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Architecture's Ephemeral Practices

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Architecture's Ephemeral Practices ____________________ A PATAPHYSICAL READING OF THE MAISON DE VERRE ______183 A “PATAPHYSICAL” READING OF THE MAISON DE VERRE Mary Vaughan Johnson Virginia Tech The Maison de Verre (1928-32) is a glass-block the general…(It) is the science of imaginary house designed and built by Pierre Chareau solutions...”3 According to Roger Shattuck, in (1883-1950) in collaboration with the Dutch his introduction to Jarry’s Exploits & Opinions architect Bernard Bijvoët and craftsman Louis of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician, “(i)f Dalbet for the Dalsace family at 31, rue St. mathematics is the dream of science, ubiquity Guillaume in Paris, France. A ‘pataphysical the dream of mortality, and poetry the dream reading of the Maison de Verre, undoubtedly of speech, ‘pataphysics fuses them into the one of the most powerful modern icons common sense of Dr. Faustroll, who lives all representing modernism’s alliance with dreams as one.” In the chapter dedicated to technology, is intended as an alternative C.V. Boys, Jarry, for instance, with empirical history that will yield new meanings of precision, describes Dr. Faustroll’s bed as modernity. Modernity in architecture is all too being 12 meters long, shaped like an often associated with the constitution of an elongated sieve that is in fact not a bed, but a epoch, a style developed around the turn of boat designed to float on water according to the 20th century in Europe albeit intimately tied Boys’ principles of physics.4 The image of a to its original meaning related to an attitude boat that is also a bed, at the same time, towards the passage of time.1 To be truly brings to mind the poem by Robert Louis modern is to be in the present. However, it is Stevenson, My Bed is a Boat thereby achieving also implies the awareness of an ever-changing a ‘pataphysical fusion of the two seemingly present. A ‘pataphysical reading of the Maison disparate worlds of science and poetry. de Verre takes this idea further, critiquing the Similarly, in “How to Construct a Time limits of our current view of a modernity Machine”, anticipating Einstein’s theories of associated with the kind of worship of modern relativity, Jarry sets out to prove that to the scientific technology such as that of Le traveler in his Machine time is reversible and Corbusier’s Esprit Nouveau and the Futurist because the machine always starts off in the movement, for while Pierre Chareau was “au direction of the future the past will always lie fait with the vicissitudes of Cubism and beyond the future. Jarry’s ‘pataphysical Time Futurism”, his work embodies a more Janus- Machine is an affirmation of the need to search like image reminiscent of Alfred Jarry’s for an open reality that includes all possibilities ‘pataphysical time machine where the view into as reality so that the absurd and the the past lies beyond the future.2 impossible can coexist on equal footing with the reasonable and the rational thereby Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), a French dramatist presenting reality in its totality. It is also a and writer, renowned for his Ubu Roi plays, critique on the age-old view of time analogous first coined and defined the term ‘pataphysics to a flowing river where time travels in a single as “the science of that which is super induced more linear direction. For Jarry, without his upon metaphysics…‘Pataphysics will be, above Machine “an observer sees less than half of the all, the science of the particular, despite the true extent of Time, much as men used regard common opinion that the only science is that of the Earth as flat.”5 Using Jarry’s ‘pataphysical 184_____FRESH AIR _________________________________________________________ time Machine to reflect on the Maison de Verre, The Maison de Verre was commissioned to this paper will demonstrate how Chareau, a Pierre Chareau in 1927. Its construction, which ‘pataphysician in his own right, while working began in 1928, was completed four years later, in a world where many of his contemporaries in 1932. Chareau’s idea of the architectural sought to escape the past, was able to fuse the machine-edifice reflected in the Maison de seemingly disparate worlds of ancient magic Verre, while it continues to inspire the kind of architecture and modern scientific building into high-tech architecture such as that of Richard one. Rogers, is born out of the empirical technology used in the practice of Renaissance natural Pierre Chareau was born in Bordeaux, on magic. At the same time, it embodies August 3, 1883, to Esther Carvallo and characteristics of Alfred Jarry’s neo-scientific Adolphe Chareau. His father was a wine theory of ‘pataphysics as a systematic toying merchant who lost his fortune and moved to with the arrangement of things and their Paris to work on the railroad. Not much is significance until what begins as an impossible known of Pierre Chareau prior to the meeting hypothesis, even absurd, makes the leap into of his future wife, Louise Dyte (Dollie), from the concrete world. Chareau’s endless devices whose account we know they met when he was in the Maison de Verre, like the bidet that 16 and she was 19. Chareau worked as a swivels or the ventilation windows operated by tracer or draftsman from 1900-1914 for the cogwheels, while exhibiting the precision of a firm, Waring and Gillow, a large British mechanician and craftsman, are clearly not Company specializing in furniture and interior wholly meant to be practical and often appear design for banks, government buildings, clubs, absurd. offices, palaces, steamships, royal yachts and railway cars. During this time he also pursued The development of natural magic during the interests in painting, music, and architecture at Renaissance was a revival of secret knowledge the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts. Dollie, who was from ancient Greek philosophy by humanist born and raised in England, helped support scholars. Such human knowledge of the them financially by tutoring English. It was cosmos was thought to come about only through the friendship developed between one through a mathematical and empirical study of of her students, Annie Bernheim (later Annie nature itself. The belief was that every natural Dalsace), that Chareau was later to be thing in the terrestrial world had some virtue commissioned by the gynecologist Dr. Jean inherent in it, associated with something in the Dalsace and his wife, Annie, to build their new celestial world. The role of the magician was to home at 31 rue St. Guillaume. discover these virtues through natural philosophy by searching for signs, which linked The years between 1919, after being drafted the two worlds, and to use these to manipulate into the war in 1914, and the mid-1930s when things through natural magic. his work began to decline, are considered Chareau’s most productive years. Through the In his manual on Natural Magick, arguably the Dalsace family and their circle of friends, he most popular and widely read manual of its was introduced to the Parisian artistic avant- kind, Giambattista della Porta asserts that “the garde and bourgeois milieu. He collaborated works of Magick are nothing else but the works with Jean Luçat, André de Herring, Mallet- of Nature, whose dutifully hand-maid is Stevens, Gabriel Guevrekian, Francis Jourdain Magick,” immediately followed by the definition and Jacques Lipchitz, with whom he became of human art as a technique to perfect very good friends.6 He was also among the deficient natural processes. 7 Even more architects from France who met in the Villa of significant is his need to distinguish between Madame Mandrot in La Sarraz, Switzerland, in two categories of magic: There are two sorts June 1928, for the purpose of founding the well of Magick; the one is infamous, and unhappy, renowned Congres Internationale because it has to do with foul Spirits, and d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Chareau was consists of incantations and wicked curiosity; known to have the works of Paul Klee, Juan and this is called Sorcery…the other Magick is Gris, Braque, Picasso, Chagall, Max Ersnt, natural; which all excellent wise men do admit Lipchitz and Modigliani, hanging on the walls of and embrace, and worship with great his home, while his own work was often seen applause… Others have named it the practical in exhibitions of the salon des Artistes part of natural Philosophy, which produces her Decorateurs. ____________________ A PATAPHYSICAL READING OF THE MAISON DE VERRE ______185 effects by the mutual and fit application of one to the natural forces.12 As one contemplates natural thing unto another.8 Ramelli’s windmills, which, with the force of only one man, appear to take on a life of their It is to this form of natural magic that I relate own using forces beyond human imagination, it Chareau’s work. Natural magic, according to is not unlike the experience Hermann Porta, operates by setting things apart and Hertzberger describes on his first visit to the putting them together in a particular way and Maison de Verre: “I entered a spaceship, out of so different animals were coupled and different this world, with wonderful panels of curved plants grafted to generate new ones as metal which you could turn or slide just with compensation for what was considered lacking your finger, mysteriously to open up a space in nature. Chareau similarly assembled which had temporarily been hidden from different machine parts to create a new kind of view.”13 “machine for living” providing for a new way of life that he considered more suitable for In one of the last books to be written on the modern living, compensating for what he subject of natural magic by Johann Christian thought was lacking.9 The Maison de Verre Wiegleb’s book, Die natürliche Magie (1786), is became an assemblage of windows from trains a long detailed description of Wolfgang von that slide up and down, lightweight airplane Kempelen’s famous Automaton Chess Player stairs, and cog-wheels from ships, exposed that toured all of Europe for an unprecedented and giving clue to how the windows opened eight years, that has been referred to as “the and closed.
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