Karel Teige: Architecture of the Industrial Age
The discussion on modern industrial architecture and its functional buildings touches upon the fundamental issues of all new international architecture. After all, strictly speaking, for the modern architect, every building is a functional building; today, there is no longer decorative and monumental architecture in the historical sense, or at least such architecture can no longer claim legitimacy today, having become a relic and an anachronism. Architecture is the fulfillment of specific construction tasks and programs, not a formal game or a visual art. Moreover, even the buildings of primitive man had a purely functional character; they were simply his tools. Returning to functionality meant a full revolution during the period of the emergence of dream architecture, because at that time form was at the forefront of interest, and purpose was satisfied only to the extent that the building broadly functioned despite its form, that the Gothic or Renaissance decoration of a factory, station, or residential building did not completely inhibit the practical functionality of the building in question. Thus, the entire still-unclosed history of new architecture emphasizes a return to functionality as the true architectural truth.
The emergence of modern architecture dates back to the end of the 19th century. In Art Nouveau and "Jugendstil," we can see the first signs of the modern movement, although the forms are quite undefined and sometimes incorrectly conceived. The effort to replace historical styles with some "modern style" is false to the extent that "style" is understood as a specific formal, decorative, and ornamental order. The Secession's effort to replace the wardrobe of historical forms with modern decorative elements was misguided. However, despite this, in the works of van de Velde, Olbrich, and Endell, alongside the ballast of empty formalism, there is a clear effort toward technicism (use of new materials) that should not be overlooked. By the end of the century, modern architecture, which was just emerging, began to understand the need for strict formal asceticism, to limit and tame decorative fantasy and whim, asserting that simple fulfillment of the task is already a guarantee of the quality of the work. Otto Wagner declared in 1895: "Something 'impractical' cannot be beautiful." The confession of architectural modernity becomes functionalism and objectivity. Functionalism is being increasingly programmatically applied, and its concept is being more and more precisely defined, so that in the end all art and formalism will be erased from architecture.
The true initiators of modern architecture are in the Netherlands H. P. Berlage, in Germany Alfred Messel, in France Auguste Perret, in Austria Otto Wagner, and in America Arthur Sullivan. The modern movement firmly establishes its roots in all countries.
One of the first historically significant works of this architectural modernity is Berlage's Amsterdam Stock Exchange. The changes this work underwent from its initial proposal, still entirely academic and conceived in the spirit of Dutch Renaissance à la Cuypers' Amsterdam station or Rijksmuseum, to the resulting realization, where all historicism is almost eliminated or at least genuinely suppressed to a minimum and where, despite the chaotic floor plan, the beautiful hall with its glass and iron ceiling attests to the modern spirit of the building—these changes illustrate the rapid evolution of emerging modern architecture, showing how it managed to free itself from museal reminiscences. The program that Berlage defined for architecture in his lecture in Zurich in 1907 (published in Berlin in 1910) "Fundamentals and Development of Architecture" emphasizes the geometric nature of modern architectural form.
Similarly, Otto Wagner initially worked in the spirit of a certain Renaissance classicism. And what the Amsterdam Stock Exchange means for the Netherlands, Wagner created for Central Europe with his Vienna Postal Savings Bank from 1903, whose purely modern hall of iron and glass is at the time a record achievement and a more consistent solution than that of Berlage. Wagner summarized his theory on architecture in the book "On Modern Architecture", which at the time meant what Le Corbusier's book meant after the world war: Vers une architecture — that is: it was a revolutionary challenge. For Wagner, architecture is merely a clear specification and perfect fulfillment of purpose through appropriate choices of materials, light and economical, clever construction, and layout.
Alfred Messel did not escape the confines of historicism, and at a time when Wagner was making his decisive statement with his postal savings bank and the buildings of the Vienna underground, he returned again to traditionalism. However, he contributed through his work to the realization of a new architectural task and dared to seek a new building type, namely the department store. However, Messel did not create a distinctive type of department store. The Grand Magasin du Louvre in Paris, although in Empire style, is a more matter-of-fact solution for modern wholesale trade. It should be noted that the mature type of wholesale palace first appeared in Europe in France. This is Samaritaine by Frantz Jourdaine, an architecture of iron and glass, somewhat marred by Art Nouveau decorations, but still impressive in its constructive and layout boldness, as is Printemps, a commercial building with very modern layouts and a passéist façade.
Van de Velde occupies a special position in the beginnings of the new architectural modernity. Alongside Berlage, Wagner, and Perret, who are essentially rationalists, realists, and constructors, Velde is more of a romantic; romanticism leads him astray into decorative and formal whims. His relationship with the machine and technology, as we can read from his theoretical articles, remains purely aesthetic. He admires a transatlantic ship as the Parthenon for its grace and compositional proportions, sees the beauty of the machine’s plasticity, but does not understand, as an individualist, that the machine means: norm, type, collectivism. Even in 1914, at the Werkbund congress, he defeated under the banner of the freedom of individual artistic creativity the typified proposals of Muthesius and only after the war did he somewhat lean theoretically towards collectivism. The aesthetic admiration for the machine in Van de Velde is enthusiasm of a purely romantic nature and he is indeed the first representative of that machinist romanticism, that adoration of mechanics, that "machinolatria" and "mecanomania" that we encounter among futurists and those who understand the principles of constructivism formally and romantically. The romanticism in Van de Velde is only partially restrained by rationalism, and even so more in his theoretical studies than in building practice. Van de Velde often purely externall and unconsciously transfers the lines and shapes of mechanical objects to his buildings. Goncourt aptly labeled Velde's style as "Yachting style." Indeed, even the demolished Werkbund theater in Cologne from 1914, one of Van de Velde's most mature and substantial buildings, recalls the curves of cars or ships.
The influence of Velde's romanticism was rather disorienting for modern architecture and thus became an element of retardation. Van de Velde made the machine a professor of aesthetics. He saw in the machine a new formal principle, not a new working method. He saw in the machine a dynamic architecture; rightly so. But wrongly and illogically, he attempted to express movement in architecture. It is certain that dynamic architecture is a modern problem. However, to express movement through the play of plastic forms is a decorative formula just as superficial as the fashion of "expressing through construction." For it is about resolving, not about expressing and interpreting. Dynamic architecture is that which is truly in motion and whose forms are exactly defined by this motion. The curves and teardrop profiles of an airplane do not express motion, but, we would say, create motion; they are not an artistic composition, but the result of aerodynamic calculations. However, to interpret motion through architectural decoration is a delusional idea of the romantic theory of empathy. And the whole of Van de Velde's aesthetics is full of this romantic theory of empathy. And this leads to the beginning of that fantastic formal anarchy that culminates in the utopian architecture of expressionism. Finsterlin's stalactite and cave architecture, his "Selenglitschermühlensysteme," "Alpine Architektur" by Bruno Taut, Poelzig's design of the Salzburg Festival House, all these are consequences and echoes of Velde's Jugendstil. We have said that his influence acted on modern architecture in a disorienting way. We see this in nearly the entire Dutch romantic Amsterdam school Wendingen: de Klerk, van der Mey, Kramer, Wijdeveld, and others. We also see it in Mendelsohn, in whom we can often observe the influence of Velde, alongside that of exhibition architectures like Olbrich, while earlier the influence of Finsterlin was also noticeable: a purely artistic delight in curve. His Einstein Tower in Potsdam is more of a monument than an observatory and workshop. Externally and illogically applying aerodynamic curves of cars and airplanes to static architecture. Moreover, many modern German architects have succumbed more or less to the allure of Van de Velde's romantic theory.
Pure architecture, however, arose outside these artistic and aesthetic speculations. In the confusion of formal whims, modern people of sound sense and opinions began to draw attention to technical, engineering constructions, bridges, cranes, power plants. In industrial and utility architecture, the first specifically modern tasks, which had no analogies in the pre-machine era, brought forth the first specifically modern realizations in the first decade of the 20th century. Until now, European factories had mostly been mere dark, unattractive workshops, even if of enormous proportions. Architecturally, they were resolved as houses. It was not understood that new production processes would require workshops designed and arranged differently. In vol. II. "Jahrbuch des deutschen Werbundes 1913", Walter Gropius published a significant article "Die Entwickelung moderner Indusriebaukunst", in which he pointed out industrial architecture in America. Such grain silos by Washbury-Grosby Comp. in Minneapolis and Buffalo, the Olive Hill studios in California, power plants in Canada and power stations in South America, these are all works of engineers, not architects. The American influence, penetrating into Europe, led architects to appropriate the "aesthetics of the engineer." Peter Behrens, who began as a painter and later, as an architect of the Darmstadt group, long clung to the delusions of Art Nouveau decor and formalism, was called in 1907 by Emil Rathenau for artistic collaboration in the A.E.G. factories. His early and decoratively conceived works were characterized by a certain stereometric simplicity, yet they were more in the realm of graphics than architecture. But now he had to work with industry and for industry: this is the first case in our century where an architect works on typical things, not individual ones. Modern industry becomes the school of modern architecture. When from 1909 to 1912 Behrens took on the construction of large factory buildings for A.E.G., he did not yet solve the problem of the modern factory as matter-of-factly as American engineers did; his artistic convictions still interpret the task somewhat formalistically and stylistically, and the false pursuit of monumentality distorts the overall clear character of the buildings with vertical divisions. However, it should not be overlooked that here for the first time in Central Europe, the space of industrial operation was understood according to its specific purposes, that a true factory was realized here, made of iron, concrete, and glass, not just a house. Poelzig's chemical factory Milch & Comp. in Luban in Poznań is rather a "house"; it is not as consistent. And Poelzig himself, apparently under the influence of Van de Velde's romanticism, later retreated far from this relatively matter-of-fact and rational architecture, straying into expressionism, claiming that purpose is just a dreadful affix to an artistic work, that in architecture beauty and art begin only where we are not bound by purpose, where we build only to God. The lamentable result of such theories was the design for the Salzburg Festival House, realized in a form somewhat more rational than the one in which it was originally projected.
In contrast, the industrial buildings of Walter Gropius, realized in collaboration with Adolf Meyer, represent a significant advance over Behrens' works. The "Fagus" factory in Alfeld from 1913, the official building and machine hall for the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914, the design for the Kappe & Co. factory, the administrative building of the Ad. Sommerfeld factory—these are the first European non-decorative, non-formalist, but truly substantive, functional, and constructive buildings. Here, as also at Perret's "Ateliers H. Esders," American straightforwardness is achieved. The rejection of the false pathos of matter, which is detrimental to Behrens' work. The factory in Alfeld is the most modern and exemplary Central European factory until the war. Today, it has been surpassed by the buildings of the Turin automobile factory "Fiat," designed by engineers Matté and Truco, and then mainly by Gropius' new work: the buildings of "Bauhaus" in Dessau near Berlin. Additionally, it is worth mentioning the Dresden Fabrik Seck, which is the work of Fritz Kaldenbach.
The beginning and birth of modern French architecture can also be found in factory and industrial buildings, in buildings of functional character and engineering execution. The century that gave Paris its pompous Opera also crafted such substantive and technically sophisticated iron structures as the Pont des Arts, Halles Centrales, Galerie de Machines (which were spoiled by applied ornaments), and finally the Eiffel Tower. The true founder of French architecture, Auguste Perret, is a man of the genus of brilliant constructors like Eiffel or Freyssinet and at the same time an architect of such questionable formal taste as American architects. It is incomprehensible how one can damage the impressiveness of bold constructions with inappropriate decorative forms. Thus, for example, the Basilica in Raincy and the Champs Elysées theater are impaired; the interior of the Esders department store and the garages in rue Ponthieu are devoid of all accessories and as such belong among the most classical realizations of new architecture. Perret's contemporary, Tony Garnier, had ample opportunity to assert himself as a city builder in Lyon with large constructions, especially industrial ones. His architectural sensibility is of purely classical nature, and often modern and bold construction is externally covered with the architecture of a spirit modernized from antiquity. Of Garnier's works, one should above all mention his Hospital Grande Blanche in Lyon and his urban studies "Une cité industrielle", which are an important preparation for Le Corbusier's concepts of modern metropolis.
Modern European industrial architecture, especially German, was created under the healthy and enlightening influence of American engineering architecture. Yet the resolution of the main problem, the proper problem of architecture, namely that of the residential house, also became a matter in America. The problem of the residential house does not seem to fit within the framework of a discussion about utility buildings. Yet it was precisely in America that it was resolved as a problem of utility construction. The residential building was also conceived as a "Zweckbau." Wright, a pupil of Sullivan, substantially advanced the development of the floor plan of modern housing. Since the 1890s to the present, he has created a series of exemplary, freely developed floor plans. His villas and country houses of a horizontal character, with flat, far-protruding roofs, are merely a practical organization of freely divided spaces. Wright's merit is that he carried out a fundamental reform of housing under the discernible influence of Japanese residential culture; the homes he realized stand out for their functional beauty of open and closed spatial systems: rooms opening onto balconies and terraces, verandas integrating into interiors—continuity of the exterior and interior, greenery, air, sunlight—this is the Wright house. This concept of the residential house exerted an almost authoritative influence in Europe, and thus the magnus parens of all modern residential architecture is Wright. Modern Dutch architecture is, after all, to some extent Wright's school.
Le Corbusier's buildings are indeed to this day a record achievement in European modern architecture. Continuing on the path initiated by Wright, Le Corbusier arrived at the creation of a definitive type of modern dwelling, a type that is significantly more economical and popular than Wright's relatively luxurious villas. In the quest for economization and production perfection, Le Corbusier, like Gropius, arrives at the necessity of producing houses serially, industrializing construction. In contrast to Gropius and many contemporary architects, Le Corbusier still understands architecture as an art, as a visual work. He does emphasize, however, that architecture as an art begins only when all practical considerations have been accounted for and that without perfect fulfillment of practical functions, aesthetic values cannot be realized at all. Constructivists will argue against Le Corbusier that beauty and aesthetic value in architecture is already present in the perfect realization of a given task. If Berlage recommended geometric ornament, as geometric shapes are not individual and are inherently beautiful, Le Corbusier adopts geometric rules as aesthetic standards of architecture: diagonal rhythm, right angles, golden ratio, etc. He applies Cézanne's principle of the sphere, cone, and cylinder to architecture and notes that geometric forms are not only beautiful but the most beautiful of all.
While Le Corbusier often emphasizes the artistic elements redundantly in his theories, Adolf Loos proclaims with the utmost emphasis absolute artistic atheism and nihilism in architecture. For over 25 years, he has been combating the view of architecture as a visual art. His (sensible and concrete) approach to architecture as a science and craft, his resistance against aesthetics and decorativeness, as he formulated in his lectures published in book form "Ins Leere gesprochen", has become the foundational truth of contemporary constructivist architecture. Modern architectural theory recognizes as its predecessor and founder Adolf Loos, who fundamentally proclaimed the separation of architecture from so-called art. "Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: a tombstone and a monument. Everything else that serves a purpose should be excluded from the domain of art," Loos wrote in 1911.
Constructivist architecture in Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia accepted this Loosian negation of architecture as an art form. Constructivism even signifies a denial of the very concept of "art." The Russian engineer Lapshin correctly states that "there is no architecture as an art of construction in itself; there is only uniform, strictly scientific construction." The new architectural generation stands on the basis of objectivity. It rejects all aesthetic speculation, all doctrine, and all formalism—as Mies v. d. Rohe proclaims. This means that a priori aesthetic speculation is rejected, but not aesthetic laws. For the requirement of order is an elementary and fundamentally aesthetic demand.
Adolf Behne distinguishes in his significant monograph on modern industrial architecture "Der moderne Zweckbau" two opposing directives in constructivism, whose conflict is not, in our view, as principled as Behne interprets. The discord lies in realizations that incorrectly apply the principles of constructivism, not in the principles themselves. Behne therefore distinguishes between utilitarianism, which seeks the most practical solution, and functionalism, which seeks the essentially most accurate solution. However, there is no contradiction as long as "principled accuracy is not understood romantically and metaphysically, as long as the factual purpose and mere meaning are not confused—and on the other hand, 'practical solutions' must not mean complying with petty-bourgeois demands, a compromise in relation to given circumstances. The demand for functionality must be accepted without reservation, but it must be clear that the purpose itself is nothing frozen, completed, unchangeable, but a means that can be deepened, refined, made precise—that in short, it is up to the architect not just to comply with the purpose, but to rearticulate it clearly and accurately, even to create it. It could perhaps be said that to the extent that the purpose creates new architecture, architecture creates new purposes. A house is merely a tool. Its form is evolving and not definitive. A house grows from its living process, hence it also happens over time. Here the functionalist concept meets, on the one hand, with dynamism and the theory of space-time, and on the other hand, with biological relativism. Modern biologists, e.g., Jennings, define an animal as a "happening." Dynamism in architecture is not to be expressed externally, as Velde and his followers did, especially the futurist Virgilio Marchi. The dynamism of architecture primarily signifies the nature of a lively and formative floor plan, which serves as a kind of channel for the movement of life. Dynamism does not mean surrogacy and formal stylization of movement, but concrete, factual movement, change in space and in time.
Functionalists believe that a perfect house would be one that grows organically like a plant. Indeed, one could speak here of a highly civilized "return to nature." A stalk of grain is an example of construction. Mollusks and shells are living spaces. The magazine "Wendingen" reproduced a series of beautiful shells, just as "l'Esprit Nouveau" reproduced a series of beautiful machines. The teaching of the machine has been formulated. Now, functionalists are trying to formulate the teaching of the shell, i.e., the lesson of nature, biological perspective on architecture. They point out that orthogonal space, straight lines, etc., are not functional shapes but mechanical. From the perspective of function, regular geometric space is nonsensical: its corners are useless dead spaces. Boundary the actively used, truly functioning space of a room, and you obtain an irregular curve. In organic life, it is claimed, there are neither straight lines nor right angles. This emphasis on functional curves has shaped the architectural projects of young Germans like Richard Döcker, Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun, Adolf Rading, and others. Tatlin’s Tower of the III International develops its spiral form on the basis of a dynamic moment. It is true that a single spatial cell is not economical if it is orthogonal; the actual utility space describes itself more with a curve—but the shells and mollusks referenced here as examples are merely individual spaces. However, when it comes to the collective arrangement of functional spaces—and this is the true architectural task—the outcome is the opposite; individual natural organisms are indeed curved—but in the beehive, in its wax honeycombs, geometry reigns.
The theory of modern architecture must find the right relationship to nature and to society. Man is the measure of all things, and man is nature. But society arises from people and is organized according to human production, which subjugates nature. The machine is not a symbol of modernity for its external beauty and elegant form; the machine is on the one hand a perfectly functioning organism (one might say: a natural force of human origin), while on the other hand a saving of force, time, and labor. And the seeming theoretical conflict between functionalism and utilitarianism, as Behne outlines it, can be resolved by finding a balance between the poles: nature and society. The great revolutions that are happening today in science will promptly, when applied in production and industry, effect a fundamental change in the relationship of civilization to organic forces. Modern scientific research (for example, in atomic theory) hints at the forthcoming biomechanical civilization. However, a return to nature in any ideological sense is excluded. It is about a technological adjustment to nature. Nature is not just a symbol of beauty. It is primarily a symbol of constructive force. Does the organism of modern architecture not resemble today the organism of man? The skeleton is inside, and the outer surface is a thin skin. In this respect, medieval architecture, which we often label as fortress-like, is distant from the constructive principles of nature. If it cannot compete with today's 60-meter-high factory chimneys, with New York skyscrapers, with 100-meter-high concrete antennas, with 300-meter-high Eiffel Tower, neither can these compete with the structure of a stalk of grain. A steel needle revealed under a microscope magnifying 200 times shows how it is rough and blunt—while a wasp’s sting, magnified 200 times, is ideally pointed and precise. Tear-drop profiles taken from nature; the shape of birds and fish has determined the shapes of racing cars and airplanes. This "return to nature," of course, presupposes a perfect technical civilization. Until we had precise and perfect machines, we could enjoy the illusion that our needles are sharp. It requires a highly advanced civilization for us to perceive its imperfection.
A modern house, equipped with all mechanical comforts, will not have the character of a cumbersome apparatus: its supreme simplicity, demanded by mass production, will be more akin to Diogenes' barrel. In this supreme simplicity, relying on all the complexities of our civilization, lies the wisdom of modern times. In supreme artificiality, which harmonizes with living life, with nature and its forces.
The emergence of modern architecture dates back to the end of the 19th century. In Art Nouveau and "Jugendstil," we can see the first signs of the modern movement, although the forms are quite undefined and sometimes incorrectly conceived. The effort to replace historical styles with some "modern style" is false to the extent that "style" is understood as a specific formal, decorative, and ornamental order. The Secession's effort to replace the wardrobe of historical forms with modern decorative elements was misguided. However, despite this, in the works of van de Velde, Olbrich, and Endell, alongside the ballast of empty formalism, there is a clear effort toward technicism (use of new materials) that should not be overlooked. By the end of the century, modern architecture, which was just emerging, began to understand the need for strict formal asceticism, to limit and tame decorative fantasy and whim, asserting that simple fulfillment of the task is already a guarantee of the quality of the work. Otto Wagner declared in 1895: "Something 'impractical' cannot be beautiful." The confession of architectural modernity becomes functionalism and objectivity. Functionalism is being increasingly programmatically applied, and its concept is being more and more precisely defined, so that in the end all art and formalism will be erased from architecture.
The true initiators of modern architecture are in the Netherlands H. P. Berlage, in Germany Alfred Messel, in France Auguste Perret, in Austria Otto Wagner, and in America Arthur Sullivan. The modern movement firmly establishes its roots in all countries.
One of the first historically significant works of this architectural modernity is Berlage's Amsterdam Stock Exchange. The changes this work underwent from its initial proposal, still entirely academic and conceived in the spirit of Dutch Renaissance à la Cuypers' Amsterdam station or Rijksmuseum, to the resulting realization, where all historicism is almost eliminated or at least genuinely suppressed to a minimum and where, despite the chaotic floor plan, the beautiful hall with its glass and iron ceiling attests to the modern spirit of the building—these changes illustrate the rapid evolution of emerging modern architecture, showing how it managed to free itself from museal reminiscences. The program that Berlage defined for architecture in his lecture in Zurich in 1907 (published in Berlin in 1910) "Fundamentals and Development of Architecture" emphasizes the geometric nature of modern architectural form.
Similarly, Otto Wagner initially worked in the spirit of a certain Renaissance classicism. And what the Amsterdam Stock Exchange means for the Netherlands, Wagner created for Central Europe with his Vienna Postal Savings Bank from 1903, whose purely modern hall of iron and glass is at the time a record achievement and a more consistent solution than that of Berlage. Wagner summarized his theory on architecture in the book "On Modern Architecture", which at the time meant what Le Corbusier's book meant after the world war: Vers une architecture — that is: it was a revolutionary challenge. For Wagner, architecture is merely a clear specification and perfect fulfillment of purpose through appropriate choices of materials, light and economical, clever construction, and layout.
Alfred Messel did not escape the confines of historicism, and at a time when Wagner was making his decisive statement with his postal savings bank and the buildings of the Vienna underground, he returned again to traditionalism. However, he contributed through his work to the realization of a new architectural task and dared to seek a new building type, namely the department store. However, Messel did not create a distinctive type of department store. The Grand Magasin du Louvre in Paris, although in Empire style, is a more matter-of-fact solution for modern wholesale trade. It should be noted that the mature type of wholesale palace first appeared in Europe in France. This is Samaritaine by Frantz Jourdaine, an architecture of iron and glass, somewhat marred by Art Nouveau decorations, but still impressive in its constructive and layout boldness, as is Printemps, a commercial building with very modern layouts and a passéist façade.
Van de Velde occupies a special position in the beginnings of the new architectural modernity. Alongside Berlage, Wagner, and Perret, who are essentially rationalists, realists, and constructors, Velde is more of a romantic; romanticism leads him astray into decorative and formal whims. His relationship with the machine and technology, as we can read from his theoretical articles, remains purely aesthetic. He admires a transatlantic ship as the Parthenon for its grace and compositional proportions, sees the beauty of the machine’s plasticity, but does not understand, as an individualist, that the machine means: norm, type, collectivism. Even in 1914, at the Werkbund congress, he defeated under the banner of the freedom of individual artistic creativity the typified proposals of Muthesius and only after the war did he somewhat lean theoretically towards collectivism. The aesthetic admiration for the machine in Van de Velde is enthusiasm of a purely romantic nature and he is indeed the first representative of that machinist romanticism, that adoration of mechanics, that "machinolatria" and "mecanomania" that we encounter among futurists and those who understand the principles of constructivism formally and romantically. The romanticism in Van de Velde is only partially restrained by rationalism, and even so more in his theoretical studies than in building practice. Van de Velde often purely externall and unconsciously transfers the lines and shapes of mechanical objects to his buildings. Goncourt aptly labeled Velde's style as "Yachting style." Indeed, even the demolished Werkbund theater in Cologne from 1914, one of Van de Velde's most mature and substantial buildings, recalls the curves of cars or ships.
The influence of Velde's romanticism was rather disorienting for modern architecture and thus became an element of retardation. Van de Velde made the machine a professor of aesthetics. He saw in the machine a new formal principle, not a new working method. He saw in the machine a dynamic architecture; rightly so. But wrongly and illogically, he attempted to express movement in architecture. It is certain that dynamic architecture is a modern problem. However, to express movement through the play of plastic forms is a decorative formula just as superficial as the fashion of "expressing through construction." For it is about resolving, not about expressing and interpreting. Dynamic architecture is that which is truly in motion and whose forms are exactly defined by this motion. The curves and teardrop profiles of an airplane do not express motion, but, we would say, create motion; they are not an artistic composition, but the result of aerodynamic calculations. However, to interpret motion through architectural decoration is a delusional idea of the romantic theory of empathy. And the whole of Van de Velde's aesthetics is full of this romantic theory of empathy. And this leads to the beginning of that fantastic formal anarchy that culminates in the utopian architecture of expressionism. Finsterlin's stalactite and cave architecture, his "Selenglitschermühlensysteme," "Alpine Architektur" by Bruno Taut, Poelzig's design of the Salzburg Festival House, all these are consequences and echoes of Velde's Jugendstil. We have said that his influence acted on modern architecture in a disorienting way. We see this in nearly the entire Dutch romantic Amsterdam school Wendingen: de Klerk, van der Mey, Kramer, Wijdeveld, and others. We also see it in Mendelsohn, in whom we can often observe the influence of Velde, alongside that of exhibition architectures like Olbrich, while earlier the influence of Finsterlin was also noticeable: a purely artistic delight in curve. His Einstein Tower in Potsdam is more of a monument than an observatory and workshop. Externally and illogically applying aerodynamic curves of cars and airplanes to static architecture. Moreover, many modern German architects have succumbed more or less to the allure of Van de Velde's romantic theory.
Pure architecture, however, arose outside these artistic and aesthetic speculations. In the confusion of formal whims, modern people of sound sense and opinions began to draw attention to technical, engineering constructions, bridges, cranes, power plants. In industrial and utility architecture, the first specifically modern tasks, which had no analogies in the pre-machine era, brought forth the first specifically modern realizations in the first decade of the 20th century. Until now, European factories had mostly been mere dark, unattractive workshops, even if of enormous proportions. Architecturally, they were resolved as houses. It was not understood that new production processes would require workshops designed and arranged differently. In vol. II. "Jahrbuch des deutschen Werbundes 1913", Walter Gropius published a significant article "Die Entwickelung moderner Indusriebaukunst", in which he pointed out industrial architecture in America. Such grain silos by Washbury-Grosby Comp. in Minneapolis and Buffalo, the Olive Hill studios in California, power plants in Canada and power stations in South America, these are all works of engineers, not architects. The American influence, penetrating into Europe, led architects to appropriate the "aesthetics of the engineer." Peter Behrens, who began as a painter and later, as an architect of the Darmstadt group, long clung to the delusions of Art Nouveau decor and formalism, was called in 1907 by Emil Rathenau for artistic collaboration in the A.E.G. factories. His early and decoratively conceived works were characterized by a certain stereometric simplicity, yet they were more in the realm of graphics than architecture. But now he had to work with industry and for industry: this is the first case in our century where an architect works on typical things, not individual ones. Modern industry becomes the school of modern architecture. When from 1909 to 1912 Behrens took on the construction of large factory buildings for A.E.G., he did not yet solve the problem of the modern factory as matter-of-factly as American engineers did; his artistic convictions still interpret the task somewhat formalistically and stylistically, and the false pursuit of monumentality distorts the overall clear character of the buildings with vertical divisions. However, it should not be overlooked that here for the first time in Central Europe, the space of industrial operation was understood according to its specific purposes, that a true factory was realized here, made of iron, concrete, and glass, not just a house. Poelzig's chemical factory Milch & Comp. in Luban in Poznań is rather a "house"; it is not as consistent. And Poelzig himself, apparently under the influence of Van de Velde's romanticism, later retreated far from this relatively matter-of-fact and rational architecture, straying into expressionism, claiming that purpose is just a dreadful affix to an artistic work, that in architecture beauty and art begin only where we are not bound by purpose, where we build only to God. The lamentable result of such theories was the design for the Salzburg Festival House, realized in a form somewhat more rational than the one in which it was originally projected.
In contrast, the industrial buildings of Walter Gropius, realized in collaboration with Adolf Meyer, represent a significant advance over Behrens' works. The "Fagus" factory in Alfeld from 1913, the official building and machine hall for the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914, the design for the Kappe & Co. factory, the administrative building of the Ad. Sommerfeld factory—these are the first European non-decorative, non-formalist, but truly substantive, functional, and constructive buildings. Here, as also at Perret's "Ateliers H. Esders," American straightforwardness is achieved. The rejection of the false pathos of matter, which is detrimental to Behrens' work. The factory in Alfeld is the most modern and exemplary Central European factory until the war. Today, it has been surpassed by the buildings of the Turin automobile factory "Fiat," designed by engineers Matté and Truco, and then mainly by Gropius' new work: the buildings of "Bauhaus" in Dessau near Berlin. Additionally, it is worth mentioning the Dresden Fabrik Seck, which is the work of Fritz Kaldenbach.
The beginning and birth of modern French architecture can also be found in factory and industrial buildings, in buildings of functional character and engineering execution. The century that gave Paris its pompous Opera also crafted such substantive and technically sophisticated iron structures as the Pont des Arts, Halles Centrales, Galerie de Machines (which were spoiled by applied ornaments), and finally the Eiffel Tower. The true founder of French architecture, Auguste Perret, is a man of the genus of brilliant constructors like Eiffel or Freyssinet and at the same time an architect of such questionable formal taste as American architects. It is incomprehensible how one can damage the impressiveness of bold constructions with inappropriate decorative forms. Thus, for example, the Basilica in Raincy and the Champs Elysées theater are impaired; the interior of the Esders department store and the garages in rue Ponthieu are devoid of all accessories and as such belong among the most classical realizations of new architecture. Perret's contemporary, Tony Garnier, had ample opportunity to assert himself as a city builder in Lyon with large constructions, especially industrial ones. His architectural sensibility is of purely classical nature, and often modern and bold construction is externally covered with the architecture of a spirit modernized from antiquity. Of Garnier's works, one should above all mention his Hospital Grande Blanche in Lyon and his urban studies "Une cité industrielle", which are an important preparation for Le Corbusier's concepts of modern metropolis.
Modern European industrial architecture, especially German, was created under the healthy and enlightening influence of American engineering architecture. Yet the resolution of the main problem, the proper problem of architecture, namely that of the residential house, also became a matter in America. The problem of the residential house does not seem to fit within the framework of a discussion about utility buildings. Yet it was precisely in America that it was resolved as a problem of utility construction. The residential building was also conceived as a "Zweckbau." Wright, a pupil of Sullivan, substantially advanced the development of the floor plan of modern housing. Since the 1890s to the present, he has created a series of exemplary, freely developed floor plans. His villas and country houses of a horizontal character, with flat, far-protruding roofs, are merely a practical organization of freely divided spaces. Wright's merit is that he carried out a fundamental reform of housing under the discernible influence of Japanese residential culture; the homes he realized stand out for their functional beauty of open and closed spatial systems: rooms opening onto balconies and terraces, verandas integrating into interiors—continuity of the exterior and interior, greenery, air, sunlight—this is the Wright house. This concept of the residential house exerted an almost authoritative influence in Europe, and thus the magnus parens of all modern residential architecture is Wright. Modern Dutch architecture is, after all, to some extent Wright's school.
Le Corbusier's buildings are indeed to this day a record achievement in European modern architecture. Continuing on the path initiated by Wright, Le Corbusier arrived at the creation of a definitive type of modern dwelling, a type that is significantly more economical and popular than Wright's relatively luxurious villas. In the quest for economization and production perfection, Le Corbusier, like Gropius, arrives at the necessity of producing houses serially, industrializing construction. In contrast to Gropius and many contemporary architects, Le Corbusier still understands architecture as an art, as a visual work. He does emphasize, however, that architecture as an art begins only when all practical considerations have been accounted for and that without perfect fulfillment of practical functions, aesthetic values cannot be realized at all. Constructivists will argue against Le Corbusier that beauty and aesthetic value in architecture is already present in the perfect realization of a given task. If Berlage recommended geometric ornament, as geometric shapes are not individual and are inherently beautiful, Le Corbusier adopts geometric rules as aesthetic standards of architecture: diagonal rhythm, right angles, golden ratio, etc. He applies Cézanne's principle of the sphere, cone, and cylinder to architecture and notes that geometric forms are not only beautiful but the most beautiful of all.
While Le Corbusier often emphasizes the artistic elements redundantly in his theories, Adolf Loos proclaims with the utmost emphasis absolute artistic atheism and nihilism in architecture. For over 25 years, he has been combating the view of architecture as a visual art. His (sensible and concrete) approach to architecture as a science and craft, his resistance against aesthetics and decorativeness, as he formulated in his lectures published in book form "Ins Leere gesprochen", has become the foundational truth of contemporary constructivist architecture. Modern architectural theory recognizes as its predecessor and founder Adolf Loos, who fundamentally proclaimed the separation of architecture from so-called art. "Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: a tombstone and a monument. Everything else that serves a purpose should be excluded from the domain of art," Loos wrote in 1911.
Constructivist architecture in Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia accepted this Loosian negation of architecture as an art form. Constructivism even signifies a denial of the very concept of "art." The Russian engineer Lapshin correctly states that "there is no architecture as an art of construction in itself; there is only uniform, strictly scientific construction." The new architectural generation stands on the basis of objectivity. It rejects all aesthetic speculation, all doctrine, and all formalism—as Mies v. d. Rohe proclaims. This means that a priori aesthetic speculation is rejected, but not aesthetic laws. For the requirement of order is an elementary and fundamentally aesthetic demand.
Adolf Behne distinguishes in his significant monograph on modern industrial architecture "Der moderne Zweckbau" two opposing directives in constructivism, whose conflict is not, in our view, as principled as Behne interprets. The discord lies in realizations that incorrectly apply the principles of constructivism, not in the principles themselves. Behne therefore distinguishes between utilitarianism, which seeks the most practical solution, and functionalism, which seeks the essentially most accurate solution. However, there is no contradiction as long as "principled accuracy is not understood romantically and metaphysically, as long as the factual purpose and mere meaning are not confused—and on the other hand, 'practical solutions' must not mean complying with petty-bourgeois demands, a compromise in relation to given circumstances. The demand for functionality must be accepted without reservation, but it must be clear that the purpose itself is nothing frozen, completed, unchangeable, but a means that can be deepened, refined, made precise—that in short, it is up to the architect not just to comply with the purpose, but to rearticulate it clearly and accurately, even to create it. It could perhaps be said that to the extent that the purpose creates new architecture, architecture creates new purposes. A house is merely a tool. Its form is evolving and not definitive. A house grows from its living process, hence it also happens over time. Here the functionalist concept meets, on the one hand, with dynamism and the theory of space-time, and on the other hand, with biological relativism. Modern biologists, e.g., Jennings, define an animal as a "happening." Dynamism in architecture is not to be expressed externally, as Velde and his followers did, especially the futurist Virgilio Marchi. The dynamism of architecture primarily signifies the nature of a lively and formative floor plan, which serves as a kind of channel for the movement of life. Dynamism does not mean surrogacy and formal stylization of movement, but concrete, factual movement, change in space and in time.
Functionalists believe that a perfect house would be one that grows organically like a plant. Indeed, one could speak here of a highly civilized "return to nature." A stalk of grain is an example of construction. Mollusks and shells are living spaces. The magazine "Wendingen" reproduced a series of beautiful shells, just as "l'Esprit Nouveau" reproduced a series of beautiful machines. The teaching of the machine has been formulated. Now, functionalists are trying to formulate the teaching of the shell, i.e., the lesson of nature, biological perspective on architecture. They point out that orthogonal space, straight lines, etc., are not functional shapes but mechanical. From the perspective of function, regular geometric space is nonsensical: its corners are useless dead spaces. Boundary the actively used, truly functioning space of a room, and you obtain an irregular curve. In organic life, it is claimed, there are neither straight lines nor right angles. This emphasis on functional curves has shaped the architectural projects of young Germans like Richard Döcker, Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun, Adolf Rading, and others. Tatlin’s Tower of the III International develops its spiral form on the basis of a dynamic moment. It is true that a single spatial cell is not economical if it is orthogonal; the actual utility space describes itself more with a curve—but the shells and mollusks referenced here as examples are merely individual spaces. However, when it comes to the collective arrangement of functional spaces—and this is the true architectural task—the outcome is the opposite; individual natural organisms are indeed curved—but in the beehive, in its wax honeycombs, geometry reigns.
The theory of modern architecture must find the right relationship to nature and to society. Man is the measure of all things, and man is nature. But society arises from people and is organized according to human production, which subjugates nature. The machine is not a symbol of modernity for its external beauty and elegant form; the machine is on the one hand a perfectly functioning organism (one might say: a natural force of human origin), while on the other hand a saving of force, time, and labor. And the seeming theoretical conflict between functionalism and utilitarianism, as Behne outlines it, can be resolved by finding a balance between the poles: nature and society. The great revolutions that are happening today in science will promptly, when applied in production and industry, effect a fundamental change in the relationship of civilization to organic forces. Modern scientific research (for example, in atomic theory) hints at the forthcoming biomechanical civilization. However, a return to nature in any ideological sense is excluded. It is about a technological adjustment to nature. Nature is not just a symbol of beauty. It is primarily a symbol of constructive force. Does the organism of modern architecture not resemble today the organism of man? The skeleton is inside, and the outer surface is a thin skin. In this respect, medieval architecture, which we often label as fortress-like, is distant from the constructive principles of nature. If it cannot compete with today's 60-meter-high factory chimneys, with New York skyscrapers, with 100-meter-high concrete antennas, with 300-meter-high Eiffel Tower, neither can these compete with the structure of a stalk of grain. A steel needle revealed under a microscope magnifying 200 times shows how it is rough and blunt—while a wasp’s sting, magnified 200 times, is ideally pointed and precise. Tear-drop profiles taken from nature; the shape of birds and fish has determined the shapes of racing cars and airplanes. This "return to nature," of course, presupposes a perfect technical civilization. Until we had precise and perfect machines, we could enjoy the illusion that our needles are sharp. It requires a highly advanced civilization for us to perceive its imperfection.
A modern house, equipped with all mechanical comforts, will not have the character of a cumbersome apparatus: its supreme simplicity, demanded by mass production, will be more akin to Diogenes' barrel. In this supreme simplicity, relying on all the complexities of our civilization, lies the wisdom of modern times. In supreme artificiality, which harmonizes with living life, with nature and its forces.
The English translation is powered by AI tool. Switch to Czech to view the original text source.
0 comments
add comment
