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Kay Fisker and Postwar Debates on Functionalism

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Kay Fisker and Postwar Debates on Functionalism The "New Empiricism-BayRegion Axis": KayFisker and PostwarDebates on Functionalism, Regionalism,and Monumentality STANFORDANDERSON, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Danisharchitect Fiskeris as a Kay presented rep- time necessity of efficient production and dominant polemicizing historian of the resentative in the WarII archi- figure post-World in archi- movement and of the In- tecturaldebates on functionalism,regionalism, action, assertedly realized modern modern secretary and monumentality.Fisker participated in a trans- tecture, seemed equally necessary in the ternational Congress of Modern Architec- atlantic on these mattersthat linked exchange condition of massive rebuilding after de- ture (CIAM), closely allied with both Scandinavia,the Englishconception of "newem- cades of and war. Countries that and Le an ar- piricism,"and the teachingand architectural depression Gropius Corbusier, published practiceassociated with two notedAmerican had been less affected by the war could be ticle titled "The Need for a New Monu- schoolsat the MassachusettsInstitute of Technol- identified as extended in a work like Le andthe of Californiaat having successfully mentality"2-finding ogy University Berkeley. Corbusier's for the ProminentAmericans in this programfor a mod- modernist paradigms: Switzerland, Sweden, competition design ern architecturethat confronted the moredomi- and Brazil.' The United States-blessed League of Nations the roots for a monu- nant of the International included ideology Style with victory without destruction and also mentality that could open all of society's LewisMumford, William Wilson Wurster, Pietro Belluschi,and LawrenceB. Anderson. with vast needs and equally great re- needs to the modern architect. sources-seemed poised to take a lead in Others, even those less squeamish proving the feasibility of modern architec- about functionalism, felt that modern archi- ture in addressing postwar problems. In ar- tecture should reveal a close attention to in- THE ARCHITECTURALSITUATION FOLLOWING chitectural education, too, the United States dividual and social conditions that they World War II required an international re- took a lead with modernist giants like found wanting in the more aesthetically ab- assessment of the condition and direction of Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der stract or technically derived variations of modern architecture. the focus on a Despite Rohe at the head of notable schools that modernism. The Architectural Review of white, abstract architecture in such promi- soon set the agenda for all other schools. London, surveying the development of ar- nent events as the Weissenhof Siedlung in That Gropius and Mies held such chitecture in Sweden during and just after Stuttgart (1927) and the International Style positions was an aspect of an increasingly the war, editorialized: exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art successful polemical group centered on the (1932), the prolific and much more diverse Museum of Modern Art in New York, abet- So far no strong reaction is evident modern architecture of the twenties had not ted by a network reaching into architectural against the principles upon which undergone a process of selection and ma- publishing and education. If a new thrust of functionalism was founded. Indeed, tured to a more singular mode of design. modern architecture appeared inevitable, it these principles were never more rel- On the contrary, internal to architecture, is not surprising that the agency for that evant than now. The tendency is, the work of major figures like Le Corbusier impetus seemed to be vested in the heroes of rather, both to humanise the theory and Alvar Aalto in the thirties challenged the Museum's International Style exhibition on its aesthetic side and to get back to any foreseen convergence of the form of of fifteen years earlier: Gropius, Mies, and the earlier rationalism on the techni- modern architecture. Simultaneously, exter- Le Corbusier. cal side. [This Swedish attempt to nal political forces sometimes eroded the Still, there were questions. The orga- humanize may] be called The New asserted moral status of modern architecture nizers of the International Style exhibition, Empiricism. through co-optation and more often Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip [Then, quoting Swedish archi- reawakened the development of conven- Johnson, strenuously asserted that their tect Sven Backstram:] tional architectural styles. master architects were notfunctionalists. Yet "The years passed, and one 'ob- Yet in the postwar period, the impe- in pragmatic lands like Britain and the jective' house after the other tus of modern architecture was so strong United States, marked by depression, war, stood ready for use. It was then that its confrontations were to Uecome in- and recovery, modern architecture was that people to ternal rather than external. The defeated gradually began dominantly "sold" as just that: functional. discover that the 'new objectiv- powers appeared to have been more closely That such a perception of modern architec- ity' [Neue Sachlichkeit] was wedded to traditional architectural forms ture could soon limit the scope of activity not always so objective, and the and thus further discredited them. The war- allowed to modernists was recognized early houses did not always function and from within the dominant circle. Al- so well as had been Journal ofArchitectural Education, pp. 197-207 expected. ? 1997 ACSA, Inc. ready during the war, Sigfried Giedion, the They also felt the lack of many 197 Anderson of the aesthetic values and the the English became interested in Sweden what it does. A house, as the Uru- little contributions to cosiness and affirmed a "new empiricism" (which guayan architect Julio Vilamaj6 has that we human beings are so they also recognized in Switzerland), Lewis put it, should be as personal as one's dependent upon, and that our Mumford, the American social critic and clothes and should fit the family life architectural and domestic tra- frequent commentator on architecture, just as well. This is not a new doctrine dition had nevertheless devel- championed for similar reasons the distinc- in the United States. People like Ber- oped. ... One result of this tive regional work of the American West nard Maybeck and William Wilson growing insight was a reaction Coast in opposition to the imported mod- Wurster [Figures 2 to 4], in Califor- against all the too-schematic ernism of his East Coast colleagues. From nia, always practiced it .... I look for architecture of the 1930s. To- within their own fashionable journal, the the continued spread, to every part of day we have reached the point New Yorker,Mumford affronted the eastern the country, of that native and hu- where all the elusive psycho- architectural establishment: mane form of modernism one might logical factors have again begun call the Bay Region style, a free yet to engage our attention. Man Meanwhile, new winds are beginning unobtrusive expression of the terrain, and his habits, reactions and to blow, and presently they may hit the climate, and the way of life on the needs are the focus of interest even backward old New York. The Coast.... Some of the best examples as never before. To interpret very critics, such as Henry-Russell of this at once native and universaltra- such a programme as a reaction Hitchcock, who twenty years ago dition are being built in New En- and a return to something that were identifying the "modern" in ar- gland. The change that is now going is past and to pastiches is defi- chitecture with Cubism in painting on in both Europe and America means nitely to misunderstand the de- and with a general glorification of the only that modern architecture is past velopment of architecture in mechanical and the impersonal and its adolescent period, with its quixotic this country."3 aesthetically puritanic have become purities, its awkward self-conscious- advocates of Frank Lloyd Wright. ... ness, its assertive dogmatism. The Although these comments relate to Sigfried Giedion, once a leader of the good young architects today are famil- Sweden and its less disrupted architectural mechanical rigorists, has come out for iar enough with the machine and its development in the war years, the thrust of the monumental and the symbolic, products and processes to take them the argument could also apply to the thought and among the younger people an in- for granted and so they are ready to and production of Kay Fisker, a leading clination to play with the "feeling"el- relax and enjoy themselves a little. Danish architect (Figure 1). Indeed, in just ements in design-with color, That will be better for all of us.8 these years, Fisker took theoretical positions texture, even painting and sculp- and gave honor to earlierarchitects and their ture-has become irrepressible.... The architectural circle of the Mu- precedent-setting buildings, which made ... The rigorists placed the me- seum of Modern Art could not let such him a leading international exponent of such chanical functions of a building above heresy go unchallenged. The museum in- a program. Consider, for example, his essay its human functions: they neglected duced Mumford to confront his old associ- on C.F.A. Voysey, H.M. Baillie-Scott, and the feelings, the sentiments, and the ates in a symposium titled "What Is Heinrich Tessenow,4 that on Louis Sullivan,5 interests of the person who was to oc- Happening to Modern Architecture?"' his study for an English audience of Danish cupy it. Instead of regarding engi-
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