Modernist Thinking and Design Principles

       

Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier

An influential designer of the early nineteenth century who changed his birth name from Charles-Edouard Jeanneret to Le Corbusier also helped change architecture to what it is known as today. Whether intentional or not, Corbusier and his colleague Ozenfant developed a new movement known as the Purist Movement that formed a segway into the Modern Movement. The academic slides provided in the architecture history course number 327 explains that “Purism championed a traditional classicism with a formal focus on clean geometries, yet it simultaneously embraced new technologies, new materials, and the machine aesthetic.” A parallel thought process to modernism design work.

     The 1914 Maison Domino house structure model is a great example of how Corbusier began testing out his design theories and implementing them into full scale instances. This new three-dimensional grid he created allowed the support spans to increase without jeopardizing structural integrity and creating an open, seemingly floating structure. Later in Corbusier’s career he wrote a book titled “First Five Points of Architecture,” it goes on in detail about his main five bullet points of architecture he tends to use in each of his buildings. The foundations for these ideas were laid way back here in the early nineteen hundreds with the Domino House. I would also like to point out his early renditions of the vertical stair tower that ascends from the dark lower portion of the building to the light exposed floors above it, all suspended above the ground on structural elements known as Pilotis.

Maison Domino Structure

            As he journeyed from building to building working and testing his ideas of architecture it is interesting to study the intermediate buildings he developed, like the Ozenfant Residence. Situated within the urban fabric of Paris it holds true to some of his few design principles, but you can see his experiments with the Pilotis, notice how the audience cannot see them, but rather it is one continuous wall façade. He included a glass cube on the corner of the building facing the traffic below where not only the corner where the two walls meet were all glass, but also the roof above. Since the completion of the residence this feature has been changed so that the glass roof is now opaque and supports a garden top outdoor space in the midst of a city. I am not sure who made this final call to change the original plan, but it may be in accordance to Corbusier’s later love for exposed roof gardens and the owner of the Ozenfant Residence was trying to be true to Le Corbusier’s Five Points.

Ozenfant Residence

           

Ozenfant Residence Interior

 One of his last structures, Villa Savoy, completed in 1930, may be the best illustration of his Five Points. To reiterate, Corbusier’s First Five Points of Architecture include:

1.) Pilotis: Elevating the mass off the ground

2.) Free Plan: achieved through the separation of the load-bearing columns from the walls subdividing the   space

3.) Free Façade: the corollary of the free plan in the vertical plane

4.) Ribbon Windows: long horizontal sliding windows

5.) Roof Garden: restoring, supposedly, the area of ground covered by the house

Villa Savoy is an all white structure located in an open field surrounded by dense forest located outside of Paris. As one approaches the structure they notice three distinct layers to the building: the lower layer dedicated to servant housing, car ports, and the ascension to the upper floors by means of a grand ramp, the main floor where the owner resides looking at the landscape through his ribbon windows, and the ramp completes its journey to the upper roof garden and sun room.  A great structure supported by pilotis and elements seen in the Domino house. With this structure having no surrounding context, only vegetation, one questions where the front of the building is. It is left subject to the viewer, possibly a rational is the front is where one enters the building through the lower level car port.

Villa Savoy

Mies Van der Rohe

Mies van der Rohe

It is very evident that Mies van der Rohe was a Rationalist to the core. He looked for standardized and repeatable forms that met the needs of the clients that also were considerate of societal needs. He was a German citizen and influenced many individuals and groups of people with his anti-formalistic viewpoints and his early works focusing on Constructivist thinking. Mies was concerned with simplifying problems he faced daily and in design providing him the option to create design solutions in return. Mies had two main design principles that he held to:

1.)   The enclosure of function in a generalized cubic container was not committed to any particular set of concrete functions.

2.)   The articulations of the buildings in response to the fluidity of Life.

Although Mies and Corbusier’s methodologies were completely different, they’re designs sometimes resulted in similar looking buildings. For instance, the Farnsworth House has raised pilotis and an open plan and contributes a lot to Corbusier’s five points, but it better identifies with Mies’s two points of design stated above. Mies was not focused on tectonic forms and producing buildings in a rugged industrial way, he graphical representation and the craft between the architect and the design to be highly influential.

Brick Country House Plan

            To illustrate that Mies didn’t focus on mechanization, I would like to bring his Brick Country House to mind, developed in 1924. It was a home where in plan it looks like a mouse maze almost. At each intersection the views open up and one is faced with several options to turn with a wide range of visual acuity of the house. It is a journey from one vantage point to the next.

            Another structure he designed was the Barcelona Pavilion, arguably one of his most famous. This encompasses a free open plan very well and can be related to his idea of the building responding to the fluidity of life. It combines a tension of opaque planes intersecting with thin airy glass walls, a large water feature, thin columns that seem unable to actually do their job of supporting the ceiling, and presentation planes that are made of rich stone like granite. These planes that act as the only opaque walls in the building act as center pieces. The smoothness and reflectance of the granite walls and floors flow into the water feature outside supporting the fluidity of life.

Barcelona Pavilion

            The Farnsworth House has caused a lot of controversy in the design world and possibly models his two design principles the best. It is an open cube wrapped in glass with few opaque walls. It brings to mind the topic of privacy and how is a family supposed to function in a space open to world to see inside their private home. It also has the idea of fluidity where the main floor of the building steps down to an outdoor receiving platform that then steps down into the landscape. Like Villa Savoy, this is also placed in a natural context. When push comes to shove, the owners are going to want privacy, thus curtains were installed on the glass facades, and how does it deal in the extreme temperatures of winter and summer, these questions beg to ask, is this type of building really suitable for residency?

Farnsworth House

Alvar Aalto

Alvar Aalto

Alvar worked in the same era as Mies and Corbusier, but seemed to have a slightly different edge on modernism. His designs were organized around functionality within the space as opposed to Mies whose work didn’t always reflect that, like the Farnsworth residence. In an effort to create his own work he developed new forms and materials that are sensitive to the climate, not too abstract in form, respect its place within the landscape, and gather architectural forms from natural phenomenon. Aalto’s career was a little behind the other two architects, his work mainly inhabited the mid 1900’s.

            Aalto’s Experimental House in Finland, completed in 1953 is situated in the middle of a dense forest. It is one with nature with fully designed living quarters as well as an exterior courtyard. Shaped like a “U” it consists of over fifty different brickwork patterns along the wall facades and outdoor courtyard floor. As the floor is the same brick as the walls and there is no kick-plate or anything that visually separates the two, the floor seems to crawl up to the wall. The use of the brick as a main design feature relates back to the Arts and Crafts Movement and the question of craftsmanship.

Experimental House

            Aalto was awarded the commission of designing a residence hall for MIT called the Baker House, which was later built in 1948. With a separation between private and communal areas he decided to separate the two with one long serpentine datum with curvilinear rooms on one side and rectangular open areas on the other. It is interesting that in this modern time that a brick work structure as opposed to steel and concrete was unheard of at the time, adding to the uniqueness of Aalto.

Baker House MIT

Another work of his that deserves recognition is his Concert Hall that was built in Essen, Germany in 1988. Another way to give account of his separation from the standard modernistic approach is how he metaphorically used function as the main design feature. The wall façade uses repetition and small variances within this repetition to signify a musical score, because after all it is a music hall. Along with the music score repetition he uses black opaque granite to signify piano keys. Overall, a slightly different take on modernism compared to Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

Concert Hall Essen, Germany

Summary

In a sense, it seems all three of the mentioned modernist designers sought to create a list of design principles that included a technique for the organization of buildings to be used specifically as billboards for the new modernistic ideals rather than creating actual structures. Less important to these architects was the actual manifestation of their principles as inhabitable places, because it was through their documented process and teachings, not their commissions, that their influence would become immortal. As their careers progressed they each added to their repertoire of design points. Some were taken out; new ones were added and experimented with only to be thrown out later on until eventually they settled upon their favorites. This is their tested and tried list of design principles they implement in nearly every modern building they design; the ideas that are copied by firms and young architects alike and impacting entire cities that can still be seen today, nearly five to seven decades later.

Weißenhofsiedlung Settlement and Loos Methodology

Weißenhofsiedlung Settlement

In an era where society craved for the next “In” thing in art and design, the result became a scattered collage of incomplete and abstract art movements that eventually caved in on themselves; bowing the knee to the Modern architecture we know today. Modern architectures’ predecessors such as: Art Nouveau, Der Stijl, Amsterdam, Arts and Crafts etc. feature elements of design that are unique to them, but often can be seen carried through to current modern architecture. To combat this chaos the German issued Werkbund was implemented as a cultural reform project “Aiming to subsume and transcend the emerging dominant capitalism.” (Adolf) Although it commissioned dozens of famous German architects and designers, its goal was not to create a new set of principles of architecture or aesthetics, but rather to provide the stepping stone of modern architecture to combine mass production techniques into meaningful poetic design. I personally think this was an intelligent idea of the Germans to try and pull the country back together and initiate some sort of systematic idea about new architecture.

Peter Behrens

Diagrammatic Plan of Haus 31 

The German state government issued a design competition in Stuttgart, Germany called Weißenhofsiedlung in 1927. One of the design objectives was to make small residences and push the ideas of modern architecture as well incorporating a “programmatic goal of creating a model for the future living of people in large cities” (Weißen.) One of the architects that was commissioned at Weißenhofsiedlung was Peter Behrens. He is now referred to as the Father of incorporating industry into modern design, a concept that Ruskin followers would be appalled at and could possibly be considered a refinement/readjustment or the next step following the Art Nouveau era. Behrens developed House number thirty-one. It’s interesting to study the floor plans of this multi-apartment small building. He comments that unlike other architects who use the same plan for each level, he decided to offset them and on some upper floors not have a living room space, but rather substitute it with an outdoor terrace. This building in particular demonstrates very well how he experiments with varying wall thicknesses as one moves up the building. The notion I found to be most interesting is how the roof planes juxtapose out on different sides of the building and each level builds as it moves down. For example: the top floor has a (blue) terrace, the terrace now becomes a part of the second floor and its terrace (green) becomes a part of the third floor so you have this progression towards the ground plane. ­

View of Behrens Multi-Level Apartment Building

Victor Bourgeois

Another member of this Werkbund team is Victor Bourgeois who designed house number ten. This is simply a three story single family residence. It seems that most of the Werkbund contestants took some form of grid or structure and would pattern it or offset it slightly so that the grid was still evident, but there was one portion or multiple portions that stood alone to be expressed or somehow compliment the other forms. If you will notice in the diagram the light blue section is shifted down, reminding me of two tectonic plates shifting against each other. There is a reference to the three by three grids in plan, but the wall planes do not follow the grid exactly making me wonder if this is intentional or if Bourgeois just placed them around there where they were convenient. If the grid did fit up perfect would it not cut down on construction cost and labor? Another question comes to mind, were the architects in the Weißenhofsiedlung given a program including exact restroom and appliance dimensions? The reason I bring this up is to say that if they had complete liberty and didn’t have to follow a rigid program then why not move the wall that is one foot away from fitting to the grid over? It is apparent that although it doesn’t fit the grid perfect it does fit rather well to the three vertical rectangles in which I mentioned the shift action previously. The blue section of the plan deals with circulation and main public spaces while the other two (violet and crimson) split the kitchen, restrooms, and sleeping quarters.

Haus 10

Diagrams of House 10 Including "Shift" Idea

Adolf Loos

The infamous Adolf Loss is the wildcard of this exhibition and in all of modern architecture in fact. He was very strongly opinionated in his view on human and social development and evolution as he studied Darwin’s works, and how modern architecture should be dealt with. In interesting fact is that he was originally offered a spot in the Weißenhofsiedlung, but was later denied permission and his site was given to Victor Bourgeois. Although many rising architects including Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier were working on breaking apart the barrier between the outside and interior of a structure and making it one with its surroundings, Loos was strongly opposed to this, almost as much as he was against ornamentation and Art Nouveau and even dedicated a book to it called “Ornament and Crime.” His ideals branched from how he viewed community. The outside of the building reflected the community and public so therefore should reflect the culture and community in its form language and material selection, BUT on  the interior of all of his spaces was where he allowed the richness of the space to be expressed. He preferred showing the natural beauty of materials like marble and other highly polished surfaces included in his design. Loos broke away from the common practice of forcing perspectives on an individual in a space and directing them where to go next as was commonly practiced in Renaissance architecture; playing off the cubist almost 2D aspect. He allowed the owner of the space to fill the space and even included the “Craft” on the inside, but would never allow it on the public side.

Truth In Material (Marble)

As a follower of Darwin he believed that Modernism was the next step in the evolutionary process for mankind and that all forms of ornamentation were just superfluous and didn’t aid in the progression of the species. As his ideas of modernism grew and likewise his commissions, architecture historians and other designers recognized that his work was different than other architects like those who participated in Weißenhofsiedlung or Frank Lloyd Wright and found him hard to classify.

As I went back and reviewed some of Loos’s projects I discovered light does play a large role in his work. He often uses mirrors to reflect natural or artificial light throughout his spaces and routinely designs his own light fixtures as seen in Kaernter Bar, the Café Museum in Vienna, and the Michaelerplaztz in Vienna is worth studying.  

As you can see the directions a designer can develop a methodology and a process of designing is infinite. The two designers from the Weißenhofsiedlung Peter Behrens and Victor Bourgeois both found ways to design a residence from a grid or structure and shift that structure or build up to it, and Adolf Loos was independent in that all his residences have a unique distinction between the public outside and the private ornamented interior.

Cafe Museum in Vienna (Custom Light Fixtures)

Works Cited:

Adolf Loos. Academic Lecture Notes. Accessed September 28, 2011. < https://blackboard.bsu.edu/bbcswebdav/courses/2011Fal_ARCH329s002_Combined/08%20Adolf%20Loos.pdf>

De Stijl Architecture. Accessed September 28, 2011. < http://www.arthistoryunstuffed.com/de-stijl-architecture/>

Flexible Housing. Accessed September 28, 2011. <http://www.afewthoughts.co.uk/flexiblehousing/house.php?house=11>

Kirsch, Karin. The Weissenhofsiedlung: Experimental Housing Built for the Deutscher Werkbund, Stuttgart 1927. Pub. 1992. p. 22-23, 57-60.

Kirsch, Karin. The Weissenhofsiedlung. Pub. 1989. Rizzoli INternational Publications, Inc. p. 88-92, 176-186.

Weißenhofsiedlung (Weissenhof Settlement). Accessed September 28, 2011. < http://www.stuttgart-tourist.de/ENG/sights_attractions/weissenhofsiedlung.htm>

 

Art Nouveau: Life After Death?

Art Nouveau

Aside from the fact that nearly all of the Art Nouveau buildings designed in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were destroyed, the spirit of it lives on in the form of modern architecture today. Defined as a transitional phase into modern architecture, the Art Nouveau era capitalized on the idea of new buildings, new ways of art and principles of design, and an escape from the rigid historical boundaries of the past. Modern architects such as: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der Rohe, Paul Rudolph, Le Corbusier, etc. wouldn’t have such solid foundations in the Modern way of design if it weren’t for this transitional phase of architecture and for the architects who sought to rise up above the standard, monotone way of design of their day and carve out a new era. Art Nouveau “Represented the last attempt at a sortie on the part of Art imprisoned by technical advance within her ivory tower.” (Benjamin)

Facade of Tassel Mansion

With the development of new mechanical systems and the Industrial Revolution on the rise, the economy prospered all over Europe and America. In this new age where families had more money to spend on homes, they desired more aesthetically pleasing and exotic designs from the architects; another contributing factor to the creation of the Art Nouveau era. Surprisingly to me, the Art Nouveau era started in Belgium of all places and spread to France, Europe, and America. It was later given the nick name of “Jugendstil” which is German for “Young Style”, which was fabricated on signs and buildings across the world to express the freshness of the style.

            It is interesting how the designers of this time attempted to stray away from the classical and Beaux Art approach and yet they still incorporated the concepts of John Ruskin’s Arts and Craft Movement. They claim it to be different and new and yet in most cases, we will take Victor Horta for example, it is just a cluster of multiple historic styles; somewhat hypocritical in my opinion. Something explored much further in this era though, is how they dealt with the facades of the building and how materials inspired and were generators for form in design. Wood, stone, glass, iron all yielded different results.

Interior of Tassel Mansion

            A Belgian man by the name of Victor Horta embodied these approaches to the dime. His compositions were very ornate, exotic, sensuous, and expressive succumbing in the direction of organic, natural forms. An influential composition of his is the Tassel mansion in Brussels constructed in 1895. It is extremely intricate in not only the front façade, but also it carries into the interior with beautiful curvilinear and flower like patterns painted on the wall, structural steel columns that evolve into tree limbs as they reach the ceiling, floor tiles that carry design to other parts of the building, etc. In this project he worked a lot with the grid system and how he split up the main areas of each floor, mainly the ground floor into three sections, placing the openings to each section in a manner to force a perspective that wouldn't be seen otherwise. As mentioned above, he used multiple design styles to create this effect. The following excerpt goes into detail on this matter:

“What Horta managed in the façade of the Tassel House (and what he sustained in the interior as well) was something quite different: a simultaneous abstraction and integration of motifs into a whole that might suggest anything from an Italian palazzo to a modern townhouse to an Egyptian temple, or indeed all of these things – and none of them – at once.” (Victor)

His later work really exemplifies the change to modern architecture. Here is an example of how his work has been watered down, in my opinion, or better said simplified and cleaner; or more Modern in nature.

Brussels Central Station

            Hector Guimard was a man who was inspired by Viollet le Duc and his ideas of architecture tectonics. He integrated new steal production into most of his work often using Ironwork railings, balconies, structural elements as the mode for his organic embellishments. In his work he often paid close attention to detail, a common trait amongst Art Nouveau architects, and expanded on the idea of the “open plan” or “free plan” later implemented in the work of Le Corbusier. As steel and iron became ever abundant at this time his work in the Paris Metro Station flourished. The entrances and exits can still be seen today with natural free-flowing iron structure supporting translucent glass and the popular Art Nouveau text projecting METROPOLITAIN.

Paris Metro Station

Bauhaus in Germany

            Henry van der Velde was a Belgian man of passion. He strived to protect this new Jugendstil from becoming another popular fashion motif, but rather a timeless style of building. To him Art Nouveau wasn’t a fashion; it was a logical form based architecture that demonstrated a modern style that was continually new, separate from the dead classical style of the past.

            Early in his life he worked as a director of design in some school systems in Germany before World War II. Hitler asked him politely to leave the country since he was a Belgian citizen, but before he left he recommended that a colleague of his be promoted to his position. This man was Walter Gropius and later founded the Bauhaus, an influential school of design for crafts and the fine arts that is referenced in modern architecture today. To Velde’s dismay the Art Nouveau era died out around 1920 and “It was seen by contemporaries and even its own exponents as entirely obsolete.” (Walter)

De Boekentoren University Library

            In Velde’s work he worked with carpet and tapestry and other building designs. A famous piece he worked on when he was eighty years of age was the De Boekentoren University Library in Ghent, Belgium. It was a unique design for a library that involved the idea of book towers, the way the simple windows open up to form an undulating plane, and how the height of the building connects the earth and sky in plan view as a Greek cross.

            Needless to say, exploring how these three men affected architecture in such a short time frame deserves notoriety. Along with others from the Jugendstil era, these three architects helped carve the way and make the transition from classic architecture to the new modern style that we know today.

Works Cited:

Walter Benjamin the Birth of Pleinairism from the Spirit of the Interior. Academic Lecture. College of Architecture and Planning, Ball State University. Architecture History 329. Accessed 09-15-2011.

Victor Hotta Early Work and Influences. Academic Lecture. College of Architecture and Planning, Ball State University. Architecture History 329. Accessed 09-15-2011.

Benjamin Paris Capital of the Nineteenth Century. Academic Lecture. College of Architecture and Planning, Ball State University. Architecture History 329. Accessed 09-15-2011.

Differing Opinions of True Architecture in the Late 1800's

Hello and welcome to my blog featuring posts and updates of my Architecture History course. I am a junior enrolled in the College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State University. The Architecture History course covers a broad range of historical architects and buildings of the past and how these examples and principles have contributed and continue to shape our current modern way of design. 

     The nature of this blog is meant to be affable yet at the same time serious and informative. The variety of content will be composed of opinion and observation, but more importantly factual material gathered from textbooks, articles, and online sources.

     Today's Blog focuses on the differences and similarities of three historic architects of the late 1800's: 

         John Ruskin, Gottfried Semper, and Viollet le Duc. 

         

John Ruskin had a stronger tie to nature than the other two architects. He grew up in London, England practicing the art of painting and other fine arts. (Arts and Crafts) He was raised as a Christian, which affected his thinking and can be seen as a result in many of his books. After graduating he was given the opportunity to teach the fine arts back at his alma mater, Oxford University. He stayed close to home his entire career really developing his ideas and perception of art in all forms including but not limited to painting and architecture. He felt that it was wrong to cover up a material and hide it, but rather the material was to be presented as itself; after all his volume of “Modern Painters” disputed for ‘Truth in Nature’. This idea carries over into his argument that building restoration “means the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered.” (02 Semper)

A Self Portrait by John Ruskin

He really enjoyed gothic architecture and thought it perfectly embodied the art of nature. He further wrote his book “The Seven Lamps of Architecture” which featured these virtues most likely developed from his Christian upbringing: Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. With all this said, Ruskin used his artistic ideologies to start the Arts and Crafts Movement in England as a resistance against the ever-growing use of mechanized goods in England and America. With the Industrial Revolution making its mark on society and architecture “He believed, along with Morris, that handwork and craftsmanship brought dignity to labor” (Arts and Crafts) and machines were diluting this dignity.

Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper had a very adventurous life that took him to many places around Europe. He grew up in Hamburg, Germany studying mathematics and wanted to be an engineer, but that fell threw for him. He also decided to join the military, but fled Hamburg to avoid a warrant out for his arrest for a duel that he was in. (02 Semper) He traveled to different parts of Germany and even to Paris learning and cultivating his ideas about society, mathematics, and design. He was involved in archeological digs in Italy and Greece, was part of the Beaux-arts era of architecture and design, and had his own ideas about religion often feeling the church was corrupt. He met up with many of the great minds of the time including Wagner and Charles Darwin.

Dresden Theater

      When he was given the opportunity to design the Hoftheater in Dresden, Germany many commissions opened up to him after that. An interesting fact is that the theater caught fire and burnt down and the people loved it so much that they sent for Semper to come rebuild it. With his warrant still out he sent his son in his place to restore the large opera house.

Curtain Wall Where "Enclosure" Can 
Be Free From Structure

As he began writing books such as his most famous “The Four Elements of Architecture” he brought his knowledge of mathematics to the table. He tried to relate design and style as mathematical formulas assigning different aspects of design such as function, technique, and materials as variables in an equation. He believed that a building should always show its structure. He further took the idea of the primitive hut and expanded it to four parts: The hearth or social outlet, the substructure, the roof, and then the enclosure or walls. His idea that the roof and structure are one continuous element and the enclosure was separate led to   the concept of the Curtain Wall.

Later he found that “architecture everywhere borrowed its types form pre-architectural conditions of human settlement.” When designing he incorporated Polytechnics, where he used multiple styles of architecture from the past in one building. For example, his opera house in Dresden has many elements that reflect work that Palladio did back in the 1500’s.

Viollet le Duc

Viollet le Duc was considered one of the last great theorists. He was influenced by nature and “All products of nature have style since they follow inflexible laws. The form of the bird’s nest or of the flower is determined by organic principles, governed by both the function of the object and the nature of the material from which it is made” (Bersanni 339). Le Duc’s career consisted of several building restorations often imparted by the king of France himself.  Le Duc had the ability to look at the past and figure out what the intent of the designers back then were and take those principles and expand on them with his own ideas. In one of his lectures he gave he said there is no invention “We must necessarily have recourse to the past in order to originate in the present.” (Memory 43) He tried to be very scientific about his work and focused on the tectonics of architecture. He was fascinated by gothic and neo-gothic architecture and believed that it surfaced because of its sturdy structural system to reach higher, rather than its detailed aesthetics.

Carcassonne Fortress (Notice Polychrome)

His work as a restoration architect was rooted in the king Napoleon Bonaparte the Second’s interest in him. The fortress of Carcassonne in France was destroyed during Napoleon the First’s era. Le Duc’s idea of restoration was not to make an exact render of the original structure, but rather take the foundation and build upon it using new materials, principles, and ideas to make it greater than the previous structure. In doing so he had different masonry and roofing material. He used slanted roofs and different spires, only used in the north so the building was out of context with the surrounding southern area.

Pierrefonds Castle

Another work the king had him restore was the castle of Pierrefonds, which was partially destroyed to get revenge on the family there from the king himself. The king wanted it to be restored so that he could use it as his own imperial palace. On this neo-gothic castle he incorporated a lot of polychrome, which simply means color. He was experimenting with using color as a way to decorate a façade rather than detailed ornamentation in normal gothic.

Notice Exposed Iron Supports

Viollet le Duc was very influential and had many people study him as inspiration for their own work, such as his addition of iron into masonry structure and it being exposed instead of hidden, his custom made iron candlesticks in the cathedrals, and Antoni Gaudi studies.

Basilique a Vezelay (Notice Multi-Colored Stone)

These three architects and theorists contributed much to our design profession, the way we begin the process, how we interpret past examples, and if were to practice building restoration. I mention the last point specifically because during their era they implemented the idea that when restoring a building one uses different material or colored masonry units to show the difference between the original and new context.

Although some of them wouldn’t agree on every topic they all agreed on a few. They were influenced by each other with books, by other theorists at the time including Darwin, even musical composers like Wagner. By interpreting architecture and the past they each took their own spin on design and art persuading one another. Each made it their responsibility to contribute books and buildings to society at a time when knowledge was marveled at. Viollet le Duc studied and defined terms in his own dictionary, others were social activists. Some stayed in the same area their whole life taking in what was around them and following the status quo so to speak like John Ruskin while others like Gottfried Semper traveled all over Europe taking in each culture and design principles.

City Of Carcassonne Restored by Viollet le Duc

On the other hand, they didn’t agree on everything. John Ruskin’s ideas about building restoration were very far from le Duc’s. He thought that if a building was destroyed it should be left alone, and not be built up again whether the same or completely different because this wasn’t honest and isn’t the work of the restorer. Not only did they have views on design, but also social issues: Ruskin did not agree with the capitalism movement due to its disregard for failing to realize the complexities of the human, Semper was against the socialistic views of society, etc. Semper and le Duc both agreed that it was wise to look to the past to find inspiration for present design work. All three referred to nature for inspiration.

In conclusion, modern architecture couldn’t have emerged without these ideas and      principles!

Works Cited.

Arts and Crafts Society. http://www.arts-crafts.com/archive/jruskin.shtml. Accessed September 4, 2011.

Dictionary of Art Historians. http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org/semperg.htm. Accessed September 4, 2011.

Architecture Viollet-le-Duc. Academic Slides. Arch 329. Ball State University. College of Architecture and Planning. Accessed September 5, 2011.

02 Semper and Ruskin. Academic Slides. Arch 329. Ball State University. College of architecture and Planning. Accessed September 5, 2011.

Memory as Construction in Viollet-le-Duc’s Architectural Imagination. Academic Electronic Article. Paroles Gelees Volume 16.2 1998.  Ball State University. College of architecture and Planning. Accessed September 5, 2011.

Bressani. Viollet-le-Duc’s Philosophy of History. Academic Electronic Article. Accessed September 5, 2011.