CONSTRUCTIONAL ‘THEORY’ IN BRITAIN 1870s – 1930s Pinai Sirikiatikul UCL Edited version with third party copyright material removed; where images in copyright retain, the author get permission from a person or an institute that holds the copyright. 1 I, Pinai Sirikiatikul, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract Unlike spoken and written theories, the constructional ‘theories’ explored in this thesis are drawn essentially from ‘practice’. While occasionally drawing upon what architects said and wrote, the thesis investigates the extent to which architects have worked out their theoretical propositions within the practical aspects of building, without necessarily articulating them verbally. Of the recent discussions on the relation of architectural theory to building practice, Kenneth Frampton’s Studies in Tectonic Culture (1995) stands out; but Frampton’s book is limited by his anti‐post‐ modernist framework, his mode of argument that largely attributes the value of architectural works to a theoretical dimension, his treatment of construction as a constant and passive given, and his disregard for the entirety of British architecture. This thesis criticises Studies in Tectonic Culture, arguing that British architecture offers some alternatives for thinking about the dialectics of ‘theory’ and ‘construction’. The way in which some British architects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries worked – experimental, craft‐based and treating the process of construction as integral to the process of design – indicated that for them construction was more than simply a medium through which an architect’s ideas are expressed; and out of their calculated employment of construction, considered in terms of ‘labour’, ‘building’, ‘material’, and ‘representation’, could emerge a certain ‘implicit intellectuality’, which was no less a ‘theory’ than verbally articulated statements existing prior to construction. It is not theory that dictates construction, but rather that ‘construction’ itself can be a ‘theory’ in the process of becoming. In opening up possibilities for thinking about constructional ‘theory’, the thesis suggests the removal of an assumed theory/practice distinction, proposing instead ‘practice’ as essentially an indispensable body of ‘immanent theory’ as an alternative to Frampton’s theory of the Tectonic. 3 CONTENTS Abstract 3 INTRODUCTION: 7 The ‘Unwritten Chapter’ of Frampton’s Studies in Tectonic Culture 1 STRUCTURAL RATIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS 23 Viollet‐le‐Duc’s Structural Rationalism, 1854‐1872 Robert Willis’ Theory, 1835 General Criticisms of Rationalist Approach (Alberto Pérez‐Gómez, 1984; Antoine Picon, 1988; Andrew Saint, 1991 and 2007, and Réjean Legault, 1997) The Debate on St. Jean de Montmartre A Unified System of Construction The Visibility of Structural Material Peter Collins’ Structural Rationalism, 1959 Andrew Saint’s Comments on Structural Rationalism, 1991, 2007 2 LABOUR 65 Contracting in Gross The Arts and Crafts Approach ‘Theory’ The Natural History Museum, London, 1873‐1880 The Contracting Process of Natural History Museum A Nominated Sub‐Contractor of Terra Cotta Production Waterhouse’s Intervention in the Contracting Process Division of Labour in Terra Cotta Making Jorge Otero Pailos’ Reading on Kenneth Frampton’s Theory of Tectonic Hannah Arendt’s Theory of ‘Action’, 1958 Terracotta Actions: An Implicit ‘Theory’ 3 BUILDING 103 Alternative Rationalism The Reception of Structural Rationalism in Britain, 1874‐1879 ‘Sacramentality’: The Reaction against the Idea of Development Westminster Cathedral, London, The Building of Mass‐Concrete Domes Common‐Sense Antidote to Specialised Knowledge and Expertise All Saints, Brockhampton, 1901‐1902 A ‘Theory’ Without a Theory Reinforced‐Concrete System Andrew Saint’s Alternative History of Concrete 4 MATERIAL 167 Three 19th‐Century Notions of ‘Material’ (Viollet‐le‐Duc, Gottfried Semper, John Ruskin) ‘Practice’ Robert Atkinson and Hope Bagenal’s Theory and Elements of Architecture, 1926 The Royal Horticultural Hall, London, 1923‐1928 Mortan Shand’s ‘Englishness’, 1929 A Collaborative Approach between Architects and an Independent Engineer 4 5 REPRESENTATION 217 Beatriz Colomina’s Analysis of Architectural Representation, 1996 2 Willow Road, London, 1936‐1940 ‘The View from Within’ Outsiders’ Views Robin Evans’ Theory, 1990 Kenneth Frampton’s Theory of Tectonic, 1995 6 ‘THEORY IN PRACTICE’ 253 Conclusion Appendix: Building Documents 288 A. Correspondences related to the building of the Natural History Museum, London (A1‐A9) B. Minutes Report on the building of the Royal Horticultural Hall, London (B1‐B2) C. Correspondences related to the building of 2 Willow Road (C1‐C2) Bibliography 329 Acknowledgement 342 5 ‘All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.’ i i Karl Marx, ʺTheses on Feuerbachʺ [1845], in Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume One (Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers, 1969) 6 INTRODUCTION The ‘Unwritten Chapter’ of Frampton’s Studies in Tectonic Culture Construction is without question indispensable to all built architecture. Construction itself may be as old and omnipresent as any other form of human practice, but a theory of construction, as distinct from a practice of construction can be traced back not much more than three centuries. Theories of construction, existing prior to and independently from actual buildings, originated in the eighteenth century, and out of them came the doctrine of Structural Rationalism, whose best known and most comprehensive exponent was Viollet‐le‐Duc. In France, especially, and to a lesser extent England and United States, it provided the main constructional theory of modernism; in German speaking countries Gottfried Semper’s different, but not unrelated, theory was dominant. But what other ‘theories’ of construction do we know? Of recent discussions of theories of construction, Kenneth Frampton’s Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture is amongst the most widely read. Studies in Tectonic Culture is a remarkable work, setting out a comprehensive revision of modernist architecture in terms of constructional principles. However, Frampton formulated Studies in Tectonic Culture as a reaction against post‐modernism, and his understanding of construction is constrained by this particular viewpoint. Associations between post‐modernism and the British Arts and Crafts movement, through the figure of Edwin Lutyens, led Frampton to disregard the entirety of Arts and Crafts architecture, for it would have been unsuited to his anti‐ postmodernist framework. My study of a British ‘theory’ of construction thus hesitates to follow Frampton’s operation. In this introduction, I offer a critique of Studies in Tectonic Culture, arguing that while British architecture is left out in Frampton’s book for historiographic reasons, it 7 nevertheless gives an alternative or possibly equally good opportunity for the understanding of the relationship between architecture and construction as any of his other choices of case studies.1 In Studies in Tectonic Culture, Frampton set out to study the way in which architects in the past two centuries had attempted to demonstrate construction in building form, and he regarded a successful and artistic result that provides the viewer with understanding of how the pieces of materials are put together in architecture as a ‘poetic of construction’. Historiographically speaking, Frampton’s aim was to re‐interpret modern architecture according to its constructional significance, rather than interpreting it according to the development of spatial concept as had customarily been done beforehand. While he did not object to history that saw architecture as the development of concepts of space, he proposed to study the history of modern architecture by shifting attention to ‘tectonic culture’, as he put it: Without wishing to deny the volumetric character of architectural form, this study seeks to mediate and enrich the priority given to space by a reconsideration of the constructional and structural modes by which, of necessity, it has to be achieved.2 Reversing Adolf Loos’s insistence on the priority of the space over the structure, Frampton prioritises the construction, stressing that in it lies the essence of architecture. His turn to construction was polemical. It was polemical because he deliberately formulated it as a reaction against a semiotic theory – the theory that had dominated post‐modern discourse and caused a tendency to reduce built works of architecture to mere visual signs. In his earlier essay 1 My thesis began as the ‘unwritten chapter’ of Frampton’s book, as Professor Mark Crinson put it when I told him before I started the thesis what I was thinking of doing. However, I soon realised that the task was less straightforward than merely adding a further chapter. 2 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetic of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture [1995], Third printing ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: The MIT Press, 2001), p. 2. 8 Towards a Critical Regionalism of 1983, Frampton had made clear his preference for construction and his aversion towards scenographic architecture: the primary principle of architectural autonomy