Blog Assignment 3: Adolf Loos

http://architect.architecture.sk/
adolf-loos-architect/
adolf-loos-architect.php

At the time of Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement in the early 20^th century, there were also many counter or parallel movements and thoughts.  One of the most pronounced and outspoken of these thinkers was the architect Adolf Loos.

Adolf Loos was born in Moravia (Czech Republic) on Dec. 10, 1870.  Now regarded as one of the pivotal architects of the early 20^th century, he was originally disregarded and considered having limited success.  He was also, and better well known for at the time, as being a rather witty and avid critique of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts Movement.  Adolf Loos displayed in his buildings and writings a desire to separate the private and the public, remove ornament from architecture and that separation of art and craftsman were permanent and should stay that way.  To go into more detail of Loos’ houses, this paper will compare and contrast with one of his contemporary’s homes, one done by Adolf Rading.

Rading House

Adolf Loos's Steiner House

Scheu House

In Alan Colquhoun’s book, Modern Architecture, he briefly contrasts English and French houses, saying the former is based on privacy and the latter on family. Loos seemed to take both of these ideas and combined them.  The exteriors of his buildings are stark.  “This is a building,” is about the only message you get from their façade.  There is nothing at all to tell you of the inhabitants or the interior. Even the back patio of the Villa Muller is starkly planed, serving as what it is, a backyard seating area.  This is in contrast to Rading’s housing (#25) which has a the back patio surrounded by a rather thick wall, which allows for a good deal of privacy here, but the patio seems more decorated in Rading’s.  Also, Rading chose to have patios facing public view, which contrasts with Loos’s idea of patios in Scheu House and slightly with those of Villa Muller.  The patio of Villa Muller is plane, and from the image, it would seem so is Rading’s, but Rading has many more windows in public view on his patios.  The Scheu House is truly bizarre with its patios.  Built like a flight of stairs, each tread and rise paring has a patio.  However, being a stair step pattern and being so high takes them out of much of the public view.  This allows for limited view from the one side that does have it.

Loos’s interiors were truly the most interesting.  This is where everything changed. While many of the rooms remained cubical, there was a vast amount of detailing that went into the interior design and décor.  Rich detailing went into the design and choice of material employed in Loos’s interiors.  Using only pure textures like marble or wood, Loos would make stark, but strangely comfortable interiors to his homes.  He would have them furnish by craftsman, not architects (why will be discussed later).  This all seems very different by today’s standards where the exterior is generally more decorated and the interior is stark dry wall with monotone paint.  What differs with Loos’s interiors to Rading’s interiors is the perception of space.  It was very common in Loos’s homes for all the rooms of the house to run together.  No real circulation, no distinguishable order at times, his homes on the inside were very open, allowing for the family feel of a French home.  While there was not much for circulation, he did dedicate a room to the staircase, celebrating the stair in it’s own way.  Like Rading’s house, which just had a staircase and halls, Loos seemed to build from a single modular unit, turning it and setting it as needed to get the desired form to his rooms.  One final note to privacy, there was a degree of it on the interior of Villa Muller, where beyond the front door was a solid wall to keep the rooms beyond unseen from the outside. 

As said above, Loos did not see any need for ornament, constantly speaking out against it and those who tried to rationalize it.  Being a Darwinist, he believed in an evolution of architecture where the eventual shedding of architectural ornament would create a new modernist style that everyone else seemed to be looking for.  He did speak out for new techniques and technologies.  Because he did so, he said that artist and the craftsman, who had grown apart over the past centuries, would and should stay apart.  An artist was meant to dream and the craftsman was meant to build (and build well).  The two becoming mixed would bring about something similar to the medieval age, where good furnishings were for the rich and the rich alone.  Through craftsman working on their work alone, they would be more able to produce work en mass and could therefore keep furniture, good furniture, affordable.  Another reason artist and craftsman could not mix was because it was a bit of a distraction.  Loos barely designed furniture.  If he had spent more time on furniture, his short list of buildings done may have been shorter. 

Adolf Loos, an architect who may have been more influential than people think, designed very original structures.  Perhaps his buildings were not completely without ornament, but without conventional ornamentation.  He despised those who believed ornament could be useful and felt for architecture to evolve, it must do away with ornament.  In his buildings he made certain to keep the private and public areas separate and just that, public or private. As a writer and an architect, Adolf Loos has made a lasting impression.

Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. New York; Oxford University Press. 2002.

http://architect.architecture.sk/adolf-loos-architect/adolf-loos-architect.php


http://ngc.dukejournals.org/content/36/3_108/39.abstract


Curtis, J.R. William. Modern Architecture Since 1900 Edition 3. New York; Phaidon Press 
Limited. 2009.


Some images from readings

Blog Assignment 2: Art Nouveau

            The era of ‘Art Nouvea’ was a period of art and architectural ideals that emerged around the turn of the 20^th century.  While it only lasted about a decade, it still has had a lasting affect on the architecture we see today.  It was a worldwide movement that encompassed arts and crafts, furniture, architecture, fashion and so much more.  Some of the people who had the greatest effects on the era and what we see today were Hector Guimard, Victor Horta, and Henry Van de Velde.

http://piclund.com/hector-guimard-paris-metro.html

            Hector Guimard, having common schooling with Victor Horta, was an architect who originally took note from Viollet-le-Duc.  He worked primarily in France, but was influenced by many movements at the time, primarily the arts and crafts movement of England.  Many of his early works had touches of Gothic in them, but without Voillet’s love of the medieval, Hector would not stay that way long.  It was later that Hector found a balance with metal and natural forms.  Many of his works are a mixture of structure taking on natural forms, such as curvilinear walls and mimicry of natural growth of a building.  Through, Guimard, we can see some of the first steps towards an architectural style of organic, amorphic thought.

http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/org
/orion/eng/hst/roma/pantheon-AN.html

            Victor Horta, a Belgian architect of spotty success, also went to the Ecole de Beaux Arts, was influenced by Viollet-le-Duc, but did not follow Viollet’s example nearly as much as Guimard did.  Like Hector, Horta, worked with metal structure and natural forms, but where Guimard seemingly combined the two into a slightly organic form, Horta was entrenched in ornament and ornamentation.  Ornament, is defined as something that is added, while ornamentation is to give something useful a more pleasing form.  There seemed to be little ornament about Horta’s work, but plenty of ornamentation.  One need only look at the Hotel Tassel in Brussels.  The elegant railings, the natural forms of the columns, the grand design of the staircases and the reflection of natural form on the walls, carpeting and tapestries all played off one another creating an inner theme of the outer world.  Bringing nature into the interior via the artificial was Horta’s main work.  Oddly enough, Horta paid much less attention to the exterior of many of his buildings, sometimes seeming an afterthought.  Through Horta, we find some of the modern era’s sculpting of metal form into natural form and not just beams and bars.

http://www.bonluxat.com/a/
Henry_van_de_Velde_Graf_
Kessler_Diplomats_Chair.html

            Henry Van de Velde, a painter in France and a furniture designer, also finds his roots in Viollet-le-Duc.  Based on the Arts and Crafts Movement of England, created his own art movement with his friend, Willy Finch.  Henry fully recognized the worth of mechanized production, but warned against the effects of fashion on art and architecture.  He said that architecture needs to be, “a tradition of the eternally new.”  It should not seek be changed or repackaged, but always work in the form that it is in. Henry also made furniture that beautified structure.  It was his belief that structure formed ornament and that ornament was the product of beautiful structure.  Ornament and structure become one, almost completely indistinguishable. 

            Alan Colquhoun describes the Art Nouveau movement as a movement of “stress on individuality and originality, being transformed into repeatable forms based on vernacular and classical models…the concept of an uncoded, dynamic and instinctual art, based on empathy with nature, for which it was possible to prescribe but not lay down any unchanging and normative rules.”[1]  It is a very reasonable description of Art Nouveau as lain out by Van de Velde, Horta and Guimard.  All three had their precedents before them, and chose to, or not to, use them to varying degrees.  They used nature as part of their inspiration, had their rules of architecture and pieces (not all) of their work can be mass-produced.  Today, a good many designers look at nature and use natural forms in various parts of their designs.  Much to Van de Velde’s delight, architecture has not succumbed to fashion, but the two do play off on another every now and again. 

Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. New York; Oxford University Press. 2002.

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[1] Colquhoun, Alan. Modern Architecture. New York; Oxford University Press. 2002 p.33

Blog Assignment 1: Semper, Viollet and Rusken

It can be said that the modern architecture of the 20^th and now 21^st centuries is a byproduct of the theories and ideas created in the 19^th centuries.  This actually makes a lot of sense, seeing as almost nothing is truly original and, thus, what came before is merely a precedent for what is and what is to come.  Living in the age that we do, we take this for granted.  We see things as they likely have been for centuries and assume that is how and why it is and never think beyond that.  Why should we?  We should, because, when we do, it comes to reason that all these things we take for granted we once an idea that have grown up into or see something we did not expect to see at all. 

Three such people, men who couldn’t just take things for granted, turned out to be some of the greatest architectural theorists in the 1800’s.  They were Gottfried Semper, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc and John Ruskin.  The three of them had varying and similar ideas on how architecture should be created, designed and preserved, as well as what qualified as architecture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Semper

Gottfried Semper, a German architect born in 1803, was a very well traveled man.  His travels took him from London to Greece and during these times he learned a lot about architecture and it’s character.  From here, he went to on create his theories of style on architecture.  Semper believed that style is a socio-political condition, seen in the earliest stages of the hut and most pronounced in the architecture of ancient Greece.  This is where Semper and le Duc have similarities, for they see architecture as a science.  Le Duc, who will be discussed later, saw architecture in a rational state.  Architecture was as it was because it needed to be so, because it grew to be so. Semper, too, saw art and architecture as a growth (Viollet didn’t see as much the art part) into its current state.  Semper shared and age with Darwin, who wrote of natural selection and survival of the fittest.  Semper shared a somewhat similar belief in the origin and development of art and architecture.  This actually brings him close to Ruskin.  However, where Viollet tried to glorify and rationalize Gothic architecture, Semper looked more toward the dwelling.  The form and intrinsic values of the home, as Semper saw it, grew from four laws of architecture, to which he wrote about.  These were:

·      The hearth:  The hearth was the main gathering place in ancient dwellings.  Meals would be cooked there.  Bodies would be warmed and social activities would take place at the hearth.  It was the focal point of the home.

·      The platform:  This would raise the hearth from the ground, away from the mud and water.  For if the hearth is wet and cold, there can be no fire.

·      The roof:  This would protect not just those in the home from the elements, but the fire too. 

·      The enclosure:  This was to protect from the wind and cold.  Unlike the average load bearing walls, these were not to be load bearing, but merely something to span between pillars.

http://www.cheaposnobs.com/2011/07/
semper-opera-house-dresden.html

Rational, scientific, organic come to mind when looking at these elements of architecture.  These elements can even be seen in today’s homes, more so in those that actually have a fireplace.  This way of thinking, while it shared mythos with Ruskin, Ruskin wasn’t nearly as scientific.  Therefore, Semper’s work often lacked the ornamentation that Ruskin loved.  It can be seen in Opera House in Dresden.  However, it is not to be said his work lacked grandeur.  For, also unlike the beliefs of Ruskin, Semper created interiors of false marble (covered, painted and polished wood) and grand halls, beautifully worked and painted.  This is in relative contrast to the beliefs of John Ruskin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:John_Ruskin_-_Portrait_-_
Project_Gutenberg_eText_17774.jpg

John Ruskin, an English artist born in 1819, was a lover of the Gothic architecture and an architectural preservationist, similar to Viollet.  Unlike, Viollet, when it came to old architectural works Ruskin believed they should be left alone, allowed to crumble and ruin.  To this writer, I must say that sounds somewhat absurd for if you were never allowed to upkeep your building it would eventually decay and you’d have to build a new one somewhere else again and again and again, but enough on that.  Ruskin believed that if a brick crumbled, let it be, it is a part of the beauty.  In short, Ruskin believed the imperfectness of architecture to make the architecture great.  The more imperfect the architecture, the better it was.  Ruskin believed that ornament made the architecture and the human presence that was in the ornament.  For example, in the time of Gothic architecture, stone masonry was used to created great cathedrals.  These stones were worked by hand and the ornamentation was likewise (much like Viollet, Ruskin did not like machinery).  Depending on the workers moods that day, or the next, you could have a number of variations of similar ornaments.  This would have been good in Ruskin’s eyes, for it should that someone actually put their will into that stone and worked it with care to the best of his abilities that day and that’s how it came out.  It makes sense, for architecture is a reflection of the time period and those that lived in it.  It showed the emotion of the time and that’s what Ruskin believed in, emotion.

He believed in them so much, he created seven laws (lamps) to explain the morals that were an integral part to making architecture.  They were:

·      Sacrifice

·      Truth

·      Power

·      Beauty

·      Life

·      Memory

·      Obedience

Because much of what Ruskin looked at, combined with his religious background, was religious, many of those “lamps” also make reference to God.  He also exalted the artist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_Palace_interior.jpg

Ruskin, unlike Semper and Viollet, wasn’t much of a doer.  His writings were his main points and he was a well known critic in his day. His deep rooted love of old buildings and materials made him especially quick to show disdain for things such as the Crystal Palace of the London World Expo (and things like it, he had a particular hate of train depots).  He loathed the use of iron and steel in architecture almost as much as he did renovating old places out of the original state.  Mostly, he felt the steel and iron would bring an end to honest craftsmen.  Instead of buildings being built by people, they’d be built by machines, an idea that he and Viollet, to a certain degree, detested.

Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, a French architect born in 1814, was also a Gothic enthusiast and a historic preservationist, so to speak.  Unlike Ruskin, Viollet was a doer.  He did multiple restorations in his lifetime, had many projects and worked to change the way many thought about architecture.  However, while Viollet was a writer like Ruskin, Viollet seemed to be split between writing and his work.

http://chateauroquetaillade.free.fr/English/
Historique%20du%20ch%E2teau%20-Anglais-.html

Viollet seemed to be two different people.  There was the writer, who pushed for more forward ideas such as the use of iron architecture, and there was the doer, the man who constantly looked to the past and didn’t really move forward.  Viollet was much like Ruskin in his love of Gothic architecture and restoration and like Semper in his belief in science.  Ruskin sought to understand architecture through feeling and emotion, Viollet looked at it from a scientific point of view.  He looked upon the ornamentation, the form and function of the whole structure and rationalized it from there.  For example, because the designer, whom Viollet saw as being the main proponent of architectural creation, wanted thin was he needed to find a better way of holding up the ceiling.  Thus, the arches that crossed at the ceiling were created to take all the buildings weight off the walls and into the foundation.  These arches needed a stabilizer at the top, so a decorative weight was place at the top so as to bring that stabilization.  Thus, you rationalize of the decoration and give it a scientific function.             

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cit%C3%A9_de_
Carcassonne,_woman_on_wall.jpg

Then there were the restoration projects that were highly criticized in his day.  Viollet did many castles and the like, but when he restored them, they were significantly different from what they had previously been.  For instance, Carcasonne, a French castle that Viollet was commissioned to restore was built originally around 100 BC, being added to again and again as time went on.  Over time it had fallen into disrepair and when Viollet was brought in to restore it he was lax on some things.  The original structure had low sloping roofs with tile, but Viollet used slate at a steep slope.  It was criticized, probably a lot from Ruskin, but over all is now considered a work of genius.  Why do the restoration differently?  Viollet believed that a work of restoration should bring the work into a form as good, if not better than the form before. 

Viollet had varying feelings on the use of steel.  At first he seemed to agree quite well with Ruskin, saying that iron and steel do not make architecture.  Eventually, that changed when he said that iron could be used as a covered from to construct buildings.  What he describes is exactly how modern sky scrapers are built.  A steel frame, quite often covered in something.

These three people have had an affect on how modern architecture works today.  Semper’s four elements can still be seen in today’s homes, but also his lack of ornamentation on the exterior and celebration of a building’s interior can also be seen in many of today’s great works.  Like Viollet, he believed the structure shouldn’t be the main sight, but should be hidden.  Viollet and Ruskin’s ideals can be seen in modern preservation and restoration.  Ruskin can be seen more in the preservation side, but also in the ideas that good people make good architecture and that can give back.  Viollet gave the ideas of using steel as structure and theories on how to make the architecture good through the structure.  These three men understood that the architecture of their time was reliant on the precedents of the past and created precedents for future generations, including us, to look at and to further understand the architecture we create.

Info gotten from course lecture and info.