INTRODUCTION
Colin Rowe, in
his excellent introduction to the book Five
Architects, points out that one of the central intuitions of the modern movement
is the idea that any repetition, any copying or employment of precedent models
supposes a failure of creative acuity. As a consequence, he says, modern architecture
has set preeminent value upon 'discovery', while being unwilling to recognize it
as 'invention', and choosing to consider it instead as an objective, logical
and inevitable result of functional and technological facts.[1]
If we accept
that idea, says Rowe, then the buildings of the Five Architects can only be
regarded as a problem, not to say an anachronism, a heresy or, at least, a
frivolity: if the buildings of Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk and Meier are
today´s architecture, they should not look like the architecture of the 30s.
But there was
no need to wait for the New York Five to contemplate forms inspired by the
recent - or not so recent- past. As we shall see, the history of contemporary
architecture abounds from the first moment in examples of more or less literal
formal loans.
It is therefore
interesting to know the opinion about it all of Philip Johnson, who drank
abundantly of the works, the projects, the drawings and even the sketches of
Mies van der Rohe. In a session with architecture students at Harvard in
1954, Johnson takes a stand against what he calls 'The Seven Crutches of Modern
Architecture.'
The first is
the Crutch of History, whose authority was theoretically abolished by modern
architecture. The second one is the Crutch of Pretty Drawing, the cult of the
beautiful plan, forgetting that architecture is something you build. Regarding the
third one, the Crutch of Utility, Johnson points out that '..merely that a
building works is not sufficient: You expect that it works. You expect a
kitchen hot water faucet to run hot water these days.' [2] The fourth is the Crutch
of Comfort, which we would call sustainability today, and emphasizes the
aspects of environmental control. The Crutches of Cheapness and that of Serving
the Client are the following ones, and the last one is the Crutch of Structure,
that attempts to identify architecture and structural order.
In the end,
Johnson proposes to abandon all these crutches and face the real problem: The
act of creation, which like birth and death everyone has to face on their own.
And nothing is better for it, says, than Le Corbusier´s definition of architecture:
L'architecture, c'est le jeux, savant,
correct et magnifique, des formes sous la lumière.
After asserting
that architecture is first and foremost an art, Philip Johnson ends up defining
himself as a traditionalist who believes in History, and clarifies how he understands
that act of creation 'I do not strive for originality. As Mies once told me:
"Philip, it is much better to be good than to be original". I believe
that. We have very fortunately the work of our spiritual fathers to build on.
We hate them, of course, as all spiritual sons hate all spiritual fathers, but
we can´t ignore them, nor can we deny their greatness. The men, of course, that
I refer to: Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. I should
include Frank Lloyd Wright -the greatest architect of the nineteenth century.'
[3]
The commentary
about Wright, so malicious, could have been perfectly signed by Truman Capote.
In any case, as we shall see, Johnson managed with these assumptions to carry
out a work that is much more than a footnote to Mies's.
On the other
hand, it is not surprising that Mies took away the importance of originality,
since, despite being an extraordinary creator, he devoted eagerly to plagiarize
himself, especially in his last years´ work: As he said, you can not invent a
new architecture every Monday.
So we have an
old architecture, made at the beginning of the 20th century, which continues to
look modern to us, and for lack of a better name we continue to call it 'modern
architecture', and we continue to see in it a formal reference, a basic material
for our designs.
Colin Rowe has
explained better than anyone the reason for this: 'rather than constantly to
endorse the revolutionary myth, it might be more reasonable and more modest to
recognize that, in the opening years of this century, great revolutions in
thought occurred and that then profound visual discoveries resulted, that these
are still unexplainaed, and that rather than assume intrinsic change to be the prerogative
of every generation, it might be more useful to recognize that certain changes
are so enormous as to impose a directive which cannot be resolved in any
individual life span'. [4]
The
architectural works that are compared in the following pages sometimes look a
lot like each other and sometimes they just share something. Many of the comparisons
have already been made, and some of them, like that of the Farnsworth House with
the Glasshouse, are already classic chapters in the history of architecture. Kenneth
Clark pointed out, in his study about Leonardo, that every work of art needs to
be interpreted anew for each generation. Without aspiring to so much, what we intend
is to add something to what has already been written and, above all, watch together
architectural works that have had, so to speak, offspring.
The offspring are
always motley. In any family portrait we can observe that the children's traits
usually preserve the beauty of their parents, and even improve them. But other
times, on the other hand, we only perceive in those traits a pale reflection of
that beauty.
Some of the
works we present in this book are a kind of bootlegs, discards, lines that the
architect has not followed. It is the case of the buildings by Philip Johnson,
Luigi Moretti, I. M. Pei or Nikos Valsamakis shown here, which make us wish
that they would have followed that same line in other works.
Dennis Sharp
wrote in 1972 A Visual History of Twentieth-Century
Architecture, a book that I have taken many times from the bookshelf, which
makes a rewiew to the best buildings of the period 1900-1960 grouped by decades,
presenting them by means of a single black and white photo and at best a plan.
Almost all of the buildings which I still appreciate from those that appear in
that book appear also here, and, as opposite to the noise and graphic verbiage
of some current publications, I was attracted to the idea of a book with many celebrated
buildings and few images, in black and white, of each one. [5]
Initially, my
intention was to write a book in favor of second-rate architects, and show
excellent but little-known architectures. However, almost without realizing it,
Le Corbusier and, above all, Mies van der Rohe, have ended up appropriating the
leading role of this book. I have also noticed, with some surprise, that towers
are a type of building that interests me more than I thought.
I must clarify
that, in many cases, I will comment on buildings that I have not seen
personally. It has not been possible for me to do the same as Willam Curtis,
who in the prologue to his excellent book on Le Corbusier tells that, after
encountering at the school library, when he was fifteen, with the Oeuvre Complete and its white villas,
big black cars and pen drawings, he felt driven to hitchiking to see it all by
himself.
Anyway, in today´s
world of overabundance of images of all kinds on any subject, I do not think
I'm committing a too serious sin: we are not in 1929, when Le Corbusier showed
in his Oeuvre Complete black and white photos of the villa Savoye, hidding
everything that he considered necessary to hide. I have of course some doubts
about it, that assault me, for instance, when I see how small Peter Palumbo
seems to be sitting on the outside platform of the Farnsworth House. Anyway, I
solemnly promise to see as soon as I can all the buildings that I have not seen
yet, and to rewrite the whole book if it were necessary as a consequence of it.
The masterpiece
of comparative architecture is probably Colin Rowe's essay The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, where he analyzes a work of the
Renaissance, the Villa Malcontenta by Palladio and another modernist one, Villa
Stein (Garches) by Le Corbusier. I do not think it necessary to warn the reader
that nothing that is written here approaches even remotely the excellence of
that essay, but if it serves to awake an interest to read it or, better yet, to
read everything that Colin Rowe wrote, I will be satisfied.
Peter Palumbo, the real estate developer from London
who bought the Farnsworth house in 1962, sitting on the outside platform.
The phantom piloti.
Photos
of Villa Savoye (Oeuvre Compète, Le
Corbusier).
In photo 1, which is a distant view of the south façade, we can see, in
the extreme vain on the left, an additional piloti
breaking the module, white and aligned with the others. In photo 2, which shows
from the inside the pilotis of the
south facade, this phantom pillar appears as black coloured. In photo 3, which
is a close view of the south façade, the shadow of the upper part of the
phantom piloti indicates a setback of
that pillar, contradictory with the position seen at its base.
NOTAS:
NOTAS:
1. Rowe, Colin, 'Introduction', in Five
Architects. Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, Oxford University
Press, New York, 1972, pp. 3-7.
2. Johnson, Philip, 'The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture', Perspecta, 3, 1955, pp. 40-45. Wright did not fall short either:
Johnson complains that he said that his Glasshouse was a monkey cage for a
monkey.
3. Johnson, Philip, ibid.
4. Rowe, Colin, op. cit.
5. The subtitle of the book where all the texts are included, Scattered
Observations on Resembling Buildings, is inspired by the one from the book Todo es comparable by Oscar Tusquets: Observaciones dispersas sobre el arte como disciplina
útil (Dispersed Observations on Art as a Useful Discipline),
which shows that this architect, although no longer so enfant, remains as terrible as
always he has been, fortunately for those of us who enjoy his writing.