Semper in the 1880s was that of the Swiss Hans Auer, a former student of. Semper at the Polytechnikum and later architect of the Parliament building in. Bern.
Gucci or Goller? Architectural Theory Past and Present Harry Francis Mallgrave
The nocturnal sky shows glimmering nebulas among the splendid miracle of stars-either old extinct systems scattered throughout the universe, or cosmic dust taking shape around a nucleus, or a condition in between destruction and regeneration. They are a suitable analogy for similar events on the horizon of art history. They are signs of a world of art passing into the formless, while suggesting at the same time a new formalion in the making. This phenomenon of artistic decline and the mysterious phoenixlike birth of new irtistic life arising from the process of its destruction is all the more significant for us, because we are probably in the midst of a similar crisis. Gottfried Semper Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts, or Practical Aesthetics (1860) Architectural historians are by nature a rather fretful lot. For even the casual historian, that is to say, he or she who only occasionally wanders into the written legacy of this field, cannot escape the distress that one must feel when confronting a t every turn the state of crisis into which every architectural generation inevitably finds itself drawn. The overt concerns surrounding this crisis, it would appear, are entirely scripted. Architects rail against the sins of their forefathers; every building of modest vintage soon becomes the object of animated derision; every social and philosophical ideal that enthused and inspired the previous generation is faulted. New theories are put forth almost weekly, often based on precisely contrary premises. Architects, it seems, are more prone to being peevish than historians are. Yet given the inevitability of this distraught situation, do not Semper's words, written nearly 140 years ago, have a peculiar resonance with present polemics? O n the eve of the millennium do we not now yearn for "a phoenixlike birth of new artistic life" to arise from the ashes of the old? Are we not confused at whether our artistic dust, to be sure now scattered throughout the universe, is still dispersing or in a stage of new formation. A second analogy Semper liked to employ to describe the artistic conditions of his time might also be pertinent here. It is the Tower of Babel, that is, the Babylonian confusion of stylistic tongues wrought by an enthusiastic spurt of industrialization, an expanding commodity basis for a new middle class, and that new-found scourge visiting the fabled sons of Shem-fashion.
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Figure 1: The Tower of Babel.
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Figure 2: Peter Eisenman, Wexner Center, Columbus Ohio. Photograph by author.
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Semper, of course, was addressing in vivid terms the crisis of historicism in the mid-nineteenth century, but do not his analogies strike a compelling note in view of our modern-day Towers of Babel? T o understand the various tongues of architectural theory over the past 30 years, for instance, the interested historian would have to study (to a greater or lesser extent) the terms and conceptual nuances of existentialism, structuralism, literary criticism, Heideggerian ontology, Marxism, Linguistics, sociology, Benjaminian aesthetics, presumed Nietzschean nihilism, and of course the various and sundry (possibly viral) strains of poststructuralism-all without going into what is often taught in our architecture schools under the guise of theory. But who is talking to whom? Indeed, it is any longer possible for two architects vested in two competing conceptual paradigms to hold a sensible discourse, to speak in the same tongue? Be that as it may, is this stuffing of extra-disciplinary models into fancy architectural parlance really new? After all Alherti, the great Renaissance theorist, was well versed in Ciceronian theory, Claude Perrault was enamored with the coeval quarrel of the "Ancients and the Moderns," Marc-Antoine Laugier was in his rationalist rigor an easily recognized child of the Enlightenment, and certainly the ideas of Jean-NicolasLouis Durand, with its parsimonious emphasis on convenance and economy, was influenced by the French Revolution or, more specifically, by the recent happenings on the Place de la Concorde. It seems axiomatic to say that architectural theory necessarily reflects its contemporary intellectual landscape. Having hoisted this white flag, however, cannot we raise a related question? Is the way in which architects read and use extra-disciplinary models today different from the way architects have used such inspiration in the past? And I am not just making an allusion here to the ephemerality of today's intellectual fashions, that is, the way we don the latest double-breasted ensemble from abroad for a symposium or exhibition or two, before snatching something else chic and trcndy from the new fall line. I am speaking more of the working dynamics of theoretical discourse, the mutual give-and-take that can exist within disciplines, between disciplines: the way one field of study, enriched by another, subsequently enriches a third. Thus let me rephrase my question. Does contemporary architectural theory aspire to relate in am way, except in the most superficial manner. to nonach'itectural disciplines'? Docs architectural discourse any longer presume to have relevance. that is, to non-readers of vanguard critical journals. or to those outside of the somewhat surreal academic towers of ivory. Certainly there have been efforts made in the last decades to counter these contemporary forces of division or to find a theoretical basis on which to build a curriculum. And indeed many schools of architecture have improved in recent times. But an astute reader of theory must at the same time be struck by the striking contrast in the level of seriousness of past architectural debates-say that regarding modernism at the close of the nineteenth century-with the feigned
Gucci or Goller? wittiness (not to mention the strained political cant or social contempt) that often parades as theoretical deliberation today. And I hope it may not sound too quaint to raise as well the question, as Semper himself might have phrased it, of whether our present artistic culture is indeed in a process of destruction or in a formless period of post-postmodern regeneration? Of course 1 now feel conipelled to defend the discussion at the end of the last century, which is my intention. But let me make it clear that the issue here is really the way in which the broader intellectual discourse resonates with the concerns of architectural thought, and vice versa. And my final question in this regard is whether architectural history and theory can indeed teach us something about this potential relationship.
A Sense of Form The birth of modern architecture can be approached from many directions, but rarely is it considered on purely intellectual grounds. In reviewing the architectural development of the nineteenth century, for instance, we find many external forces-such as social changes, stylistic exhaustion, and material and technological innovations-contributing to the ideological sense of modernity. Seldom, however, do we consider such intrinsic and less discernible values as the particular way of thinkina with which an architect approaches his task. These conceptual values are so elusive, it seems, that entire histories of the modern movement have been composed from the sole perspective of external factors, with perhaps a token allusions to the Arts and Crafts moment or Art Nouveau as somehow important to the avant-garde mindset. But intellectual change, particularly when considered from a broader perspective than architecture itself, is a much slower and far more insidious process. It is nevertheless discernible; moreover, it is always instructive to study. I would like to consider, albeit briefly, two lines of development that were highly more significant (far more so than either the Arts and Crafts movement or Art Nouveau) in nurturing what we deem to he a twentieth-century way of thinking, and both are illuminating in the way in which architecture has in the past engaged extra-disciplinary models. Both lines not only drew upon but also contributed substantially to the broader swath of intellectual development. The first line becomes apparent in 1818, the year Arthur Schopenhauer published the first edition of The World as Will and Representation. Though the book contained but one chapter devoted to architecture, it was nevertheless an important chapter, especially with the architectural supplement the author added to the second volume of the work in 1844. Schopenhauer was not so keen on the "artistic" value of architecture. In the philosophical fashion of the day, he was intent on ranking the various arts. Music, entirely freed of matter, was at the top of the artistic structure; and architecture, with its very un-ideal dependence on physical matter for its creations, was at the bottom of the scale. This was not the first time, incidentally, that a German idealist philosopher would scorned Lhis sometimes self-tortured art.
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Schopenhauer, however, did introduce something new into architectural thinking. In seeking to controvert Hegelian spirit as the content of form, he chose to view the manifestation of "will" as form's principal content, at least for the arts. Thus each of the arts were analyzed in terms of the "will" their forms displayed, and of course architecture manifested the lowest grades of human will-concepts such as gravity, cohesion, rigidity, and hardness. His reading of gravity, however, is what made his reading of architecture radically new. Gravity for him was a natural will, as it were, attempting to collapse building materials into a worthless h6ap of rubble; structural rigidity was that ingenious human invention for subverting gravitational will, that is, for making a functional building and thereby depriving these unrelenting forces of the shortest path to their satisfaction. Architecture performed this miracle with its contrived lineaments of columns, vaults, walls, and roofs. What was new in this dynamic reading of architecture, in essence, was Schopenhauer's animated view of architecture a s a radical conflict between support and load, that is, the wilful spirit of the human mind opposing the gravitational energies of nature. A building, so to speak, trembled with this conflict of forces. It would not take long for such a view to find architectural appropriation. The German archeologist and teacher at the Berlin Bauakademie, Carl Botticher, in writing his masterwork of architectural theory entitled Die Tektonik der Hellenen (Greek Tectonics, 1843-52), drew heavily on Schopenhauer's view of architecture-it even contained a chapter entitled "Symbolism of Load and Support in Conflict." Botticher, with his conceptual dialectic of a work-form and subsequently developed an-form, strove to demonstrate that the decorative parts of the Greek temple were closely connected with construction, and that the purpose of each part's artistic form was to express symbolically the mechanical functions of this structural dynamic. In short, he sought to unravel in Greek architecture the latent symbolism of the finished art-form, a representational value over and above its more mundane work-form. For instance, he interpreted a Doric cyma, a molding applied at transitional points in the fabric of the temple, as a symbol for load and support, as a decorative seam signifying the dual notions of upright-standing and freefinishing. The curvature of this ogee molding, he insisted, depended on the real intensity of the load that was to be symbolically expressed. When place high in the entablature, for example, the molding might incline more in a vertical profile. At a lower point of greater load, say in the Doric echinus, the curvature might become more severe and horizontal in form, compressed as it were by the load of the entablature. This theme of conflict was represented ornamentally a s a folding or bending of leaves, eventually attaining canonic form in such ornaments as the egg-and-dart. Gottfried Semper, as Wolfgang Herrmann has informed us, read Botticher's book in the reading room of the British Museum library on 13 December 1852,
Gucci or Goller? and almost immediate!} incorporated it into his own already well developed theory.' In a lecture given in London in 1854, entitled "On Architectural Symbols," Semper took over Botticher's analysis of the Doric cyma almost entirely, although he also went on to speak of other architectural symbols, such as the hearth and the gabled roof.? The following year Semper moved to Zurich to head the architecture department at the Federal Polytechnikuni and-at the urging of Richard Wagner-read Schopenhauer. Thus we should not be surprised to find this animate view of architecture fully woven into Semper's thinking when he publishes the first volume of Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts in 1860. The text of Style is, in fact, rife with comments relating to the organic symbolism of architectural forms. Architecture veritably teems with life, but a column, or any part of a building is no longer, as with Schopenhauer, merely a passive element in conflict with the gravitational forces of the load; rather, a building in all its parts is an active organism energetically overcoming these forces. The lines of a classical gable, for instance, not only complete the Doric order but also veritably hover above it as a mediator of its horizontal and vertical forces. The curves of an Ionic or Corinthian capital are no mere decorations hut symbols expressing elastic resistance to the superimposed load and resulting tension. As Semper says:
. . their supporting elements are artistically enlivened into organisms, and their frame and roof supports are expressed collectively and purely mechanically as a necessary load to activate the life inherent in columns. At the same time the frame and its supports are in themselves variously articulated and appear striving and essentially alive in their individual parts? This type of thinking for Semper extended everywhere, even to the detailing of a rusticated ashlar block (fig. 3). The visible part of ashlar, he says, consists of two formal elements: the edge and the face. The former frames a face that is outwardly active in expressing compression and its counter-thrust. Projecting the face of the block beyond the framing edge greatly enhances this effect. The purpose of rustication on the lower story of a building, then, is to symbolize this active network of forces, as it were. In commenting on the detailing of his stone work for the Dresden Gallery, he notes further that an ashlar block with a raised face expresses resistance more clearly than a smooth one, and this expression intensifies, at least within certain limits, by increasing the projection of the ashlar. A stone block expresses the rusticity and strength of a fortress if the roughly broken surface is left as it is, or if, after being roughly split with a hand punch, it is surrounded with a deep, rectangular, recessed seam or edge. A similar effect can be achieved by a so-called diagonal beveling of the stone edse, creating triangular joints. In this way the bossage blends more with the seam to form a unit. A third way of edging the bulge is by combining the rectangular seam with the beveling.'
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Illustration 3: Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kunsten (1860) Rustication detail of the Dresden An Gallery.
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One can also play with the direction of the chiseling to produce a regular or irregular grain. "In the same way," he continues, the bands of joints between the bulges acquire a regular beat, one that has a decorative effect because of its rhythm and the emphasis on its contrastinpurface treatment. The same effect is achieved by the careful smoothing of the joint surfaces. Thus the rustic coarseness can be clad in a certain manly elegance and gain an expression similar to the symbolism of the Doric order,' As an architect, Semper was especially known for his lithic expressiveness. This reading of a building as a vital work of art would have a major impact on the next generation of German architect^,^ but Semper was not alone in his thinking. Soon after moving to Zurich in 1855 he met and befriended Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the respected philosopher who was just completing the sixth volume of his Aesthetik, oder Wissenschaft des Schmen (Aesthetics, or the Science of the Beautiful). Semper, who was known for his intense conversations with friends (he shared daily aperitifs with Vischer at a local pub), was not doubt critical of the Hegelian tenor of Vischer's earlier approach (Hegel, in particular was the frequent object of Semper's scorn). At the same time the architect would have been attracted to Vischer's discussion of architecture as a "symbolic art," one horn in the task of rhythmically animating forms by infusing "buoyant life" into inert matter? In 1866, three years after the second volume of Semper's work appeared, Vischer embarked on a re-evaluation of his earlier theories, Kritik meiner Asthetik (Critique of my Aesthetics), which largely turned on the "higher" symbolic process of his animate reading of architectural form. Architectural symbolism, he now argued, is not aligned with any specific cultural stage (as it had been for Hegel) but springs more immediately from instinctive human behaviour, devolving a t least in part from the transposition or reading of emotions into worldly forms. Vischer now refers to the animation of architectural form, and of artistic form in general, as a "unifying and contractive feeling" (Ineins-und Znsammenfuhlung), that is, as a pantheistic impulse on the part of the individual to merge with the sensuous world?
A few years later, in 1873, this whole line of reasoning achieves a new synthesis with the appearance of a small doctoral dissertation entitled "On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics." Its author was Robert Vischer, none other than the son of Friedrich Theodor. The lodestar to this new direction in psychological aesthetics was the notion of E i n f i i h i q , generally translated as "empathy," which Vischer defined the unconscious projection of one's "own bodily form-and with this also the Vischer's thesis was a s much a soul-into the form of the ob.ject."' physiological study as a psychological one, as he was enamored, for instance, with making distinctions between sensation and feeling, and reflecting on the induced bodily changes. He was also concerned with what he termed artistic "reshaping," or how our emotion expands to fill out the aesthetic object, at the
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same time that we impose on the object a universal rational norm. Art reshapes our relation with the world, in effect, by making taut those perceptually lax parts, and at the same time by intimating the presence of the human soul. Art works thus exude their own quasi-autonomous, dynamic inspiration. Vischer's study induced a bevy of related analyses on the reinterpretation of the ' ~ the most prominent title from an architectural perspective artistic s y m b ~ l , but was a dissertation published in 1886, "Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture."" Its youngauthor was the soon-to-be-famous art historian Heinrich Wolfflin. Wolfflin built his study with the opening question, "How is it possible that architectural forms are able to express an emotion or a mood?" He then laid out the problem in physiological as well as psychological terms, recounting the contributions of Schopenhauer, Botticher, the two Vischers, Semper, and others. His guiding thesis was the formula that ."Physical forms possess a character only because we ourselves possess a body," that is, the formal expression we read in architectural form is a reflection our own corporeal impressions: the experience of our will, the notions of regularity. symmetry, and proportion, our physical sense of balance and rhythm. Most important was his definition of ornament as "excessive force of form."i2 Responding to the analogy Semper had drawn between Gothic architecture and scholasticism, Wolfflin also defined style as the collective manifestation of our corporeal and psychological will. In Gothic paintings, he noted, the bridge of the nose is often narrow, the forehead assumes hard vertical folds, the whole body stiffens and pulls itself together, shoes are pointed, medieval costume follows suit. And all is mirrored in architectural form: in the tall pointed arches whose stiffness resolutely echoes scholastic sentiments. Semper's earlier example of the Greek hydria and Egyptian situla, later cited by W ~ l f f l i n ,illustrated '~ perfectly his thesis. The forms or curvatures of these two vessel types, for Semper, were not only incorporated by these two cultures into: their respective monumental building forms, but they served as well as national emblems for the collective psychologies of the two nations. As Semper himself noted. "The basic features of Egyptian architecture seem to be contained in embryo in the Nile pail, and the formal relation of the hydria to certain types of the Doric style is no less striking! Both forms are precursors of what architecture invented when struggling to express monumentally the nature of the two
people^."'^ Wolfflin's study no1 only served as a prelude to his first significant art-historical undertakingof the folloiving year, Renaissance and Baroque (1887) but he also established in the last pages of his dissertation the formalist basis of an arthistorical methodology that would prove so influential to the twentieth century. More importantly, his analyses brought architecture to the threshold of considering form in and of itself, that is, devoid of historical associations. Style, the former "content" of architectural design, had for all intents and purposes here been banished.
Gucci or Goller? A Sense of Space If it is unfortunate that Wolfflin's dissertation has received so little discussion in the genesis of modern architectural theory, the same is true for other major texts of theory of this period as well. One important example is the inaugural lecture given at the University of Leipzig by August Schmarsow, and published in 1893 under the title "The Essence of Architectural Creati~n."'~ Schmarsow, who at the time was in a professorial competition with Wolfflin, in fact came up with the theme of this lecture in response to Wolfflin's formalism. What, he asks, does the troglodyte's cave, the Arab's tent, the Egyptian and Greek temple, the Caribbean hut, and the German Reichstag building have in common? It is not their forms, their materials, or their construction, he responds sharply, but rather the fact that they are all "spatial constructs." Schmarsow next defines architecture as "the creatress of space," and he somewhat incisively, from a later phenomenological perspective, continues on to analyze the spatial nature of architecture through its experiential and cultural settings, the collective sense for order, rhythm, regularity, and formal definition." The principal focus for architects in their spatial creations, he argues, should not be so much the development of vertical or horizontal axes, hut rather the enclosure and orientation of the moving subject within space. Thus the single most important dimension for architectural spatial creation is that of depth. Now where did Schmarsow come up with this theme, one that would be so pivotal to the architectural thought of the first half of the twentieth century? The answer is once again Semper, but this time a single passage of Style that was almost an incidental passage in the course of his voluminous writings. Space as an architectural concept had always been an important aspect of his theory, hut one largely circumscribed within the motive of walling or "dressing" (Bekleidung). In speaking on the spatial implications of vaulted masonry in the second volume (such vast spatial works as the Pantheon and imperial baths), however, Semper was struck by the novelty of this creative medium for Rome, but fell at the same time it was a motive that went largely undeveloped. Moreover, "the Romans were in no way the inventors of this mighty spatial art, which would have related to Greek architecture like a symphony concert does to a hymn accompanied by a lyre, were it perfected to the same extent as the latter."" Semper then traced this motive of space back to tholoi, crypts, "and other mysterious works of those early mystic inhabitants of the Mediterranean lands," but postponed the contemporary relevance of the idea until the third volume of his work, which of course was never written. In a lecture of 1869, however, he returned to this theme of space and concluded a nearly identical passage with the prophetic proclamation that "Herein," that is, in this mighty art of spatial creation, "lies the future of architecture in general.'"8 Only slowly did architects follow up on the implications of this passage. The Berlin architect and Semper admirer Richard Lucae was perhaps the first. In two addresses given in 1869 and 1870 he first rhapsodized on the "joy and airiness"
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of large spatial creations, equating the spatial experiences of the Cologne Cathedral and Pantheon with such modern creations as railway halls and Alpine tunnels, and second joined this discussion of architectural space with the spanning possibilities of iron.I9 Lucae's inspired musings, however, at first sparked little interest, but almost a decade later the art critic Conrad Fiedler began a commentary on Semper's Style and he too was attracted to this passage on vaults. Again he saw this "new idea of spatial enclosure" (for him more perfectly executed in the Romanesque style of vaulting) as a way for contemporary architects to liberate themselves from the stifling cul-de-sacs of eclecticism or historici~m.~~ Fiedler's conclusions again went unheeded, but here and there architects again fell upon Semper's passage. Perhaps the most interesting interpretation of Semper in the 1880s was that of the Swiss Hans Auer, a former student of Semper at the Polytechnikum and later architect of the Parliament building in Bern. In one essay of 1881 Auer argued than even though construction should take priority in architectural theory, "the most important and original task of architecture is the creation of space."21 Two years later he published an even more provocative essay and now brought the issue into clear focus. The "poetry of space" should no longer be an ancillary concept to design but the very "soul of building," and its development thereby follows technological advances. It did not take him long to arrive at the audacious spans of the modern railway station as the gist of the new style in the formation. The new material that facilitates this new style is iron, that "which shakes its brazen fist at all past traditions.""
A Sense of Realism Schmarsow, as he later admitted, had not read the published essays of Lucae, Fiedler, or Auer when he presented his address in 1893; instead he came upon his thesis simply by reading Semper. But Schmarsow's address nevertheless remains an important document of this period, no less because it provided another theorist with a basis to achieve an even grander synthesis. This most astute theorist was the architect Richard Streiter-a figure again all but lost to our heavily abridged histories of this period. Streiter was first of all trained as an architect, and between 1887 and 1893 he worked in the office of Paul Wallot, the famed architect of the Berlin Reichstag. In the mid-1890s he decided to leave practice and take a doctorate at University of Munich under Theodor Lipps, the psychologist and great disseminator of "empathy theory." In 1896 Streiter completed his dissertation on Carl Botticher, ~ short, he was which of course necessitated his mastery of Semperian t h e o ~ y .In the person perfectly situated as both an architect and psycholo-.'ist to construct the theoretical bridge between the pertinent literature within and without the confines of architecture. Streiter's essay of 1898, entitled "Contemporary Architectural Questions," popularized two terms that would soon find wide architectural c~rrency.'~The first term, actually used by Streiter in an essay of 1896,23was the notion of
Gucci or Goller? Sachlichkeiu The word is sometimes translated into English as "objectivity," hut this reading defiles its original meaning. For Streiter and others at the tum of the century, it can be defined as the simple, practical, straight-forward solution to a problem, inclusive of artistic concerns. Hermann Muthesius would, in a few years, run with this idea.26 And with the qualifier "new" applied to it, this phrase would become a very prevalent term within German artistic theory down through the 1920s.
The second term that Streiter introduced was the notion of "realism," which delineates in a single stroke the broader thrust of his theory. Realism was a term first used'in French painting of course; in German architectural theory it is first employed in the late-1880s in response to the Eiffel Tower and Gallerie des machines at the Paris E x p o ~ i t i o n . ~Streiter, however, defined it in a different way as "the most extensive consideration of the real conditions in the creation of a building and the most perfect fulfillment of the requirements of functionality, comfort, health-in a word, ~achlichkeit."^ This again was not purely abstract or functional design, as Streiter also added the rider that realism should take into account the characteristics of the local building materials, the landscape, and historical attributes of the region. The essay "Contemporary Architectural Questions" thus sought to define these terms with respect to contemporary theory, hut more specifically with regard to Otto Wagner's recently published book of 1896, Modern ~rchitecture.'~Streiter was quite excited about Wagner's hook, both about Wagner's stylistic experiments and his "extremely progressive program," but at the same time he was quite critical of Wagner's theoretical reasoning. His basic complaint was that Wagner had attempted to develop the art-form exclusively or solely out of constructional motifs, what Botticher had termed the work-form, and in this Streiter felt he had gone too far in making a virtue out of necessity. Streiter termed this strategy or architectural approach "tectonic realism," and he equated it-pejoratively-with a suggestion made a decade earlier by Robert Dohme, that modern design should draw inspiration from the austerity and elegance of modern vehicles and ships. Muthesius, and later Le Corbusier, would again make famous this very same analogy. Streiter, however, objected to tectonic realism for two reasons. First there was Otto Wagner's political and social na'i'veti, his unbridled enthusiasm for the democratic leveling of classes and values in modem society, which in Streiter's view effectively reduced a n to fashion. Connected with this was the fact that tectonic realism with its constructional symbols would not take into account the local huilding materials, landscape, and historical conventions, as Streiter's notion of realism demanded. The second reason Streiter objected to Wagner's tectonic realism was that Wagner in his theory had in essence fallen back on Botticher's formula of a work-form and art-form-,the latter arising solely from the former. Streiterobjects to this model, arguing that s u c h a conceptual framework had been overtaken by more recent developments in psychological aesthetics, especially by the theory of empathy. And to support this contention he wheels out his two
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big guns-Wolfflin and Schmarsow Wolfflin, for Streiter, had shown the primacy of the collective "sense of form" over and above such technological forces as constructional techniques. Schmarsow had provided modern architecture with a whole new realm to explore. a "sense of space."30 In the end, however, it was Streiter's vernacular or regional sentiments that overrode all other concerns. For, after reducing the architectural problem to exploring the implications of Wolfflin's sense of form and Schmarsow's sense of space, Streiter-though conceding the impending victory of natural science over historical and antiquarian interests, though acknowledging the "unbridgeable cleft" dividing the old world from the Darwinian perspective of the new, though positing realism as a healthy alternative to an "unreal, misleading, and untimely idealism," to the "false pathos and hollow bombast of eclecticism3'-rears back from the precipice of Wagner's chaste and sanitized image of the modern metropolis and insists on an architectural connection with the past, with the landscape, and with regional value^.^' In essence, architectural theory here passes from modernist enthusiasm to a postmodern critique of the limits of modernism. Quite a precocious leap of faith! There is, however, one footnote to this somewhat curtailed scenario. Neither Streiter, nor Wagner, nor Schmarsow, nor Wolfflin was the first to articulate a fully abstract aesthetic model for modern architecture; this was done by another little known architect and Semper admirer, Adolf Goller. The latter, who was on the faculty of the Stuttgart Polytechnikum, published in 1887 a book entitled Zur Aesthetik der Architektur: Vortrage und Studien (Toward an Aesthetics of Architecture: Lectures and Essays), which contained the psychological study "What is the Cause of Perpetual Style Change in ~rchitecture?"~"Goller, in a way quite similar to Wolfflin, was interested in how and why architectural design undergoes continuous formal changes. His solution was the psychological explanation of jading (Errnudung), which, if I can oversimplify it, argues that a culture collectively becomes use to a certain set of formal proportions called a "memory image" (Gedachtnisbild). Eventually this standard image becomes too complete or jaded, and artists begin to play with the accepted norm for proportions. Hence we move in a process similar to that of the Renaissance to the Baroque, and then onto a new style or set of proportions altogether. What are important in Goller's stylistic argument, however, are not so much his results, but rather the process he undertook to achieve them. In order to eliminate content or stylistic associations from the equation, he came up a definition of architecture as the "an of visible pure form." He also defined beauty in architecture as an "inherently pleasurable, meaningless play of lines or of light and shade." In other words, he considered architecture for the first time as a fully non-representational or formal play, focusing entirely on the aesthetic nuances of abstract form. But Goller, who was so focused on the details of explaining formal evolution, did not actually see what he had done, and it was left to the art critic Cornelius Gurlitt to understand the implications of Goller's study. In his 1887 review of
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Goller's book, Gurlitt speculated on what exciting things would happen if Goller's abstract model for architecture-that is, abstract lines, colors, and forms-were also to be applied to the arts of painting and sculpture.33 This, of course, was twenty years before Georges Braque was introduced to Pablo Picasso. Returning to our first theme, however, we underscore the scenario that evolves through this lengthy discourse on the notions of form and space. In the second decade of the nineteenth century a German idealist philosopher, not especially architecturally sophisticated, tosses out a reading of architecture ripe with implications. It is embraced in part by two architects around mid-century, and Semper joins to it his studies in ethnography, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and speculations on the future of architecture. Aspects of this reading then pass in the 1870s into aesthetic theory, art criticism, and art history, where it radically restructures their respective grounds. Once fully mature as a body of theory, the dual notions pass back into architecture at the point when historicism collapses and architects find themselves in need of a new formal paradigm. In short, between the 1818 and 1898, in particular, we witness the birth of at least one important part of modern theory through a complex web of theoretical contributions from various disciplines. Of course, I have not touched on such other contemporary contributions as French rationalism, the English Arts & Crafts movement, and the tall building in itself a s a revolutionary architectural phenomenon. But this also raises as well my observation that the level of seriousness claimed by architectural theory today is perhaps not as high as a century ago. With this, I also reiterate Semper's question, which has now seemingly re-insinuated itself as a perennial question, of whether we are in a process of artistic decline or formless regeneration? Obviously we cannot answer these questions now, as architecture is presently moving in a multitude of directions, ranging from the continued commercialization of its global productive forces to a more tempered cultivation of regional sensibilities. In fact, these varied approaches will no doubt always remain a characteristic of any future practice. But the role of history and theory within these multiple scenarios is perhaps somewhat more stable. Its purpose is first to preserve what is now our international historical legacy (the easier task) and second to remind the architect of the complex models and strategies used in the past, thereby urging one to define ever more encompassing strategies for our time. For without a remembrance of this historical and theoretical legacy and the intellectual effort it entails, architecture will-as Streiter correctly surmised exactly a century as-invariably reduce itself to fashion.
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Volume 10, August 1999
Notes
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See Wolfgang Herrrnann, "Semper and the Archeologist Bcitticher," in Gottfried Semper: In Search of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984, p. 140. Gottfried Semper, "On Architectural Symbols," in Res: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics, 9 (Spring 1985): 61-67. Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kiinsten (Munich, 1863) 11, p. 359. The book is currently being translated through the publication program of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. Semper, Der Stil, IS, p. 364. Semper, Der Stil, IS, p. 365. Especially influenced were the architects Constanlin Lipsius, Hans Auer, and Alfred Friedrich Bluntschli. See J. Duncan Berry, "The Legacy of Gottfried Semper: Studies in Spathistorismus," PhD Dissertation, Brown University, 1989. Friedrich Vischer, (Robert Vischer (ed)), Aesthetik; oder Wissenschaft des Schonen, Munich: Meyer & lessen, 1922-23 (orig. 1846-57), 111, sec. 559. Friedrich Vischer, "Kritik meiner Asthetik," in Robert Vischer (ed), Kritische Gcinge, Munich: Meyer & Jessen, 1922 (orig. 18661, IV. pp. 316-322. Robert Vischer, "On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics" (translation by H. Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou), in Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1873-93, Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994 (orig. 1873), p. 9 2~ . -.
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Perhaps the most important was Johannes Volkelt's Der Symbol-Begriff in der neuesten Aesthetik, Jena: Hennann Dnfft, 1876. Heinrich Wolfflin, "Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture'' (translation by H. Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou), in Empathy, Form, and Space, pp. 149-187. note 9. Wolfflin, "Prolegomena", p. 179. Wolfflin does so in Renaissance and Baroque, (translation by Katrin Simon), Ithaca: Comell University Press. 1975, p. 167, note 5. Semper, Der Stil, p. 6, note 3. August Schmarsow, "The Essence of Architectural Creation" (translation by H. Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou), in Empathy, Form, and Space, pp. 281-297, note 9. Schrnarsow, "The Essence of Architectural Creation", p. 287. Semper, Der Stil, p. 394, note 3. Semper, "On Architectural Styles," in Gottfried Semper: The Four Elements of Architecture and other Writings, (translation by H. Mallgrave and W. Herrrnann), New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 281. ,,
,,
Gucci or Goller?
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26
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30 31 31 33
R. Lucae, "Ueber die Bedeutung und Macht des Raumes in der Baukunst," in Zeitschrift fur praktische Baukunst, 29 (1869): 198-207; "Ueber die Asthetische Ausbildung der Eisen-Konslruktionen, besonders in ihrer Anwendung bei Raumen von bedeutender Spannweite," Deutsche Bauwitung, 4 (1870): 9-12, Conrad Fiedler, "Observations on the Nature and History of Architecture" (translation by H. Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou), in Empathy, Form, and Space, p. 138, note 9. Hans Auer, "Die Einfluss der Construction auf die Entwicklung der Baustile," Zeitschrift des Osterreichischen Ingenieur- und ArchitektenVereins, 33 (1881): 9. Hans Auer, "Die Entwickelung des Raumes in der Baukunst," Allgemeine Bauwitung, 48 (1883): 65-68,7374. Richard Streiter, Karl Bottichers Tektonik der Hellenen als asthetische und Kunstgeschichtliche Theorie: Eine Kritik, Hamburg: Leopold Voss, 1896. Richard Streiter, "Architektonische Zeitfragen," in Richard Streiter: Ausgewahlte Schriften, Munich: Delphin, 1913, pp. 55-149. Richard Streiter, "Aus Munchen," in Pan 2, 3 (1896): note 28. See in particular Hermann Muthesins, Style-Architecture and Building-Art. (translation by Stanford Anderson), Santa Monica: Getty Research Center for the History of A n and the Humanities, 1994 (German orig. 1902). See J . Duncan Berry, "From Historicism to Architectural Realism," in H. Mallgrave (ed), Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity, Santa Monica: Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1993, pp. 246 & 257. Streiter, "Aus Munchen," p. 249. Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture: A Guidebook for his Students to this Field of Art, Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of A n and the Humanities, 1988 (German orig. 1896). Streiter, "Architektonische Zeitfragen," pp. 103-108, note 24. Streiter, "Architektonische Zeitfragen," p. 134. Adolf Goller, "What is the Cause of Perpetual Style Change in Architecture?" in Empathy, Form, and Space, pp. 227-280, note 9. Cornelius Gurlitt, "Goller's asthetische Lehre," Deutsche Bauzeitung 21 (17 December 1887): 602-04.
