Digital Plecnik: Vienna Years

312 DIGITAL APTITUDES + OTHER OPENINGS Digital Plecnik: Vienna Years MAGDALENA GARMAZ Auburn University INTRODUCTION also worked in his office in the 1890’s. It was a decade that saw a profound shift in Wagner’s un- This paper proposes that by looking at the work of derstanding of architecture. He had abandoned the the architects of the Wagner School, Joze Plecnik use of historicist styles and had embraced a new in particular, one can identify a series of connective expressivity and new materials that were to become threads with the digital technologies of the present an integral part of Secession movement. In Modern day. Digital technologies have enabled production Architecture1, a textbook written for his students in of myriad of wall panel and cladding systems, with a 1895, Wagner states the objectives for design in the focus on predetermined architectural form and ma- new century - and proclaims a break with the old teriality. One can argue that if he were to practice architectural paradigm. As the physical appearance today, Plecnik would be an even more productive of Wagner’s architecture starts to change, its theo- and engaged architect (if that is possible!) - with all retical premise becomes grounded in the writings of the available speed and ease of production. Yet, it Gottfried Semper, a German architect, architectural is important to state that the basic premise behind historian, and theoretician whose designs for Natu- his architectural production remains true to Gottfried ral History Museum and Burgtheater, both located Semper’s Bekleidung theory, which provided the on the famous and polemical Viennese Ringstrasse, theoretical grounding to Plecnik’s work. Semper’s certainly did not solicit praise from the members of theory remains, even after a century and a half, as the Secession movement. inspiring and fresh, as it was when it was first in- troduced to the architectural audience. In other Vienna at the turn of century was a laboratory of words, Plecnik’s work embodies the same principles ideas in its own right - from urban (Camillo Sitte) that were/are championed not only by Otto Wagner, to artistic (Gustav Klimt). One of the formidable but also by our contemporaries. Semper’s attention voices was that of the art historian Alois Riegl who to the surface, or skin, rather than the structure of refuted Semper’s materialistic account of the ori- the wall, in relation to the space (making), found its gins of ornament in the decorative arts; for Riegl, early testing in Plecnik’s Vienna work. That same ornament had an autonomous and continuous his- “Semperian cloth” richly adorned with architectural tory . Vienna Secession members, and the archi- ornament, can be observed in the work of Swiss tects in particular, had embraced textile arts as the architects Herzog & de Meuron, who, with the help origins of architecture and architectural ornament. of digital technology, create buildings that give an even more complex interpretation of the relationship For Wagner and his school, Semper’s seminal Style between the surface and space. in the Technical and Tectonic Arts2 and in particular his Bekleidung theory, provided a constant source of THE CONTEXT reference - and a much needed conceptual grounding. Semper’s understanding of the critical role of Joze Plecnik was one of a few young architects in textiles in the development of architectural form Vienna who not only studied under Otto Wagner, but came from his exhaustive research into the cultures DIGITAL PLECNIK 313 of Europe and Middle East. For Semper, the use of associated with another material that then must be covers is “perhaps the most important element in transposed. Cache creates a series of tables that the symbolism of architecture.” He states that “the trace this transposition game through the four dif- principle of dressing has greatly influenced style in ferent technical arts (textile, ceramics, carpentry, architecture and in the other arts in all periods and masonry) that Semper recognizes as forming the in all nations.” That statement, as well as the prin- origins of architecture. Architecture emerges in ciple of dressing, introduces a metaphor of an inte- the move from one technology to another - textiles rior kernel (Kern) and exterior covering (Hulle): the would today be the abstract procedure emerging stylistic “hull,” or shell, and the inner “kernel,” or within a transposition process that leads us from core. This particular metaphor, which became very primitive fabrics to contemporary modulation tech- important to Semper, can be actually traced to the niques while continuously emulating mosaic clad- writings of contemporary Carl Botticher, with whom ding, wooden panels, and embossed metal. he carried on a tense rivalry. TWO CASE STUDIES: LANGER HOUSE AND It seems obvious that the idea of the Kern, de- ZACHERL HOUSE void of ornamentation, represents the ideal of pure form, and therefore an essence of the Modernist As a son of a cabinet maker, young Plecnik came approach to architecture. Thus the dressing, or to Vienna after he spent several years in cabinetry shell, that conceals the core, is kind of obstacle school. His continuous exposure to the finesse and to the purity of form. Nevertheless, as Werner precision required in the making of an object, and Oechslin argues in his essay The Evolutionary Way an emphasis on the mastery of the whole as well to Modern Architecture: The Paradigm of Stilhulse as its parts, provided a formative influence on the und Kern3, Wagner arrives at Modernism under future architect. And I suggest that this design complex, and evolutionary circumstances, not re- discipline provides a particularly fitting parallel to ally liberating the Kern from the concealment of digital thinking and making, where one has to con- the exterior covering, but rather, paradoxically, by stantly shift scale from a detail to the final product. introducing a modern, clear-paneled façade. Plecnik’s close relationship with Wagner both as his This notion of a form that is modern because of its teacher and mentor produced a clear incorporation exterior treatment, in which the façade is liberated of some of Wagner’s most important theoretical from the tyranny of historicist reference, is a criti- and pragmatic issues into Plecnik’s work. The no- cal element in our understanding of both Wagner’s tion of Gesamtkunstwerk (the understanding of a and Plecnik’s work in relationship to our contempo- building as a total work of art) became incorporated rary moment. By deconstructing or reconstructing into Plecnik’s architecture early on; most of Plecnik’s the wall into a series of layers, both architects gave projects have his very distinctive involvement with themselves - and us - permission to look at it in a all of the aspects of design, including landscape and more complex and engaging manner. Although nei- furniture design. Additionaly, the Semperian under- ther of them had actually moved beyond a standard standing of walls as a memory of the textiles, or masonry wall structure artfully dressed in exquisite mats, once used to divide and define spaces, reso- marble panels, they had nevertheless attempted to nated strongly with young Plecnik. Throughout his work with reinforced concrete, and, in the case of career, he consistently applied a Semperian Kern Plecnik, had continued to work with new materials. and Hulle dialectic to building design. The exterior of the building conceals the structure - the load- Bernard Cache, in his insightful essay Digital Sem- bearing wall - and the interior is often treated in an per4, proposes that Semper closely follows Vitruvius equally elaborate manner as the exterior. in the concept of transposition. He means that re- gardless of whether architectural motifs have their The interdependence of art forms, the totality of origin in wood or stone, or in fabrics (as Semper the artistic vision, the emphasis on craft, and the proposes), the general principle is that the forms strive for individual expression are some of the ele- and proportions of the architectural orders are ments that contributed to the technologically inno- technically determined. This determination does vative and artistically unique architectural projects. not come from actual material but via procedures Plecnik’s formative years in Vienna were defined by 314 DIGITAL APTITUDES + OTHER OPENINGS his adherence to Semper’s writings, and his appli- Langer House (1900), Plecnik’s first commission cation of the Bekleidung theory into his built work. in Vienna, was a relatively modest project that involved ground-floor remodeling and the design of a new street façade. The request to design the façade as an independent element resonated with a textile treatment, and Plecnik’s solution was to create a smooth plaster surface with a winding floral pattern in relief that created a strong textural quality. This lively patterned fabric is set amongst a simple grid of windows that transition from a row of flat windows to slightly concave ones, ending up on a wall projecting forward as a large bay. This fine geometric game of patterns, projections, and reliefs is contrasted by a side elevation that is simple, un- adorned, and has only vertical grooves in plaster. Plecnik’s design strategy had involved many different sketches and drawings for the façade. Architec- tural historian Peter Krecic5 argues that in the Langer House one can see an anticipation of a future curtain wall precisely because of the independent treatment of the façade. Plecnik also introduces a repetitive element - the floral pattern - that can be easily seen in a number of different fabrication possibilities if it were to be built today. The plasticity of the façade represents not only a departure from the historicist reference but also from a material research point of view. That is, the plaster is not treated as a delicate surface as would be case with the sgraffito technique, but rather its sculptural potential is fully explored Figure 1.

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