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.

bibliography

to the editor


NOTES



[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.