Klein Penthouse (unbuilt) LOT-EK

The firm’s Klein Penthouse was an unbuilt concept for a photographer with a site in New York’s Meat Packing District. Set atop the large flat expanse of a relatively low-rise building, the project again took the shipping container as the central architectural element. On this occasion, however, rather than inserting the container into an existing building, the rooftop was to be reconfigured to reflect the container’s decidedly nonstatic origins.

The roofscape was to be laid out with six lanes, mimicking a parking lot. White kerbs separated each lane, and the roofing membrane was composed of black outdoor rubber granules. Three irregularly spaced zones – one each of grass, pebbles and water – formed the landscaping, while the accommodation took the shape of an 8 meters (26 foot) long truck container connected directly to the photographer’s studio on the floor below.

Intentions in Architecture by Christian Norberg-Schulz – Published within a few years of Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of the City and Robert Ventun’s Complexity and Contradiction, Christian Norberg-Schulz’ (b 1926) Intentions in Architecture is equally a reaction against Modernism, in particular as realized after the War. Norberg-Schulz begins the book with an extended argument suggesting that the perception of form has a cultural basis and meaning in architecture is the result of cultural intentions. The task of the architect is then to work within the network of those intentions.

We are here faced with basic problems which involve a revision of the aesthetic dimension of architecture. How can architecture again become a sensitive medium, able to register relevant variations in the building tasks and at the same time maintain a certain visual order? A new aesthetic orientation transcending the arbitrary play with forms is surely needed, although it is not claimed that the result should resemble the styles of the past. Undoubtedly we need a formal differentiation of the buildings corresponding to the functional differences of the building tasks. But so far we have not found any answer to the question of whether the differentiation should also acquire a symbolizing aspect by the assignment of particular forms to particular functions with the purpose of ‘representing’ a cultural structure. So far modern architecture has had the character of a ‘belief’ rather than a worked-out method based on a clear analysis of functional, sociological, and cultural problems … (p18)

The Problem
What we need is a conscious clarification of our problems, that is, the definition of our building tasks and the means to their solution . . . What purpose has architecture as a human product? . . . How does architecture (the environment) influence us? . . .

To give the questions about the purpose and effects of architecture a basis, it is necessary to inquire whether particular forms ought to be correlated with particular tasks. We thus have to ask: Why has a building from a particular period a particular form? This is the central problem in architectural history as well as in architectural theory. We do not intend that the study of history should lead to a new historicism based on a copying of the forms of the past. The information given by history should above all illustrate the relations between problems and solution, and thus furnish an empirical basis for further work. If we take our way of putting the problem as a point of departure for an investigation of architecture’s (changing) role in society, a new and rich field of study is laid open?

On a purely theoretical level we gain knowledge about the relation between task and solution. But this knowledge may also be incorporated into a method which helps us in solving concrete problems, and which might facilitate the historical analysis going from the solution back to the task. The historical analysis orders our experience and makes the judgment of solutions possible. All in all we arrive at a theory treating architectural problems … (pp21-24)

Architecture is explicitly a synthetic activity which has to adapt itself to the form of life as a whole. This adaptation does not request that every work should be related to the total whole. The individual work concretizes secondary wholes, but because it belongs to an architectural system, it participates in a complete concretization. New concretizations can neither imitate the past, nor break completely with tradition. They are dependent upon the existence of symbol-systems which are capable of development. This implies that we should conserve the structural principles of tradition rather than its motives … (p188)

The modem movement is the only true tradition of the present because it understands that historical continuity does not mean borrowed motives and ideals, but human values which have to be conquered in always new ways…

Modern forms have developed through experimentation and the fight against borrowed motives. But they have never been ordered, they have never become a real formal language. This is the basic problem that the present generation of modern architects has to face, and it can only be solved through the formation of types. The types must be interrelated in such a way that they form a hierarchy corresponding to the task-structure. (pp206-207)

Extracts. Source: Christian Norberg-Schulz, Intentions in Architecture, MIT Press (Cambridge Mass). 1977. ? 1977 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. First published in 1965 simultaneously in Oslo, Norway, for Scandinavian University Books by Universitetsforlagel. in the United Kingdom by George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, and in the United States b. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Haus Trub

The method culminates in a unique design marked by a horizontal exterior volume which, by and large, relies on a modernist language. Extensive glazed areas on the home’s exterior unveil a space which has been sliced up inside, thereby revealing the application of Matta Clark’s train of thought.

Patriarch, View from Patriarkh Ponds

The architectural character of the environs has rubbed off on this new building. A corner edifice, it has incorporated the dominant style of the immediate surroundings. The building takes on a quality embodied in its high ceilings and latticed windows and unites classical elements with those of early modernism in a contemporary structure. The generous loggias in the facade, which is structured with columns, pilasters and ornate shoulder pieces, are particularly striking.

Main Elevation Detail of Patriarch

Sir Benjamin Baker, Firth of Forth Bridge, Edinburgh, 1882-89

The bridge is composed of three giant units supported by pylons over a total length of about 2,500 meters; it was perfectly suited to the many visionary works of the period and was immediately popular Very few people criticized the bridge’s appearance, but among them was William Morris, one of the fathers of modernism, who called it ‘the supremest specimen of all ugliness?.

An ideological clash among generations occurred in the Modern Movement’s co-ordinating organization CIAM in the mid 1950s. A group of younger architects felt that the older Modernists were too doctrinaire and that their architecture was both impersonal and inflexible. Thus, CIAM was superseded by “Team 10″, which included Aldo Van Eyck (Holland), Georges Candilis (France), Ralph Erskine (Sweden), Reima Pietila (Finland) and Alison and Peter Smithson (Britain). The latter were closely associated with the social content of architecture, with questions of “identity” in buildings and the so-called “New Brutalism”. This term seems to have derived from two main sources: Le Corbusier’s use of beton brut and its tough appearance, and the exposed services and materials of its key monument, a new school at Hunstanton, Norfolk, in 1957 by the Smithsons. The term is also often applied to the unadorned raw concrete of buildings like the London South Bank complex (including Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre). It heralded one aspect of a new era, while another was the “free-form” design of Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel, the originality and freshness of which surprised even the young revolutionaries. It led to a host of free architectural compositions from Saarinen’s TWA terminal in New York, and Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, to Ton Albert’s HMB buildings in Amsterdam.

The Pompidou Centre in Paris by Piano and Rogers represented a break in another direction. As a museum it was to be viewed as a cultural “machine”. One of the first major essays in the new “High-Tech” manner in the history of architecture, it was rooted in the science fiction ideas of the British ARCHIGRAM group of designers. Engineering, or High- Tech, architecture carries on the Modernist tradition of the simple functional shed, albeit with external guts or services a la Lloyds Building in London, also by Richard Rogers.

In the 1970s while the Western world cowered behind economic barriers and experienced deep recession, the oil-rich states commandeered the architecture and planning principles of mature Modernism. The Arab countries produced developments (and Utopias) employing the skills of talented Western architects such as Jorn Utzon, Henning Larson, Reima Pietila, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and James Cubitt. The international promise of modern architecture became a reality in the Middle East.

In poorer developing countries sprawling squatter areas grew into monster slums and the United Nations saw fit to hold influential conferences on environmental issues, as well as setting up a number of regional environmental centres. More generally people began to view the impact of urban expansion and the new technologies on their environment and found it wanting. The narrowing of resources, the burgeoning population question, and the ever-present threat of nuclear war all caused much concern.

The self-build city Arcosanti by Soleri in Arizona (begun in 1969) and projects such as the Anthroposophical Seminary in Jarna, Sweden (begun in 1976), and the “spiritual” centres in America, Scotland and India all contributed to a new sensibility in their attempts to humanize design. They proved to be small pockets of resistance to the prevailing commercial developments and to doctrinaire Functionalism. In a sense they were also early components of the embryonic “green” movement. They also represented a new interest in “natural” design, and in organic architecture coupled with environmental betterment. Organic architecture, which derives largely from Frank Lloyd Wright, is concerned with respect for natural materials, the sympathetic siting of buildings and new spatial principles, as can be seen in Douglas Cardinal’s Canadian Museum.

In sharp contrast to this tendency is the interest in “Deconstruction”: a literary method applied to art and architecture in the work of Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman and others whose projects were featured in a Deconstructivist exhibition in New York in 1987. It relates in some ways to earlier Soviet Constructivist design with its dynamic planar emphasis, but is also redolent with new ideas.

The strongest tendency of the past decade, however, has undoubtedly been the resurgence of the technically dominated High- Tech mode of design in the history of architecture. This is seen particularly in the work of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Philip Cox, Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw and Michael Hopkins whose influence still continues to dominate today’s architectural thinking and practice.

As the 19th century progressed, the emblematic side of architecture became diffused. It was under threat from both the new technological building world which ascribed little importance to it and from an accompanying loss of faith in the need for “one true style”. Lightly adopted styles were used with considerable abandon, often only reflecting a weak association of ideas, such as “Classical” for learning or “Gothic” for religion. Many were troubled by this and fine architects felt hopelessly lost. “In what style should we build?” moaned one German, and the question summed up the dilemma. In England, A. W. N. Pugin and then John Ruskin argued for true principles in design and moral rules for honest building. Their exemplar was medieval ecclesiastical society and its buildings; true Gothic, they believed, would be an appropriate reflection of an honest modern society. But this approach to design, in which it was treated as a moral issue (an attitude which reappeared later in Modernism) could not ultimately prevail, and the so-called Battle of the Styles continued to be fought.

The engineering exploitation of new situations, however, was self-confident enough to ignore any concern for cultural reference. The completely new forms, such as stations, exhibition halls, exchanges and arcades, which were unprecedented in spatial terms as well as rich in constructional ideas, were virtually drained of architecture’s traditional emblematic role. More importantly, they were usually also rather crude as instruments.

Architects, on the other hand, sometimes designed a brilliant instrument, but went too far with the emblematic content. Charles Garnier’s Opera in Paris, for example, is a magnificent and complex articulation of a difficult requirement, but the building’s lavish ornament is at odds with its precisely articulated form.

This looseness of emblem which decorated so much 19th-century architecture is seen both in the fashion for the exotic styles brought back from the colonies and in the exported imperial culture. Through the century Britain built in Bombay an “Ionic” mint (1829), a “Doric and Corinthian” town hall (1825-33), “Early English” high courts, a “Renaissance” telegraph office, a “Venetian gothic” secretariat (1874), a “15th-century French decorated” university hall and finally a “14th-century Flanders” library designed by Scott. Meaningless fancy-dress, it was particularly tasteless, given India’s own ancient cultural heritage.

Mies’s treatment of living space as a single transparent volume provoked harsh criticism as well as praise. House Beautiful editor Elizabeth Gordon attacked the International Style as un-American in an April 1953 article entitled “The Threat to the Next America.” Gordon blasted what she called a “self-chosen elite” of museum curators, academics, and architectural critics for promoting the most extreme forms of Modern Archtiecture such as the Farnsworth House:

They are all trying to sell the idea that “less is more,” both as a criterion for design, and as a basis for judgment of the good life. They are promoting unlivability, stripped-down emptiness, lack of storage space and therefore lack of possessions.
(Gordon. p. 128)

Gordon’s essay serves as a reminder that even during the postwar decades when modernism constituted the dominant model for design thinking, it did not go unchallenged. If history is to provide an intelligible portrait of complexity, then episodes of resistance as well as acceptance must be included in the account.