ARCH417Class09

ARCH 417Fall 15

agenda 9.23.15READ: Curtis, Chapter 7, "The Architectural System of Frank Lloyd Wright"AND two excerpts on Compass from Wright's writingsChapter 9, Cubism, de Stijl, and New Conceptions of SpaceChapter 12, Architecture and Revolution in Russia

The words. (1953)NATURE.  Why?  As in popular use this word is first among abuses to be corrected.  ORGANIC.  Ignorant use or limitation of the word organic.FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION.   Too many foolish stylistic constructions are placed upon the slogan.ROMANCE.   A universal change is taking place in the use of this word, a change to which organic architecture has itself given rise.  No longer sentimental.TRADITION.   Confusion of all eclectics, especially critics, concerning the word.

The words. (1953)ORNAMENT.   The grace or perdition of architecture; for the past 500 years “appliqué.”  SPIRIT.   Any version or subversion of the word by so-called international style or by any fashion promoted by experts.THIRD DIMENSION.   Where and why the term was original.  What it now means in architecture.SPACE.  A new element contributed by organic architecture as style.

NATURE1.   NATURE means not just the “out-of doors,” clouds, trees, storms, the terrain and animal life, but refers to their nature as to the nature of materials or the “nature” of a plan, a sentiment, or a tool.  A man or anything concerning him, from within.  Interior nature with capital N.  Inherent PRINCIPLE.

ORGANIC2.   The word ORGANIC denotes in architecture not merely what may hang in a butcher shop, get about on two feet or be cultivated in a field.  The word organic refers to entity, perhaps integral or intrinsic would therefore be a better word to use.   As originally used in architecture, organic means part-to-whole-as-whole-is-to-part.   So entity as integral is what is really meant by the word organic.   INTRINSIC.

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION3.   FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION.  This is a much abused slogan.  Naturally form does so.   But on a lower level and the term is useful only as indicating the platform upon which architectural form rests.  As the skeleton is no finality of human form any more than grammar is the “form” of poetry, just so function is to architectural form.   Rattling the bones is not architecture.   Less is only more where more is no good. Form is predicated by function but, so far as poetic imagination can go with it without destruction, transcends it.    “Form follows function” has become spiritually insignificant:  a stock phrase.  Only when we say or write “form and function are one” is the slogan significant.    It is now the password for sterility.   Internationally.

ROMANCEROMANCE, like the word BEAUTY, refers to a quality.  Reactionary use of this honorable but sentimentalized term by critics and current writers is confusing.   Organic architecture sees actuality as the intrinsic romance of human creation or sees essential romance as actual in creation.  So romance is the new reality.  Creativity divines this.  No teamwork can conceive it.  A committee can only receive it as a gift from the inspired individual.  In the realm of organic architecture human imagination must render the harsh language of structure into becoming humane expressions of form instead of devising inanimate facades or rattling the bones of construction.  Poetry of form is as necessary to great architecture as foliage is to the tree, blossoms to the plant or flesh to the body.  Because sentimentality ran away with this human need and negation is now abusing it is no good reason for taking the abuse of the thing for the thing.

ROMANCE (II)In the realm of organic architecture human imagination must render the harsh language of structure into becoming humane expressions of form instead of devising inanimate facades or rattling the bones of construction.  Poetry of form is as necessary to great architecture as foliage is to the tree, blossoms to the plant or flesh to the body.  Because sentimentality ran away with this human need and negation is now abusing it is no good reason for taking the abuse of the thing for the thing.   Until the mechanization of buildings is in the service of creative architecture and not creative architecture in the service of mechanization we will have no great architecture.

ORNAMENT6.      ORNAMENT.  Integral element of architecture, ornament is to architecture what efflorescence of a tree or plant is to its structure.  Of the thing, not on it.  Emotional in its nature, ornament is- if well conceived-not only the poetry but is the character of structure revealed and enhanced.  If not well conceived, architecture is destroyed by ornament.

Netherlandsneutral during WW Iless disrupted than other countries in Europe

De Stijl Vol. 1, no. 1 Delft, October 1917

de Stijl—philosophy Iin search of "the style": abstraction as universal languageline, plane, circle, and sphere: mean the same things in all times and all places: timeless, cultureless perfection; these geometric ideals guide our efforts (cf. Platonic forms)champions of abstraction and pure geometric form

de Stijl—philosophy IIreduction to essentials=geometric abstraction in regard to form and primary colors in regard to color (no mixtures)

de Stijl—philosophy III"The new architecture is anti-cubic; that is, it does not seek to fix the various space cells together within a closed cube, but throws the functional space cells...away from the center...towards the outside, whereby height, width, depth + time tend towards a wholly new plastic expression in open space. In this way, architecture acquires a more or less floating aspect that, as it were, works against the gravitational forces of nature."

—Theo van Doesburg, 1924

de Stijl--foundersTheo van Doesburg (painter, writer, publisher of journal)Piet Mondrian (painter)Gerrit Rietveld (architect and designer)

de Stijl--foundersTheo van Doesburg Piet MondrianGerrit Rietveld

font design

graphicdesign

Reconstruction of Dance Hall/Cinema at the Café Aubette, Strasbourgcreated with Georges Vantongerloo and Sophie Taueber-Arp

Gerrit RietveldBorn in 1888, he left school at 11 to be apprenticed to his father and enrolled at night school before working for a local goldsmith. By the time he opened his own furniture workshop in 1917, Rietveld had taught himself drawing, painting and model-making.Critically, he had made the intellectual leap from a craftsman’s emphasis on artistry to a designer’s focus on the concept behind the work. He had also developed a distinctive style of cabinet-making, which was simpler and sparser than the conventional furniture of the era, often making minimal use of materials.It culminated in a wooden armchair that he made in summer 1918 from seven rails, six posts, two struts and two boards. Rietveld described his objective as being to make a chair “without mass or volume that did not enclose space, but allowed it to continue uninterrupted.” This was revolutionary for the time, and technically so challenging that designers have striven to achieve the same aim ever since.

Gerrit RIETVELDZigZag Chair1934

Russia, prior to 1917

The Old Regime

Czar and Czarina Nicolas and Alexandra, crowned in 1896

Russian RevolutionFebruary 1917—Czar abdicates, Empire collapses, provisional government institutedOctober 1917, Bolshevik forces under Vladimir Lenin take power. Formation of Soviet government, capital moves to Moscow, Imperial family executed.

Varvara STEPANOVA and Aleksandr RODCHENKO in the 1920s

Stepanova trained as a painter and met Rodchenko in artschool. They became central figures in the Russian avant-garde in the years before the Revolution.

Varvara STEPANOVA• After the Revolution, Stepanova abandoned

painting as a bourgeois activity in favor of textile design and other useful arts.

• Stepanova wrote: : 'Composition is the contemplative approach of the artist. Technique and Industry have confronted art with the problem of construction as an active process and not reflective. The 'sanctity' of a work as a single entity is destroyed. The museum which was the treasury of art is now transformed into an archive'.• —Stepanova for the exhibtion 5x5=25, held in

Moscow in 1921

Helped found the First State Textile Factory near Moscow with her friend Liubov Popova, another former painter.

1924 became professor of textile design at Vkhutemas (Higher Technical Artistic Studios) .

She continued in graphic design for books and publications.

RodchenkoSpatial Constructionsc. 1920

Alexander Rodchenko, Suchov Transmission Tower, 1929. Gelatin silver print, 5 13/16 x 8 7/8 in.

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1998/rodchenko/texts/new_cultural.html

new Soviet institutions

design for a Worker's Club

Rodchenko designed a Workers' Club as one of the Soviet exhibits at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in the summer of 1925.

Ilya Golosov, Zuev Workers' Club, Moscow, 1926-28

Vladimir TATLINMonument to the Third International1919

Shurpin, Morning of the Motherland, 1952

Monument to StalinBudapest

Lev RUDNEVMoscow State University (MGU)1953massive classroom building withover 5,000 rooms built with gulaglabor