lit, and accessible from both inside and outside. The light pours down the glass shaft above, which pro­ vides access to the roof… ‘Lower Floor. – The guest room has been carried out with the essential concern of avoiding the mistral. Because the bed must be sheltered from the currents of air, a partition wall cuts off all air flow. The room comprises a studio and a dressing area with a lit ceiling. The lit mirror has a small satellite mirror that permits one to shave the nape of one’s neck: a lamp is fixed at the centre of the mirror, flaring so that all is lit equally, without shadows. There are drawers everywhere, external and internal, pivoting and slid­ ing, to contain common objects. The guest room is independent, with doors leading directly to the garden and the terrace under the house. The bed is an ordinary divan, simply modified with a fixed headrest to be used during morning breakfasts… ‘We have tried to create the smallest habitable cell. Despite its extremely reduced dimensions, the maid’s room provides a suf­ ficient level of comfort. There is ease of movement, although the space has been strictly economized, and this room could serve as an example of all rooms for children and servants where one seeks only essential comfort. ‘The boiler room, storage and gardener’s shed are equally independent. ‘Terraces and Gardens. – Paving crosses the entire garden up to the space under the house raised on pilotis. To give the gar­ den greater intimacy, the side exposed to the wind has been closed off by a narrow storage space in corrugated sheet metal, where the gardener can store his tools. A reflecting pool, which would attract mosquitoes, has been avoided; instead there is a sunbath­ ing pit with a sort of divan made of sloped paving stones, a tank for sand baths, a mirrored table for cocktails, and benches to either side for chatting. A small stair enables one to descend directly to the sea to bathe, fish, or sail. ‘This very small house thus has, concentrated in a very small space, all that might be useful for comfort and to help indulge in joie de vivre. In no part has a line or a form been sought for its own sake; everywhere one has thought of man, of his sensibilities and needs.’ Translated from Gray and Badovici (1929), in Caroline Constant – Eileen Gray, 2000, pp. 240–45.

S OM E C OM M E N T S R E G A R DI NG GR AY A N D B A D OV IC I ’ S ‘DE S C R I P T ION ’ Gray and Badovici were writing their ‘Description’ at the same time that Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye was being built, and six years after the first French edition of Vers une architecture. Gray and Badovici are keen at the outset to establish that the house they have designed is less about appearance and more about making a place to live (to dwell, which implies a more embedded, engaged, profound form of living than mere existence) and to enjoy (there is an aesthetic as well as a pragmatic aspect to their attitude; it is about living well). They have obviously read and been inspired by Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture but question and refine its polemic. Their remark about the ‘play of masses brought together in daylight’ refers to Le Corbusier’s assertion that ‘l’architecture étant le jeu savant, correct et magnifique des volumes assem­ blés sous la lumière’ (Le Corbusier, 1923, page 25; translated by Etchells in 1927 as ‘architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light’). They make the point that architecture is more than that; it is about ‘responding to human needs’, physical and emotional, in making habitable spaces. Le Corbusier would probably not have disagreed, but Gray and Badovici question his insist­ ent theorising. Suspicious of abstract theory, which seems sometimes to be promulgated for its own sake, they prefer to design and to build. They also rebuke those (presumably including Le Corbusier) who strive for celebrity – ‘the need to distinguish oneself, to be original at all costs’. One particular aspect of Le Corbusier’s theorising that Gray and Badovici reject is his system of ‘les tracés régula­ teurs’ (Le Corbusier, 1923, pages 49–64; translated as ‘Regu­ lating Lines’). They see this as an interest in abstractions that diverts focus away from more immediate realities of living in the world. Architecture, they say, ‘is not only a matter of constructing beautiful arrangements of lines, but above all dwellings for people’; i.e. architecture is about framing life rather than ‘lineaments’ (see pages 65–8). This dichotomy, between abstraction and experience, has a long pedigree, stretching back at least to the philoso­ phers of ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle. It has always had an architectural dimension. In the first century BCE, the Roman architect Vitruvius promoted the importance of what he called ‘symmetry’ and its dependence on ‘propor­ tion’ in architecture. ‘Proportion’, he wrote in the third of his Ten Books on Architecture, ‘is a correspondence among the measures of the members of an entire work, and of the whole to a certain part selected as standard’.* In the fifteenth century, Alberti, in his own Ten Books on Architecture, said that ‘the Force and Rule of the Design, consists in a V I L L A E .1 0 2 7

right and exact adapting and joining together the Lines and Angles which compose and form the Face of the Building’.** In the eighteenth century, writers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany (and later Augustus Welby Pugin and John Ruskin in Britain) questioned the abstract geometry of classical architecture, favouring the more pragmatically organised forms and arrangements of ‘Gothic’ and traditional regional architectures. (The distinction is related to that between ideal geometry and geometries of being outlined in Analysing Architecture; and relevant too to the contrasting attitudes evident in ‘temples’ and ‘cottages’.) Gray and Badovici refer to this ancient and venerable dichotomy when they comment that the architecture (clas­ sical) of the eighteenth century was ‘pure convention’, and prefer to be inspired by the Gothic, which was ‘a homogeneous whole built for man, to the human scale, and balanced in all its parts’. This sentence is an echo of the sentiments of the late nineteenth-century artist, craftsman, philosopher and social reformer William Morris, who was a protagonist of the English movement called the Arts and Crafts. The Arts and Crafts movement has been recognised by historians as a progenitor of architectural Modernism because of the way its architects arranged their buildings according to practical needs, clear construction and aesthetic experience rather than the abstract prescriptions of classical design. But Mod­ ern architects (including Le Corbusier as well as Gray and Badovici) distinguished themselves by rejecting the Arts and Crafts movement’s allusions to the past (rural cottages and farm buildings…) in favour of a clean-lined, forwardlooking architecture influenced more by the availability of new materials (steel, reinforced concrete and large sheets of glass) and the technological achievements of engineering. As we have seen in some of the other analyses in the present book, this predilection for the new did not stop Modern architects being influenced by the directness and practicality of traditional architectures. Remember that Mies van der Rohe was influenced by African traditional architecture and told his students to admire the ‘simple and true crafts’ of the ‘unknown masters’. The link is evident in Gray and Badovici’s comment that the entry and kitchen arrangements in Villa E.1027 had been influenced by traditional rural architecture and the ‘customs of the peasant women of the region’. Gray and Badovici make it clear that their focus in designing Villa E.1027 has been on creating a considerate architecture, an architecture that gives priority to the enjoy­ ment and comfort (physical and emotional) of the person * Vitruvius – Ten Books on Architecture (1st C BCE), trans. Hicky Morgan,

1914, p. 72.

** Alberti – Ten Books on Architecture (1485), trans. Leoni, 1755, p. 1.

205

water tank

outer kitchen inner kitchen lemon trees bath entry

wc

stair

appr

o ac h

p at h

music corner

chart

shower

bedroom

bar

boudoir/studio dining

living room

‘sun-lounger’ veranda

divan

guest bedroom

terrace maid

bed alcove

‘hammock’ veranda

lower terrace

sunbathing pit

steps down to the sea

inhabiting a building (rather than to abstract theory or the celebrity of its architect). They allude to satisfying the abid­ ing desire of all for solitude and emotional peace, for finding shade and a cooling breeze in the summer, for having space to entertain friends, for the need to be able to settle to work undisturbed. They seek to achieve what Alison Smithson in 1967, in her discussion of the dwellings illustrated in the children’s books of Beatrix Potter, referred to as ‘the simple life well done’ (page 202). I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E Gray and Badovici describe their house in terms of its places (above) rather than its visual appearance or sculptural form. As in the house of Mrs Tittlemouse, there are places for small things: storage cupboards for suitcases, drawers for knickers and pyjamas, racks for hats and for umbrellas, a cylinder of gramophone records, even a place for the lemons without 206

The many places identified and framed by the Villa E.1027 are labelled in this drawing. Gray and Badovici made it clear that their design was more about accommodating life and all its little ceremonies and rituals than concern for external appearances and rules of proportion. Even so, their approach did produce architecture with a distinctive and at the time still novel appearance that we have come to label with the historians’ label Modern. Gray and Badovici would claim this concern with style was not their intention. Their design has specific places for the smallest details of ‘the simple life well done’. There is a meandering shady approach with the house on the right and lemon trees to the left. There is an outdoor kitchen where the perfumes of warm vegetation would mingle with those of local produce cooking. There is an entrance chicane that slightly delays the dramatic revelation seen from the living room of the Mediterranean sparkling in the distance. (Compare with the Villa Savoye, the House of Dun, the Maison à Bordeaux… all of which create a transition from shady entrance to sunny view.) There is a corner for music and a bar; a terrace for sunning yourself, another for standing like a seafarer surveying the ocean (you can do that from the roof too), and another for swinging idly in a hammock. Exhausted, there is a divan for rest under a chart evoking voyages to distant places. Revived, it is time to trip down the steps for a dip in the sea… followed, after showering and changing, by a dinner al fresco with guests on the lower terrace (served by the cook and maid). All, with the benefits of wealth and leisure, is aimed at engendering la vie simple bien faite. (How could we not agree with that?)

which a gin and tonic would be incomplete. There are specific places for particular activities: the usual ones such as sleeping (including a particular place on the veranda for a hammock), eating, cooking, washing… but also for warming your legs in the sun, sunbathing, dozing, talking, reading… There is a divan in the living room (for an afternoon nap on a hot sum­ mer afternoon) and a bed alcove. The heads of the beds are designed with reading lights, and with contraptions to assist in supporting a book or a wake-up cup of coffee. A house designed with accommodation for a maid, for a clear zoning of servant and living spaces, and with a specific place for lemons may seem irredeemably bourgeois. But beneath the cocktails and ‘Riviera villa’ privilege of Gray and Badovici’s lifestyle there is in their Description of Villa E.1027 a fine discrimination about how architecture and life might find a gentle (as well as genteel) humane harmony… and perhaps not just for those with the benefits of wealth and the privilege of leisure.

‘The greatly affluent… involuntarily sigh as they behold the modest care-excluding mansions of the lowly contented… The matured eye, palled with gaudy magnificence, turns disgusted from the gorgeous structure… and regards with unspeakable delight, the simple cottage… With fixed, depressed brow, is beheld the stately edifice on the eminence, confounding admiration with regarding it as the seat of cares and inquietude; by glancing the view below, we smile with serene delight on the Cottage in the valley, whose narrow confines seem adequate to all real wants, and speaks the residence of “Those calm desires that ask but little room”.’

James Malton – An Essay on Cottage Architecture…, 1798.

The simple life well done has, for a long time, held its attractions for those who feel themselves burdened by cares and wealth; certainly in the eighteenth century (above) but also going back to the poetry of Greek poets such as Theocritus (third century BCE) who wrote of the idyllic pleasures of rustic life. It must have seemed particularly attractive in the years after the horrors of the First World War.

R E SP ONSE T O C L I M AT E One aspect of the gentle harmony of Gray and Badovici’s design is its sensitivity to the variable climate of the south coast of France. In ways found in traditional architecture, they were conscious of what is now, eighty years later, called sustainability. The house can be changed to respond to dif­ ferent conditions. These include fierce sun, the vicious and mind-disturbing Mistral wind, and grey, drizzly winter days. Badovici patented a window system, below, that allows for all the permutations I outlined in ‘A Hotel Terrace Door­ way’ (Doorway, 2007, pages 168–9). The casements are divided into slim vertical panes that can be folded back against the jambs or pillars, leaving the opening completely clear for ventilation. On the outside of the windows there are rails on which run louvred shutters that can be slid across to provide

varying degrees of shade. Some of these have hinged panels to provide even finer gradations of ventilation. The large openings to the terrace are fitted with folding windows so that the living space can be opened directly to the sea. The terrace itself is provided with a slim framework of steel posts and rails onto which fabric (sail cloth?) can be stretched to provide shade. Elsewhere (as mentioned in the ‘Description’) door­ ways are positioned to be protected from the Mistral, and windows to allow cross ventilation on sultry summer nights. Some of the doorways are provided with two or three leaves – a metal door for security, a louvre panel for ventilation and a mesh to keep out mosquitoes. These, as with the window system, can be arranged in different permutations for dif­ ferent circumstances. The subtle mechanics of providing environmental comfort have aesthetic dimensions too. Gray and Badovici write of enjoying the light from the fire along with the day­ light, and, on a grey drizzly day, of closing the view to the sea and opening that to the old village and dripping lemon trees on the slope immediately behind the house. T R A NSI T ION, H I E R A RC H Y, H E A RT Gray and Badovici’s acknowledgement of the centrality of the person – the inhabitant – stretches to using architecture to manipulate (orchestrate) experience and to alter the way the world appears. In discussing Rem Koolhaas’s Maison à Bordeaux, we saw how he used a device found also in country houses of the eighteenth century, by which a building may manipulate a visitor’s introduction to the world occupied by its owner. Something similar happens in Villa E.1027.

elevation

plan

section

Badovici’s patented window system

V I L L A E .1 0 2 7

207

temple

section

beach camp

approa

ch path

ship deck

living floor

lower level, under-croft

208

For practical reasons it was easier to enter the house from the up-slope side; that is the direction of approach from the tunnel under the adjacent railway. But this arrangement works dramatically too; and Gray and Badovici enhance the drama by making the visi­ tor walk along the length of the shaded northern elevation before entering the house (left). Along the approach there is a glimpse down into the undercroft, making it clear that the house is sup­ ported above the ground on pilotis. The entrance is approached over what seems like a bridge (or the gang­ way onto a ship). Under a concrete can­ opy the visitor turns right to enter the house but is confronted not by a front door but by a recessed wall. To the left is the lavatory. To the right is the door into the house. Diverted by the wall and passing through the doorway, entrance is fur­ ther drawn out by a complex partition, comprising umbrella stand and storage, which screens the living space.

Negotiating the chicane created by this screen you enter the heart of the house to be confronted by a panoramic view of the sun glistening on the ocean. You have entered another world. Walking out onto the terrace, shaded by the sail cloth or not, the visitor finds him- or herself a storey above the ground, on an in-between space contemplating the ocean and its horizon. This in-between space is an architectural relative of: the portico of a Greek temple (opposite), which intervenes between the place of the god and the outside world; the beach camp which mediates between the sunbather and his or her surroundings; and, perhaps most pertinently, the deck of a cruise ship from which well-heeled 1920s lovers, arm-in-arm, could gaze wistfully out to sea. GE OM E T RY; SPAC E A N D S T RUC T U R E If the spatial organisation and accommodation of life in Villa E.1027 is reminiscent of English Arts and Crafts and tradi­ tional forms of architecture, its appearance and the way in which it was constructed is very different. Towards the end of the nineteenth century new building materials were developed. These included structural steel, reinforced concrete and large sheets of glass. In 1918, aware of the radical potential of reinforced concrete, Le Corbusier published his famous image of the Dom-Ino house, which replaced load-bearing wall construction with a grid of con­ crete (or steel) columns or pilotis (Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 174). Eight years later, just as Gray and Badovici were designing and building Villa E.1027, he published his ‘Five Points for a New Architecture’ (pilotis; roof garden; free

traditional

V I L L A E .1 0 2 7

plan; horizontal window; and free elevation; see page 180) inspired by what he saw as the potential of the new methods of construction. In their villa, Gray and Badovici did not follow Le Cor­ busier’s ‘Five Points’ exactly, but they did take advantage of the constructional freedoms offered by the use of reinforced concrete. Some of the advantages are illustrated in the two drawings below. The left-hand drawing illustrates traditional loadbearing wall construction. It is a made-up example. It is com­ posed of relatively small elements that have to be put together in particular ways. The walls are built of stone or brick with joints of mortar which evens out their irregularities and helps them to be stable. These heavy walls have to be supported on foundations (footings) that spread the load into the ground. They also, generally speaking, have to be built vertically so that the loads transmit directly down into the foundations. Windows and doorways into such walls have to be small because the walls above such openings have to be supported by lintels or arches. Upper floors and roofs are generally composed of layers of lengths of timber: joists supporting floorboards; trusses, purlins, rafters, battens supporting roof slates or tiles. Many buildings still are constructed using similar traditional materials and construction. A reinforced concrete structure, below right, is funda­ mentally different in that it is composed of a liquid material poured into a pre-built mould – the formwork. Its strength comes from steel reinforcement rods laid in the formwork before the concrete is poured. Floors and roofs do not need walls to support them; columns are sufficient. Floors, roofs,

reinforced concrete

209

and columns act as a single – monolithic – structure. Columns are supported on concrete pads in the ground, rather than strip foundations. The columns allow floors to be free of structural walls; the ground floor may be left open; upper floors may be planned and organised using lightweight partitions that are free of any responsibility for holding up floors or the roof above. Windows no longer need lintels; in fact, whole walls may be made of glass. Also, because reinforced concrete is monolithic and strong, floors may be cantilevered, i.e. project sideways over space. Villa E.1027 has a flat roof (up the spiral stair) but no roof garden. Its plan might be called free in that the living room is open and divided by the nonload-bearing partitions of the entrance screen and that defining the shower space at the end. The openings to the terrace are also free in the sense that the large folding glass wall is made possible by the reinforced concrete structure of the columns and roof.

living floor

lower level, under-croft

Llanmihangel Place (upper floor plan)

Blackwell, by M.H. Baillie Scott, 1899 (entrance floor plan)

Llanmihangel Place (lower floor plan)

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Strategies for planning space may be fundamentally different with reinforced concrete construction (as in Villa E.1027) when compared with traditional load-bearing masonry construction (as in Llanmihangel Place, left, and Blackwell (above).

On the lower floor, Gray and Badovici used pilotis to create a space, shaded from the sun but open to the garden and sea breezes. In that Gray and Badovici’s emphasis was on making places for the various aspects and activities of life in their villa, their plan is related in spirit to that of an Arts and Crafts house (for example, Blackwell in the English Lake District, by M.H. Baillie Scott, 1899, 13). Such Arts and Crafts houses were, in their turn, influenced by old traditional houses; for example, Llanmihangel Place in south Wales. This last also has the main living rooms on the upper floor. But the structural potential and possibilities of reinforced concrete are illustrated by comparing the amount of structure nec­ essary in the lower floor of the load-bearing masonry house with the plan of the lower floor (under-croft) of Villa E.1027. In place of thick walls there are slim concrete columns; in place of tiny windows there is openness to the surroundings; in place of gloomy darkness there is light and air. In Villa E.1027 the intent to frame domestic ceremonies is similar to that found informing Arts and Crafts houses and their models, the traditional houses of times past. But in the E.1027 the expression is different because of the different materials used, and the rejection of stylistic ornamentation. A future-oriented aspiration – seeking light, health and distant horizons – produces a radically different atmosphere. C ONC LUSION (201 5): A NO T E ON M E TA PHOR In the film Il Postino (Michael Radford, 1994), the poet Pablo Neruda (played by Philippe Noiret) tells the eponymous post­ man Mario Ruoppolo (played by Massimo Troisi) that the most important elements in poetry are metafore. Metaphors are not exclusive to verbal language; they occur in architecture too.* The pertinent metaphor – the poetic allusion – for Villa E.1027 is that of the ocean-going liner. The idea comes again from Le Corbusier’s book Vers une architecture, which had been published in Paris in 1923. It was a collection of illustrated essays that had previously appeared in the magazine L’Esprit nouveau, edited by Le Corbusier and his then friend Amédée Ozenfant. One of these essays was entitled ‘Des yeux qui ne voient pas…’ (‘Eyes Which Do Not See’). The first part of this essay, complete with photographs of ships such as the Aquitania, was devoted to ‘les paquebots’ (‘Liners’). It made the point that the way in which the modern ocean-going Cunard passenger ships were designed should be seen as an inspiration to architects: for their clarity of purpose; freedom from historical styles; power; and efficiency of construction using industrial materials. Such ships also carried their (wealthy) passengers across the oceans. Each time they left port it was to carry people off to distant and romantic destinations. V I L L A E .1 0 2 7

Aquitania

In their ‘Description’ of the Villa E.1027, Gray and Badovici refer to the power of the chart on the wall of its living room; it evokes in the imagination ideas of distant voyages and romantic sunsets over distant seas. This is not the ship metaphor used by Sigurd Lewerentz in his Sankt Petri Kyrka in Klippan (see the following analysis); this is not the ship that supports you and provides you with a reference point and home on the rough and unpredictable seas of life. This is a ship that transports you, in the romantic sense of the word, to far-away places. It is like a child’s make-believe vessel con­ structed of dining chairs; a place to play ‘let’s pretend we’re sailing to the other side of the world’. The broad open living room with its terrace, which like a ship’s deck may be shaded by flapping sail-cloth, is not only about providing a view of the Mediterranean. It is about putting the person who stands there in the presence of the horizon, the infinities of sea and sky, the winds that propel voyages to distant places. This is a ship of romance and privilege, about freedom and sunshine, fresh open prospects, dreams of distant places. It is a ship that is sailing away from the claustrophobia of the past, the dark muddy trenches of the recent First World War, the gloomy ponderous architecture of the nineteenth century… and into a future seen, optimistically, as bright. So Villa E.1027 shows that architecture is not just about the here-and-now; it is not only about learning from the past; it is also about dreaming, launching optimistic ideas into times-to-come; about telling stories to yourself and to provoke the imaginations of others. * See also Metaphor, 2019, in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

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2023

Engagement is not an easy quality to define. ‘I know it when I experience it’ seems a tempting but inadequate way of describing it. Maybe a better way would be to say that architecture engages when we feel, maybe subliminally, that it includes us, resonates with our being there, provides for us; that we understand what we do there. An ottoman under the window in a fire-warmed inglenook, a sheltering porch, a commodious work surface alongside a stove, with conven­ iently stowed knives, spoons, pans… are all simple examples of what we might call places that present themselves for engagement. They are manifestations of the consideration an architect or designer has given to the person who will be in and use those places: sitting reading the paper; waiting for the door to be answered; making/eating dinner… Elsewhere I have described this quality as treating the person not as a spectator but as a participant ingredient in the business of place-making. The idea is that architecture is not complete until it is occupied, used…; and that, as a corollary, it is insuf­ ficient that it be admired from a detached viewpoint (which, put over-simply, is the case with paintings, sculptures, music and drama performed by others…). This quality of engagement can be related to what has been termed ‘functionalism’ in relation to Modern

architecture in particular. But that term makes it seem rather mechanistic; a shortcoming exacerbated by Le Corbusier’s use, in Towards a New Architecture (1923, 1927), of phrases such as ‘a house is a machine for living in’ and ‘a chair is a machine for sitting in’. It seems inappropriate, for example, to refer to the bench Clough Williams-Ellis, in his garden at Plas Brondanw, judiciously placed to catch you astonished at encountering the axial view of the distant conical moun­ tain Cnicht (below) as ‘a machine for sitting in’. (See also Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 111.) Yet that bench does illustrate engagement. ‘Only connect’, E.M. Forster exhorted in Howard’s End (1910); the Plas Brondanw example is an instance where the mind of an architect (now dead) connects through the medium of architecture with whoever explores his garden. (See the example of the doorway at the summit of a sand dune too; below.) Engagement/connection is as important in architecture as it is any field of creativity – writing, stand-up comedy, marketing… – but more so since architecture does (should) not stand apart from us (nor condemn us to stand apart from it) but embraces us physically, psychologically, symbiotically. Our lives, work, play, joy, suffering, adventure, boredom… are framed by it. With regard to architecture, engagement occurs then when we feel, again maybe subliminally, that a place – ingle­ nook, porch, work surface, garden seat… reception desk, mar­ ket stall, bus stop, dressing table… bar, bath, changing room, library… – has been designed/created with us in mind. And it is this consideration of personal inclusion (rather than out­ ward show) that informed Eileen Gray’s design of Villa E.1027. Like a good host, the architect, through the instrument of the house, provided for the needs, comfort and entertainment of those who would stay there. Considerate and engaging architecture, like considerate and engaging hospitality, are qualities of ‘the simple life well done’.

Clough Williams-Ellis’s garden at Plas Brondanw in North Wales, UK.

The simply constructed doorway at the top of a sand dune (see pages 214–15 of Exercises in Architecture) creating a threshold at the point where you see the ocean and, in the other direction, smell the forest, is an exercise in engagement. It is in accord with, acknowledges and intensifies experience of a situation. In this it attains the status of poetry, not in words but place.

The ship metaphor, particularly with regard to appearance, is a superficial characteristic of Villa E.1027. Much discussion and criticism of architecture focuses on appearances, and some historians deal in styles. But Eileen Gray reminds us that architectural value also lies in engagement. In this she was a kindred spirit of Arts and Crafts architects (see for example page 200), though the materials she used were different. SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON – E NG AGE M E N T

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terrace

living/work

kitchen

dining cellar

garage

steps hidden under banquette in dining room

line of road

section

bridge

garden

plants sun platform terrace

kitchen

dining

working

steps

bath

hearth

living

bedroom

gallery

guest

access road

plan

T E M PE À PA I L L A A few years after the Villa E.1027, Gray built another house for herself; this time mostly without the help of Badovici.* It stands north of Menton, at the side of a narrow winding hill road. She called the house Tempe à Pailla (Straw Temple). To the south and west it has views over the town to the sea; to the north and east there are wooded mountains. On the side away from the road there is a garden at the lowest level. The living accommodation is mostly on the top of three levels, where its open terrace might catch cooling breezes in the summer. That terrace, half shaded by a roof and with its own windows fitted with sliding blinds was clearly intended as a fair weather living room. It leads off the enclosed living/ work space which has a hearth. The house was designed following the same principles of engagement as the Villa E.1027. There are specific places for specific activities: the terrace has a sunbed platform, a bed for T EM PE À PA I L L A

yard

The Tempe à Pailla was designed in the early 1930s a few years after the Villa E.1027. Peter Adam, in his book on the life and work of Eileen Gray,* describes it as the house Gray built ‘for herself’ (as distinct from the one she built for Badovici and which she would feel had been defiled by Le Corbusier; see pages 109–10). When Gray bought the site (back in 1926 while still working on Villa E.1027) there was an old farm building and water tanks. The Tempe was built on top of these, giving it height for air and views. To preserve her views to the north she also bought a plot of lemon trees across the road. Like the Villa E.1027, the Tempe à Pailla refers to ocean-going ships with its open deck terrace half shaded with a slim roof supported on metal tube columns, its quirky flagpole and a funnel venting fumes from the hearth below. But also like the earlier villa, the Tempe follows the Arts and Crafts approach of giving consideration to the places for the everyday ceremonies and activities of domestic life: for sunbathing; for lunch; for washing; for working; for resting; for dressing; for entertaining guests. The position and geometry of the house was preconditioned by the buildings existing on the site. But though those earlier structures underpin the house, its plan betrays no evidence of their form. With a judicious positioning of columns (pilotis were not needed here) the layout of the walls, though mostly arranged orthogonally, is free to play the primary role of dividing space according to use. Gray also produced diagrammatic plans for both houses (see Adam, 2000, pages 193 and 265) indicating her concern to optimise sun, views and circulation.

plants and access to a screened-off gallery for communicating with the road (guests arriving, deliveries etc.); the adjacent living/working room has inbuilt storage, desk, daybed etc.; the dining room has a banquette under which is concealed the stair down to the cellar; the bedroom has expandable storage, movable side tables, and a dressing corner; and the kitchen has an inbuilt table with ironing board fitment. The house was provided with inventive, sometimes multi-use furniture designed by Gray in contemporary materials.* Whereas the Tempe à Pailla, like the Villa E.1027, also makes reference to the ship metaphor – with is terrace deck and flagpole – it too is informed by the same considerate attitude of engagement with ‘the simple life well done’.

* For an account of the background to the Tempe à Pailla see Peter Adam – Eileen Gray: Architect Designer, 2000. Images of Tempe à Pailla are available at: hiddenarchitecture.net/si-tempe-pailla/ (Jan. 2023).

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A P O L LO PAV I L I O N , PE T E R L E E , 19 6 9 The Apollo Pavilion was designed by an artist/architect who had been advising the developers of the English new town of Peterlee during the late 1950s and 1960s. Victor Pasmore described his pavilion, named after the contemporary space programme, as: ‘...an architecture and sculpture of purely abstract form through which to walk, in which to linger and on which to play, a free and anonymous monument which, because of its independence, can lift the activity and psychology of an urban housing community on to a universal plane.’ Since its completion in 1969, the Pavilion’s fortunes have been mixed. Rather than lifting ‘the activity and psy­ chology of an urban housing community on to a universal level’ it suffered vandalism and neglect. Nearby residents never liked it. Pasmore himself suggested the copious graf­ fiti humanised it. In 1982 the Pavilion was declared unsafe and access closed off. There was a plan to use it for planting. In the 1990s the Pavilion was the focus of debate as to whether it should be demolished or listed as a building of historic interest. It was not listed, but by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century it had been restored with the help of money from the British Heritage Lottery Fund. Since then it seems best used as a backdrop for television crime dramas set in the northeast of England. Looking at the above image, you might think that this is a building that belongs in the broad architectural historical category that also includes Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and Eileen Gray’s Villa E.1027. But analysis, bearing in mind the concept of engagement, shows it is different. 214

Pasmore seems to have designed his Pavilion as a large piece of (reinforced in situ concrete) sculpture, but one he hoped would be accepted as habitable, recreationally, by the residents of the new town. Despite his claims for the humanising power of graffiti, it is doubtful that that was what he anticipated, let alone wanted to attract. Whatever its quality as a piece of abstract sculpture, the Pavilion’s design itself thwarts its success as a work of habitable architecture. And that failure is not down to its style or material, but to its failure to engage (except in regard to graffiti artists). The Pavilion might be an example of ‘the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light’ (Le Corbusier) but as Gray and Badovici countered (see page 203), for habitation, architecture ‘should respond to human needs and the exigencies of individual life’. Even remotely, looking at the above and other images, we can imagine how we might relate to this structure. But most if not all of our attempts hit up against obstacles. There is nowhere comfortable to sit in the sun talking to friends. A ball bounced or kicked against one of the end walls is likely to end up in the water. It does not seem, as a traditional bandstand would, to lend itself to public performances… It is more the case that the concealed areas lend themselves better to hiding nefarious and anti-social activities. I have included this building here not to criticise it as a piece of sculpture, but to illustrate the issues that arise when architecture fails to engage (accommodate life). Images of the Apollo Pavilion are available at: modernmooch.com/2021/10/04/apollo-pavilion-peterlee/ (Jan. 2023).

SA N K T PET R I K Y R K A

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SA NKT PETR I K YRK A a Lutheran c hurc h in the souther n S wedish town of K lippan SIGU R D LE W ER ENT Z , 19 6 3 – 6

In which we shall see that: • architecture can transport you into an emotionally intense world, one that is maybe filled with symbolism and allegory; • architecture can be austere but also witty; • a severely restricted palette of materials can convey profound symbolic and poetic meaning; • but meaning can be enigmatic; its poetry can be interpreted in personal ways… and maybe not those intended by the poet-architect; • finding your way into a building may not always be easy or obvious.

‘Once our language has been declared insufficient, room is left for others; allegory can be one of them, like architecture or music.’

Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Allen – ‘From Allegories to Novels’ (1949), 2001.

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T

his small church in Klippan is the work of a man in his late seventies who had been working as an architect for over fifty years. Sigurd Lewerentz never explained his work in words. It is left to speak for itself. Sankt Petri does not look like a church. It is intense, apparently saturated with meaning but open to a variety of interpretations. It is the architectural equivalent of one of Beethoven’s late string quartets; complex in its avoidance of orthodox, clear, resolved form; affecting in its dramatic and shifting emotional impact. C ON T E X T Lewerentz was asked to design the church in 1963. The triangular site, by a quiet crossroads and in the corner of a municipal park, had been donated some years previously. Klippan is a small town of generally low density. The area around the site can be characterised as suburban. Nevertheless, despite its parkland and suburban setting, Lewerentz chose to make the church a small but dense cluster of buildings: the square block of the church itself; an L-shaped block of ancillary accommodation; and a street between the two. The composition constitutes a small piece of city – not a modern city but a non-specific traditional or Biblical city – a tiny fragment of what St Augustine referred to as ‘The City of God’. As a small piece of city, Sankt Petri is severe and surreal. There are no trees in its one narrow L-shaped street, though there are silent street lamps that appear to be bowing politely as you pass. Its ground surface is mainly grit (you hear your own footsteps grating). All the walls are of dark, purplish-brown, bricks – cooked

Sankt Petri Kyrka is set in the country town suburbia of Klippan in southwest Sweden. But within its own secluded precincts it creates a world distinctively of its own. One that takes you out of the everyday and into a ‘City of God’.

entrance road

church

Klippan centre

park

‘street’

pond

Klippan station

car park

1 site plan

earth – held together with concrete and mortar – mud that goes hard. Windows are like mirrors. No colour except per­ haps the reflection of a blue sky or the occasional glimpse of a tree, beyond. This is a strange city; one to be lost in. The building is oriented exactly with the Cardinal points of the compass (1). There are at least six paths of approach: two along the tree-lined pavement from the north; two across the park from the east; one from the car park to the south; and one, which seems more an exit than an entrance, from a garden with a pool and fountain. Lewerentz positioned the buildings to allow room for this garden to the west. With its greenery and placid water the garden provides the natural counterpoint to the fragment of city. The whole composition – city and garden – is screened from the town by the lines of trees along the pavements and by hedges and earth banks. Lewerentz did not use or integrate his design with what was already there so much as create a small world separate from everywhere else. Sankt Petri Kyrka is a stage set: a discrete realm for narrative. In my book Doorway (Routledge, 2007) I told the story of my own first visit, alone, to this building. I had walked from the train station to the south-west. I found the car park first, and then walked along the pathway pointing towards a chimney. Reaching a T-junction I turned left towards the pool of water. Rounding the end of the building I saw a tall metal fence with an open gate leading into the street between the buildings. There was a brick path under my feet and it led that way. Expecting to find the entrance into the church along SANKT PETRI KYRKA

the street I walked through the gateway. The lower buildings on my right were clearly secondary; the church itself was on my left. There was no-one about. Two large panels of glass were attached above eye level to the wall on my left; like mirrored sunglasses they merely reflected what was outside. Above them was a glowering brow of projecting brickwork. Next there was a small door, but it was locked so I went on and turned the corner of the street. The brick path stopped at the corner, leading nowhere. On my right, steps led down into a square concrete hole in the ground; the entrance to the church was not down there. There were offices in the building alongside. The wall of what I took to be the church on my left was now completely blank; not even any sunglasses; just a few more silently polite lamp-posts, standing there like (rather unhelpful) saints. At the end of the street a free-standing wall, at a strange angle to all the other buildings, partially blocked the view out. Walking to the end of the street and past this wall I found myself back on the suburban road feeling mildly rejected by this small piece of surreal city. I felt like a thwarted Theseus trying to find his way into (rather than out of) the labyrinth. Continuing counter-clockwise, with the church on my left, I walked past a dingy yard which I took to be where the bins were kept, and turning another corner found myself back in the garden with the pool of water. Now I saw that there were two doorways, one single and one double, in the wall of what I took to be the church. Neither looked like a main entrance, more like doors into the boiler room. Only the single 217

e

a b c

d

2 site plan, showing interior plan of the church

door had a knob. Both were locked. Confused, I decided that if I could not enter by the proper way (I had begun to doubt whether this church actually had a way in!) I would try to get in by the back door. I returned to the dingy yard to see if that door was open. It was. I had expected to see mops and buckets but I found myself in a magical space – a small rectangular cave (a) lit by dim light filtering through a crevice in what seemed a very deep brick-vaulted roof (3). I could hear water dripping. In the corner of this small cave was a doorway leading into the larger cavern of the church itself. I had found my way in. After the sunny suburban ordinariness of the public road outside, and my experience of the surreal street of the small fragment of the City of God, the character of this space was overwhelming. The interior of the church (4, and the drawing on the title page of this analysis) is dark, but with bright squares of glaring sunlight. One of these illuminates a huge clam shell (the font, b in 2 and 4) making it shine in the darkness. Water drips silently into this shell and then overflows, drop by drop, metronomic, measuring out time into a pool of water under a rupture in the brick floor. At the centre of the church cavern a large steel T (c) sup­ ports the brick-vaulted roof. Such is the daunting presence of this steel structure that, on my first visit to Sankt Petri, it was 218

at least three-quarters of an hour before I realised that I had not gone near it. When I did, I tapped it and it rang like a bell. The brick floor slopes unevenly down towards the mas­ sive brick altar (d) under a cluster of lamps. Alongside, against the back wall, is a brick seat for the priest and a brick lectern. Past the organ is a doorway from the sacristy (e). The priest’s entrance with the choir at the beginning of the service is lit by light filtering through another crevice (f, in the section opposite), this time in the apparently deep brick-vaulted church roof high above. This light shines a pathway on the floor, which the priest follows to the altar.

3 sections through light crevice

f

a

b

c e

d

4 section through main church space

Light, sound, texture, scale, time…; through his building Lewerentz uses these modifying elements of architecture to intensify the drama and emotional experience. With the man­ tle of architect he designed his building as an instrument to elicit emotional responses, to organise the space for worship, to frame and protect the iconic T structure at its centre. His windows blind with glaring light; his dark interior reveals itself slowly but never ceases to daunt; his dripping water reminds you of eternity; his uneven brick floor makes you feel unsteady, even seasick; his brick walls and vaulted roof resound with organ music and singing; his steel structure rings like a bell; his altar provokes thoughts of sacrifice. This is architecture that does not stand separate from the person, consigning him or her to be a spectator. The Sankt Petri Kyrka engages, involves, includes you in its repressed turmoil. I DE A L GE OM E T RY Throughout his career, Lewerentz used geometry and pro­ portion to discipline his plans and sections. He designed the Chapel of the Resurrection in 1922. It was built as part of the Woodland Crematorium on the outskirts of Stockholm, which was initially a collaboration between Lewerentz and Erik Gunnar Asplund. The elevation and sections of the Chapel of the Resurrection (5) illustrate a geometric analysis of the building derived from drawings included in Colin St John Wilson’s 1988 article in the Architects Journal. These suggest the building was conceived on an armature of Golden Section rectangles (see Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 139). Hans Nordenström, 1968, however, suggests an analysis based on √2 rectangles. Whatever Lewerentz’s precise method, it is clear that he sought to imbue his design with a genetic integ­ rity based in ideal geometry. Extracting the underlying geometry from a work of architecture is fraught with difficulty. Imprecision in drawing SANKT PETRI KYRKA

5 Golden Rectangles in the Chapel of the Resurrection

219

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

K

L

M

and construction always seems to make multiple interpretations possible. The pitfalls are compounded by one’s own desire to make the evidence fit a pet theory. None of this dilutes the fascina­ tion of the search, the desire to solve a puzzle, to find resolution… to access the thought processes of architects wielding their scale rulers as magic wands. What might be the experiential benefit for the person (worshipper in this case) remains a moot issue. The plan of Sankt Petri Kyrka in Klippan (6) is perhaps even more fraught with difficulties for the geomet­ ric analyst than other buildings. A glance of the practised eye suggests a framework of ideal geometry is present; but finding it and establishing whether it is the right one are different matters. The diagram alongside with the text below offers a possible analysis. Lewerentz’s use of ideal geometry contrasts with Mies’s rejection of the idea that ideal geometry might hold some authority over his design, but is in accord with the fascination for geom­ etry found frequently in architecture.

6 Sankt Petri, geometric analysis of plan

Lewerentz appears to have begun his design on a grid of 3.333… metre squares (marked with small crosses and coordinated A–M and 1–15 in the diagram above). This grid establishes the limits of the main buildings. (It may also extend outwards into the garden but I have not explored that possibility.) The church block occupies the grid from A1 to G10. The L-shaped ancillary block has coordinates L4, L15, A15, A12, I12, I4; though its walls to the street do not align with the grid – one is slightly inside where it might be, the other apparently the same amount outside – the grid’s presence seems affirmed by the nib of wall that projects to pick up coordinate I4. Within the grid the main church space occupies a perfect square, A4 to G10. This square extends diagonally to the south­ east by five grid units to give a larger square that includes the L-shaped ancillary block. The grid also determines the positions of some, but not all, other elements in the plan, including some of the partition walls in the office accommodation. The metal gates in the street are positioned according to grid lines B and 6. The strangely angled wall at the end of the street is on a line drawn from M2 to A5. Having recognised the underlying role of the grid, analysis becomes less certain (and my attempt here is certainly not complete). There may be others hiding away but the only instance of the Golden Section appears to be in the community room with its fireplace positioned accordingly. Elsewhere, as in the case of the enclosure around the altar, the recurring figure is the square. In some areas squares interrelate in simple additive ways, such as in the south-east corner of the ancillary accommodation, 220

producing 3:2 rectangles. But in the small entrance extension to the north the arrangement of squares is more complicated. Here they do not appear to conform to the grid, and they overlap by the thickness of their shared walls rather than sharing congruent sides. Their sizes do, however, appear to follow an arithmetic progression 3:2:1 generating a small spatial vortex or spiral. Other subtleties that become apparent during such an analysis include: the position of the font’s rupture in the brick floor, which appears to relate to the diagonal of the large square and the other diagonal established by the strangely angled wall; the entrance doorway, which seems positioned on the centre line between grid lines 3 and 4; the brick bench in the entrance lobby/wedding chapel, which is on grid line 3, and its adjacent altar, which is on grid line B; the doorway from the sacristy, which appears to be positioned on that diagonal of the strangely angled wall where it crosses grid line E; and the altar rail is also on grid line E. The altar itself does not line up with the grid; nor do the steps down from the street to the lower level of the offices. There are many other (possible) alignments and correspondences but I shall leave you to speculate for yourself. You might also wonder whether Lewerentz used ideal geometry with symbolic import or merely as an expedient mechanism for making design decisions. One final point to notice in this geometric analysis is that the T-shaped steel structure does not stand at the exact geometric centre of the square church space (as you might expect). It leaves the centre spot for you to occupy. I shall return to this later, when discussing some interpretations of symbolism in this building.

6 brickwork

7 brick vaulting

GE OM E T R I E S OF BE I NG

bricks together into being an equal partner in the surface texture of walls. In some places in the walls of Lewerentz’s earlier Markuskyrkan at Björkhagen near Stockholm the mortar is smeared over the surface of the bricks (6) – this is

Most of the fabric of Sankt Petri is brick. Floor, walls, roof, altar, bench seats, partitions… all are made of brick. The vast majority of bricks used in building the church are uncut. To build walls without cutting bricks is not easy. One of the famous dictums of the American architect Louis Kahn, a near contemporary of Lewerentz, was that ‘a brick knows what it wants to be’, implying there is an accord between the uncompromising geometry of the rectangular brick and the uncompromising verticality of gravity which results in vertical rectangular walls and the geometrically curved arches. I do not know whether Lewerentz was aware of or respected Kahn’s dictum but he pushed its sentiment beyond its limits. The dictum suggests, irrespective of what Kahn actually meant or did in his own work, that bricks and gravity working in harmony can, in themselves, make architectural decisions. Lewerentz asserted a more fundamental truth: that it is the architect who makes the decisions; and that, although the intractable rectangularity of the brick and the unalterable verticality of gravity constitute conditions with which the architect must work, they do not determine design decisions. Lewerentz’s attitude in this is one that modifies/ transcends/supersedes any authority thought to lie with the geometry of making. The only thing the brick knew, as far as Lewerentz was concerned, was that it did not want to be cut in two. None of us would. He also refused to reject bricks if they were malformed or discoloured. The insistence on not cutting bricks seems quirky but it may, as we shall see later, have some symbolic meaning. It is an insistence that produced some unusual textures in the brickwork of Sankt Petri, where the usual conventions of brickwork – such as that one brick should rest on two (bonding) – are often ignored. It is an insistence that also elevated mortar from merely being the glue that holds SANKT PETRI KYRKA

called bagging because it is an effect achieved with sacking or sometimes the bag the cement came in. At Klippan the mortar is more often brushed to produce a neater slightly recessed but still rough-textured joint. Lewerentz modified, subverted, even literally twisted the assumed authority of the geometry of making in other ways too. He delighted in getting bricks to do difficult things or at least things that were different from the usual. As has been said, the roof supported by the T-shaped steel structure is composed of brick vaults. These arch between smaller steel beams supported by two larger steel beams spanning across the church space. It is these two larger beams that are supported by the steel T (7). The smaller beams are neither parallel nor horizontal, as would be usual; their ends are up and down alternately and they meet at an undulating ridge. The brick vaults are constructed with uncut bricks too. The effect is to make the ceiling appear less substantial, like the billowing under-surface of a bank of (heavy) clouds. Elsewhere Lewerentz modifies the geometry of making by subjugating it to the geometry of human form, its measure and movement. Bricks are not flexible and ‘want’ (as Louis Kahn suggested) to be formed into rectangular shapes. But people are not rectangular; when they sit they need a seat that acknowledges the curvy geometry of their bottoms and backs. At various places in the Sankt Petri complex Lewerentz provided built-in seats, constructed, as one would expect, in brick. Rather than allow the uncompromising geometry of the rectangular bricks to determine the form of these seats he asked the bricklayer to arrange them in an irregular way – one that gently curves the seat to match the bottom of a human being and also provides lumbar support (9). In the ancillary 221

8 brick sitting alcove

block Lewerentz provided a pair of conversation seats, also built in brick, with an eye-level view across the adjacent park (8). These brick details, walls and seats, were not contrived in an ad hoc way on site but thought through before construction, in detailed dimensioned drawings (see Wang, 2009). Lewerentz thought about social geometry too. The brick floor of the church space has groups of parallel lines of wider mortar joints indicating the places where the lines of simple wooden chairs should be (10). This may seem dictato­ rial but clearly Lewerentz thought that, if left to themselves, the congregation might revert to organising the chairs in a conventional way – regular lines facing to the front (11). His

9 anthropomorphic brickwork

arrangement is less formal, with members of the congre­ gation, choir and clergy sitting in a rough circle around the altar, as they might in the open landscape. And whereas in the conventional arrangement (11) the chairs crowd around and isolate the T structure, his arrangement maintains its accessibility. Lewerentz’s arrangement also allows the space to work ceremonially: there is space around the font for bap­ tism, with the brick floor mounded up under the baptised like the ground under a saint; there is a place in front of the altar for a marriage couple, or for a coffin; and there is a processional route from the altar to the double exit doorway into the garden (x).

x

10

222

11

‘The perfect temple should stand at the centre of the world, a microcosm of the universe fabric, its walls built four square with the walls of heaven… the four-square enclosure on the top of the world mountain, where the polar tree or column stands and whence issue the four rivers.’

W.R. Lethaby – Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, 1892.

‘PAV E M E N T S L I K E T H E SE A , C E I L I NG S L I K E T H E SK Y ’ Sankt Petri Kyrka in Klippan is a composition of clear incon­ trovertible architectural elements – floor, wall, roof, column, doorway, altar… The accomplishment of Sigurd Lewerentz in his design lies in the ways he invests these basic elements with symbolic meaning. This is a building that presents itself as being deeply poetic. But, just as when you look for under­ lying ideal geometry, it is difficult to be certain about which interpretation is right. It is probable that Lewerentz wanted his work to be enigmatic. Presented with enigma and vague allusions, people try to make their own sense of things. Lew­ erentz, perhaps remembering Stéphane Mallarmé’s saying – ‘To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.’ – was an architect (like a god) who refused to be explicit about the meaning of his work. Such puzzles as result engage and fascinate the mind; you sense an explanation but are unsure what it is. Like the world, Sankt Petri is open to variant interpre­ tations. It is like the world in that it is a human construct comprising ‘city’ – the environment dominated by human determination – and ‘garden’ – the environment dominated by Nature. I do not know whether Lewerentz read William Richard Lethaby’s book Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. Published in England in 1892, it may have been a text he and Asplund consulted whilst designing the Woodland Cremato­ rium (though Caroline Constant, in her book The Woodland Crematorium: Towards a Spiritual Landscape, 1994, does not mention it). There are a few passages in Lethaby’s book that suggest an influence on Sankt Petri. The first is above. Though to find allusion to the ‘four rivers’ in Sankt Petri would perhaps be tendentious, the church is certainly ‘built four square with the walls of heaven’, i.e. the walls of its square plan are aligned with the Cardinal points of the compass. Though it stands on a flat site, the slope of the internal floor suggests a hill; and near its centre stands ‘the polar tree or column’ – the T structure. In his book Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages (1855), an account of his architectural tour of northern Italy, George Edmund Street (who was to become an influential architect) wrote of his visit to St Mark’s in Venice: ‘But of all the features in this very noble interior, that which, next to the gorgeous colour of the mosaics on the walls, most attracted me, was the wild beauty of the pavement; for I know no other word that quite describes SANKT PETRI KYRKA

the effect it produces. It is throughout the whole church arranged in beautiful geometric patterns, just like those of the noble Italian pavement in the choir of Westminster Abbey; but these, instead of being level and even, swell up and down as though they were petrified waves of the sea, on which those who embark in the ship of the Church may kneel in prayer with safety, their undulating surface serving only to remind them of the stormy seas of life.’ The pavements of Sankt Petri ‘swell up and down as if they were petrified waves of the sea’ making one unsteady. Lewerentz may not have read Street but the latter’s words are recalled too by Lethaby: ‘Mr Street, in 1854 (sic), described “the wild beauty of the pavement” in St Mark’s as swelling up and down like a petrified sea; and he went on to suggest that this undulation of surface was an intentional making of the floor in the semblance of the sea.’ (emphasis in original) In the same part of his book Lethaby quoted from John Ruskin’s Stones of Venice (1851): ‘Round the domes of (St Mark’s) roof the light enters only through narrow apertures, like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far-away casement wan­ ders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phosphoric stream upon the waves of the marble that heave and fall in a thousand colours along the floor.’ The ‘waves’ of Lewerentz’s floor may be brick rather than marble but the ‘narrow apertures’ in his roof do create ‘a narrow phosphoric stream’ along which the priest and choir process on their way to the altar. The metaphor of church as ship is old. ‘Navy’ and ‘nave’ come from the same etymological root – navis (Latin) = ship. And both words also suggest ‘navel’ – belly button – (as well as ‘naval’ – to do with the navy) and another sort of ‘nave’ – the hub of a wheel – both of which derive from a different etymological root – the northern European nafu (Old English), naaf (Dutch), nabe (German). As if to underline the naval metaphor, there is a model of a ship in the vaulted ceiling of the lobby/wedding chapel of Sankt Petri. And as if to acknowledge the navel metaphor the church with its ‘polar column’ establishes a ‘centre’ (a hub) for the world of its congregation as a ‘microcosm of the universe fabric’. The profound interiority of Sankt Petri and the blankness of the building’s elevations suggest Lewerentz thought of his walls as limits of universal space, as flats on a stage having meaning only for their interior. For the human-made world of Sankt Petri there is no exterior, nowhere beyond the limits of the universe… until the gates of Paradise – the doors out into the garden – are opened. The church is a ship, but it is also a primeval cave (complete with dripping water), the womb from which everyone emerges (re-born) into the light. 223

The T-shaped structure near the middle of the church (page 215) is a Tau cross – tau is the letter T in Greek and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Tau is thought to be one of the oldest letters. Its symbolic interpretations could fill a book of their own. (You can Google ‘Tau cross’ to find some of them.) Apparently Lewerentz came to this form gradually through the exploratory processes of design (see Wilson, 1988 and 1992). But when he found it, he must have been sensible to its potent symbolism. Being a cross the structure evokes ideas of sacrifice and resurrection. It stands as the presence of Christ crucified. So much is obvious. But the T’s possible interpretations have more dimen­ sions to them than that. The structure feels primitive, even pagan. It stands like the column at the centre of a Minoan pillar crypt (see the Royal Villa, Knossos on page 226). And to return to the ship metaphor, it stands like the mast that penetrates below decks on a masted sailing ship, as if there is above the roof a vast sail blown by the winds of heaven. The column establishes a centre – though it stands back to allow you to occupy the actual centre – and it also acts as a pivot (axis, axle) around which the space of the church, and the world outside, revolves. (An axis mundi.) The T structure is a metaphorical tree too; a steel equiv­ alent of the real tree that stands just outside in the garden. In Norse mythology the heavens were supported by ‘the Ash Tree of the World’ – Yggdrasil – watered by the subterranean Well of Mimir (the pool beneath the font?) and with three roots stretching to the ends of the earth. Yggdrasil is trans­ lated as Odin’s horse, a reference to the Norse god’s nine-day self-sacrifice by hanging, during which he learned to read the runes, i.e. discover the secret of life (see the quotation below). Perhaps that is why Lewerentz’s T-shaped steel structure also resembles a gallows (and its off-centre position allows for the absent presence of Odin’s swinging body). Finally… A platitude sometimes heard in sermons is that ‘the church is not the building but the congregation; the people are the bricks from which the church is built’. It is tempting to think this was in Lewerentz’s mind when he decided that no brick should be cut in building Sankt Petri; to do so would be like cutting a person – a member of the congregation – in two. The metaphor may be extended: the mortar that holds the bricks together represents religious belief – the faith that binds. The malformed or discoloured bricks represent people with physical or mental disabilities – hope of inclusion. And ‘Wounded I hung on a wind-swept gallows

For nine long nights,

Pierced by a spear, pledged to Odhinn,

Offered, myself to myself.

The wisest know not from whence spring

The roots of that ancient rood.’

‘Hávamál’ (c. 800 CE), trans. Auden and Taylor, 1981.

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the very few bricks that were cut – when I was there I found only one – are those rare martyrs sacrificed for the greater good – the love of fellow human beings. Not even Le Corbusier’s Chapel at Ronchamp (opposite page), with which Sankt Petri Kyrka has been compared, is so replete with potential symbolic interpretation. Interpretation is another way in which architecture can engage and involve the person. Each writes their own narratives according to the clues provided by the building. Each becomes convinced that their interpretation is right. Provoked by the visitor’s own creative faculties, such narratives have lives of their own. C ONC LUSION (201 5) Historians might try to find the truths behind Lewerentz’s decisions as matters of historical fact. (It is possible he did not rationalise them himself.) An architect is interested in understanding how architecture works and finding stimu­ lating ideas for design. It would be vain to think analysis can reach into Lewerentz’s mind to extract his exact intentions. It is clear he intended Sankt Petri to be saturated with symbol­ ism/narrative/metaphor*, and it is sufficient here to note that architecture possesses that potential, not only with elements such as the T structure but also in the ways buildings are con­ structed and the experiences they provide. In this, because it includes and engages us more thoroughly, architecture may be richer in its poetic potential than other art forms; certainly richer than it is often given credit for. Sankt Petri Kyrka is a quiet unassuming group of buildings hidden away in the suburbs of a quiet unassuming small town in southern Sweden. And yet this is one of the most emotionally powerful works of architecture anywhere in the world. With its playful but dark brickwork it is witty and austere at the same time. It manages to offer a critique of the sterility of religion generated by human beings. But at the same time the building recognises the faith, hope and love that religion can provoke. It is a building that takes you on a journey: through the labyrinth of the city street, down the apparent dead end back alley of the bin yard; into the magic cave of the lobby/chapel, and the sacred catacomb of the church with its luminous white clam shell and ominous Tau cross. It takes you just about as far from the everyday world as you can get. Finally, from its internal gloom and glare, it sends you out into a paradise garden – a world of green and sunshine and calm reflection. The Sankt Petri Kyrka is a compelling illustration of the capacity of architecture to elicit emotional responses, to provoke spiritual feelings, to affect, to transform. * See Metaphor, 2019, in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

C H A PE L L E N OT R E - DA M E D U H AU T, RO N C H A M P

Standing on its hilltop, the exterior form of the Ronchamp Chapel evokes that of a prehistoric dolmen combined with a clutch of three standing stones.

plan

Its interior (below) is cave-like, reminiscent of the interior of a dolmen/burial chamber, complete with the slivers of light penetrating between the great megalithic slabs of stone.

RONCHAMP CHAPEL

Both Lewerentz and Le Corbusier made Christian build­ ings that seem to have derived inspiration and ideas from pre-Christian pagan architecture… as if to make the point that human spirituality is older that Christianity – a timeless sentiment and force in the human condition. In the Chapel at Ronchamp (left), Le Corbusier too created a cave-like interior, or perhaps one evoking the interior of a megalithic dolmen (below) including the chinks of light between the grand slabs of stone. Externally, the chapel’s composition appears as a fusion of two types of prehistoric monument: a dolmen, with its heavy capstone supported on upright slabs of stone, and a clutch of standing stones. This is a combination that did not occur in prehistoric architecture but it seems Le Corbus­ ier wanted to allude to these ancient archetypes because of their respective evocation of the female (embracing, protect­ ing…) and the male (erect, assertive…) principles as well as the eternal mystery of religion. In the Ronchamp Chapel the ‘standing stones’ are also interior spaces with their own small altars illuminated by defused light filtering down from above (see page 38 of Analysing Architecture, 2021). The complex curved geometry of the Ronchamp Chapel plan is very different from the generally orthogonal geometry of Sankt Petri Kyrka but the two buildings share poetic allusions to ancient precedents.

225

ROYA L V I L L A , K N O S S O S Disinterred in the 1920s by the archaeologist Arthur Evans, the so-called Royal Villa was built some three thousand years ago. It stands apart from the Minoan Palace of Knos­ sos on the Mediterranean island of Crete. The surviving lowest floor has a tantalising plan, with an axial central megaron focused on a throne and, alongside, a square crypt centred on an ominous pillar (right). The axiality and geometry make it clear this was a place of ritual, but possi­ ble interpretations are legion. (The speculative restoration in the plans below is informed by Evans’s findings on site.) open to throne below

upper room/ ‘salon’?

pillar crypt *

In his seven volume account of the discoveries at Knossos (1928), Evans speculated on the purpose of the Royal Villa’s pillar crypt: ‘Arrangements were made to meet a greater diffusion of the offertory liquid, and point perhaps to actual sacrifice within the chamber, the receptacles being filled with the blood of the victim.’* In our turn we can only speculate as to whether the image above, together with Evans’s gory interpretation, influenced Lewerentz’s conception of the Sankt Petri Kyrka, in which he seems to have used the column element as an inter-religious symbol of sacrifice.

upper (middle?) floor (speculatively restored)

section (speculatively restored, minus top floor/roof terrace)

throne

megaron/ audience chamber?

light well

bath?

hall

entrance?

lowest floor

226

pillar crypt

yard?

light well

section (speculatively restored)

If the reconstruction is correct, the Royal Villa’s stratification has: an airy and shaded roof terrace; a sunlit middle floor with views to the wooded hills; and a mysterious lowest floor where rites may have been performed or oracles consulted. * From Arthur Evans – The Palace of Knossos, Vol. 2, 1928.

V IL L A BUSK

227

V ILL A BUSK a music ian’s house south of Oslo, N or way SV ER R E FEH N, 19 87– 9 0

1 Villa Busk stretches along the edge of a natural rocky outcrop

2 Villa Busk from the other side, the approach across the rocky plateau

In which we shall see that: • dramatic topography contributes significantly to a work of architecture; • architecture can provide the stage for a fairytale narrative; • there are different ways in which architecture might be said to be musical; • in the musical analogy, it is not necessary to think of architecture as frozen; • architecture orchestrates movement and elicits emotional responses in time, just as music does.

‘We must again find a dialogue with the earth… The rampart is the ultimate trade with the landscape.’

Sverre Fehn – ‘Has a Doll Life?’, 1988.

228

S

verre Fehn’s Villa Busk stands on the edge of a rocky outcrop in southern Norway with a distant view of the sea. It was built for a musician and his family. With its resemblance to a romantic fortress standing on the edge of a precipitous cliff and complete with a fairytale tower, it has the appearance of a house made to accommodate a poetic and maybe reclusive sensibility. Underlying its appearance, this is a building that offers an architectural equivalent to music. It has the geometric rhythm of music. With spaces and form arranged musically, the house is an instrument that plays with emotions, a work that orchestrates the person’s experience of and relations with their surroundings. All this is done by means of an intimate collaboration with the particularities of the site: a rocky plateau, a significant drop; views of sea and sunset; different kinds of vegetation.

E L E M E N T S OF A RC H I T E C T U R E; USI NG T H I NG S T H AT A R E T H E R E; I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E The Villa Busk is site specific. The site contributes essential elements in its architecture. The house could not be the same anywhere else. In beginning his design Fehn had the opportunity to choose the exact location. The choice was his first archi­ tectural (design) decision. He chose a position on a natural outcrop of rock, amongst mature trees, with a view of the sea. He recognised this as a place with architectural potential, a habitation in embryo. It was a location with dramatic as well as habitable possibilities. The purpose of his architecture would be, by the judicious arrangement of elements, to enhance and exploit the inherent potential of this place in relation to the surrounding landscape. The house has a clear composi­ tion, an intellectual organisation that may be readily deconstructed into its component parts (3 –13). Many works of architecture, especially houses, begin with a box, four walls with a roof on top. Sverre Fehn begins conceptually further back; his approach is more elemental. He begins with just a wall. In the quotation on the opposite page, Sverre Fehn claims ‘the rampart is the ultimate trade with the landscape’. That is how the Villa Busk begins. This is the conceptual starting point for everything that follows.

‘I have found a paper of mine among some others, in which I call architecture “petrified music”. Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music.’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, recorded by Eckermann (1836), trans. Oxenford (1906), March 23, 1829.

‘(Architecture) is music in space, as it were a frozen music.’

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, trans. Stott – Philosophy of Art (1804-05).

VILLA BUSK

hearth

REFUGE

pool

PROSPECT

3 wall

Fehn does not merely drop a box on top of the cliff. His first move, in an interplay with the site’s rocks, trees and level changes, is to erect a wall. Fehn’s rampart, his ‘trade with the landscape’, is made of concrete, poured in situ. It stretches roughly east–west along the crest of the exposed rocks. As soon as it comes into being, even in the imagination, the wall begins to reinforce the identity of the place. It defines and protects the place from the danger of the edge. It divides – like a castle wall divides friends (insiders) from enemies (those others outside) – the dwelling place of the house from the world out there. It makes the refuge that is appreciated for its prospect. The junction of the flat vertical plane of the concrete wall and the rocky outcrop draws attention, by means of counterpoint, to the sculptural quality of the natural rocks and trees. The rocks and trees, it might be said, create a visual melody against the grey drone of the wall. Fehn also uses this wall to begin the more detailed identification of subsidiary places that a house needs. At the western end the wall turns back on itself to create a hearth (surmounted by a chimney stack – a marker stone). At its eastern end the wall similarly turns back on itself to make a place that will eventually become a small plunge pool adjacent to the master bedroom. In this way, two of the rooms of the house have begun to be identified by the line of the wall. The living room at the western end (which is on higher ground than the rest of the house) relates to the setting sun and the view of the sea. The pool and master bedroom relate to the sun rising in the east.

colonnade loggia

circulation route

LIGHT tree LIVING ZONE

HEAVY

4 colonnade

The next move in the design is to make a double line of columns – a colonnade – parallel with the rampart, stretching from one end of the house to slightly beyond the other. This sets the rhythmic beat of the house and defines a pathway that will become its main circulation spine, its home key. At the eastern end this pathway relates to the return of the wall around the indoor pool, and also to an existing tree growing out of the rocks (see the image on page 234). Towards the western end the columns climb some steps (to where the living room will be) before extending beyond the end of the wall with its hearth to make a loggia leading onto the bare rock. You can see this loggia prominently on the left in the image on page 227. The windows of the adjacent living room are somewhat obscured by trees. The concrete wall – the rampart – defines the limits of the house along the edge of the rock outcrop. The columned pathway, glazed along its length (except where it protrudes out into the landscape), defines the edge to the safer plateau on top of the outcrop. One wall is heavy and protective; the other light and visually open. The domestic realm, the living zone, is situated in-between these two limiting elements of different character. Looking one way, you see a relatively benign landscape. Looking the other, you are faced with distant views and danger. 229

storage

entrance

7

The first element is the site with its potential for a place on top of the rocks.

chasm

tower

5 the cross, entrance–tower, axis

8

The third move is to make an axis at right angles to the wall and colonnade, just where the rocks are highest. This axis too is defined by a double line of columns. The nexus is the main entrance into the house. Terminating each end of this second axis there is, on the plateau side of the house, a small square storage building, and opposite, beyond the wall, a tower across a bridge. The tower, accommodating the children’s bedrooms and with a study/communal room on its uppermost floor enjoying views across the landscape and to the sea, complements the romantic character of the house. It allows the person to go through the rampart that protects the edge, to launch out into space, crossing the chasm between the rocks and the tower. The tower too can be seen in the image on page 227. Approaching the house your feet are on the solid bedrock of the earth. Following the transverse axis and crossing the chasm you find yourself three storeys above the ground.

The wall changes the site fundamentally; it defines the habitable place on the rocks.

9

The ground is levelled into a platform, using the wall to retain the earth.

storage pods

10

There is space within this retained ground for more rooms.

6 simplified roof structure

As well as defining the circulation spine of the house, the colonnade also helps support the roof. The structure follows a regular grid based in the geometry of making. The roof profile peaks over the colonnade (see the drawing on the right) with a shallower pitch over the living zone to the concrete wall. On that south side the roof is supported by brackets fixed to the wall, allowing some rooms to be lit by a clerestory. 230

11

Finally, the lightweight roof structure shelters the interior of the house.

ORC H E S T R AT I NG R E L AT IONSH I P S W I T H T H E L A N D S C A PE

storage

loggia

steps

living

entrance

hall

storage pods

kitchen

dining courtyard

bed

pool

tower

12 places in the plan

The subsidiary places of the house occupy the living zone between the rampart and the circulation colonnade. From right to left, west to east, there are: the loggia, which in some ways (at sunset for example) is the climax of the composition; the living space, also on the higher level with views to the sea, focused on its hearth and with, over a low wall, connection to the entrance/hall; the kitchen, screened from the spine by a block containing a lavatory and stairs down to a lower level (a music studio); the dining space; a courtyard open to the sky and a more open view over the rampart; the master bedroom, separated from the pool by a block containing a lavatory and shower. Two storage pods are attached to the outside of the circulation spine. The tower contains bedrooms above a shower room, topped by the study/communal room with panoramic views across the land and sea. This tower-top room is another contender for climax of the composition. The tower itself casts the client’s daughters as fairytale princesses!

13 more detailed plan

All these places, together with the approach path across the rocks and the tower’s spiral stair, are shown in more detail in this plan. Subtleties may also be seen: the corner nibbled from the storage block to accommodate some existing trees; the outside face of the wall of the pool angled towards the focal tree; the large rock left near the entrance to deflect the visitor towards the front door…

VILLA BUSK

Following either axis of the house takes you along a musical line. These lines involve the movement of the person through the frame provided by the house, like the line of a melody against the rhythmic beat in a piece of music. What is aural in music is multi-sensual and kinaesthetic in architecture. While a listener sits still as the music moves, in a building it is the person that moves while the architecture stands still (usu­ ally). You can dance to architecture just as you can dance to music. The beat in the Villa Busk is pro­ vided by the structural grid. Music stimulates emotion. The emotional stimulus the Villa Busk provides lies in the relationships the house sets up between the person and the landscape. The entrance–tower axis (see 15, a–a, next page) involves: approaching across the rocky plateau; stepping down under the covered way between the house and the storage block; stepping up into the porch and entrance hall; noticing the steps up to the living area on the right and the parallel lines of columns stretching to the left with the distant framed view of a tree; crossing the hallway to pass through the doorway in the concrete wall; finding yourself on a glazed bridge, up in the air; and then crossing into the tower with its spiral staircase leading up to the study on the uppermost floor or down to the outside. The other principal musical line of the house runs along the circulation spine (15, b–b). If you turn right after entering, you climb some steps that ‘The route from boat to hearth is mediated by a tower. The daughters of the house have their rooms in the tower, and at the foot of it are the shower and cloakroom. The tower is completed by a communal room which captures all four directions of the sky.’

Sverre Fehn, 1992, p. 6.

231

14 section

b'

third

a'

a

second

follow, almost exactly, the rising ground line of the rocks outside, taking you up to the elevated living area with its hearth and distant views westward. Turning left at the entrance you go down the pathway between the columns, past the dining area and courtyard on your right, with the plateau resembling a Japanese rock garden through the glass wall on your left, to the master bedroom and the pool. While on this journey, the tree – one of the starting (reference) points for the house – stands as a focus outside in front of you, with the angled wall canted towards it. The Villa Busk is not merely an object in the landscape, it is an instru­ ment that manipulates your experience of and relationship with that landscape. The living space is raised and has distant views to the west, The dining room is more enclosed with primary views across the plateau and into the courtyard. It is in the courtyard that you can lean out over the precipice. The bedroom is more womb-like. While in the pool you are exposed to the morn­ ing sun. Orchestrating experience is a primary power of architecture.

first

ground

b

tree 15 musical lines, and tower levels

The two main axes of the Villa Busk take you along different lines of experience, just as music takes you through different sections of a composition. The storage block and the tower terminate the entrance axis (a'–a) as it passes through the house, taking the person from solid ground at the entrance, up slightly onto the platform of the house, across entrance hall and the bridge, to the third storey (second floor) of the tower. You first encounter the longer axis (b'–b) about a quarter way along its length. To your left is the progressively more private part of the house, passing the dining room, courtyard and bedroom before ending in the pool. To your right are the steps up to the living space and the loggia. 232

16 illustration from Viollet-le-Duc’s The Habitation of Man in All Ages (1876)

A RC H I T E C T U R A L R E F E R E NC E S The Villa Busk suggests that Sverre Fehn, like all architects, learnt from the work of others. With its defensive wall, its barbican tower and its small loop-hole-like windows over the craggy cliff, the house has a clear resemblance to a romantic medieval castle. Even the way the timber roof projects over the wall, supported on brackets, is reminiscent of the timber hoardings built on the battlements of fortresses, as illustrated in Viollet-le-Duc’s book The Habitation of Man in All Ages (1876; 16 opposite). (Viollet-le-Duc was a French architect of the nineteenth cen­ tury who was interested in medieval architecture. His ideas on structural honesty and the use of iron were influential in the development of Modern architecture.) Fehn also acknowledged his debts to some of the twen­ tieth century’s pioneers of Modern architecture. The house’s underlying rectangular grid and crossed axes (17), for exam­ ple, together with the lining of pathways with columns, is reminiscent of some of the houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (18). And Fehn’s assemblage of services – lavatories, kitchen equipment, showers etc. – into cores (19) separated from the external walls but which also play a part in defining adjacent rooms and spaces, is reminiscent of the work of Mies van der Rohe, as in the Farnsworth House (20) where the bathroom and plant room core helps define different functional spaces on each of its four sides. The concrete wall of the Villa Busk, if all else were removed, would stand on the rocks like a piece of eroded ruin (21, next page). The roof is attached to the wall as if added later (22) and supported on brackets like one of Viollet-le-Duc’s hoardings. This illusion of layered history – of fragments from the past reused and reinterpreted – is a reminder of the actual layered history of Carlo Scarpa’s refurbishment of the Castelvecchio in Verona (23).

20 Mies van de Rohe’s Farnsworth House, 1950

VILLA BUSK

17

18 Wright’s Martin Residence, 1904

It seems Fehn made use of ideas gleaned from the work of other architects. For example, the use of cross axes as a principle of spatial organisation of circulation routes appears to relate to the domestic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (above). While the idea of hiding subsidiary accommodation – stairs, wash-rooms, storage… (what Kahn would have called ‘servant’ spaces) – in discreet blocks also used to imply broader spatial organisation, seems to come from Mies van der Rohe, as in the Farnsworth House (below left).

19

233

21

If you removed everything else, the wall with its openings would stand like a ruin in the landscape, reminiscent of old castles. The ups and downs of the openings and windows evoke the idea of notes on a musical stave.

23

22

The way in which the roof is constructed and supported from the wall on brackets is reminiscent of the medieval castles restored in the nineteenth century by the French architect Viollet-le-Duc. (See 16 on page 232.)

Wright, Mies and Scarpa were all influenced by Japanese traditional architec­ ture. So was Sverre Fehn. The Villa Busk is like a Japanese pavilion in its aesthetic interplay with the landscape: its exploitation of existing topography and trees; and its framing of portions of the landscape as pictures. The framing of the trunk of the tree in the rectangular frame of the window at the end of the circulation spine is a Japanese device (24; see also the Louisiana Art Museum on page 156). The exterior, framed by the window, becomes decoration for the interior. The Villa Busk’s relationship with the ground has Japanese nuances too. In traditional Japanese houses there is often an interplay between the natural ground and an artificial platform. The kitchen may have the earth as its floor, while the more formal parts of the house will be on a platform, supported on posts perched on natural but carefully placed stones, and lined with tatami mats. The stratification has poetic dimensions and emotional effects. The poetry refers to the dual state of the human being as part of and separate from Nature, or at least it celebrates the subtle differences between the two states of being. The emotional effect derives from the phenomenological recognition that you feel slightly different standing on the ground or solid rock to when standing on a timber platform. The vibrations, sounds, textures, sense of stability and solidity, are different in each case. And in the former situation we are at large; in the latter, contained, framed by the struc­ ture of the platform. The ways in which we step onto or off a platform is handled carefully in Jap­ anese architecture. It may be a step, or perhaps a naturally flat stone, but always there is an intermediary stage between the natural ground and the platform, a place to leave your shoes and the dirt of the ground behind as you step onto a more refined domain (25, opposite). This happens too in the Villa Busk. 234

Allusions to layers of history are reminiscent of Scarpa’s Castelvecchio, refurbished in Verona, Italy, in the 1950s and 1960s. Where Scarpa was actually relating his interventions to historic remains, Fehn, in the Villa Busk, gives the appearance of doing so for narrative effect. It enhances the house’s romantic character. ‘Japan has a word for finding the pleasantest point in an interior… We are all on a journey through the great space of nature, and if you are capable of revealing your temperament, the place will find you and keep you there.’

Sverre Fehn, 1992, p. 6.

24 the tree at the end of the circulation spine

‘The straight lines of poetry are found in the concrete mass’s confrontation with the mountain, and the regular rhythm of wooden pillars is slipped down into the earth like responses to the static slide-rule of the roof construction.’

Sverre Fehn, 1992, p. 7.

Both the Villa Busk and traditional Japanese archi­ tecture play with the in-between in other ways too. In the analysis of the Farnsworth House I mentioned the engawa – a veranda – that provides a traditional Japanese house with a space that is neither inside nor out, maybe for contemplation of a rock garden. In the Villa Busk the engawa is created by the combination of the colonnaded circulation spine and a timber platform attached outside its glass wall (26). This relates to the natural rocks (chosen by Fehn as a provident garden) on the plateau. Other Japanese nuances in the Villa Busk include the way in which the columns of the circulation spine continue outside the walls of the building for a few bays at each end. Inside, the columns are part of the integrated structural frame of the house; outside, their feet rest either on the natural rock or on pad-stones. By this device the stark separation of the house from its surroundings is lessened… in two ways: spa­ tially, by the small loggias that are created; and structurally, by the admission of the natural ground as part of the house’s structural system (27). In the Japanese way, the thoughtfulness put into the design – such subtleties as the framing of fragments of the landscape as pictures, the provision of natural blocks of stone as steps between outside and in, and the creation of spaces that are in-between inside and outside – is appreciated, maybe subliminally, by the person who experiences it. The house becomes a receptacle and vehicle of considerateness, which is a powerful factor in aesthetic response (see Villa E.1027). Those who experience buildings enjoy the feeling that they and their aesthetic sensibilities have been taken into consideration by the designer… rather more than if they feel intellectually excluded by enigmatic and arcane ideas (though the latter have been used in architecture, as in other art forms, to create mystique and appeal to cliques as well as sensation-seeking media). This dimension of consideration, engagement, commu­ nication between the architect and the person is evident in the Villa Busk. It has (at least) three levels: that of intimacy, in which you interact with the building and its materials closely by touching; that of distance, in which you contemplate the remote – the sea, the forests, the clouds in the sky, the stars; and that of the intermediate, in which you move around, sit and talk to friends, cook and eat dinner, sleep and maybe immerse your body in a pool of water. Considerateness always involves thinking of the person, inhabitant, visitor… as a player in, rather than merely a spectator of, architecture. VILLA BUSK

25

In traditional Japanese architecture there is a functional and aesthetic difference between places where the floor is the natural ground and those that are on platforms (from Edward S.Morse – Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, 1886).

engawa

26

The Villa Busk might be described as Japanese in its creation of a platform for viewing the landscape and its creation of zones that are neither fully inside nor fully outside.

27

The posts of traditional Japanese buildings have different ways of touching the ground. Japanese houses also have verandas – engawa – between inside and out (from Morse, 1886). 235

C ONC LUSION (201 5)

2023

All architecture situates the person in relation to his or her surroundings and mediates in that relationship – filtering, including, excluding… Some architecture does this, so to say, from the inside out; it establishes a separate world of its own, if not completely hermetic, divorced from its surroundings by the bubble of its own particular design ideology. To suggest an example… here is part of Peter Cook’s 2013 review of Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan (above); it includes this observation: ‘It just stands there − a white vision, outrageously total, arrogantly complete, just about real though located in a general-purpose location that you would have trouble remembering without the presence of this extraordinary object.’* On the other hand, some architecture is so minimal in its intervention in the physical world that the mediation too is minimal (see the drawing above right, of perhaps the most rudimentary work of architecture possible). The child finds its own form, its own geometry, and maybe a line drawn in the sand – its own corporeal bubble – is all that stands between him/her and the land, air, weather, other people, and whatever they take to be their gods. But some architecture – and Sverre Fehn’s Villa Busk falls into this category – finds a middle stretch of this spec­

On page 229 I included two early nineteenth–century views on the musical analogy in architecture. Goethe refers to architecture as ‘petrified music’; Schelling as ‘music in space… frozen music’. It is impossible to determined exactly what these two German philosophers meant. There are at least two possibilities: music in space and frozen music. Despite Schelling linking these they are not necessarily the same.

trum, where the inner (artificial) world of the person and the conditions offered by the surroundings (topography, light, climate, prospect…) overlap, interact, work together symbi­ otically; each contributing to the whole work of architecture; each enhanced by the other. In this middle spectrum architecture is neither temple (aloof and hermetically separate) nor cottage (dependent on providence) but a blending of both, a sensitive mediator in our relationship with the world. * Peter Cook – ‘Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku; Zaha Hadid Architects, in AR (Architectural Review), available at: architectural-review.com/8656751.article (Dec. 2013).

236

Maybe because of a resemblance to organ pipes and sheet music, the pendants around the gallery in Charles Ren­ nie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art library (above) evoke for me the idea of frozen music. I can also see how Goethe might have seen the elaborate front of a grand Gothic cathe­ dral (Strasbourg for example) as a great chord, played with all the stops open on a pipe organ, erupting from the ground petrified. But music in space seems to have different possi­ bilities; possibilities that may be applied more appropriately to Fehn’s Villa Busk. In this sense, the musical possibilities of architecture can be more melodic, not frozen at all, but involving movement and time. This would be architecture that, like a piece of music, takes the person through a series of linked experiences, exciting and calming, shocking and soothing, stimulating dance… even bringing tears to the eyes.

V IL L A M A IR E A

237

VILLA MAIREA a house in the woo ds of wester n Finland A LVA R A A LTO, 1937– 9 In which we shall see that: • the human can blend into the natural (rather than there being a sharp threshold); • overlapping layers of space can stretch from the purely natural to the intensely human with gradations in-between; • planning can be like soft-edged collage rather than a neat diagram of hard-edged shapes; • ideal geometry can be a hidden prop for design without being evident in the finished work; • composition can be enriched by blending right angles with curves, and using a varied palette of materials.

‘The curving, living, unpredictable line which runs in dimensions unknown to mathematics, is for me the incarnation of everything that forms a contrast in the modern world between brutal mechanicalness and religious beauty in life.’

Alvar Aalto – ‘The Hill Top Town’ (1924), quoted in Göran Schildt – Alvar Aalto in His Own Words, 1997.

A

ll architecture involves in-between spaces. Buildings mediate between us and the world; they frame us, our possessions and what we do. At its most rudimentary – such as when we make a camp on the beach – architecture involves drawing a boundary between ourselves and our surroundings, even if that boundary is no more than the edge of a towel or a line in the sand (see page 236). It is hard to think of a building that does not begin, conceptually, like this, even if it does not have walls. (See, for example, my description of a temporary mosque in Nazareth in the Introduction to An Architecture Notebook: Wall, 2001.) Architecture involves framing; and framing involves defining an inside, separating it from the general outside. Often buildings establish a precise unambiguous divi­ sion between inside and out. A fence or wall with a thickness of no more than a few centimetres or inches makes a sharp 238

incision in space, cutting one area off from another. Crossing the threshold of an opening in such a barrier takes no more than a split second; in an instant you are transported from one place into another. In other examples the division between inside and out is less clear. Architects open up a zone that is neither inside nor out, creating places that might be called transitional or in-between. Examples include the engawa of a traditional Japanese house (see page 235), the terraces of Wright’s Fall­ ingwater (page 158) or the portico of a Greek temple (page 86). In the Villa Mairea Alvar Aalto creates in-between places by organising the house according to overlapping lay­ ers. Not only does Aalto blur the division between inside and out, he also blends the artificial into the natural, like a painter smudging one colour into another or into the background character of the canvas.

I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E; OV E R L A PPI NG L AY E R S The Villa Mairea (1) was designed as a house for a wealthy client. It is situated in a clearing in the woods. The house has servant quarters and kitchen, a liv­ ing space, dining space, winter garden, library. The bedrooms are upstairs. Above the winter garden is a studio. Outside is a pool and sauna linked to the main house by a covered terrace facing approximately south. There are hearths in the living space, the dining space, and out under the covered terrace. The house has a rectangular core (2). This contains the main spaces. The entrance is to the east, with its approach along the drive through the woods. A right-angled low wall stretches out westwards from the main body of the house to embrace the small rectangu­ lar sauna. The rectangular core of the house establishes what could be a sharp

servants

covered terrace

kitchen dining

living

sauna

entrance

library

winter garden pool

1

woods servants shade

entrance

dining

woods

living

sauna

sun, pool and garden woods woods 2

3

division between inside and out. But it is only the conceptual starting point for Aalto’s architectural play. He sets about camouflaging its severity with spaces that overlap and soften that core, creating in-between zones. The natural world can be perceived as being made up of overlapping layers. Think of the shallows of the sea, with one small wave overlapping the next and the next and the next (3). Particularly in wet countries, there are often rich layers of overlap (4): a pool of rainwater; the mud around it darkened

by dampness; dry earth around that; grass; leaves scattered across the water and ground; and all under the layer of dappled shadow cast by a nearby tree. Add to this the sky’s light and cloud reflected in the surface of the water and you have a rich interplay of overlapping layers comprising different textures, colours, light and shade. That layering is what Aalto aims for in the Villa Mairea (5 and 6 on next page). It suggests that as human beings we do not need to think of our houses as isolating us from Nature.

VILLA MAIREA

4

239

d

servants

entrance porch covered terrace

dining

deck

pool

a

living

sitting porch

c

garden garden

b

5

6

Aalto seems to have thought in terms of overlapping layers of space when designing the Villa Mairea. Some of these are clearly human because they are regular in their geometry; some attempt to be natural (organic) in form by being apparently free of geometry; and some of them are natural. Some of the layers of space are indicated in the diagram above. The first layers are natural or existing: the woods, the ground, the clearing and presumably the line of access from a nearby public road. The next layer is the rectangular core of the house. From its wall, which divides inside from out, Aalto projects subsidiary spaces both inwards and outwards. Outwards from the house is the garden; domesticated Nature in contrast to the wild Nature of the woods around. Layered onto this is the covered terrace and the pool. Attached to the sauna is a step down onto a small wooden deck with a diving board – more layers. And at the front door to the house there is an irregular porch sheltering steps made of irregular stones. Over the winter garden, the studio has a curved outer wall overhanging the square core to make a sunny sitting porch beneath.

The overlap of spaces continues inside. You might interpret the tables and the stairs as overlaps but there is also the place where the dining space seems to spill into the entrance hallway (a), retained by a curved wall. Both the winter garden (b) and the library (c) are layers superimposed onto (subtracted from) the general square of the living space, the floor of which is itself layered into different surfaces – timber floorboards and clay tiles (indicated by the curved line in the diagrammatic plan above) – like the shallow surf lapping the sand. The hearths too are small layers added to their respective spaces. There is also a trellis, cross-shaped in plan (d), softening the north-east corner of the servant quarters, presumably to camouflage its geometric harshness and to imply projection of the material form of the construction out into the natural realm of the woods. The blurring of inside and out is not so pronounced upstairs in the Villa Mairea. Even so, bedroom windows project to allow angled views of the woods, and there is a sun terrace above the library and part of the living space. A walkway projects around the studio over the winter garden too. (See the elevation below.)

7 entrance elevation

240

H I E R A RC H Y A N D F O C US The composition of the Villa Mairea is not without hierarchy and focus. Its gravitational core (the heart of the house) is the dining table, with other layers becoming more diffuse (more affected by Nature) as they fan out from this centre. The whole house is an abstract composition in which one layer overlaps others, confusing or blurring boundaries. This painterly attitude to composition is apparent also in the ele­ vations (7). Layers of light and shade, tree foliage and trunks, bushes, and the different colours and materials, reflection and texture of the building itself overlap like blocks of paint and fabric in an abstract collage. There is layering and blurring of edges in the detail of the house too. The porch at the main entrance (8) is a blend of regularity and irregularity. The hearth under the covered terrace (9) is an irregular composition of irregular blocks of stone attached to the regular end wall of the dining space. The edges of the main hearth in the living space (10) are also softened by breaks in the plastering, kerbs of irregular stones, and a strange bite taken out of the edge against the window. And the bottom step of the main stair up from the living space (10) is squiffy against the sober regularity of the other steps in the flight. Even the flat roof has a rail with the plan of a contour or pool (see the drawing on page 238).

8 entrance porch, side elevation

9 hearth in the covered terrace, plan

10 the stairs in the living space

GE OM E T RY When asked what was the module he used in his office Aalto replied, ‘One millimetre or less’. This response, together with the quotation on page 238, implies that Aalto eschewed ideal geometry in his architecture in favour of a finer grained attitude to deciding dimensions. But perhaps his reply was somewhat disingenuous. The plan of the Villa Mairea is regu­ lated according to an underlying grid of squares divided into halves, thirds and quarters (11, next page), though as usual the thicknesses of walls allow different interpretations of exactly where the grid lines fall. It appears also, as in Lewerentz’s later plan for the Sankt Petri Kyrka in Klippan (see page 218), VILLA MAIREA

10 the hearth in the living space, side elevation (different scales) See also page 170 of Curve, 2019, in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

241

A

A1/2

B

C

D

E

F1/3

F

F2/3

G

G1/3

G 2/3

H

H1/2

I

1

2 21/3 21/2 2 /3 2

3

B1/2

4

5

51/2

11 geometry

The plan of the Villa Mairea is laid out on a geometric grid of squares, some of which are subdivided into thirds, halves or quarters. The main body of the living area, incorporating the winter garden and library, occupies a square 3F–3H–5H–3H. The servants’ area of the house occupies 31/3 squares between grid lines 1 and 2, and from grid lines D to G1/3. The dining/entrance hall area broadly occupies 22/3 squares between grid lines 2 and 3, from E to G2/3; though a third of the square 2E–2F–3F–3E is allocated to the garden, making the dining area itself narrower. The wall dividing the front entrance from the cloakroom lies on grid line 21/2. The extent of the wall that embraces the garden and sauna is determined by grid line A1/2. The grid line 22/3 determines the line of the roof over the external terrace. One of its other lines is on grid line 2, and it becomes more complex around the area of the sauna, though you can still see relationships to the grid. Many other of the house’s lines are determined by this grid. Some are diagonals. For example: the angle of the sitting porch seems determined by its origin at point 5D of the grid; one of the lines of the main porch originates at point 1D; the angled library wall aligns with point 3D; the angle of the wall where the dining area projects into the hallway aligns with points 41/2F and 2G; the angled wall in the kitchen aligns with points 5D and 1F2/3; the angle of the external hearth seems aligned according to a line between C3 and F2; even a small wall in the cloakroom near the front door seems to align with points B1 and H3. Determining the relationship between the curved geometry of the pool and the underlying grid is more difficult. But certainly part of the curve seems to be a quadrant with its focus at point 4C. Another part of the curving edge of the pool touches point 5D. And the pool’s left-hand edge aligns with grid line B1/2. 242

Any architect needs a way of making decisions about the dimensions and relationships between the parts of a building. Using an underlying grid can make such decisions seem less arbitrary, though strict adherence to a grid can make a building boring. So Aalto uses a grid in a more complex way: to help him make decisions without seeming to be the slave of geometry.

12

Nicolas Poussin’s The Funeral of Phocion which was composed using regulating lines in a way comparable to Aalto’s method for composing his plan for the Villa Mairea. The method seeks to imply linkage between points and parts in a way that will generate integrity in a composition. How much such integrity might be discernible in a realised architectural plan is less certain.

that elements that deviate from the orthogonal are aligned with diagonals between grid nodes (some of these are indicated in 11): the angles of the lines of the porches, one of the library walls, the extension of the dining space into the hallway, and the angled wall in the kitchen all are determined by diagonals linking grid points. These elements are not as free (arbitrary) in their geometry as they appear. Even the curve of the swimming pool can be interpreted as following the discipline of the grid, with some curves touching or having their radial centres at grid points. Alignment of diagonals is a paint­ er’s device too. It can bring a visual integrity to a two-dimensional layout. Aalto’s plan is comparable to the com­ position techniques used by landscape painters, e.g. the seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin. Poussin’s painting of The Funeral of Phocion, for example (12), is organised according to diagonals linking specific points on the picture surface. Poussin’s intention was to draw the observer’s eye to the two stretcher-bearers in the foreground. Aalto’s intent in using what Le Cor­ busier called ‘regulating lines’ was not pictorial composition (unless he was concerned for the aesthetics of the plan drawing). It appears to have been more to establish some reason (spurious or not) for the angles and dimensions of the various parts of his plan. For Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Sigurd Lewerentz, Alvar Aalto (and many other architects) the underlying grid was a framework that helped in making deci­ sions. Geometry cuts short doubt and deliberation, or at least establishes a kind of certainty (in place of indecision). If an element aligns with a grid line or a diagonal between grid nodes then it acquires a sort of rightness. A grid can be an authority against arbitrariness. Whether it imbues a design with aes­ thetic worth is a moot point, which has been argued over for centuries. VILLA MAIREA

11 outside hearth

C ONC LUSION (201 5) The history books report that Aalto was influenced by Wright’s Fallingwater (pages 157–68), which had been completed and published while Aalto was beginning to think about his design for the Villa Mairea. Early designs for this house had deep cantilevers. As he developed it, and without a waterfall to work with, Aalto’s design matured. Wright’s imitation of overlapping geological layers in the terraces of his house became in Aalto’s design a more subtle collage of human and natural contributions to the place. For both architects (as with others mentioned in this book) inspiration came from the traditional architecture of Japan. Much classical temple architecture presents a sharp division between the natural and the human. In rudimentary architecture the human presence can seem subject to the domination of Nature. Remember the quotation from Ruskin quoted at the beginning of the chapter ‘Tem­ ples and Cottages’ in Analysing Architecture in which he describes the character of an archetypal cottage (repeated from page 93): ‘Everything about it should be natural, and should appear as if the influences and forces which were in operation around it had been too strong to be resisted, and had rendered all efforts of art to check their power, or conceal the evidence of their action, entirely unavailing... it can never lie too humbly in the pastures of the valley, nor shrink too submissively into the hollows of the hills; it should seem to be asking the storm for mercy, and the mountain for protection: and should appear to owe to its weakness, rather than to its strength, that it is neither overwhelmed by the one, nor crushed by the other.’ Aalto’s Villa Mairea, as do traditional Japanese houses and gardens, suggests that more subtle relationship between the decision-making mind and Nature in which the architect chooses which natural phenomena to accept and which (if pos­ sible) to override. The result is a collaborative process in which Nature is managed for aesthetic effect rather than submitted to as an overriding moral authority. Architecture mediates between the person and the surroundings (environ­ ment) – this is its philosophical role – but its edges – the interfaces that distinguish an interior from the exterior – need not be sharp. In the Villa Mairea, Alvar Aalto demonstrates how they may be blurred into graded in-between spaces through which you can move almost imperceptibly between the realms of mind and Nature. 243

FAT H Y H O U S E , S I D I K R I E R , EGY P T, 1971

Fathy experimented with creating cool air by drawing it over water. Here a windcatcher (right) takes air down to the well to be cooled. He also made places on the roof (below).

wind-catcher

sea-facing elevation with wind-catcher

the house facing the sea

entrance courtyard

sitting place private courtyard

terrace roof plan

sitting place living bed

kitchen

section plan

bed bed

living

private courtyard

entrance courtyard

bath

kitchen

loggia terrace

Fathy’s plan and section are ‘musical’ compositions of squares and proportioned rectangles divided by thick walls and topped by parabolic vaults and domes. 244

wind-catcher well

Hassan Fathy learnt from traditional Islamic architecture and applied its principles as well as construction techniques in the houses he built for the poor as well as in those he designed for wealthier clients. His two main aims when building a small house for himself (near the coast west of Alexandria) were privacy and comfort. ‘It is desirable that houses should be restful, private, human in size, and related simply to their environment.’* Privacy is one of the chief characteristics of Islamic domestic architecture, as is the way it needs to mitigate the challenges of the Middle Eastern climate. ‘In architecture, the element of heat would, as a force, create a different form than would the element of cold. We would not expect an Arab in the desert to have a Swiss chalet with a gabled roof to run off rain and snow, because he has no rain or snow; he sleeps on the roof.’* Rather than using glass and air-conditioning, Fathy favoured the subtler and more energy efficient techniques learnt from centuries of traditional building. Though this house is built of stone, in much of his earlier work Fathy used traditional mud techniques to build walls with high ther­ mal mass and distinctive near parabolic vaults to allow warm air to rise. He used perforated walls, particularly high up in rooms, for the warm air to escape and for cooling breezes to enter. Courtyards with plants and fountains would help cooling and loggias provide shade. Privacy is paramount in an Islamic house, but Fathy broke precedent by providing an open terrace, neverthe ­ less screened from the public road, looking towards the sea (above; that view is now obscured by later building.) But Fathy’s concerns were not only practical. He com­ pared architecture with music. ‘If the building, the room, space I surround myself with is proportioned harmoniously, it is musical… There must be more (than technique) – and when there is, we hear music, we see harmony, we create culture. And when technique is given to different people… the results will differ, because the cultural background of each individual or group will differ.’* * Hassan Fathy quoted in J.M. Richards, I. Seragelsin and D. Rastorfer – Hassan Fathy, 1985.

T HER M A L BAT HS

245

T H E R M A L B A T H S , VA L S a bathing c omplex at t ac hed to a hotel in a S wiss valley PE TER ZU MTH O R , 19 9 6 In which we shall see that: •

architecture can appeal to and stimulate all the senses – sight of course, touch (texture, heat, chill…), smell, hearing and taste as well…

•

it can provoke other senses too – trepidation, uncertainty, pride, lust, embarrassment…;

•

architecture can relate to us through all our senses, emotions and character traits;

•

architecture deals in sensuality as well as sensibility and spatiality.

‘Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory; qualities of space, matter and scale are measured equally by the eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle. Architecture strengthens the existential experience, one’s sense of being in the world, and this is essentially a strengthened experience of self.’

Juhani Pallasmaa – The Eyes of the Skin (1996), 2005.

A

rchitecture is often conceived in terms of addition: add­ ing stone to stone, steel to steel, concrete to concrete…; a house by adding room to room, a street by adding house to house, a city by adding building to building, street to street… But architecture can be conceived as subtraction too. Space can be won by excavation, by erosion, by taking away material from solid matter; caves, for example, are made by running water wearing away rock; troglodyte houses are made by people cutting away at soft tufa stone – maybe expanding natural caves – to make rooms. Peter Zumthor’s thermal baths at Vals are not excavated from natural rock but they are conceived as if they were. The thermal baths at Vals are attached to an older hotel built in the 1960s. They emerge out of the steep hillside on which the hotel stands, near the village of Vals beside the river that flows along the floor of a deep valley between the high Alps in the Graubünden canton of eastern Switzerland. The hotel and baths face east across the valley (1). In the early morning shafts of sunlight strike between the peaks opposite. At midday and in the afternoon the short cattle-clipped grass 246

of the opposite hillsides, bathed in sunlight, is bright green. Cow bells clatter. In winter the landscape is grey and white. On cool days vapours from the baths’ warm outdoor pool join the mists in the valley.

hotel restaurant hotel entrance to baths baths

hotel apartments < village

1 immediate context

main road

E XC AVAT E D SPAC E The baths exploit water from a natural hot spring. You enter the building down a tunnel under the hotel (at a in 5 below),

as if you too were a molecule in a flow of water, come to join the waters that are there already. It is as if the spaces of the baths have been scoured out from solid matter as caves are excavated by underground water flows (2–11).

a

b

5

2 plan

The mind – as agent of erosion – enters, as do bathers in the finished building, through the tunnel (a) at the top right of the plan. It scours its way through crevices in the block of rock gradually making them wider, but always obeying the authority of its own orthogonal geometry. Spaces that are tight and small near the source (the tunnel) become wider and more generous towards the opposite corner (the outdoor pool, b) – as they tend to in natural cave systems. Water collects in depressions in the floor (the pools). Light enters through the cave’s mouths, and through cracks between the geological sections of the rock (concrete) roof. Great pillars of rock left by the scouring are themselves excavated, making small hidden places inside.

3

The baths building begins (conceptually) as a massive rectangular block bedded half into the slope. Though conceptually monolithic, this block is built of thin slices of locally quarried quartzite stone. Its perfect geometry emerges straight from the grass of the hillside and is capped by a perfectly horizontal concrete slab. Grass, divided into tatami-like sections (opposite), grows on the top.

6

outdoor pool

pool

4

The architecture begins with that geometrically perfect piece of artificial geology. The spaces that accommodate the baths are scoured from within the block, not by water but by Zumthor’s designing mind. This is a cave system made not by mindless processes but, like one of George MacDonald’s fairytales, obeying the laws imposed by Zumthor’s fantastic imagination.

T H E R M A L B AT H S

The artificial cave system becomes a labyrinth, a place (or complex of many places) for the person to explore, finding different circumstances and conditions in different parts of the building. Bathers pass through the five changing rooms to wander and swim amongst the pillars and seek out the secret places to soak and relax. Some places in this building are spacious, others confined; some are light, others dark; some warm, others cool; some dry, others steamy; some indoors, others outside; some enclosed, others have a view; in some you are on display, in others hidden away; some are quiet, some have sound (electronic, or made by the water or the bathers); in some you are pummelled by crashing water; in others you can snooze; some even are perfumed, maybe with flower petals. Within the defined, detached geometric world of this building there is a large variety of places, each with its own atmosphere, each designed to stimulate our sensuality and sensibilities in a different way. 247

a

x

a'

outdoor pool

8 section a–a' b

b'

c

c' pool

d

d' 9 section b–b'

10 section c–c' 7

The sections (8–11) show how the spaces flow down and open out from the north (solid earth, darker enclosed spaces) to the west and south (open spaces, light, air and views). The concrete slab roof is cut away over the outdoor pool (at the top of the plan above, 7). Around it are platforms for sunbathing. The outdoor pool extends under an overhang and, to one side, into the interior; you can swim through a flexible doorway, at x in 7, between inside and outside. A pool of light is created over the inner pool of water by means of perforations in the flat grassed roof. At night these perforations are lit by lamps that resemble flowers with hanging heads, looking down into the pool below.

I DE A L GE OM E T RY The laws that discipline Zumthor’s fantastic imagination are those of ideal geometry. Like the geometry of a sophisticated piece of music, that of the thermal baths in Vals is complex and many layered. It is too complex and has too many layers to give a complete account here. As in other buildings ana­ lysed in this book, it appears to be based on the square, the √2 rectangle and the Golden Section rectangle (12 opposite). The only obvious square is that of the indoor pool with its four by four square of sixteen small roof-lights and its grass 248

11 section d–d'

roof divided like a four-and-a-half tatami mat floor (see the axonometric on page 246). This core square centres two slightly larger squares of different dimensions. One of these gives the outer extents of two of the great pillars containing hidden places: a – high powerful showers that crash on your back and b – a dark and quiet room for meditating, lying on a bed listening to a recording of simple music made by striking rocks. The extent of a Golden Section rectangle generated from this square coincides with the (right-hand) outer edge of the building. The other slightly larger square determines the outer extents of another two of the great pillars, containing:

changing rooms entrance steam baths showers h

j

j

x

i

a

f

sun-bathing

g

c outdoor pool

e

pool d b x

y

quiet rooms

12

Superimposing the same diagram we used to analyse the underlying geometry of the Esherick House (pages 120–22) – combining square, √2 and Golden rectangles – we can see that, though no individual case seems significant, a number of walls do coincide. Excluding the service access zone to the right… the square determines the extent of the very hot bath (f); the √2 rectangle determines the position of one of the dividing walls in the steam baths (h and i); and the Golden Rectangle determines the end of the building. Numerous instances of the same proportions can be found elsewhere. It seems Zumthor wanted to instil the building with a sort of genetic integrity based in geometry. c – a freezing cold pool (usually empty of people) and d – a

pool of warm water sometimes covered with perfumed flower petals (often full of people). (There is a shower to wash off the petals when you get out.) A √2 rectangle derived from the core square determines the position of the inner face of the pillar containing the fountain where you can taste the spa water (e). The whole building is based on a large square and Golden Section rectangle, but with a bit added to the northern (right-hand) end to accommodate the stairs down to a lower floor which is chiefly for the plant and maintenance areas. The extent of this added bit seems to have been determined by another Golden Section rectangle (x). The area of roof cut out over the outdoor pool is a √2 rectangle (y) attached to the southern side of the large square on which the large Golden Section rectangle is based. And so on. The matrix of ideal geometry on which this building is based is too intricate to describe in words or even as a diagram. The thermal baths at Vals is a cave system created by a mathematical god. T H E R M A L B AT H S

MODI F Y I NG E L E M E N T S The thermal baths constitute a frame within which people can subject themselves to (enjoy or otherwise) a wide variety of sensual experiences. The hollowed-out great pillars contain hidden places with very different characters. There is a very hot bath in f and two sets of steam baths in h and i; maybe these were intended for male and female but they are used for those who wear their swimming costumes and those who do not. When it is snowing you can swim into the outdoor pool and feel the snowflakes melt on the skin of your shoulders. Hidden away at g is a small but lofty rock chamber you reach through a tunnel in the water. Here you encounter a low humming sound; after a while you realise it is being made by your fellow bathers, so you join in. Sounds from vocal cords resonate with the acoustic of the space. There are other spaces in the labyrinth where you may lie on beds in different circumstances. You can lie in: quiet dark rooms; quiet light rooms; sheltered shaded spaces or sunny sheltered spaces in the public areas, indoors or out; or you can lie on a raised platform by the outdoor pool, in full sun. The focus on sensual experience in the thermal baths at Vals is reminiscent of that in the bathing complexes built by the ancient Romans (13, next page). Roman baths had pools of different temperatures: hot, tepid and cold. They might also have an outdoor pool. In his baths, Zumthor adds further sensual experiences: the pool perfumed with flower petals; 249

outdoor pool

atrium

entrance hot

13 reconstruction of the women’s baths, Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli

the humming chamber; the chamber where you can drink the spa water; the chamber where you can lie in the dark and listen to rock (not ‘Rock’) music; the chambers where giant showers crash water onto your back; the chamber where you dip your toe into the cold water and decide to go somewhere else; and so on. This is a building that provides for all the five senses – sight, touch, hearing, smell and taste – but it provides for other senses too. Zumthor said there should be no clocks in the baths so that bathers would be unaware of time. But the building does not obliterate time; it replaces clock time with other sorts of time: the movement of the sun and clouds across the sky; the movement of other people around the internal spaces – entering, wandering, immersing and then, some time later, taking their leave; the movement of farmers and animals on the hillsides opposite; your own explorations of the hidden places in the great pillars; maybe time spent otherwise in snoozing. It is a building that caters for psychological senses too – the emotions: the sense of slight trepidation each time you cross the threshold to peer into one of the hidden places, not knowing what to expect, finding many other eyes peering back at you or a changing room full of naked people; the sense of resonance with others as you hum softly in the acoustic chamber; the sense of self-consciousness when you emerge from the changing rooms at the higher level to descend a long stepped ramp ( j–j in 12) cast as the star on a TV chat show in front of the audience in the pool; or, alternatively, the gratified sense of exhibitionism, doing the same, if you enjoy showing off your finely-honed physique; the sense of refuge and relaxation when you enter one of the dark spaces inside a stone column to lie on a bed listening to music. It is difficult to think of another building anywhere that offers such a promiscuity of ways in which our bodily and psychological senses and sensibilities are revitalised by the conditions the architecture provides. 250

Ovid, trans. Brookes More – ‘Echo and Narcissus’.

C ONC LUSION (201 5): C ON T E N T A N D C ON T E X T

cold baths

tepidarium

‘He beholds himself reflected in the mirrored pool – and loves; loves an imagined body which contains no substance, for he deems the mirrored shade a thing of life to love. He cannot move, for so he marvels at himself.’

There are sixteen small roof-lights over the indoor pool at Vals. For each, on the grassy roof, there is a small light, lit at night; the shade of each light is black and like a narcissus flower. Each looks down into the pool chamber below and at its own reflection in the glass of its own little roof-light. Narcissus was the god who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pond. His story is told by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses (above). Though the building is much photographed (and pho ­ togenic), the thermal baths at Vals is even more powerful as an instrument… which is more profoundly architectural. It does not just stand there, in amongst the Swiss mountains, merely to be admired as a sculptured block of stone. This is a building that, like all other buildings, manipulates your experience, emotional and sensual. But it does so at a higher, more intense, level than most buildings. The thermal baths at Vals is a building that, again like all other buildings, medi­ ates between people and their surroundings – landscape and climate – modifying, orchestrating, filtering, intensifying… their inter-relationships. But again, it does so at a higher, more rigorously considered, level than most buildings. In this building, Zumthor provides a frame within which people may indulge privately in subtle sensual pleasures, a refuge where they may reflect upon the landscape and its ever-changing weather, and a stage/auditorium on which they may display themselves and watch others. And he does so by the timeless application of geometry, thought by many to be the touchstone of architectural magic (artifice). One suspects that Zumthor did not intend his building for t he camera. Though it might, in its purpose, c ater for Narcissuses, it is itself less narcissistic and more consid­ erate; it manifests, in architectural form, consideration for its context, the powerful landscape, and for its content, the sensual, emotional, naked (or almost so) person. This is a building that is as interested in what it does to the person as how it looks. In providing for the people who use it and in responding to the setting the building establishes a bridge between the two. The entrance tunnel cuts visitors off from the surrounding landscape only to reintroduce them in the special circumstances of being unclothed in a labyrinth carved from inside a huge artificial and geometrically ordered rock boulder. If the thermal baths at Vals is a temple, it is a temple to the sensual human being.

2023 The Thermal Baths at Vals is probably Zumthor’s most sensual building. In other buildings he adopts different themes. No two seem to share the same stylistic language (of appearance nor of construction) but all share the same intensity of explo­ ration and resolution. Some play with multiple senses. Most engage the person as essential to the architecture. Alongside are three more of Zumthor’s works, from both before and after the Thermal Baths in Vals. The first is a small chapel on the hillside above the village of Sumvitg, south of Zurich in the Graubünden region of Switzerland. The Chapel of St Benedict (Song Benedikt) is a tear drop shaped cylinder clad on the outside in shingle and with a finely crafted timber-structured interior. Light enters through a clerestory under the low-pitched roof. The shape is redolent also of a boat and an egg, both with shells or hulls, and reminders of the protective sanctuary provided by churches. You enter up a few concrete steps and cross a narrow but nevertheless slightly unnerving gap between the concrete and the timber deck of the chapel. It is a goal of pilgrimage, for architects as much as if not more than for worshippers. The second example plays with the moment of entrance too. It was built three years earlier than the chapel. It is a shel­ ter for some Roman archaeology in the town of Chur, east of Sumvitg. Here the entrance is more elaborate and also slightly unnerving. Zumthor has screened the door with a steel box incorporating steps. Cantilevered from the main structure, the metal box gives slightly as you step in, hinting that you are entering a world different from the present. The third example is another countryside chapel, some­ what smaller than Saint Benedict. The Bruder Klaus Chapel stands in fields east of Mechernich, Germany. The chapel was constructed by casting concrete in flat-faceted tower-like formwork over a pre-erected wigwam of rough timber tree trunks. When the concrete set, the timber was burnt to leave the hollow interior blackened and smelling of smoke. The floor is molten lead left to cool. Passing through its triangular doorway, you can imagine the effect on your senses. Sun and rain flow through the opening in the roof and down the walls, creating their own pools of light and water. The building is primevally elemental: earth; fire; air; water. ‘A young colleague asked me how I would go about building a house of wood after working for some years with stone and concrete, steel and glass. At once, I had a mental image of a house-sized block of solid timber, a dense volume made of the biological substance of wood, horizontally layered and precisely hollowed out… A house like this would change its shape, would swell and contract, expand and decrease in height, a phenomenon that would have to be an integral part of the design.’

Peter Zumthor – Thinking Architecture, 1998.

T H E R M A L B AT H S

plan of the Saint Benedict Chapel, 1988

See also page 131 of Analysing Architecture, 2021.

section through the entrance of the archaeological shelter, Chur, 1986 See also page 96 of Shadow, 2020, in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

section through the Bruder Klaus Chapel, 2007 See also page 82 of Shadow, 2020, in the Analysing Architecture Notebook series.

251

CHANGEABILIT Y Though we move in an around architecture, we tend to think of buildings as static frames. We open and close doors and windows, draw curtains, switch lights on and off… but in some buildings change can be more radical. closed

view to mountain

This is the plan of a typical traditional Japanese house as recorded in Bruno Taut’s influential (in Europe) book Das japanische Haus und sein Leben (1937). He shows its interior open, across verandas, to the north and east. This is just one of its many permutations. Such houses have sliding and removable translucent paper screens (shoji) that can be positioned according to use, sun, wind, and aesthetic predilection. Three more of almost infinite permutations are shown in the plans to the right.

view to sunrise

open

open

closed

Void Space/Hinge Space Housing (concept), Fukuoka, Japan, 1989

closed Schröder House, Utrecht, 1924

On the upper floor of the Schröder House Gerrit Rietveld provided screens that could be moved to open up or compartment the space into separate rooms. The house is usually celebrated for its external appearance, as a prime example of De Stijl architecture. But its flexible layout is novel too. 252

In the late 1980s, Stephen Holl designed a residential block in Fukuoka, Japan, in which the internal layout of each apartment could be radically re-arranged by means of hinged elements. It was called the Void Space/Hinge Space Housing. The above drawings are diagrammatic representations of open and the closed alternative layouts in one of the apartments. Entry is middle left. Holl’s website declares: ‘Diurnal hinging allows expansion of the living area during the day, reclaimed by bedrooms at night. Episodic hinging reflects change in family over time; rooms can be added or subtracted accommodating grown-up children leaving or elderly parents moving in.’ You can see that the segments of space taken up by the pivot arcs of the various elements would remove a substantial amount of usable space from some of the rooms. Internet images show the interiors largely empty of furniture.

R A ME SH HOUSE

253

R A MESH HOUSE an environment ally responsive house in Thir uvananthapuram, Kerala LIZ A R A J U SU BH A D R A (R .S. LIZ A), 20 03 In which we shall see that: • while many buildings prioritise

the horizontal dimension in their

planning, some give equal value

to their vertical organisation, especially when sited on a slope;

study

w.c

• a datum space, which can be

seen from most parts of a

building, makes its layout legible;

• architecture is not always merely

a shelter from rain or a shade

from sun, insulation from cold and a refuge from public view…; it can be a subtle and sophisticated instrument of environmental modification without the need for mechanical air-conditioning.

roof terrace

guest bedroom

‘Since the beginning of recorded art, India’s brains had devised the jali to filter the glare and strong sunlight into cool but breeze-filled rooms… We can study the many and varied components of Indian architectural design and find out what makes them essentially and intriguingly “Indian”.’

Laurie Baker – ‘Is a Modern Indian Architecture Possible?’, in Gautam Bhatia – Laurie Baker:

Life, Works & Writings, 1991.

U

fish pond entrance courtyard

open brickwork ventilation wall – jali – (full height of courtyard)

nlike the drawing at the beginning of the analysis of the Casa del Ojo de Agua (the first in this book), the axonometric above is a cutaway drawing; roofs, and some parts of the walls, have been omitted so that relationships between internal spaces may be shown. This house does have a relationship with its context but, in contrast to Mies van de Rohe’s Farnsworth House (pages 77–94) which is open (through glass) to its surroundings, this house is introverted. The drawing illustrates the interrelated vertical layers of this not-large house in the tropical climate of southern India. The layers are arranged almost as a spiral around a small courtyard, open to the sky and ventilated through a perforated brickwork (jali) full-height wall. The house is entered, by foot and by car, at the mid-level of the spiral. From the entrance you can descend the central stair (alongside the open courtyard) down past a mezzanine bedroom, to the 254

garage

mezzanine bedroom

reception room

access from road

kitchen utility room

courtyard where there is a kitchen and everyday living space. Or you can ascend to the study on the top floor. From the courtyard level, with its fish pond, you can go further down, to a doorway – in the corner that cannot be seen in the drawing – out to the garden. And from the study there is another doorway, up a couple of steps, out onto a roof terrace amongst the fronds of the surrounding coconut palms. A single mango tree in the courtyard (not shown in this axonometric but shown in the section and plans oppo­ site) reaches above the roof. (Mangoes may be picked from the roof terrace.) Architect R.S. Liza’s Ramesh House stands on a sloping site in the sprawling suburbs of the Keralan city of Thiru­ vananthapuram (also known as Trivandrum) in southern

India. There are other individual detached houses around. The access road is on the uphill side of the site; this is why the spiral of spaces, from ground to roof, is entered midway. The climate in Kerala is generally hot and humid. Being tropical, there is also a monsoon season. These are factors any house design in the region has to take into account. You can see the layout of the spaces of the house in the drawings alongside, arranged with the lowest levels at the bottom and a section at the top. You can see that the family spaces – kitchen, living/dining space, reception room – are arranged together on the left, near the entrance, whilst the more private individual spaces – the bedrooms and study – are on the right looking out into the garden’s dense vegetation.

1 section

roof terrace

S T R AT I F IC AT ION – F ROM E A RT H T O SK Y Modes of architectural drawing – in particular, starting a design by drawing a plan – tend to produce buildings organ­ ised primarily in the horizontal dimension. This tendency fits in with the fact that we generally move in the horizontal plane; we are held down on the more or less horizontal sur­ face of the earth by the vertical force of gravity. If we flew like birds our architecture would be different. Many of the great works of architecture analysed in this book – Mies’s Farnsworth House and Barcelona Pavilion, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and Cabanon, Lewerentz’s Sankt Petri Kyrka, Zumthor’s Thermal Baths at Vals… – submit to the primacy of the horizontal plane, even if some lift their main floor from the ground as a piano nobile. Kiesler’s Endless House and Findlay’s Truss Wall House both try to subvert that authority (of the horizontal), though of course are not able to ignore the verticality of gravity and our predisposition to walking and standing on horizontal surfaces. The Ramesh House manages to break free of the dom­ inance of one horizontal plane, one strata dominant in its relationship with the surface of the earth. But this house does so without employing curved sculptural form. The earth and sky are both present in the courtyard – with the mango tree stretching between the two as an axis mundi (an axis of the earth, a vertical centre, a stable reference marker around which life revolves) – but the living spaces around are arranged on at least six different levels – one below and five above the courtyard’s earth level. All except the secluded study on the top floor and the small bedroom on the middle floor have views into the courtyard. The spaces and rooms are connected by a stack of short flights of stairs (reminiscent of a drawing by M.C. Escher) next to the courtyard. The courtyard itself has a gravelly earth floor, down a large step from the kitchen level, which makes it seem less a R AMESH HOUSE

w.c

study a

2 roof level

reception room

courtyard mezzanine bedroom

entrance

bath garage

small bedroom a

3 entrance level

jali

courtyard kitchen fish pond utility room

4 lower level

living/dining space

guest bedroom bath access to garden

jali

The house has a stepped section that spirals down to a floor-and­ a-half below the entrance level and up to a floor-and-a-half above. The utility and everyday living spaces are on the lowest level. Entering the house you look down into the courtyard with its fish pond and mango tree. Climbing the stair you reach the bedrooms and study. On the roof terrace you are in the tree canopy. 255

place to occupy and more a place that, although central to the house, is slightly apart from its domestic life. A pond with fish makes the courtyard (with its tree) into a schematic landscape. This is a house where you can have your feet on the ground and your head in the trees, with most of life at home taking place on a ladder of spaces between the two.

5–7 The courtyard – with its earth floor, open brick walls (jali),

pool and tree – is key to keeping the living spaces of the interior of the house relatively cool.

R E L AT IONSH I P W I T H C L I M AT E ( I N F LU E NC E OF L AU R I E B A K E R) The climate in Kerala is challenging. This is a region where the purpose of a house is not primarily to keep you warm. The first reason for any house (and this is shared across the world) is to define and protect (psychologically as much as physically) the private, personal realm of a person, family or other established group of people. But whereas in Europe or North America this may traditionally be manifest in the form of walls around a hearth – a social heart and source of warmth – in Kerala (as in much of India and other tropical regions) the challenge is to ameliorate, if at all possible, heat and humidity and to provide a dry refuge during heavy mon­ soon rain. Ventilation and a sheltering roof are key elements. Fashion (a desire to appear Modern) and influence from abroad has prompted extensive use of glass walls and airconditioning in many contemporary developments in India, domestic and commercial. But the Ramesh House is designed to achieve comfort without the need for air-conditioning, and this aim is helped by not having large glass walls. The key factor in the Ramesh House’s environmental strategy for keeping the living spaces relatively cool is the traditional one of the courtyard, open to the sky. This court­ yard is small, high and shaded by the canopy of the tree, so that warming from direct sunlight, which hardly enters it, is mitigated. The openness of the courtyard allows warm air to escape from the living spaces around it, all of which have openings onto it (5). Moisture in the earth, from the tree, and from the fish pond, evaporates to create cool air that drifts down into those spaces (6). And the jalis – the open brickwork walls at either side of the house – allow cross ventilation, whilst also maintaining privacy and security (7). R.S. Liza was influenced by Laurie Baker, a precursor with a similar low technology approach to the climatic chal­ lenges of southern India. He worked in Kerala for the last thirty years of his life, dying in Trivandrum in 2007. Baker designed individual houses for wealthy clients and some institutional buildings; but he did so to support his main work developing housing for India’s poor. He set up an organisation called Costford, based in his own residential compound – The Hamlet – on the outskirts of Trivandrum. Costford has continued Baker’s work since his death. 256

5

The open-to-the-sky courtyard allows rising warm air to escape from the living spaces of the house.

6

Evaporating moisture from the earth, pool and mango tree makes cooler air that drifts down into the living spaces.

7

The jalis allow cross ventilation whilst preserving privacy and security. Minimizing the use of glass, optimising evaporative cooling and cross-ventilation, creating shade (avoiding the intrusion of strong hot sun)… all help to minimise the need for energy (e.g. air-conditioning) in keeping the house comfortable.

Baker’s ethos was to produce low-cost, low-energy housing. He was not (romantically) wedded to using tradi­ tional materials (which in Kerala would be mud, unwrought timber and coconut leaves) but neither did he think it a good idea to use materials involving high energy (in manufacture or use) for the sake of appearing modern. His simple palette was based on brick (hardened mud; for walls, built in furni­ ture…) and reinforced concrete (for roofs, floors, platforms…). He used timber (for louvres, windows…) and clay tiles (for floors). He avoided using glass as much as possible, and tried to keep necessary windows (modestly sized) out of the sun. Occasionally he used old coloured bottles for decoration, inserting them into brick walls to diffract glints of blue, red or yellow light into shaded interiors.

‘(The) common burnt brick is usually pleasing to look at with warm colours ranging from cream, through orangy sandy colours to brown and even bluey brown. When built into a wall, pleasing and interesting simple patterns appear. Like people who all have one nose, one mouth, two ears and two eyes but no two look exactly the same, so each brick, although simple in shape, has its own individuality.’

Laurie Baker – ‘Brickwork’, in Houses: How to Reduce Building Costs (no date).

The Ramesh House uses some formal ideas found in Baker’s houses. Like his Lt. Col. John Jacob House (8, 1988, below left) it is entered at a mid level, with further living spaces above and below. Like his Abu Abraham House (9, 1989) it has living spaces arranged around a small courtyard. But rather than try to emulate any one of Baker’s houses directly, R.S. Liza develops the spirit of his architecture. His

top floor

9 Abu Abraham House, Baker, 1989 (courtesy of Costford)

middle floor – entrance level

bottom floor 8 Lt. Col. John Jacob House, Baker, 1988

R AMESH HOUSE

Like the Ramesh House, the Jacob House (left) is entered at mid-level, and the Abu Abraham House centred on a courtyard. The Ramesh House is, even so, spatially more three-dimensional than either.

10 Low-cost, low-energy ‘demonstration’ house, for the Archbishop of Trivandrum, Baker, 1970 (courtesy of Costford)

Baker’s Quaker beliefs and attitudes, as evident in this manifesto statement from one of his many low-cost design guides, informed his approach to architecture: ‘Unnecessary architectural fashions, frills and finishes do not make good architecture. India has a wealth of beautiful strong, natural local building materials. Their special characteristics and textures should be shown in our building and we should all learn to abhor false and fancy finishes. Planning spaces must be economically and sensibly done. Energy-intensive materials should be used sparingly and only when local natural materials are not available or in short supply, or if the quality is too inferior for durable use. The country is short of energy. Let us not cause further shortage. Do not build unless there is real necessity. For a simple example, in this community planning, a common lavatory and toilet block may be just as good and less costly than individual toilets in each unit. Water pipes can all be less if a common toilet unit is built. Windows are expensive. In many instances they can be replaced by jalis. Doors and windows can often be frameless and save half the cost. Money borrowed from abroad has to be paid back, Far better to help remove the cause and occasion for borrowing. Plan and build within our own means.’

Laurie Baker – Rural Community Buildings, 1997.

257

11 (courtesy of Costford)

A few of Laurie Baker’s sketches showing how building and running costs might be reduced by omitting glass, optimising ventilation and using cheap local materials.

main influence on her lies in his low-energy response to cli­ mate. For his individual houses, Baker did use glass in some (modestly sized) windows. When designing low-cost, lowenergy houses, he avoided glass altogether, providing ventila­ tion through brick jalis. The plan on the previous page (10) is of a ‘demonstration’ house Baker designed as a prototype for a project initiated by the Archbishop of Trivandrum in 1970, when Baker first arrived in southern India. (He came to Ker­ ala from China, by way of the Himalayas where he had been working with his Keralan wife, Elizabeth, a medical doctor.) This single-storey house type was built with a coconut thatch roof, with simple rooms arranged around a small courtyard open to the sky and ventilated through open brick jali walls. Baker was intent on economy in construction as well as energy use. He published pamphlets for general use, illustrat­ ing ways of building that would reduce use of materials, and hence reduce cost. Some of his sketches are reproduced above (11). ‘Rs’ means rupees; ‘Rs+’ meaning more costly and ‘Rs-’ less so. In these drawings he suggests that corbelled brick arches are cheaper than lintels; that rat-trap bonding in brick walls uses 75% of the bricks used in other bonds (that shown for comparison is English bond); and that, for ventilation, jalis or simple wooden flaps are cheaper than fully carpentered windows. Top right are a few of Baker’s sketches showing that 258

ventilation walls – open brickwork jalis – are decorative as well as energy saving (i.e. they combine the functional with the aesthetic – an aim, associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement, promoted by John Ruskin and William Morris in the late nineteenth century). R.S. Liza also uses simple wooden flaps, similar to those suggested by Baker, for adjustable ventilation in the alcove in the small bedroom and the desk alcove in the study of the Ramesh House (indicated at a on the plans on page 255). The jalis allowing cross ventilation in the courtyard (12) and alongside the stair down to the garden are both arranged in a chevron pattern (30o and 45o respectively) for structural stability as well as visual interest.

12 Ramesh House brickwork jali

‘To me, this Himalayan domestic architecture was a perfect example of vernacular architecture. Simple, efficient, inexpensive… As usual this delightful, dignified housing demonstrated hundreds of years of building research on how to cope with local materials, how to cope with local climate hazards and how to accommodate the local social pattern of living. It dealt with incidental difficult problems of how to build on a steeply sloping site, or how to cope with earthquakes and how to avoid landsliding areas and paths. The few examples of attempts to modernize housing merely demonstrated, only too clearly, our modern conceit and showed how very foolish we are when we attempt to ignore or abandon these hundreds of years of “research” in local building materials.’ 13 Baker’s sketch of the interior of their Himalayan home (courtesy of Costford)

PL AC E S F OR PE OPL E Baker was interested not only in simple and economic building construction but also in framing the lives of people in engag­ ing ways. This aspiration is evident in the Ramesh House too. The way in which Baker drew the interior of the house in which he and his wife lived when working in the Himalayas

14

‘All over the country a variety of ingenious and decorative shelves and recesses are found in thick walls, and sleeping and storage lofts above the lintel level. All this shows a mastery of a three-dimensional approach to the use of space.’

Laurie Baker – ‘Architecture and the People’, in Bhatia, 1991.

R AMESH HOUSE

Laurie Baker – ‘The Question of Taking Appropriate Building Technology to Pithoragarh’, in Singh, Singh and Shastri, eds. – Science and Rural Development in Mountains, Gyanodaya Prakashan, Naini Tal, 1980, quoted in Bhatia, 1991.

(13) illustrates his interest in architecture as a frame for life before external visual expression. The drawing is informed by a desire to convey places that could/would be occupied by people – a place to sit in the sun, a place to sit eating or to work, a place to prepare food and to cook, a place to sleep, a place to store dishes etc. This attitude, which can inform a whole approach to making architecture, is evident too in a small sketch Baker included in his book Houses: How to Reduce Building Costs (14). The message of this simple sketch is that, if you are building a wall you might as well save money by making it into a place to sit too; the wall is then doing more than one thing. It is thought of as a place to accommodate a person rather than just as a constructed piece of building structure. This is an attitude to architecture evident in what is known as vernacular or traditional architecture across the world. Just as it is evident in the Bakers’ Himalayan home, it is evident in the small Keralan mud house illustrated on page 262, where places to sit, to sleep, to cook… are incorporated in the constructed fabric (rather than as independent pieces of furniture) and are therefore more essential to the form of the building than its visual appearance. As I have already commented, this attitude of including the person as a participant ingredient rather than merely a spectator of architecture is evident in R.S Liza’s Ramesh House too. It is a place – or rather a composition of many places contained in the unifying frame of the house – for inhabiting. The Ramesh House has built-in bench seats on the roof terrace (a in 15, next page), a built-in desk (b) and daybed (c) in the study (the desk is built into a window that is for ventilation not a view), a seat built into the wide sill of the window looking into the courtyard of the mid-level bedroom (d), and so on. Every part of the house is designed with a purpose (an occu­ pation) in mind. This does not make the Ramesh House into a ‘functionalist’ house – a ‘machine for living in’ (any more than any of Le Corbusier’s houses were actually ‘machines for living in’ despite his rhetoric). It is born of that way of seeing 259

space as engaging with the presence of the person (and of course vice versa – this is a two-way transaction), making them feel ‘at home’, i.e. included in the architecture as a participant.

b

E L E M E N T S D OI NG MOR E T H A N ON E T H I NG The sense of occupiable space (Christian Norberg-Schulz, in his book Existence, Space and Architecture, 1971, called it ‘existential space’) is also achieved in the Ramesh House. As in Baker’s houses and the Keralan mud house on page 262, elements do more than one thing. A step between the living/dining area and the courtyard – primarily there to keep the courtyard’s grit and monsoon rain in its right place – is high enough to be also an informal seat, a place for sitting with your feet on the earth and your bottom on the tiled floor. Similarly the kerb of the fish pond is wide enough to be a seat for feeding the fish. And the base of the courtyard jali contains a kennel for the family’s dogs (e); its roof can also be a place to perch. O C C U P Y I NG T H E I N -BE T W E E N These elements doing more than one thing often make places that are inbetween, poised between one defined space (a bedroom for example) and another (the courtyard). The sitting step is in-between the ‘landscape’ of the courtyard and the human domes­ tic world of the house. The kerb of the pond is in-between earth and water. The kennel is in-between the interior and exterior worlds. The roof terrace is in-between the domestic world of the house and the canopy of the surround­ ing trees with the sky above. The window seat in the mid-level bedroom (d) is perhaps the most inter­ esting of these in-between places. It is a place to sit which is neither inside the 260

c a

d

e

16 places to settle

bedroom nor inside the courtyard but suspended between the two. It creates a focus for the courtyard. That framed seat is like a stage in an auditorium; open to domestic view but with a private area behind; a window of appearance – the window from which the ‘light’ of Juliet ‘breaks’ to Romeo. It is the opening into a refuge from which the occupant of the bedroom can see in prospect what is going on in the rest of the house and from which they might communicate with the rest of the family. But it can also be shuttered for privacy. Similarly, the kitchen has an open wall to the courtyard, through which the mango tree is visible. The whole house is a three- (four- because architecture also involves the modifying element of time) dimensional stage on which the daily incidents and dramas of life are played out, with ‘actors’ communicating with each other from different levels. DAT U M SPAC E All the living spaces of the house may be said to be in-between spaces. Each lies in-between the courtyard and the outside world around. This makes the courtyard with its tree (the axis mundi) into a datum space by reference to which you always know exactly where you are inside the house (17). The direction of communality

datum space

middle level

datum space

it can be difficult to see them as establishing private worlds for occupation, places separated from the world around, proposed through design by the mind of the architect and creatively interpreted and amended by the ways in which the occupants inhabit them. When you enter the Ramesh House you feel that you have entered this private world. But the interior is not entirely separated from its surroundings. The fabric of the building acts as a filter rather than as hermetic envelope. Air for ventilation is admitted through the brickwork jalis, the adjustable shutters and the open-able windows. The sun is largely excluded – by the leaves of the mango tree, the height and narrowness of the courtyard and the shade of the surrounding trees – to keep out its heat. But even so, shafts of sunlight sparkle (coruscate) into the shady interior of the house. In these ways the house is like a machine for living in, a passive instrument, adjustable by the occupants, for modifying the environment inside the house to make it as comfortable as possible. 2023

lower level 17 courtyard as datum space

is towards the centre; the direction of individual reflection is outwards. The courtyard plays an essential part not only in the environmental strategy of the house (in facilitating air movement and ventilation, as illustrated on page 256) and int terms of intra-family communication, but also in helping the mind of an occupant or visitor make sense of the spaces of the house, so that they may grasp its form easily – know where they are and how to get from one place to another. It also means that the spaces of the house ranging from the smallest to the courtyard have different scales and characters. C ONC LUSION (201 5) Although I have visited the Ramesh House, I do not remember its external appearance. Even though this is partly because it is shrouded with trees (the shade of which helps to keep it cool) it is more because this is a house that is not particularly concerned about external appearance. This is a house that is primarily about framing, accommodating, a family’s domestic life, making a private world for them to live in. Its various levels establish an internal world spiralling gently about the schematic landscape (courtyard) and axis mundi (mango tree) at its centre. Works of architecture are so often presented (in photographs in the media) as objects to be admired that R AMESH HOUSE

Here is a profound distinction. You may design a building as you might arrange flowers, cut hair, mould clay, paint a pic­ ture, create jewellery… with a view to its visual composition and the aesthetic of its appearance to the eye. Some think this is the essence of ‘Architecture’, the quality that distinguishes it from mere ‘building’. Many histories of architecture through the ages deal with architecture in this way. You might do so with a specific focus on how your building might look (well, hopefully) in a photograph. (And that is why many histories of architecture prioritise photographic illustrations.) Whereas there are no other ways of arranging flowers, cutting hair, moulding clay, painting pictures, creating jewel­ lery… there is another, profoundly different way of designing a building. And that is to focus on the ways in which its spaces will frame its content – people, their activities and posses­ sions, atmospheres, the domestic dramas of their lives, the changing emotions and states of being… – and the ways its fabric mediates between that content and the context – the forces and characteristics of the world around, the landscape, other people, the forces of the sky, the influence of the gods… It is the latter way, as demonstrated in the Ramesh House, that produces congenial places for living in. It is informed by consideration for the family. The primary pur­ pose of its fabric is to mediate in the relationship of that family with the surroundings: climate and the world around. But it also engineers a rich and varied setting for all the internal events, activities, collaborations… and maybe dramas… that occur in any home. 261

M U D H O U S E , T h i r u va n a n t h a p u r a m , Ke r a l a , I n d i a This small house uses the simplest materials: mud, timber, leaves. It frames life and is a climatic modifier.

section

The conceptual form of this simple yet sophisticated house is shown in the drawings below. It appears that con­ struction would have begun with a clear idea of the final form, probably because it uses a common traditional language of architecture. The house provides a single occupant with an airy and shady refuge from heat, rain and flood. Rooms are open-sided and the roof covering is thick with very low eaves to keep out the sun. Even with no added furniture it provides places for the activities of daily life: sleeping, cook­ ing, eating, storing, chatting with neighbours/family, keep ­ ing chickens… This house is timeless; but the relationship between structure, walls and spatial organisation could be described (anachronistically) as Modern. Its relationship between space and structure can be compared with the Bar­ celona Pavilion, Farnsworth House, Villa Savoye…

1

2

store living bed

plan

This mud house has layers of construction (right) arranged with a clear idea of its final spatial organisation: 1 a multi-layered platform of stone and mud; the final spatial organisation of the house is already evident in this platform; it also contains a chicken house (not shown); 2 posts to support the roof are arranged irregularly, also with awareness of the final plan arrangement; 3 these posts, together with a matrix of purlins and rafters, support the roof of coconut leaves (shown dotted) which provides the interior with shade and shelter from monsoon rains; 4 mud walls weave between the posts; only two rooms are closable; others – the bed/living room and kitchen – are open for ventilation; 5 even though the house does not have a ‘front door’, an entrance/threshold is identified by means of two stones set in the edge of the platform; 6 with its roof the interior of the house is a shady, airy and dry refuge from the sun and monsoon rains of southern India. 262

store living

3

4

MORE PUBLIC

sitting steps MORE PRIVATE threshold 5

6

kitchen

BA R DI HOUSE

263

BA R DI HOUSE a house in the subur b of M or umbi, São Paulo, Bra zil LIN A BO BA R DI, 19 49 – 52

In which we shall see that: • architecture can deal in contrasts

– of light and shade, enclosure

and openness, protection and

exposure, lightweight and heavy,

modern and traditional, relation­ ships with the ground (elevation

and excavation)…;

• such contrasts can take the

person through an orchestrated

series of experiences;

• they can also be essential

components in a work of

architecture’s poetry.

‘No decorative or compositional effect was sought in this house, as the aim was to intensify its connection with nature, using the simplest possible means, in order to have the minimum impact on the landscape. The problem was to create an environment that was “physically” sheltered, i.e., that offered protection from the wind and the rain, but at the same time remained open to everything that is poetic and ethical, even the wildest of storms.’ (more on page 269)

Lina Bo Bardi, trans. Anthony Doyle and Pamela Johnston – ‘House in Morumbi’ (1953), in Stones Against Diamonds, 2013.

T

his house, in the Murumbi suburb of São Paolo, was designed by Lina Bo Bardi for herself and her husband. It was her first realised project. She and Pietro Maria Bardi had emigrated from Italy to Brazil late in 1946 just after getting married. Their house is also known as the Glass House – a nickname given it by neighbours when it was built. It was the first modern house in a now prosperous residential district previously occupied by scattered simple traditional houses. When the house was built its site had been cleared but its large garden has since become filled with regenerated rain­ forest. Although the main living area of the house appears as a sealed glass box raised on legs, it was designed so that it could be opened up too, allowing the sounds and perfumes, warmth and breezes of the surroundings unhindered access to the interior. Rather like in the Casa del Ojo de Agua (pages 11–22) the intention was to intensify the relationship with surrounding Nature rather than insulate domestic life from it. Both houses have this in common with children’s tree houses. When the glass walls of the Bardi House are open there is no protective rail (nor mosquito netting as in the Casa del Ojo de Agua); there is a sense of standing on a precipice, a sense of danger, of being on the edge. Bardi did not intend this to be

264

a sanitised Modernist house, hermetically sealed in its own physical or conceptual world (see the quotation above); she wanted something less prescribed and certain, something more visceral and complex – emotional and poetic as well as ordered by reason. Superficial comparisons can be made between the Bardi House and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (pages 169–81): its main element consists of an open plan raised above the ground on what Le Corbusier called pilotis; it has something of an architectural promenade; it has a (small) roof garden. But this is about as far as comparisons may be taken. The Bardi House has its own different subtleties. Most great designs are praised for the consistency and lucidity of their conception. But the Bardi House is a house of contrasts where architectural ideas that might be described as opposite are intertwined. This is a work of architecture in which contrasts – light and shade, earth and air, openness and privacy, irreg­ ularity and order, tradition and modernity… even master and servant – are combined and juxtaposed to create a complex whole (rather like a Mozart opera). Works of architecture often seem somehow sealed off from their surroundings (there are a number of examples in this book, including the Villa

1 site plan, lower level, cutting through the hill (shaded).

2 site plan, upper level, main living level, surrounded by mature trees

Savoye) occupying their own conceptual world (that of the architect’s spatial or formal imagination) but in this house Bardi expressed a desire to dissolve this hermetic intellectual separation.

glass walls around the central square patio may be opened too, for cross ventilation. Like other temples on promontories (the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, or the Villa Savoye for example) the Bardi House has a winding approach (in this case a drive­ way) from which it may be seen from various angles, here through trees. The other smaller buildings on the site include a garage (near the driveway entrance) and a studio (to the right in the site plan) that Bardi built for herself. This small studio stands amongst the trees like a Japanese tea-house.

SI T I NG The Bardi House stands on a hill at the middle of a tongueshaped piece of land (1 and 2 above) bounded by public roads. As may be inferred from the site plan of the lower level (1, which cuts through the hill) the site slopes steeply up from the road. The house stands right on the brow of the hill. Contours are shown in the drawings on the following pages. When the site was clear it had a commanding view across the landscape but now the view is obscured by the trees that have since grown. The front of the house with its glass walls faces approx­ imately south, which in this latitude – south of the equator – means that it faces away from the sun at noon when it is at its strongest. The side glass walls are, however, hit by morning and evening sun; the surrounding trees help provide shade but the glass walls are also provided with light curtains. The BARDI HOUSE

I DE N T I F IC AT ION OF PL AC E The approximate contours of the Bardi House site are shown in 3 (next page). Like the Ramesh House (previous analysis), the Bardi House centres on a tree. Some sixty years after it was built the house is surrounded by many trees but this particular tree is special; as in the Ramesh House, it stands as the spiritual (maternal) point of reference for the living spaces about it. It is the tree under which we might rest when trav­ elling across the landscape. It is an axis mundi, connecting 265

the ground with the sky; an axis around which the house revolves. The tree identifies the place of the house. The tree selected as a place of rest or inhabitation is a complete work of architecture in its own right, without a house about it. But this house (as the Ramesh House) would be incomplete without its axial tree – a wheel without its hub, a body without its soul. The Bardi House is a rectangle arranged around its tree (4). The rectangle projects from the flat top of the hill out over the slope of approach. The tree is framed in a square hole not quite in the middle of the rectangle. Whereas in the Ramesh House the earth floor of the courtyard of the tree is acces­ sible from within the house, here the patio around the tree is inaccessible from the living spaces, where it has no floor, just the ground a few metres below. From inside, the tree is in its own sky-lit room, on the edge of which you can stand but into which you cannot go (like the sanctuary of a church). I do not know how much earth was moved on the site to construct the house. It appears from the contours that there may have been some moulding of the topography, particu­ larly to ease access. The slope of the adjacent road is used to enter the site approximately halfway up the hill on which the

House sits (5). The driveway then follows the contours before making a sharp left turn up the slope and under the house. The image on the title page of this analysis shows the view from the turn in the driveway as it was when recently built, without the mature vegetation. It is shown more recently from the same viewpoint in the drawing opposite. (Notice that the glass box does receive a substantial amount of morning sun; the curtains to mitigate solar gain were fitted later.) The turn in the driveway provides a distinctive position from which to view (and photograph) the house, comparable to that provided by the Propylaea of the Acropolis to view the Parthenon, and the rock platform from which Frank Lloyd Wright wanted Fallingwater to be admired (page 168). The house may be described as contextually responsive, not by reason of formal harmony but of contrast. The Bardi House appears (from the approach at least) as a precise pol­ ished geometric box, aloof on its pilotis, set amidst dense, irregular and changing natural vegetation. The house has the same relationship with its context as an ancient Greek temple, formal and ordered, has with its rugged natural landscape. Here in the outskirts of São Paolo the landscape

3

4

The contours of the site. Conceptually the house begins with a tree situated in the most prominent position near the top of the hill.

The house is arranged as a rectangle around the tree. The regular geometry of the house contrasts with the irregular topography.

266

is different but the principle of the relationship is the same; a geometrically pure form, emblematic of human reason and mathematics, distinguishes itself from mindless Nature around. The house – like Palladio’s Villa Rotonda – is a temple to the human being. To accentuate the contrast – between geometric reason and natural irregularity – the garden is laid out in narrow meandering paths following the contours, irregular steps, and small terraces retained by rough walls (6). The plans of the Bardi House on the following page (7 and 8) illustrate the first of the conceptual extremes mentioned above. Internally, places are identified accord­ ing to different architectural ideas, some associated with traditional and others with Modern ways of defining space. Simplified drawings of the lower and upper floor plans are shown alongside (9). Bardi uses two ways of defining space: the box-like room (traditional masonry construction) and the open plan (columns and glass walls) set on the elevated platform supported on pilotis. If you were to subscribe to the modern ethos of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, who suggested architects eliminate the room as a box or Le Corbusier, who argued against the ‘paralysed’ plan, then you

the Bardi House amongst mature vegetation in the 2010s

5

6

The approach to the house follows the contours. Subsidiary buildings occupy relatively flat (or flattened) parts of the site.

The site is terraced with retaining walls and meandering paths amongst the trees.

BARDI HOUSE

267

Bardi uses masonry walls to create box-like rooms for the private and service spaces of the house. By contrast, her living area is open-plan. The house juxtaposes traditional and modern ways of planning. Bardi also uses a third kind of space – the box-like room with one wall missing (either open or replaced with glass) – for the cave, main bedroom and drying porch. The tree’s patio is a glass box subtracted from the open plan living area.

A fourth kind of space is the room with no floor or ceiling, as in the case of the space Bardi refers to as ‘a sort of suspended patio’. (See the quotation opposite.)

maid

maid

service

plant room

laundry

drying porch

courtyard kitchen

store

store

bed

shaded cave, used for display

patio

dining

bed

patio

dressing

main bed

entrance library

entrance stair hearth area under house

7 ground (lower) floor plan

living drive way

8 first (living) floor plan

might condemn Bardi’s juxtaposition of two fundamentally different kinds of space as anathema. But Bardi uses both: box-like rooms for the parts of the house requiring privacy – bedrooms, servants’ rooms and service facilities – and open plan for the main living area. While the private areas are containers the living area is open to the world – a belvedere and a vitrine. (Bardi was interested in window displays; see the top quotation opposite.) A second pair of extremes is evi­ dent in the house’s relationships with the ground. Whereas the Farnsworth House and Villa Savoye (for examples) have consistent relationships with their ground (the living spaces are lifted above it onto a platform), the relation­ ship with the ground, and the sky, in the Bardi House is more complicated (see 10 and text opposite). 268

service rooms

courtyard

cave

bedrooms

patio

undercroft

living areas

9 simplified plans of lower floor (left) and upper floor (right)

‘Freeing the external walls from the load-bearing structure makes it possible to have large ribbon windows or wall’ (sic; floor?)’-to-ceiling glazing, increasing daylight levels, eliminating dark corners and increasing the flexibility of the arrangement of the room.’

Lina Bo Bardi, trans. Anthony Doyle and Pamela Johnston – ‘The Design of Interiors’ (1944), in Stones Against Diamonds, 2013.

roof garden

living

patio

bed

courtyard

service rooms

‘cave’ undercroft

10 simplified section through the house, showing different relationships with the ground and sky

RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE GROUND Lina Bo Bardi’s house manages to achieve radically different relationships between the living spaces and the topography of the site. The first relationship with the ground that confronts you as you approach the Bardi House is the dramatic overhang of the glass box supported on its slim grey steel columns, which merge with the surrounding tree trunks. This flat rectangular platform supporting the living area contrasts with (counterpoints, stands aloof from, casts its shadow over, dominates…) the irregular ground beneath, with its plants, rocks and meandering stepping-stone pathways… and with its (rectangular) cave embedded deep in the shade under the overhang. Climbing the dog-leg stair you rise from one realm to another, from the ground up into the higher level of architecture, of the human mind. At that level your relationship with the trees is different; you are in a tree house, up amongst the branches; you are on a piano nobile. The perfectly flat platform floor – uniformly covered with ethereal blue mosaic (it is like walking on the sky) – defines your realm, where architecture makes sense of the world for you and Nature is consigned to a realm beyond the edge. With the glass walls slid open you may step right to that edge but no further; beyond is only air – Nature with no ground for you to stand on. It is the same at the edge of the tree’s patio – the sanctuary around which the house revolves. Though you can see Nature outside, you are confined in this world of the mind. But when you step through one of the doorways into the rear of the house, with its traditional masonry and pragmatic box-like sleeping and service rooms, you realise that the house there has a more engaged relationship with the ground. The masonry walls, as they must, are founded directly into the earth. When you look out of the hole-in-the-wall windows you see the ground at its usual level, a level you may step out onto. It is as if the route back to Nature from the realm of the mind is through tradition; and that architecture, whilst appearing intellectually aloof from Nature, grows from it through the processes of tradition. There is a third, more enigmatic, relationship with the ground evident in the Bardi House. The area labelled ‘courtyard’ lies between the family bedroom block and the service wing… but unusually for a courtyard there is no access from either. On the family side there are windows allowing sunlight into the bedrooms; but the wall of the service wing is completely blank. Obviously, this is partly to do with maintaining privacy. But why do the family rooms not have doorways out into this courtyard? I do not know the answer. It is as if it is intended as a secret realm, another place in the house that you can glimpse but not enter; perhaps a paradise garden… or maybe an unsigned route to paradise. By climbing an industrial rung ladder from the steps running alongside the eastern side of the house (see the aerial perspective on page 264) it is possible to reach this courtyard. Along a rough stone path, at its opposite end, there is another rung ladder (Jacob’s?) to a tiny roof garden above the kitchen – a realm on high, a place apart, requiring effort to attain, and in direct contact with the sky… a secret place in the sun. It is easy to imbue these relationships with more poetic import than was perhaps intended by Bardi; her 1953 description of the house (right; e.g. ‘Above the kitchen, waterproofed with aluminium panels, is a low-maintenance tropical garden’) is relatively prosaic. But they do cohere as a plausible narrative exploring the person’s place in the world and questioning the promise (and European elitism) of Modernism in a country such as Brazil. In this house we have a stratification of levels that stretches from the cave below, through the realm of the intellect, to a transcendent level above. It is notable that Bardi founds this transcendent level on the zone of tradition rather than that of the intellect. This house can be interpreted as a critique of humanist Modernism as well as a shop window for it.

BARDI HOUSE

‘The city is a public space, a great exhibition space, a museum, an open book offering all kinds of subtle readings, and anyone who has a shop, a window display or any show case of this kind has to assume a moral responsibility which requires that “their” window display might help to shape the taste of city-dwellers, help to shape the face of the city and reveal something of its essence.’

Lina Bo Bardi, trans. Anthony Doyle and Pamela Johnston – ‘Window displays’ (1951), in Stones Against Diamonds, 2013.

‘The intention was therefore to situate the house within nature, bringing it into contact with its “dangers” without fussing too much about the usual “protections”; hence the house has no parapet walls… Glass walls enclose the house on three sides… Access to the house is via a cast iron staircase with natural granite steps. An internal area, a sort of suspended patio, allows for cross ventilation on hot days. The rear of the house which rests directly on the terrain, is a standard stone and cement construction; a long courtyard, sealed from one side, separates the front of the house from the service area to the rear, though both volumes are connected via the kitchen. Above the kitchen, waterproofed with aluminium panels is a low-maintenance, natural tropical garden. As the house faces south-southeast, blinds and shutters are not required… Protection from the morning sun is provided by white vinilite curtains. This house represents an attempt to achieve a communion between nature and the natural order of things. By raising minimum defences against the natural elements, it tries to respect this natural order, with clarity, and never as a hermetically sealed box that flees from the storms and the rain, shies away from the world of men – the kind of box which, on the rare occasions it approaches nature, does so only in a decorative or compositional, and therefore “external” sense.’

Lina Bo Bardi, trans. Anthony Doyle and Pamela Johnston – ‘House in Morumbi’ (1953), in Stones Against Diamonds, 2013.

‘Mountains, woodland, sea, rivers, rocks, meadows and fields are all factors defining the form of a house: exposure to the sun, weather and winds determine its position, the surrounding land provides the materials for its construction, and thus the house grows out of the land whilst remaining deeply rooted in it, its proportions governed by a constant: the human scale.’

Lina Bo Bardi, trans. Anthony Doyle and Pamela Johnston – ‘Architecture and Nature: the House in the Landscape’ (1943), in Stones Against Diamonds, 2013.

269

Bardi achieves various relation­ ships between the house and the ground and sky by using different permutations of the basic architectural elements floor, wall, roof, window and glass wall (11 and 12): a (living area) – floor and roof, views around three sides (through glass walls); b (undercroft) – uneven ground and roof, views around three sides; c (tree patio) – uneven ground, one wall, and edges of floor and roof, views around and up to the sky; d (cave, main bedroom, kitchen and drying porch) – floor, three walls and roof, views in one direction only (sometimes through a glass wall); e (bed- and service rooms) – floor, four walls and roof (box-like room), view through window; f (courtyard) – floor and three walls, view to the sky and in one horizontal direction; g (roof garden) – f loor, views all around and to the sky; h (entrance stair) – four walls and a roof, hardly any floor, no views (until the door is opened). These permutations of basic archi­ tectural elements frame the range of experiences you have in and around the house. They contribute to the narrative of the house offered on the previous page.

g

a

e

d

c

b

e

f

11 permutations of floor, wall, roof, window and glass wall

e d e e

f

c e a

e e e

h

d

d

12 views from the main floor (plan turned through 90º to match sections)

SH A D OW A N D L IGH T The permutations of basic architectural elements contribute too to the wide variations in level and quality of light in different parts of the house (13). The range stretches from deepest shade to glare. The cave under the house is always in shade. The area under the overhanging upper floor is a shady fern garden with a patch of light around the focal tree trunk. From that shady undercroft, the entrance stair leads you up first into a dark box from which you 270

13 light and shade (section through the entrance stairway and ‘cave’)

The Bardi House is an exercise in contrasts. There are spaces that are enclosed and spaces that are visually, and can be physically, almost completely open to the surroundings. There are cave spaces and spaces open to the sky. There are dark spaces and light spaces. Cool spaces and warm. Spaces with views and others that are enclosed. There are spaces in touch with the ground and others raised above it, relating more to the canopies of the trees and distance. All this makes for a house of variation.

14 front elevation

15 section through tree ‘courtyard’

pass through the door in to the bright living area surrounded by foliage. The library space, to the east is shaded from the evening sun. Elsewhere, the smaller bedrooms have louvred shutters against the strong northern sun so they can be dark and cool… The main bedroom receives the cooler morning sun filtered through the surrounding trees. Along the courtyard, the small roof garden above the kitchen is open to the sky. The Bardi House is an instrument by which light (and colour) is played like a musical composition, contributing to the aesthetics of the experience offered and subliminally enhancing the narrative it manifests.

keeping the glazing panels a regular size (16). The problem faced (and solved in this way) by Bardi is reminiscent of that of the architects of ancient Greek Doric temples such as the Parthenon (17) where the spaces between the outer columns are narrowed to allow the triglyphs in the entablature above to be regularly spaced. C ONC LUSION (201 5)

The fact that the house consists of two fundamentally dif­ ferent structural systems has already been mentioned; the living area glass box is an open-plan steel structure while the box-like bedrooms and service rooms are traditional masonry. The steel framework of the glass box is, however, not regular. The outer bays are narrower than the middle to allow the steel columns to be set inside the glass walls whilst

Lina Bo Bardi described her house as ‘an attempt to achieve a communion between Nature and the natural order of things’ (see the quotation on page 269). She was interested in emulating Frank Lloyd Wright’s idea of ‘the natural house’ (see the quotation on page 145). But, as we have seen, the Bardi House can be interpreted as something more com­ plicated, more ambiguous. It is not possible to tell whether this ambiguity was a result of not applying a (Modernist) architectural language rigorously through the whole building (as for example Mies had in the Farnsworth House), or born of conscious intellectual intent. Whichever, in writing about it, Bardi followed the time-honoured precept for creative

16 syncopated grids of glass wall and steel structure

17 Parthenon; spacing of columns and triglyphs

SPAC E A N D S T RUC T U R E; GE OM E T RY

BARDI HOUSE

271

2 02 3 The Bardi House presents itself frontally to the world as a work of Modern architecture, related to Mies van der Rohe’s contemporary Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson’s Glass House (1949; see page 95). But we have seen that the house is, phenomenologically (in terms of experience), more difficult to pin down than either. SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON

18 Chame-Chame House, 1958, ground floor plan.

people – ‘never explain’ – and her first house stands as an expression of ambivalence to the appropriateness of Modern architecture for Brazil. A later house, the Chame-Chame House (18, above) built in 1958, displays a different architectural language, one that appears to grow more from the curved retaining walls in the Bardi House garden than from the house itself. (Now destroyed) it had a more consistent language – consisting of rough-finished curved walls – than the Bardi House. But, because of that difference, the Bardi House offers a lesson that the later house does not. It illustrates, whether intentionally or not, that ambiguity itself can be a factor in architecture and the narratives it can tell. Just about all the other buildings illustrated and analysed in the present book are counted as good or great works of architecture not only because of their ideas but also because of the internal intrinsic consistency and integrity of the architectural expression of those ideas. They follow the rule put forward by the Victorian fairytale writer George MacDonald in his essay ‘The Fantastic Imagination’ (alluded to in the Introduction of this book – see page 4): ‘Obeying laws, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.’ Form versus formlessness. All the buildings analysed in this book are different but all have their own integrity. The Bardi House is different in that it adds a dimension to architecture’s possibilities, its powers, by virtue of its ambi­ guity. Such ambiguity does not necessarily undermine Mac­ Donald’s rule but it does complicate it by suggesting that it is possible, and can be effective, for architects (writers, artists, choreographers, politicians, even philosophers…) to exploit inconsistency and ambiguity in their work… just so long as they obey the laws they set themselves, just so long as they are consistent in both. 272

Where Mies and Johnson, in the two houses mentioned above, situate the person in full view of the world, in a display case so to speak, Lina Bo Bardi is concerned to provide a spectrum of situations. A corollary of the variations in light and shade and groundedness versus being raised in the Bardi House is the variation in openness and closedness, seclusion and display, refuge and prospect. The image of the house not long after completion on page 263, shows it presenting its elevated living space openly and confidently to its surroundings. But that sense of it being a display case is countered by the dark cave below and the private cellular accommodation (bedrooms) to the rear. The open-plan living area may well have a panoramic prospect but it is hardly a refuge. The refuges are hidden away at the back. The arrangement brings to mind metaphorical comparisons between architecture and the human psyche, such as those put forward by Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung*, as well as by Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space: ‘Verticality is ensured by the polarity of cellar and attic… Up near the roof all our thoughts are clear… As for the cellar, we shall no doubt find uses for it… But it is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces. When we dream there, we are in harmony with the irrationality of the depths.’ ** Unlike Le Corbusier in the Villa Savoye (page 173), Bachelard does not take us from cellar up to and out onto the roof, only as far as the rationality of the attic. Though not in clear vertical stratification, the Bardi House offers the full spectrum of architectural/spatial phenomenology, from cave (cellar) all the way through various levels of relationship with ground, closedness, privacy, light and shade, sky, display, seclusion, openness, prospect, refuge… up to the tiny roof garden above the kitchen, itself a hidden-away refuge visible only to the gods, the powers of the sky. Lina Bo Bardi’s house is more poetic than she made out in her own description. * See page 123–5 of Metaphor (2019), in the Analysing Architecture

Notebook series.

** Gaston Bachelard, trans Maria Jolas (1964) – ‘The House. From Cellar

to Garret’, in The Poetics of Space (1958), 1969.

RO B I E H O U S E 2 , Ch i c a g o – Fr a n k L l oyd W r i g h t , 19 0 9 (s e e a l s o p a g e 9 6)

B, the cliff- like rear wall

upper floor plan

rear elevation

B, the cliff-like rear wall

A

lower floor plan

B, the cliff-like rear wall

Like many purportedly categorical terms in architectural criticism – ‘Classical’, ‘Modern’, ‘Vernacular’, ‘Gothic’… – the meaning of the word ‘organic’ is protean, it changes shape according to the whim of the person using it. (See the quotation from Hugo Häring on page 293.) It was a favourite word of Frank Lloyd Wright. It is not easy, and may well be subject to my own interpretative partialities, but my understanding is that Wright’s use of ‘organic’ abbreviated his belief that architecture should have an inner integrity, grown from pre-determined principles akin to a genetic code. His conviction seems to have originated in his playing with Froebel Blocks in the kindergarten, an experience that taught him to instil his work with… ‘… a properly proportional unit system… that would keep all to scale, ensure consistent proportion throughout the edifice… which thus became – like a tapestry – a consistent fabric of interdependent, related units, however various.’* * Frank Lloyd Wright – A Testament, Horizon, New York, 1957.

ROBIE HOUSE

Such a principled design methodology may well be an ideal, but it is not one that is easy to adhere to totally. We have seen that Bardi resorted to two different sets of principles in her own house: one for the open-plan front and another for the cellular bedrooms and service accommodation to the rear. In 1952, using his Robie House as an example, Wright, looking back over his career, claimed to be the author of organic architecture (as far back as 1894), with its genetic code consisting of: ‘shelter, broad and low’; ‘wide eaves’; ‘walls (as) screens’; ‘open-plan’; ‘cantilever structure’; ‘building as a box… gone’.** It in no way diminishes the Robie House’s status as an icon of twentieth-century architecture, but it is evident that its design falls short of that organic integrity in a few places too, e.g.: the dark and meaningless space beneath the west terrace (A); and the cliff-like rear wall (B) of the service accommodation. ** Frank Lloyd Wright – ‘Organic Architecture Looks at Modern Architecture’, in Architectural Record, May 1952.

273

FU N PA L AC E , C e d r i c Pr i c e , 19 6 0 s

Cedric Price’s Fun Palace idea was conceived in the 1960s in collaboration with the experimental theatre director Joan Littlewood. They described it as a ‘laboratory of fun’. Briefly, the idea was to make a place, maybe in a disused building, that would respond to whatever people wanted to do: listen to music, dance, make food, or movies, play games… even engage in more edgy activities such as protest against some public grievance or start a riot. Though the idea was promulgated well before the advent of the Internet, let alone artificial intelligence, those technological advances seem the best means for the achievement of such interactive architecture. The following text was generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot on 6 March 2023 in response to the request ‘Tell me about Cedric Price’s Fun Palace idea’: ‘Cedric Price’s Fun Palace was an innovative architectural and cultural project designed in the 1960s that aimed to create a flexible and adaptable space for a wide range of activities and events. The Fun Palace was intended to be a place where people from all walks of life could come together to learn, create, and have fun. ‘Price envisioned the Fun Palace as a giant structure that could be endlessly reconfigured to suit different needs and activities. The building would be composed of a series of modular components that could be easily moved and rearranged, allowing the space to be transformed into everything from a theater to a laboratory to a playground. ‘The Fun Palace was also intended to be a hub of technological innovation, with advanced sound and lighting systems, interactive exhibits, and other cuttingedge technologies that would enable visitors to engage with the space in new and exciting ways. ‘Despite its visionary concept and the support of many influential figures in the cultural and architectural communities, the Fun Palace was never built. However, its influence can be seen in a wide range of subsequent projects and initiatives that have aimed to create innovative, flexible, and adaptable spaces for cultural and educational activities.’ 274

The project’s marketing manifesto suggested: ‘Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to what’s happening elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.’ The Fun Palace idea has infinite potentialities but no predetermined form and certainly no definable architec­ tural language or formal style. Part of the fascination of the Fun Palace idea is that it breaks completely any fixed link between form and function. The ultimate aim would be that the form of a place, in the broad sense, should be malleable according to the whim of the user – i.e. what the user wanted to do there. Indeed the realm in which such a concept might find its fullest possible realisation (though still limited by being on the other side of a screen or Virtual Reality headset) may well be in the Metaverse (see page 75), where interactivity between people and places is not geographically, temporally nor gravitationally restricted. In the Metaverse you can sing in an international choir across continents, play chess with an opponent on the other side of the world, converse (using ChatGPT) with Albert Einstein or George Orwell, start a riot in multiple jurisdictions simul­ taneously. (You cannot share a meal or embrace a friend!) The letters GPT in ChatGPT stand for Generative Pre-trained Transformer. Such chatbots offer the possibility of quasiintelligent interactivity, in words, between a user and a com­ puter. That such a facility will one day be available for archi­ tectural design is highly probable. Maybe the day when we ask a computer program to design a school or a hospital, a store or a theatre, a house or an apartment block, even a fun palace… is not so far fetched. (I might argue that such a possibility will depend on the GPT being well-versed in Ana­ lysing Architecture.) It will be interesting to see if the results offer anything in the way of fun.

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275

V ITR A FIR E STATION a f ire st ation for a f ur niture fac tor y est ate in nor th S wit zer land Z A H A H A DID, 19 9 0 – 93

In which we shall see that: • architecture can subvert, warp, conventional orthogonal geometries – ‘ideal’ and ‘of being’; • the aesthetic effect of so doing can be more sculptural than experiential; • experientially such warping can be disturbing and challenge personal safety; • but its purpose can be to demand media attention, as a form of commercial advertising; • with such an aim, sensationalism, even notoriety, is more valuable than pragmatic efficiency and experiential comfort.

‘Conceived as the end-note to existing factory buildings, the Vitra Fire Station defines rather than occupies space – emerging as a linear, layered series of walls, between which program elements are contained – a representation of “movement frozen” – an “alert” structure, ready to explode into action at any moment.’

zaha–hadid.com/architecture/vitra-fire-station-2/ (March 2023).

T

here is no ambiguity in Zaha Hadid’s design for her first realised building, the fire station on the Vitra furniture factory estate near Birsfelden in north Switzerland. This building is consistently informed by a commitment to sub­ verting (what some might call the natural order of) orthogonal geometry as a foundation of architectural composition. Zaha Hadid’s fire station follows George MacDonald’s precept and obeys its own ‘laws’ (in this it might, oddly, be said to conform to Wright’s idea of ‘organic’ architecture’, see page 273, though maybe not to his Robie House version of it) even if its dominant formative ‘law’ is to contradict a condition of composition sometimes assumed to be itself a (more generally accepted) law of architecture: i.e. the geom­ etry of making – the natural gravitation of structure and construction to the vertical and rectangular (as evident in the vast majority of buildings across the world) derived from and conditioned by the ways in which buildings are constructed with standard materials – straight lengths of steel and timber with rectangular sections, rectangular bricks, squared stone, flat panes of glass…

276

LINE A MEN TS In the analysis of Kiesler’s Endless House there is some dis­ cussion of the lines of architecture (pages 65–8). I began by drawing reference to Alberti’s assertion that: ‘The whole matter of building is composed of lineaments and structure… let lineaments be the precise and correct outline, conceived in the mind, made up of lines and angles, and perfected in the learned intellect and imagi­ nation.’ (See also the extended quotation and discussion in Analysing Architecture, 2021, page 139.) Then I outlined seven ways in which the lines of archi­ tecture might be generated: 1. from the characteristics of available materials; 2. from patterns of inhabitation; 3. from abstract (ideal) geometry; 4. from the scale and form of the human body; 5. from finding ideal geometry in the form of the body; 6. from distorting ideal geometry or the geometries of making; and 7. by formulations of the natural growth of shells, trees etc. The Vitra Fire Station’s distortion of orthogonal geometry fits category 6. This category shares with Alberti’s own (category 3) a conviction that architecture is generated primarily as a matter of line. Zaha Hadid’s fire station, as Alberti’s buildings, is an exercise in lines, planes and angles; though not one that deals in squares and other geometric proportions. Hadid’s lines might better be described as lines

d f

b

c

a

e

1

This drawing of the Vitra factory estate and its surroundings illustrates various interplays of architectural geometry. Most of the factory estate is governed by the right angle; factory buildings are orthogonal and arranged on a rectangular grid of streets; their roof-lights and ventilation ducts are also laid out on rectangular grids. Adjacent to the site there are rectangular houses and other buildings, some at varying angles. The lorries and cars are, in essence, rectangular and parked in rectangular spaces also arranged in grids. Some of the trees are laid out in straight lines or rectangular grids too; others are arranged irregularly. In some areas the prevailing rectangularity of the architecture – site arrangement and building form –is modified; for example, where it conflicts with the line of an existing road or the railway running along the western edge of the site. A few buildings have a corner cut off in response to the conflicts of geometry caused by layers of development over time. In the grids of trees some

V I T R A F I R E S TAT I O N

have died whilst others have prospered. The overall result is an interplay between rectangular geometry and the entropic workings of the world. But generally speaking there is a human predilection for rectangularity. This is a preference that prevails in most parts of the developed world. The Vitra Fire Station (a) distinguishes itself by its difference, by its comparatively chaotic geometry. Four other buildings, all by renowned architects, do so too: Frank Gehry’s Design Museum (b, 1989); Tadao Ando’s Conference Centre (c, 1993); Herzog & de Meuron’s VitraHaus (d, 2009); and SANAA’s Factory Hall (e, 2009). Three of these are irregular assemblages of orthogonal components. The last, SANAA’s Factory Hall, is a subtly distorted circle in plan (though its structural system, following the geometry of making, is orthogonal and supports a roof with parallel lines of roof-lights). Breaking pragmatic convention is expensive, but attracts valuable media attention (for both client and architect). 277

a

2

This is my tracing of one of the paintings prepared as part of the design process for the Vitra Fire Station. The building itself, camouflaged by the other lines and angles, can be distinguished at a. Notice that even the orthogonal grid and buildings of the site have been distorted by the dynamic (warp) field of Hadid’s perspective. Some of the paintings prepared for the fire station project are available at the Zaha Hadid Architects website: zaha-hadid.com/architecture/vitra-fire-station-2/ (March 2023). The process of drawing, as distinct from printing, always involves time. A drawing is a record of movement, the movement of the hand moving an implement across the paper or graphic screen. In the squiggles Kiesler generated for his Endless House (see page 69) the lines are random, or at least only constrained by the moving mechanism of hand and arm. In Zaha Hadid’s fire station design it is clear from the paintings that a driving idea behind the project was to express the dash and dynamism of a fire engine rushing to a blaze. Some of the factory buildings are apparent; but it is not clear how the curves were generated. It is possible they were constructed by rapid (abstract expressionist) arm movements (a bit like Kiesler’s squiggles) or, more sedately and more probably, by using standard french curves. (Computergenerated curves were not widely available in the early 1990s, though have been used by Zaha Hadid in later projects.) Certainly it is possible to conjure up a world with similarly distorted perspective using a french curve (right, my attempt). But the underlying yet dominant message of Zaha Hadid’s technique is that pragmatic and experiential concerns of planning should take second place to picturesque composition. 278

of energy, lines of ‘movement frozen’ (see quotation on page 276), dynamic rather than static lines. In whatever medium they are made – pencil, paint, wheel tracks along a road, reinforced concrete panels…– lines manifest and constitute a drawing – a drawing out or draw­ ing along. Like most architects, Zaha Hadid conceived her fire station through the medium of drawing; though, whereas much architecture is conceived using the conventions of orthogonal drawing (plan, section, elevation) and of perspec­ tive (lines converging at vanishing points on a horizon), she employed a drawing technique that distorted (warped) both. As if following Einstein’s suggestion that space is curved, Zaha Hadid constructed images in which perspec­ tive (representation of form in space) is curved (2) and lines converge towards a curved horizon. The distortions were then translated into the form of the building itself. The ruler (straight edge and scale rule) is, as its name implies, the magic wand of the architect; it governs the process of design and establishes relationships in form and space. Zaha Hadid’s drawings explore what happens to architecture when the ruler is curved rather than straight and the authority of the right angle is subverted.

a b

3

Zaha Hadid used other types of drawing either to develop or illustrate the fire station project. In the above drawing (again this is a tracing) the factory buildings are shown in their conventional orthogonal form. Here the fire station (a) is composed of straight lines. Other, more enigmatic, but also straight, lines criss-cross the site. These might be drafting construction lines, sight-lines or lines of movement; it is unclear which. Some emanate from or converge upon the entrance to the site at b. Others seem arbitrary, there for aesthetic effect or to imply energy (flashes of lightning). Perhaps some suggest the rapid response of a fire crew to a hypothetical fire. The lines in this drawing are very different in origin from those evident in Wright’s (Fallingwater) grid, Le Corbusier’s (Villa Savoye) ‘regulating lines’, Aalto’s (Villa Mairea) compositional lines, or even Kiesler’s (Endless House) and Findlay’s (Truss Wall House) squiggles. And yet Zaha Hadid’s intent is the same: to find lines for the determination of the form of a building. As already mentioned (page 276), Alberti argued ‘let lineaments be the precise and correct outline, conceived in the mind, made up of lines and angles, and perfected in the learned intellect and imagination’. Zaha Hadid supplements or perhaps qualifies Alberti’s two benches of perfection (i.e. intellect and imagination) by implying (in her generative drawings) that imagination includes aesthetic sensibility and emotive expression as appropriate authorities for the determination of lineaments. Architecture need not depend on orthogonal geometry. Not only can it be free of the vertical and the right-angle, it can assertively challenge their age-old presumed authority. But a preoccupation with formal lineaments can lead an architect (whether Alberti or Zaha Hadid) to de-prioritise the human presence.

The origin, motivation, generation… of lines is crucial to many design disciplines. For example, there is a resemblance in some of the lines of Zaha Hadid’s fire station to those of a stealth fighter jet (or at least half of one) – maybe consciously or subconsciously she exploited its visual expression of speed – but again (as in the comparison with the work of other architects) the origin of the lines of a fighter jet is different. The fighter’s lines are derived from a combination of the need for lift, aerodynamic streamlining and a desire to minimise radar presence. There may also be some intent to make the jet appear fearsome and fast. (Warriors have always wanted to appear fearsome.) It is in this last intent that there is some correspondence with the Vitra Fire Station; Zaha Hadid’s own website describes how the building was intended to be redolent of an ‘explosive’ lightning reaction, such as when fire-fighters respond to a call to action. Buildings, however, unlike jets or fire engines, do not tend to move, neither slowly nor at the speed of lightning. The result can become a sculptural caricature, a three-dimensional equivalent of the ‘go-faster’ stripes on a sports car.

‘On passing, brilliant red fire vehicles are glimpsed, their lines of movement inscribed in the surrounding asphalt.’

‘This building is “movement frozen” – a vivid lucid expression of the tensions necessary to remain “alert”.’

zaha–hadid.com/architecture/vitra-fire-station-2/ (March 2023).

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4

zaha–hadid.com/architecture/vitra-fire-station-2/ (March 2023).

279

e f

upper floor plan

b

c a

d

5 floor plans

K I N D S OF SPAC E The plans of the Vitra Fire Station are shown above. The accommodation is fairly simple. The garage for the fire engines is at a, with a yard, presumably for washing them, at b, and a storage room at c. The changing facilities are at d with the lockers housed in two zigzag banks. The mess is upstairs at e, with access to a roof terrace, f. The refusal to adhere to orthogonal geometry is evident in the layout of the spaces. Generally the geometries of being are downgraded in favour of a composition of distortion. The (often presumed) authority of the geometry of making is ignored. It required much more steel reinforcement than normal to strengthen the concrete roof. There is space in the garage for five fire engines but it does not accommodate them in a simple rectangle. Lockers that would normally be arranged in straight ranks are distorted into angular bent strips. Columns supporting the roof, that would normally be regularly spaced, are clustered in an irregular group, some of them at an angle to the vertical. Only the w.c. cubicles and the steps of the stair up to the mess seem to conform to orthogonal norms. 280

ground level floor plan

In Analysing Architecture (2021, pages 162–3) I referred to a set of diagrams produced by the architectural theorist Bruno Zevi to explain the evolution of architectural space in the twentieth century. These diagrams are repro­ duced opposite (6). Zevi’s caption to his diagrams reads: ‘The box encloses, confining one like a coffin. But if we separate the box’s six planes, we have performed the revolutionary act of modern architecture. The panels can be lengthened or shortened to vary the light in fluid spaces. Once the box has been broken up, the spaces can perform their functions in total freedom.’* It is perhaps disingenuous of Zevi to suggest that the prime motivation for breaking open the architectural box was to liberate or optimise functional performance. Such composi­ tional freedom does not obstruct functional performance but it is probable that Modern architects (Zevi cites Wright, Mies, Gropius…) did it mainly for aesthetic reasons, to explore fresh ways of doing architecture prioritising elemental composition (over ornamentation) and the orchestration of light. * Bruno Zevi – The Modern Language of Architecture, 1978.

6

Zevi’s diagrams (redrawn here) illustrate the way in which twentieth-century architects opened the enclosed box by dividing and then sliding apart its enclosing walls, floor and roof. A classic example of the dissolved box is Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion (right, 1929, pages 33–52) but see also Wright’s claims with regard to his Robie House on pages 96 and 273. The Barcelona Pavilion conforms to orthogonal norms; all its planes, though separated and given their own identities (as basic elements of roof, floor, wall, glass wall, column, rather than combined into a cell), are arranged at right-angles or parallel to each other. In the earlier Robie House Wright created cantilevered eaves overhangs that seemed to give the roof an independent identity as a planar element, thus suggesting the break up of the conventional architectural box.

7

In the Vitra Fire Station Zaha Hadid takes the dissolution of the box a stage further by rejecting the orthogonal norms of architecture. Planes are separated from each other but also arranged in an apparently haphazard way without obedience to the vertical or parallel arrangements.

Barcelona Pavilion

Zaha Hadid’s fire station shares the aesthetic motivation for exploring new methodologies for elemental composition, if not with light then certainly in terms of the arrangement of basic architectural elements (especially the wall, roof, column and glass wall). But whereas the abiding orthogonality of opened-box buildings such as Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion and Wright’s Robie House and Fallingwater preserve not only some of the authority of the geometry of making but also resonate with the inherent six-directions emanating from our own corporal form and pervading the world (both built and wild – up, down, north, south, east and west). Zaha Hadid’s fire station breaks that resonance between architecture, the human frame and the way we organise the world around us according to the six (four horizontal and two vertical)

directions. Its chaotic geometry, its conflict with the orthog­ onal, creates a disharmony that alienates the building from both its content (the person) and its context (the orthogonally biased context, most strongly manifest in the layout of the factory estate). The building exists in its own world, isolated as it were by an invisible warp shield from the quotidian world around. (See also the quotation from Peter Cook referring to another Zaha Hadid building – the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, 2013 – on page 236.) The generation of such conflict may be interpreted as: wilful; as polemical (a philosophical challenge to orthodoxy); as driven by desire for sculptural aesthetic effect (‘art for art’s sake’, to use a phrase employed by the nineteenth-century English aesthete Walter Pater), or perhaps to create a sensation to attract media attention.

V I T R A F I R E S TAT I O N

281

DI S T ORT I NG T H E ORT HO G ON A L Whereas Zevi described how the rectangular box might be de-constructed (split apart, opened up), Zaha Hadid takes the process a step further, into distortion. And here lies a potential design strategy. It might be argued that, when conceiving the Barcelona Pavilion, Mies de-constructed the form of an existing archi­ tectural form, the ancient Greek or Minoan megaron (see page 39). One way of creating a distorted architectural form would be to start with a conventional orthogonal design and push and pull it out of shape. In Analysing Architecture (2021, page 187) I showed how Le Corbusier distorted the ground floor of the Pavillon Suisse (1931) to spatial advantage. I also suggested (fifth edition, page 162) that the Vitra Fire Station might originate with a conventional design for an orthodox orthogonal building (8 and 9). By contrast with Findlay’s Truss Wall House (pages 53–62) and Kiesler’s Endless House (pages 63–76), where places and routes are bounded by

8 orthogonal version of the ground level floor plan

9 actual ground level floor plan.

282

(pseudo-)organic (in a sense different from Wright’s, page 273) curves, each of the spaces of the Vitra Fire Station can be restored to an orthogonal form. This makes it seem even more alienated from its world than either of those other nonorthogonal buildings. VA LU E A DDE D Through architectural history debate has surrounded the notion that the built environment may be divided into ‘build­ ing’ and ‘Architecture’; this is usually cast as a qualitative dis­ tinction, though some have argued that ‘architecture without architects’ can be of higher (aesthetic and functional) quality than buildings produced by ‘architects’. (See Rudofsky, 1964, for example.) Some have grappled with how the distinction between building and Architecture might be defined. The argument is often that Architecture represents what would, in managerial-speak, be called ‘added-value’ (it is usually intellectual or aesthetic value that is thought to be added).

My own view, argued and illustrated throughout Ana­ lysing Architecture (all editions), is that defining a qualitative distinction between ‘Architecture’ and ‘building’ is semanti­ cally futile, or at least can never be resolved; all buildings, all places, have their architecture – the intellectual structure given them by a mind – though the quality and character of that architecture may vary widely. Building, by contradistinc­ tion, is no more nor less than the means by which architecture is realised into built form. Zaha Hadid implicitly subscribes to the notion that a qualitative distinction between Architecture and building can be drawn, and that her task as an architect is to add some­ thing (intellectual, aesthetic) to what would otherwise be an ordinary building. According to this notion, the added-value in the case of the Vitra Fire Station would be the distortion of orthogonal geometry. The orthogonal plan opposite (8) might be described as a (mere) ‘building’; whereas the plan of the Vitra Fire Station with its added distortion (9) could thereby be granted the status ‘Architecture’. But what is the value that is added by the Architecture in this particular case; what benefits accrue from Zaha Hadid’s deviations from orthodox geometries? Certainly nothing in the way of social agenda, enhanced experience or developed philosophical narrative. The building has been found infamously incapable of operating as a fire station (it now operates as a museum for Vitra chairs and a venue for cocktail parties); so the added-value cannot be counted as performance-related or functional. (In the eighteenth century – 1731 – in his Epistle to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, ‘Of the Use of Riches’, Alexander Pope lampooned those who put ‘Architecture’ before practicality: ‘Or call the winds through long arcades to roar, Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door; Conscious they act a true Palladian part, And, if they starve, they starve by rules of art.’ What is added in the Vitra Fire Station is the appear­ ance of an energetic event and the suggestion of dynamism. The added Architecture gives the building an expressive, expressionistic quality that represents movement frozen. As already mentioned, Zaha Hadid’s website calls it ‘explosive’, suggesting the explosion into action of the fire-fighters when called to action. What is added too is a picturesque quality that appeals to the camera. It is probable that Vitra commissioned Zaha Hadid to design this building as much for publicity as to fulfil a pragmatic need for a fire station. Architecture since the time of the Egyptian pyramids and before has been used for public effect. In this sense Hadid’s design satisfies its purpose well. Wright knew that Fallingwater would look particularly well in photographs taken from a particular ledge of rock V I T R A F I R E S TAT I O N

by the river below the waterfall (see page 168). Similarly the architect of the Mongyo-tei (pages 10 and 167) knew that the tea-house would look well from a particular rock on the bank of the adjacent lake. The architects of the Acropolis in Athens knew the Parthenon would look at its best from the entrance Propylaea and in distant views across the city. Zaha Hadid was given a site directly opposite the entrance of the Vitra factory estate; lines on the drawing on page 279 indicate some consideration was given to the view from this point; and it is from this direction that the classic photographs of the building have been taken (see the title page of this analysis, page 275). Zaha Hadid’s building is not about the aesthetics of experience or the pragmatics of use (no one could argue that these are not actually compromised by its Architecture of distortion). It is about the aesthetics of sculptural and pic­ turesque form. These (you might call them cosmetic) aspects of architecture possess (and always have possessed) powers that should not be underestimated. They are often the prime reason why those with power and a desire for publicity – poli­ ticians, commercial businesses and the wealthy – commission architecture in the first place; i.e. because they want to attract attention and project a distinct and impressive identity. C ONC LUSION (201 5): A N A RC H I T E C T U R A L H I S T OR I A N ’ S (PAT R IC I A N ) PE RC E P T ION OF ‘A RC H I T E C T U R E ’ A N D I T S ‘E VOLU T ION ’ T H ROUGH H I S T ORY The Vitra Fire Station fits neatly into standard architec­ tural historiographies of the evolution of architectural form through history. As was suggested above, it conforms to the concept of ‘Architecture’ implied in Nikolaus Pevsner’s dictum that ‘a bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture’*. It relates to Robert Venturi’s distinction between a ‘Duck’ and a ‘Decorated Shed’ (see Analysing Archi­ tecture, 2021, page 58). The fire station can also be interpreted as an extrapolation from the evolution of architectural form from the enclosed box to open form, as outlined by Bruno Zevi (see page 281). Far from being a maverick building, as it might at first appear, the Vitra Fire Station plays its part in the narrative of architectural history well. It draws on references and conjures originality by distorting them, promulgating their antithesis or just turning them on their heads. At the same time it con­ forms to Alberti’s idea that ‘the whole matter of building is composed of lineaments and structure’ (see page 276) and to Le Corbusier’s oft-quoted assertion (to which he by no means confined himself in his own designs) that ‘Architecture is the * Nikolaus Pevsner – An Outline of European Architecture, 1945.

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masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light’.* Architecture is possible without lines and, as Le Corbusier himself showed in his own work, it involves a lot more than the arrangement of masses in light. If you think of architec­ ture in terms of identification of place (before, not rather than, formal composition) then lines often do play a part but are not essential. In Analysing Architecture (2021, page 11) I used an image of children sitting under a tree to illustrate what I called ‘architecture at its most rudimentary’. Here there are no lines, just a recognition of a place to be. There is the suggestion of a territorial boundary circumscribing the children, and perhaps suggested by the canopy of the tree, but it is not defined with a line (as one might encircle a place on the beach). All architecture builds from this fundamental purpose, the identification of place. Zaha Hadid’s fire station does identify a place; but her preoccupation with pictorial lines and angles, and sculptural composition, gets in the way of the building operating effectively and comfortably as a place for fire fighters and their engines. But at the same time, those same preoccupations (with breaking rules) have more than satisfied her client’s brief – a desire for publicity. This must be one of the most visited examples of twentieth-century architecture in Europe if not the world. I shall leave you to decide whether either is a good or a bad thing, to argue which benefits outweigh which dis­ advantages; and to decide how all this affects your definition of architecture (or ‘Architecture’). 2 02 3 Though this book contains analyses of many works of archi­ tecture from the past, it is not history. Its aim is to expose, for consideration by those facing the challenges of doing architecture (e.g. and most particularly, student architects), the possible inner thought processes behind a wide a range of approaches to architectural design. I do this in the hope that it might help those facing the challenge of having architectural ideas, by suggesting they try some of the different approaches for themselves… as a learning process. It is not my primary intention to spin historical narra­ tives, identify trends, trace allegiances and draw family trees or lines of succession amongst architects. Nevertheless, it is apparent that during the 1990s and into the early decades of the twenty-first century, there has been a significant, even dominant, amount of media attention paid to works of archi­ tecture that, taking more and more advantage of the technical * Le Corbusier, trans. Etchells – Towards a New Architecture (1923), 1927..

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advances of computer generated design, have subscribed to a similar approach to the acquisition of fame followed by Zaha Hadid; i.e to prioritise sensational media-attracting visual appearance over experiential subtlety and pragmatic efficiency. Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim (1997), Santiago Cala­ trava’s City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia (1996–2009), and Zaha Hadid’s later Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre in Baku (2012, page 236) are just three of many examples, by these and other architects. Together, such examples and their wide coverage in web-based journals and social media apps, mark the huge rise in architecture as a form of advertising. SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON Architecture generally treats the person in two fundamentally different ways: as occupant, inhabitant, ingredient… (i.e. embracing the person, as would a mother); and as spectator (trying to impress the person, as would a showman). Many do both; the two lie on a spectrum rather than assert a clear categorical division. But even so, some architects prioritise one end of the spectrum, others the other. Works such as Zaha Hadid’s fire station, with its gestation in two-dimensional picturesque art practice, tend to the latter – showman – and treat the person, even when inside but especially when out­ side, as a spectator. This is the real reason the building could not actually be used as a fire station; the practicalities of the tasks involved were given less priority than the striving for sensational appearance. On page 281 we extrapolated a fourth stage from Bruno Zevi’s three, in the progress of the architectural dissolution of the planar and orthogonal box. Subsequent to the Vitra Fire Station, with its exploded planar form, parametric computer software has enabled architects, including Zaha Hadid’s practice, to explore a fifth stage, which adds the curvaceous distortion of planes (below).

An extrapolated fifth stage in Zevi’s diagrammatic illustration of the progressive dissolution of the box in architecture.

MOHR M A N N HOUSE

285

MOHR M A N N HOUSE a family house in the Lic htenrade subur b of Ber lin H A NS SCH A ROU N, 193 9 In which we shall see that: • appearance may be deceptive,

even subversive; a Modern

house might be hidden within the

appearance of a traditional one;

• architectural composition can

take its lead from place-making

in the landscape rather than be

dictated by geometry – ‘ideal’ or

‘of making’;

• the notion ‘organic’ in relation to

architecture has infinitely (?)

variable interpretations and

definitions;

•

A

Scharoun’s notion of ‘organic’ – like Wright’s – seems to have

incorporated the controlling

discipline of geometry but in a

different way.

t first sight this building, by northern European stand­ ards, appears to be a fairly unremarkable suburban house. It was designed by the same architect who designed the Schminke House (1933, see page 296) which had been built six years earlier and was a decidedly Modern building, with a steel structure and the maritime look of a million­ aire’s yacht. (You will recall that Le Corbusier, in Vers une architecture, had suggested that ocean-going liners offered architects a design aesthetic to follow.) So what happened to Hans Scharoun’s design ideology in the intervening years? How did he respond in his architecture, and what does the result tell us about relationships between architecture and visual appearance? What too does the Mohrmann House tell us about Scharoun’s architectural ideas? The power that visual appearance holds in architecture is illustrated by the restrictions imposed by the National Socialist government in Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Like many right-wing movements and ultra-conservative political parties the Nazis preferred tradi­ tional design and ways of building based either in the classical language of architecture (derived from ancient Greece and Rome) or in a national vernacular that appears to grow from the soil of the country. In many of the buildings analysed in this book we have seen that progressive Modern architects too can be positively influenced by vernacular architecture, but usually in different ways. Remember for example that Mies found simple African timber construction and Japanese 286

spatial arrangement an inspiration for his steel and glass Farnsworth House. He was interested in the principles underlying vernacular architecture rather than its superficial appearance, and in how those principles might be applied to new ways of living and construction techniques made possible by the development of new materials such as steel, concrete and plate glass. The Nazis were more interested in appearance than principle. (Architecture is riven by this distinction.) They wanted domestic architecture to look like folk architecture from the past, specifically German or at least northern

The Weissenhofsiedlung was portrayed in 1940 by Nazi propagandists as an Arab village, with the intention of condemning Modern architecture as un-German – i.e. not ‘Aryan’ (in the sense the word was used by Nazis to claim racial superiority).

European, built with traditional materials such as brick and timber, with pitched tile roofs and small windows. In 1927 in Stuttgart, under the direction of Mies van der Rohe, a number of leading Modern architects – including Scharoun as well as Le Corbusier and Mies himself– had built an exhibition of Modern housing called the Weissenhofsied­ lung (literally the White Farm, or Courtyard, Settlement). Under the influence of ideologues such as Alfred Rosenberg and a racist nationalist interpretation of the European Völkisch movement – which reacted against Modernism and international industrialism by eulogising the virtues of craft and tradition – the Nazis condemned the houses as decadent, publishing postcards (opposite page) showing them xenopho­ bically as an Arab village. (The architects themselves probably appreciated the comparison.) The house Scharoun designed is at the right edge of the postcard, with lions basking in its yard and a camel resting obstinately in front. Escaping this oppressive regime, Mies, Gropius and oth­ ers left for the United States in the 1930s. Scharoun, together with his friend and mentor Hugo Häring (also an architect, see page 292), stayed in Germany. But his architecture, mainly houses at the time, had to comply with Nazi stipulations… at least in outward appearance.

From the public street in its leafy suburb, the Mohrmann House seems a traditional house with masonry walls, small windows and a pitched roof. Behind this mask of conventionality Scharoun plays a different game, distorting the geometry of making – which tends to make orthogonal rooms – to arrange spaces in a freer way, more related to context and function. .

A C OM BI N AT ION OF V E R N AC U L A R A N D MODE R N And so, like Lina Bo Bardi’s House, Scharoun’s Mohrmann House can be seen as a combination of vernacular (conserv­ ative) and modern (progressive) architecture. But whereas in the Bardi House the two are attached to (butted up against) each other (the Modern steel and glass living room standing on pilotis attached to the vernacular bedroom and servant wings), in the Mohrmann House the Modern (the particulari­ ties of Scharoun’s own version of the Modern will be explored in due course) blends in with the vernacular. As Peter Blundell Jones has commented, such restrictive conditions… ‘would have been fatal to a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or a Walter Gropius, whose architecture would have lost its meaning if forced into a “vernacular” mould.’ * Those conditions certainly affected the outward appear­ ance of Scharoun’s houses. But under the sheep’s clothing of vernacularity he was able to continue with his experiments in spatial organisation. It would have been easier for him to do these within the more flexible order offered by steel frame structures (as in the Schminke House) but he determined to

* Peter Blundell Jones – Hans Scharoun, 1995.

MOHRMANN HOUSE

‘granny’

entrance

kitchen

hall

play

music dining living tree terrace

garden

quiet study

plants

The ground floor plan of the Mohrmann House is composed of a combination of the orthogonal (obeying the authority of the geometry of making) and the (subversively) irregular. Space is arranged according to activity.

try to do it too using more traditional load-bearing walls and timber roof trusses. This resulted in buildings that blended the orthogonal (governed by the geometry of making, and approved of by the Baupolizei of the Nazi regime) and the spatially inventive, which, if openly expressed, might have been denounced as decadent and subversive… (even though it too could be argued to derive from the ways in which traditional vernacular spatial organisation responds to use before appearance). 287

The Mohrmann House is set in a suburban plot in the south of Berlin. The public road is to the right in the site plan below. North is up, so the approximately L-shaped plan traps the sun whilst also opening up the interior to the garden. There are other suburban houses in their own gardens either side (not shown). The upper floor, right, sits within the slopes of the pitched roof and so has a smaller floor area. The garden is laid out informally, like an English Arts and Crafts garden, with distinct places for different purposes: sitting in the sun, growing vegetables and fruit, children playing, etc. The entrance to the house is on its shady north side with a crazy paving path from the front gate.

c

first floor plan

c

b

a

ground floor and garden plan

c a b

ground floor plan, deconstruction 1

ground floor plan, deconstruction 2

The ground floor is the most distinctive (inventive) part of the Mohrmann House. The north and east elevations conform with Nazi requirements and give the building, from the public realm, the appearance of an unremarkable traditional house governed in the main by construction using traditional materials: clay tiles, bricks, rough-cast render, timber, small-paned windows… This conformity applies too to the granny flat at the house’s western end (c in the plans above). But the conformity is merely a screen; like a stageset it provides the actor with an entrance into another world; here one not subject to orthogonal geometry; a realm where Scharoun allowed himself more freedom to mould space in relation to the life to be lived in it.

The heart of the house does not conform to traditional spatial or constructional geometries. Here Scharoun uses different criteria for the arrangement of walls, doorways, windows, thresholds etc. These criteria include the more relaxed identification and arrangement of places (intimate domestic places) with a view to their relationships to each other and to the garden places outside. He avoids box-like rooms allowing an informal arrangement of places priority over the geometry of making (ideal geometry seems not to be even considered) despite the difficulties generally involved in constructing irregular forms. Roof profiles conflict, presenting structural problems and junctions that are challenging to construct in traditional materials.

288

I N F LU E NC E OF T H E BR I T I SH A RT S A N D C R A F T S MOV E M E N T One of the reasons why Scharoun was able to continue to develop as an architect under Nazi restrictions was because he was as much interested in identifying places for human occupation and orchestrating their interrelationships as he was in the outward appearance of buildings. He shared this interest with architects of the British Arts and Crafts movement, promoted in Germany by Herman Mutthesius in his 1904 book Das Englische Haus. In Europe, the Arts and Crafts movement influenced various branches of what broadly came to be termed, by historians, Modernism. The Arts and Crafts interest in space tailored for habitation and straight­ forward un-ornamented craftsmanship influenced even those architects intent on using new materials to create buildings that would look very different from traditional buildings. It seems that Scharoun reverted to Arts and Crafts principles when Nazi restrictions prevented further experimentation with steel structures and large areas of glazing. It might be argued that these restrictions, ironically, led him to develop themes in his architecture that might not otherwise have been cultivated, and which also informed his larger, nondomestic, post-war architecture (e.g. the Philharmonie con­ cert hall and the National Library, both in Berlin). Put simply, the themes Scharoun came to explore concerned synergies between architecture and the ways we occupy landscape. In the houses he built under Nazi restrictions Scharoun began to explore how the division between the two – traditional in architecture through the ages and manifest most powerfully in the wall between inside and outside – might be blurred. In Modern architecture this could be done most directly (for the eyes at least) by the use of the glass wall. But under Nazi restrictions Scharoun aimed for a poetic dissolution of the tra­ ditional boundary between (formal, geometric…) architecture and (informal, irregular…) Nature using more subtle architec­ tural means. Scharoun allowed natural irregularity to relax the geometry of his architecture, reversing the way garden architects use the regular order of architecture to discipline Nature. In his houses there is no sharp division between architecture and Nature; they blend where they meet. This led him to experiment with how architecture itself could be built landscape. In his pre-war houses this built landscape was used to mediate between the house and the garden and more distant views (in ways that were not restricted by the Arts and Crafts predilection for straightforward construction). In his larger post-war work he was to explore the potential of designing architecturally abstracted landscapes like terraced valleys or open woodland – enclosed in buildings set in the context of the city (see the Philharmonie, right). MOHRMANN HOUSE

a verandah

dining room

drawing room servery hall scullery

kitchen

entrance

The Five Gables, Cambridge, M.H. Baillie Scott, 1897–8

Through the general influence of the British Arts and Crafts movement in Germany during the first quarter of the twentieth century, Scharoun may have been influenced by houses such as The Five Gables by M.H. Baillie Scott (plan above). As in the Mohrmann House, the orthogonal geometry of making is amended for reasons of inhabitation, though not in quite so apparently free a way. Notice in particular the similarity in attached juxtaposition of seat and hearth in both houses (a), as well as the overlaps of interior and exterior particular at the verandah. In his book Houses and Gardens (1906), Baillie Scott wrote: ‘It will be noted that the wide doorways between the rooms… are used as an expedient to make these appear to combine to form one large apartment, and to avoid that impression of confinement in separate and isolated boxes which constitutes one of the essential defects in the plan of the modern small villa.’ Published four years before Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Wasmuth Portfolio’ (1910, which publicised his work in Europe; see also page 96) and two years after Mutthesius’s Das Englische Haus (which promoted British Arts and Crafts domestic architecture in Germany), this quotation has a claim to be one of the first to suggest that living in small houses might be improved by breaking open box-like rooms. Notice too how the complex chimney stack, with hearths and mass warming spaces both sides, divides the dining room from the drawing room in a comparable way to Wright’s division of the same functions in the Robie House (pages 96 and 273). The stack’s end also helps define the hall space.

Philharmonie, Berlin, Hans Scharoun, 1960–63

In the Philharmonie concert hall in Berlin Scharoun created a grand built landscape like the tiered terraces of a rocky valley surrounding the place of the orchestra, all under a sweeping roof, lit like a starry sky. This built landscape, which evokes the ancient origins of performance, is nevertheless artificial, completely enclosed, isolated from its context. 289

scullery

dining hall

kitchen pantry

boudoir entrance garden room

study

Rose Court, Baillie Scott

Also in Houses and Gardens, Baillie Scott illustrated a design for a house called Rose Court (above). Of this house he wrote: ‘Each site will demand its own special treatment, and in those with an eastern or western frontage, where the frontage admits, it will often be desirable to place the house with its end towards the road, an arrangement often to be met with in old villages. That the majority of people really demand as a sine qua non that they shall have a bay-window facing the road it is difficult to believe, and its continual recurrence, I feel assured, is owing merely to a fixed idea on the part of the builder whose commercial training leads him to forget the essential difference between the house and the shop.’ In the Mohrmann House, as well as avoiding ‘confinement in… boxes’, Scharoun follows Scott’s (explicit and implicit) advice; the house is end-on to the road and has no public facing bay-window. Compare too Scharoun’s built-in circular dining table with the rectangular one in Rose Court (above and c below). But whereas the garden of Rose Court is laid out with axial symmetry, that of the Mohrmann House, like many other Arts and Crafts gardens, is determinedly asymmetrical.

Scharoun adopted a similar strategy to that of the Mohrmann House in his design for the Weidhaas House (1939, above).

e e a

a

c

b

b

c

g f

f

d d

At a much more modest scale than in the Philharmonie, and twenty years earlier, Scharoun created a built landscape in the Mohrmann House too. The arrangement of sitting area (a), hearth (b), dining area (c)… is as relaxed in its organisation as it might be in a dell in the landscape. Correspondences can be drawn between the other places (d, e, f) in Scharoun’s design 290

and an imaginary day camp in the landscape, with rocks and logs as seats around the fire and a picnic cloth under a tree. In the Mohrmann House, Scharoun blurs the boundary between inside and outside, bringing external paving into the living space and extending the roof outside the door (g). If it were not for weather, Scharoun would probably have preferred no doors at all.

M O L L H O U S E , B e r l i n , H a n s S c h a r o u n , 19 3 6

Moll House, Hans Scharoun, 1936, site section

Moll House, Hans Scharoun, 1936, site plan with couch

Moll House, Hans Scharoun, 1936, site plan with house

Scharoun designed the Moll House in 1936, three years before the Mohrmann House. It too stands in a suburb of Berlin, near the Halensee, one of the smaller lakes to the west of the city. The house, which was originally also designed under Nazi restrictions, is no longer in its origi­ nal condition. The plan illustrated above is how it was first designed by Scharoun. Like the Mohrmann House, the Moll House demon­ strates Scharoun’s interest in blurring the boundary between architecture and landscape. The site is irregular in plan and slopes quite steeply down to a narrow access to a jetty on the bank of the lake. MOLL HOUSE

Scharoun’s design appears to begin, not yet with an arrangement of spaces to accommodate the various func­ tions of the house – that comes later – but with the simple positioning of a couch to command the best views across the lake (above). The couch, as the seed from which the house will grow, is placed high on the hill facing roughly east, across the lake and towards the rising sun. The house is composed around this couch. In a similar way to the later Mohrmann House, it creates a landscape of domestic places that straddles the divide between interior and exterior. The private areas are screened from the street by a more conventional elevation under a pitched roof. 291

z

y

Hugo Häring’s House Shaped by Use and Movement (1923) explored how architecture might tailor space to make places closely matched to the activities. You can see in the plan above specific places for ‘playing the piano’, ‘sitting by the fire’, ‘eating’, even ‘reading the paper in the morning’ (obviously resonant with Arts and Crafts houses such as those by Baillie Scott on pages 289–90). This specific allocation of space contrasted with Mies van der Rohe’s desire for flexibility: to provide people with open space to use as they wish (right).

Mies’s desire for flexibility is illustrated in the Fifty-by-Fifty Foot House (1950). In Häring’s plan (left) the main tool in organising space was the basic architectural element of the wall. Places are not absent in Mies’s plan, but defined more subtly; the picnic table and chairs, for example, could move anywhere on the Cartesian grid of the paving, but would probably end up under the shade of the tree; and although the furniture may be moved anywhere inside the glass wall, a sitting place would gravitate to the hearth (y), and the bedroom (z) is defined by a screen of storage.

I N F LU E NC E OF H UG O H Ä R I NG

Häring, it will be deduced from the above, and in con­ trast to Mies’s belief in flexibility, was convinced that space should be organised to be specific to function; a house or any other building should consist of places tailored quite tightly to specific purposes and arranged according to their relationships. In 1923 he had produced a plan for a House Shaped by Use and Movement (above left). This plan can be contrasted with the plan of Mies’s unbuilt Fifty-by-Fifty Foot House (1950, above right) where the arrangement of functions, though framed by a square glass enclosure and a matrix of square paving slabs, appears more relaxed, more flexible. Häring and Mies differed over a concern that lies at the generative core of all architecture – how the organisation of space should relate to use. Häring promoted an ‘organic’ (see the quotation and comment on the opposite page) relationship between the two, with spatial organisation governed by use as a priority over every other factor. Architecture is a creative field in which different driv­ ing forces overlap, interact, and fight for dominance. Three of these contending forces, vying for primacy, are: the social geometry of human activity and use; the geometry of making derived from straightforward or elegant construction; and the ideal geometry of squares, circles, √2 and Golden Section rectangles… In Analysing Architecture (all editions) these are covered under the headings ‘social geometry’, ‘geometry of making’ and ‘ideal geometry’. Briefly, Häring favoured the primacy of the first of these – the geometry of human activity and use – distorting the geometry of making to fit

One of the interests of German architects since the nineteenth century, and which had been reinforced in the early twentieth by interest in the British Arts and Crafts, was the relation between life and space. Classical and Gothic revival architects in the nineteenth century tended to present architecture as a matter of proportion and ornament (style), and perhaps also as being enhanced by ideas such as ‘truth to structure’ or ‘truth to materials’. Others realised that architecture has a more profound role to play in framing people’s lives and activities. This was an interest that did not (overtly) conflict with 1930s Nazi restrictions; Scharoun could explore life’s relations with space through traditional idioms as much as he could through modern ones. Hugo Häring, eleven years older, was Scharoun’s friend and mentor. Häring had worked with Mies but that is not to say they agreed on this issue of the relation between space and life. In fact they were diametrically opposed. In his mon­ ograph Hans Scharoun (1995) Peter Blundell Jones illustrates their difference with a passage in which Mies (translated by Schulze) harangues Häring: ‘Make your spaces big enough, man, so that you can walk around in them freely, and not just in one predetermined direction. Or are you all that sure of how they will be used? We don’t know at all whether people will do with them what we expect them to. Functions are not so clear or so constant: they change faster than the building.’ 292

‘New building, understood as organic building, must concern itself above all else with the human being. It can no longer be given over to an expression of power, the creation of a stage-set, or the demonstration of an aesthetic arrangement. Instead its form should be bound up with and grow out of its connections with its environment, as a response to ground and landscape, to the relationship of world, sun and stars, to the nature of stone, wood and other materials, to plant and animal, to daily life and its routines, to place and time, to the surroundings and neighbours.’

Hugo Häring, trans. Blundell Jones, quoted in Peter Blundell Jones – ‘Scharoun Houses’, in Architectural Review, December 1983.

Notice that Häring uses ‘organic’ in a different way from Wright (page 273). Where Wright seems to have been seeking the equivalent in architectural form and construction of genetic integrity in Nature, Häring seems to be looking for a direct relationship between use and spatial organisation into places for people, with the same sort of irregularity in built form as found in the places we make in the landscape. Bearing in mind the irregularity of the shapes of spaces created by both Häring and Scharoun, this prioritisation of landscape-based planning actually, in terms of construction (structure and material detailing) works against the sort of genetic integrity championed by Wright; i.e. construction detailing becomes more complex, less natural, than with planning that follows the orthogonal geometry of making. In this sense, Mies’s Fifty-by-Fifty Foot plan (opposite) might be said to be more not less ‘organic’ than Häring’s. Such is the treacherous realm of words in architecture.

use, and ignoring ideal geometry. Mies, by contrast, favoured the second – straightforward and elegant structure and construction – with human activity and use free to occupy largely undifferentiated (but nevertheless orthogonal) space in a relaxed self-determining manner (even so, this appar­ ently spatial freedom was conditioned by the position of the hearth, of trees and by fixed rooms such as the bathrooms and kitchen). Notwithstanding Mies’s Fifty-by-Fifty Foot House being a square, he too ignored ideal geometry as an author­ ity for organising space. Neither Mies nor Häring favoured ignoring all three driving forces, as Zaha Hadid was to do in her Vitra Fire Station (see previous analysis) in favour of a fourth, which we might call the ‘picturesque imperative’, the importance of (photogenic) sculptural appearance.

S C H A ROU N ’ S GE OM E T RY At first sight it appears that Scharoun follows his mentor Häring in suggesting that primacy belongs to the subtle geom­ etries of human activity and use, adding his own dimension by exploring in particular the ways these can mediate between person and landscape. But the actuality is more complex. Scharoun developed his own relationship between the three (or four) driving forces mentioned above. Häring was adamant that ideal geometry was not rele­ vant in architecture whose main purpose was to frame, in a responsive way, the lives of people. He saw people’s activities as irregular and asymmetrical; so architectural spaces should be too. But Scharoun’s use of squares, √2 and Golden Section rectangles is evident in the house he contributed to the Weis­ senhofsiedlung (plan above) and in the Moll House (below). From these plans it can be seen that Scharoun did not use ideal geometry in simple, obvious ways. Only fragments of the underlying proportions and figures are evident in his plans. Perhaps because of the Häring association, Scharoun is not usually considered to have used ideal geometry in the composition of his plans. The analytical process by which I The core of the Moll House is based on a Golden Section rectangle. Notice that the curved wall in the hallway follows the construction arc for a √2 rectangle within the Golden Section rectangle. The angle of the stair derives from striking a line from the corner of that √2 rectangle to a third point on its opposite side.

These observations suggest that the plan of the Moll House is based on a complex web of geometric interrelationships.

MOHRMANN HOUSE

293

discovered that he had is shown below. In a way that I have used in previous analyses in this book, I was considering how the Mohrmann House plan would look if it had been designed according to other approaches. I began by converting the plan to an orthogonal arrangement (B below); the result looked very much like an Arts and Crafts plan (comparable to the plan of Baillie Scott’s The Five Gables on page 289). I then wondered what the plan would look like if Scharoun had used an underlying ideal geometry. (My preconception was that he would not have.) To my surprise I found that, in the orthogonal plan I had constructed using principal dimensions from Scharoun’s own plan (C), ideal geometry was already present. I then analysed Scharoun’s built plan to check, and it was there too (D). Despite assumptions, he had used ideal geometry in constructing his plans, even if twisted and with only slight traces still apparent.

The plans A, B, C, D below should be read clockwise: A – the plan of the Mohrmann House as built; B – the plan straightened into a more conventional Arts and Crafts plan; C – geometry encountered in the straightened plan; D – geometry retained in the ‘distorted’ plan as built. In the plan of the Mohrmann House Scharoun distorted the geometry of making to give primacy to the geometry of human activity and use. If we reasserted the authority of the geometry of making the plan would look something like in B below. When constructing this plan I used principal dimensions from Scharoun’s own. I intended going on to construct a plan using ideal geometric figures (square etc.) but found they were already there (C). So I re-examined the plan of the Mohrmann House as built and found it was based on a web of squares, √2 and Golden Section rectangles, some apparently retained from an orthogonal version. I have no idea whether this was the process Scharoun followed in developing the design. It does, however, suggest that he was not as averse to using ideal geometry to control relationships as was his mentor Häring.

A

B

built plan

plan re-imagined as orthogonal

D

C

ideal geometry in built plan

ideal geometry in plan re-imagined as orthogonal

294

Finally I tried to construct a plan of the Mohrmann House as it might have been had Scharoun not been subject to Nazi restrictions (right). I used the Schminke House for guid­ ance. The changes may not seem obvious but are significant. Using steel columns for the structure (along with walls) would open up the internal spaces and remove lumps of masonry from disrupting relationships with the garden. External stairs and decks to the upper floor would give the house a more maritime look (like the Schminke House). The house would have been white with a flat roof. Large areas of glass would have allowed more sunlight into the interior and, from outside, provided a mirror reflecting flowers, trees and sky. C ONC LUSION (201 5) Scharoun’s Mohrmann House illustrates how architectural ideas of composition as well as appearance can blend, over­ lap, coexist in a single unified work of architecture. Whereas some buildings – the Farnsworth House is a prime example – display the virtue of rigorous adherence to a single driving idea or ideology, in others – e.g. the Mohrmann House – the driving idea is more nuanced. In Scharoun’s 1930s houses the first ideological conflict is that between his inclination to explore Modern spatial ideas and materials and the Nazi insistence that houses should look traditional (using traditional materials in traditional ways, with the implication that they would contain box-like rooms). In his ability to subvert Nazi restrictions Scharoun shows that architecture is not only about appearances; he was able to develop his ideas about freer spatial composition even within the limitations of traditional construction. This is not the only example of conflicting ideas in the Mohrmann House. Following, or at least concurring with, Häring’s insistence that the accommodation of the person should be the paramount concern of architects, Scharoun produced plans that (in their subversive parts at least) appear thoroughly ‘organic’ in Häring’s terms. But at the same time, it is evident that Scharoun also liked to play abstract games with ideal geometry – something anathema to his mentor. We can only speculate why. Working on a drawing board, games with geometry using compasses and set squares are always an attractive pastime; geometry and set proportions make decisions about dimensions and relationship easier by imposing a certain (though maybe spurious) authority. The application of ideal geometry can be thought to contribute to the graphic aesthetic of a plan; also to the aesthetic experience of spaces, analogous to tonal harmony in music. It might simply be that Scharoun used ideal geometry because it was a part of his architectural training that he found difficult to shake off. Whichever reason applies, he used ideal geometry MOHRMANN HOUSE

plan re-imagined as akin to the Schminke House (next page)

in a way that leaves only slight traces in his plans, like the vestigial traces of fossilized creature. The chief idea present in the Mohrmann House and the other houses Scharoun produced during the 1930s is primacy he gives to places for the person to engage in specific activities – sitting looking out at the garden, engaging in a communal meal, speaking on the telephone, playing the piano… – and to frame those activities and relationships within a relaxed, non-formal composition redolent of a family occupying a found place in the landscape, and unrestrained by rectan­ gular geometries either ‘ideal’ or ‘of making’. The irregular built landscapes he produced introduce spatial subtleties that are principled rather than cosmetic, defined by occupation rather than wilful abstraction, attractive not only visually but also in the ways in which they conform to the principle of engagement. 2 02 3 There is not much to be gained from worrying too much about definitively defining the seemingly categorical words historians, critics and theorists use in discussing architecture. From 1977 to 1988 I struggled with researching, eventually to complete, my PhD on the meaning of the word ‘vernacular’ in application to architecture. I found, more or less, that it could mean anything. I have made infinitely more progress in discovering what I later realised I was after – I now describe it as ‘the universal language of place-making’ – by analysing examples of actual architecture. ‘Organic’ is another word impossible to pin down. Wright used it one way; Häring another; research would no doubt turn up multiple definitions; likely Kiesler and Findlay thought of their architecture as ‘organic’… But maybe Scharoun felt that geometry – like that in Vitruvian Man – could be a touchstone of Nature’s idea of ‘organic’? 295

S C H M I N K E H O U S E , L ö b a u , H a n s S c h a r o u n , 19 3 3 evening sun deck

morning sun deck main bedroom hall

N

W

The Schminke House was designed and built before Nazi controls came into force in Germany and so demon­ strates how Scharoun really wanted to design. You can see that it looks very different from the later Mohrmann House. The use of steel for struc ­ ture, cantilevered decks and roof, and large panes of glass make the house seem like it has no (planar) elevations in the traditional sense. It very much conforms to that simplified section of Wright’s Robie House (page 96) – hori­ zontal planes sandwiching living space between – but with a non-orthogonal footprint. In Analysing Architecture (2021, page 121), I used the Schminke House as an example to illustrate the influ­ ence of the three principle ‘vectors’ – topography, sun and the human form – conditioning architectural design. Although it is apparent that Scharoun was attracted by the mari­ time aesthetic, his plan is also strongly influenced by a need to cope with a north-facing slope and a wish to orient the house away from the client’s ugly factory situated on the south. It appears too that Scharoun was already, years before the Morh­ mann House and as part of his Modern way of designing, basing his plans on complex matrices of ideal geometric figures: squares, √2 and Golden Sec ­ tion rectangles… (right). Maybe also, as appears to be the case in the later house, he began his design with a geometrically ordered orthogonal plan which he then distorted in response to the influence of the vectors mentioned above. Reference for the Schminke House: Peter Blundell Jones – Hans Scharoun, 1995.

296

E

upper floor plan

S

VIEWS

evening sun deck

dining

kitchen

living

hearth

dining

hall winter garden morning sun deck

entrance ground floor plan

ground floor plan with superimposed geometry

BIOSCL E AV E HOUSE

297

B I O S C L E AV E H O U S E a house ex tension in East H ampton, N ew Yor k M A D ELIN E GINS and A R A K AWA , 20 0 8

labyrinth

main house

In which we shall see that: •

architecture can challenge the person physically and psychologically with the aim of promoting fitness, hence longevity and perhaps even immortality;

•

through the centuries, architecture has developed norms – orthogonal geometry, legibility, axiality, human scale – but these norms may be subverted, contradicted in the interests of challenging perceptions and experience… to stimulate metabolic vitality;

•

although this example is quirky, the aspiration for architects of creating stimulating environments that promote physical and mental well-being is pertinent and requires imagination, sensitivity and skill.

‘Every day, you are practicing how not to die.’

Madeline Gins, quoted in ‘Architectures of Joy: a Spinozist Reading of Parent + Virilio & Arakawa + Gins’s Architecture’, in Léopold Lambert, ed. – The Funambulist Pamphlets Volume 08: Arakawa + Madeline Gins, 2014.

298

T

he Bioscleave House was built as an extension to a more conventional house in the wooded suburbs of East Hampton near the easternmost end of Long Island, New York. Though attached to the main house by an umbilical link, it is a complete dwelling in itself, with two bedrooms, a study and bathroom in four almost rectangular pavilions arranged cen­

trifugally around an amorphous area for cooking, dining and more general life. As can be seen from the drawing above, the house was designed as part of an extensive landscape, though not all has been built. The main entrance is approached through a labyrinth, composed of five concentric plans of the house at varying levels, to the north-east of the extension. The name of the house is composed of two parts: the first – bios- – refers to life; the second part – -cleave – is less easy. ‘Cleave’ is a word with two meanings that are opposite, coming from different Old English etymological roots. ‘Cleave’

‘Reversible Destiny is an absolute refusal of modernist comfort that triggers a process of weakening of the body and decreases its power.’

garden entrance bedroom entrance from house

bathroom

dining table

kitchen

living area

bedroom

study

main entrance Bioscleave plan

The plan of Bioscleave House is composed of four rectangular pavilions arranged around an amorphous living, cooking and dining area. The central area is an artificial topography. Like Scharoun’s Mohrmann House (previous analysis) it is a built landscape, but of a different kind. Whereas Scharoun created abstracted landscapes with level platforms, Gins and Arakawa create a piece of uneven terrain. The contours of this terrain are shown in the plan above. It is yellow and covered with small bumps. This piece of artificial terrain is centred on a ‘dell’ – the cooking place, a hard-edged pit the same shape as the plan of the house – amidst an uneven piece of ‘woodland’ where the ‘trees’ are metal poles. Above the kitchen pit there is a roof-light also in the shape of the plan of the house, which appears as a ‘sun’ in a deep green ‘sky’. Next to the kitchen area there is a dining table; it is in a soft-edged pit with the edge as seating. The table too is the shape of the house’s plan but flipped over and rotated through 30°. The artificial topography is isolated from the exterior world by a translucent (rather than transparent) wall (shown un-hatched in the drawing) which provides a luminous grey ‘sky’ around the interior’s own uneven ‘horizon’. The pavilions provide rectangular ‘caves’ around the dell; the two diagonally set pavilions (bathroom and study in this drawing, though other published drawings show the disposition of functions differently) are at an angle of 42° (not 45°) to the two bedrooms. The entrance into one of the pavilion caves (sometimes shown as the study and sometimes a bedroom) is very low, so that you have to enter by crawling. Views out of the house are minimal; windows are either too high or too low; contact with the outside as a datum is lost. One thing that cannot be shown in these monochrome drawings is that all the surfaces, inside and out, (except the translucent walls) are coloured in large rectangles of green, yellow, red, pink, purple, blue and other bright colours. The plan of the Bioscleave House is comparable to that of one of the Reversible Destiny Lofts built in the Mitaka district of Tokyo by Gins and Arakawa in 2005 (right). These apartments too were painted in bright colours. They also have central kitchens surrounded by four pods of differing geometric shapes. But here the floor of the central area is level, though like in the Bioscleave House covered with unsettling bumps. An uncertain relationship with gravity is elicited in two of the pods, one of which is a horizontal cylinder, the other spherical.

B I O SC LE AV E H O U S E

‘Architectures of Joy: a Spinozist Reading of Parent + Virilio & Arakawa + Gins’s Architecture’, in Léopold Lambert, editor – The Funambulist Pamphlets Volume 08: Arakawa + Madeline Gins, 2014.

can mean ‘to split’ (cleofan) or ‘to adhere to’ (clifian)*. Its oxy­ moronic name implies the house is intended to strengthen life by challenging it (evoking Nietzsche’s suggestion that ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger’). Gins and Arakawa believed that architecture could be an instrument of what they called ‘Reversible Destiny’. This is a belief founded on architecture’s fundamental role in establishing an interactive setting for life. But instead of providing comfort, Gins and Arakawa wanted to stimulate physiological and psychological renewal by creating living environments – ‘landing places’ – that would be intentionally uncomfortable. By presenting challenges, the Bioscleave House draws attention to fundamental relationships between people and space, and to the ways such relationships are managed by architecture. There are timeless ways in which architecture helps us make sense of the physical world in which we live, making it physically and psychologically more comfortable: a level platform makes it easier to walk around; walls protect us from threats and organise space; roofs shelter us from sun and rain; doorways do many things. The general assumption is that these are things that architecture should do. Gins and Arakawa contradict this assumption, suggesting that comfort leads to degeneration; vitality is stimulated by challenge.

Reversible Destiny Loft, Tokyo * Arakawa and Gins were aware of the oxymoronic quality of the word. In The Mechanism of Meaning (1979, 1988) they wrote ‘The act of cleaving [to cleave: to adhere (to)/to divide (from)]’.

299

dining table

The uneven artificial terrain of the Bioscleave House can be seen in this section. The more traditional original house is to the left of the drawing. The sloping roof, with its roof-light over the kitchen ‘dell’, gives the central living area a ceiling that in places is high whilst in others can be touched. The kitchen is fitted with largely orthodox equipment and a work surface. Rather than making people sit, picnic-style, on the uneven terrain to eat, the house has a normal height, and level, table. It is, however, an unusual shape, being a version of the house’s plan, and diners have to perch on the rounded and bumpy edges of its pit.

Since the Roman architect Vitruvius in the first century BCE wrote his Ten Books on Architecture we have been told that good architecture depends on ‘firmitas utilitas venustas’. This was expressed in the seventeenth century (in a different order) by British diplomat Henry Wotton in The Elements of Architecture as ‘Commodity, Firmnesse, and Delight’. It is usually assumed that ‘well building’ (as Wotton called it) depends on these three ‘Conditions’. But what if an architect, for whatever reason, decides that a work of architecture should be unstable (not firm), uncomfortable (not commodious) or ugly (not beautiful). It would still be a work of architecture. (Relationships between these three conditions are in any case far from simple.) In the Bioscleave House, Gins and Arakawa aim to produce a building that is intentionally uncomfortable. (We can assume the building is stable and you can decide for yourself whether it is beautiful.) They do so by challenging conventional relationships with architectural space in vari­ ous ways. Their purpose is to strengthen the physiology and psychology of the person experiencing the house. First, the occupant must think carefully about how to move around the space because the floor is uneven and bumpy; its slopes can cause unbalance (people who enter have to sign a form waiv­ ing their right to claim compensation in the event of injury). Second, the translucence of the house detaches the occupant from the datum of the exterior; when inside you are not quite sure where you are. Third, the house challenges your sense of 300

kitchen

scale; conventionally, when ceiling heights are constant and windows and doorways are related to normal anthropometric dimensions, you measure yourself against them subliminally. In the Bioscleave House that sense of scale is disrupted by the varying distances between ceiling and floor, the different heights of windows, the different dimensions of doorways. And fourth, the asymmetry and irregularity of the plan and of its components (the kitchen and the dining table for exam­ ples) removes that reassurance we sense unconsciously by reason of the resonance of our own six directions (forward, backward, left, right, up, down) when we are in a conventional box-like room, with its horizontal floor, horizontal ceiling, and four vertical walls all at right angles to each other; or sitting around a rectangular table. And although there is a geometric axis present in the plan (see opposite page), it is not one to which you can positionally relate the axis of your own body (as you could for example with the axis of a temple, mosque, church, or classical building such as a grand house or government building). A fifth way in which the house tries to challenge convention, related to the fourth, concerns mapping and legibility. When in a building we try to make sense of it (to know where we are) by building up a mental map of its layout. It is usually said that a building is legible if it is easy to understand its layout and find your way about. In the Bio­ scleave House an attempt to disrupt this process is made by ‘Placed in a state of disequilibrium… the human body keeps re-harmonizing its parts in relation with the architectural parts and thus develops a conscience of its direct environment. Via this process of harmonization, the body learns and becomes both stronger and more skilful. That leads us to the main purpose of such an architecture… which consists in an adamant refusal of death. (Gins and Arakawa) undertake to architecturally train the body against the continuous degradation of human tissues.’

‘Architectures of Joy: a Spinozist Reading of Parent + Virilio & Arakawa + Gins’s Architecture’, in Léopold Lambert, ed. – The Funambulist Pamphlets Volume 08: Arakawa + Madeline Gins, 2014.

‘We see architecture not merely as that which stands by and gets linked up with, as structures that life avails itself of in passing; not passive, not passively merely hanging around to provide shelter or monumentality, architecture as we newly conceive it actively participates in life and death matters.’ ‘Architecture, in anyone’s definition of it, exists primarily to be at the service of the body. The question arises as to how to be most fully at the service of the body.’

Madeline Gins and Arakawa – Architectural Body, University of Alabama Press, 2002.

repeated representations of the house plan (almost as a logo) at different scales and in different orientations. There are a number of instances of the house plan, small and large, in and around the house. As well as the kitchen area, the dining table, the roof-light and the exterior labyrinth, the bathroom ceiling has a plan of the house for reading during a bath. The varying orientations of these scattered multi-scaled maps of the house are intended not to help you know where you are but to confuse. The mind is not allowed to relax because that would, Gins and Arakawa argue, weaken it and decrease its power. Confusion, stress, strengthens the mind and body. A further, sixth, way in which Gins and Arakawa con­ fuse interpretation, both formal and spatial, is by obfuscating the way in which the building is put together, and the mate­ rials used. This is not a building that accepts the authority sometimes ascribed to the geometry of making. Gins and Arakawa’s desire to use architecture to make people conscious of what they are doing – how they place their feet, how they keep their balance etc. – is reminiscent of the ways architects of traditional Japanese gardens used, for example, stepping stones or a narrow bridge to cause people to watch their feet and thus take their attention away from the view until a precisely controlled position. But whereas the concern of the Japanese garden architects was the aesthetic orchestration of the experience of a garden, that of Arakawa and Gins was no less than to engineer metabolic strength and resilience in the interests of achieving immortality. The possibly positive aesthetics (and wit) of experience seem less relevant to them. On the following pages there is a sequence of drawings exploring the different roles of the basic elements of archi­ tecture and some of the normal ways they frame life and activity. Then a further sequence looks at how the Bioscleave House subverts these norms with benevolent discomfort, in the interests of provoking its occupants into greater vitality. ‘The plan is the architect’s medium but it is also the symptom of his deity. He traces lines and laughs to see all these little bodies trapped in the spatial apparatuses he drew from above.’

‘Applied Spinozism: Architectures of the Sky vs. Architectures of the Earth’, in Léopold Lambert, ed. – The Funambulist Pamphlets Volume 08: Arakawa + Madeline Gins, 2014.

B I O SC LE AV E H O U S E

The layout of the Bioscleave House is governed by an axis about which it is mirrored and flipped. The axis is marked by a central pole in the kitchen area and by its passing centrally through two paired sets of poles in the living area. The peripheral pavilions are not all exactly the same size though all are variations on the Golden Section rectangle. Each of their entrances is different too. There are no doors.

The curved walls around the central area are described by a collection of circles with centres and radii apparently unrelated to each other. These are suggestive of the ripples emanating from small pebbles randomly scattered on the surface of a pond. They also imply a centre of gravity for the house in the kitchen area. (Not all possible generative circles are shown.) 301

Architecture is usually considered to frame us physically and to help us make sense of the world in which we live. It contributes to our physical and our psychological comfort and security. Architecture mediates between us and our surroundings. We use its basic elements in timeless ways to modify our relationship with the world. The elements of architecture are instruments that do various things for us, maybe to make life easier or to help us to relate to each other and our surroundings. Here are a few examples.

If we want to give ourselves some privacy we might screen our place with a wall. The wall also keeps strangers (enemies) out and protects us from wind. We might build a roof too, supported perhaps on the wall and column, to shelter us from rain and shade us from sun.

Out in the landscape we have to navigate rough terrain. We are exposed to weather. We have no privacy or protection from attack. We have no datum, no specific place to relate to – until we settle to sit on a rock or hide in a cave (both of which are rudimentary acts of architecture that do not involve building anything). Architecture is the medium we use to address these issues. A ceiling parallel to the floor gives a stratum of space in which to move around and against which to measure ourselves. But we might want to reduce the darkness by opening a roof-light (or perhaps a light well) to let in light from the sky…

When we clear ground and flatten it (as an arena, a platform or a pit) we create a level floor, which is easier to walk around on or dance. The floor defines a (human, artificial) place, with thresholds, separate from the world around.

We might mark a place with a standing stone in the landscape, or perhaps a column shaped into a cylinder. The marker represents the vertical dimension, a datum against which to relate the verticality of our own vertical form. From anywhere within sight (maybe as far as the horizon) a marker establishes a reference point, according to which we know where we are. It is something we can hold on to, literally and metaphorically. It can be our friend, guide and representative.

302

… or a window:

The window allows us to see the world outside as well as letting in light. It might also allow others outside to see us in our place. We will probably relate the window’s dimensions and position to our own scale and needs. The window then also represents a measure of our selves. (You can see how the plans of those Minoan apartments – e.g. on page 46 – would have developed elementally.)

By contrast, the Bioscleave House, in the cause of its architects’ stated purpose of prolonging life by setting the mind and body challenges that will steel the metabolism and make it stronger, subverts almost all these norms of architecture. If Gins and Arakawa had done a similar analysis, they may have introduced even more diverse and extensive beneficial challenges into their design… a trapeze, a crawl tunnel, a climbing wall, a dungeon, trip wires… who knows what else? Here is a version of their conceptual sequence.

Next, a doorway. A doorway provides scale too. Its anthropometric dimensions gives us a representation of our own human (or superhuman, or subhuman) stature. Of course a doorway does a lot of other things too. It is a meeting point between inside and outside. It can be a valve or filter. It presents a challenge. It can be the entrance to a refuge or an escape from a prison. It is where people shake hands or kiss in welcome or farewell. Doors provide privacy and protection. They are essential but also the weak point in any defensive barrier. Though consisting of nothing (space) a doorway is potentially the richest of all architectural elements.

We might add furniture to our place, such as a table, which might be an altar for sacrifice, a table for eating or a desk for study. We could add various other types of furniture – seats, beds, shelves… – all establishing places for different things. Furniture relates activities in places creating a spatial matrix framing domestic life. Its arrangement together with the composition of architectural elements, as archaeologists find when they disinter ancient houses and cities, tells the story of the life lived in the place.

Finally, changing the point of view to look down from above, we can see how the layout of these various architectural elements map out our life for us. The architecture of the place helps us make sense of the space in which we live. It mediates in a sensible way between us and our surroundings. It identifies our place. As such it is part of us. Its orthogonal geometry resonates with our own six directions (front, back, sides, up and down) and those of the world around (north, south, west, east, up and down). To know where we are we acquire and carry a version of this simple map in our heads.

B I O SC LE AV E H O U S E

The original site of the house was reasonably level. It was easy to walk around amongst the trees and bushes. The conventional first architectural move would be to lay a perfectly horizontal flat floor slab as the base for the house. But they did the opposite.

In contradiction to the time-honoured role of architecture to make rough places smooth, Gins and Arakawa begin the house by disturbing the level ground and engineering a piece of irregular terrain. This introduces into the experience of the house the physiological effort of climbing and descending slopes and the need to adjust balance on uneven ground. The result resembles a playground or a track for off-road biking.

But Gins and Arakawa relent by creating some level surfaces: the table and seats for eating; and the floor and work-surfaces of the kitchen area. Around the world, cooking places take many forms, from the camp-fire out in the landscape to the fire-pit in a traditional Japanese house; the architects of the Bioscleave House could have created cooking and eating places that would have contributed more to their mission to prompt physiological and psychological adaptation. continued on next page 303

The terrain of the interior of the Bioscleave House is dotted with slim vertical columns like artificial trees. These poles are a help when climbing the slopes. This is another way in which the architects do not challenge the occupants as much as they could have. They admit the trees are there for people to hold on to as they try to navigate the uneven terrain. But columns angled off the vertical would have deprived occupants of a vertical reference and increased the sense of disorientation.

The interior of the house is cut off from the surrounding woodland garden and the adjacent house by a translucent wall which admits light but obscures the exterior. Visual reassurance of seeing a normal world outside is denied. Occupants are sealed inside the challenging environment of the Bioscleave House. Windows in the rectangular cells are either too high or too low to allow a view out. Intentionally, the interior is something of a torture chamber intended to strengthen; (but see Jondi Keane’s account opposite).

The roof/ceiling of the Bioscleave House is canted (not only to cast rain off, which is the usual reason, but) to create, in conjunction with the irregular ground surface, varied head clearances. At one end of the house, on top of a mound, a person must stoop under a low ceiling; whilst at the other end the ceiling is high above – out of reach. The effect has been compared to that of an Ames Room where perspective is distorted to make people appear different sizes. The effect in the Bioscleave House is to deprive occupants of a constant scale against which to measure themselves. The roof is fitted with that roof-light shaped as a map of the house, illuminating the kitchen work area.

Rectangular cells are positioned, like caves, around the central area of the house. Their different height doorways also deprive occupants of a consistent scale against which to measure themselves and contribute to occupants’ fitness by sometimes making them stoop to pass from one space to another. If Gins and Arakawa had followed the same tactic as they used in the Reversible Destiny Lofts in Tokyo (page 299) then these peripheral cells may have been internally spherical and cylindrical with curved floors to disturb balance.

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The drawn sections on this and the previous two pages are simplified versions of the house with scale compressed but the drawing above is the actual plan. The layout is designed to disrupt the ways in which we relate to the places in which we find ourselves. We usually align our own innate orthogonal geometry with that of conventional rectangular rooms subliminally; but in the Bioscleave House that possibility is denied in the central area and reduced in the rectangular cells. The way we map space so that we know where we are is, as has been mentioned, undermined by the recurrence of plans of the house at different scales and different orientations. With no clear view out, it is easy to lose your sense of where you are in relation to the world outside. The interior of the house challenges the senses with its bright colours which act as camouflage breaking up surfaces. The ceiling is deep polished green that reflects both artificial light and the daylight dulled by the translucent walls. The undulating floor is textured rubber, which at least allows your bare feet or rubbersoled shoes to get a grip when clambering around this irregular terrain. The intention is to disturb and strengthen.

C ONC LUSION (201 5) The artist and academic Jondi Keane has spent a day and night in the Bioscleave House. He recorded some of his expe­ riences in ‘A Bioscleave Report: Constructing the Perceiver’. His observations focus primarily on the discomfort and disorientation elicited by the interior. These are responses that, although they seem to have made him feel queasy, he found challenging and stimulating, just as Gins and Arakawa wanted. He hints that the house actively changed (readjusted) his physiological and mental mechanisms for perceiving and moving around space. ‘The disruptions I experienced in Bioscleave House were made more acute, resembling sea-sickness of a land lover alongside the excitement of a flaneur in a self-organizing city. My struggle to identify the indicators responsible for my imbalance, dismorphia and lack of orientation hinted at the insufficient coordination I possessed for dealing with new learning conditions. Uncertain boundaries and inconsistent points of reference left me no choice other than to assemble alternative modes of measure and engagement.’ Keane remarks on the difficulties posed to his instinc­ tive mapping of the house by repeated but conflicting cues… ‘Experiencing two or more unrelated sets of cues regard­ ing orientation, size, distance, location and balance, compounded by the absence of fixed points of reference, makes a person opt for momentary, event-based modes of relation rather than programmatic responses.’ … and an effect that caused a split in how he made sense of where he was by means of sight and by means of his body’s position and the tension in his various muscles. ‘In the Bioscleave House, the absence of a visual hori­ zon makes residents orient the top portion of the body visually and orient the lower portion proprioceptively.’ (‘Proprioceptive’ means, according to Chambers Twen­ tieth Century Dictionary, ‘of, pertaining to, or made active by, stimuli arising from movement in the tissues’.) Keane also remarks on how the house dislocates its occupant by depriving (in this case) him of reference points outside. ‘To add to the disorientation, from each location in the central room I felt as though I were on higher ground. Moving faster around the central room to counteract the illusion of height, I noticed more and more asymmetry in my perception of the surroundings. I realized I had begun to construct a differential perception, with a built-in

* In Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Françoise Kral, eds. – Architecture and Philosophy: New Perspectives on the Work of Arakawa & Madeline Gins, 2010.

B I O SC LE AV E H O U S E

factor for anomalous relationships to compensate for my expectations of conventional built space. In a matter of hours I was reduced to guesswork in relation to objects external to the house.’ Keane’s descriptions of his experience make the house sound something like a set for training special forces for challenges in enemy territory. And, in a way, that was what Gins and Arakawa wanted it to be – an instrument, active rather than passive, which would strengthen people’s ability to deal with and survive the trials of life. You might consider the Bioscleave House to be something of a nonsense work of architecture, an affront to reason. It challenges conventions in ways that would make it impossible to live in for a long time. It seeks to undermine thousands of years of human efforts to use architecture to make physically and psychologically comfortable places in which to live. After a while you would long for a flat floor and a view of the gar­ den. But we can assume that it is more a polemical exercise than a serious proposition for exactly how every new house should be built. The Bioscleave House is a useful building to analyse here because it highlights, by its contradiction of them, some of the most rudimentary aspects of the basic language of architecture. It has previously been in fairground attractions – The House That Jack Built for example – that architects have sought to disrupt conventional expectations, that floors should be level and walls vertical, for the entertainment of children. The same attitude has also applied to some garden architecture of the Italian Renaissance (in the gardens at Bomarzo for example), for the amusement of wealthy and consequently idle ladies and gentlemen bored with a nor­ mality of leisure. But the Bioscleave House also presents a serious (if extreme) reminder of the powers of architecture. All the buildings analysed in this book have been discussed in terms of their relationships to and effects on people. This is an aspect of architecture that is often neglected in media and historical discussion of its products, which usually focuses on appearance to the eye – style and sculptural composition. Even some experienced and notable architects seem not to understand the more subtle experiential possibilities of architecture. But since ancient times this is exactly where its greater powers have been applied. People have always been affected emotionally and physically by stooping to enter a dark cave or struggling to climb a steep slope to a sacred high point nearer the sky. The power of these architectural experiences is expressed in their association with places identified as spiritual or religious, places of the dead or of worship. For its priests and embalmers, the power of a great Egyptian 305

pyramid lay not only on its perfect geometric form set in the shifting sands of the desert but also in the effort involved in climbing a narrow passage to the burial chamber at its heart and the disorientation elicited purposefully by labyrinthine entrances. The phenomenological (experiential) has always been a significant factor in the aesthetics of architecture. Gins and Arakawa bring an awareness of this phenom­ enological dimension of architecture to bear on a particularly twenty-first-century (and some might say narcissistic) pre­ occupation – physical and psychological well-being and a desire to live forever. Although they might have done it with more intensity, disrupting even more of the conventional expectations we have of architectural spaces – flat floors, vertical walls, anthropometrically dimensioned doorways… – Gins and Arakawa do challenge the ancient assumption that architecture should aim for comfort (‘Commodity’ to use Wotton’s term). Instead they promulgate the idea that the architecture in which we live has a part to play in our regimes for physical and mental well-being or at least resilience. Gins and Arakawa have produced a building which is, because of the intensity and strangeness of the experience it offers, more like an art installation. There have been other (perhaps more pragmatic) initiatives promoting health through the design of the environments through which people move (see for example the Active Design Guidelines produced by New York City in 2010*). And other examples recognise the phenomenological possibilities of architecture to promote well-being not by annoyance and discomfort but by a more gentle and subtle manipulation of experience. We might think again for example of (as was mentioned on page 301) those traditional Japanese stroll gardens which play with all the factors mentioned by Gins and Arakawa and more. They too prompt exercise and meditative reflection. Walking around their uneven pathways challenges balance and measure. Having to watch your feet for a moment enhances aesthetic response when once again you look up to see the exquisite reflection of a tea house in the surface of a lake. An inability to see everything everywhere

* Available at: nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/active-design-guidelines/active-design­ guidelines.page (March 2023).

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all at once stimulates wandering… And all is done in subtle ways to enhance life and promote physical and psychological well-being. 2 02 3 The Bioscleave House is a polemical reaction to decades of promotion of labour-saving devices in the home and the cre­ ation of urban, commercial and domestic environments for easy living. Although its realised form is perhaps extreme, the argument behind Gins and Arakawa’s house must have pertinence in relation to rising levels of obesity and unfit­ ness, particularly in western countries, notwithstanding its apparent failure to achieve immortality in its occupants (or its originators – Arakawa died in 2010 and Gins in 2014). SI T UAT I NG T H E PE R S ON The Bioscleave House situates the person in a setting that is unusual, one that was intended to challenge physically and psychologically in the interests of strengthening resilience to the effects of aging. But, as suggested by New York’s already mentioned Active Design Guidelines,* there are also what might be termed ordinary ways in which the built envi­ ronment – cities and houses – can promote fitness: e.g. by making staircases in public buildings more prominent and accessible than lifts (elevators); by providing safe bicycle and walking routes along natural desire lines; by designing active playgrounds for children and adults; maybe even by making car use more problematic (rather than easier). The idea of designing environments that require/enable people to be more active – situating the person in circum­ stances where they find it easier to exercise their bodies and minds than not, and without feeling resentful about being manipulated into it (and without disadvantaging those with disabilities) – is a fascinating challenge for the architect, one that requires imagination, wit and skill; the aim being to make health-giving activity inevitable, unavoidable… and fun too.

T U R N E N D, H a d d e n h a m , Pe t e r A l d i n g t o n , 19 6 0 s As has been mentioned throughout this book, much architecture in the third decade of the twenty-first century sells itself by the presentation of strong, arresting, click-bait visual identity. It could hardly be otherwise in a time of social media and web-based architectural news sites that rely on pho­ tography and computer simulations. But this last one-page case study is of a work that is the antithesis of attention demanding architecture. It is a building, a house, that, without being an actual cave, has virtually no presentation to the outside world. It cre­ ates a personal world hidden away in its own close in a sleepy English village. In the 1960s, the English archi­ tect Peter Aldington built a group of three houses in Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, England. The one at the end of the close – Turn End – was for himself. It might be thought odd that a decade later Aldington was to build a homage to Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House – Wedgewood House, Higham St Mary, Suffolk (below, 1975–8) – because Turn End could be described as its architectural antithesis.

‘stroll’ garden

bedrooms

bed

sitting kitchen/ dining

courtyard garden

entrance studio

formal garden

Middle Turn carport

shared access courtyard The Turn

Wedgewood House, elevation

Turn End is a private house, hidden from the outside world, integrated with its garden and composed as a patchwork of spaces to frame different aspects of per­ sonal domestic life. Its principle room and datum space, for example, is a tiny out­ door courtyard garden complete with pond (below), for sitting warmed by the sun.

public road Turn End, site plan

The house is concealed from the public road (at the bottom of the above site plan) at the end of a shared access courtyard and behind a car port attached to Aldington’s studio. Its front door is concealed too, situated to the right at the end of a narrow entrance passageway. But that (somewhat inauspicious) approach leads to the revelation of a private paradise. The first thing you see as you enter is the tiny courtyard garden, the datum place of the whole house, with trees and sunlight reflecting off the water. The house is organised along an internal spine pathway that leads along the side of the courtyard garden (on its right), past the kitchen and dining area (to the left), then to an intimate sitting space on the left and the Aldingtons’ bedroom open to the right, and finally to a glass door leading out to a more extensive garden behind the house. Across the small courtyard garden, and visible from the din­ ing area, there is a gateway leading into a more formal garden. In this personal world of this house, the identity of the place cannot be detached from that of its creator. References for Turn End (and Wedgewood House):

Jane Brown and Richard Bryant – A Garden and Three Houses, 1999.

John Pardey – Houses: created by Peter Aldington, 2016.

Alan Powers – Aldington, Craig & Collinge, 2009.

See also pages 300–301 of Analysing Architecture: the Universal Language

of Place-Making, 2021, and page 165 of Metaphor, 2019, in the Analysing

Architecture Notebook series.

307

E N DWOR D

T

he case studies in this book illustrate the richness and diversity of ideas that drive the art of architecture. Some buildings achieve fame, or notoriety, by reason of being pho­ togenic or judged as ugly. But there is, as has been frequently repeated in this book, a great deal more to architecture than visual appearance and identity. These twenty-five+ analyses illustrate that there is no one right way to do (nor to judge) architecture. Architecture has infinite and subtle possibilities. Like music and philoso­ phy, architecture is a matter of proposition and composition. These analyses also show that buildings designed according to different attitudes and techniques, with different methodologies and agenda, can be studied and understood according to a consistent conceptual framework. One of the reasons for preparing these analyses has been to test and refine the conceptual framework (analytic methodology) offered in my previous book Analysing Architecture. As a tool for analysis, it has, broadly speaking, stood up to the task. Though they should be used selectively and intelligently rather than as a mindless checklist, the themes identified and illus­ trated in the various editions of the earlier book do provide ways into architectural analysis and can help in gaining an understanding of the general workings of architecture – which is, by suggesting various approaches to try out and modify, useful to those wanting to do it – as well as of the underlying propositions underpinning particular buildings – which might be useful to critics and historians wanting insight into how specific architects worked. At the outset I said that the buildings chosen for analysis had been selected according to two criteria: the range of dif­ ferent kinds of architectural space they exemplified; and their differing suggestions about the relationship between architec­ ture and the person. But a few of other themes have emerged particularly strongly too. Firstly, the case studies expand and refine discussion of the different attitudes architects might have to geometry and how it can be used (see below). There are those that subscribe to the authority of the orthogonal and the geometry of making. There are also those who see orthogonality and the geometry of making as influences to be subverted; and some who celebrate or subvert the other geometries of being – e.g. social geometry – as well as the mathematical formality of ideal geometry. Secondly, the analyses illustrate, even in what appear to be radically original works, the debt owed by their architects to traditional (a.k.a. vernacular) architecture and architecture of the distant past. Many architects, it seems, believe there is a wellspring of what we might call ‘authentic’ architecture

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residing in the buildings and places produced by people who did not think of themselves as Architects. This tendency is either a subset of the attraction (described in the eighteenth century by the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau) of the notion of the ‘noble savage’. Or it could be a recogni­ tion that architects are, through abiding insecurity perhaps, constantly striving to add some intellectual icing to the cake of architectural production while at the same time envying the assurance and apparently unselfconscious beauty of traditional (African, Cotswold, troglodyte, Native American, Japanese…) architecture. Maybe all the examples illustrated in this book betray this sense of a loss of innocence. (Whether ‘innocence’ has ever existed is a moot point.) But another interpretation may be that those traditional architectures manifest (what I term) a universal language of place-making – a metalanguage – even though they each ‘speak’ it in their own ways influenced by geography, resources, culture, and traditions going back, seemingly, to the beginnings of time. And thirdly, and this is a point I have accentuated more in this third edition, the twenty-five case studies, together with the many shorter analyses that I have added, illustrate the rich variety of situations in which architecture can place the person. Such situations might be simple – as a pulpit situates the person as a point of focus for an audience – or more sophisticated – as when a complex of conditions puts the person in a situation that challenges them physically and psychologically, informs them philosophically or poetically, entertains them amusingly or surprisingly… It is certainly my belief that architecture is a richer vein of human creativ­ ity when this potential is taken on; when people are seen as practical and emotional beneficiaries of the situations that architects can provide, rather than treated merely as specta­ tors of gestural or sculptural showmanship. T H E ( F R AUGH T ) I S SU E OF QUA L I T Y One thing I have tried to avoid in my analyses is the issue of ‘quality’. For me, the buildings in which I find quality are those that are interesting to analyse. I’m not looking necessarily for the very best buildings ever designed (though some analysed here are surely amongst them) but a selection that illustrates, mainly to architectural students that want to learn the mul­ tifarious possibilities of their art, a range of approaches to architecture from which they may draw inspiration in the form of those essential commodities of their profession – ideas – and to which they might themselves hopefully add. This need not, and probably isn’t, the same value by which

others assess the quality of works of architecture. Some value them because they are beautiful (in their own or common estimation): such beauty might lie in their sculptural form, ornamentation, orchestration of experience, light and shade (moving from a shady living room out into a bright garden filled with colour)… Others might value works of architecture because they work well: they frame activities efficiently, are comfortable, economical to run, don’t let in the rain… It will be noted that some of the buildings I have analysed in this book do not satisfy any of these latter criteria: the Farnsworth House, Villa Savoye, Vitra Fire Station and the Bioscleave House, for examples – all of which have been abandoned as inappropriate to their intended purposes – have been variously assessed as ugly, uncomfortable, uneconomic, inefficient, impractical, leaky… And yet I would describe these buildings as possessing pure architectural quality, and as such have lessons to teach us. They teach us about what it is and might be possible to do with architecture (especially if the problems could be obviated). A RC H I T E C T S A N D GE OM E T RY Architectural uses of geometry are discussed at length in Analysing Architecture (all editions) under the chapter headings of Geometries of Being and Ideal Geometry. The twenty original analyses in the present book suggested there is more to say about architects’ relationships with geometry. The architects whose work was analysed used geometry – geometries of being and ideal geometry – in different ways. Wright (Fallingwater), Fehn (Villa Busk), Aalto (Villa Mairea), Le Corbusier (Villa Savoye), Lewerentz (Sankt Petri Kyrka) and Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker (MLTW, Sea Ranch) evidently used geometry to provide a framework upon which to compose their drawn plans. In most this took the form of a grid. MLTW used sugar cubes instead. Of these only Fehn and Le Corbusier, and to some extent MLTW with their sugar cubes, related their underlying grid to the geometry of making, i.e. the structural discipline of their buildings. Even then, Le Corbusier deviated from his grid when it got in the way of what he wanted to do (for example, around the central ramp in the Villa Savoye). Wright and Aalto, by contrast, used grids that were more obscure – abstract grids that were not directly related to the structural geometry of their buildings. In both cases the grid was an aid they kept to themselves but which becomes apparent when their plans are analysed. They used the grid as a frame to help them make decisions about the positions and dimensions of things. Presumably they felt that the controlling discipline of the grid lent aesthetic integ­ rity to their drawings and hence their architecture. But the benefit that might accrue to those who would experience their ENDWORD

buildings is not clear. Aalto also used his grid to determine occasional diagonals and curves to modulate his otherwise orthogonal plan (i.e. to help its blending with its irregular natural surroundings). Lewerentz constructed diagonals on his grid too, though to a lesser extent. His design suggests that the mathematical underpinning of architecture has a spiritual dimension. The concealed grid of the Sankt Petri Kyrka may be interpreted as emulating the hidden order of all things – described by the religiously minded as the ‘mysterious way’ in which God works and found by scientists since before Newton to be susceptible to mathematical formulation. It is appropriate (or intended by Lewerentz) that, as with Nature, the underlying geometric discipline of his building should not be overt but discoverable only with some effort and, even then, open to variable interpretation. The grid is a matrix that holds things together concep­ tually. It is satisfying to the architect’s mind when things have some underlying order. Sometimes architects work on the basis that sophistication comes with complexity. Pawson and Silvestrin (Neuendorf House) make a relatively simple (but nuanced) matrix consisting of overlaid squares. Kahn (Esherick House), Terragni (Danteum) and Zumthor (Thermal Baths, Vals) make their geometric matrices more complicated by introducing √2 and Golden Section rectangles. They also overlay matrices of different scales to achieve even greater complexity. Analysing their plans produces bewildering cat’s cradles of lines. Decisions are made about the dimensions and positions of elements according to this tangle of lines, suggesting that geometry lends a genetic, if complex, integrity to the whole. As mentioned at the outset of this book, George MacDonald – Queen Victoria’s favourite writer of fairytales and theorist of ‘The Fantastic Imagination’ – argued that stories need an armature of ‘laws’ to hold them together and, however fantastic they may be, to give them their own inter­ nal plausibility. Many architects, working in line rather than words, find that reassuring armature in geometry. In many of the analyses I have referred to an analogy between architecture and music. Centuries of music have been composed using what was in Johann Sebastian Bach’s time called the ‘well-tempered’ scale. From the range of sound frequencies available this scale extracted twelve tones (A to G# including half-tones) related in geometric proportion. Doubling and halving the frequencies added octaves. Music was composed using intervals and harmonies held together by mathematics. The results appealed to the ear. Some archi­ tects clearly believe, as apparent in the examples analysed in this book, that geometric proportion applied to dimensions rather than sound frequencies can give their work a harmonic integrity equivalent to that possible in well-tempered music. Whether this is the case is a moot point. 309

Not all architects believe that ideal geometry should have authority over architecture. Märkli tries it in La Congi­ unta but neither Gray (Villa E.1027) nor Dewes and Puente (Casa del Ojo de Agua) bother. They prefer to depend on a different sort of geometry, one that derives from human inhabitation (geometry of being). Murcutt (Kempsey Guest Studio) is content with the discipline of the geometry of mak­ ing (with timber components) and of that traced by the path of the sun in the sky. Mies (Farnsworth House and Barcelona Pavilion) finds a fusion of ideal geometry with that of making, giving the latter the authority and status of the former. In the Farnsworth House he takes one component – a floor slab of travertine – rather than a perfect geometric figure such as a square or Golden Section rectangle, and uses that as the module to give geometric discipline to the composition as a whole. In the Barcelona Pavilion there is an extra subtlety in that the geometry of one component is in counterpoint with those of others – i.e. the geometries of the floor slabs, columns, the glazed screens and wall cladding are in interplay with each other rather than in resolved harmony. Le Corbusier (Cabanon) proposes a different hybrid geometry. His Modulor system formulates laws for composi­ tion using dimensions derived from an idealised human figure governed by series of numbers related to the Golden Section and authorised by the drawn construction of a geometric diagram. Le Corbusier suggested that, using this system of dimensions, his work would be in accord with that ‘mysterious way’ governing all creation. Koolhaas (Maison à Bordeaux) pays homage to Le Corbusier by using the Modulor diagram as a framework for the plans of his house but alters the foun­ dations of Le Corbusier’s framework by increasing its scale to that of a hero/god rather than a human being. By contrast with those architects who use right angles and straight lines, Kiesler (Endless House) and Findlay and Ushida (Truss Wall House) avoid Cartesian grids and Euclidian geometry. They prefer shapes based on free curves, growth, movement – of the hand and arm drawing, of the body dancing, of shells growing. Kiesler argues that it is this approach which brings his design closer to the source of original creation. These architects disregard the authority of the geometry of making too. They relish shapes that are difficult to make, refusing to accept ease of construction as a limitation on their imagination or on architecture’s claim to transcend the mundane. Considering the five analyses to the second edition… R.S. Liza (Ramesh House) is not concerned to use ideal geom­ etry to modify the house’s innate geometry of making, which harmonises with the six-directions-plus-centre innate in the human form, and concentrates more on ventilation, evapora­ tive cooling, shade… to make a house that is comfortable in 310

a challenging climate. Bardi (in her own house) deals with a conflict between the geometry of structure and that of glass walls to preserve the regularity of the outward appearance of the house by adjusting its structural geometry. Zaha Hadid (Vitra Fire Station) is concerned to invent a new fragmented, warped, ‘explosive’ geometry, one that pays no heed to any authority that ideal geometry or the geometries of being might be thought to possess. Scharoun (Mohrmann House) allows slight remnants of ideal geometry to persist as traces (pal­ impsests) of a more geometrically regulated way of designing. He produced irregular (distorted) compositions governed more by a desire to frame use and relationships, which did not subjugate themselves to the geometry of making. And Gins and Arakawa (Bioscleave House) used axes and Golden Section rectangles for reasons that are unclear but probably to help them make compositional decisions where no other authority presented itself. Perhaps they wanted to create the hint of a datum, but one that could not be used by occupants as a reference to make sense of the space in which they found (or rather, were not permitted to find) themselves. I N T ER PR ET I NG A RCHI T EC T U R ES OF T HE PA ST Even amongst buildings which at first sight appear original it is hard to find works of architecture that owe no debt to ancient and traditional architecture. The Casa del Ojo de Agua is influenced by Mayan or Inca temples; the Neuendorf House by Moorish courtyard houses. Even the Barcelona Pavilion, considered one of the most innovative buildings of the twentieth century, is apparently influenced by the ancient Minoan hall and Greek megaron. The Truss Wall and Endless Houses, two of the most determinedly unorthodox buildings, emulate the amorphous spaces of troglodyte houses (cave dwellings) and shells. The Farnsworth House is a reinterpretation in steel and glass of a Greek temple and of a rudimentary African hut on stilts; it also seems to borrow its proportions from the ancient temple of Aphaia at Aegina. La Congiunta rearranges the components of a Romanesque church. The Cabanon takes a lead from an ordi­ nary garden shed but is conceptually equivalent to the hermit’s cell, Elisha’s room ‘on the wall’ or the cabin of an ocean-going liner. The Esherick House with its detached end chimneys is a geometrically complex settler house. The Maison à Bordeaux is a deconstructed château. The Danteum draws on such ancient precedents as the Egyptian hypostyle hall, the Minoan pillar crypt and labyrinth, and the Greek Telesterion. The Villa Savoye is Le Corbusier’s Parthenon and twists a Pompeian house into a spiral. Sea Ranch imitates local traditional tim­ ber barns and classical aedicules. Villa E.1027 acknowledges a debt to traditional French peasant architecture. And both

the Villa Busk and the Villa Mairea owe something to their architects’ interest in traditional Japanese architecture (as of course does the work of both Wright and Mies) and its poetic relationship with Nature. The Sankt Petri Kyrka evokes the anti-Nature of a barren city street, the promise of the time­ less City of God, the labyrinth and the atmosphere of pagan worship in caves. Fallingwater and the Thermal Baths at Vals find inspiration in geological formations and place-making in the landscape. And the Bardi and Mohrmann Houses draw references from vernacular or traditional architecture whilst also introducing contemporary architectural ideas of struc­ tural and spatial organisation. (Maybe the Bioscleave House is one example free of historical reference?) K I N D S OF A RC H I T E C T U R A L SPAC E Architects organise, order, mould space in different ways. Many of these are evident in the buildings analysed. Finding labels for different kinds of architectural space is tricky. The spaces of the Casa del Ojo de Agua are sequential, ranged along a line like the parts of a sentence punctuated by doorways. Its dining room is a raised platform open to the trees around on three of its four sides and has no roof. The bedroom below is a staging point on the route from the top of the slope down to the river. It too is a platform open, though veiled by mosquito net, on three of its four sides. The floor of the dining room above gives the bedroom a roof. Because of this it has a horizontal emphasis. The back wall of the house and its relation to the slope give direction to both rooms. So, even in this small house different kinds of architectural space are evident: sequential; punctuated; elevated; open (in various degrees); veiled; horizontal; directional. The Neuendorf House also frames a punctuated sequence. Its long approach pathway is a space for movement – dynamic. Like a crescendo in music it builds to a climax at the constricted entrance into the courtyard. The courtyard is enclosed. Being open only to the sky it has a vertical emphasis. The loggia is a space that frames a view. It projects a horizontal axis over the swimming pool to the sea beyond. Where the Casa del Ojo de Agua and the Neuendorf House provide a certain route, the Barcelona Pavilion offers choice and uncertainty. It is the seminal example of space that is said to flow between separated planar walls (like a stream between rocks). Where both the Casa del Ojo de Agua and the Neuendorf House focus on clear centred spaces – hearts – that of the Barcelona Pavilion (if it has a heart) is less clear. Its space is un-centred, not focused (except at the statue). Without its walls the Barcelona Pavilion would have had space structured by its columns; but the walls make spaces in different overlapping ways. ENDWORD

In Sea Ranch spaces are defined by use and by structure, as they are too in the Villa Busk. In both there are spaces that are in-between inside and outside. The Truss Wall and the Endless Houses choreograph space, emulating the movement of dance. The sequence in the Endless House (the clue is in the name) has no beginning nor end. The Farnsworth House’s relationship with endless­ ness – the infinite – is different. It frames a centred, though asymmetric, space hovering slightly above the infinite curved surface of the earth. Its space is raised and with a horizontal emphasis. Inside, its places – for sleeping, eating, cooking… – are implied rather than defined by enclosure. On the lowest floor of the Maison à Bordeaux there are spaces that are excavated out of the ground. The spaces of both the Endless House and La Congiunta can be interpreted as excavated too, but from space itself rather than from solid matter. The walls of the Sankt Petri Kyrka also excavate space from space itself, making the interior, though orthogonal, like a cave. The spaces of the Thermal Baths, Vals, are excavated from a rectangular and massive block of constructed stone. We have seen that the spaces of many of the buildings analysed are ordered mathematically. The mathematical order of the Esherick House is abstract where that of Le Corbus­ ier’s Cabanon is formulaic and related to human scale. The Esherick House also illustrates Kahn’s hierarchical notions of ‘served’ space and ‘servant’ space. The mathematical space of the Danteum is, like the Esherick House, abstract too. Its sequential spaces are narra­ tive – they relate the story of Dante’s Commedia. This is a form of dynamic space. The Villa Savoye frames a quintessential example of dynamic space – the architectural promenade – sequential, punctuated and potentially narrative. It plays with mathematical space and spaces with horizontal and vertical emphases too. Villa E.1027 and Sea Ranch concentrate on making space into places for inhabitation. Christian Norberg Schulz, in his book Existence, Space and Architecture (1971), called this kind of space ‘existential’. Martin Heidegger, in his essay ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ (1950), called it space for dwelling. Space for inhabitation provides psychological and physical comfort for the person. In the case of the Kempsey Guest Studio this is done by reinterpreting the space of an existing building. Both the Villas Busk and Mairea add to this a poetic relationship with their landscape. The Thermal Baths, Vals, offers sensually provocative spaces. And the Sankt Petri Kyrka makes spaces that are emotionally charged. Of the analyses new to the second edition of this book, the Ramesh House provides environmentally tuned spaces for inhabitation, arranged vertically in a spiral as well as horizontally. The Bardi House puts two different kinds of 311

space – traditional boxed space and modern free-planned space – next to each other. The Vitra Fire Station experiments with the idea of distorted space. The Mohrmann House cre­ ates built versions of the sort of architectural spaces people occupy in the landscape. And Bioscleave House seeks to create challenging spaces to provoke health-promoting exertion. These very brief descriptions do not account for the full range of kinds of architectural space. There are grand classifications, such as: inside, outside and in-between; static, dynamic; narrative; focused, unfocused; horizontal, vertical; punctuated, flowing; enclosed, open; structured, unstruc­ tured and layered; centred; axial, asymmetric; exclusive, delimiting; excavated, constructed… But within these there are as many subtle nuances as there are in the ways music may be composed and played. A RC H I T E C T U R E A N D T H E PE R S ON Perhaps the curse of architecture is that although essentially about making frames (for life) some architects want their work to be the content of the frame – the picture. There is a desire to make buildings photogenic, to look good. Architec­ ture frames the lives and activities, possessions and beliefs of people. And as people occupy, inhabit, use, perform in… the space of buildings, various kinds of architectural space accommodate them and affect them in different ways. Archi­ tecture manifests and symbolises human presence and will to change the world. It also manipulates, orchestrates and manages experience. Some architecture is conceived as if it were sculpture, as if the three-dimensional form and visual appearance of buildings were its paramount subject. But as the preceding analyses illustrate, architecture has more dimensions to it than the visual. Juhani Pallasmaa (see the quotation on page 246) makes the point that architecture involves smell, sound, touch and even taste. But even this argument does not go far enough. Architecture involves other senses too, emotional senses: curiosity; uncertainty; trepidation; fear; contradiction; security; humour; well-being; secrecy; dis­ play; transition; arrival; exclusion; welcome; community; entertainment, frustration and many others. All these reside in people. All these and more are part of our experience and enjoyment of works of architecture. They depend not just on the information received from our five senses. They depend on interpretation, on emotional response. Architecture mediates between the person and other people, and with the environment. People are, as I have repeatedly written in the preceding pages, essential participant ingredients of archi­ tecture not merely spectators of it. Architecture is a mode of communication – the proposition of a way of inhabiting, 312

relating to each other and the world – between the mind of an architect and those who will encounter the work it produces. Le Corbusier uses the person – human form and geom­ etry – as the basis on which he constructs the Modulor. He also makes architecture that takes a person on a walk from the earth to the sky. Dewes and Puente give the person a tem­ ple in the jungle where they are in touch with its sounds and atmosphere. Pawson and Silvestrin use the wall to accompany, challenge, detach the person from Nature, but then reveal the horizon…. Mies lifts the person onto a higher plane, making one place to wander in and another to be on display. Märkli offers a cave in which the person may encounter, divorced from the landscape, visceral sculptures. Terragni uses archi­ tecture to take the person on a narrative journey from hell to heaven. Koolhaas tells jokes. Wright puts the person next to a hearth on a rock by a waterfall. Gray, Fehn and Aalto offer a ‘simple life well lived’ in harmony with benign Nature. MLTW suggest a way in which people can live communally surrounded by wild Nature. Murcutt relates the person’s activities to the different times of day – dawn, midday, dusk. From the person, Lewerentz elicits emotional responses and religious contemplation. Zumthor stimulates and soothes the body’s sensuality but maybe also provokes exhibitionism. Liza R.S. situates the domestic life of a family in an environmen­ tally attuned spiral. Scharoun formalises the sorts of places such a family might make in the landscape. While Gins and Arakawa do something similar but more challengingly, aiming to irritate the person into living longer. All this is done through the medium of architecture. Physically, sensually, psychologically, socially, emotionally… architecture is, without doubt, the richest of all the arts. The different priorities you can adopt as architect are more varied than those open to practitioners in any other art form. You might think when you set out on a design that the priority is clear, merely to design a great building. But as we have seen in the preceding case studies, that simple aim hides a plethora of options. Some architects have given priority to the experience of people in an around their building. Some have sought to tell a story. Others have sought to compose a picture or sculpture. Yet others have concerned themselves with the health, the immortality even, of their clients. Others have tried to entertain, or to define new ways of organising space, of living individually and communally. Some have recognised the growing need for ecological responsibility. Options are legion. So what are your priorities when setting out on a design? And what approach, what techniques and devices will you adopt to achieve them? Remember, above all, the task before you begins with having an idea! But remember too that ideas do not emerge out of nothing. They need to be quarried.

ACK NOW L EDGE ME N TS

R E G A R DI NG T H E F I R S T E DI T ION…

A N D T H I S T H I R D E DI T ION

T

I

hanks are due to: Francoise Bollack and Tom Killian (New York), who have unflinchingly provided challenging debate and invaluable information on some of the American examples included in this book; The Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation in Vienna, and Tatjana Okresek in particular, for granting me permission to use the Kiesler drawing (that was) on page 57; Leena Pallasoja at the Museum of Finnish Architecture in Helsinki for sending me some useful material on Sverre Fehn. I am grateful too to the team at Routledge: Fran Ford for her good humoured encouragement; Laura Williamson for her support; and Faith McDonald for seeing the book through production. As always I depend on the support of Gill, and the occasional interest of Mary, David and Jim. But now I have another generation to thank – Emily, daughter of Mary and Ian – though at only a few months old she is sublimely una­ ware that merely by coming into existence she makes the work involved in putting together a book worthwhile (not that I expect her to have the slightest interest in architecture). T H E SE C ON D E DI T ION…

F

urther thanks are due, in particular, to Pierre d’Avoine, Dan Harris, Jana Davis Pearl and her father A.J. Davis FAIA, Mona Kriepe, Andrew R.B. Simpson, Liza Raju Subhadra and Peter Blundell Jones. I am also again grateful to Fran Ford, Jennifer Schmidt, Grace Harrison and Siobhán Greaney at Routledge for sup­ porting and producing this second expanded edition of a book which seems to have found use in schools of architecture around the world. If it has, it is mainly because architecture is such a rich and fascinating field of human imagination and creativity. And Emily, at the time of writing, is now five years old and shows no signs of wanting to become an architect.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

am particularly grateful to the staff of the Boa Nova restaurant in Porto, firstly for their hospitality and for a delicious and entertaining meal, and secondly for inadvert­ ently giving me the idea of supplementing the twenty-five main courses of this book with a collection of interspersed amuse-bouches. I would also like to thank various correspondents for their comments and the ideas they have prompted while I have been preparing this edition. Amongst these, and in addition to those mentioned in previous Acknowledge­ ments, are: Stephen Bollard who is exploring the potential of teaching architecture in secondary school here in the UK (an aspiration close to my own heart); Kevin Nute, now teaching in Hawai’i, with whom I have enjoyed stimulating discussions; D’Arcy Jones in Vancouver, currently engaged in a Doctorate in Design at the University of Calgary, on the topic of ‘subversion’ in architecture; Shivani Pinapotu at the Rhode Island School of Design who is learning from how children make places (another subject close to my heart) to make cities more entertaining for all; and Maryam Singery of the University of Texas at San Antonio who shared with me some of the challenges facing architectural tutors in this day and age. Thanks again to Fran Ford at Routledge for having faith in my ability to further expand this book without resorting to the knee-jerk approach of adding a further five case stud­ ies. I hope the inclusion of shorter analyses of a number of extra buildings helps to enrich the book as a whole. Also at Routledge, I am grateful to Hannah Studd for shepherding me through the process, and to Alanna Donaldson, who has taken this book, along with the fifth edition of Analysing Architecture and the second of Exercises in Architecture, through the production process. Thanks too to Mike Hamilton who proof-read all three books. Emily is now fourteen years old and still shows no signs of wanting to become an architect.

313

BIBLIOGR A PHIES INTRODUCTION

BARCELONA PAVILION

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Werner Blaser – Mies van der Rohe, Thames and Hudson, London, 1972. Juan Pablo Bonta – Architecture and its Interpretation, Lund Humphries, London, 1979. Peter Carter – Mies van der Rohe at Work, Phaidon, London, 1999. Ulrich Conrads – Programmes and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, Lund Humphries, London, 1970. Caroline Constant – ‘The Barcelona Pavilion as Landscape Garden: Modernity and the Picturesque’, in AAFiles 20, Autumn 1990. John Dee – Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570), facsimile edition, Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish MT, undated. Theo van Doesburg – ‘Towards a plastic architecture’, in De Stijl, 12, 6/7, 1924. Robin Evans – ‘Mies van der Rohe’s Paradoxical Symmetries’ (1990), in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, Janet Evans and Architectural Association, London, 1997. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, trans. Bosanquet – Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (1820s, 1886), Penguin Books, London, 2004. Robert Hughes – ‘Mies van der Rohe – Less is More’, Visions of Space 4/7, BBC (television programme), 2003. Philip Johnson – Mies van der Rohe (1947, 1953), Secker and Warburg, London, 1978. Detlef Mertens – Mies, Phaidon, London, 2014. Fritz Neumeyer – The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991. Sophia Psarra – ‘Invisible Surface’, in Architecture and Narrative: the Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning, Routledge, London, 2009. Colin Rowe – ‘Neo-“Classicism” and Modern Architecture I’ (1973) and ‘Neo-“Classicism” and Modern Architecture II’ (1973), in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1982. K.F. Schinkel – Sammlung architectonischer Entwürfe (Collected Architectural Designs), 1819–1840; also available in facsimile with an Introduction by Doug Clelland, Academy Editions, London, 1982. Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Tut Schlemmer, trans. Krishna Winston – The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, Northwestern U.P., Evanston IL, 1972. Franz Schulze – Mies van der Rohe: a Critical Biography, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1985. Franz Schulze – Mies van der Rohe: Critical Essays, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989. Ignasi de Solà Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos – Mies van der Rohe: Barcelona Pavilion, Gustavo Gili SA, Barcelona, 1993. David Spaeth – Mies van der Rohe, The Architectural Press, London, 1985. Oswald Spengler, trans. Atkinson – The Decline of the West (1918, 1922), George Allen & Unwin, London, 1932. Wolf Tegethoff – Mies van der Rohe: the Villas and Country Houses, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1985. Frank Lloyd Wright – (Wasmuth Portfolio) Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright, Wasmuth, Berlin, 1910, republished without the German translation as Drawings and Plans of Frank Lloyd Wright, Dover, New York, 1983. Frank Lloyd Wright, ed. and intro. Neil Levine – Modern Architecture; being the Kahn Lectures for 1930 (1930), Princeton University Press, 2008.

CASA DEL OJO DE AGUA Frances Anderton – ‘Jungle House’, in AR (Architectural Review), June 1991. Richard Bryant, ‘A Life in Architecture’, Architects’ Journal, 1 April, 1999, available at: architectsjournal.co.uk/archive/a-life-in-architecture-33 (Jan. 2022). Lewis Carroll – ‘Jabberwocky’, in Through the Looking-Glass, Macmillan, London, 1872. (Dewes and Puente) – ‘Habitation au Mexique’, Architecture d’aujourd’hui, June 1991. Suzanne Frank – Peter Eisenman’s House VI: the Client’s Response, Whitney Library of Design, New York, 1994. James Joyce – Ulysses, Shakespeare & Co., Paris, 1922. Plato, trans. Lee – Timaeus (c. 360 BCE) 16, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971. Deborah Singmaster – ‘A Life in Architecture’ (Richard Bryant), in AJ (Architects Journal), 1 April 1999, available at: architectsjournal.co.uk/home/a-life-in-architecture/770632.article (Jan. 2022). Henry David Thoreau – Walden (1854), Bantam, New York, 1981. John Welsh – Modern House, Phaidon, London, 1995. NEUENDORF HOUSE archeyes.com/neuendorf-house/ (Mar. 2022). johnpawson.com/works/neuendorf-house (Mar. 2022). Mark Alden Branch – ‘Light architecture’, in Progressive Architecture, Vol. 73, No. 11, November 1992 Brian Edwards et al, eds. –Courtyard Housing: Past, Present & Future, Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, 2006. Jean Gallotti – Le jardin et la maison Arabes au Maroc (1926), Actes Sud/Centre Jacques-Berque, Arles, 2008. Friedrich Gilly, quoted in Fritz Neumeyer – The Artless Word, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991. John Welsh – Modern House, Phaidon, London, 1995.

314

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Lázló Moholy-Nagy – The New Vision: Fundamentals of Bauhaus Design, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1938, 1947), Dover Publications, New York, 2005. Mario Pisani – ‘Eisaku Ushida, Kathryn Findlay: Truss Wall House, Tokyo’, in Domus, 818, Sept. 1999. Oswald Spengler, translated by Atkinson – The Decline of the West (1918, 1922), George Allen & Unwin, London, 1932 (1971). Leon Van Schaik – ‘Ushida Findlay Partnership’, in Transition, 52–3, 1996. Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Tut Schlemmer, trans. Krishna Winston – The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer (1958), Northwestern University Press, Evanston IL, 1972. John Welsh – Modern House, Phaidon, London, 1995. ENDLESS HOUSE rudygodinez.tumblr.com/post/51598262234/friedrick-kiesler-endless­ house (May 2022). kiesler.org (May 2022). Samuel Beckett – The Lost Ones, Calder & Boyars, London, 1972. Dieter Bogner – Friedrich Kiesler: Inside the Endless House, Böhlau, Vienna, 1997. Dieter Bogner, ed. – Friedrich J. Kiesler: Endless Space, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna, 2001. Dieter Bogner, ed. – Friedrich Kiesler: Endless House 1947–1961, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, Vienna, 2003. Klaus Bollinger, Florian Medicus and the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, eds. – Endless Kiesler, Birkhäuser, Basel, 2015. Nick Clegg – ‘Making the Metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters’ (2022), available at: nickclegg.medium.com/making-the-metaverse-what-it-is-how­ it-will-be-built-and-why-it-matters-3710f7570b04, (Oct. 2022). Beatriz Colomina – ‘Space House, The Psyche of Building’, in Ian Borden and Jane Rendell, eds. – Intersections: Architectural Histories and Critical Theories, Routledge, London, 2000. Friedrich Kiesler – ‘Manifesto of Tensionism. Organic Building–the City in Space–Functional Architecture’ (1925), translated at: kiesler.org/wp-content/uploads/Manifesto-of­ Tensionism_1925_EN.pdf (Oct. 2022), Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation. Friedrich Kiesler – ‘Pseudo-Functionalism in Modern Architecture’, in Partisan Review, July 1940, reprinted in Bogner, ed., 2003. (Friedrich Kiesler) – ‘Frederick J. Kiesler’s Endless House and its Psychological Lighting’, in Interiors, November 1950, reprinted in Bogner, ed., 2003. Interview with Friedrich Kiesler – ‘The Endless House’, Camera Three, 1960, reprinted in Bogner, ed., 2003. Friedrich Kiesler – ‘Hazard and the Endless House’ (1959), in Art News, November 7, 1960, reprinted in Bogner, ed., 2003. Frederick Kiesler – Inside the Endless House, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1966. Juhanni Pallasmaa – The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (1996), John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2005. Katsuhiro Yamaguchi – ‘Living Media Architecture’, in ‘Ushida Findlay Partnership: Truss·Wall·House’, Kenchiku Bunka (Special Issue), August 1993. FARNSWORTH HOUSE Jay Appleton – The Experience of Landscape (1975), Hull University Press/John Wiley, London, 1986. Werner Blaser – Mies van der Rohe, Thames and Hudson, London, 1972. Peter Carter – Mies van der Rohe at Work, Phaidon, London, 1999. Edith Farnsworth – Extract from journal, available at: archives.newberry.org/repositories/2/resources/1232 (Mar. 2023). Edward R. Ford – The Details of Modern Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1990. Leo Frobenius – Das unbekannte Afrika: aufhellung der schicksale eines Erdteils, Oscar Beck, München, 1923. Antony Gormley, quoted in Maev Kennedy – ‘Antony Gormley wants you for fourth plinth’, in The Guardian, 26 Feb. 2009. Romano Guardini, trans. Bromiley – Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race (1923–25), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI, 1994.

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Realm of Architecture, Thames & Hudson, London, 1991.

Urs Büttiker, trans. David Bean – Louis I. Kahn: Light and Space,

Whitney Library of Design, New York, 1994. Brad Collins and Anthony Vidler – Eric Owen Moss: Buildings and Projects 2, Rizzoli, New York, 1996. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, trans. Massumi – ‘1837: Of the Refrain’, in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980), Continuum, New York, 1987. Peter Eisenman – Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, Oxford U.P., New York, 1975. Suzanne Frank – Peter Eisenman’s House VI: the Client’s Response, Whitney Library of Design, New York, 1994. Klaus-Peter Gast – Louis I. Kahn: The Idea of Order, Birkhäuser, Basel, 1998. Klaus-Peter Gast – Louis I. Kahn: Complete Works, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich, 2001. Martin Heidegger, trans. Hofstader – ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’ (sic; 1951) in Poetry, Language and Thought (1971), Harper and Row, London and New York, 1975. Louis Kahn – ‘Order in Architecture’, in Perspecta 4, 1957. Alessandra Latour, ed. – Louis I. Kahn: Writings, Lectures, Interviews, Rizzoli, New York, 1991. Robert McCarter – Louis I. Kahn, Phaidon, New York, 2005. Sam Rodell – ‘The Influence of Robert Venturi on Louis Kahn’, Masters dissertation, Washington State University, 2008, available at: rex.libraries.wsu.edu/esploro/outputs/graduate/The-influenceof-Robert-Venturi-on/99900525159401842 (Dec. 2022). Heinz Ronner, Sharad Jhaveri and Alessandro Vasella – Louis I. Kahn: Complete Work 1935–74, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, 1977. Joseph Rykwert – Louis Kahn, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2001. Robert Venturi – Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966. Rudof Wittkower – Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, Tiranti, London, 1952. Richard Saul Wurman, ed. – What Will Be Has Always Been: The Words of Louis I. Kahn, Access Press and Rizzoli, New York, 1986.

316

MAISON À BORDEAUX Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoîne – Koolhaas houselife (movie and book), Bêkafilms and Les Pneumatiques, Bordeaux, 2008. The movie is available to rent at: bekalemoine.com/koolhaas_houselife.php (Dec. 2022). John T. Emmett, introduced by J.Mordaunt Crook – Six Essays (1891), Johnson Reprint Company, New York/London, 1972. Robert Gargiani, trans. Piccolo – Rem Koolhaas/OMA: The Construction of Merveilles, EPFL Press distributed by Routledge, Abingdon, 2008. Rem Koolhaas – Delirious New York (1978), Monacelli Press, New York, 1994. Le Corbusier, trans. Etchells – Towards a New Architecture (1923), John Rodker, London, 1927. Le Corbusier – ‘Five Points Towards a New Architecture’ (1926), trans. in Ulrich Conrads – Programmes and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, Lund Humphries, London, 1970. Robert Venturi – Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1966. Frank Lloyd Wright – from Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe (1910), reprinted as ‘The Sovereignty of the Individual’ in Kaufmann and Raeburn, editors – Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings, Meridian, New York, 1960. IL DANTEUM archeyes.com/the-danteum-giuseppe-terragni/ (Dec. 2022). Giorgio Ciucci – Giuseppe Terragni: Opera Completa, Electa, Milan, 1996. Peter Eisenman – The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, Lars Müller, Baden, 2006. Peter Eisenman – Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques, The Monacelli Press, New York, 2003. Thomas L. Schumacher – Surface & Symbol: Giuseppe Terragni and the Architecture of Italian Rationalism, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1991. Thomas L. Schumacher – The Danteum, Triangle Architectural Publishing, London and Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1993. Bruno Zevi, trans. Beltrandi – Giuseppe Terragni (1968), Triangle Architectural Publishing, London, 1989. FALLINGWATER youtube.com/watch?v=9CVKU3ErrGM (Jan. 2023) Jonathan Adams – The Architecture of Defiance, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2022. William J.R. Curtis – Modern Architecture Since 1900, Phaidon, Oxford, 1987. Grant Hildebrand – The Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Houses, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1991. Donald Hoffmann – Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Nature, Dover, New York, 1986. Donald Hoffmann – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: the House and its History (1978), Dover, New York, 1993. Donald Hoffmann – Understanding Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architecture, Dover, New York, 1995. Christopher Hussey – The Picturesque, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, London & New York, 1927. Edgar Kaufmann and Ben Raeburn – Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings, Meridian, New York, 1960. Edgar Kaufmann – Fallingwater, Abbeville Press, New York, 1986. Robert McCarter – Fallingwater: Frank Lloyd Wright, Phaidon (Architecture in Detail Series), London, 2002. Edward S. Morse – Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings (1886), Dover, New York, 1961. Kevin Nute – Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, Routledge, London, 1993. Frank Lloyd Wright – An Autobiography (The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1932, 1943, 1977), Quartet Books, London, 1977.

Frank Lloyd Wright – The Future of Architecture (1953), Meridian, New York, 1970. Bruno Zevi – The Modern Language of Architecture, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1978. VILLA SAVOYE Geoffrey H. Baker – Le Corbusier: an Analysis of Form, Van Nostrand Reinhold, London, 1984. Le Corbusier – ‘Five Points Towards a New Architecture’ (1926), trans. Ulrich Conrads – Programmes and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, Lund Humphries, London, 1970. Le Corbusier – Œuvre Complète 1910–1929, Les Éditions d’Architecture, Zürich, 1964. Le Corbusier – Œuvre Complète 1929–1934, Les Éditions d’Architecture, Zürich, 1964. Le Corbusier, trans. Aujame – Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and Urbanism (1930), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991. Le Corbusier, trans. Etchells – Towards a New Architecture (1923), John Rodker, London, 1927. Le Corbusier, ed. Gresleri, trans. Munson and Shore – Voyage d’Orient: Carnets, Electa, Milan, 1987 (in Italian), 2002 (in English). William J.R. Curtis – Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, Phaidon, London, 1986. Enis Kortan – Turkish Architecture and Urbanism through the Eyes of L.C., Boyut, Istanbul, 2010. Sarah Menin and Flora Samuel – Nature and Space: Aalto and Le Corbusier, Routledge, London, 2003. Guillemette Morel-Journel – Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Éditions du Patrimoine, Paris, 2000. Flora Samuel – Le Corbusier in Detail, Architectural Press, Oxford, 2007. Simon Unwin – Villa Le Lac (ebook), available on Apple Books, 2012. KEMPSEY GUEST STUDIO Jay Appleton – The Experience of Landscape (1975), Hull University Press, Hull, 1986. Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper – Glenn Murcutt: A Singular Architectural Practice, Images Publishing Group, Mulgrave, 2002. Philip Drew – Leaves of Iron: Glenn Murcutt, Pioneer of an Australian Architectural Form, The Law Book Company, New South Wales, 1985. Françoise Fromonot, trans. Anning – Glenn Murcutt: Buildings and Projects, Whitney Library of Design, New York, 1995, pp. 62–5 (Marie Short House) and pp. 148–51 (Kempsey Guest Studio). Karissa Rosefield – ‘Happy Birthday Glenn Murcutt!’ at: archdaily.com/407155/glenn-murcutt-turns-77 (Jan. 2023). CONDOMINIUM ONE, THE SEA RANCH searanch.ced.berkeley.edu/s/sea-ranch/page/home (Jan. 2023). Jay Appleton – The Experience of Landscape (1975), Hull University Press, Hull, 1986. Kent C. Bloomer and Charles W. Moore with a contribution by Robert J. Yudell – Body, Memory, and Architecture, Yale University Press, New Haven CT, 1977. Lawrence Halprin – The Sea Ranch… Diary of an Idea, Spacemaker Press, Berkeley CA, 2002. Donlyn Lyndon, John Donat ed., contributing ed. Patrick Morreau – ‘Sea Ranch: the Process of Design’, in World Architecture Two, Studio Vista, London, 1965. Donlyn Lyndon – ‘The Sea Ranch: Qualified Vernacular’, in Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 63, No. 1, Oct. 2009. Donlyn Lyndon and Jim Allinder (with essays by Donald Canty and Lawrence Halprin) – The Sea Ranch, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2004. Donlyn Lyndon and Charles Moore – Chambers for a Memory Palace, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1994. Charles Moore, Gerald Allen and Donlyn Lyndon – The Place of Houses: Three Architects Suggest Ways to Build and Inhabit Houses, Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1974.

BIBLIOGR APHIES

Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin – ‘Co-operation in Building’, in The Art of Building a Home, Longmans, London, 1901. John Summerson – ‘Heavenly Mansions: an Interpretation of Gothic’ (1946), in Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays on Architecture, Norton, New York, 1963. William Turnbull – Buildings in the Landscape, William Stout, Richmond, CA, 2000. VILLA E.1027 Peter Adam – Eileen Gray: Architect/Designer, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1997. Leon Battista Alberti, trans. Leoni – Ten Books on Architecture (1485, 1755), Tiranti, London, 1955. Ethel Buisson and Beth McLendon – ‘Architects of Ireland: Eileen Gray (1879–1976)’, in Archiseek, available at: archiseek.com/2010/gray-eileen-1888-1976/ (Mar. 2023). Ulrich Conrads, trans. Bullock – Programmes and Manifestos on 20th-century Architecture (1964), Lund Humphries, London, 1970. Caroline Constant – Eileen Gray, Phaidon, London, 2000. Le Corbusier, trans. Etchells – Towards a New Architecture (1923), John Rodker, London, 1927. Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici – ‘De l’électicism au doute’ (‘From eclecticism to doubt’), in L’Architecture Vivante, Winter 1929. Eileen Gray and Jean Badovici – ‘Description’ (of Villa E.1027), in L’Architecture Vivante, Winter 1929. James Malton – An Essay on Cottage Architecture…,Hookham and Carpenter, London, 1798. Alison Smithson – ‘Beatrix Potter’s Places’, in Architectural Design, Vol. 37, Dec. 1967. Colin St John Wilson – The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture (1995), Black Dog Publishing, London, 2007. Vitruvius, trans. Hicky Morgan – The Ten Books on Architecture (first century BC, 1914), Dover, New York, 1960. SANKT PETRI KYRKA Janne Ahlin – Sigurd Lewerentz, Architect, MIT, Cambridge MA, 1986. Peter Blundell Jones – ‘Sigurd Lewerentz: Church of St Peter Klippan 1963–66’, in arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Volume 6, Issue 02, Jun 2002, pp. 159–73, also in Modern Architecture Through Case Studies, Architectural Press, Oxford, 2002. Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Allen – ‘From Allegories to Novels’ (1949), in Weinberger, ed. – Jorge Luis Borges, The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922–1986, Penguin Books, London, 2001. Claes Caldenby, Adam Caruso and Sven Ivar Lind, trans. Krause and Perlmutter – Sigurd Lewerentz, Two Churches, Arkitektur Förlag AB, Stockholm, 1997. Caroline Constant – The Woodland Crematorium: Towards a Spiritual Landscape, Byggförlaget, Stockholm, 1994. Nicola Flora, Paolo Giardello, Gennaro Postiglione, eds., with an essay by Colin St John Wilson – Sigurd Lewerentz 1885– 1975, Electa Architecture, Milan, 2001. Carl-Hugo Gustafsson – St Petri Church, Klippan, 1986. Vaughan Hart – ‘Sigurd Lewerentz and the “Half-Open Door” ’, in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, Vol. 39, 1996. Dean Hawkes – ‘Architecture of Adaptive Light’, in The Environmental Imagination, Routledge, Abingdon, 2008. William Richard Lethaby – Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (1892), Dover Publications, New York, 2004. Kieran Long, Johan Örn Mikael Andersson – Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life, ArkDes, Stockholm and Park Books, Zurich, 2021. Gordon A. Nicholson – Drawing, Building, Craft: Revelations of Spiritual Harmony and the Body at St. Petri Klippan, unpublished Master of Architecture dissertation, McGill University, Montreal, 1998, available at: core.ac.uk/display/41906651 (Mar. 2023). Pierluigi Nicolin – ‘Lewerentz-Klippan’, in Lotus International 93, 1997. Hans Nordenström – Strukturanalys: Sigurd Lewerentz’ Uppståndelsekapellet på Skogskyrkogården: en Arkitekturteoretisk Studie, Institutionen för Arkitektur 2R, KTH, Stockholm, 1968.

317

John Ruskin – Stones of Venice (1851), available at: gutenberg.org (April 2023). George Edmund Street – Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages, John Murray, London, 1855. Nicholas Temple – ‘Baptism and Sacrifice’, in arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Volume 8, Number 1, Mar. 2004. Wilfred Wang, ed. – St. Petri Church, University of Texas at Austin, 2009. Colin St John Wilson – ‘Masters of Building: Sigurd Lewerentz’, in Architects Journal, 13 April, 1988. Colin St John Wilson – ‘Sigurd Lewerentz: the Sacred Buildings and the Sacred Sites’, in Architectural Reflections: Studies in the Philosophy and Practice of Architecture (1992), Manchester UP, 2000. Unknown, trans. Auden and Taylor – ‘Hávamál’, from ‘The Poetic Edda’ (c. AD 800), in Norse Poems, Athlone Press, 1981. VILLA BUSK ‘Villa Busk, Bamble, Norway 1987–1990’, in A+U (Architecture and Urbanism), January 1999. Johann Peter Eckermann, trans. Oxenford – Conversations of Goethe (1836), 1906, available at: hxa.name/books/ecog/Eckermann-ConversationsOfGoethe. html (Feb. 2023). Sverre Fehn, ed. Marja-Riitta Norri and Marja Kärkkäinen – Sverre Fehn: the Poetry of the Straight Line, Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, 1992. Sverre Fehn in conversation with Olaf Fjeld – ‘Has a Doll Life?’, in Perspecta 24, 1988, reprinted in Norberg-Schulz and Postiglione, 1997. Miles Henry – ‘Horizon, Artefact, Nature’, in AR (Architectural Review), August 1996. Edward S. Morse – Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings (1886), Dover Publications, New York, 1961. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, trans. Stott – Philosophy of Art (1804–05), Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1989. Christian Norberg-Schulz and Gennaro Postiglione – Sverre Fehn: Works, Projects, Writings, 1949–1996, Monacelli Press, New York, 1997. Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, trans. Bucknall – The Habitation of Man in All Ages (1876), Arno Press, New York, 1977. VILLA MAIREA Alvar Aalto – ‘The Hill Top Town’ (1924), in Schildt, 1997. Alvar Aalto – ‘From Doorstep to Living Room’ (1926), in Schildt, 1997. Sarah Menin and Flora Samuel – Nature and Space: Aalto and Le Corbusier, Routledge, London, 2003. Juhani Pallasmaa – Alvar Aalto: Villa Mairea 1938–39, Mairea Foundation and Alvar Aalto Foundation, Helsinki, 1998. Juhani Pallasmaa – ‘Villa Mairea: Fusion of Utopian and Tradition’, in Futagawa, ed. – ‘Alvar Aalto: Villa Mairea, Noormaku, Finland, 1937–39’, in GA (Global Architecture), 1985. Nicholas Ray – Alvar Aalto, Yale University Press, 2005. Göran Schildt – Alvar Aalto: the Early Years, Rizzoli, New York, 1984. Göran Schildt – Alvar Aalto Sketches, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1985. Göran Schildt – Alvar Aalto: the Decisive Years, Rizzoli, New York, 1986. Göran Schildt – Alvar Aalto in His Own Words, Rizzoli, New York, 1997. Richard Weston – Villa Mairea, Phaidon (Architecture in Detail series), London, 1992. Richard Weston – Alvar Aalto, Phaidon, London, 1995. Nobuyuki Yoshida – ‘Alvar Aalto Houses: Timeless Expressions’, A+U (Architecture and Urbanism), June 1998, Tokyo. THERMAL BATHS, VALS Peter Davey – ‘Zumthor the Shaman’, in AR (Architectural Review), October 1998, pp.68–74. Thomas Durisch, editor – Peter Zumthor, Buildings and Projects, Volume 2 1990–1997, Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich, 2014. Lars Muller, trans. Oberli-Turner, Schelbert and Johnston, photographs by Helene Binet – Peter Zumthor: Works – Building and Projects 1979–1997, Birkhäuser, Basel, 1998.

318

Raymund Ryan – ‘Primal Therapy’, in AR (Architectural Review), August 1997. Steven Spier – ‘Place, authorship and the concrete: three conversations with Peter Zumthor’, in ARQ (Architecture Research Quarterly), Vol. 5, No. 1, 2001. Nobuyuki Yoshida, ed. – ‘Peter Zumthor’, A+U (Architecture and Urbanism), Feb. 1998, Extra Edition. Peter Zumthor – Therme Vals, Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich, 2007. Peter Zumthor – Thinking Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel, 1998. Peter Zumthor – Atmospheres, Birkhäuser, Basel, 2006. RAMESH HOUSE Elizabeth Baker – The Other Side of Laurie Baker, D.C. Books, Kottayam, Kerala, 2007. Laurie Baker – Cost Reduction for Primary Schools, Costford, Thrissur, Kerala, 1997. Laurie Baker – Houses: How to Reduce Building Costs, Costford, Thrissur, Kerala, no date. Laurie Baker – Mud, Costford, Thrissur, Kerala, 1988 and 1993. Laurie Baker – Rural Community Buildings, Costford, Thrissur, Kerala, 1997. Laurie Baker – Rural Houses, Costford, Thrissur, Kerala, no date. Gautam Bhatia – Laurie Baker: Life, Works & Writings, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1991. Norberg-Schulz, Christian – Existence, Space and Architecture, Studio Vista, London, 1971. Simon Unwin – ‘Cultural Sustainability’, in Green: International Conference on Sustainable Architecture, 9–11 January 2009 (conference proceedings), Indian Institute of Architects, Trivandrum, 2009. BARDI HOUSE Gaston Bachelard, trans Maria Jolas (1964) – ‘The House. From Cellar to Garret’, in The Poetics of Space (1958), Beacon Press, Boston, 1969. Lina Bo Bardi, trans Anthony Doyle and Pamela Johnston – Stones Against Diamonds (2009), Architecture Words 12, Architectural Association, London, 2013. Zeuler R.M. de A. Lima – Lina Bo Bardi, Yale U.P., New Haven, 2013. Zeuler R.M. de A. Lima – ‘The Reverse of the Reverse: Another Modernism according to Lina Bo Bardi’, in On the Interpretation of Architecture, Volume 13, Number 1, May 2009, available at: cloud-cuckoo.net/journal1996-2013/inhalt/en/issue/ issues/108/Lima/lima.php (Feb. 2023). George MacDonald – ‘The Fantastic Imagination’ (1893), in The Complete Fairy Tales (ed. Knoepflmacher), Penguin, London, 1999. Olivia de Oliveira – Lina Bo Bardi: Obra construida/Built work, Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2010. Olivia de Oliveira – Subtle Substances: the Architecture of Lina Bo Bardi, Romano Guerra Editora, São Paulo and Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2006. Cathrine Veikos – Lina Bo Bardi: the Theory of Architectural Practice, Routledge, Abingdon, 2014. Simon Unwin – Metaphor, Routledge, Abingdon, 2019. VITRA FIRE STATION zaha–hadid.com/architecture/vitra-fire-station-2/ (Mar. 2023). Hans Binder – ‘Two New Buildings for Vitra’, in Deutsche Bauzeitung. Ausser der Reihe (Out of the Ordinary), Vol. 127, No. 12, Dec. 1993. Le Corbusier, trans. Etchells – Towards a New Architecture (1923), John Rodker, London, 1927. Marie-Jeanne Dumont – ‘Zaha Hadid, Poste de Pompiers pour Vitra’, in Architecture d’aujourd’hui, No. 288, Sept. 1993. ‘Fire Station for Vitra’, in Baumeister. Special Issue. Beton (Concrete), Vol. 90, No. 9, Sept. 1993. Walter Pater – The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873, 1893), University of California Press, 1980. Nikolaus Pevsner – An Outline of European Architecture, Penguin, London, 1945.

Luis Rojo de Castro – ‘Vitra Fire Station’, in Croquis. Special Issue. Zaha Hadid, Vol. 14, No. 3 (73(I)), 1995. Bernard Rudofsky – Architecture Without Architects, Academy Editions, London, 1964. ‘Vitra Fire Station’, in Architectural Design, Vol. 64, No. 5/6, May/ June 1994. ‘Vitra Fire Station’, in Architecture (AIA). Special Issue. European Architecture, Vol. 82, No. 9, Sept. 1993. ‘Vitra Fire Station’, GA Document, No. 37, 1993. ‘Vitra Fire Station’, in Lotus, No. 85, May 1995. John Winter – ‘Provocative Pyrotechnics’, in AR (Architectural Review), Vol. 192, No. 1156, June 1993. Lebbeus Woods – ‘Vitra Fire Station’, in A&U (Architecture and Urbanism), No. 10 (277), Oct. 1993. ‘Zaha Hadid: Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein’, in Andreas Papadakis – AD Profile 96: Free Space Architecture, Vol. 62, No. 3/4, March/April 1992. Bruno Zevi – The Modern Language of Architecture, University of Washington Press, 1978. MOHRMANN HOUSE Peter Blundell Jones – Hans Scharoun, Phaidon, London, 1995. Peter Blundell Jones – Hugo Häring, Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart, 2002. Peter Blundell Jones – ‘Scharoun Houses’, in AR (Architectural Review), Vol. 174, No. 1042, Dec. 1983. M.H. Baillie Scott – Houses and Gardens, George Newnes, London, 1906. Colin St John Wilson – The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture (1995), Black Dog Publishing, London, 2007. BIOSCLEAVE HOUSE Obituaries of Madeline Gins: nytimes.com/2014/01/13/arts/design/madeline-arakawa-gins­ visionary-architect-dies-at-72.html?_r=1 (Mar. 2023). telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10706243/Madeline-Gins­ obituary.html (Mar. 2023). A video of the interior of the Bioslceave House can be seen at: youtube.com/watch?v=VzMDcUD3eDc (Mar. 2023). Gins and Arakawa’s Reversible Destiny website is at: reversibledestiny.org (Mar. 2023). Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Architecture: Sites of Reversible Destiny (Architectural Experiments After AuschwitzHiroshima), AD Academy Editions, London, 1994. Arakawa and Madeline Gins – The Mechanism of Meaning (1979), Abbeville Press, New York, 1988 (revised edition). Arthur C. Danto – ‘Arakawa-Gins’, in The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001. Madeline Gins and Arakawa – Architectural Body, University of Alabama Press, 2002. Madeline Gins and Arakawa – Making Dying Illegal (Architecture Against Death: Original to the 21st Century), Roof Books, New York, 2006. Jondi Keane – ‘Situating Situatedness through Æffect and the Architectural Body of Arakawa and Gins’, in Janus Head, 9(2), 2007. Léopold Lambert – ‘# INTERVIEWS /// ARCHITECTURES OF JOY: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO PUZZLE CREATURES [PART A]’ (2011), in The Funambulist: Bodies, Design & Politics, available at: thefunambulist.net/2011/11/08/ interviews-architectures-of-joy-a-conversation-between-two­ puzzle-creatures-part-a/ (Mar. 2023). Léopold Lambert, editor – The Funambulist Pamphlets Volume 08: Arakawa + Madeline Gins, The Funambulist + CTM Documents Initiative, New York, 2014. Jean-Jacques Lecercle and Françoise Kral, eds. – Architecture and Philosophy: New Perspectives on the Work of Arakawa & Madeline Gins, Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, 2010.

BIBLIOGR APHIES

OTHER FEATURED BUILDINGS (AMUSE-BOUCHES) Jane Brown and Richard Bryant – A Garden and Three Houses, Garden Art Press, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1999. Salmar Samar Damluji and Viola Bertini – Hassan Fathy: Earth and Utopia, Laurence King, London, 2018. Arthur Evans – The Palace of Knossos, a Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilisation as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos, Vol. 2, 1928. Hassan Fathy – Gourna: a Tale of Two Village, Ministry of Culture, Egypt, 1989. Donald Hoffmann – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House: the illustrated story of an architectural masterpiece, Dover, New York, 1984. Donald Keene, trans. and ed. – Anthology of Japanese Literature to the Nineteenth Century (1955), Penguin, London, 1968. Sylvia Kleinert and Margo Neale – The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture, Oxford U.P., 2000. Kazuko Okakura – The Book of Tea (1906), Penguin, London, 2010. John Pardey – Houses: created by Peter Aldington, RIBA, London, 2016. Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin – The Art of Building a Home. A Collection of Lectures and Illustrations…, Longmans, Green & Co., London, New York, & Bombay, 1901. Alan Powers – Aldington, Craig & Collinge, RIBA, London, 2009. J.M. Richards, I. Seragelsin and D. Rastorfer – Hassan Fathy, Mimar/Architectural Press, London, 1985. Soshitsu Sen – Chado: the Japanese Way of Tea, Weatherhill/ Tankosha, New York, Tokyo, Kyoto, 1979. Álvaro Siza Viera in conversation with Kenneth Frampton, in Kenneth Frampton, Vincent Mentzel and Wiel Arets – A Pool by the Sea, IITAC Press, Chicago, 2018. Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen – Northern Tribes of Central Australia, MacMillan and Co., London, 1904. James Steele – An Architecture for People: the Complete Works of Hassan Fathy, Thames and Hudson, London, 1997. James Steele – Hassan Fathy (Architectural Monographs), Academy Editions/St Martin’s Press, London, 1988. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill – Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum, Princeton U.P., 1994. Frank Lloyd Wright – Drawings and Plans: the early period (1893– 1909), (Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürf, Wasmuth, Berlin, 1910), Dover, New York, 1983 (Wasmuth portfolio).

319

INDE X

√2 rectangle 26, 65, 122, 123, 124, 149, 150, 174, 219, 248, 293 √5 rectangle 26 ‘1837: Of the Refrain’ (Deleuze and Guattari) 123 Aalto, Alvar 202, 238–243

Abstract Expressionism 56

Abu Abraham House (Baker) 257 Acedo, Guadalupe 145

Acropolis, Athens 9, 171 Active Design Guidelines, New York 306

Adam, William 140

Adam and Eve 64

‘African Queen’ (Huston) 73 African village 65

Alberti, Leon Battista 65, 66, 132, 205, 276 Aldington, Peter 307 Altes Museum, Berlin (Schinkel) 38, 47, 48, 49 ambiguity 272 American settler house 124

Ames Room 304

anthropometrics 300

apodyterium 182

Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee (Pasmore) 214

Appleton, Jay 89, 115, 188, 193

Aquitania 211

Arab village 287 archaeological shelter, Chur (Zumthor) 251

archi-grammar 8, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 architectural ideas 3, 4, 6, 19, 35, 42, 64, 78, 89, 132, 158, 179,

264, 272, 284 architectural promenade 179, 264 Aristotle 155, 205

Artificial Intelligence 75 Art Nouveau 56, 57 Arts and Crafts 200, 205, 209, 213, 289, 292

Asplund, Erik Gunnar 45

asymmetry 36, 38, 45, 80, 102, 300

Asymtote Architecture 74 Augmented Reality 75 Australian aborigine place-making 189

Bachelard, Gaston 272 Bach, Johann Sebastian 309

Badovici, Jean 109, 202, 207, 213 Baillie Scott, M.H. 210–211, 289, 290

Baker, Laurie 254, 256

Balmond, Cecil 141

Bank of England (Soane) 182

Barcelona Pavilion (Mies) 33–52, 54, 93, 154, 168, 281

Bardi House (Bardi) 263–272 Bardi, Lina Bo 6, 264–272, 273, 287 Bauhaus 45, 57, 94 Baupolizei 287 Bawa, Geoffrey 182 Beaux-Arts 35, 36, 42, 43, 103, 181

Beckett, Samuel 76 Beethoven, Ludwig van 216

Bioscleave House (Gins and Arakawa) 72, 297–306 Blackwell (Baillie Scott) 210–211

Blake, William 109

‘Blood Flames’ (Kiesler) 64

Blundell Jones, Peter 287, 292 Bo, Jørgen and Wohlert, Vilhelm 156

320

Bomarzo Gardens 305

Bonham House (Moore) 197 Bonta, Juan Pablo 39, 40, 42

Borges, Jorge Luis 216

boundary 189

Box, The (Moss) 91, 133–135

Bramante, Donato 132

Brick Country House (Mies) 48

Bruder Klaus Chapel (Zumthor) 251

Bryant, Richard 15

built landscape 290, 295, 299

Bund Deutscher Architekten 84

Byzantine architecture 46

Cabanon (Le Corbusier) 7, 66, 67, 118, 143, 202 Calatrava, Santiago 284

caldarium 182

Calhoun, Will 130

Carroll, Lewis 17 Casa Batlló, Barcelona (Gaudi) 67 Casa de Chá da Boa Nova (Siza) 5, 9

Casa delle Nozze d’Argento, Pompeii 182

Casa del Ojo de Agua (Dewes and Puente) 2, 5, 11–22, 25, 30, 50,

60, 104, 154, 254, 264

Castel Beranger (Guimard) 68

Castelvecchio, Verona (Scarpa) 233

castle 138, 140

Castle Howard, Yorkshire (Vanbrugh) 136

catafalque 190

cella 190

cellar 31

ceremony 72 Cesariano 136

Chame-Chame House (Bardi) 272 chance 68, 69

changeability 252

Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp (Le Corbusier) 225

Chapel of the Resurrection (Lewerentz) 219

Charlottenhof (Schinkel) 48, 49

ChatGPT 274 Chinese architecture 46

chora (Plato) 13

choreography 54

circumcision 189

‘City in Space’ (Kiesler) 74, 75 City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia (Calatrava) 284

City of God (St Augustine) 216

clearing ground 189

cleave 298

Clegg, Nick 75 climate 207, 255, 256, 258, 262 climax 28

Colomina, Beatriz 76 Colonia Guell (Gaudi) 67 colonnade 229

colour 45

colour clock (Kiesler) 72 combined elements of architecture 99, 184

Comlongon Castle, Scotland 120

community 193

complexity 129, 130, 132, 144, 145

compluvium 182

compression and release 24

computer generated design 284 conditions 158 confusion 145 Conrads, Ulrich 44 Constant, Caroline 223 content 47, 87, 250 context 34, 35, 47, 87, 250 contradiction 129, 138, 144, 299 Cook, Peter 236, 281 Correalism 64 Costford 256 cottage 31, 85, 94, 130, 160, 165, 198, 207 couch 291 courtyard 39, 48, 307 Cranston Tea Rooms, Glasgow (Mackintosh) 57 Creed, Martin 59 crepidoma 94 Crook, John Mordaunt 146 curve 54, 57, 60, 61, 68, 69, 72, 75, 238, 284 cyberspace 76 Dali, Salvador 145 Damasio, Antonio 108 dance 30, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 231 dancing floor 62 Dante Alighieri 52, 148–156 Danteum (Terragni) 27, 147–156 datum space 52, 254, 260 Davidovici, Irina 101 deconstruction 282 Dee, John 52, 111, 132, 148 defined area of ground 27 Degas, Edgar 92 degrees of inside 195 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix 123 De Stijl 42, 252 destiny idea (Spengler) 35, 45, 50 Dewes, Ada and Puente, Sergio 12–22 disruption 305 distortion 280, 284 dolmen 74, 225 doorway 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 27, 31, 32, 40, 51, 66, 72, 90, 100,

108, 116, 152, 154, 190 Doric architecture 171 drawing 3, 4, 69, 158, 278 dreams 64, 145, 198 Dr Who 75 Duchamp, Marcel 64 Dudok, Willem 96 Dulwich Picture Gallery (Soane) 21 Dunnottar Castle, Scotland 155 Duveen Gallery, Tate Britain 59 dwelling 133 dystopia 76 Edwards, Brian 32 Egyptian architecture 46 Einstein, Albert 278 Eisenman, Peter 22, 91, 120, 130–132, 146, 181 elements doing more than one thing 7, 14, 260 Eliot, T.S. 62 Elisha 108, 109, 110 Emmett, John T. 146 emotion 16, 20, 27, 28, 45, 75, 104, 118, 140, 154, 188, 198, 206, 216, 219, 228, 231, 250 enclosure 28 Endless House (Kiesler) 63–76, 105, 276, 278

INDEX

engagement 212, 214, 219 engawa 82, 83, 235, 238 entrance 30, 31, 159, 217 environmental modification 254 Escher, M.C. 131, 255 Esherick House (Kahn) 66, 119–129 Esherick, Joseph 192, 198 eternity 219 Étoile de Mer, Cap Martin 109 Evans, Arthur 46, 226 Evans, Robin 40, 41, 115 evaporation 256 excavation 21, 246, 247 exedra 182 existential awe 72 ‘Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme’ (Kiesler) 64 Fabergé 30 Facebook 75 Fallingwater (Wright) 157–168, 170, 243 fantasy 198 Farnsworth House (Mies) 34, 42, 65, 76, 77–94, 95, 100, 103, 104, 105, 140 146, 166, 168, 186, 233, 272, 307 Fathy, Hassan 244 Fathy House, Sidi Krier (Hassan Fathy) 244 fauces 182 Faustian soul 46 Fehn, Sverre 19, 125, 228–236 Fibonacci sequence 112, 117 Fifty-by-Fifty Foot House (Mies) 292 fighter jet 279 Findlay, Kathryn 54–62, 105 fireplace 158 First 100% Cinema, The (Kiesler) 75 First World War 34, 45 Five Gables, Cambridge (Baillie Scott) 289 ‘Five Points for a New Architecture’ (Le Corbusier) 139, 180, 209 flexibility 292 flux 74 focus 8, 31, 51, 52, 78, 102, 103, 124, 160, 241 folk architecture 34, 286 formlessness 75, 76 Forster, E.M. 212 fort 195 fountain 31 framing 7, 24, 34, 60, 82, 89, 100, 185, 205, 302 Frank, Suzanne and Dick 130 Freud, Sigmund 272 Frobenius, Leo 84, 86, 90 Froebel Blocks 273 Fromonot, Françoise 185 frozen music, architecture as 229, 236 function 45, 292 funniest joke 144 Fun Palace (Price) 274 Gadanho, Pedro 76 Gale, Adrian 88 Galilee, Beatrice 104 garden 223 Garden City 200 Garden of Eden 64 Gaudi, Antonio 67 Gehry, Frank 277 genetics 117, 273, 309 geometries of being 8, 133, 205, 221 geometry of human form 136

321

geometry of making 41, 54, 56, 59, 65, 67, 69, 72, 73, 83, 85, 100, 103, 105, 121, 127, 130, 134, 138, 160, 165, 185, 190, 196, 198, 221, 230, 276, 287, 288, 292, 294 ‘Ghost’ (Whiteread) 106 Gilly, Friedrich 27 Gimson, Ernest 165 Gins, Madeline 298–306 Gladwell, Malcolm 88 Glaeser, Ludwig 39 Glasgow School of Art (Mackintosh) 57, 236 Glass House (Johnson) 94, 95, 272 Glassie, Henry H. 5 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 46, 205, 229, 236 Golden Section rectangle 26, 111, 114, 117, 122, 123, 124, 143, 144, 149, 150, 174, 219, 220, 248, 293 Gormley, Antony 86–7 Gothic architecture 205 grammar 5, 17, 104, 195 Gran Plaza de la Fuente Mágica, Barcelona 38 gravity 45, 68, 69, 73, 79, 221, 299 Gray, Eileen 109, 110, 202–213 Greek architecture 46 Greenfield, Susan 108 grid 8, 38, 131, 158, 160, 162, 165, 175, 220, 230, 241, 242, 292,

309 Griffin, Marion Mahony 168 Grima, Joseph 145 grotto 70 Guardini, Romano 93–4 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (Gehry) 284 Guimard, Hector 68 Hagia Sophia, Istanbul 171 Hagia Triada, Crete 47 Halprin, Lawrence 192, 193, 198 Hamlet, The (Baker) 256 Hani Rashid 74 Häring, Hugo 273, 287, 292, 294 harmony 101 heart 39, 40, 47, 56, 80, 196 hearth 40, 70, 78, 80, 110, 124, 158, 160, 167, 196, 199, 229, 241,

256 hedgerow 192 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 46 Heidegger, Martin 133, 311 Hepburn, Katharine 73 Herzog, Jacques and de Meuron, Pierre 94, 277 hesitation 27 Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku (Zaha Hadid) 236, 281 hidden 8, 27 Hindu temples, India 87, 100 Hippodamus 161 Hitler, Adolf 34, 45, 286 ‘Hōjōki’ (Hut Ten Feet Square) 110, 118 Holl, Stephen 252 Hollein, Hans 105 horizontality 255 House (Whiteread) 106 House VI (Peter Eisenman) 22, 91, 130–132, 146, 181 House for a Derbyshire site (Parker and Unwin) 200 House for the Berlin Building Exhibition (Mies) 43 House of Dun (William Adam) 140 House of the Silver Wedding, Pompeii 182 House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii 176 House Shaped by Use and Movement (Häring) 292 House That Jack Built 305 House with Three Courts (Mies) 87

322

Hubbe House (Mies) 82, 83 hubris 64 Hughes, Robert 89, 91 human scale 45, 66, 83, 94, 108, 111, 117, 143, 203, 269 humour 144, 145 Hussey, Christopher 168 Huston, John 73 hypostyle hall 151 ideal essence 88 identity 106, 124, 125, 195, 283 impluvium 182 in-between 8, 48, 82, 186, 196, 197, 209, 229, 235, 238, 260 Inca temple 16 ‘Indiana Jones’ (Spielberg) 155 Indian architecture 254 infinity 32, 46, 71, 87 inglenook 200, 212 inhabited wall 8, 121 Inherit the Wind (Kramer) 89 innocence 73 insula 182 integrity 242, 309 intellectual structure 283 intercolumniation 86 Internet 75 introversion 254 irregularity 67, 106, 241, 287, 300 Islamic architecture 244 isolation 24 Jacob House (Baker) 257 jali 254 James, Henry 88 Japanese architecture 9, 10, 82, 83, 85, 87, 125, 159, 166, 232, 234, 235, 243, 252, 301 Jensen, Knud 156 jeopardy 74 Johnson, Philip 45, 94, 272 joke 144 Josephsohn, Hans 98, 105 Joyce, James 17 Jung, Carl Gustav 272 Kahn, Louis 65, 66, 120–129, 129, 186, 197, 221 Kami no Chōmei 110, 118 Katsuhiro Yamaguchi 64 Kaufmann, Edgar 158 Keane, Jondi 305 Kempsey Guest Studio (Murcutt) 183–188 Kiesler, Friedrich 59, 64–76, 105, 276, 278 Kirchner Museum, Davos (Gigon/Guyer) 101 kit of parts 192, 199 Klee, Paul 57 Klein Bottle 61, 71 Knossos, Crete 39, 46, 47, 62 Kolbe, Georg 41 Koolhaas Houselife (Bêka and Lemoine) 141, 145, 146 Koolhaas, Rem 138–146, 179, 207 labyrinth 32, 34, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 54, 61, 115, 151, 217, 247, 298 La Congiunta (Märkli) 97–106 landscape 289 language 3, 5, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 95, 154, 198, 162, 262 layering 37, 239, 240

Le Corbusier 3, 7, 27, 66, 67, 68, 89, 96, 108–117, 118, 132, 136, 139, 140, 143, 144, 170–181, 182, 202, 205, 209, 212, 214, 225, 243, 264, 284 legibility 300 Leonardo da Vinci 58, 66, 111, 136 Lethaby, W.R. 6, 223 Lewerentz, Sigurd 211, 216–224, 241, 243 ‘Lietentant Kijé’ (Prokofiev) 154 light 55, 175, 182, 205, 219, 241, 247, 264, 270 light drawing (Picasso) 57 lineaments 65, 276 ‘Little Dancer Aged Fourteen’ (Degas) 92 Littlewood, Joan 274 Llanmihangel Place, Wales 210–211 locus of creation 189 loggia 28, 29, 32, 38, 229 ‘Lost Ones, The’ (Beckett) 76 Louisiana Art Museum (Bo and Wohlert) 156 low-energy ‘demonstration’ house (Baker) 257 Lyndon, Donlyn 192 MacDonald, George 4, 7, 116, 247, 272, 276, 309 Mackintosh, Charles Rennie 57, 68, 236 Maison à Bordeaux (Koolhaas) 137–146, 179, 207 make-believe 145, 197, 211 making sense 50, 52, 129, 159, 160, 171, 193, 299, 305 Malik, Nesrine 8 Mallarmé, Stéphane 223 Malta temples 75 Malton, James 207 Manhattan 161 ‘Manifeste du Corréalisme’ (Kiesler) 64 manifesto 34, 35, 39, 45, 50, 64, 73, 76, 106 Märkli, Peter 98–106 Markuskyrkan, Björkhagen (Sigurd Lewerentz) 221 Martienssen, Rex 86, 87 mask 127 mathematics 52, 108, 111 mausoleum 21, 22 Mayan temple 16, 22 maze 46 megaron 39, 40, 47, 48, 86, 90, 186, 226 memorial 125 memory 71 Meta 75 metaphor 4, 21, 27, 108, 115, 211, 212, 213, 223, 224 Metaverse 75, 274 methodology for analysis 5 Mies van der Rohe 34–52, 61, 65, 76, 78–94, 95, 96, 103, 126, 132, 140, 144, 145, 205, 220, 233, 272, 281, 292 Miletus (Hippodamus) 161 minimalism 24, 31, 45 Minoan pillar crypt 224 Minotaur 46 minstrels’ gallery 200 mise en abymes 79 Mnajdra, Malta 75 Möbius Strip 71 Modern architecture 32, 126, 179, 202, 205, 212 modifying elements of architecture 7, 99, 142, 187, 219, 249 Modulor (Le Corbusier) 66, 67, 111, 113, 114, 115–17, 136, 143–4 Moholy-Nagy, Lázló 54, 57 Mohrmann House (Scharoun) 34, 65, 285–290 Moll House (Scharoun) 291, 293 Mondrian, Piet 43, 132 Mongyo-tei (Kansetsu Hashimoto) 5, 10, 125, 167 Moore House I (Charles Moore) 198

INDEX

Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull and Whitaker (MLTW) 192 Moorish house 31, 32 morality 68 Morris, William 205 Morse, Edward S. 82, 83, 167, 235 mosque, Nazareth 238 Moss, Eric Owen 91, 120, 133–135 mother 284 Mother’s House (Venturi) 126–129 movement 45, 47, 57, 58, 60, 61, 69, 71, 231, 236 Mud House, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala 262 Mumford, Lewis 88 Murcutt, Glenn 184–188 music 24, 26, 27, 42, 60, 87, 101, 102, 105, 113, 120, 158, 160, 165, 178, 216, 228, 236, 244, 248, 295, 309 Mussolini, Benito 148 mutability 142, 188 Mutthesius, Herman 289 Narcissus 250 narrative 154, 217, 224, 228 National Library, Berlin (Scharoun) 289 National Socialists (Nazis) 34, 45, 286 Nature 16, 24, 25, 27, 64, 68, 73, 79, 82, 85, 90, 93, 94, 95, 170, 223, 295 naval 223 Necromanteion, Greece 151 neoclassical architecture 132 Neoplasticism 42, 43, 44, 45, 74, 132, 165 Neruda, Pablo 211 Neuendorf House (Pawson and Silvestrin) 23–32 Neumeyer, Fritz 84, 93 Newman, Paul 89 Nietzsche, Friedrich 46, 173, 299 Nike Apteros, Athens 171 Nile 46 noble savage 308 Norberg-Schulz, Christian 260, 311 Nordenström, Hans 219 nostalgia 197 novelty 138 Nute, Kevin 166 Odysseus 115 oecus 182 ‘One & Other’ (Gormley) 87 organic 273, 276, 293 orientation 82 original sin 68, 73 orkestra 60 Oud, J.J.P. 42 Ovid 250 Ozenfant, Amédée 211 Palace of Minos, Knossos 39, 46, 62 Palau Nacional, Barcelona 35 Palau Victoria Eugenia, Barcelona 36, 37 Palladio, Andrea 7, 81, 92, 93, 128, 129, 132, 165, 173 Pallasmaa, Juhani 72, 246 Palumbo, Peter 88–9 Pantheon, Rome 171 Paradise 132, 223 parallel walls 8, 121, 127, 129 parametrics 68, 284 ‘Paranoid Critical Method’ (Salvador Dali) 144–5 Parker, Barry and Unwin, Raymond 200, 202 Parthenon, Athens 52, 93, 171, 265, 271

323

Pasmore, Victor 214 Pater, Walter 281 pathway 21, 27, 28, 30, 46, 102, 150, 154, 229, 232 Pawson, John 24–32 perfection 83 peristyle 86 peristyle garden 182 perspective 24, 28, 29, 30, 31 Peter and the Wolf (Prokofiev) 154 Pevsner, Nikolaus 283 Phaestos, Crete 47 phenomenology 108 Philharmonie, Berlin (Scharoun) 289 philosophy 35, 72, 87, 89, 94, 129, 171 piano nobile 94, 96, 140, 173, 269 Picasso, Pablo 57 picturesque 158, 168, 278, 283, 293 pile building, Congo 84 pilgrimage 98 pillar crypt 226 piloti 127, 139, 210, 264 place-making in the home 200 place-making on the beach 190 plan 68, 69 Plas Brondanw (Williams-Ellis) 212 plastic 45 platform 18, 27, 36, 37, 38, 86 Plato 13, 88, 205 polydimensional 69 Pompeii 171, 175 Pope, Alexander 283 portico 39, 79 ‘Postino, Il’ (Michael Radford) 211 Potter, Beatrix 202, 206 Poussin, Nicolas 242 precedent 30, 31, 34, 49 Price, Cedric 274 primitive place types 7, 16, 54 privacy 18, 32, 87, 244, 256 procession 60 program music 150 project for a Brick Country House (Mies) 43 propylon 38, 39, 49 prospect and refuge 98, 115, 188 Prouvé, Jean 187 Psarra, Sophia 39, 40 psyche 71 psychology 108 Pueblo Español, Barcelona 36, 37, 41 puffeth 146 Pugin, Augustus Welby 205 puja 90 punctuation 17 pyramid 21 quality 308 Ramesh House, Kerala (R.S. Liza) 253–261 rampart 229 recognition 159 reflection 40, 81 refuge and prospect 8, 89, 90, 98, 108, 115, 192–3, 229, 262, 272 regulating lines 173, 243 Reich, Lilly 34 reinforced concrete 209 resolution 76, 126 Reversible Destiny Loft, Tokyo (Gins and Arakawa) 299

324

rhythm 24, 42, 60, 229 Rietveld, Gerrit 42, 43, 132, 165, 252 ritual 72 Robie House (Wright) 96,296 Rodell, Sam 126 Roman baths 249 romance 211 Romanesque church architecture 99, 104 Romeo and Juliet 21 Ronchamp Chapel (Le Corbusier) 225 Rose Court (Baillie Scott) 290 Rosenberg, Alfred 287 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 205, 308 Rowe, Colin 3 Royal Apartments, Knossos 46, 47 Royal Villa, Knossos 151, 224 Rudofsky, Bernard 282 Ruskin, John 93, 94, 144, 168, 205, 223, 243 sacrifice 219, 224 sacrosanctity 30, 31, 52, 93, 146 saddlebags 196 sail boat 93 Sainte Chapelle, Paris 46 S. Pietro, Tuscania 99 St Augustine 216 St Mark’s, Venice 223 SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa) 277 Sankt Petri Kyrka, Klippan (Lewerentz) 215–224, 241 Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam 48 Santa Maria Novella, Florence (Alberti) 66 Sayer, Rose 73 Scarpa, Carlo 233 Scharoun, Hans 65, 286–290, 299 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm von 229, 236 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 38, 47, 48 Schlemmer, Oskar 45, 57, 58 Schminke House (Scharoun) 295,296 Schröder House, Utrecht (Rietveld) 165, 252 Schumacher, Thomas L. 150 sculpture, architecture as 61, 71, 73, 133, 214 Sea Ranch (Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker) 191–9 seclusion 24 sensuality 246, 249 ‘served’ and ‘servant’ spaces (Louis Kahn) 121, 197, 186 shell 68, 72 ship metaphor 209, 211, 212, 213, 224 shoji screens 252 showman 284 Shrigley, David 105 shrine 115 Silvestrin, Claudio 24–32 Simmel, Georg 78 simplicity 84, 90, 110, 126, 144, 193 Sisler, Mary 64, 69, 74 Siza, Àlvaro 9, 67 Smithson, Alison 206 Soane, John 21, 182 social geometry 65, 222, 292 Sodom and Gomorrah 151 Solà Morales, Ignasi de 35, 36 Song Benedikt Chapel (Zumthor) 251 space-nuclei 71 Space Stage (Kiesler) 74 space and structure 8, 80, 140, 209, 271 spatial syntax 8 Spencer, Madison 130

Spengler, Oswald 35, 45, 46, 50, 69 squiggle 56, 69 Städtisches Museum, Mönchengladbach (Hollein) 105 Starck, Philippe 72 Stern, Robert A.M. 22 Stoneywell Cottage (Gimson) 165 Steinbeck, John 193 Stonehenge 84 Strange I’ve seen that face before (Shrigley) 105 stratification 8, 15, 21, 55, 56, 138, 172, 226, 255, 269, 272 Stravinsky, Igor 42 Street, George Edmund 223 structural geometry 84 subtraction 246 subversion 120, 138, 145, 180, 276, 295 surprise 145 Surrealism 64, 145 suspense 27, 28 symbolism 223 symmetry 43, 47, 49, 50, 69, 80, 95, 128, 205

Villa E.1027 (Gray) 109, 201–213 Villa Foscari (Palladio) 128 Villa Le Lac, Switzerland (Le Corbusier) 173, 178 Villa Mairea (Aalto) 237–243 Villa Rotonda (Palladio) 7, 81, 92, 93, 94, 134, 165, 173 Villa Savoye (Le Corbusier) 89, 169–181, 205, 264 Viollet-le-Duc 233, 234 Virtual Reality 75 Vitra Conference Centre (Tadao Ando) 277 Vitra Design Museum (Gehry) 277 Vitra Factory Hall (SANAA) 277 Vitra Fire Station (Zaha Hadid) 67, 89, 91, 275–284, 293 VitraHaus (Herzog & de Meuron) 277 vitrine 81, 92, 95 Vitruvian Man (Cesariano) 136 Vitruvian Man (Leonardo da Vinci) 57, 58, 295 Vitruvius 111, 117, 132, 136, 205, 300 Vkhutemas 94 Void Space/Hinge Space Housing (Holl) 252 Völkisch movement 287

taberna 182 tablinum 182 Tadao Ando 277 Tardis 75 tatami 66, 85, 234, 247 Tau cross 224 Telesterion, Eleusis 151 Tempe à Pailla (Gray) 213 Temple of Aphaia, Aegina 86 Temple of Poseidon, Sounion 86, 87 Temple of the Four Winds (Vanbrugh) 136 tepidarium 182 terminology 7 theme and variation 182 Thermal Baths, Vals (Zumthor) 245–251 Tiryns, Greece 39, 47 ‘Towering Inferno’ (Guillermin) 89 teepee 65, 67 temenos 39, 87 Terragni, Giuseppe 132, 148–156, 179 Theseus 217 Thoreau, Henry David 18, 90, 110, 193 traditional house, Western Ghat, India 90 transition, hierarchy, heart 8, 15, 16, 24, 49, 55, 102, 121, 140, 186, 194, 207, 241 Trenton Bath House (Kahn) 120, 122 triclinium 182 trilithon 84 troglodyte house 246 Truss Wall House (Findlay and Ushida) 53–62, 68, 71, 105 Turn End, Haddenham (Aldington) 307

wanigi cross 189 Warramunga tribe 189 ‘Wasmuth Portfolio’ (Wright) 96, 165, 168, 289 Wedgewood House (Aldington) 307 Weidhaas House (Scharoun) 290 Weimar Republic 34,49 Weissenhofsiedlung 287, 293 Welsh, John 15, 30 Welsh timber houses 199 Western architecture 46 Whiteread, Rachel 106 widi dancers 189 Williams-Ellis, Clough 212 Wilson, Colin St John 219 wind-catcher 31, 244 Wiseman, Richard 144 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 4, 17, 89 Wittkower, Rudolf 128 Wollumqua Mound 189 Woodland Crematorium, Stockholm (Lewerentz and Asplund) 219 Work No. 850 (Creed) 59 Wotton, Henry 300 Wright, Frank Lloyd 42, 46, 82, 93, 126, 144, 158–168, 170, 233, 238, 243, 271, 273, 276

Unité d’habitation, Marseille (Le Corbusier) 117 Unités de camping (Le Corbusier) 116 using things that are there 7, 35, 159, 184, 229

Yggdrasil (Ash tree of the world) 224 Zaha Hadid 67, 89, 91, 236, 276–284, 293 Zen rock garden 167 Zevi, Bruno 280–281 Zillner, Gerd 74 Zuckerberg, Mark 75 Zumthor, Peter 246–251

Vanbrugh, Sir John 136 van Doesburg, Theo 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 96, 165 van Eyck, Aldo 72 Vanna Venturi House (Venturi) 126–129 vectors of architecture 296 ventilation 188, 207, 256, 262 Venturi, Robert 7, 120, 126–129, 144, 145, 283 vernacular architecture 24, 93, 94, 259, 286, 308 Via dei Fori Imperiali, Rome 148 Villa Busk (Fehn) 125, 227–236

INDEX

325

‘But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you’re alive to see?’ Jack Kerouac – On the Road (1957), 2000.

‘Positing a designing mind behind the architectural reality lets the analyst explain architectural change. The person who will be a maker of houses travels through architectural experiences from the beginning of his life… Like the learning singer of epics or chanter of sermons, he passes through an apprenticeship of imitation. But at maturity, like the best of the epic singers, he is reliant not on one original, but on a competence constructed out of numerous originals.’ Henry H. Glassie – Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts, 1975.

‘Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells.’ William Wordsworth – The Prelude, 1805.

326