ARCH 416

Spring '15

Class 14 Making It Modern

what is modern

architecture?

Adolf Loos, "Ornament and Crime" (1908)

Antonio Sant'Elia, "Manifesto of Futurist Architecture" (1911)

Frank Lloyd Wright, "The Future of Architecture" (1953)

Antonio Sant'Elia • Power Station • 1914

"…just as the ancients drew

inspiration for their art from

the elements of nature, we—

who are materially and

spiritually artificial—must find

that inspiration in the

elements of the utterly new

mechanical world we have

created…"

—Antonio Sant'Elia, Manifesto of

Futurist Architecture, 1911

http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/architecture.html

"Ornament and Crime"

design diatribe by Adolf Loos

• written in 1908

• first given as lecture on 21 January 1910 in Vienna

• first published in Cahiers d'aujourd'hui (1913) in French

• not published in German until 1929

"The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of

ornament from useful objects."

"No ornament can any longer be made today by anyone who

lives on our cultural level ... Freedom from ornament is a sign

of spiritual strength."

Adolf Loos (1870—1933)

born in Austro-Hungarian

Empire

his father was German and

a stonemason

studied locally and then in

Dresden

traveled in US 1893-6

(attended World's

Columbian Exposition)

returned to Vienna

Villa Steiner (1910)

"Looshaus" (1910)

Goldman &

Salatsch Building

on Michaelerplatz.

central Vienna

• Born 1867 to farming

family

• Parents divorced and he

dropped his father's

name

• Anna Wright wanted him

to be an architect

• purchased Froebel blocks

at Centennial Expo, 1876

Frank Lloyd WRIGHT

(1867-1959)

Froebel blocks

Froebel blocks

• Was admitted to the

University of Wisconsin–

Madison as a special

student in 1886.

• Took part-time classes for

2 semesters

Frank Lloyd WRIGHT

(1867-1959)

Early Work

• Hired as a draftsman with the architectural firm of Joseph

Lyman Silsbee.

• Feeling he was underpaid at Silsbee (at $8 a week), quit and

found work at Beers, Clay, and Dutton.

• Left new job to return to Silsbee—with a raise in salary.

• After less than a year, learned that the Chicago firm of Adler &

Sullivan was looking for someone to make the finish drawings

for the interior of the Auditorium.

Larkin Building (1904-1906)

Unity Temple (1908)

Unitarian Universalist Church

Oak Park, IL

1905-8

reinforced concrete

Unity Temple

Organic Architecture

“So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture:

declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the

teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life,

and to now serve the whole of life, holding no ‘traditions’

essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any

preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or

future, but—instead—exalting the simple laws of common

sense—or of super-sense if you prefer—determining form by

way of the nature of materials...”

— Frank Lloyd Wright, An Organic Architecture, 1939

The words. (1953)

NATURE. Why? As in popular use this word is first among

abuses to be corrected.

ORGANIC. Ignorant use or limitation of the word organic.

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION. Too many foolish stylistic

constructions are placed upon the slogan.

ROMANCE. A universal change is taking place in the use of

this word, a change to which organic architecture has itself

given rise. No longer sentimental.

TRADITION. Confusion of all eclectics, especially critics,

concerning the word.

The words. (1953)

ORNAMENT. The grace or perdition of architecture; for the

past 500 years “appliqué.”

SPIRIT. Any version or subversion of the word by so-called

international style or by any fashion promoted by experts.

THIRD DIMENSION. Where and why the term was

original. What it now means in architecture.

SPACE. A new element contributed by organic architecture

as style.

NATURE

1. NATURE means not just the “out-of doors,” clouds, trees,

storms, the terrain and animal life, but refers to their nature

as to the nature of materials or the “nature” of a plan, a

sentiment, or a tool. A man or anything concerning him, from

within. Interior nature with capital N. Inherent PRINCIPLE.

ORGANIC

2. The word ORGANIC denotes in architecture not merely

what may hang in a butcher shop, get about on two feet or

be cultivated in a field. The word organic refers to entity,

perhaps integral or intrinsic would therefore be a better word

to use. As originally used in architecture, organic means

part-to-whole-as-whole-is-to-part. So entity as integral is

what is really meant by the word organic. INTRINSIC.

FORM

FOLLOWS FUNCTION

3. FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION. This is a much abused

slogan. Naturally form does so. But on a lower level and

the term is useful only as indicating the platform upon which

architectural form rests. As the skeleton is no finality of

human form any more than grammar is the “form” of poetry,

just so function is to architectural form. Rattling the bones is

not architecture. Less is only more where more is no good.

Form is predicated by function but, so far as poetic

imagination can go with it without destruction, transcends

it. “Form follows function” has become spiritually

insignificant: a stock phrase. Only when we say or write

“form and function are one” is the slogan significant. It is

now the password for sterility. Internationally.

ROMANCE

ROMANCE, like the word BEAUTY, refers to a

quality. Reactionary use of this honorable but

sentimentalized term by critics and current writers is

confusing. Organic architecture sees actuality as the

intrinsic romance of human creation or sees essential

romance as actual in creation. So romance is the new

reality. Creativity divines this. No teamwork can conceive

it. A committee can only receive it as a gift from the inspired

individual. In the realm of organic architecture human

imagination must render the harsh language of structure into

becoming humane expressions of form instead of devising

inanimate facades or rattling the bones of

construction. Poetry of form is as necessary to great

architecture as foliage is to the tree, blossoms to the plant or

flesh to the body. Because sentimentality ran away with this

ROMANCE (II)

In the realm of organic architecture human imagination must

render the harsh language of structure into becoming

humane expressions of form instead of devising inanimate

facades or rattling the bones of construction. Poetry of form

is as necessary to great architecture as foliage is to the tree,

blossoms to the plant or flesh to the body. Because

sentimentality ran away with this human need and negation

is now abusing it is no good reason for taking the abuse of

the thing for the thing.

Until the mechanization of buildings is in the service of

creative architecture and not creative architecture in the

service of mechanization we will have no great architecture.

TRADITION

5. TRADITION may have many traditions just as TRUTH

may have many truths. When we of organic architecture

speak of truth we speak of generic principle. The genus

“bird “ may fly away as flocks of infinitely differing birds of

almost unimaginable variety: all of them merely

derivative. So in speaking of tradition we use the word as

also a generic term. Flocks of traditions may proceed to fly

from generic tradition into unimaginable many. Perhaps

none have creative capacity because all are only

derivative. Imitations of imitation destroy an original

tradition. TRUTH is a divinity in architecture.

ORNAMENT

6. ORNAMENT. Integral element of architecture,

ornament is to architecture what efflorescence of a tree or

plant is to its structure. Of the thing, not on it. Emotional in

its nature, ornament is- if well conceived-not only the poetry

but is the character of structure revealed and enhanced. If

not well conceived, architecture is destroyed by ornament.

SPIRIT

7. SPIRIT. What is spirit? In the language of organic

architecture the “spiritual” is never something descending

upon the thing from above as a kind of illumination but exists

within the thing itself as its very life. Spirit grows upward

from within and outward. Spirit does not come down from

above to be suspended there by skyhooks or set up on

posts.

There are two uses of nearly every word or term in usual

language but in organic sense any term is used in reference

to the inner not the outer substance. A word, such as

“nature” for instance, may be used to denote a material or a

physical means to an end. Or the same word may be used

with spiritual significance but in this explanation of the use of

terms in organic architecture the spiritual sense of the word

is uppermost in use in every case.

THIRD DIMENSION

8. The THIRD DIMENSION. Contrary to popular belief,

the third dimension is not thickness but is depth. The term

“third dimension” is used in organic architecture to indicate

the sense of depth which issues as of the thing not on

it. The third dimension, depth, exists as intrinsic to the

building.

SPACE

9. SPACE. The continual becoming: invisible fountain

from which all rhythms flow to which they must

pass. Beyond time or infinity. The new reality which organic

architecture serves to employ in building. The breath of a

work of art.

Wright on the machine

"…there is danger of the machine becoming a pattern of life

instead of life using the machine as a tool."

—Wright, 1953