History of Architecture - Essay Example

Cicely Natasha Sugito Dianne Ghirardo ARCH 441 – History of Architecture As a proponent of Architectural Realism, Otto Wagner was interested in urbanplanning. Although Wagner began as a traditional architect, he promoted the transition from historicism to the idea of an architecture that spoke to its time. As an architect, Wagner began his career with buildings that were designed in the conventional Baroque and neo-classical styles. Wagner attempted to turn away from the accepted traditional forms of architecture by bringing together structural rationalism and technology. However, he retained a sense of historicism and eclecticism. (Wagner 21). Wagner’s architectural style embraced and clearly manifested a distinct change in traditional and the emergence of purpose built buildings. The church at Vienna’s Steinhoff sanitarium, the Postal savings Bank and several entrances for Vienna’s city railway are some of Wagner’s most memorable buildings. (100) . The belief of art having purpose was expressed when he stated, “ The practical element in man, which is particularly pronounced, is evidently here to stay and every architect is going to have to come to grips with the postulate, a thing that is unpractical cannot be beautiful” (100). In the exploration of the idea of modernity in architecture, he used the designs of his own buildings, where he used new technology, materials and simpler ornamentation. The Postal Savings Bank is seen as an important early work of modern architecture. This represented Wagner’s move from Neoclassicism. The building was constructed using reinforced concrete. Square marble plates cover the façade attached to the man brick structure with mortar and ornamented with iron bolts with aluminum caps. The picture below shows the exterior of the main façade of the Postal Savings Bank. . The ideas of Jugendstil were represented in Wagner’s work in the 1980’s. Other architects seemed to set him apart because of his perspective on industrialization that meant the use of machine aesthetic, glorification of technological advancements and the incorporation of new materials such as iron in his architectural work. This incorporation of an open metallic crown with floral decoration that topped the main building in his 1897 project for an Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna was noticeably a modern element. The use of symbols of industrialization as decoration and using and exposing lightning bolt heads was evident in his work. In his book, Modern Architecture, that supports an architecture that is based on modern materials and modern construction methods, he states, “… All modern forms must be in harmony with the new requirements of our time…” (Wagner 23). Wagner dispensed with almost all ornamentation and used materials in their simplest forms that show a simple but effective blending of plan space and materials in his works. Although Wagner advocated for modern architecture his work had elements of traditional architecture such as the church of the Steinhoff, one of Wagner’s works, was a large cruciform structure with a hemispherical dome raised on a cylindrical drum and it had many decorations had (Otto, 30). The Postal Savings Bank in Vienna was characterized by “linearity, smoothness and crispness of design in which the external walls were covered by marble revetments held in place by exposed aluminum fastenings, while in the interior Wagner elegantly used exposed metal and glass”. (Otto, 43). Wagner set forth a functionalist message that, modern art must yield for us modern ideas, forms created for us, which represent our abilities, our acts and our preferences. The efforts by Wagner to modernize architecture were instilled in his students at the Vienna Academy. The students eventually seceded from what they thought to be false values of the Eclectic period. The reform of architectural practice and the establishment of modern design principles such as the honest use of materials especially steel and the preference of simplicity and clarity of form were the major goals of Wagner (43). Eugene Viollet-le-Duc a French theorist was the first theorist who aimed at creating a new system of architectural form that is independent of antiquity. He advocated the restoration of medieval buildings. He was widely involved in the Gothic Revival in France and emphasized honesty in architecture that transcended all revival styles to inform the strength of Modernism. Viollet’s restorations combined historical fact with creative modification (Robert, 15). His famous restorations include the clean up and update of Notre Dame hence the gaining of its third tower and the enhancement of the medieval fortified town of Carcassonne. According to Viollet-le-Duc, restoration is a “means to reestablish a building to a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time” (15). the initial aim of Viollet’s architectural restorations were to restore in the style of the original, but his later restorations showed that he often added entirely new elements of his own design. The fanciful reconstructions of Viollet to some extend render obscure the original form of the structure. Viollet-le- Duc did not create a timeless architectural style but showed others the philosophical foundation and methods that could be used. The theories that he exposed in his books were more influential than his construction work. Viollet-le-Duc developed his own design that people would consider beautiful. He used materials such as brick, cast iron elements and detail of steel constructions created by a design of indispensable diagonal trusses. According to Viollet’s theory, this decoration has a rational foundation. The philosophy of Viollet-le-Duc was used in Art Nouveau, the first architectural style independent of the tradition of antiquity in Europe that came after the Gothic style (Viollet-le-Duc, 50). Viollet- le-Duc aspired to develop a new architecture based only on facts and reasonable conclusions. Some of his arguments were, “A door ought to be made for going into a building or going out of it and the width of such door ought to be accommodated to the number of persons who have occasion to go in or out. However dense a crowd may be, the persons are always less than seven feet in height. To make a door five yards wide and ten high is so absurd” (80). He also argued that, a column is a support and not a decoration like a frieze or an arabesque. He could not understand why one would furnish his facades with the columns. According to Viollet-le-Duc, a cornice is intended to keep the water from the face of the wall, so it will lack meaning if you put a projecting cornice in an interior. Viollet-le-Duc did not apply his theories himself, but other architects applied most of his proposals for iron structures (Viollet-le-Duc, 80). Viollet’s architectural theory was largely based on finding the ideal forms for specific materials and using these forms to create buildings. In the cases of unbuilt projects for new buildings, Viollet-le-Duc used the lessons from Gothic architecture and its structural systems to modern building materials such as cast iron. His inspiration came from organic structures such as leaves, animal skeletons and the wings of bats as reflected in his Assembly Hall project (Viollet-le-Duc, 80). His drawings of iron truss work were innovative and influenced the Art Nouveau movement. Viollet argued that planning should be a rational process that begins with a functional program and proceeding in logical steps from plan to structure and then to elevation designs and decorations. Unlike the traditional method that begins with an ideal image and working from the outside in, his method was conceived as working from the inside out (Viollet-le-Duc, 97). The picture below was Viollet’s plan for a market hall. Wagner and Viollet-le-Duc supported the ideal of contemporary architecture geared to the needs of modern society. They advocated for the use of glass and iron in building and that architecture should be a direct expression of current materials, technology and functional needs. In conclusion, creating an architectural style that was distinct from eclecticism was Wagner’s goal. Nevertheless, this was not achieved as the language and points of reference he used were from an established tradition of architecture. In as much as his work was considered modern at that time, it still contained references to Classicism and neo-Renaissance. This resulted in his modern architecture arguments not to be completely distinct and leave the traditional architecture of the past. John Ruskin decried the type of restorations employed by Viollet-le-Duc stating that it is “a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered, a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed” (Viollet-le-Duc 35). Because Viollet-le-Duc refuted the challenge of his own ideas, he continued to design buildings in eclectic styles. Both Wagner and Viollet-le-Duc did not succeed to completely avoid using traditional architecture as reference to modern architecture. The preservation movement widely rejected Viollet’s methods because it threatened the autonomy of the observed historical past. Works cited Eugène-Emmanuel, Viollet-le-Duc. The foundations of architecture: selections from the Dictionnaire raisonné. Michigan: G. Braziller, 1990. Otto, Wagner. Modern architecture: a guidebook for his students to this field of art. Santa Monica: Getty Publications, 1988. Robert, Mark. Robert Willis, Viollet-le-Duc, and the structural approach to Gothic architecture. Princeton: Princeton University, 1976. Wagner, Otto. Geretsegger, Heinz, Otto Wagner 1841-1918: the expanding city, the beginning of modern architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1979. Read More