Making in Architecture
“Making in architecture has been defined as the process of conception, creation and realization of a building design. In the early part of the twentieth century, ‘Making’ has been mediated by the presence of a modern consciousness that responds to a new reality.”
From this point on, this paper will be about this paper. The intent of this paper is to discuss the new reality in the terms of Architecture of the early twentieth century. This is a Modernist thought process; the reality of this paper is that the past must be referenced to validate the content. The early twentieth century brought about a new thought process in Architecture, Modernism, which included styles such as futurism, constructivism and purism. This modern consciousness changed the reality of ‘Making’ in architecture, but what was this new reality? How was this new work conceived, created and realized? What were the factors behind these changes?
We are looking at a shift in the way the world thought. This shift was made possible by asking the right question: How? This question alone brought about consciousness in reason, the laws of nature and the order of the universe. Man had discovered that, “though one cannot know the truth, man can at least know what he makes himself”. By asking How instead of What, homo faber (man the maker) proceeded down a path of discovery and development by discontinuing the linear nature of the past to the present. This Modern movement dealt with a self-referential nature in architecture, looking onto itself for answers. By architecture referencing itself and not history, gave intent to the ‘Making’ of architecture as well as giving it a direction. The break from history, self-referential signs, progressive experience of a building by movement and volume in architecture all show the language of this new reality.
Mass production and standardization of the Industrial Revolution brought the Purism, the Bauhaus and the International Style into the vanguard of this new reality in ‘Making’. The industrial revolution influenced the Bauhaus that based the work of ‘Making’ as a team-work effort or an industrial production. A statement from the Bauhaus talked of this, “Building should be the result of a collective effort and that each artist-craftsman should contribute his part with full awareness of its purpose in relation to the whole building”. Conception of design for the French Purists like Le Corbusier contained principals of Architecture as a volume rather than a mass and regularity rather than axial symmetry for means of ordering. Purism by definition breaks down to the reduction of all buildings to the basic geometric shapes of rectangle, plane surface, cube and cylinder. The Bauhaus thinkers also used the universal truth or pure geometry and object type, although abstract painting influenced and not the cubism of the Purists. The Bauhaus thinkers with the influence of constructivist design dealt with structure and the space it occupies. In contrast, Mies van der Rohe used walls as a device for direction and to define space instead of using them as a load bearing piece of a building as seen in Classical Architecture.
Creation for the International Style dealt with the following main objects: pilotis, continuous strips of fenestration, glass walls and flat roofs. “More than a revolution in building technique, though its characteristic effects of hovering volumes and interpenetrating planes admittedly relied on the machine-age materials of concrete, steel and glass”. The thin Pilotis we used to show they did not have to support a heavy mass from the volume above, usually a concrete geometric shape, like as seen in Poissy, France with Villa Savoye. The ribbon windows were created to show that the wall was a non-load bearing object and acted more as the tightly wrapped skin around the structure. These principals were used as an exaggeration of the idea, to drive the point home. The Bauhaus statement regarding creation stated, “We aim to create, organic architecture whose inner logic will be radiant and naked, unencumbered by lying facings and trickery; we want architecture adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars…with the increasing strength of the new materials – steel, concrete, glass – and with the new audacity of engineering, the ponderousness of the old methods of building is giving way to a new lightness and airiness”. The Bauhaus had to deal with ruins of a defeated nation in Germany as well as the financial effects of the war, Walter Gropius said of this, “The benumbered world is shaken up, the old human spirit is invalidated and in flux towards a new form”. The new form was a horizontal layering of space and the expression of hovering planes, the building as a whole being formed on cantilevered trays on pillars with brackets. The use of marble, steel and glass with the design of a recessed column line eliminated the vertical corner line and expressed the horizontal nature as well as showing a continuation of material.
The realization of Architects like Le Corbusier was that the “vast imaginative world included a vision of the ideal city, a philosophy of nature and a strong feeling for the Classical tradition”. The Modernists of this time were based in thought of a self-referential nature, but the past can be seen as the reference for aspects of most designs of that period, including Le Corbusier use of the golden section and human scale ordering. The modern use of these principals can not be critiqued in a traditional manner to understand, one must see the intention behind the idea. Modern architecture is also a style that cannot be totally realized without the movement of the observer. The progressive experience of a building is accomplished only by movement of the observer. One must move through spaces to fully understand it as the building reveals itself or as in a panoramic operation. The constructivists realized that with mass production becoming the overriding force in construction that “efficiency for its purpose” became their motto. They also realized that buildings had a formal relationship between structure and the space it occupies.
There was a new reality in the early twentieth century in terms of ‘Making’ and the new reality it created. By discussing what caused this movement, what factors went into changing the world’s views and showing how different styles of Architectural thought in that period all used similar aspects for ‘Making’. It can be said that the Modern movement in the early twentieth century can be defined as a method of thinking that breaks away from history, uses self-referential signs, shows progressive expression of a building by movement and has a notion of volume. To end with a quote of Mies van der Rohe which is commonly misused, “Less is More”, the truth and purity of this paper is completed by the lack of that which is not essential.
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Trachtenberg, Marvin and Hyman, Isabelle. Architecture: From Prehistory to Post-Modernism. Netherlands: Harry N. Abrams, B.V. 1986.
Posted in Architectural Theory and tagged architecture, bauhaus, constructivists, development, Discussion, golden section, history, homo faber, industry, international style, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, modern, modernists, organic architecture, pilotis, purism, purists, review, style, technology, theory, twentieth century, villa savoye, Walter Gropius by Studio Render with 77 comments.
