The Notion of Type and its Importance in the 20th Century - Dissertation Example

The Notion of Type and its Importance in the 20th Century The notion of type was first introduced by A. C. Quatremère de Quincy in the field of architecture at the 18th century. Quatremère de Quincy described the type in his Encyclopédie, published in 1825, as the ‘characteristic form’ or ‘particular physiognomy’ that allows a building to be read as to its fundamental aim1. According to Anthnony Vidler,19th century was characterized by the first typology, while the second typology of the Modern architecture prevailed in the 20th century. Following the first industrial revolution, the first typology was developed by Abbe Laugier on the premises of Enlightenment philosophy, naturalism and rationalism. After the second industrial revolution, the second typology emerged, which was based on the mechanistic principles of mass production and its most famous representative was Le Corbusier, who formulated the concept of “objet-type”. However, Corbusiers notion of type could be traced back to Muthesisus, the German Werkbund and Adolf Loos. The aim of this essay is to discuss the notion of type and its importance for the early 20th century architectural discourse through reference to Hermann Muthesius and the German Werkbund, Adolf Loos, and Le Corbusier. Deutscher Werkbund was established in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius and Friendrich Naumann in order to consolidate art and industry2. The debates surrounding Werkbund focused on Muthesius concept of “Typisierung” (Typification). According to Muthesius, mass production denoted standardization; however, he combined the economic concept of standardization with Platonic (or Weberian) ideal types3. Muthesius ideas were heavily criticized by a number of artists and architects. The debate between him and Van de Velde was not about mechanization, but on the role of the artist. Whereas Muthesius asserted that the artist was separated and abstracted from the production process, Van de Velde advocated the artistic freedom and creativity4. Muthesius and Werkbund did not care much about the Fordist aspects of the mass production, rather they tried to bring organization to the otherwise chaotic world of the mass production ruled by fashion, individualism and arbitrariness. Peter Behrens designs for AEG, which were called Types, epitomized the various tendencies within the Werkbund. Behrenss workplace in Berlin has become an atelier for many young architects including Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, who would shape the Modern Movement. They learned architecture directly from Behrens. As Curtis noted Le Corbusier practicality and idealism was enhanced through his work for Peter Behrens, who saw mechanization as a vital force in creation of the modern culture.5 Figure 1, Peter Behrens, Types, AEG, 1912. The Werkbunds approach was influential until the end of World War I. However, later on, both Gropius and Le Corbusier abandoned the theoretical approaches of the Werkbund. Before 1914, debates were focused on the design of commodities. After 1920, the architectural issues have increasingly become the focus. Adolf Loos holds a special place in the history of modern architecture, not just as a pioneering figure of the Modern movement, but also as a critic of the Werkebund. In his influential article “Ornament and Crime” (1908) he argued that elimination of ornaments from the useful objects was beneficial to culture “reducing the time spent on manual labour and releasing energy for the life of the mind”6. This article can be regarded as an attack to the Werkebund in a sense that it was unacceptable for Loos to give the artist a form-giving role7. He did not believe that the artist is the creator of everyday useful objects8.According to him, style was the outcome of several economic and cultural conditions. Hence he also criticized Muthesius on the ground that he substituted form for ornament9. As Kenneth Frampton indicated , for Loos “all culture depended on a certain continuity with the past; above all, on a consensus as to a typification”10 Hence, he did not believe in the romantic notion of highly-gifted artist transcending his epoch11. His idea of the elimination of ornament and unadorned design influenced Le Corbusier. As Frampton stated, “he anticipated Le Corbusier notion of the objet-type,the refined, spontaneously produced by the craft-based industries of the society”12 Loos unadorned Steiner House was built in 1910, at least eight year before the famous “International Style”. Meanwhile, he gradually developed his conception of the “Raumplan”, which would be the basis of mass housing. As it can be seen from the Figure 2 and Figure 3, the exteriors of Loos houses were simple, unadorned cubes. Colquhoun stated that “In reducing the outside to the barest expression of technique, Loos was making a conscious analogy with modern urban man, whose standardized dress conceals his personality and protects him from the streets of the modern metropolis”13 The abstracted and rectilinear forms were quite influential on Le Corbusier. However, for Loos, the façade without ornament was to hide individuality, while for Le Corbusiuer it signified Platonic beauty14. Nevertheless, Loos “Ornament and Crime” laid the foundations for the Purism, which aimed to synthesize the “type-objects of the modern world”15. Figure 2, Adolf Loos, Stenier House, Vienna, 1910. Figure 3, Adolf Loos, Scheu House, 1912, Vienna. Loos expelled the ornament also from the interior architecture. He preferred to combine classical motifs with vernacular style. He removed ornaments from daily objects as well. The Chest of Drawers given in Figure 4 illustrates his unadorned objects-style. However, it must be noted that his classical interior architecture did not emit an atmosphere of cold rationalism and machinism. Although, Loos defined the architect as a stonemason who has learned Latin and he did not believe in the concept of architect as a creative artist, he was himself highly-gifted artist. His Kartner Bar in Vienna, image given in the figure 5, clearly illustrates his unique taste and artistic talent . The atmosphere of his interior design proves that a truly modern design can still be cosy, intimate and humanistic without being cold and mechanistic, can also be glamorous without an ornament. Figure 4, Adolf Loos, Chest of Drawers, 1900. Figure 5, Adolf Loos, Kartner Bar, 1907, Vienna. While Le Corbusier adopted the anti-ornament discourse of Loos, he also advocated the Purism together with Amedee Ozenfant. Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Co Dal summarized The Purist stance simply as follows: “the necessity for overcoming the tautologies of the Cubist experience by return to classical models”.16 Le Corbusier constructed his conception of modernity on the basis of the machine allegory. Indeed, he defined the house as a “machine for living in”. Le Corbusier introduced his pivotal notion, that of the “object-type” in his essay “Le Purisme”17. Objet-types were defined as the objects which “tend toward a type which is determined by the evolution of forms between the ideal of maximum utility, and the necessities of economic manufacture.”18 For Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, objet-types represented the order, the anonymity and the purity of the modern industrial world19. While Le Corbusier hailed Cubism for its simplified forms, non-narrativity, pictorial depth and selection of modern objects, he attacked it on th basis of its “decorative deformation and fragmentation of the object”.20 For them, Cubism takes objects weight and solidity, the Purism reinstates the objects integrity. Jeannerets (Le Corbusier) famous painting “Still Life” gives the object its integrity and turns it into an object-type, which contains general and universal values. As it can be seen from the Figure 6, Still Life holds the modern objects together, as if they resist to the relativism and fragmentation of the Cubism. As Curtis noted the Purists sought underlying ideals and ideal types in design in line with the Platonoism21. In fact, they followed Cubism in terms of their subject matter, as Cubism presented daily objects in typical forms22. Jeannerets painting also portrayed mass-produced things like guitar, bottles and pipes. However, “the outlines of bottle and guitar have been reduced to simple geometrical shapes laid out parallel to the picture surface; outlines and colours are crisp and distinct; visual tension is introduced by overlaps and spatial ambiguities; the Cubist principle of fusing different views of an object has been regularized—the bottle top, for example, is a pure circle.”23 Indeed, simple things of everyday life gain heroic qualities in the painting. Figure 6, Jeanneret/Le Corbusier, Still Life, 1919. The architectural prototypes of the Maison Citrohan and the Pavillon de LEsprit Nouveau, were developed by Le Corbusier to bring rationality and order to the chaotic and individualistic existence of the bourgeoisie. Le Corbusier transferred the object-types of his painting to the architecture, as standardized construction elements of the mass production. Indeed, the name of his mass-housing project revealed his passion for Taylorism in architecture since the Citrohan was intended as a pun for “Citroën”. Le Corbusier used the car as a metaphor of his machine-houses. As Curtis stated he “hoped to mass-produce the pieces of the building by Taylorized methods like those being used in automobile factories”.24 The Citrohan also epitomized his notion of house as a “machine for living in”. As it could be seen from the figure 7, Masion Citrohan was a cubic and unadorned box, a pure prism. Figure 7, Le Corbusier, Maison Citrohan, 1925-27, Stuttgart. The cubic ideal-type of Maison Citrohan was built in line with the abstract and universalist aspirations of the Purism. As Coulquhoun noted, the monolithic, universalist and integrated Citrohan house was antithetical to the fragmented object of the Cubism25. For Le Corbusier, modern technology and the laws of architecture were intertwined. Furthermore, he asserted that similar to the technology of the car, the technology of the house should not be seen outside as he wrote : “we have got used to compositions which are so complicated that they give the impression of men carrying their intestines outside their bodies. We claim that these should remain inside...and that the outside of the house should appear in all its limpidity”26 For him, both house and car were objets-type. As Stanislaus von Moos argued Le Corbusier sought for synthesis and integration. The Citrohan House paved the way for Le Corbusiers future housing projects. Le Corbusier carried out his first urbanistic plans with the domino house, while typology and technology were treated as synonyms.27 Le Corbusiers mechanistic imagination reached its peak with the Villa Savoye (in Figure 8) as it became a symbol of machinist civilization. Figure 8, Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1929-31. In regard to the interior design, Le Corbusier also sought for the purity of the design and advocated that mass-produced furniture would be sufficient to furnish a house; in short, he was against the decorative character of the Art Deco. Pavillon de LEspirt Nouveau in 1925, which could be seen in the figure 9, reflected the industrial modernity of the found objet-types. Figure 9, Le Corbusier, Pavillon de LEsprit Nouveau, 1925, Paris. The Pavillon had two types of furniture: fixed and mobile, actually Le Corbusier borrowed the ideas from Loos.28 According to Arthur Rüegg the pavilion was a “curious mixture of Spartan simplicity and the heterogeneous deployment of objects”29. Indeed, as Colquhoun noted, the pavilion was an amalgam of found objet-types which have no links to each other.30 The Pavillon de LEsprit Nouveau can be seen as the epitome of the Purism. In the pavilion, the mass-produced objects and furniture were juxtaposed. As Frampton noted: “while machinist in promise and urban by implication, since it was designed ostensibly for mass production and aggregation at high density, it was furnished in accordance with the Purist canon of objet-types, that is with English club armchairs, Thonet bentwoood furniture and standard Parisian cast-iron park pieces, with objects-tableaux of Purist origin, with oriental rugs and South American pottery”31 Looss anti-ornament discourse and his attitude against Art-Deco movement, as well as his taste, was apparent in the form of the Pavillon. It might be said that modern mass-produced objects had almost fetishistic appeal for Le Corbusier. He personified the standardized objects as follows: “The objects of utility in our lives have freed the slaves of a former age. They are in fact themselves slaves, menials, servants. Do you want hem as yours soul mates?We sit on them, work on them, use them up; when used up, we replace them”32. Herewith, Le Corbusiers discourse on object-type almost takes a Marxist turn reminding Marxs notion of the commodity fetishism. Although the content of the quoted passage highlighted the use-value of daily objects (sitting, working, using etc.), the form of his sentences (the personification of the objects as servants and soul mates) revealed the exchange value of commodities; thus, attributing a fetish character to the objects. While Le Corbusier characterized the modern and the Purist man as a rational being “who does not worship fetishes”, as Baudrillard asserted there is almost an absurd and surreal sense in Corbusiers radical reduction of objects to their pure function. 33 In the 20th century, the concept of type evolved in a sense that it evoked the industrial and machinist images of mass production and standardization. The modernist epoch of the serialized mass-produced object has begun with the German Werkebund and reached to its culmination point with Le Courbusier, who contemplated the house as a machine and dreamed of a Fordist style mass-produced houses. The modern houses have become rationally and economically designed machines, and the decorative ornaments were deemed superfluous. In the 20thj century, the notion of type-objet was central to the Modern Movement in search of the serialized and mass-produced architecture. As Lathouri stated the Modernist categories of the ‘typical object’ and the ‘standard product’ have become “the symptomatic of the new understanding of the role of architecture in the articulation and expression of ‘external change or internal demands’ – spatial, material, economic, social” in the 20th century.34 Bibliography Curtis, William, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 2nd ed. (London: 1987). Curtis, William J. Le Corbusier:Ideas and Forms (Oxford: 1986). Colquhoun, Alan, Modern Architecture (Oxford: 2002). Frampton, Kenneth, Modern Architecture A Critical History, 2nd ed. (London: 1985). Gronberg, Tag, “Speaking Volumes: The "Pavillon de lEsprit Nouveau" , Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1992), pp. 58-69. Lathouri, Marina, “The City as Project: Types, Typical Objects and Typologies”, Architectural Design, Volume 81 , Issue 1 (2011), pp. 24-31. Stanislaus von Moos, Le Corbusier, Elements of a Synthesis, 1979. Tafuri, Manfredo and Francesco Dal Co., Modern Architecture 1 (London:1986). Vidler, Antony, “The Third Typology”, Oppositions, 1976, 7: 1-4. Read More