The text presented here is not precisely as published by OUP, but modifications are minor. Illustrations are another matter. Where images used in the original book were not my copyright, I have in most cases been able to substitute links to coloured images on the web. The sources are listed under Image Acknowledgements.

When this text was submitted as part of a PhD thesis in 1996, the Notes were greatly extended. Most readers may prefer to ignore them. They have been collected at the end of each chapter, with internal links leading to them and back to the text. They are a mixture of: simple page references; additional examples or quotations to justify generalisations; and some afterthoughts.

Architectural criticism and history.

The 'facts' of twentieth-century architecture are to be seen all around us. However, the 'modern architecture' that is talked about in the journals and text books is only a small proportion of this (Allsopp, 1974, p.31). It consists of several hundred buildings designed by an elite and considered by this elite and a small group of critics and academics to be particularly praiseworthy or significant. The various philosophies of modern architecture are also produced and fought over by these small groups. It is relevant to ask what can be gained by learning about these buildings and the ideas that went with them.

The answer is that they do have a real influence on everyday building. As we have seen, the architect is attempting to tackle a highly complex task. He is expected to provide the user with, to paraphrase Corbusier, an efficient 'machine for living or working in' and at the same time manipulate or allow for its inevitable aesthetic or cultural effects upon him. It is inevitable that he will welcome ready-made philosophies which chart a course through the difficulties because he has little time to sit down and fully think one out for himself. They will help him establish Robin Boyd's "guide-vision". Business pressures and physical realities will prevent him applying these ideas to the full but their influence will still be evident especially in his dealings with the structural engineer.

Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas on exposing the rough nature of timber and brick, and breaking down the division between 'inside' and 'outside' are evident in the suburban house of today. It is immaterial whether these 'leaders' actually converted society to new viewpoints or were merely the 'first on the scene' as society changed under the influence of wider forces. If the latter is true they still served to codify the new movements and viewpoints and so provide the basic language for discussing them.

It is a daunting task to attempt to summarize in a few pages the range of architectural ideals which the engineer might encounter in practice in the 1980s.

The architectural world, comprising critics and historians of architecture as well as practising architects, is in ferment. There has always been great diversity of outlook and fierce argument concerning the appropriate aims of architecture. However, one type of approach normally tends to dominate discussion, and strongly influence production, at any one time.

The next Chapter will show how the Eclectic Style of the late nineteenth century gave way to the Modern Movement and, in particular, the International Style which developed in the 1920s and 1930s and greatly influenced construction after World War II. In the past two decades there has been another major shift in emphasis and its effect on major building projects is beginning to be felt. Many commentators now see the Modern Movement as having led the profession into a blind alley and consider that Modern Architecture is now 'dead'. However its supporters are fighting a strong rearguard action.

To add to the confusion, the writing of books and papers about architecture has become a sizeable industry which, to the concern of many practising architects, is dominated by critics whose training is in the history of art rather than the profession of architecture. In their search for new concepts the commentators have turned to fields such as philosophy, social psychology, literature, music, ancient rhetoric and the theories of signs and symbols (semiology or semiotic). The jargon carried over from these other fields makes their writing somewhat difficult to follow.

It was these writers who first became aware that the histories of the development of architecture dominant at the height of the Modern Movement involved a careful selection of facts calculated, sometimes quite consciously, to achieve certain objectives. As Jencks put it "one might even say there has been an attempt to coerce or stampede society into accepting certain trends which the architect favours, under the guise of making them appear inevitable". This has led to a burst of interest in the actual process of criticism, and the way in which architectural history has been written.

In a related development the art of representing architecture in drawings and photographs has come under closer examination. The vast majority of critics are obliged to work from two-dimensional representations of buildings when architecture should be a three- dimensional experience involving movement and other senses and impressions besides the purely visual. On the one hand there is a greater awareness of how misleading drawings and especially photographs can be, while on the other the production of beautiful drawings of projected buildings is seen in some circles as an end in itself. It has now become conventional to include plans and cross-sections as well as exterior photographs in descriptions of buildings. Perhaps this is a reflection of changing attitudes to the nature of architecture. However, it is usually necessary to search engineering journals to find details about the structure of buildings other than those of 'High Tech' architects.

The history of art and architecture has been marked by the continual formation of groups of like-minded practitioners and theorists who have banded together for mutual support in promoting revolutionary or unconventional approaches to their subject. The aid of rich and influential patrons is often enlisted and in many cases a new journal is launched. If the group and its supporters are successful they become recognized as a 'Movement' and their influence usually crosses the boundaries of several arts such as painting, sculpture, literature, music and of course architecture. Examples with relevance to architecture are 'de Stijl' and 'Cubism'.

Fig. 9.1. The de Stijl movement in art was concerned with the visual effects of plane surfaces. This diagram illustrates the application of its concepts to architecture. (Archts: Theo van Doesburg and Cor van Esteren, 1923.)

A person with no knowledge of art history, looking at the buildings produced during the twentieth century, would probably organize them into quite different categories from those to which they are allocated by the architectural commentator. He might be surprised to find Mies' 1919 project for a glass-clad skyscraper looking very much like a 'Late Modern' American skyscraper of the early 1980s classified along with the Einstein Tower as 'Expressionist'. The reason is that the art historian is aware of the ideas which inspired these buildings and has traced their origin in a common Movement or philosophy.

Fig. 9.2. Mies van der Rohe: 'Crystal Skyscraper', 1921. Go to the Museum of Modern Art, New York MOMA, click on 'The Collection' and search for 'Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper'.

Fig. 9.3. Erich Mendelsohn's 'Einstein Tower' observatory. Designed c.1919. Go to the Image Archive of the Astrophysical Institute, Potsdam AIP, search for 'Einstein Tower' and scroll down the photos.

Unfortunately for the layman, the connection between what is said and written by architects, and what they produce, is often rather tenuous. Critics themselves maintain that artists cannot be relied upon to explain or to interpret their own work correctly. To add to the difficulties an individual architect may subscribe to a number of mutually contradictory viewpoints and his outlook will change over a period of time. It is therefore impossible to assume that any particular architect or his work will necessarily belong to a particular Movement.

Not all Movements are organized consciously by groups of artists. In many cases they are identified by critics who see certain trends emerging in philosophy and design. In this case however the practitioners are often unhappy to be lumped into rigid categories. Many of the architects today categorized as 'Post-Modernists' are very unwilling to be classified in any way and, as one of them said, certainly not as 'post' anything.

A final point to keep in mind is that the 'old masters' of the Modern Movement claimed that their ideas had been misunderstood, misquoted and over-simplified by generations of critics and that they had been attacked for things they did not mean or did not say. Gropius (1962) wrote bitterly on the occasion of his seventieth birthday:

"Entering a new chapter of my life ... I realise that I am a figure covered with labels, maybe to the point of obscurity ... It is ... with considerable disgust that I have watched the confusing battle of words that has arisen around the representatives of the various schools of modern design. These aesthetic battles are usually not stirred up by the Architects themselves, but by those well-meaning or ill-meaning, self-appointed critics who, in the attempt to buttress their own aesthetic or political theories, wreak havoc with the work of creative people by capturing or abusing some of their statements without comprehending the background and context they sprang from." [Note 1.]

It can be seen that the engineer who tries to gain some insight into architectural philosophy is stepping into the proverbial minefield. A glance at the relevant shelves in the library will indicate the vast amount of literature which might be relevant. Some ten or twenty years ago it might have been satisfactory for him to learn something of the history of twentieth century architecture since anything preceding 1890 or so was proscribed. The recent fancy for reference to historical styles makes it necessary for him to have a passing knowledge of the whole history of world architecture if he is to enjoy more than a layman's appreciation of Post-Modern architecture.

It was once common to see the history of architecture as a gradual and progressive evolution of ideas and techniques, with some sort of a crisis during the late nineteenth century. At this period there was a general feeling that architectural evolution had come to a halt. While some architects were content to adapt the styles of previous eras to the functions of the industrial revolution, others felt the need for a new style appropriate to the age but despaired of developing it.

The evolutionary viewpoint sees this discontent increasing with the development of steel and reinforced-concrete construction until in the early twentieth century the first generation of modern architects came to grips with the implications of the machine age and began to invent forms which took advantage of, and were thoroughly appropriate to the new industrialized techniques and the even wider range of new materials.

Another way of looking at architectural ideas, represented by the views of Jencks, is what might be called the 'state of flux' theory. (Jencks 1973. See also Banham 1960, p.182.) This holds that there is a continual ferment of ideas. Many shades of opinion exist concurrently, with now one and then the other gaining the ascendancy. This pluralist viewpoint concentrates on tracing the fortunes of the various strands of thought. Jencks' thesis is that contradictory ways of thinking about architecture co-exist not only in society as a whole but within the individual and it is this very multiplicity of feeling that provides richness in the observer's experience of the architectural product.

Considering that Vitruvius' two-thousand-year-old maxim is still frequently quoted, and in view of the consistency of debate in architectural literature from the 18th Century on, it is tempting to suggest that the only thing that has evolved is the technology of construction. In the following two Chapters both the viewpoints described will be adopted in order to provide a rounded introduction to the history of architecture and its ideals.

Note.

Note 1. Gropius (1962), pp. 11 and 12.
There are many other examples of alleged misinterpretation. Le Corbusier was equally bitter about what he saw as misconceived comment on his chapel at Ronchamp in 1955 (Le Corbusier, 1957, pp. 6 and 7). Morris made a strong attack on the then fashionable view of Corbusier's execution of work at the Unité d'Habitation at Marseilles (Morris, 1978, p.59). Mies van der Rohe, who is generally held to have professed the most extreme functionalism and purity of form, of which the Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology, housing the Faculty of Architecture, is considered to be an outstanding example. However, he siad of it, "[It is] the most complete and the most refined building on the campus, and the most simple. In the other buildings there is more a practical order on a more economical level and in the Architects' building it is a more spiritual order" (reported by Carter, 1972, p.10). Admittedly, Mies did alter his stance, and was an ardent functionalist in earlier times. See e.g. Blake (1964), p.22.

Image Acknowledgements. Linked images, Chapter 9.

Grateful thanks to the following organisations which have made it possible to provide links to full colour photographs and descriptions of buildings for this chapter.
Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York. Link.
Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam. Link.

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