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The Life and Work of Matthew Nowicki Tyler S. Sprague a Dissertation

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The Life and Work of Matthew Nowicki Tyler S. Sprague a Dissertation Expressive Structure: The Life and Work of Matthew Nowicki Tyler S. Sprague A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2013 Reading Committee: Alex T. Anderson, Chair Jeffrey Karl Ochsner Meredith L. Clausen Bruce W. Hevly Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Ph.D. in the Built Environment ©Copyright 2013 Tyler S. Sprague University of Washington Abstract Expressive Structure: The Life and Work of Matthew Nowicki Tyler S. Sprague Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Alex T. Anderson Department of Architecture Matthew Nowicki (1910-1950) developed an approach to architecture that negotiated the architectural and engineering fields through his use of expressive structural forms. As more than an optimized materialist exploration, Nowicki’s approach was a reasoned response to the technical and societal challenges facing Modern architecture, and the broader conditions of the postwar world of which he was a part. Through his work, Nowicki broadened the array of possible Modern design solutions available to architects in the postwar period. Widely respected and well published, Nowicki’s work is significant because it embraced both engineering and architectural concerns, and opened the door to an expanded field of expressive structural systems within Modern architecture. Matthew Nowicki’s structurally expressive Modern architecture set the stage for many other formally expressive structures in the years that followed. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Nowicki’s Structurally Expressive Modern Architecture…………….. 66 Chapter 2: Background and Early Work ................................................................ 84 Chapter 3: Rebuilding Warsaw ............................................................................... 135 Chapter 4: United Nations ...................................................................................... 178 Chapter 5: American Design Work.......................................................................... 236 Chapter 6: North Carolina State Fair …………………………………………….. 302 Chapter 7: Chandigarh ............................................................................................. 330 Chapter 8: After Nowicki’s Death ........................................................................... 400 Chapter 9: Conclusion.............................................................................................. 418 Appendix A ………………………………………………………………………. 425 Appendix B ………………………………………………………………………. 427 Introduction Maturity brings a ‘sense of the medium,’ and mature architecture (has) discovered the difference between painting and the art of organizing accessible space. As a result, we now rely in our expression on the potentialities of materials and structures, almost picking up the trend of the nineteenth century. This interest in structure and material may find within the building medium decorative qualities of ornament that are much too involved for the purist of yesterday. Matthew Nowicki, “Origins and Trends in Modern Architecture,” 19511 Published in 1951 shortly after his death, “Origins and Trends in Modern Architecture” by Matthew Nowicki (1910-1950) served as the theoretical culmination of his shortened career. In this article, Nowicki reflected on the origins of Modern architecture, considered its current course, and discussed his ideas for a “mature” postwar Modern architecture. Addressing a wide range of topics, Nowicki focused his comments on the expression of the “material and structures” of architecture as a new direction for Modern architecture. In the article, Nowicki summarized his own approach to Modern architecture, an approach that had been developing over the course of his short, yet substantial career. Polish by birth, Nowicki was educated as an architect at the Warsaw Polytechnic with a strong background in both design studies and structural engineering, graduating in 1936. Nowicki had begun an architectural practice in Warsaw and started teaching at the Warsaw Polytechnic, when the Nazi invasion in September 1939 initiated World War II. During the war, Nowicki became active in the underground network of resistance, continuing to design (and teach) modern architecture. After the liberation of Warsaw in February 1945, Nowicki contributed significantly to the official design for the reconstruction of central Warsaw as the capitol of democratic Poland. ! 1! However, sensing the impending Soviet takeover, he left for the United States in November 1945. In the years that followed, Nowicki became involved with a wide range of Modern architectural projects, across a broad geographical area. With an impressive drawing ability, international design experience, and a knack for making friends quickly, Nowicki became a widely respected architect in a short amount of time. Between 1945 and 1950, Nowicki emerged as a promising figure in the modern architectural scene and a colleague to Eero Saarinen and Philip Johnson, a position that was aided by a powerful friendship with the writer and critic Lewis Mumford. By 1950, less than five years after his arrival in the United States, Nowicki had design projects in New York City, southern California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and India, in addition to a teaching position as Chair of the School of Design at North Carolina State College. Nowicki’s early death in an airplane crash in 1950 shocked the architectural profession, leaving many of his projects unrealized and the full implications of his writings little understood. The article “Origins and Trends in Modern Architecture” was Nowicki’s last major statement. Although many architects, writers and theorists have cited and interpreted this article since Nowicki’s death, its message and significance have not been deeply explored, and different scholars have emphasized different aspects of Nowicki’s article. Correspondingly, interpretations of Nowicki’s life and brief career also have varied widely. For example, after his death, Eero Saarinen called Nowicki a “poet-philosopher of form,” while Lewis Mumford claimed he “sought to bring together the regional and the universal, the mechanical and the personal.”2 Philip Johnson believed he “represented equally engineering innovation and the form of past architecture.”3 While certainly laudatory, disparate comments such as these do not suggest a consistent understanding of Nowicki's career or his contributions. ! 2! Thus, Matthew Nowicki’s role in postwar Modern architecture and the overall significance of his work have remained unclear. Given the scale of work in which he participated, it is clear that Nowicki was a highly respected figure in the late 1940s. However, the impact of his work within the changing context of the postwar world has not been clearly discerned, and his significance is not well understood. This dissertation aims to bring together and analyze the diverse elements of Nowicki’s life and to propose a coherent framework for understanding of his life, career and architectural significance. Through a comprehensive assessment of Nowicki’s life and work, culminating in his article “Origins and Trends in Modern Architecture,” this dissertation aims to describe Nowicki’s approach to Modern architecture and to analyze and interpret his lasting significance. As this dissertation shows, Nowicki championed expressive structural systems in Modern architecture throughout his life, which suggests a strand of continuity through his diverse range of his projects and writings. Culminating in the design of the Livestock Pavilion in Raleigh, North Carolina, his work explored a wide range of structural systems and materials, including high-strength steel cables, thin shell concrete, aluminum frames, and thin masonry arches and others, in a variety of expressive ways. Just as it can be said that the painter finds expression through the medium of paint and brush on canvas and the sculptor through the stone and chisel, Nowicki’s Modern architecture expressed his convictions through a deep understanding of the potentials of structure and materials, and their adaptation to human-centered demands. Nowicki’s writings describe his search for structural expression as more than an optimized materialistic exploration, but as a reasoned response to the technical and societal challenges facing Modern architecture. This was the central theme of his essay “Origins and Trends in Modern Architecture.” Nowicki described his work as a re-exploration of the early ! 3! principles of Modern architecture, rather than a completely new direction. His designs indicate a faith that Modern architecture could meet contemporaneous demands, and express them in simple, powerful forms. Through his work, Nowicki broadened the array of possible Modern design solutions available to architects in the postwar period. By allowing expressive structural forms to guide his work, Nowicki created architecture that established different form-function relationships than had been evident in prewar functionalist architecture, while also creating the architectural permanence that he desired. Widely respected and well published, Nowicki’s work is significant because it opened the door to an expanded field of expressive structural systems within Modern architecture, setting the stage for many other expressive structures in the 1950s and 1960s. With structurally
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