History and theory of contemporary architecture

History and theory of contemporary architecture

Introduction: Raumkunst; general introduction to the course

The course addresses its attention to the evolution of the notion of space in architecture and urbanism, from the end of the 19th century till the 1970s. Space is a word that we always use to describe our projects and characterize our normal communication and expressions. Space is as well a volatile word, so we will try to understand what is the meaning of "space". We are going to see how architects dealt with this definition through the years. We start with the 19th century, when this word was firstly used as a way of describing a product. 1920 and 1930 were the years of the explosion of this word in the architecture field.

On the other side, this relationship between architecture and space is parallel to other critical observations; functional and rationalistic approach, evolving then into a more sensorial approach. In some kind of way, this aspect is not really a contemporary vision when speaking about architecture; in the recent decades we are used to consider architecture as a "negligent" object, as it lost its significance when giving format to the city, when giving a footprint. Architecture started with cultural buildings such as museums, theaters, etc., which were shaping the city and the civilization.

Recently, form (as a concept) is rising again, it came back as an element of formality for contemporary architecture. So what we are witnessing is the passage between the decease of architecture in the old times and the sudden rising in the contemporary years. So, we are observing the missing spot between those two passages. We will try to understand and look to the history of this format, to its kind of dialectic. If we use the term of spatiality we are talking about a specific dialectic on architecture’s field. Dialectic between architecture and space, its context, the relationship within the city, all of this through the decades.

The spatial component of architecture, its theoretical conception and its practical realization, constituted during the 20th century one of the main issues of modernity in architecture.

Experiencing space through empathy and sensitivity

The various “forms” of space produced by architects, artists, and urbanists reflected the different answers to historical, sociological, and aesthetical questions that arose in different contexts in the decades following the modernist revolution. During the semester the development of the spatiality of form will be analyzed through a series of lectures, seminars, readings, and field trips. From Camillo Sitte to Le Corbusier, from Russian Constructivism to Dutch Neoplasticism, from Mies van der Rohe to Louis Kahn, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Bruno Zevi, from Luigi Moretti to Carlo Scarpa, from the spatial experiments of the Team X to those of the 1960’s utopias, from the American Minimal and Land art to the Yugoslavian Monumental architecture, the course will address its inquiry to the mutual influences between the aesthetic of art, architecture, sociology, technology, and history.

Such as the city of Venice, where modernity and old styles combine together into formalism and experience, urban space. The word of architecture + historical urban space. We are keeping them within this confrontation/dialectic between, as said, dialectic and space. We will try (in the 2nd part of the semester) to get different examples of the spatial research with Wright, following the spirit of formalization. We will see the primordial architecture of Latin American, combined with modern times. We will analyze the great members of Italian tradition, such as Moretti and Scarpa.

Then we’ll see the post-war period, where the sensibility of space got explored in a larger scale, social issues, relation with a spontaneous birth and modularity of space (Team X-read as “ten”). Last but not least, we will take a glimpse to more parallel experiences, where the notion of space/sensitivity reaches a different evolution and approach, within the Land art in America, and the Constructivism architecture in Jugoslavia: a relationship between the object and nature itself. We will learn how to deal with space with the idea of this constant relation.

Three basic components of the experience of space

What we can describe as “spatiality”, the man-the subject who is perceiving it all-, the architecture/artistic object, the artifact, and the context-the city, or nature.

• The man
• The object of architecture (as object of art)
• The environment

If we split this trio, we are off the rails and not able to understand the whole phenomena.

First exercise

Dedicated to catching some of the elements of sculpture, to understand the spatial element of architecture/sculpture.

Second exercise

Concrete analysis of architectural space. Those two exercises will constitute the premises to enter the exam session. It will be oral and you will be asked to comment on the projects seen in the program and discuss them, under the relation of space. The first exercise is individual.

Next lecture we will see specifically the theme of light, movement, seen through the history of sculpture. You will be asked to work on the sculptures which are in your country, into the galleries. The idea is to make you work on the tradition of your country. Even the urban installation.

The concept of light as an action of plasmation

You will have to choose a series of sculpture and comment on them, the concept, the main spatial elements. What is surface in sculpture, its linguistic expression, concept, how important it was. The treatment of surface changes the perception of materiality, thus the object is perceived differently. The material makes visible some things and tries to hides others. The theme of color, the scale…

Second part of the semester

What is memory in architecture, its sensibility, the dimensions, the evolution of formality.

Start of the actual lecture

Today we will see the concept of Raumkunst.

Space-Raumkunst

The birth of the concept

<<Our sense of space (Raumgefuhl) and spatial imagination (Raumphantasie) press towards spatial creation (Raumgestaltung); they seek their satisfaction in art. We call this art architecture; in plain words, it is the creatress of space (Raumgestalterin).>> - August Schmarsow, "Das Wesen der architektonischen Schopfung", 1894

Why those words became the element of architectural theory? Let’s see through examples.

“The tower which fell down” - Adolf Hildebrand

The first example we see is by Adolf Hildebrand, who talks about his trip to Italy at the beginning of the century (around the last decade of the 19th century and then again at the beginning of the 20th century). He was shocked at the immediate transformation between the two decades; he arrived in Florence and assisted to a complete transformation of the urban condition of this space in front of the church. Medieval Florence is dense, with narrow streets, while after the transformation some medieval parts were demolished, the streets got enlarged… the closing of the Baptistery got demolished, leaving it to an open view, but leaving it sort of alone (the monument). The details around the church were occasionally shown, the space around the city was cleaned. Some elements were completely altered.

He concentrates mostly on the “Porta del Paradiso” by Ghiberti, especially on the door’s detail; it was meant to be perceived from a narrow distance, so the change of scenario changed its perception as well as a matter of perspective and comprehension of space. Demolishing this scenario, the baptistery got completely isolated, perhaps the door as well lost its full power of influence.

In 1902 the tower in San Marco square (Venice) fell down, so again he was confronted with a big architectural loss. He says, trying to draw sketches, that the perception of the square was totally modified and looked like the house where the cat is out, and mice are free to wander (paraphrasing about the procurative). The architectures were made in different times and perhaps styles, so they all breathe the atmospheres of different epochs. The merging element was, in fact, the bell tower. This element represented the merging and connection of the architectures present in the square, so its loss meant a loss of a merging among those different styles.

We must always consider the spatial context + genius loci of the environment.

<<There is an intimate relationship between the character of the buildings and their spatial context.>>

The spatiality of the form is, for Hildebrand, a “sensibility” that has been lost “with the development of museums and the conventions of considering works of art out of their original context, as individual, isolated.”

And the most difficult task of his present is to “open people’s eyes to the general law of all art, namely that the work of art is always conceived as a part of something larger, as part of a situation (…) An artistic building is not valid solely in its own terms, but as part of an environment. The stronger this double life is, the wider the field of action of the single image (Lebensraum des Einzelbildes) will be, and the greater, in turn, its artistic value will be.”

Thanks to the museums, for him, we started observing artworks and paintings, murals-as a museum is a remembrance of humanity’s footprints on this world, perhaps is a trace of physical memory. An artistic building is a proof of humanity. It is not valid only as a volumetrical element, but we can only understand it in a larger perspective, conceiving space + sensitivity. Architecture + environment = necessity to the full comprehension of a building.

1908, Albert Brinckman

He does something that historians don’t do often. He described the sequence on how we get to this space, which is Santa Maria della Pace square, how it is perceived from different distances (perspective of space). The façade presents a semicircular space, decorated with double columns (colonne binate) in couples. He also tried to document the relationship between man and sculpture and the architectural context.

In this illustration, it’s shown the perspective effect on Michelangelo’s Campidoglio square.

1877, Hermann Maerstens: “Das optische Masstab” (“the optical scale”)

Architecture as to scales: the drawn one, on paper, and the optical scale, in reality. How we perceive things. We perceive things in three different moments/relational points/dynamics:

• When we are looking from a certain distance, looking at the entirety of the sculpture while perceiving the context
• We get closer, and observe the sculpture in its figure, we get a clearer understanding of the figure
• We get very close, and we are able to observe every detail with attention.

Every step gives us a perception of the same sculpture, but seen under three aspects, which allow us to three different perceptions.

The sculpture

1908, Vienna Joze Plecnik, Saint Charles Borromeo fountain: he was Otto Wagner’s pupil from Ljubljana. He was very talented and this fountain is one of his artifacts. It’s composed of two green semioval (ellissoidali) figures combined together, in a centre oval space. In the planimetry on the side you can observe a series of diagonal lines, that represent three different moments of the perception of this sculpture and how it was conceived.

You must consider that this was the angle/corner where it was conceived to be placed. We cross 5 steps and then we find a circular space with an obelisk in the middle. It is possible to perceive the sculpture under the said three different aspects, as the observer gets closer to it. First, you get a general perception of the sculpture inserted in the urban context, then the figure of the sculpture itself, and finally all the details. In the pics, you can see the very detailed decorations, lizards with wings, cherubins…

The squares

1889, Vienna, Camillo Sitte: “Der Stadtebau nach seinen Kunstlerischen Grundsatzen”: meaning “the building of the city” (stadtebau) to his artistic and formal principles. He explained the spatial effects that an observer can have in some of the major architectural spaces in Italian, German, and Austrian spaces.

He describes the Sant’Antonio square in Padova, telling that the observer can understand the façade only from one angle, at first; the more you enter the square, the more the façade is revealed and exposed. The dimension of the square is perfectly congruent to the space where this building is located, so it’s a nice architecture in terms of relation between space and environment.

The San Marco square in Venice is an agglomeration of different moments and architectural glimpses. There is no privileged view. The space is urban but semi-private.

The city of Vienna, based on rings disposition

The city developed a lot in the 19th century. The operation was to cancel the walls and transform the space into a new urban centre, a multifunctional arteria, combining the growth of the new city within the old ones, keeping up with the progress. Coulee de sac. The scale of the city exploded and became bigger. The monuments have different styles, neo baroque, neo gothic, neo classicism… different agglomerate of objects within this new space.

The biggest debate about the ring was if the larger scale was led to lose its architectural complexity. Thus, one book of Sitte is dedicated to the correction-in his own opinion- of the new scale’s operations. For example, he changed the scale around the church.

The sketches

Le Corbusier tries to understand architecture under the urban scale, measuring the feelings of a space through a sketch.

Space-Baroque

Many books have been published during these years. Baroque was seen as a retrograde action towards the development of art and architecture, as it was seen as a deformation between the relation of man and architecture.

Wolfflin: he said that it had a psychological effect on man, as architecture gives reactions to our senses/perceptions. It gives us happiness, anxiety, claustrophobia..

And Baroque, in this topic, has a different perception. Baroque is a change, on five aspects:

• From a linear to a painterly style (malerisch)
• From an epoch characterized by representation in planes to an epoch characterized by representation in depth
• From an epoch characterized by closed forms to one of open forms
• From artworks made by parts of equal value, to artworks in which the individual elements are subordinated to a whole
• From a style in which objects are represented with absolute clarity to one in which they are depicted in a style of relative clarity.

In the pic, San Pietro in Montorio and San Carlino alle quattro fontane, Rome. What is structural? What is not? The effect of the presence of the shadow.

<<Painterly architecture is particularly interested in making its basic form appear in as many and as various pictures as possible. While in the classic style the permanent form is emphasized and the variation of the appearance has beside it no independent value, the composition.>>

Light becomes the element of expression of art, a light which gives birth to shadow, and thus shapes the façade.

<<the more manifold they are, the more they diverge from the objective form, the more painterly the building is considered to be>>

Light is not accidental, it has the precise purpose to shape the element-the light and its shadow, the architecture and its context, the tridimensionality and the materiality perceived from this relation of aspects. (on the right, Borromini’s detail on the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide)

The individual perspective is no longer the preliminary to the architectural image but has its own significance. It exists together with the other separate images as a partial representation.

-Paul Frankl

The analysis that we do is an accumulation of data. An optical sequence that architecture gives us.

<<Optical appearance is now primary not only for the impression (receptively) but also genetically. The corporeal forms exist only to carry the visible phenomena. They serve light, not the reverse as in the first phase (the Renaissance).>>

-Frankl

Lecture 2 1/3/21

Biography: he will upload some of the materials and books he put in it. Continue of the previous lecture (This morning is going to be divided into 2 sections, taking back from the Raumkunst of last week to then focus on the first exercise, under the spatial reading of the sculpture. He will show us a series of art pieces.)

The themes of art

We went through a series of authors and theories of architecture and art, interested in this topic. We saw that there is a growing sensibility towards those specific questions (see previous lecture). The principal question was to educate our vision to the sensibility of space. When designing in a specific territory we are using a specific language + form. We analyzed different data and ideas given by the form and the way of observing the art piece. This is Raumkunst: the art of space. Those books were fundamental to future artists as we saw, such as Le Corbusier, Rohe, Moretti… so this aspect was institutionalized.

Psychologically, the intuited form of three-dimensional space arises through the experiences of our sense of sight, whether or not assisted by other physiological factors. All our visual perceptions and ideas are arranged, are ordered, and unfold in accordance with this intuited form- and this fact is the mother lode of art whose origin we seek.

Our sense of space (Raumgefuhl) and spatial imagination (Raumphantasie) press towards spatial creation (Raumgestaltung); they seek their satisfaction in art. We call this art architecture; in plain words, it is the creatress of space (Raumgestalterin).

-August Schmar