Wayde
Tardif
Architecture
ou [R]volution: Architecture as Ephemera and Le Corbusier at
Weienhofsiedlung-1927
Modernity is the production of
new ways of looking before it is the production of new forms.[1]
On the hill overlooking Stuttgart, Germany in 1927, examples of
the alcazar of Modern domestic design were offered to the public by sixteen[2]
of the most noted architects of the day. It was a showcase intended to
represent the foremost ideas in residential design whose constructions were
conceived to serve as prototypical examples of Modern Movement[3]
architecture and the ideals it exemplified. It was considered an
"inspiriting representation of the modern city."[4]
The exhibition was a self-serving event, its architects worked to promote not
only the architecture but also the way of life it was to provide - emphasizing
health, well being, cleanliness and efficiency through the metaphor of the
manufacture and production of goods, including architecture.
With the following, I posit the concept of architecture as
ephemera as a polemic to the prevalently held view of architecture as
eternal and immutable in its physicality, intent and cultural role. The word
ephemera in this context should not be exclusively regarded as the evanescent,
the fleeting and transitory, rather, as media whose reflexive and dynamic task
is to inform. I hope to show that at the 1927 Weienhofsiedlung
exhibition in Stuttgart,
narrative, metaphor, image making, representation and public relations, created
a dynamic of acceptation which correspondingly thrust perceptions of a new way
of life, via the politics of style, into the minds of the public. As propaganda
for an architectural movement, the exhibition presented itself as a billboard
manifesto for not only a new architecture, but also a new way of life.
The protagonists in the project of modernity, architects and those
in pursuits not too far afield, were tasked to create a new world, however,
found it impossible to do so without destroying what came before it. The
creation of the world they were tasked to undertake at Weienhof sidestepped
the notion of dealing with existing conditions of the world altogether. The
project was predicated on creating a new vision of the world from scratch. That
is, not succumbing to creative destruction and giving the world a new face for
an old life, rather, providing a new container for a new life to inhabit. In
doing so, they created a self-referential construct, which became the
paradigmatic example of Modern Movement architecture. They too, were intent on
manufacturing the 'right state of mind' for this architecture's inception into
the lexicon of Modern life. Moreover, it was to be exercised through the
resources of the Modern apparatus of a mediated campaign. The as-advertised
objective of the exhibition was to display the ideals of mass[produced]
housing. In spite of such goals, the tectonics of many of the projects did much
to undermine this. None-the-less, the architecture did, in fact, represent such
objectives.
In one of the only contemporary sources to point out the role of
the publicity-effect of the Weienhofsiedlung, architectural historians and
theorists Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco dal Co suggest that the 1927 exhibition
was nothing more than an "ashen and glacial waxworks museum," which
at best "was effective enough as a propaganda parade for the new
architecture."[5] With the
proliferation of mass-production by industry in the1920's and the ubiquity of a
resultant standardization of goods, advertisements for products had already
begun to enter into the diction of Modern life through mediated sources and
carried with them an image of the ideal. So too would the new architecture
carry with it an image of the ideal.
The whole of the Weienhofsiedlung project represents a milestone
in architectural thinking during the Modern Movement. Le Corbusier's work at the exhibition
is particularly extraordinary in its use of itself in portraying architecture
as a new agency for expression and the house as a new instrument for living,
whose passive and static past has been abandoned for one of interaction and
expression. The exploration of ideas culminating over his young, but not
insignificant professional career to the date of this exhibition, is evident;
included are the Citrohan (not to say Citron) house and his now celebrated
"five points of architecture," (pilotis, roof garden, ribbon windows,
free facade, open plan), which made their debut here before being put to the
test more succinctly in the Villa Savoye in France.
Le Corbusier's addition to the Siedlung[6],
with his cousin, Peirre Jeanneret, was the design of two buildings, which,
along with the many other prototypes of housing displayed at the exhibition,
have come to represent a turning point in the development of Modern Movement
architecture. The metaphor of the house as a 'machine for living,' (machine
habiter), was never exemplified more greatly than at this exhibition. Its
architecture embodied a kind of machine aesthetic itself, with its crisp clean
lines and seemingly standardized kit-of-parts from which they were built - in
spite of the fact that the campaign of actually constructing such
"simplicities" was immensely difficult and costly.
Applications of 'Taylorized' mass production techniques in
industry combined with a corresponding 'Fordist' mass-consumption of goods by a
populace put into action since 1914[7]
as a way to stimulate economies, would ultimately allow for a hitherto unknown
surplus of leisure time. This is precisely what this new architecture counted
on, rather, depended on, for its success. In spite of the fact that the housing
at Weienhof was intended to be for an upper-middle-class clientele, as
so-called experimental designs in mass [produced] housing, it was supposed the
ideals presented would have ramifications in the future for lower cost models
based on their designs. The egalitarian goals of such efforts, seem, in
retrospect, a second tier objective of the exhibition next to the promotion of
its ideals. This, in spite of the vehemence of critics of Modern Movement
architecture, like architect, pedagogue and author, Peter Blake, who urges[8]
that the goals of modernism, especially in the realm of housing, were a kind of
"socialist catechism;"[9]
the architectural equivalent of a "chicken in every pot."[10]
However, not wanting to lessen the efficacy of those, who, like Peter Blake, so
firmly believe in such honorable pursuits, which may have well been the intent
of much of the efforts of Modern Movement housing, the self-serving interests
of the exhibition outline other intents. For the Weienhofsiedlung, it would be
publicit which would propel the image of the Modern box-as-architecture into
the minds of the public, where they could see and read about an architecture
whose superfluous decorations had been stripped away, revealing only whitewashed
walls, ultimately, as Le Corbusier alludes, revealing one's own self. He, as
well as others participating in the exhibition, were selling a new way of life
as much as they were a new architecture from which to live it. They were
selling the image of an ideal: A Utopia.
Architecture ou [R]volution:
Change in the air
Le Corbusier aptly titled the last chapter of his 1923 Vers une
Architecture, [Towards a New Architecture], "Architecture ou
Rvolution," where he outlined the problems of social unrest, placing
responsibility for its resolution on the question of building, providing the
requisite dwelling needs for workers, artisans and intellectuals. He advocated
the mass production techniques of the automobile assembly line, the lightweight
materials of the airplane, the spatial dynamics of the ocean-going liner, and
the regulating lines of proportion as this new architecture's basis, over any
particular stylistic concern. The implied revolution is in this new
architecture's juxtaposition with the canons of the past; its methods; its
means; its materials. Its industrially fabricated materials, glass, steel and
concrete, allow for facile manipulation and expedience in their use. Their
combination allows a formal characteristic previously unseen - flat roofs, broad
flat facades, large expanses of glass, and the expression of a dynamic other
than the architecture's construction. The techniques of construction created
through the use of the new materials have rendered the old architecture
"styles which still obsess us,"[11]
unable to keep stride with Modern ways.
The new architecture Le Corbusier endeavors to create would
provide a venue for stimulation of the mind and soul and become more than a
"machine we live in [that] is an old coach full of tuberculosis."[12]
It would become a machine for living, not just living in. The fomenters of
modernity that surround the contemporary man are at odds with the conditions in
which he lives. Le Corbusier asserts that design for domestic life has not kept
pace with that of its contemporary accoutrements, which indeed were an
influence in creating the Modern state of mind.
The institution of the eight-hour workday, brought about through
the efforts of the Taylorized apparatus of Modern production provides for a
formerly unheard of quantity of leisure time. With leisure time available and
man's consciousness of the evolving world around him, the conditions he feels
are inadequate undoubtedly become foremost in his mind, prompting him to
resolve to do something about it. Le Corbusier suggests this time needs to be
accounted for in order to keep man from becoming restless. His avocations need
to be as productive as his vocation, however, in the realm of family, community
and daily life. Le Corbusier queries, "Architecture or Revolution?"
He answers the question himself, stating that "Revolution can be
avoided,"[13] alluding
architecture's perceived prowess at undermining social ills and providing for
the welfare of its inhabitants. Such was the optimism that fueled the
development of Modern Movement housing at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Weienhofsiedlung Exhibition - 1927
Publicit - Propaganda for a New Architecture
The so-called International Style "called up
the possibilities of a contemporary world a world freed from limitations of the
past."[14] Peter Blake
asserts that the concept of 'housing' probably didn't even exist before the
appearance of the Modern Movement, aside from the development of company towns,
army posts or concentration camps and then, not until the efforts of the Weimar
Republic, which began to advocate and construct Siedlungen.[15]
The housing issue in Germany after World War I became a paramount
responsibility of the state. Shortages brought about by the war, economy and
the collapse of private industry, especially construction, needed to be
rectified by a program of new development.[16]
The city of Stuttgart took it upon itself to incorporate the "architecture
of housing"[17] into the
broader policies of cultural expansion, to compete with other cities and regions
for prestige and influence, as well as the chance to establish Stuttgart as the
cultural center of the region[18]
The efforts by the state would prove effective in the erection of thousands of
units of housing during the 1920's, with thousands more developed by
cooperative coalitions. With the state sponsored projects, it was imperative to
keep costs down, however, mechanized (Taylorized), methods of construction were
frowned upon, as it was perceived that the results would be of poor quality and
would take away economic opportunities from local craftsmen. It was argued too,
that the poor quality of mechanized construction would be a factor in
demoralizing the housing's inhabitants by lowering their self-esteem.[19]
Germany's economic situation allowed the development of much the
needed housing and prompted a wide series of Siedlungen to be undertaken. The
Weienhofsiedlung was just one of many, but few received as much publicity and
notoriety. The goal of these colonies was the egalitarian provision of a standard
of living that many could not meet on their own. Similar situations across
Europe mirrored the efforts of Germany after the war, and projects like Le
Corbusier's efforts at designing housing at Pessac in France, completed the
year before the Weienhofsiedlung, is an example of such an endeavor.
Representation, publicit,[20]
narrative and imagery played a significant role at the Weienhofsiedlung in the
summer of 1927, as it did in a number of diverse venues. The practice of public
relations in Germany was beginning to be understood as a powerful tool - as
would become evident sometime later with the propaganda arts being exercised to
their fullest potential under Hitler's rule. The Weienhofsiedlung was more
than a demonstration of the abilities of the Neues Bauen (new
building), of Modern Movement architecture. As an exhibition, Weienhofsiedlung
proved almost too well the famous axiom - "a picture is worth a thousand
words." Its advertising and promotions portraying exhibition imagery,
imprinted on posters, postcards, magazines and in newspapers across Europe,
promoted the exhibition and drew some 50,000 attendees during its duration,
proclaiming the existence of a new spirit, a new way of life and the new
architecture in which to lived it! For such an important event as the Weienhof
exhibition in Modern Movement history, documentation of its existence is slight
in comparison to other architectural events, even those dating before 1927; [21]
perhaps due to the nature of the project (speculative Modern housing), or its
seeming lack of importance at the time. So notable, however, were the formal
characteristics of the housing at the exhibition, that in early 1930, Alfred H.
Barr, the founding Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, coined the
now ubiquitous term 'International Style' as the description for the genre of
architecture proposed there, despite the fact that Walter Gropius had announced
the inception of an 'International Architektur' in 1925 with the design of the
new Bauhaus buildings in Dessau.
Gropius's announcement notwithstanding, the moment Alfred H. Barr
labeled the Weienhof exhibition in such a way, he consequently acknowledged
the work as the paradigmatic example of Modern Movement architecture, yet for
many, pinning whatever important work was accomplished there to stylistic
kitsch! The synthesis of common intentions, united language of form and
cultural diversity (though design participation was limited to European
architects), no doubt drove such a description. However, this synthesis of
intentions and language of form opposed the incongruous nature of 19th
century's "unconscious and halting architectural developments."[22]
It was, instead, a "single body of discipline, fixed enough to integrate
contemporary style as a reality."[23]
The expressed intention of the exhibition was not the definition
of an International Style, per se, rather, an exercise in what Mies van der
Rohe, master planner and organizer of the exhibition, announced would be an
architecture of the pure reflection of its structure, materials and means of
production - no notions of style or aesthetic rhetoric were to be imposed upon
the design participants. In fact, as Mies van der Rohe wrote, the goal of the
Weienhof exhibition was to "find suitable use of new materials and
construction, not for the sake of new forms."[24][25]
Further, he places architects in the guise of educators, stating that
"architects have the role of showing the possibilities of the new
architecture," alluding that people didn't know what they were looking for
and required the genius of design to enlighten them about the lifestyle changes
the new architecture could bring about.[26]
Philip Johnson, in a new foreword to the 1995 edition of The International
Style, the book he co-wrote with Henry-Russell Hitchock, nonetheless
contends that Mies van der Rohe indeed imposed stylistic constraints on the
designers with the requirement of stucco finishes, flat roofs, and the
application of large, expanses of glass, which indeed suggests a stylistic
leaning.[27]
As paradigmatic examples of Modern Movement architecture, the
Weienhofsiedlung housing was not intended to be viewed as specific, de-facto
examples, rather, as the culmination of a set of ideas from which new
architectures could be defined. The units were intended to be conceived as
house-types rather than specific paradigms of Modern Movement housing. Still,
many attending the exhibition viewed the exhibition models as a set of
circumscribed ideas in housing; as the epitome of thought in domestic design. It
was precisely this that drew the project's harshest criticisms. Le Corbusier
lamented the misunderstandings, stating that "Stuttgart was not a realm of
finite solutions, rather, typical elemental solutions where one has to state
their program."[28]
Moreover, claiming that the "architects [of the exhibition] did not try to
make miracles for the masses, rather, they attempted to construct for a
specific group and have their effects spread, rather than attempt to change the
social character of everyone."[29]
No other exhibition to date had reflected such a materialization
of the zeitgeist of Modern Movement design ideologies and their transformations
than the Weienhofsiedlung Exhibition. Not only was housing shown that summer
in 1927, but also, furnishings, fabrics, appliances and equipment. The
exhibition was organized in a tripartite arrangement, with: (1) The houses of
the Siedlung and on an adjacent site, construction demonstrations of Modern
building products; (2) The Interior Design of the house; and (3) an International
Planning and Model Exhibition: New Architecture.
The exhibition was the progeny of the Deutscher Werkbund in
Berlin; an association founded in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius, et al, as a
coalition union for German artists, architects, industrialists and businessmen.
The Werkbund was instituted as a remonstrative enterprise, concerning itself
with the problems of the inferior design and manufacture of consumer products
and the commercialization of the arts - empathetic sentiments to the ideals of Morris
and the Arts and Crafts Movement, however, with different ends.[30]
It was recognized that for reforms to occur they would require the efforts of
industry combined with the genius of artists and architects. These ideals
became the mandate for the organization - that there would "be an
enrichment of commercial work through a collaboration between the arts,
industry and craft."[31]
The Werkbund exhibitions, of which Weienhofsiedlung was a part,
became a considerable force in promoting the objectives of the group. Their
exhibition of products and projects were predicated on two primary notions:
1) The cultivated industrial elite
would be willing and enthusiastic enough to accept the requisite criticism and
corresponding education for the task at hand.
2) The impact of well-designed goods would raise the moral tenor of life.
At the Weienhof exhibition there were indeed collaborations
between artists and industry, as witnessed by the marketing campaigns of the
associated trades, construction industries and manufacturers of building goods,
in the brochures and pamphlets which documented the Weienhof exhibition and as
indicated by manufacturers using the names of designers as a way to promote
sales of their products. Similarly, architect's used the names of manufacturers
and their products to help legitimize and sell their designs as well. I use the
word "legitimize," because the design of the unfamiliar, rectilinear
forms of the housing, attributable to architects designing via requisite
construction needs and not a set of a priori rules, necessitated a familiarity
with its goods, equipment and construction materials, which were also on
display.
Weienhofsiedlung was considered a showcase event, intended to
capture the public's attention with a new and exciting application of
architectonics, as evident by the architects who were invited to participate.
The use of these architects, considered to be from the Left, according to Mies
van der Rohe, was thought to be an unheard-of exhibition tactic, guaranteed to
prompt noteworthy attention.[32]
The design and construction of the 60 units of housing was conceived as
city-sponsored benefaction for an upper-middle-class clientele, requiring this
new architecture to not only excel as a temporary installation of extraordinary
design, but indeed, to be occupied after the exhibition! A fear of the so
called "Left" and the potential for the manifestation of radical new
forms being exhibited prompted the project committee to rename the housing
exhibition, from a phrase undoubtedly preferred by the Werkbund community -
"The Modern Dwelling," to simply "The Dwelling," (Die
Wohnung); assumably, as Pommer and Otto note, to 'satiate the more conservative
designers and politicians, who might be put off otherwise.'[33]
Architecture as Mass Media:
Narrative and Architecture as Ephemera
"The theory of metaphor offers us the occasion to shift the problem of the
image from the sphere of perception to that of language."[34]
Gottfried Semper took the idea of architecture to its origin, to the idea of building,
to the nomadic tent, which could adhere to a limited palate of primary
architectonic elements - hearth, roof, enclosure, platform/mound. The tent, as
paradigmatic example of a physically ephemeral architecture, functions nearly
as well as a fixed and permanent (?) structure, but offered the possibilities
of pulling up its stakes and moving at a moment's notice. This, for nomadic
culture, not only had value but too, was essential. The ephemerality in
architecture suggested here is an ideologic ephemerality, referring to the
notion of change as a constant factor, to a reflexive and dynamic indeterminacy
and the dispatching of the eternal and immutable in what architecture has
historically been defined as. It refers not to myth itself, rather, to the idea
of myth, to the utility of myth, to the apparatus of myth for disclosing
narrative - media.
The Geographer, David Harvey, asserts that "in the absence of
Enlightenment certitudes about the perfectibility of man, the search for an
appropriate myth for modernity became paramount."[35]
He suggests that architects, artists and writers became obsessed with language
as a way of communicating the ideas and ideals of modernism; that language and
its precise use could be the appropriate medium by which one might reflect the
contemporary condition of the world. However, at the beginning of the 20th
century what the appropriate myth might be was still at issue. It needed to
"redeem us from the formless universe of contingency, or . . . provide the
impetus for a new project for human endeavor."[36]
Weienhofsiedlung followed the ideals of the latter, with intentions to indeed
develop 'a new project for human endeavor;' one of experience.
"The eternal and immutable could no longer be automatically
pre-supposed in the project of modernity . . . it was a celebration of a
technological age and a condemnation of it; an excited acceptance of the belief
that the old regimes were over and a deep despairing of that fear; a mixture of
convictions that the new forms were escapes from historicism and the pressures
of the time with convictions that they were precisely the living expressions of
these things."[37]
18th century architect, Etienne-Louis Boule notes "the production of
the mind is what constitutes architecture."[38]
Le Corbusier makes a similar declaration, stating that what is art in
architecture is a pure creation of the mind,[39]
too, alluding to the fictive account of abstraction and synthesis in design. Le
Corbusier was indeed familiar with the role of the fictive in mass media for
selling ideas.[40] It has been
noted, however, that significantly less attention has been paid to his
architecture and its relationship to the "new means of communication,"[41]
the mass media and of course, the then newly developing 'culture of
consumerism,' than his architecture in relation to the culture of the machine
age.[42]
As proselytizer and publicist, Le Corbusier sought out manufacturers of
industrial as well as consumer products to help underwrite the costs of
production of the publication L'Esprit Nouveau (1920-1925)
and exhibition efforts like the Plan Voisin and the L'Esprit
Nouveau Pavilion at the Decorative Arts Exposition of 1925. With the Plan
Voisin project, two companies, Voisin, an automobile manufacturer and
Michelin, a tire manufacturer, were approached about underwriting the costs for
a redesign of Paris, in exchange for naming the exhibited plan after the
companies - linking the proposal with the companies and providing potentially
valuable media exposure. Voisin agreed, but Michelin did not. Le Corbusier had
used the automobile manufacturer, Voisin, before to illustrate a text[43]
that advocated plans for a mobile architecture named for the automotive company
who made it - "Les Maison Voisin."
In opposition to Walter
Benjamin's assertion that the 'aura of a work of art, its authenticity, its
testimony to the history which it has experienced, its presence in time and space,
is what is lost in its reproduction,'[44]
it was in fact, publicit - the very act of its commodious reproduction, which made the
Weienhofsiedlung even more real than the exhibition itself. "Something
exists," Le Corbusier's asserts "only on the condition that it can be
read, can be analyzed, can be understood,"[45]
alluding that image is an approbatory substitution which can exist on its own,
in absentia of the real thing. Such is the goal of advertising. Such was the
goal of the new architecture, as reflected in the photography of the
exhibition, mediating the ideals of the architecture's design in the broad flat
facades, unencumbered lines, sheets of expansive glass and open plans.
Advertising, like Modern Movement architecture, as a medium for communication,
can be described as a chimerical narrative; the divulging of a subject's
essence, through which, one can be persuaded that conditions are (or are not),
as they seem. The narrative which develops as the result of the use of
metaphor, (in the case of the Weienhofsiedlung, the metaphor of the production
and manufacture of goods), "has the ability to tie and untie the world . .
. creating a new compatibility, seen through an incompatibility."[46]
The concept of permanence, versus one of architecture as ephemera,
is such an incompatibility and can be regarded as a reference point with Le
Corbusier in the creation of an appropriate myth for modernism. Prefacing his
"five points of architecture," Le Corbusier proposed that the
"house would no longer be this solidly-built thing which sets out to defy
time and decay . . . which is an expensive luxury by which wealth can be shown;
it will be a tool as the motor-car is becoming a tool."[47]
He continues, "it will no longer be an archaic entity, heavily rooted in
the soil by deep foundations, built firm and strong."[48]
Industrial capacities for mass production would be called on for the
development of this newly envisioned domestic architecture as 'house-tool,' and
mass-media would be called on to introduce it to the public, whenever the right
state of mind existed for its inception. The right state of mind indeed existed
for an architecture as 'house-tool,' however, from a designer's point of view.
The same year as the Weienhofsiedlung, Buckminster Fuller proposed his Dymaxion
house, an exploration in prefabrication and technological prowess of industrial
capacities for manufacturing unit housing efficiently and cheaply. Le
Corbusier's project for metal maisons rurales,
simultaneously explored the notion of a prefabricated architecture constructed
like that of an automobile, train or airplane, with a metal skin and modular
equipment.
In the article entitled "Les Voisin Maison," in L'Esprit
Nouveau 2 (1920), Le Corbusier and Saugnier (a pseudonym for the Purist
painter Amde Ozenfant), wrote about Voisin's construction of a mobile-type
house in their airplane factory, describing not only the method of manufacture
("assembled like Ford automobiles"), but the ordering process, the
time frame in which to build it ("You will be delivered a house in three
days!"), as well as the method of delivery ("transported on the major
roadways of France") and ("Three hours later you can move in!").
Noting further that a "generation is emerging that will know how to
inhabit the Voisin houses,"[49]
alluding the time was coming for the right state of mind for the use of such
means for housing.
All architecture has, of course, the capacity to communicate
influence in its representation, configuration, construction and materiality.
It is the sphere of narrative development that provides the ether through which
we live our lives. In its reflexive and dynamic capacity as media, however,
architecture principally has the ability to inform, to shepherd its audience in
such a way as to allow for events to occur and/or emotions to be expressed or
conveyed. Architecture as media informs its audience not only through direct
use, but also by way of its image. The controlled environment of media
production is an exclusionary device, allowing the audience to experience only
that which the producer wants them to. It is an effective tool and one which
the Weienhofsiedlung promotion campaigns used to convey that a new world
existed in the periphery of one's own, imparting that the possibilities of
orphic virtues and ways of living could be experienced in the new architecture.
The architects of the Weienhofsiedlung understood that "Modern [Movement]
architecture did not simply address or exploit mass culture. It is itself, from
the beginning, a commodity."[50]
Beatriz Colomina defines architecture as media in describing Le Corbusier's
vision of the house:
Seeing, for Le Corbusier, is the primordial activity of the house.
The house is a device to see the world, a mechanism of viewing . . . This is
the space of the media, of publicity. To be inside this space is only to see,
to be outside is to be in the image, [is] to be seen . . . [51]
Colomina's description doesn't fit neatly with Le Corbusier's
houses at Weienhof, as it might have with his Villa la Roche, or Villa Savoye,
where the promenade architecturale is the prevalent device as its form of media
- transposition/moving images/cinematic representation. Weienhofsiedlung,
however, was indeed a phenomenon exploited for its media appeal - the very
nature of an exhibition is a form of media in itself - the act of display,
performance, exposure and divulgement. At Weienhof, the difference from that
of la Roche, or illustrated later at Savoye, was that the character to be seen
in the image was the architecture itself, not necessarily its occupants, or the
view outside its windows.
Of Le Corbusier and Jeanneret's two houses at Weienhof, the Double
House is of particular interest. Unlike the Citrohan-type, Single
House, whose merits had been proven and exhibited en-mass the year earlier
at Pessac, in France, the Double House was convertible in nature.
Like Semper's tent, it had an indeterminacy of function - its living room, a
space much larger than the other areas of the house, with movable partitions
had the capacity to double as the bedroom with its fold-out beds from built-in
cabinetry. It became, in essence, a sleeping car, as one might find on a train.[52]
This feature allowed the space to have the flexibility of either daytime or night time
use, and adhered to the ideals Le Corbusier set forth for the new architecture:
the house is a dynamic entity capable of functioning as an instrument, rather
than a static element. As well, the "five points of architecture," Le
Corbusier introduced here alluded a further dynamism.
The pilotis, in lifting the house up into the air, an act formerly
"occurring only in fairytales,"[53]
notes Adolf Vogt, commenting on the fantastic imagery of the seemingly great
mass of the upper portion of the structure, which precariously seemed suspended
above the ground. Combined with the roof garden, (les toits-jardin), which
allowed free access to what had formerly been unused and unusable space but now
could be considered another whole room in the out-of-doors, makes for a
"double gain of ground."[54]
That is, in freeing the space under the structure and opening access at the
roof, twice as much gross area is achieved and twice as much activity can
occur. With Le Corbusier's Weienhof houses, the sloping hillside prohibited
the in-the-round exposure of the ground plane, so both the Single House and the Double
House express their pilotis as a permeable screen, behind which, darkly
painted walls recede into the hillside. The long windows (la fentre en
longueur) punctuate the smooth, crisp, faade that floats in front of a
line of structure liberated from the task of supporting anything but the floors
and roof, allowing the faade to be freely expressive (la faade libre). The
layout of the plan is open (le plan libre), allows an incredible
flexibility of use. This system of fenestration and plan organization provides
the apparatus with which this new architecture defines itself - not as an end
in itself, rather, as an effectual medium, expressive of an age of dynamic
change and infinite possibility.
Surface:
The Law of Ripolin and the Narrative Role of the Wall
"The whitewashed wall is a signifier of a people who have
preserved intact the balanced structure of a harmonious culture."[55]In
Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier's Second Reminder to
Architects regards Surface, where he advocates the achievement
of simple forms through the clear articulation of the surface of architectural
structures. He advocates their use toward achieving the sublime, not by
following, rather, furthering the example of the engineer whose designs tend
not toward architectural needs, but fulfill requisite structural and material
needs and little more. The job of the architect is to understand these
requirements and proceed toward the goal, utilizing geometry, generating lines
and proportionality as its determinants.
The image of Weienhofsiedlung residing on the hill overlooking
the city of Stuttgart, provided the publicit efforts of the exhibition with
much virility in its crisp forms and profusion of white walls - though not all
white. It was a striking representation of modernity against a backdrop of
dependence on convention. This juxtaposition of convention versus contrariety
gave rise to the excitement over the siedlung in 1927, as it does to this day.
The epidermic quality of the wall treatment that made the housing at
Weienhofsiedlung distinct, with its monochromic skim of plaster and paint,
absorbing all trace of the wall's authentic construction, functioned more than
to obscure techniques of assembly. There would be a virtuous quality, which it
would to be held to as well. The treatment of the wall as monolithic
(mechanized) mass, conceptually constructs a new kind of space; one which was
very different than before; one of appearance which belies content, and
construct; one which Wigley contends exists as a transparent medium, overlooked
by critics as being so fundamental as to be self evident.[56]
It is not, however, 'self evident'. The space of appearance carries with it a
narrative role as well. One that is neither simply structural nor simply
aesthetic. Its narrative role is immersed in the metaphor of production and
manufacture. The wall is not just the product of a mechanized process, but
representative of a mechanized process as well.
The narrative role of the wall in Le Corbusier's architecture,
specifically during the 1920's, can be described as a "symbolic
system,"[57] upon which
images are cast, narrating the life-scene. It is a screen upon which one
ultimately casts one's own image and as "a recording device on which other
textualities are registered and with which they are accommodated."[58]
Its surface is like that of a tight skin stretched over a frame - sheer, crisp,
clean and carefully composed, defining where we are to gaze into, out of, or
upon. Indeed, it presents itself as a cinematic screen, upon and along which we
are able to witness a profusion of changing events. This 'symbolic system makes
and remakes the world, conspiring with our aesthetic understanding which
reorganizes the world in terms of works and works in terms of the world.'[59]
This fiction, if you will, is not one which is perceived in a one to one
relationship with that which it is expressed here, but exists nonetheless as a
phenomenon accommodated and made possible by the means of modernity. It
"proceeds," as Ricoeur maintains, "from reverberations, not from
things seen but from things said."[60]
That is, in the use of the theory of metaphor, "there is the opportunity
to shift the problem of the image from the sphere of perception to one of
language."[61]
The Law of Ripolin is the whitewashing away of the
extraneous and unclean. This epidermic tegument is to be Weienhofsiedlung's
virtuous component. "The whitewash does not bracket materiality in order
to simply construct a space of pure rationalization. It screens off the object
in order to make a space for art . . . it literally frees an eye for art."[62]
Not just a surface treatment, nor its use upon the wall "simply
[considered] what is left behind after the removal of decoration . . . rather,
. . . it is a cleaning agent. Cleaning the image of the body in order to
liberate the eye"[63]
Decoration is not removed for the sake of the decoration, rather it is removed
for the sake of the eye. It is removed to allow for the eye to see the true
nature of the wall, to see what the wall has been reincarnated as. It no longer
holds a part of the roof and the floors above, but itself. The Law of
Ripolin provides the way to express the nature of the wall in its
new role.
Whitewashing however, is not strictly modern, as Le Corbusier
reminds us. It is an ancient act and a useful one, indicative of a culture of
civility, harmony and balance and a return to the sublime. Le Corbusier notes
that through his travels he "found whitewash wherever the twentieth
century had not yet arrived."[64]
The irony of its use in Modern Movement architecture, however, is that the
twentieth century and its Taylorized ways allow the facile accumulation of its
mass produced goods, again making our homes into 'temples and museums.'[65]
Precisely that which the Law of Ripolin was to relieve us of.
That Le Corbusier should advocate stripping away wallpapers, dirt, grime and
stencil work for a fresh coat of whitewashing, is to advocate action in one's
life; to become alive; to relieve one's self from the dependence of custom and
old things; to reveal an "inner cleanliness"[66]
of one's soul.
Conclusion:
In an attempt to understand and know our world, Modern Movement
architecture, as ephemera, as media and transgressor, appropriately undermined those
things perceived as fixed and permanent. It did so through the juxtaposition
and resultant implication of its materiality and image in the context of the
world which we purported to know. It asserted the capacity to keep at bay the
duplicity and arbitrary reliance on convention, it indeed defined the burden of
modernity to reflect the nature of world.
If modernity was indeed the production of new ways of looking
before it was the production of new forms,'[67]
then the Weienhofsiedlung, with its image provided by analogous materials,
colors, and architectonic applications, was indeed the paradigmatic example of
Modern Movement architecture. It provided not only the apparatus through which
one could look to the heart of an epoch, but too, the eyes with which to see
it. As a mediated expression of its age, the exhibition represented an
egalitarian venue for social integration and reflected the dynamic and
reflexive essence of Modern ideals - information, production, and a secularized
imprint of the sacred through its commodious reproduction. Through such
transliterations and the resultant impressions acquired from the eclectic
terrain over which it was exposed, the underlying ideals by which historic
standards were formerly established had been obliterated, subverting stability
and knowledge about the world. Critics of modernity assert that this
instability of means, by which we are able to understand the world in which we
live, is indeed a "crisis of modernity: a lack of mind, a lack of guiding
ideas, the end of style."[68]
It is not, however, the end of style, if one looks to Le Corbusier's own
definition of what "style" is. "Style," he states, "is
a unity of principle animating all the work of an epoch, the result of a state
of mind which has its own special character."[69]
The unity of principle exhibited at the Weienhofsiedlung helped define more
than just the epoch in which it was built; it also helped define the
characteristics by which modern architecture has been defined for generations.
[1] Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer
Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995) p.
31.
[2] The Architects of the Weienhofsiedlung,
1927: Mies van der Rohe (Master planner and Coordinator), Le Corbusier, Walter
Gropius, J.J.P. Oud, Bruno Taut, Peter Behrens, Hans Poelzig, Richard Dcker,
Adolf Schneck, Mart Stam, Adolph Rading, Hans Scharoun, Max Taut, Ludwig
Hilberseimer, Josef Frank and Victor Bourgeois.
[3] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto,
Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago 1991) Pommer and Otto use the term Modern Movement as a way of
distinguishing the architectural provocateurs who were involved in the
Weissenhof exhibition and later in CIAM, from those involved in other segments
of the profession. In doing so, they acknowledged the fact that the
"Modern" developments indeed comprised of innumerable contributions
from both individuals and groups. This sentiment was solidified later when
Philip Johnson noted in his 1947 text, The Weissenhofsiedlung, that the
exhibition 'represented a culmination of the various architectural elements
merged into a single stream.'
[4] Leonardo Benevolo, History of Modern Architecture vol. 2 (MIT Press, Cambridge 1984) p.486.
[5] Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco dal Co,
Modern Architecture (Abrams, New York 1979) p. 189.
[6] Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, in their celebrated book The International Style, states "the German word, Siedlung, serves more conveniently to denominate modern community housing projects than the "garden suburb" or "residential subdivision." As well, they note that siedlung were not developed for a specific family, rather, a typical family.Though as I will later show, Le Corbusier himself referred it to as a "Cit-Jardin."
[7] David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; an Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. (Cambridge, Blackwell, 1989). pp. 124-140.Harvey notes this date as the period in which Henry Ford instituted the five dollar/eight hour day, thus beginning a standard of production/consumption formerly unheard of. Ford's rational was to allow his workers the luxury to afford his automobiles and the leisure time for such consumption, thus stimulating the economy for everyone's benefit.
[8] Peter Blake, No Where Like Utopia (Knopf, New York 1993).
[9] Peter Blake, No Where Like Utopia, p17.
[10] While on the campaign trail for President of the United States in 1928, candidate, Herbert Hoover, promises every American an equal opportunity to have wealth, success and happiness, or at the very least: "a chicken in every pot."
[11] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture
(Dover, New York 1986) p. 289.
[12] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,
p. 277.
[13] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 289.
[14] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto,
Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture, p. 165.
[15] Peter Blake, Form Follows Fiasco (Atlantic/Little Brown, Boston 1977) p.123.
[16] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto,
Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture, p. 16.
[17] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto,
Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture, p. 16.
[18] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto, Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture, p. 16.
[19] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto,
Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture, p. 16.
[20] Beatriz Colomina, "L'Esprit Nouveau:
Architecture and Publicit" in Architecture Production (ed. Beatriz
Colomina, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 1988) p. 57.Like Colomina, I
too have used the French here, to help insure that meaning is not lost in the
translation. As Colomina points out, publicit connotes advertising (methods
and techniques) advertisement and publicity.
[21] Pommer and Otto note its exclusion in recent architectural history texts - citing Spiro Kostof''s A History of Architecture, in particular - a text quite popular with undergraduate architectural history curricula in schools across North America.
[22] Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell
Hitchcock, The International Style (Norton, New York 1995) p. 36.
[23] Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell
Hitchcock, The International Style (Norton, New York 1995) p. 36.
[24] Mies van der Rohe, in foreword to Bau und
Whonung: Herausgegeben vom Deutscher Werkbund (Akad Verlag Dr. Fr. Wedekind
& Co., Stuttgart 1927) p7. [Trans. by Ingo Messier and Wayde Tardif, 1999].
[25] Pommer and Otto note that Mies was
frustrated by the strictly formal gestures of the designs at the 1923 Bauhaus
exhibition and was not interested in pursuing that venue at the
Weienhofsiedlung.
[26] Mies van der Rohe, p7.
[27] Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock, The International Style, p. 16.
[28] Le Corbusier, "Significance of
Garden City in Weienhof," in Spring/Summer edition of L'ARCHITECTURE
VIVANTE, 1928 [Trans. by Thierry Robot and Wayde Tardif, 1999]
[29] Le Corbusier, "Significance of
Garden City in Weienhof"
[30] Jrgen Joedicke, Weienhofsiedlung
Stuttgart (Karl Kramer Verlag, Stuttgart 1989) p. 9.
[31] Jrgen Joedicke, Weienhofsiedlung, p. 9.
[32] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto,
Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture, p. 25.
[33] Richard Pommer and Christian Otto,
Weissenhof 1927 and the Modern Movement in Architecture, p 24.
[34] Paul Ricoeur, "The function of
fiction in the shaping of reality" in Man and World: An International
Philosophical Review (Vol. 12 No 2 19??) p.123-141.
[35] David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 30.
[36] David Harvey, The Condition of
Postmodernity. p. 31.
[37] Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane,
Modernism: A guide to European Literature 1890-1930. (Penguin, New York 1991)
p. 46.
[38] Qtd. in Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and
Disjunction (MIT Press, Cambridge 1987). P 67.
[39] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,
pp. 203-223.
[40] Colomina notes Le Corbusier's
"intuitive" capacities in the understanding of media and publicit in
Marie-Odile Briot's writing on Le Corbusier in Leger et l'esprit moderne: une
alternative d'avant-garde a l'art non-objectif (1918-1931), a catalog for the
Exhibition in Paris, at the Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, Mar.
17-June 6, 1982.
[41] Beatriz Colomina, "L'Esprit Nouveau:
Architecture and Publicit" p. 67.
[42] Beatriz Colomina, "L'Esprit Nouveau:
Architecture and Publicit" p. 67. The term machine age, was a symbolic
concept to help generate material consumption, which, paradoxically, was
invented by the advertising industry.
[43] Le Corbusier-Saugnier "Les Voisin Maison" in L'Esprit Nouveau 2 (1920) p. 211.
[44] Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations ed. Hannah Arendt
(New York 1968) pp. 222-223.
[45] Le Corbusier, The Decorative Arts of
Today [L'Art dcoratif d'aujourd'hui] (MIT Press, Cambridge 1987). P. 167.
[46] This statement comes from my notes as
taken in Martin Bressani's Graduate Seminar class at Carleton University,
Spring/1999, deriving from dialog regarding assigned readings by Hannah Arendt
and Paul Ricoeur.
[47] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,
p. 237.
[48] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,
p. 237.
[49] Le Corbusier-Saugnier "Les Voisin
Maison" p. 211.
[50] Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity:
Architecture as Mass Media (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1996) p. 195.
[51] Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, p. 7.
[52] Willy Boesiger and Hans Girsberger, Le Corbusier 1910-65 (Praeger, New York 1967) p. 50.
[53] Adolf Max Vogt, Le Corbusier, the Noble
Savage: Toward an Archaeology of Modernism (MIT Press, Cambridge 1998). p. 8.
[54] Adolf Max Vogt, Le Corbusier, the Noble
Savage: Toward an Archaeology of Modernism, p. 8.
[55] Le Corbusier, The Decorative Arts of Today, p. 189.
[56] Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer
Dresses, p. 29.
[57] Nelson Goodman, Qtd. in Paul Ricoeur,
"The function of fiction in the shaping of reality" in Man and World:
An International Philosophical Review (Vol. 12 No 2) p. 123.
[58] Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer
Dresses, p. 31.
[59] Nelson Goodman, Qtd. in Paul Ricoeur, "The function of fiction in the shaping of reality," p.123.
[60] Paul Ricoeur, "The function of fiction in the shaping of reality," p.128.
[61] Paul Ricoeur, "The function of
fiction in the shaping of reality" in Man and World: An International
Philosophical Review (Vol. 12 No 2 19??) p.123-141.
[62] Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses, p. 23.
[63] Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer
Dresses, p. 8.
[64] Le Corbusier, The Decorative Arts of
Today, p. 189.
[65] Le Corbusier, The Decorative Arts of
Today, p. 189.
[66] Le Corbusier, The Decorative Arts of Today, p. 188.
[67] Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer
Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995) p.
31.
[68] Stewart Ewen, All Consuming Images (Basic Books, New York 1988) p. 160.
[69] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, p. 237 p. 87.