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Home , Balcony, Dentil, Emil Kaufmann, Garret, Joseph Gwilt, Louis Le Vau

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Date:______

I, ______, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in:

It is entitled:

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: ______

Ornament: Semantics and Tectonics for Contemporary Urban

A thesis submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE

In the school of Architecture and of the College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning (DAAP)

2005

by

Gavin R. Farrell

B.S. , University of Cincinnati, 2003

Committee chairs: Jeff Tilman David Niland John Hancock i

Abstract ______

With some notable exceptions, today has largely increased its scale and reduced its descriptive content in what can only be described as an evasion of putting forward a readable socially-relevant meaning. It may be that current sentiments of a diverse, relativistic modern society prevent ornament’s conveyance of direct idealistic social messages. If this is so, then ornament has two ‘holding patterns;’ 1. To express the purpose of the , and 2. to increase the building’s significance. The theoretical root of the problem of ornament will be investigated, and its various types and methods of application will be described with an eye for giving an understanding of ornament’s strengths, weaknesses, and its intimate, mutually-enhancing connection with form, structure, and the resultant space. Tentative principles of use for the 21st century will be developed, suggesting the necessity of a real or implied relationship between tectonics and semantics.

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Contents______

Abstract i Contents ii List of Illustrations iii

Introduction 1 1. Ornament: Definition and Etymology 4 2. The Meaning of Ornament: Psychology and Origin 8 3. to the Italian Writers 16 4. Growing Rationalism: through the 18th Century 54 5. 19th Century and Ornament 86 6. 20th Century and Ornament 119 7. Conclusion: Principles and Propriety for the 21st Century 144 8. The Project 152

Bibliography 157 Program 162

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Illustrations ______

3.1.1 Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture: Volume I, Books I-V of ‘Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva’, trans. Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks. Yale University Press, New Haven & , 1996.

3.2-4 Serlio, On Architecture.

3.5 Anthony Blunt, Philibert de l’Orme. A. Zwemmer Ltd., London. 1958.

3.6-3.7 , The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor, Richard Schofield. MIT Press paperback edition, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2002.

4.1 Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects, Boulée, Ledoux, and Lequeu. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1952.

4.2 Internet source

4.3-5 Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects..

4.6 J.N.L. Durand, Précis des leçons d’architecture données à l’École Polytechnique, trans. David Britt, intr. Antoine Picon. Getty Research Institute Publications Program, , 2000.

4.7 , A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers. Eakins Press, New York, 1967.

4.8 , et. al, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete “Wendingen” Series, int. Donald Hoffman. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992.

4.9 E.H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Phaidon Press Limited, , 1979.

5.1 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2001.

5.2 Selections from , The Grammar of Ornament. DK Publishing, In., New York, 2001., Frampton’s Studies in Tectonic Culture, and Frank Russell, ed. Architecture. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, 1979.

5.3 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary. ed. M.F. Hearn. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990.

5.4 Russell, Art Nouveau Architecture.

5.5 John Zukowsky, ed. Chicago Architecture, 1872-1922. Prestel-Verlag, , in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987.

5.6 Kenneth Frampton, 1851-1919. A.D.A EDITA Tokyo Co., Ltd. Tokyo, , 1981.

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5.7 Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary. ed. M.F. Hearn. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990.

5.8 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2000.

5.9 Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture, trans and int. Harry Francis Mallgrave. Getty Center for the and the Humanities, Santa Monica, 1988.

5.10-11 Russell, Art Nouveau Architecture.

5.12-14 Frampton, Modern Architecture 1851-1919.

5.15 Russell, Art Nouveau Architecture.

6.1 Thomas Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” VIA III Ornament, ed. Stephen Kiernan. Falcon Press, Philadelphia, 1977.

6.2-8 Frank Lloyd Wright, et. al, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete “Wendingen” Series, int. Donald Hoffman. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992.

6.9-12 Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture.

6.13-14 Frampton, Modern Architecture 1851-1919.

6.15 Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar”, Jones The Grammar of Ornament, and , Towards A New Architecture. trans. Frederick Etchells. Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1986.

6.16 Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 2002.

6.17 Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar”, Jones The Grammar of Ornament.

6.18-19 Frampton, Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century.

6.20 William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900. Phaidon Press Limited, London, 2000., Jones The Grammar of Ornament.

6.21-3 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900.

6.24 Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture: 1750-1950. McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal, 1998 edition.

6.25 Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900.

6.26 Frampton, Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century.

6.26, 7.1 Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Robert Venturi, Learning From Las Vegas. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1977. 1

Introduction______

The argument for an ornamented contemporary architecture begins with several assumptions:

1. That Architecture can and in some cases should convey meaning. 2. That the meaning, if it is worth communicating, should be clearly readable. 3. That abstract form alone is insufficient to fully convey meaning; ornament expands architecture’s capability for communication. 4. Ornament that evidences human craftsmanship is valued by society.

Perhaps the weakest assumption is the first. In 1831, Victor Hugo boldly declared in The

Hunchback of Notre Dame: ‘the book will kill the building’ and that as humanity’s main form of expression ‘architecture is dead.’1 The role of communicating the great ideas of humanity had been stripped from architecture’s hands and taken to the printing press. Hugo’s statement has particular relevance for ornament because undeniably architectural ornament has played a great role in the communication of ideas; in much architecture perhaps more so than space, form, or structure. Alternate mediums of communication have usurped this important role of ornament; even in 1831 Hugo discerned a movement towards un-ornamented geometric abstraction that would eventually be fully realized by the Modern Movement: “Starting with Francis II, the architectural form of the edifice was rubbed off and allowed the geometrical forms to become visible… The sweeping lines of art were replaced by geometry’s cold, inexorable ones. A building became a polyhedron.”2 Hugo suggests that since were not needed for communication any longer they were becoming mute geometric exercises. As late as Complexity and Contradiction in 1966 architects were still attempting to come to terms with their displacement in society:

Industry promotes expensive industrial and electronic research but not architectural experiments, and the Federal government diverts subsidies toward air transportation, communication, and the vast enterprises of war or, as they call it, national security, rather than toward the forces for the direct enhancement of life. The practicing architect must admit this. …Architects should accept their modest role rather than disguise it…3

1 Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. trans. Catherine Liu, Random , Inc. New York, 2002 Modern Library Paperback Edition. 161, 171. 2 Hunchback, 170. 3 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Second Edition reprint, 1998. 44. 2 We have to face the fact that Hugo, Venturi and Scott Brown’s observations are correct.

However, although architecture and ornament are no longer a primary focus of society there is no reason why ornament cannot still communicate meaning. The book may have killed architecture, but now it seems as though the book itself has been killed in turn by other mediums. Yet architecture is still here with an important, if diminished, role of social support to play and ornament’s vast potential in this role has remained relatively untapped for the past sixty years.

The second assumption should be easy to accept, one who speaks always wishes to be understood. Today a certain vague level of abstraction seems to be requisite for architectural expression, making the meaning, if there is one, an exercise in intellectual extrapolation. It is supposed that non-specificity is a good thing for art, but it is felt that as soon as architecture’s message becomes clouded by abstraction the general public begins to either miss the message or lose interest, contributing even more to architect’s already marginal social standing. If we feel confident about our messages, surely we should want to see them understood and appreciated.

Representational ornament has remained the most lucid, if not the only way, for architects to communicate.

The argument for ornament relies on the proposition that abstract form lacks the same communicative depth that a fully developed ornament carries. The power of certain pure forms and spatial techniques, i.e. the , the , cubes, pyramids, shattered forms, blobs, convexity/concavity, spatial compression/release, play with light, etc, is not contested. These are all useful devices, but at best they are only suggestive. The ornament is what truly ‘fleshes out’ meaning and visually displays a building’s significance. It will be shown how abstract form and tectonics are what prepare a work for a message, and ornament is the device that makes the message specific.

The last assumption, that ornament is valued, hardly needs proving. Ornamental pieces of historic buildings are regularly salvaged and re-used. When rehabilitating older structures it is felt to be of prime importance not to mar or destroy any ornament, so much so that it is in our laws. Nostalgia or not, this clearly demonstrates that ornament is for some reason highly valued, 3 most obviously because of the human investment ornament makes apparent. The suggestion is that if architects want their buildings to be highly valued, using ornament is a good way to do so.

The use of the word ‘ornament’ will be surveyed in the discourse from Vitruvius to present day, carefully noting modifications of use and significant issues, such as the machine, rationalism, the relationship with structure, general theories of ornament, and the influence of philosophy. It will be noticed that what architects have called ornament has migrated in many directions beyond the traditional understanding; into the form and structural frame, and gradually increasing in scale to the point where it encompasses the entire building. It may be felt that once the entire building becomes ornament then it is no longer ornament; but nonetheless architects have used the term in that fashion to describe their own work and in a certain sense it can be seen as an appropriate use of the term; for instance, a role that ornament used to play – communication

– is now undertaken by the building at large.

If this increase in scale is not accompanied by the application of new detail-scale ornament, the architecture loses not only the communicative ability of fine, small-scale representational ornament, but also divorces itself from the connection to craft, as the influence of the human hand is significantly less apparent in macro-ornament. The various types and methods of employment of ornament shall be classified, and the strengths and limitations of each method will be illustrated for specific situations (most notably restricted urban sites versus relatively free rural sites). With the survey of the discourse completed, the current condition of architecture will be evaluated for the potential of ornament today, always with reference back to the initial assumptions: what rules of propriety are sensitive for us today? What can ornament be useful for in our present condition?

Fundamentally, this thesis is a plea to reduce the abstraction and decrease the scale of today’s ornament in an attempt at clarification of meaning. It is believed that this reduction in scale will produce ornament that re-establishes the valued connection with human labor. Surely we wish for our work to have greater meaning and be valued, and ornament has much to offer in this regard.

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1. The Word Ornament: Definition and Etymology______

…to deal with whatever ornament may be strikes at the very core of the visual experience, where that experience is not skewed by taste, snobbery, ideology, social convention, ecclesiastical or political restrictions, stylistic salesmanship, and all sorts of other refinements…4 Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament

What is architectural ornament? The boundaries of the concept are elusive. When attempting to distinguish ornament from finer manipulations such as the entasis that occurs in classical , architectural historian and critic John Summerson eventually concluded that “perhaps it is best not to define.”5 Leone Battista Alberti, before giving us the first theoretical definition of ornament in the architectural discourse in his 1450 , hesitantly noted: “The precise nature of beauty and ornament, and the difference between them, the mind could perhaps visualize more clearly than my words could explain.”6 The limiting nature of words has in fact always been a stumbling block for architects from the very beginning of our written record, as

Vitruvius notes: “terms which originate in the peculiar needs of the art [of architecture], give rise to obscurity of ideas from the unusual use of language”.7

Furthering the difficulties of language, attempting to move toward a definition for ornament we are presented with several near-synonymous words: decoration, embellishment, and enrichment, the most significant of which is ‘decoration.’ The need to distinguish between ornament and decoration did not make itself felt within the discourse until, not surprisingly, the threatening rise of a competitive profession in the 19th century: interior decoration. Responding to the threat, it was attempted by some to distinguish ornament from decoration; but such re- definitions are usually more interesting as revelations of the theoretical agenda of the architects involved. Previously, architects happily used the terms synonymously (and many continue to);

4 Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1992. 44. 5 John Summerson, “What is Ornament and What is Not” VIA III Ornament. Falcon Press, Philadelphia, 1977. In Summerson’s “Mischevious Analogy” he also notes that “the dividing line between ‘texture’ and surface ornament is very hard to draw.” In one of the most important books on ornament, E.H. Gombrich’s The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art Gombrich also comments in the preface on the undefine-ability of ornament and, unwilling to make a specific definition, remarks “Luckily it is a mistake to think that what cannot be defined cannot be discussed.” 6 , On the Art of Building in Ten Books. trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1988. 156, Book 6 chapter 2. 7 The Ten Books, 129. 5 had the rising new professionals given themselves the appellation ‘interior ornamenters,’ undoubtedly the sensitive situation would be reversed.

Any distinction may be a futile one; investigation into the etymology of decoration and ornament reveals a close connection. Both are -based words, ornamentum and decorationem, built from the root ‘order.’ The similarities of the two words perhaps lead to the invention of the archaic English word “decorament,”8 which is no longer in use, but the existence of such a curious hybrid shows an early confusion in the treatment of the words. Observe:

Decoration, Decorament, Adornment, Ornament

One can see a relationship between the words in the repetition of the ‘or’ relating back to order.

The difference occurs when the visual sign of order has been “added” (adorned) or “decked”

(‘decored’) onto the object or building in question, a rather subtle distinction. The suffixes, ‘ion’ and ‘ment’ both mean ‘state of being.’ Alternately, the suffix ‘ent’ means ‘that shows or does.’

Literally speaking, decoration is a bedecking that shows or makes a state of being in order (very close to ‘decorum’), while ornament is slightly more general; something that shows a state of being in order. Both have developed beautifying and honorific connotations to the point where the original connection to ‘order’ is an etymologic footnote. The ancient Greek word for ornament, kosmos, also close to ‘order,’ makes the world-ordering nature of ornament even more apparent with the modern descendant ‘cosmic.’9 Kosmos regrettably also has the very non- architectural modern association with the word ‘cosmetics,’ which are a form of ornament or decoration – but it must be accepted that cosmetics serve to make apparent a certain social order that however superficial is greatly important to us. Taking the words literally, both ornament and decoration in the context of architecture can be seen as devices for making an order – either social or architectural – apparent.

Ornament and decoration have received slightly different connotations from their disciplined use in a few specific cases. Bolstering the honorific connotation of decoration, one

8 See Oxford English Dictionary 9 Bloomer and James Trilling discuss the Greek word kosmos as the ancient word for ornament in their respective books, The Nature of Ornament: Rhythm and Metamorphosis in Architecture and Ornament: A Modern . Trilling invents the term “kosmophobia.” 6 always receives ‘decorations’ for valor under fire, never ‘ornamentations.’ However, honors are not entirely for decoration, as the phrase ‘an ornament to one’s profession,’10 also suggests a highly honorific connotation. Ornament has acquired a slightly more ‘architectural’ connotation, while ‘decoration’ is something often restricted for interiors: ‘I love how you’ve decorated the place,’ never ‘ornamented the place.’ This is almost entirely due to the association of the word

‘decoration’ with the interior decoration profession, although the use of the word ‘decorations’ for stage-sets has also helped establish a more ephemeral feeling for the word.11 Observing the use of the words pre-19th century in the architectural discourse, it is apparent that the word

‘decoration’ is happily applied where ‘ornament’ is often used. Many notable architects and scholars have continued to use the words interchangeably.

Since the field of architecture is rather confused on the matter, it is worth noting that the field of music has managed to retain strong discipline in use the of the word ‘ornamentation.’ In classical music, the term “ornament” is rigorously applied to notes added to an already completed piece, and the term decoration, although it could be, is never used for such notes.12 This is entirely within the ‘beautifying’ connotation of the word; the ordering structure of the piece has already been created, and the extra notes are added as adornment to the structure, perhaps making the structure more evident with their presence. How music has managed to retain such strong discipline while architecture has not is an open question that shall not be attempted here, but it may be traceable back to a disciplined use of words in the first written theory on musical ornamentation.

Words evolve their meaning via gradual changes in use, and the best way to judge what the word ‘ornament’ means to architects is by observing the contexts of its use and the definitions given to it to suit desired purposes. Listening to what architects are thinking when they use the

10 See Oxford English Dictionary. 11 Differences of use also exist between nationalities. When discussing the words in his introduction, Gombrich uses ‘ornament’ to describe a knick-knack on the mantelpiece, while an American might be more comfortable using ‘decoration’ for such an object. 12 Simply reading the encyclopedia Britannica entry (The new Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 8. Micropaedia Ready Reference, 1998 edition) for “Ornament” (architectural) and “Ornamentation” (musical) shows the disciplined use of the word in the musical entry. In the architectural entry, decoration and ornament are interchangeable. In the musical, only “ornament” and “ornamentation” are used. 7 term ‘ornament’ lends great insights. However, before entering a study of ornament’s use, a few points can be made clear about architectural ornament:

1. It has no quantitative function.

2. It is controlled by architects. (hence ‘architectural’ ornament)

3. When the word ornament appears, the guiding conventions of appropriateness, propriety, or ‘taste’ are rarely far off. These words govern the resolution of the conflict of perception of what the ‘order’ should be, outlining the type, style, or quantity of ornament that should be used in certain cases. A great problem for ornament is that these rules are entirely subjective and usually disseminated by a writer taking an arbitrary, authoritative stance.

4. Concerning order, there were two kinds of intent mentioned that buildings can communicate: architectural and social. These make a division between two major types of ornament or decoration; tectonic, having to do with construction, an illustration of the order of building, and semantic, having to do with meaning and social messages, the order of society. The difference between tectonic and semantic ornament at first seems fairly clear; one is introverted towards the building for its inspiration, the other is extroverted, but often the distinction between the two can become unclear; for instance, tectonics carried out to extreme elaboration can achieve a semantic message of richness, and occasionally semantic devices such as can take up structural roles. However, it is felt that any investigation into ornament will find the division extremely useful.

5. Compositionally speaking, there are two large classifications for ornament: patterned and free. Patterned ornament uses geometry and repetition; free ornaments are individual elements unto themselves. Either can be representational or non-representational, semantic or tectonic, applied or integral.

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2. The Meaning of Ornament: Origin and Psychology______

In the preface to his The Sense of Order: A study in the Psychology of Decorative Art E.H.

Gombrich notes that “There is no tribe or culture which lacks a tradition of ornamentation.”13

The universal nature of ornament in human society suggests a deep underlying force; either certain conditions of society make ornament necessary or the mechanisms for creation of it are deeply ingrained in our very beings. Observing the architecture and crafts of pre-modern it is obvious that ornament served a wide spectrum of social purposes; stating status, providing amusement, or advertising messages of the state or . An argument that ornament exists because it serves important needs of society will find much supporting material, however, it is far more interesting to argue that the composition of the human mind itself is pre-disposed towards the creation of ornament, and this pre-disposition has subsequently been seized upon for various social purposes. It has been shown how the word has a connection to ‘showing an order’ or ‘bringing into being an order,’ along with its beautifying connotation. Consider the powerful opening lines of Alberto Pérez-Gómez’s Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science:

The creation of order in a mutable and finite world is the ultimate purpose of man’s thought and actions. There was probably never a human perception outside a framework of categories…14

While ‘purpose’ might be contested, there is no doubt that the creation of order does occupy a large portion of our efforts. Now consider the introduction to a 1958 article entitled “The Need to

Classify”, by Roger L. Batten of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Geology:

One of mankind’s earliest intellectual endeavors was the attempt to gather together the seemingly overwhelming variety presented by nature into an orderly pattern. The desire to classify––to impose order on chaos and then to form patterns out of this order on which to base ideas and conclusions––remains one of our strongest urges.15

Finally, an example from American literature, Nathaniel West’s 1933 Miss Lonelyhearts:

Man has a tropism for order. Keys in one pocket, change in another. Mandolins are tuned G D A E. The physical world has a tropism for disorder, entropy. Man against Nature …

13 E.H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford, 1979. vii. Owen Jones begins his chapter “Ornament of the Savage Tribes” with a similar note: “From the universal testimony of travelers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early a stage of , with whom the desire for ornament is not a strong instinct.” 14 Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983. 15 Roger L. Batten, “The Need to Classify” Natural History, 67, No. 3, March 1958. Quoted from a reprint in the Smithsonian Institution Annual Report of 1958-59. 9

the battle of the centuries. Keys yearn to mix with change. Mandolins strive to get out of tune. Every order has within it the germ of destruction. All order is doomed, yet the battle is worth while.16

Architectural theory, science, and literature have all observed the same phenomenon.

Evolutionary theory can explain why this is so: it is a simple matter of survival, if we give up the

‘battle’ we refuse to live. If one cannot make ordered sense of the environment, one’s capacity for survival greatly diminishes. With an understanding of the patterns and workings of our natural surroundings, survival and reproduction are far more certain. A sense of order is highly preferable to chaos; in chaotic situations (chaos created by a lack of understanding of the unseen order) one’s survival is threatened due to an inability to perceive threats, procure sustenance, and so on.

At this point a ‘primitive hut’ theory of ornament can be advanced. The psychological need to form order is closely linked to our very survival; but what happens when due to our success at forming patterns the viscidities of life are momentarily put aside and we find ourselves with idle time? In a newfound state of leisure, this powerful latent psychological force moves our hands to externalize what we did while we were in survival mode – form abstract patterns reflecting nature – i.e, create ornament.17 It has been said that ornament can be tectonic or semantic, but this additional message is inherent in all ornament; it is a sign that somebody managed to establish a state wherein survival was no longer an issue – a state of plenty – and that they used the time to create something; a static, physical sign that, whatever its immediate purpose might have been (if any), also makes evident that the basic wants of life had been enough fulfilled to engage in the art of ornament, the first visual art.18

Perhaps today the success of science and technology at establishing a state of comfort has distanced us so greatly from the demands of survival in a harsh natural world that this basic message of plenty seems trivial. Also weakening the primordial meaning of ornament is the fact

16 Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts & Day of the Locust. New Directions Publishing Corp., New York. 1969 edition, thirty-second reprint. 31. 17 Gombrich comes close to saying this in his The Sense of Order: “If these tendencies did not have a strong survival value they would not have come to form part of our organic heritage.” 18 Ornament may have been the first of all the arts, but it is possible that something approximating music might have been practiced before ornament, thus I limit to ‘visual’ arts. Adolf Loos will actually describe ornament as the first art, as will be discussed in chapter 6. 10 that today it has become less personal; rarely do we weave our own decorative patterns in our clothes or carve enrichments into our own tools,19 the first ‘primitive’ ornament was undoubtedly user-executed, or at least, the receiving individual was much closer to the means of production.

The complex labor-exchange economy has created an entire class of people within society that create ornaments for others, architects being part of that class. Despite fundamental changes in production the message of ornament as a sign of plenty or success is still understood by the general populace. Architectural historian George E. Thomas puts it well with a 19th century example:

Ornament, far from being inimicable to the values of industrial America, as post- Siegfried Giedion critics have argued, was desirable as an affirmation of American economic success. In [architect Frank Furness’s father] Dr. Furness’s phrase, ornament produced a “cheering effect... Be it ever so bad, it hints of plenty.”20

Observing the then-common ornamental flourishes of garlands and exploding with fruit, ‘hints’ might have been a gentle understatement. While that is a 19th century example selected because it was a non-architect making the observation, today ornamental displays are still associated with plenty and success, sometimes taken to unsettling extremes.21

A cheering message of plenty is a reassuring, comforting one. It would seem innocent enough, but it raises extremely sensitive moral and political issues that have dogged the ornament question – plenty for whom? How can resources be used to ornament buildings when there is such a difference in quality of life between classes in society? Complexity and Contradiction and

Learning from Las Vegas, and indeed the failure of the Modern Movement to solve any social problems whatsoever have hopefully made it clear that these problems are not for the architect.

The message of plenty also raises an important question about the role of architecture itself: should architecture be something that comforts or challenges? Alberti was fairly clear about this

19 Although sometimes we do, for example: -knit scarves and sweaters, or the custom paint-jobs of car hot-rodding. Generally, ornament is much less personal in an industrial society, but these examples show how important it can be for various social purposes, and how it is far from a dead art. 20 George E. Thomas “Frank Furness: The Flowering of an American Architecture”, Frank Furness: The Complete Works. Princeton Architectural Press, Inc. New York, 1996 revised edition. 43. 21 Recently a successful Chinese businessman built himself a large mansion that is nearly an exact copy of a French chateau. Nothing says “I have arrived” like a heavily-ornamented stone building. The evidence of human craftsmanship shows your ability to dominate others in a way abstract form or a machine aesthetic can never duplicate. 11 in the introduction to his treatise: “[of all the arts] architecture, if you think the matter over carefully, gives comfort and the greatest pleasure to mankind, to individual and community alike”.22 But, generally speaking, much contemporary architecture is not concerned with the basic, primordial comforting message of ornament. Perhaps for some special buildings this is appropriate. Great arbiter of contemporary taste Herbert Muschamp put it best:

“contemporary architecture is meant to be enjoyed. The experience differs from the reassuring pleasure of comfort food, however. It is more akin to eating sushi for the first time and discovering that you like it. The sensation is intensified by defying the instinctual fear of the unknown.” “Arousing conflict is one of the social functions architecture performs.”23

The comfort food-sushi analogy introduces possibly the most appropriate of all the ‘mischievous analogies’ applied to architecture, the gastronomic analogy, as best elaborated by Peter Collins.24

Sushi is quite enjoyable, but for everybody other than architecture critics who visit the building only once, a reliance on initial effect is a sore oversight as the building must stand for at least several years; the ‘shock’ of the unique becomes something people must live with.25 August

Perret had it right; buildings should be banal – but in a good sense of the word, not the banality of

‘ugly and ordinary.’ One of ornament’s almost innumerable useful qualities is that it aids greatly in sustaining the appeal of a building beyond the initial discovery. Noted 19th century ornamentalist Christopher Dresser commented rather quaintly, but probably correctly, on how exposure time is a factor in the appreciation of ornament:

It is not sufficient that ornament be pleasing when first viewed, it must give lasting satisfaction. In human society we do not hastily conclude that he is the best man, or even a good man, because he is most pleasing at first; an intimate and prolonged acquaintance may be necessary in order that a right opinion be formed, and that man we judge best

22 Alberti, 3. 23 Herbert Muschamp, New York Times articles on 12/18/2002 and 5/18/2003, respectively. 24 John Summerson, Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1998 edition. “The Mischevious Analogy” 195. and Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture: 1750-1950. McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal, 1998 edition. “The Gastronomic Analogy” 167. 25 The practice of glossy magazine photography helps contribute to the ‘one look’ or ‘shock value’ effect. Architects should attempt to emulate lived experience, not small color photo prints. Peter Collins puts it: “This paucity of detailing, …[is] not of course readily apparent in photographs, and can only be appreciated when one actually visits a recent building. But it is very evident that a world of difference exists between small-scale photographs of, say, the Chase-Manhattan Bank in New York and the building itself, for the former look so rich and the latter so barren and empty; and there can be few visitors, even devoted admirers of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who have not nostalgically compared the opulence of the various nineteenth century banks surrounding it with the bleakness of its own details, and regretted that the sincere expression of and materials has not provided something more substantial to caress the eye.” (251 Changing Ideals) 12 whose character stands the test of intimacy, and whose company is more pleasurable the longer it is continued. It is so with ornament.26

If the entire building is the ornament no further discoveries are possible after the first look, the

‘acquaintance’ is fully made and there is little reason for the observer to pause and engage the building with their eye again. Some might say that the changes of the light during the day are enough to enrich the experience of a building, which may be true in some cases, but seeing changing light reflecting from ornament doubles the enrichment.

We are, after all, social creatures. We enjoy each other’s company. Ornament that makes manifest the work of the human hand gives a permanent sign of a supportive social presence. If no people are immediately present, at least the ornament is there and delivers a cheering sign of presence. Vitruvius opened book VI with an anecdote: “It is related of the

Socratic philosopher Aristippus that, being shipwrecked and cast ashore on the coast of the

Rhodians, he observed geometrical figures drawn thereon, and cried out to his companions: “Let us be of good cheer, for I see the traces of man.”27 Nearly all patterned architectural ornament involves simple geometric figures. Hugo’s observation that ‘the building became a polyhedron’ shows how the scale of the sign of human interaction with the building was increasing. Buildings can either provide multiple signs of presence with ornament, or a single sign in their entire form.

The danger is a return to the pre-Miesian ‘more is more’ philosophy, but simply put: not only is ‘less a bore,’ but more really is more. Jane Jacobs began her The Death and Life of Great

American Cities with a selection from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “…more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. They mean more life. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it.”28 Ornament, like all the other useless arts, is one of those things which provide a full and rich tapestry for life

26 Christopher Dresser, The Art of Decorative Design. American Life , Watkins Glen, New York, 1977. Originally printed by Day and Son, London, 1862. 5. 27 Vitruvius, The Ten Books On Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1960 edition. 167, Book VI Introduction. 28 The consideration of ‘life is an end in itself’ might be problematic, but very few would object to having a richer and full life. 13 to exist upon, and there can never be ‘enough.’29 The very real and natural budget that the client allows can become deciding factor for where the ‘enough’ occurs.

The common man has always seemed to have a penchant for some variable quantity of ornament, but within the western architectural discourse, at least two distinct peaks and valleys can be observed in architectural theory directly related to feelings about ornamental profusion.30

These high and low tides show that a measure of discipline might be appropriate in ornament; although architects ought to act with a surety that their sense of appropriateness is based more on public sentiment or desire than their own theoretical agenda. Or as Sullivan put it, to “interpret and initiate!”31 not create and impose.

Inevitably, any stance on ornament needs to define what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ornament. Rather curious distinctions have been made in the past based on differing geometries,

‘truthfulness’ of representation, style, or even the psychological state of the worker during production. This thesis will make the distinction between good and bad based on how well the ornament accomplishes its task: does it communicate its semantic or tectonic message in a way that it is likely an average observer will appreciate? And, equally significant, does it reveal the primordial nature of ornament: an enriching action of the human hand during a state of plenty?

The resolution of the hand versus the machine dilemma is obviously a major issue, and will be fully discussed in the body of the paper. For now, it will be said that ornament that takes needless steps to eliminate the traces of the human hand from the final product, therefore making less evident the human involvement with the building, is ‘bad’ ornament. This would seem to be obvious, but it is astounding how much hand work often goes into producing a machine aesthetic, such as in the careful grinding down of welds for a cleaner ‘look.’

29 Gombrich, 17. “…there can never be too much love and sacrifice expended on respect and veneration.” 30 This will be a theme discussed in chapters 4-6. 18th century writers such as J.F. Blondel, Boullee, Ledoux, and Le Camus de Mézières all write about the decadence of the and Baroque manners. Much of their vocabulary and arguments are repeated almost verbatim by early 20th century writers such as Loos, Corbusier, and Gropius as they argue against the ornamental profusion of the late 19th century. 31 Louis Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats. 138: “…the architect is a product of a social body, a product of our civilization. …So we approach him from two sides – as a product and as an agency; so of course I come at once to his true function, namely the double one: TO INTERPRET AND TO INITIATE!” The difficulty, of course, is in the interpretation. 14 Ornament is often criticized as a kind of aesthetic frippery. Aesthetic concerns are of course apparent in all ornament, but to dwell too much on the superficial appearance ignores the significance of the work present in the ornament. Foremost, ornament is surplus labor expended with the belief that the psychological return is worth the investment, it is a celebration of building and our social meanings, if we choose to express those meanings on our buildings. Inevitable aesthetics will modify the outward appearance, but the core meaning is always present.

Ornament fundamentally means that somebody made it, and it is assumed that at a basic level, we have a respect for each other’s labors.

There is something significant about human labor, and in architecture, ornament is the best way to represent that labor. Abbot Suger and Alberti were well aware of this feature of ornament, but Ruskin put it most eloquently with his lamp of sacrifice, “…the spirit which offers for such work precious things, simply because they are precious; not as being necessary to the building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what to ourselves is desirable”32 With finite mortal time, and even less time available once the basic needs of life are satisfied, sacrificing precious labor to an object via ornamentation is the surest sign of meaningful significance. It is obvious in any building that human labor was involved at some point, but abstract form conveys the message weakly; all buildings must have form, not all buildings must have ornament. It is absolutely essential that buildings have form and structure, but ornament is not essential, its presence shows intent of significance. Perhaps there exists only one powerful example of pure forms making evident tremendous labor: the Egyptian pyramids. The labor apparent in their construction is almost terrifying, especially when one considers how each block was cut with hand tools and pulled into place by dozens of people, yet there is no ornament present. Modern form alone has never achieved the same effect.

The story of ornament is in many ways the story of two ideas at odds with one another: rationalism and . Rationalism is useful for working out programs, forms, and structure, but not so useful for ornament. The problem with rationalism is that somewhere, a hypocrisy must occur: one must at some point make an irrational stop in reasoning or realize that

32 Ruskin, The Seven Lamps, 10. 15 the premises being ‘rationally’ argued are not really based in any ‘reason’ at all. If rationalism is carried out to its logical extreme, we end up with the work of the engineer, not a healthy situation for ornament or architecture.

Maybe architects today are doing the best they can with ornament; it is quite possible society no longer sees buildings as significant enough to merit the investment – and architects might be partly to blame for this. But there are enough signs to suggest that the question of ornament needs thorough attention, it has much to promise as an invigorating force for architecture.

16

3. The Use of Ornament: Vitruvius to the Renaissance Writers______

1. Vitruvius

In , written about 25 B.C., Vitruvius uses the term ‘ornament’ or its two close variants, adornment and ornamental, 26 times.33 Decoration or decorative appear

16 times. Neither term receives explicit definition and both see use describing two- dimensional (paintings, frescos) and three-dimensional (sculptural) applications to buildings. With the chapter titles “The Ornaments of the Orders” contrasted with “…on the Decoration of Dining ”, ornament begins to acquire its more ‘architectural’ association. Worse, ‘decoration’ appears multiple times referring to stage sets in a section on theater design.34 However, for Vitruvius a strict division between exterior and interior does not exist for either word, he refers to an “ornamental ”, and

“busts of ancestors with their ornaments” at interior situations, and decoration at occasional exterior instances.35 Decoration is also used to describe exterior applications, but ornament is also used in such a way.36 Regrettably, Vitruvius is not perfectly disciplined with his use of the words. In his defense, he humbly requested of

Caesar

…that if anything is set forth with too little grammatical rule, it may be pardoned. For it is not as a very great philosopher, nor as an eloquent rhetorician, nor as a grammarian trained in the highest principles of his art, that I have striven to write this work.37

33 When tallying words, the issue of translation becomes essential. The text used is Vitruvius, The Ten Books On Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1960 edition. Based on the translator’s notes, Morgan attempted to retain Vitruvius’s awkward original style as closely as possible. Because the English for these two terms is so close to the Latin, the important assumption is made that ornamentum and decorationem would be translated directly into their English equivalents. 34 Book V, Chapt VI. This fits one of the sub-definitions for decoration in the OED. “2. That which decorates or adorns; an ornament, embellishment; esp. an ornament temporarily put up on some special occasion; formerly used (after the French) of scenery on the stage.” 35 Ornamental entablature: Book V chapter I, 136. Busts and ornaments: Book VI chapter II, 178. Exterior sculptural decoration: Book VII introduction, 199. 36 Exterior roof decorations: Book VII chapter V, 212. Ornament describes lion’s head roof applications on the same page. 37 Vitruvius, 13. Book I chapter I. 17 Despite some interchangeability of terms, interesting observations can be made.

The often repeated phrases “ and their ornaments” or “architraves and their ornaments” show that an important use of ornament was as a distinguishing feature for the orders, which is appropriate considering the literal ‘to bring into being an order’ nature of the word. For the Doric temple, traditional timber-frame elements evolved into ornament:

In accordance with these [timber frame roof] details, and starting from carpenter’s work, artists in building temples of stone imitated those arrangements in their , believing that they must follow those inventions. So it was that some ancient carpenters, engaged in building somewhere or other, after laying the tie-beams so that they projected form the inside to the outside of the , closed up the space between the beams, and above them ornamented the coronae and with work of beauty greater than usual; then they cut off the projecting ends of the beams, bringing them into line and flush with the face of the walls; next, as this had an ugly look to them, they fastened boards, shaped as triglyphs are now made, on the ends of the beams, where they had been cut off in front, and painted them with blue wax so that the cutting off of the ends of the beams, being concealed, would not offend the eye. Hence it was in imitation of the arrangement of the tie-beams that men began to employ, in Doric buildings, the device of triglyphs and the metopes between the beams. 38

It seems that in this case ornament is a simple attempt to avoid the ugliness of ‘raw’ construction and please the eye, thus achieving the decorum requisite for a temple to the gods. On the surface it appears to be a tectonic-based ornament, but the fact that Doric,

Ionic, and Corinthian temples all had the exact same timber roof structure but different representational tectonic ornament on their entablatures suggests that something more than an expression of construction was being made present. The system of ornament for the orders was a convention to engender the temple in the appropriate manner for the god it was associated with; the tectonics, when it came to Ionic temples, were manipulated into a more feminine character.

…in the [Ionic] capital they placed the , hanging down at the right and the left like curly ringlets, and ornamented its front with cymatia and with of fruit arranged in place of hair, while they brought the flutes down the whole shaft, falling like the folds in the robes worn by matrons. Thus in the invention of the two different kinds of

38 Vitruvius, 107. Book IV chapter II. “On the Ornaments of the Orders” 18 columns, they borrowed manly beauty, naked and unadorned, for the one, and for the other delicacy, adornment, and proportions characteristic of women.39

Interestingly, the Doric is not always unadorned if fluting is considered ornament,40 what Vitruvius means is relatively unadorned as compared to the Ionic. With the large ornamental triglyphs representing heavy beams, tectonics played a greater role in the Doric; it may be that the beam-ends are associated with a more masculine quality – raw, big, and rough structure. But tectonic ornament – representing small rafters

– are also a key feature of the . The dentils were made to have a more dainty or feminine appearance than heavy, bold triglyphs. When discussing propriety, Vitruvius puts it thusly:

The temples of Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, will be Doric, since the virile strength of these gods makes daintiness entirely inappropriate to their . In temples to Venus, Flora, Proserpine, and they Nymphs, the Corinthian order will be found to have peculiar significance, because these are delicate divinities and so its rather slender outlines, its flowers, leaves, and ornamental volutes will lend propriety where it is due. The construction of temples of the Ionic order to Juno, Diana, Father Bacchus, and the other gods of that kind, will be in keeping with the middle position which they hold; for the building of such will be an appropriate combination of the severity of Doric and the delicacy of the Corinthian.41

The ancients faced a need to engender their temples to suit their various gods, and ornament served this purpose for them. The tectonic ornament was manipulated to support the message of the semantic ornament, the sculptures in the tympanum would make absolutely evident what the gender of the god associated with the temple was.

As well as serving as fine-tuning for mythological associations, ornament communicated political and historical facts of the real world:

A wide knowledge of history is requisite because, among the ornamental parts of an architect’s design for a work, there are many the underlying idea of whose employment he should be able to explain to enquirers.42

39 Vitruvius, 104. Book IV chapter I. 40 Doric columns with fluting introduces the idea of architectural cross-dressing with males wearing matronly robes. 41 Vitruvius, 15. Book I chapter II. 42 Vitruvius, 6. Book I chapter I. 19 Vitruvius goes on to describe the story of the Caryatids, an example of representational semantic ornament being used as a structural device to increase its didactic message.

Describing a similar monument commemorating a defeat of the Persians, the intent of the ornament is frankly nationalistic:

…they set effigies of the prisoners arrayed in barbarian costume and holding up the roof, their pride punished by this deserved affront, that enemies might tremble for fear of the effects of their courage, and that their own people, looking upon this ensemble of their valour and encouraged by the glory of it, might be ready to defend their own independence.43

For Vitruvius, ornament was primarily semantic and associational based within a continuing tradition.

The long line of using nature and reason as justification for ornamental propriety was initiated by Vitruvius in his justification of the details of entablatures and his rejection of ‘decadent’ fresco painting of his day. Consider two of his stances; the first on the conventions of tectonic and mutule ornaments, the second on semantic fresco scenes:

…in Greek works nobody ever put dentils under mutules, as it is impossible that common rafters should be underneath principle rafters. Therefore, if that which in the original must be placed above the principle rafters, is put in copy below them, the result will be a work constructed on false principles. …the ancients held that what could not happen in the original would have no valid reason for existence in the copy. For in all their works they proceeded on definite principles of fitness and in ways derived from the truth of Nature. Thus they reached , approving only those things which, if challenged, can be explained on the grounds of truth.44

We now have fresco paintings of monstrosities, rather than truthful representations of definite things. …Yet when people see these frauds, they find no fault with them but are on the contrary delighted, and do not care whether any of them can exist or not. …if we give our approval to pictures of things which can have no reason for existence in actual fact, we shall be voluntarily associating ourselves with those communities which are believed to be unintelligent on account of just such defects.45

These are Vitruvius’s means of gauging appropriateness for ornament. Every writer who ever appeals to a ‘truthfulness of representation’ argument will in some way echo these

43 Vitruvius, 7. Book I chapter I. 44 Vitruvius, 108-109. Book IV chapter III. 45 Vitruvius, 211-212. Book VII chapter V. 20 passages.46 He can be classified as semi-rational; though Vitruvius makes some distinctions of truth and falsity he does not take rationalism to its logical extremes of asking: “Why are triglyphs present on the gabled end of the temple, should not heavy beams only cross the short span?” or “there are no triglyphs on a Ionic temple, yet it has the same timber trusses as a Doric temple – is this false representation?” or, most fundamentally of all: “Is there not a falseness in this simulation? Why are we imitating timber devices in stone? What about the nature of the materials?” Vitruvius’s inability to ask these questions places him as primarily an associationist working within a strong tradition, tempered with a measure of rationalism. Though some of the ornament used was from a rational tectonic origin, its conventionalization allowed it to be harnessed for the semantic task of association; the techne was as yet servant for the eidos.

Before moving on to Alberti, there remain a few small notes to be made about

Vitruvius that can be connected to later issues relating to ornament. Firstly, though the

ornaments of the orders are within the literal definition of the word ‘ornament,’ the

additional beautifying connotation receives strength when Vitruvius declares that the

arrangement of the elements of a farmhouse are more for “keeping the produce in good

condition than for ornamental beauty.”47 Alberti will come very near to equating

ornament with beauty. Secondly, Vitruvius notes that:

A house in town obviously calls for one form of construction; that into which stream the products of country estates requires another; this will not be the same in the case of money-lenders and still different for the opulent and luxurious; for the powers under whose deliberations the commonwealth is guided dwellings are to be provided according to their special needs: and, in a word, the proper form of economy must be observed in building houses for each and every class.48

‘Opulent and luxurious’ are not a specific mention of ornament, but the idea that

ornament is the visible way of declaring a building’s status in society will be continually

46 Gombrich, in the course of his chapter “Decoration: Theory and Practice” uses the Vitruvian appeal to truthful representation as a theme. 47 Vitruvius, 182. Book VI chapter V. 48 Vitruvius, 16. Book I chapter II. Also, Book VI chapter V’s title: “How The Rooms Should Be Suited To The Station Of The Owner” 21 referred back to in the discourse until the onset of the Modern Movement. Lastly, it is worth noting that the matter of proportions take on a mystical, sacred nature for many

Renaissance writers. But Vitruvius says that proportions are often manipulated for the practical purpose of exaggerating ornament:

The , above the architrave, is one fourth less high than the architrave, but if there are to be reliefs upon it, it is one fourth higher than the architrave, so that the sculptures may be more imposing.49

And even more interestingly, a piece of ornament, a triglyph, can serve as an ordering module for the entire design:

In the case of Temples, may be calculated from the thickness of a column, from a triglyph, or even a module…50

Using an ornament to order a building architecturally is an important idea that will be returned to during the Modern Movement.

2. Abbot Suger

The only piece of the discourse that we have for the millennia and a half between

Vitruvius and Alberti comes from the hand of Abbot Suger, c. 1140. While not technically an architect, the profession as we understand it today did not yet exist, so his view of ornament is probably about as close as we can come to a grasp of the medieval understanding of the subject.51

Suger found himself in a position of leadership in a prosperous diocese facing the question of how best to express faith in god. The ephemeral (in time) act of sacrificing

49 Vitruvius, 94. Book III chapter V. 50 Vitruvius, 14. Book I chapter III. ‘symmetry’ for Vitruvius does not mean the modern idea of symmetry, but a proportional relationship throughout the work. 51 Panofsky has this to say on the authorship of design at St. Denis: “To what extent he [Suger] was responsible or co-responsible for the very design of his structures is for others to decide. But it would seem that very little was done without at least his active participation. That he selected and invited the individual craftsmen, that he ordered a mosaic for a place where apparently nobody wanted it, and that he devised the iconography of his , crucifixes and altar panels is attested by his own words, but also an idea such as the transformation of a Roman porphyry vase into an eagle suggests a whim of the abbot rather than the invention of a professional goldsmith.” Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church of Saint Denis and its Art Treasures, trans. Erwin Panofsky. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1979. 36. 22 bulls before the temple was no longer practiced; so more static acts of sacrifice were carried out: construction and ornament.52 To put it simply: for Suger, god’s good graces allowed abundance for the people, so it was fitting that worshippers should express their thanks to god by putting their abundance back to whence they received it by building a church. The size and ornaments of the church became the manifestation of a god-given prosperity.53 The built act of worship then develops into a competition between cities to see who loves god most by building the largest and most ornamented church.54 It was particularly important for Suger to be able to compare his abbey’s ornaments with those of Haggia Sophia; for St. Denis’s to surpass all rivals would show the greatest devotion to the almighty.55 Suger does not discuss it, but the alternative to investing surplus labors in the church would be to let the general populace spend their fruits on themselves; which according to Suger’s reasoning would be seen as an ungrateful affront to god, who allowed the fruits in the first place.

To glorify a church with iconography seems a natural thing to do, but Suger was actually breaking fundamental rules of the time. Panofsky provides a selection from the contemporaneous St. Bernard to show the conflict of belief between new and old guard:

And further in the cloisters, under the eyes of the brethren engaged in reading, what business has there that ridiculous monstrosity, that amazing mis-shapen shapeliness and shapely mis-shapenness. Those unclean monkeys? Those fierce lions? Those monstrous

52 The ancient practice of ornamenting the frieze with the skulls of bulls or goats shows an attempt to memorialize the brief act of sacrifice by rendering the act of the sacrifice permanent in stone. Karsten Harries provides an illustration of this, The Ethical Function of Architecture, 124. 53 Suger, 43: ‘XXIV Of the Church’s Ornament’ “Having assigned these increases of the revenue in this manner, we turned our hand to the memorable construction of buildings, so that by this thanks might be given to Almighty God by us as well as by our successors…” and 91: “Leaning on God’s inestimable counsel and irrefragable aid, we proceeded with this so great and so sumptuous work to such an extent that, while at first, expending little, we lacked much, afterwards, expending much, we lacked nothing at all and even confessed in our abundance: Our sufficiency is of God.” 54 An objective look at the competition of church building will not see it as who loves God the most, but a measure of relative levels of prosperity and size of population. Suger would probably see the difference of relative levels of prosperity as a sign of God’s favor, which can be won by building a church. 55 Suger, 65. “I used to converse with travelers from Jerusalem and, to my great delight, to learn from those to whom the treasures of and the ornaments of had been accessible, whether the things here could claim some value in comparison with those there. When they acknowledged that these here were the more important ones… [remarks about fear of violent jealousy from the Greeks and ]” 23

centaurs? [several more examples of whimsical sculptures given] …on all sides there appears so rich and so amazing a variety of forms that it is more delightful to read the marbles than the manuscripts, and to spend the whole day in admiring these things, piece by piece, rather than in meditating on the Law Divine.56

Ornament is a powerful medium, and Saint Bernard saw it as a distraction from his pious

mission of life. Suger defends his pro-ornament position:

The detractors also object that a saintly mind, a pure heart, a faithful intention ought to suffice for this sacred function; and we, too, explicitly and especially affirm that it is these principally that matter. [But] we profess that we must do homage also through the outward ornaments… with all inner purity and with all outward splendor.57

For Suger, ornament is an extension of, and an aid to worship. Extension of by the labor

made manifest by workmanship or rich materials (purchased by the labors of the flock),

and an aid to by generally glorifying the proceedings of worship and providing

pictographic aids for the peasantry to have explained to them (i.e., the building is the

book). Panofsky puts it so: “Suger had the good fortune to discover… a Christian

philosophy that permitted him to greet material beauty as a of spiritual beatitude

instead of forcing him to flee from it as though from temptation; and to conceive of the

moral as well as the physical universe, not as a monochrome in black and white but as a

harmony of many colors.”58 Saint Bernard’s fear of ornament would fall under what

James Trilling has called ‘kosmophobia,’ a genuine, real fear that shows how incredibly powerful ornament can be when it is felt to conflict with important life-values.

Suger embarks on quite detailed descriptions of the semantic ornaments of the church, but unfortunately says very little of the Gothic tectonic details which will fascinate later architects. In fact, much of the ‘ornament’ he describes is not actually architectural, but free objects detached from the building, the apparatus of Christian worship – candelabras, cups, and so forth. Ornaments that could be called ‘architectural’ include gilt panels, mosaics, windows, and fixed altar pieces, all included in chapters

56 Suger, 25. Quoted from Panofsky introduction. 57 Suger, 67. 58 Suger, 26. Panofsky introduction. 24 following ‘Of the Church’s Ornaments’. The closest Suger comes to describing non-

semantic ornaments are as follows:

We also committed ourselves richly to elaborate the tower[s] and the upper crenellations of the front, both for beauty of the church, and, should the circumstances require it, for practical purposes.59 [God’s hand] allowed that whole magnificent building [to reach completion] in three years and three months, from the crypt below to the summit of the vaults above, elaborated with the variety of so many and columns…60

The detailing of the elaborating columns goes unexplained, but the structure receives a

stamp of symbolism; twelve primary columns representing the twelve apostles, and

“secondarily, as many columns in the side- signifying the number of minor

Prophets, according to the Apostle who buildeth spiritually.”61

The ornament Suger dwells on by far the most is that of precious metals and gems. He seems to have viewed it as the concentrated labors of the devout flock made manifest in the most precious form available of the earth. Panofsky has observed that for

Suger, the psychological effect of viewing such resplendent work was intensely religious:

…the loveliness of the many-colored stones has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial,… then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven… I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagogical manner.62

For Suger, ornament could bring man closer to god.

3. Leone Battista Alberti

Writing the first ‘modern’ text on architecture, Alberti shows a similarity to Suger in that

he recognizes ornament as significant as an investment of human labor, both of the

intellect and the hand. After a millennium and a half social changes had rendered the

Vitruvian prescriptions for propriety obsolete, so Alberti, wishing to return to the classic

59 Suger, 47. 60 Suger, 50. 61 Suger, 105. 62 Suger, 21, quoted from Panofsky introduction. 25 language, is forced to invent a new system of ornamental propriety reasoned on what he

considers to be the ideal social hierarchy. But beyond the visual establishment of social

relationships, ornamented buildings are also seen as valuable monuments of civic

improvement. Lastly, Alberti is the first to briefly consider an important psychological

question concerning ornament.

Vitruvius uses the term ‘ornament’ relatively sparingly in his text. He never

refers to an entire capital as an ornament, but parts of the Ionic and Corinthian capitals

are. An entire column is never referred to as ornament, but sculptural caryatids are. The

largest architectural element Vitruvius refers to as ornament was an entablature, but he

only allowed himself to do this once; it may have been an accidental lapse in judgment as

he was much more comfortable with the phrase ‘architrave and its ornaments.’ With

Alberti’s c. 1450 De re Aedificatoria,63 not only is the word ‘ornament’ used much more

liberally, but something interesting happens that begins a trend in an escalation of the

scale of what architects call ‘ornament.’ For Vitruvius, there were “The Ornaments of

the Orders,” but for Alberti the orders are the ornaments of architecture: “In the whole art

of building the column is the principal ornament without any doubt.”64 Because all the accoutrements of continued to be replicated, physically little

changed, but the concept of ornament dramatically increased in scale. Alberti was

attempting to establish a new order of building; a glorious resurrection of enlightened

ancient which scholars were just beginning to re-discover and feel great admiration

for. The column was the great symbol of classical architecture; if the new order was to

be a revival of classic glory then Alberti’s use of the column as an ornament perfectly fits

the literal meaning of the word.

63 The text used is: Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1988. The ornament/decoration word translation question of this book feels safe, Rykwert, Leach and Tavernor note in the introduction: “As far as English usage would allow, we have attempted to make this a literal translation.” 64 Alberti, 183. 26 Regarding the new social conditions, an important change in faith had occurred

which drastically altered ornament’s role for religious buildings. The fine distinctions of propriety demanded by male and female gods in Roman polytheism were no longer necessary under Christian monotheism; ornament no longer had to engender its host building. In Alberti’s discussion of the orders in books six and seven, the sexed associations of the columns themselves are not explicitly mentioned. With their engendering roles useless, a new set of rules demarcating appropriateness for the ornaments of architecture was required to fit the social conditions of the day and Alberti produced them in his three chapters on ornament for sacred, public, and private buildings, which shall be discussed shortly.

It is not only the orders which Alberti considers to be ornament, everything beyond the rough structural walls of building is called ornament: paintings, frescoes, revetment, flooring, sculptures, reliefs, , and, most interestingly, openings.65 Adornment is typically considered to be additive, but Alberti’s openings –

windows, niches, – are the first negative ornaments. Despite introducing this

revolutionary idea of negative ornament, Alberti gives us the first definition of ornament

in the discourse, and it is an additive definition:

…had ornament been applied by painting and masking anything ugly, or by grooming and polishing the attractive, it would have had the effect of making the displeasing less offensive and the pleasing more delightful. If this is conceded, ornament may be defined as a form of auxiliary light and complement to beauty. From this it follows, I believe, that beauty is some inherent property, to be found suffused all through the body of that which may be called beautiful; whereas ornament, rather than being inherent, has the character of something attached or additional.66

In a sense, windows, niches, and doors – though physically negative in relation to the

– are additive design elements. Openings aside, Alberti’s definition changes the

focus of ornament from illustration of an order to the abstract and difficult concept of

65 Alberti, 180. “Openings are an ornament that gives great delight and dignity to the work…” 66 Alberti, 156. 27 beauty. Beauty is something rather vague, “a great and holy matter. …some inherent property, to be found suffused all through the body of that which may be called beautiful.”67 Alberti’s concept of beauty will not be fully explained, but it had to do with imitating the order of nature, which was perceived to be beautiful.68 The nature argument is similar to Vitruvius, and will continue in the architectural discourse through to Frank

Lloyd Wright. The important item in relation to ornament is that the beautifying connotation of the word is immensely strengthened, and the order-defining element is diminished.

Alberti’s new rules of propriety for ornament presented in books six through nine pick up where Vitruvius left off. Vitruvius indirectly dealt with issues of class and ornament, but Alberti makes the issue explicit.

…the temporal ought to concede to the sacred in dignity as far as is reasonable, so in refinement and quantity of ornament, private buildings should allow themselves to be surpassed easily by public ones. …The severest restraint is called for, in the ornament to private buildings, therefore, although a certain license is possible.69

This shows Alberti’s belief that, due to our relatively temporal nature, the individual is not as important as the state or god.70 Building a palazzo more ornamented than a church or city would be a literal display that the owner believes themselves more significant than their fellow citizens and even the gods; invested labor in ornament is seen almost as

67 Alberti, 156. 68 Alberti, 303: “Beauty is a form of sympathy and consonance of the parts within a body, according to definite number, outline, and position, as dictated by concinnitas, the absolute and fundamental rule in Nature.” Concinnitas appears to be a simplification of Vitruvius’s Order, Arrangement, Symmetry, and Eurythmy – one word for many. 311: “…the faults of ornament that must be avoided most of all are the same as those in the works of Nature, anything that is distorted, stunted, excessive, or deformed in any way. For if in Nature they are condemned and thought monstrous, what would be said of the architect who composes the parts in an unseemly manner?” 163: “The chief ornament in every object is that it should be free of all that is unseemly.” 69 Alberti, 293. 70 Alberti, 193. “…as kings and other citizens grew wealthier, and were tempted to dignify their city and their own names with buildings of great size, it seemed disgraceful that the houses of mortals should receive higher praise for their beauty than the temples of the gods; soon the stage was reached when even in the humblest of towns King Numa laid out four thousand pounds of silver for the foundations of a single temple. I strongly applaud him for this, because he catered both to the dignity of the city and to the worship of the gods, to whom we owe everything.” 28 an extension of worship.71 Site location also had something to do with propriety in ornament:

...there is a further difference between a and a : the ornament to a town house ought to be far more sober in character, whereas in a villa the allures of license and delight are allowed.72

It is interesting that the private individual’s luxuriant displays of ornament are accommodated out in the countryside. Though Alberti does not say it, this can only be because a country villa is isolated, while in a dense town abutting public and religious buildings it could be seen as a direct affront to the social order. Restraining the displays of the wealthy to out in the countryside would make a vulgar competition with the more important institutions less evident to an urban population but allow the wealthy to declare their class and have the necessary competitive bouts among themselves. The ‘license’ is an inevitable compromise to allow for human nature.73

Alberti’s sense of propriety came from a simple hatred of wonton displays of wealth for no reason other than the show. This rather sensible argument will be continued by several later writers. He colorfully expounds his case here:

I do not praise Deioces, the famous king of the Medes, who encircled the city of Ecbatana with seven walls distinguished by their colors; some were purple, some blue, some covered with silver, and some even with gold. I also despise Caligula, who had a stable of marble and a manger of ivory. All that built was overlaid with gold and adorned with gems. Still more outrageous, Eliogabalus strewed his pavement with gold, lamenting that he could not use amber. Such ostentations of wealth, such insanity, is to be censured: human effort and sweat are invested in something of no particular use nor any role in the construction, which no admiration for its ingenuity can ennoble, nor the charm of invention endorse.74 “The greatest glory in the art of building is to have a good sense of what is appropriate.”75

71 Alberti, 194. (of the ornament of temples) “Ornament is never completed: even in a small temple there is always something left over, it seems, that could and should be added.” The worship of the divine is a continuous process carried out via the labor in ornament. 72 Alberti, 294. 73 Alberti, 292. Alberti’s final thought: “I therefore conclude that anyone who wants to understand correctly the true and correct ornament of a [private] building must realize that its principal component and generator is not the outlay of wealth but the wealth of ingenuity.” 74 Alberti, 312-313. 75 Alberti, 315. 29 He attempts to use the tectonic, rational reason “no particular use nor any role in the

construction,” but if he were to look at his own ornament, it is obvious that essentially all of it is useless and has no tectonic role. For instance, he says of the ornament of church : “I strongly approve of patterning the pavement with musical and geometric lines and shapes, so that the mind may receive stimuli from every side.”76 What Alberti really objects to is the blatant and vulgar display of wealth. In his own day, villa building was

the rage, and while he desired to recreate a golden age of Rome, he did not want to see

Rome’s most decadent displays repeated in his own time by the aristocratic class. It is a

plea for temperance: Alberti wanted ornament to display what he thought the true moral

order of society should be: church first, public buildings second, private estates last. His

“human effort and sweat” shows a sympathetic recognition of the human investment of

labor in ornament, and that the value in that labor should be employed for everyone’s

benefit in the greater institutions, not personal whims of aggrandizement.77

For Alberti, properly employed ornament had a definite aspect of civic

improvement:

When you erect a wall or of great elegance and adorn it with a , columns, or roof, good citizens approve and express joy for their own sake, as well as for yours, because they realize that you have used your wealth to increase greatly not only your own honor and glory, but also that of your family, your descendants, and the whole city.78

Considering the treatise as an instrument for classical revivalism aimed at an educated

aristocracy, the above passage can be seen as a marketing ‘sell’ promising rewards if you

build in the ‘correct’ style. There is an undoubted attempt to convince present; however,

there is also the equally potent idea that ornament makes the building a public

76 Alberti, 220. 77 Further recognition of the labor aspect of ornament occurs during a discussion on 163 regarding the placement of huge stones. However, for Alberti the influence of the intellect in the arrangement is equally important as the invested labor for the final effect of ornament. 78 Alberti, 4. 30 for all to appreciate and be proud of; wealth is put into labor to create ornament that will last generations and make a building “for the permanent adornment of the city.”79

It has already been shown how Alberti understood ornament to be useful for illustrating social significance (semantics), but he also understood how ornament could show the importance of architectural elements, notably the roof, one of his six basic elements of architecture:

Our ancestors then seem to have distinguished themselves here, as elsewhere, in attaching so much importance to the covering that they exhausted almost all their decorative skill in adorning it. For we have seen roofs made of copper, , and gold, and elegantly decorated with gilded or coffered in gold, and picked out with sculpted crowns and flowers, and even statues.80

Whether the ancients ornamented the roof in that particular case just because it was a roof or because it was the roof of a sacred temple is a question of importance (the latter is much more likely), but Alberti is suggesting that important and symbolic architectural elements, such as the roof, deserve ornamentation as an honorific glorification of function.

As a scholar, Alberti is thorough in his explanations, leaving few stones unturned.

He is the first to attempt an answer for the important psychological question: just why do we find ornament appealing? And he arrived at the following: “The pleasure to be found in objects of great beauty and ornament is produced either by invention and the working of the intellect, or by the hand of the craftsman, or it is imbued naturally in the objects themselves.”81 The third item – the inherent property – will be discarded, but the first two will be vigorously returned to by later writers. For instance, Owen Jones and

Christopher Dresser will use the ‘investment of intellect’ approach, while Ruskin will rely heavily on the ‘hand of the craftsman’ approach.

79 Alberti, 8. 80 Alberti, 27. 81 Alberti, 159. 31 Two small ornament-related notes can be made about Alberti before moving on to

Serlio. First, Alberti makes a comment that foreshadows the romantic extravaganzas that

will eventually occur: “Watchtowers provide an excellent ornament, if sited in a suitable

position and built on appropriate lines; if grouped closely together, they make an

imposing sight from afar.”82 Such an idea as this will evolve into the ornamental towers applied entirely for visual effect in many styles. Such effect-based use of ornament will be revolting to the modern mindset. Secondly, another modern objection to ornament will be against its purely applicative nature. Alberti notes that this is entirely for practical reasons:

One particular fault we see committed by incompetent people, is that they have hardly begun a work when they cover it and cram it with paintings and sculpted statues; as a result these vulnerable items are destroyed before the work has even been completed. The work ought to be constructed naked, and clothed later; let the ornament come last; only then will you have the occasion and opportunity to do it conveniently without any form of hindrance.83

Alberti effectively laid the idea of ornament that the Modern Movement would

react to; a beautifying covering for the building tied to an expression of class. Ornament

was an exercise of the mind and an investment of labor, an “auxiliary light to beauty”

which gave pleasure, stimulated the mind, and was a gift for the glorification of the city.

Though many of the classical ornamental elements used had distant tectonic origins,

tectonic expression in the modern sense is not yet seen as a matter of significance; where

rational tectonic arguments occur, they are in defense of keeping the classical language

pure. Perhaps the most interesting point about Alberti, besides the conceptual increase in

scale of ornament, is that he avoids Vitruvius’s sexed nature of the columns, and

officially introduces the ‘Italian’ (composite) order. Alberti is never overtly nationalistic,

but nationalist choices will be no stranger to ornament in the coming centuries. Attempts

82 Alberti, 257. 83 Alberti, 312. 32 will be made at inventing both French and American classical orders; and nationalism

will also justify other stylistic choices of ornament, or the very use of it.

4. Sebastiano Serlio

Written in Latin and lacking illustrations, Alberti’s De re Aedificatoria initially was fairly inaccessible. Later translated editions would correct the problem with illustrations added by others, but it was perhaps Serlio’s 1537-1547 The Book of Architecture that most widened the accessibility of classic revivalism by providing extensive illustrations with the text, using the vernacular tongue, and targeting itself at practitioners of all competency levels.84 For ornament, Serlio’s book is in a way a step backwards towards

Vitruvius as well as forwards from Alberti. He moves ahead in the sense that he takes a less didactic stance on the classical rules, allowing greater inventiveness, and backwards in that he strongly re-establishes the classic genders of the orders with prescriptions for modern equivalents of the ancient associations rather than minimizing them as Alberti had.

Serlio initially envisioned a treatise of seven total books, but only managed to publish five during his life. Books one and two teach how to draw, book three illustrates the great Roman precedents, book four documents “the five orders of building, and their ornaments,”85 and book five discussed temples. The order in which these were actually

published shows their relative levels of importance: 4, then 3, then 1 and 2 together, and finally 5. What is perhaps most famous is that book four (actually the first) begins

84 The texts used are: Sebastiano Serlio, Sebastiono Serlio on Architecture, trans. Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks. Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1996., and Sebastiano Serlio, The Book of Architecture, trans. Robert Peake, introduction by A.E. Santaniello. Benjamin Bloom, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1970 reprint of 1611 London edition. The introduction to book four (the first produced) states the intended wide audience immediately: (quoted from Santaniello’s introduction) “Benevolent reader, I have prepared some rules of architecture, thinking that not only the more intelligent would comprehend them, but that also those who are less ingenious could understand…” The vernacular tongue, in the original, was both French and Italian (for books 1, 2, and 6) – doubly increasing the book’s wide influence. 85 Serlio 1611 edition, Book IV “Sebastian Serlius to the Reader” 33 immediately with all five orders illustrated together in a figure entitled the “Five Manner

of Buildings.” The principal classical ornaments of architecture were thus graphically

codified together for the first time. On the facing leaf, Serlio immediately describes the

ancient associations according to Vitruvius: Doric with male strength, Ionic with matrons

or non-belligerent males, and Corinthian for delicate maids. He then sets about modernizing the rules for Christian society with a different tack from Alberti:

My meaning is, to follow the manner and customs of the Christians, that I (as far as I may) will ascribe holy Buildings to God and to his Saints: and profane buildings, as well as public and private, I will ascribe to men according to their professions. So say I then, that the Tuscan manner (after my opinion) is fit for strengths, for of Cities, Towns and Castles, places for treasure, munitions and Artillery to keep them in, for prisons, harbors of the sea, and such like things, serving for the wars.86

In the chapters continuing after Tuscan, Doric is prescribed for male soldier-saints who

shed their blood for Christ or “men of arms, and strong personages”, Ionic is dedicated to

“Saints as are of nature either weak or strong”, Corinthian for the “Virgin Mary, or any

other Saints that were virgins, or houses… for persons of honest life and conversation”.

The origin of the Composite, as it departs from Vitruvius and has no specific

associations, requires a bit of explaining from Serlio and yields some interesting insights

on ornament. Observing that it appears to be a composition of the Ionic and Corinthian,

he offers that since Romans had “triumphed over all those countries…” from which the

other orders had originated, “so they might at their pleasures, as commanders over them,

set their orders together”.87 As the Pantheon housed various gods from nations

subjugated by the Romans, the Composite order was another means of making what was

once somebody else’s their own, simultaneously showing Rome’s Imperial greatness in

the act of appropriation. Veracity of this is a matter of debate; the Composite, like the

Corinthian, might have originated from simple novelty, but if true, it shows ornament in

its not uncommon political role – a graphic display of domination much like the

86 Serlio 1611 edition, Book IV introductory note, “The Author to the Reader”. 87 Serlio, 1611 edition, Book IV chapter 9, facing page of fol.59. 34 caryatids, but in this case the foreign people’s sacred temple architecture itself is being

dominated. Not only the composition of the capital displays the message, but its

placement in the work was also carefully selected; the Roman order’s incumbency above

all – as at the , as Serlio notes – has important hierarchical symbolism.88 In the days before eyeglasses, it would have made more sense to put the most elaborate ornament closest to the observer (certain notes in Vitruvius show that items such as this were carefully considered); but with the Composite on top, all the other nations are symbolically bearing the weight of Rome. This is ornament near its full height of semantic communication. Serlio refrains from prescribing the Composite to any specific building types, but does provide two ornaments in the style.

The example of the Colosseum shows how original careful scaling of the less important ornamental elements for visual effect can have great consequences for later arbitrary selections for the sake of antique authority. Looking at Serlio’s line-up of the orders [3.1], the Composite has unusually large brackets – they are in the position where triglyphs would occur, but they take a form that could be an extremely over-sized modillion. This is because Serlio uses the Colosseum as his source of authority for the

Composite, and on the fourth story, the scale of the was adjusted by the ancient architect to be more in tune with the size of the building and to create a simple rhythm with the slots for the canopy-suspension system of wooden masts – they are not actually triglyphs, dentils, modillions, or brackets at all, but large corbels supporting a projecting coping and drip edge for a roofless building. Serlio, needing an ancient

88 Serlio 196 edition, Book III. “Many people ask the reason why the Romans built this edifice of four Orders and did not build it of a single Order like the others: that is, the one in which is of Rustic work and the one in Pula which is the same. It could be answered that the ancient Romans, as conquerors of the whole world – particularly of those peoples from whom the three Orders had their origin – wanted to put these three types together and put above them the Composite Order, the Order which they invented, to show that that as victors over those peoples they also wished to triumph over their works, arranging them and mixing them at their pleasure. However, leaving this debate aside…” Serlio has a similar discussion in Book IV, chapter 9. 35 authority, seized upon a particular example where the top entablature had been drastically manipulated to suit the building’s overall proportions. Aware of this problem, but rather than adjust the proportions (and thereby losing the authority of being able to say ‘this is from an antique example’), Serlio suggests that “The architrave, freize and should be set a long way from the viewer.”89 This is a fairly poor compromise, for if one desired to employ Serlio’s example of Composite on a one-story building, they would by accident have an entablature originally meant to be on an extremely monumental four- story building. Palladio will create a completely different interpretation of the

Composite, with dentils of a more traditional size in relation to the Corinthian. The example illustrates some of the finer problems of resolving a rationalist desire for antique authority, and strikes a curious note, as Serlio has little trouble making slight adjustments or even committing fantastic violations of the classical rules in many other examples.90

[3.1] Serlio, ‘The Five Styles of Building.’ An attempt at codification of ornament.

89 Serlio 1996 edition, 364. Book IV, chapter 9. 90 Serlio 1996 edition, 296. Book IV, chapter 6. He defends an adjustment to a doorway which breaks classical rules: “I have never actually seen anything like this on an ancient building or found anything written, but Baldassare from Siena – most knowledgeable of antiquities – may perhaps have seen some traces or maybe with his consummate judgment invented this variety, placing triglyphs above the opening because they bear less weight and the corbels, which bear the whole weight of the , above the masonry of the pilastrades. This, in my opinion, preserves the natura and is pleasing to the eye, and was highly praised by Clement the Seventh. …The architect could use this invention not only for a door, but also for various ornaments, according to the situation.” Note his appeal to intellectual and papal authority as support for his invention. For large violations of the classical ‘rules,’ observe many of his fireplace or portal drawings. i.e., 299. Perhaps it is just that for the sacred orders themselves, Serlio felt he needed antique authority, but for the less-important building elements allowed himself greater freedom. 36 Along with adapting the Vitruvian sexed associations for modern use, Serlio stays

close to the ancient source by beginning each chapter on an order with the title “Of the

[order name] and the ornaments thereof,”91 echoing Vitruvius’s “On the ornaments of the orders” chapter. However, Alberti’s influence is extremely apparent, as Serlio directly echoes Albertian ornament theory here and there: “It was my initial intention to describe only the ornaments of the five styles of buildings in the fourth book – that is, columns, pedestals, architraves, , and some different sorts of doors, windows,

niches and other similar individual members”92, and the orders are referred to as the

“ornaments of architecture”93 at the beginning of chapter nine. Chapter eleven “Of ornaments of pictures within and without the houses” deals with paintings, and chapter twelve provides illustrations for “ornaments and garnishing”94 of interior coffered

ceilings – which should be observed closely, as some modern structural plans

and even city plans will bear an uncanny resemblance.95

Though some differences occur (mainly in Serlio’s inventiveness), Alberti and

Serlio have much in common ideologically about ornament. For instance, Serlio

strengthens an Albertian dictum, stating something very similar to ornament as a ‘gift to

the public’: “the commodity and beauty of buildings give utility and contentment to the inhabitants, honor and ornament to a city and pleasure and delight to those who contemplate them.”96 Serlio’s later books, not published during his life, show a very

91 Serlio 1611 edition, Book IV, chapters 5-9. This is not actually Serlio, but Robert Peake. 92 Serlio 1996 edition, 300. Book IV, chapter 5. 93 Serlio 1611 edition, Book IV chapter 9. 94 Serlio 1611 edition, Book IV, chapter 12, Fol.68. Serlio’s “Garnishing” may be the first introduction of the gastronomic analogy within the context of ornament. 95 This will be discussed in detail further on, and has been best shown by Thomas Beeby’s article “The Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar”, in Ornament VIA III, ed. Stephan Kiernan. Philadelphia, PA: Falcon Press, 1977. 96 Serlio, Book III fol. 124v, Quoted from the Vaughan Hart and Peter Hicks 1996 translation introduction, xxxv. 37 similar stance with Alberti on the use of ornament for a display of the social hierarchy;97 however, Serlio understood that an architect’s livelihood relied upon the patronage of aristocrats, so he allows much more license for garish displays of wealth via ornamentation. Alberti had called watchtowers ornament, and Serlio furthers the idea, calling a church’s campanili ornament.98 But this is now an architectural part of a church, not part of city walls. However, the large ornament is still intended to be decked with smaller ornaments, so nothing is lost in terms of richness from the increase in scale.

Translators Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks make a subtle observation about Serlio; a very symbolic one directly vivifying the primordial meaning of ornament:

With their rusticated contrasted with Corinthian , Serlio’s palace facades in Book IV might be seen to express an ordered progression from the realm of Nature to the various levels of refinement of man’s own character, ranging from robust to delicate. On a Tuscan Serlio notes:

The ancient Romans thought it good to mix Rustic not only with Doric, but also Ionic, and even Corinthian. Therefore it would not be faulty to have a mixture of Rustic with one other style, symbolizing by this partly the work of Nature and partly the work of human skill. The columns banded by Rustic stones, and also the architrave and freize interrupted by the , represent the work of Nature, but the capitals, part of the columns and the cornice with the pediment represent the work of the human hand. (fol. 133v)99

There is nothing like this in Alberti or Palladio, and it gives the highly mannerist compositions where columns are devoured with rusticated blocks a certain poetic sense

[3.2-4]. Remembering the primordial message of ornament – an ordering work of the human hand during a momentary escape from the state of nature – we have in Serlio a use of ornament to make more apparent the primordial meaning of ornament itself via contrast of nature’s rough work and man’s refined work. While interesting, and possibly true (the gate is suggested to have antique authority, but Vitruvius does not say anything

97 Serlio’s Book seven makes this absolutely clear, but Books I-V also have the occasional comment about ornament as an expression of the patron’s wealth: “the elements of utility get transformed into ornament so as to display the artistry and also the wealth of the patron, and sometimes this ornament goes beyond necessity” Book IV chapter 5. 98 Serlio 1996, Book V, “These campanili would be ornament to the face of the temple because they would mask the two corners which protrude from the side chapels, and with their underground commodities they would provide habitations for the priests.” 99 Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture: Volume I, Books I-V of ‘Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva’, trans. Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks. Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1996. xxx. 38 to suggest an intent like this), there are other legitimate means of explaining the stacked

hierarchies and mixings of columns – the political: Rome dominates all, the structurally

expressive: the most delicate proportions are placed on top because beneath they would

appear unsafe, and the practical: the parts of the building immediately at street level

should not have fine breakable ornamental work. Novelty is an equally likely

explanation. Wherever the truth lies; the ornament still remains as a sign of human

involvement with the building, with multiple colors of semantic or tectonic meaning; this

is not direct and clear communication, but subtle, powerful, emotional suggestion.

[3.2-3.4] Serlio, Rustic gates. Poetic expression of man versus nature, or simple novelty?

With that vague lesson of ornament established, a good final lesson can be learned

from Serlio on the opposite end of the spectrum of ornamental communication: how to

make intentions absolutely clear. The sexed associations of the orders admittedly rely on

a conventionalized system; an observer will not understand the abstracted maleness of

Tuscan or Doric versus the femaleness of Corinthian and Ionic unless the two types are present in buildings adjacent to each other, and then the observer is directly asked “which is masculine and which is feminine?” And even then a correct answer may not be certain without any additional ornaments on the buildings to make the message explicit (such as a female or male statue in the center of the tympanum). With his for the Ionic 39 and Corinthian orders, Serlio makes sure to drive the message of the orders absolutely

home by use of sculptural ornament, noting:

“…the manner of the Ionic being made after the feminine kind, it is so likewise a material thing that having a to make of that order, we must, as near as we can, make some show of that sex therein…” “…the Corinthian manner had her beginning from a maid, of the town of Corinthia: therefore I have placed a maid here, instead of a column…”100

Vitruvius would not have approved at all of Serlio’s fantastic winged and four-breasted depictions of the female body, but Serlio does make absolutely evident the intended femaleness of the order – and he uses representational ornament to do so. For the ancient’s temples, the same task would have been achieved by the placement of the principle deity’s statue at the center of the tympanum.

For ornament, Serlio has one foot in the past and the other in the future. Reaching

back to Vitruvius, he re-establishes the conventions of association, but at the same time

he shows mannerist inventiveness, flaunting the rigid rules – especially in some of his

gate and fireplace drawings. Ornamental devices of rustication, voussoirs, and the classical language turn into the architect’s playground. He notes: “It is not sufficient that the work should be strong, but it must also be made artificially, to please men’s sight.”101

After he himself had measured monuments of for book three, it must have been quite apparent that nobody ever followed one absolute set of rules anyways, so why not invent something? Cautious asides of “as far as I may” and “after my opinion” are frequently sprinkled throughout the text, showing a far less authoritarian stance than

Alberti. What Serlio provides is basically the first easy-reference ornament pattern-book

for everything a client of his day might have needed. The plethora of illustrations makes

reading the text itself almost unnecessary.

100 Serlio, Book IV, chapter seven Fol.43 and chapter eight, Fol.58. 101 Serlio, Book IV chapter 5, Fol 11. 40 5. Philibert De l’Orme

Philibert de l’Orme’s 1561 Nouvelles Inventions pour bien bastir et à petits Fraiz and his

1567 Le premiere tôme de l’Architecture add a few points of significance to the theory of

ornament. First, De l’Orme’s training as a mason made him more sensitive to

straightforward matters of building – tectonics – and therefore, when he invented a new

system of French orders, what could be called tectonic regional expression begins. But it

is not yet modern tectonics, as De l’Orme still bases himself within an associational

framework. Second, Alberti had argued against excessive ornament based on the

symbolism of invested labor for incorrect social purposes, but De l’Orme occasionally

argues against excessive ornament merely as a matter of his own taste; but he uses reason

in the course of his argument.

The new orders are De l’Orme’s attempt to create a national French ornament and

are an important example of tectonics taking a supporting role in semantic ornament

[3.5]. Architectural historian Anthony Blunt describes De l’Orme’s reasoning behind his

proposal as both theoretical and practical.102 All of the orders had local origins; the

Romans had invented their own, so why should the French not invent a Gallic order as a fitting expression of national greatness? Nationalism drove the urge to make a new order, but what would determine the form of it? As a rationalist coming from a family of masons, the practical argument comes close to an early form of regionalism based on the available materials and tectonic expression; Blunt explains:

…marble being relatively rare in , most columns had of necessity to be made of stone, and a single long shaft of stone will not stand the strain imposed by the entablature which it has to support. Stone columns, therefore, have to be built of superimposed drums, and in order to conceal the joins of these drums de l’Orme proposed that the French Order should have a series of decorated bands round the shaft of the column.103

102 Anthony Blunt, Philibert de l’Orme. A. Zwemmer Ltd., London. 1958. A discussion of de l’Orme’s order proposal occurs on pages 118-122. 103 Blunt, Philibert de l’Orme. 119. 41 Blunt shows how this is a curious case of architectural re-invention due to De l’Orme’s

lack of knowledge of the Greek methods of construction; they built their columns of

drums, but did not emphasize the joints apart from a few exceptional cases.

[3.5] De l’Orme, tectonic ornament integrated into traditional system as national expression. From Blunt.

The important item of note occurs in the relationship between the tectonics and the

semantics. First, the tectonic element in De l’Orme’s invention is subservient to

tradition; he does not actually create a new, sixth, French order, but modifies all of the

existing orders with bands to express the noble French stone “as good as marbles brought

from ”.104 Second, Blunt explains that the bands themselves are seized upon as a means of expressing ideas outside the realm of tectonics:

He recommends that in composing these ornaments [the bands] the architect should use decorative features suitable to the country or the person for whom he is working, and he

104 Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700. Penguin Books, Ltd., New York, 1980. 86. 42 himself employed this principle by introducing for instance the monogram of Catherine de’ Medici in the pilasters in the upper story of the Tuileries...105

Much akin to how keystones, a tectonic element, might receive important semantic ornaments. Relationships such as these between tectonic and semantic ornament increases the significance of both, they are mutually enhancing.

Now for De l’Orme’s anti-ornament comments. Alberti had argued that the

Vitruvian triangle is not equilateral, but is weighted more heavily towards the

‘grace/delight/beauty’ side (ornament being the most prominent item on the beauty side of the triangle).106 After all, any vernacular builder or trained engineer can make a sound building that houses a function adequately. However, in one of his comments De l’Orme weights the triangle away from delight (specifically mentioning ornament/decoration) and towards commodity:

It would be much better, in my opinion, for the architect to fail in the ornamentation of the columns, in the proportions and the treatment of facades (to which those who proclaim themselves architects devote the most study) rather than that he should desert Nature’s excellent rules which concern the comfort, convenience, and advantage of the inhabitants, and not the decoration, beauty, and richness of houses, made only to please the eye, and not for any benefit to the health and life of men.107

Such a statement lays the germ that grows into Durand equating firmness and commodity with beauty. It also makes the assumption that ornament does not contribute in a real way to the ‘health of life and men’ (Ruskin in his definition of architecture will insist that it does). The inability to quantify ornament’s psychological benefit in terms of square footage towards a specific function is one of its downfalls, but in its unquantifiable nature it finds close kinship with its bearer, architecture itself.

105 Blunt, Philibert de l’Orme. 120. Blunt uses ‘decorative features’ to describe what I have called semantic ‘ornament.’ The matter of word choice is important. If De l’Orme had explicitly distinguished between ‘decoration’ and ‘ornament,’ Blunt would very likely have commented on it in his description. The important assumption is made that De l’Orme uses the words about as synonymously as the other writers of this period. Blunt is comfortable using the words synonymously, as he refers to the same ornamental bands as decoration in Art and Architecture in France on 87. 106 Alberti, 155. Intro to Book 6: “Of the three conditions that apply to every form of construction – that what we construct should be appropriate to use, lasting in structure, and graceful and pleasing in appearance – the first two have been dealt with, and there remains the third, the noblest and most necessary of all.” 107 Blunt, Art and Architecture in France. 85-86. From De l’Orme’s Le premiere tôme de l’Architecture. 43 What has been termed ‘selective rationalism’ plays a role in De l’Orme’s attacks on ornament. Blunt documents another of De l’Orme’s tirades against those who pile up ornament “without reason, proportion, or measure, and more often by mere chance, without being able to say why they did it.”108 Forms of this statement will be echoed by multiple architects taking a rationalist position, including such notables as Laugier,

Durand, and Violet-Le-Duc. The fact that architects are responsible for quite a large sum of their client’s money makes it desirable to have a solid reason behind design decisions, and the reason for ornament is often felt to be a weak one. Despite these anti-ornament comments, De l’Orme ends up taking the typical expression of the social hierarchy statement similar to Alberti.109 Although he introduces these fundamental anti-ornament arguments, De l’Orme was a man who truly appreciated sumptuous, richly embellished architecture.110

6. Andrea Palladio

120 years after Alberti, Andrea Palladio’s 1570 I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura remains within the same school of thought on architectural matters in general but shows some important developments concerning ornament. Like Alberti, Palladio states that the

108 Blunt, Art and Architecture in France. 86. From De l’Orme’s Le premiere tôme de l’Architecture. 109 Blunt, Art and Architecture in France. 86. “After considering these basic practical matters, Philibert goes on to the question of ornament. This he admits is necessary, but it must above all be applied properly, ‘as is necessary and reasonable’, not merely to give an effect of richness. Generally speaking, he is opposed to richness of either decoration or material, except in the case of a royal palace or a public building to which it is appropriate.” Another contemporary French treatise mentioned in Blunt takes the same line: Jacques Androuet du Cerceau the Elder (1559 book: Livre D’Architecture) “The book presents plans for houses of all sizes, from one suitable to a merchant, to the grandest hotel of a noble family. The smaller houses consist of a single block, usually of only one storey, but with great variety in the elevations. The surface is varied by stone quoins and surrounds; the openings are of different forms, and the front is often broken by small pavilions containing cabinets and covered by separate roofs, so that the sky-line is discontinuous. …Later in the book du Cerceau shows more splendid houses…” (page 141) 110 Blunt, Philibert de l’Orme. 117-118. “His personal taste comes out in a preference for elaborate forms whenever ancient buildings provide examples of them. In dealing with the , for instance, he illustrates a pedestal decorated with rams’ heads, swags and swans carved in , which is more like a Roman altar than the pedestal of a Doric column. Naturally these characteristics are even more marked when de l’Orme comes to deal with the more ornate orders, and his capitals and cornices for the Ionic, Corinthian and Composite orders show a pursuit of richness which should not surprise us in the architect who had shown his tendencies in this direction in the tomb of Francis I.” 44 orders are the ornaments of architecture, but Palladio explicitly adds the intent that they are used to provide the psychological and visual structure to a building. Palladio also shows a powerful understanding of how ornament can be used to manipulate the appearance of space, and is possibly the first author to say that ornament can be used as a tectonically expressive device in something approaching the modern sense of the word.

But to return to the matter of language for a moment, translator Richard Schofield

provides a brief note of interest which highlights how the word ‘ornament’ was perhaps

being over-used by the renaissance authors, to the point where it signified anything that

beautified. A perplexing question is introduced: can ornament be ornamented?

Ornamento is used on literally dozens of occasions by Palladio; sometimes it is clear that the word is focused or “loaded” in the sense that it refers to Albertian theories to the effect that columns, capitals, bases, pilasters, doors, and windows were ornaments… We are not sure, however, whether Palladio intended this word to carry a theoretical weight on every occasion; this question need not affect the translation a great deal since the word can be translated as “ornament” in many cases, but there are occasions when “decoration” or other words would serve better. The problem may be exemplified by what Palladio says… about the columns to be used in churches: “each order must be given its appropriate and suitable ornamenti…” Does this mean that the columns, ornamenta in the Albertian sense, are also to be given their own ornamenta, also in an Albertian sense? …we have vacillated between translating ornamento as “ornament” or translating in with more natural English synonyms or near synonyms, depending on the context.111

But it is not just ornamental church columns that are being ornamented; Alberti, Serlio,

and Palladio all use the term on an even wider scale. There are many nestings of

ornament. Cities are ornamented with buildings, squares are ornamented with

monuments and buildings, buildings are ornamented with roofs, sculptures, paintings,

columns, revetment, and openings. Orders receive ornaments on top of themselves.

However, the largest ornament on the scale of the building remains the order, pediment,

or tower. Some of the plainly non-architectural uses of the word show the problem of

undisciplined general use:

111 Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor, Richard Schofield. MIT Press paperback edition, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2002. Translator’s note, 378. 45

“roads and bridges… form a part of architecture relevant to the ornament of cities and the countryside…”112 “And just as in cities the beauty of streets is increased by the addition of beautiful buildings, so outside the cities their ornament is increased by trees, which, when planted on either side of them, cheer us up with their greenness and make them extremely comfortable with the shade they provide.”113 “…for the greater ornament and convenience of the city one should make the street which is most used by the main businesses and passing visitors broad and embellished with magnificent and splendid buildings…”114 “Arches that are built at the ends of streets, that is, at the entrance to a square, are the greatest form of ornament for squares…”115

Non-architectural uses aside, some very relevant ideas on ornament appear in Palladio. It has been argued that the Greek and Roman use of tectonic ornament in their dentils and triglyphs was more for the purpose of association and solidarity with tradition rather than any intent to express the real, ‘true’ structure of the building. Alberti was likewise not concerned with the true nature of materials, as he says “Nor do the lineaments have anything to do with material…”116 But, along with De l’Orme’s tectonic interest, a passage in Palladio can possibly be read as a step towards intentional tectonic ornament suggestive of the ‘true’ structure:

When building the surface or face of the wall above flush with the one below, only do so internally because the , vaults, and other supports of the structure will not let the wall collapse or move. The , which will be outside, will be covered with a band or a fascia and cornice, which, since it goes round the whole building, will be decorative and act as a binding for it.117

This is still not quite the fully modern idea of tectonically expressive ornament. The fact that a cornice (assumed to include dentils or brackets), a symbol of frame architecture, is used as a binding course in a masonry wall shows that association with the classical language is more important than ‘true’ structural expression, but the passage still clearly shows an intended relationship between the structure and its ornament.

112 Palladio, 163. 113 Palladio, 165. 114 Palladio, 166. 115 Palladio, 193. 116 Alberti, 7. 117 Palladio, 17. 46 The above is an implied reading of a tectonic intent for the ornament. Where

Palladio is absolutely explicit about his intent for ornament, it is clear that psychological

effect is of much greater importance:

With regards to the projections of cornices and other ornaments, it is a gross abuse to make them project too far, because when they extend further than is reasonably appropriate, apart from the fact that if they are in an enclosed space they will make it narrow and displeasing, they will frighten those who stand under them because they always look as though they are about to collapse. …Moreover, one should avoid at all costs making the columns look as though they are divided by putting rings and garlands around them which appear to keep them united and firm, because the more columns appear to be complete and robust the more they appear to produce the effect for which they were put there, which is to make the structure above look secure and stable.118

For Palladio, the ornament was the visual structure of the building. The small addition

“apart from the fact that if they are in an enclosed space they will make it narrow and

displeasing” shows that not only was ornament providing the structure, but it was

understood as able to manipulate the observer’s emotional reaction to space, a

recognition of fundamental importance.

Ornament not only influenced the psychological impression of individual spaces,

but also found consideration in the composition as a whole. for instance, should

lead to “wide, beautiful, and ornate spaces.”119 Anthony Blunt comments on the

composition of the interiors of French hôtels where the dramatic effect of moving from relatively dim stair to sunlit ornamented forms the essence of the composition.120

Thus even the spatial composition of buildings was fully calculated to make evident the investment in ornament.

Alberti had minimized the ancient associations of the orders, and Palladio also reduces them to an anecdotal comment solely for the satisfaction of antiquarians.121 The

118 Palladio, 56. 119 Palladio, 66. 120 Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700. Penguin Books, New York, 1980. The specific example discussed by Blunt which uses this technique is Louis Le Vau’s Hôtel Lambert, . p.224. 121 Palladio, 215. “[it was shown] what kind of temples, where, and with what ornaments one should build depending on the attributes of the gods. These conventions have not been taken into consideration even 47 ornamental orders are instead said to be utilized for their structurally expressive nature

based on the antique proportions: “They must be distributed in buildings with the

strongest at the lowest point because it will be most capable of carrying the load and the

building will have a firmer base; so the Doric will always be placed under the Ionic, the

Ionic under the Corinthian, and the Corinthian under the Composite.”122 Thus, if the composite on top did symbolize domination for the Romans, for Palladio it does not.

This is an example of selective rationalism at work; with the original intent of the orders obsolete but with a strong romantic desire to resurrect them, structural rationalism

becomes the basis for a new system of propriety. Equally important, if not more so, was

the justification of antique precedent for the arrangement, i.e., the Colosseum. It was

common for pre- buildings, due to various practical and social reasons, to have a

grandly proportioned street level and piano noble with the upper and stories

diminishing in height. To apply the orders according to the classical proportions would

arrive at the exact opposite of Palladio, with the relatively short and stubby Tuscan at the

and the tall Corinthian on the ground floor, so the exact source of the rationalism is

a mix of precedent and perhaps post-rationalized structural expression.123

Palladio’s arguments against mannerist ornaments show this selective rationalism at work. In order to combat ‘gross abuses’ of the classical language committed by his contemporary sculptor and painter-architects, he begins what might be considered the

first modern arguments which consider ‘the nature of the materials.’

…one must not make any of these scrolls spring from the cornices, since it is essential that all parts of the cornice should be made with a particular effect in mind and should act as examples of what one would see when the building was made of , and beside that, it is appropriate that to support a load one needs something hard and capable of

though they can be seen in many temples; I will nevertheless explain briefly how other writers have reported them so that those who delight in antiquities will be left satisfied…” 122 Palladio, 17. 123 Sir William Chambers makes a similar argument in 1759: “Columns so formed could not be applied to accompany each other without violating the laws both of real and apparent solidity, as in such case the Doric dwarf must be crushed under the strapping Ionic, or gigantic Corinthian virago, triumphantly rising uppermost, and reversing the natural, the necessary predominance in the composition.” Chambers, 119. 48 resisting weight; and there is no doubt that such scrolls would be utterly pointless, because it is impossible that a wooden beam or a piece of wood could produce the effect that they represent, and, because they purport to be soft and malleable, I cannot think of any reason why one would place them under something hard and heavy.124

Note that, as with Vitruvius, the sensitive question of why timber is being imitated in

wood is avoided. For Vitruvius, not asking such questions showed solidarity with

tradition, for Palladio behind such unasked questions lies the romanticism of an antique

revival. The above ‘nature of the materials’ stance is not the only anti-mannerist

argument, functional symbolism of tectonic ornamental elements also receives defense

when Palladio vehemently argues against the use of broken .125 Rationalism is a selective weapon to defend the purity of the orders.

Pediments are an important point. He does not use the term “ornament” to describe pediments (Alberti has already referred to roofs as adornment), but he makes comments which have an extremely ornamental nature to them:

…I have built a tympanum on the front façade where the principal doors are, because tympanums accentuate the entrance of the house and contribute greatly to the grandeur and magnificence of the building, this making the front part more imposing than the others; furthermore, they are perfectly suited to the insignia or arms of the patrons, which are usually placed in the middle of facades.126

Vestigial tectonic ornament serves as a supporting, accentuating frame for a semantic

heraldic ornament. Palladio probably felt justified in such a use from his studies of

antique buildings, three examples of which he has illustrated showing the use of a

pediment to close off a masonry [3.6, 3.7].127

124 Palladio, 56. 125 Palladio, 56. 126 Palladio, 155. 127 Palladio, 250, 271, 313. Palladio’s reconstruction of the temples of the Sun and Moon, Mars, and the temple at Trevi. 49

[3.6, 3.7] Palladio’s reconstruction of the temples Neptune (left) and temple at Trevi (right). On the left,

‘true’ structural expression, on the right, masonry fire proofing technology masked by a vestigial pediment.

The ancients had already broken the relationship between structure and exterior

expression (something often attributed only to the 19th century), so the use of a pediment where it is not actually in line with a system of roof trusses behind was not a problem for

Palladio. This illustrates another facet of selective rationalism; though the orders were displayed in a purportedly structurally rational manner, great artistic license was allowed in using the ancient symbols of roof structure. The three ancient examples show the beginning of what will eventually be called an associative philosophy. The vault represents the technological improvement of the first fire-proofing, but if it was expressed on the exterior it would have radically changed the traditional temple form, so

important for associative reasons. The obvious solution was to continue with the

traditional eidos and continue replicating the old timber techne for its associative value

rather than display the new masonry techne. 50 Palladio discusses the social role of ornament but he is not nearly as detailed

about it as Alberti.128 Ornament does not serve as the vehicle for a grand social vision.

From all the villa drawings presented, it appears as though Palladio’s clients were

extremely wealthy; he probably did not feel it was his place to instruct them in the proper

reticent manner of ornamenting their town houses so as to not conflict with nearby

churches or public buildings. He does, however, suggest ornamental treatment in order to

differentiate town houses from country houses; Tuscan or unpolished Ionic columns are

deemed as fitting for the more rustic setting.

7. Conclusion

Looking back on the first millennia and a half of ornamental theory in architecture a few

comments can be made. Between Suger and Alberti, the significance of ornament as a

product of human labor is clearly understood, and therefore control of ornament was seen

as a powerful means of expressing society’s values. Ornament’s qualities and

capabilities in application appear to be understood in full depth, but a general theory of

ornament’s relationship to the work as a whole has not yet been put forth.

Alberti was certainly the first ‘modern’ writer in that his prescriptions for

ornament show a social vision for the built world which was not the status quo. By reading between the lines, we can learn much from Alberti. His concession allowing the wealthy to build extravagant in the countryside shows an intelligent compromise between his social vision, the social system of the time, and intractable human nature.

20th century writers such as Loos and Corbusier will make no such concessions, but will

have the audacity to demand fundamental changes in society and human nature. We can

128 Palladio, 77. “…for great men and especially those of public office, houses with and spacious, ornate will be required, [no doubt partly to impress, but also] so that those waiting to greet the master of the house can spend their time pleasantly in such spaces; similarly, smaller buildings of lesser expense and ornament will be appropriate for men of lower status.” 51 learn even more when we accept that Alberti’s modest attempt at a social vision was futile, many town houses ended up receiving quite resplendent ornament anyways. The fact that nobles simply could not build houses larger than helped keep the social hierarchy apparent through raw scale, but modern industrialism and capitalism combined with new building types will change the balance of power to the private sector.

Remembering the conflict of rationalism versus romanticism, where is the

rationalism in these texts? Reason was used not only as a defense to justify and maintain

the purity of the classical ornaments, but a rationalist system also governed the

arrangement of the ornaments in the composition of the building. The rational system

was geometry; Alberti’s ‘lineaments’, Serlio’s ‘linee occult’, Delorme’s system of divine

proportions, or for Palladio, a paraphrase of Alberti/Vitruvius.129 All this basically means that a rational system of geometrical relationships governed the disposition of ornament

(and the building’s overall form). Thus, rationalism worked to protect and discipline

ornament. Slowly, rationalism will turn from defending ornament towards an attack.

Palladio begins the assault with a selectively rational attack on certain types of

mannerist ornament which he finds disagreeable because they are not within the ‘rules,’

and De l’Orme begins attacking gratuitous ornament applied “without reason.” Palladio

and Delorme, being masons rather than artist-architects or scholar-architects, were more

sensitive to practical issues of building, and therefore tectonics. But tectonics remain

secondary to the tradition of , rational tectonic arguments are selectively used

to modify taste. Alberti had attacked excessive ornament, but his objection was against

the social symbolism of intemperance, De l’Orme attacks purely because of a new

selective rationalism.

129 Palladio, Book I chapter 1: “Beauty will derive from a graceful shape and the relationship of the whole to the parts, and of the parts among themselves and to the whole, because buildings must appear to be like complete and well-defined bodies, of which one member matches another and all the members are necessary for what is required.” 52 All the writers clearly understood ornament to be something necessary for a

certain expected level of decorum so that life will have some dignity to it, not appearing

‘shabby.’ Alberti put this feeling best:

…the whole commonwealth – should be much embellished; and by their [the ancients] letting it be known that if all these institutions, without which man could scarce exist, were to be stripped of their pomp and finery, their business would appear insipid and shabby.130

This sentiment will continue among architects through to the 20th century – a glorification of daily function –, and even Loos will recognize but reject the idea, partially due to his own preference, and partially due to how he perceived the economic needs of his day.131

Foremost, Vitruvius, Alberti, Serlio, De l’Orme and Palladio illustrate the power

of a conventionalized system of ornament. With rigorous use of convention, tectonic

devices can acquire supportive associations beyond a mere illustration of construction.

All tugged classicism in slightly different directions, but they all agree that classicism

was the appropriate method of building, and this allowed buildings to create a somewhat

systematic and readable environment rather than an environment of many disparate

tongues.

The Renaissance authors come very close to calling architecture ornamented

building, but they never quite did. However, the nineteenth century concept of

architecture as ornamented building is not far off; a comment Serlio makes on Tuscan

city gates hints at the narrowing of the role of the architect: “I shall not mention here how

to arrange the gates of cities and fortresses [as Vitruvius and Alberti had] …and leave

that task to the military architect… But I will certainly discuss the way in which, once a

130 Alberti, 155. Serlio notes how ornament provides decorum (1996 edition, 273. Book IV chapter 5): “…sometimes this ornament goes beyond necessity, this invention [a Tuscan wall with open arches] was made for utility, for strength, and for decorum. Utility, because of the openings which it has; strength, because it is very solid and well bonded between each opening; and decorum, because it is rich in ornamentation.” 131 For Loos’s recognition of how ornament comforts the common man in daily life, See Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, 38 and 42. 53 city or fortress gate has been arranged, I think it should be ornamented”.132 This is an almost exact pre-echo of Ruskin’s explanation of what he thought architecture was:

“Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws architectural which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, that is architecture.”133 It will take

Perrault’s relativist shattering of proportional mysticism to drop the focus away from the

lineaments and linee occult and turn it to ornament itself.

132 Serlio 1996 edition, 260. Book IV chapter 5. 133 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1989. 9. 54

4. Growing Rationalism: from the Baroque through the 18th Century______

Architecture is like a beautiful woman: she should please in herself; she needs few ornaments. Even so, it should be noted that, where ornaments are employed in the cornice of the entablature, some should also be carved in the various members of the architrave, but in moderation and simply to prevent too sharp a contrast between the cornice and the architrave. A beautiful dress always has its appropriate jewels. …Ornaments are not to be used in profusion; they are like salt in ragout, to be dispensed with caution.134 Nicolas le Camus de Mézières, The Genius of Architecture (1780)

In terms of profound new understandings, very little is added to the theory of ornament from the

Renaissance to the beginning of the 19th century; what occurs are dramatic explorations of the relationship between form, structure and ornament. For the most part every major writer continuously repeats the idea of ornament as an appropriate illustrator of the social hierarchy and a delivery device for semantic meanings, with modifications of use or style to suit their own taste

– nobody seems to take up Alberti’s modernist moral vision for the social hierarchy; understanding decorum requires that the King must receive the most ornaments.135

An increasing number of comments calling for the removal of ornament can be found, related to an increasing rationalist philosophy or unique social pressures; J.N.L. Durand, though he writes at the beginning of the 19th century, will be put in this chapter as the climax of such commentary. Perrault’s relativist analysis of the classical ornaments of architecture stands as the most important theoretical writing of the 17th century. In some writers, such as Abbé de

Cordemoy, a near-modern idea of tectonic expression will be approached, but the idea remains pre-modern in the sense that it is still bound by an associational historic style and a sense of social propriety. In the 18th century, much of the discourse seems to be a direct reaction against the profusely ornamental Rococo style which had achieved prominence.136 Other developments that

134 Nicolas le Camus de Mézières, The Genius of Architecture; or, the Analogy of that Art with our Sensations, trans.David Brit, intro. Robin Middleton. The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, , 1992. 84… 91. Another beautiful Gastronomic analogy. 135 Anthony Blunt gives a colorful example of this in his Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700 with the story of Fouquet and his Kingly Vaux-le-Vicomte (Seine-et-Marne) . Violating the social order of ornament distribution, Fouquet was arrested for embezzlement and all his property confiscated. Colbert was the traitor who implicated Fouquet, and Brunt notes: “Colbert was not the man to miss such an opportunity because of any of the scruples which a more sensitive character might have felt. It may, however, be thought that he went unnecessarily far in actually transporting to Versailles the best statues and the rarest trees with which Fouquet had ornamented his park.” The ornament was re-distributed properly. 136 The anti-Baroque and anti-Rococo stance of several writers will be discussed as this chapter unfolds, but here are two a few that will not be mentioned, discussed by Gombrich, 21-26: Reiffstein (1746), Charles 55 will bear on the ornament question include Boullée and Ledoux’s formal explorations, the rise of a new building type, an as-yet unrecognized loss of social importance (as later identified by

Victor Hugo), and two opposing philosophic schools of thought: Kant versus the Scottish

Associationists.

1. 17th Century: and François Blondel

As more of scientist than an architect, in his 1683 Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients Perrault is able to remove himself from all preconceptions and subject the classical tradition to a near-objective scrutiny. He sensed something fundamentally irrational in the of proportions based on mystical numbers, the linee occult, and harmonic musical analogies.137 Perhaps it was reading Alberti’s digression regarding numbers in

Book 9 chapter 6, or De l’Orme’s study on ‘divine proportions’ that prompted Perrault to declare:

“The extent to which architects make a religion of venerating the works they call ancient is inconceivable. They admire everything about them but especially the mystery of proportions.”138

Perrault attempts to expose this fascination as a matter of arbitrary beauty; he proposes that the eye simply cannot perceive obscure proportional relationships present in a work, and they therefore cannot have any real effect on the observer.139 The above would seem to be quite an accomplishment in itself, but, as a scientist, it would not be enough for him to leave architecture as a matter of taste or convention; he is compelled to go further. Pérez-Gómez states that

Perrault’s “concern was to place architecture… into the framework of the new scientific mentality

Nicolas Cochin the Younger (1754), and J.J. Winckelmann (1755), and Freidrich August Krubsacius (1759). Gombrich notes how, in , the anti-rocaille arguments were also fueled by nationalism against French influence. 137 Robin Middleton observes that Perrault may well be directly reacting to “Rene Ouvrards 1679 Archtiecture Harmoique; ou, Application de la doctrined des proportions de la musique a l’architecture” (de Mézières, 19), which ardently discussed the musical analogy of tones and proportions in architecture. 138 Claude Perrault, Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns After the Method of the Ancients. trans. Indra Kagis McEwen, intro Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, California. 1993. 55. Another very pertinent thought occurs on page 58: “Although there are a few honest people who, perhaps because they have not given the matter enough thought, genuinely believe that the glory of their beloved antiquity rests on its being considered infallible…. There will be many others who know very well what they are doing when they cloak in a blind respect for ancient works their own desire to make the matters of their profession into mysteries that they alone can interpret.” ‘mysteries that they alone can interpret’ could be a warning for architects of all times. 139 Perrault, 49. “…we cannot make the claim that the proportions of architecture please our sight for unknown reasons… it follows that what pleases the eye cannot be due to a proportion of which the eye is unaware.” 56 inaugurated by Galileo and Renee Descartes.”140 Using mathematics science can, theoretically, perfectly describe and predict natural phenomena. The mixture of scientific thought in artistry leads to the idea that perhaps architecture, like science, can achieve perfection.141 On this point

Perrault’s rationality becomes ‘selective.’ The solution is to average measurements from various precedents and call the result the new, perfect, standard. “The arithmetic mean, a most appropriate conceptual expression of the juste milieu, became for Perrault a rational guarantee of perfection.”142

It is significant that Perrault never describes the orders as ‘the ornaments of architecture,’ thereby taking a step back from the Renaissance writers, but ornament does play a nothing short of a fundamental role in his argument. In the first paragraph of the preface ornament figures highly:

Now these different proportions together with their appropriate ornaments are what give rise to the different architectural orders, whose characters, defined by variations in ornament, are what distinguish them most visibly but whose most essential differences consist in the relative size of their constituent parts.143

It can be assumed that Perrault is referring primarily to the capitals as the defining ornaments. In the next paragraph, the ‘most essential differences’ in proportions turn out to be not quite so essential, which will make the ‘variations in ornament’ essential:

...the beauty of a building, like that of the human body, lies less in the exactitude of unvarying proportion and the relative size of constituent parts than in the grace of its form, wherein nothing other than a pleasing variation can sometimes give rise to a perfect and matchless beauty without strict adherence to any proportional rule. A face can be both ugly and beautiful without any change in proportions, so that an alteration of the features – for example, the contraction of the eyes and the enlargement of the mouth – can be the same when one laughs as when one weeps, with a result that can be pleasing in one case and repugnant in the other; whereas, the dissimilar proportions of two different faces can be equally beautiful. …although no single proportion is indispensable to the beauty of the face, there still remains a standard from which its proportion cannot stray too far without destroying its perfection.144

140 Perrault, 1. Pérez-Gómez Introduction. 141 Perrault, 17. Pérez-Gómez Introduction 142 Perrault, 21. Pérez-Gómez Introduction 143 Perrault, 47. 144 Perrault, 47. 57

‘The features’ here are of utmost importance, because within the analogy, the features are either the orders or ornaments, probably both. Perrault states that something about variations of the ornaments of the face, not the overall proportions, result in the emotional quality of the face.

This poetic facial analogy sets up his entire argument, with ‘there still remains a standard from which its proportion cannot stray too far’ justifying Perrault’s attempt to quantitatively define that standard. It would have been more ‘rational,’ rather than lay forth a single ‘perfect’ average standard for the orders, to set forth maximum and minimum variances beyond which perfection would be ‘destroyed’ (according to taste, of course). However, every preceding writer had unabashedly set down preferred proportions, so Perrault keeps in step with the discourse’s precedent by presenting only one option. The result for architecture, if actually observed, would have been quite restrictive: building’s ornaments could present only one emotional expression;

Perrault hoped that the one expression would be a delightful smile by his convention. Of course, he does allow some license, but Perrault very sincerely wishes everybody to follow his set of perfect averages for the ‘features’ of architecture.

The great unasked question of classical architecture revivalism, ‘why are we replicating wood forms in stone?’ is addressed thoroughly by Perrault.145 He does not assault the classical vocabulary on grounds of truth or falsity of structural representation, but rather accepts the inherited language in his category of customary beauty. Several of the tectonic eccentricities unrepresentative of what a real timber frame building might look like but which had become common phrases in the classical vocabulary are accepted by Perrault via the use of a linguistic analogy: “Among the ways of speaking that are contrary to the rules of grammar, we find many that are authorized by long usage and are so firmly established that it is not even permitted to revise them.”146 Certain elements of ‘slang’, improper because they varied from the original

145 Perrault, 51, 52, 166-167, 173. 146 Perrault, 166. 58 timber tectonics, are accepted due to their continued usage.147 Other elements of slang had gone too far, and are discussed as ‘abuses.’

On this point Perrault essentially becomes a more rigorous and scientific version of

Palladio, directly echoing a few of Palladio’s points and documenting many new ‘abuses.’ The reasoning follows the same course as Palladio – the orders provide a representational structure, the appearance of durability. “The two most important requirements in architecture are durability and the appearance of durability, which, as we have already said, produces one of the principle constituents of beauty in buildings.”148 Abuses which represent questionable tectonic situations are therefore improper; but it is all understood to be illusionary rather than real, which will shortly lead to the accusation of being ‘architecture in relief.’

Related to the question of ornament’s relationship with structure, in part one, chapter one, paragraph one, a comment is made which has extreme significance:

These are the only parts dealt with here [columns, architraves, friezes, cornices], and it is their proportions that the ordonnance regulates, giving to each part the dimensions appropriate to its intended application, such as a greater or lesser size calculated for the support of a great weight or a greater or lesser capacity for accommodating delicate ornaments, which may include sculpture or moldings; these ornaments also belong to the ordonnance and provide an even more visible sign than proportion for designating and regulating the orders.149 [italics added]

The ornament itself provides a visual cue for the ordering of the structure. The ‘structure’ for

Perrault is the apparent structure (columns, pilasters), not the ‘real’ structure, which would be the hidden brick bearing walls. This is important because it establishes a relationship between the structure and the ornament whereby they increase each other’s significance; the structure is there to bear the ornament, the ornament is there to regulate the structure and provide social meaning.

147 Accepted elements include: enlargement of columns, orienting dentils/modillions on pediments vertically rather than with the slope of the roof, putting modillions on all four sides and in the cornice under the pediment, and putting triglyphs between columns. (166-167) 148 Perrault, 82. This is essentially affirming with Palladio – “the more columns appear to be complete and robust the more they appear to produce the effect for which they were put there, which is to make the structure above look secure and stable”. Perrault directly echos Palladio on 71 as well. 149 Perrault, 65. 59

At several points, Perrault rejects idea that modifications should be made in proportions to please the human eye.150 In the context of his argument, this is not too objectionable, but it will become a thought that requires extreme sensitivity. It suggests that the appreciation of architecture does not lie in the beholder, but that architecture exists independently of our thoughts on the matter – just as the scientific phenomena Perrault was observing appeared to operate with indifference towards him. Because Perrault was adapting a traditional system with a plethora of associations and details, the objective stance did not cause any damage to the observer’s experience. Difficulties will arise when Durand furthers Perrault, taking up an ‘objective’ stance to create a vocabulary without traditional associations or the meaning inherent in detailed ornament.

Perrault cannot be discussed without briefly mentioning his revolutionary idea of positive and arbitrary beauties and attempting to show the long-term influence on ornament. Positive beauty has to do with grandness of size, quality of materials and execution; but more interesting is the idea of symmetry providing positive beauty.151 A building sets up a logical order, if the building conflicts with its own order, it is loses beauty.152 The symmetry element shows a belief that buildings express a connection to ordered nature by setting up their own logical order within themselves; a thoroughly classical ideal. For ornament, the concept of arbitrary beauty will have a delayed effect. The word ‘associationism’ has been used occasionally to describe the connections that occur between perceptual experience and memory. Philosophers will not formalize this idea until the late 18th century, but Perrault in the late 17th seems to have an understanding of the idea when he discusses arbitrary beauty.153 This shows how in one respect

Perrault was a century ahead of his time.

150 Perrault, 51, 52. Discusses this at length in Part 2, chapter VII. 151 Perrault, 50-51. 152 Perrault uses the example of the Pantheon here – the lines of the dome do not line up with the niches below, causing less beautiful symmetry. Perrault means symmetry in the Vitruvian sense; a proportional relationship between parts. Page 50-51. 153 Perrault, 51. “Against the beauties I call positive and convincing, I have set those I call arbitrary, because they are determined by our wish to give a definite proportion, shape, or form to things that might well have a different form without being misshapen and that appear agreeable not by reasons within everyone’s grasp by merely by custom and the association the mind makes between two things of a different nature.” Italics added. 60 The first half of Perrault’s argument, the destructive de-mystification of occult number- based proportion, will have significant consequences for architecture and ornament. By destroying the idea of beauty defined by an absolute geometric order, the Renaissance idea of architecture as the art of the lineaments is replaced in favor of the art of ornamenting – which takes us directly to the 19th century. Rather than worry about how the eyes are related in size and position to the ears and the nostrils, architects could turn straight to designing a beautiful set of eyes, with less care for their relationship with the overall face. But Perrault himself does not intend for architecture to become the art of ornamenting building, he is too wrapped up in proportions.154 The second half of Perrault, the constructive creation of a new classical system, will generally go ignored in practice. Attempting to have architects follow a standard is futile, as

Perrault says himself “one can find agreement neither between any two buildings nor between any two authors, since none has followed the same rules.”155 It was a mark of hopeful idealism for Perrault to believe that he might be any different.156 To close with Perrault, it can be mentioned that though he does not dwell on it, he briefly notes, like everybody else, how ornament illustrates the social hierarchy.157

But Perrault was opposed in his radical idea of ‘arbitrary,’ customary beauty or ‘taste.’

His contemporary François Blondel believed in an absolute, non-customary beauty based in proportions: “External ornaments do not constitute beauty. Beauty cannot exist when the proportions are missing.”158 Since Blondel taught at the Académie Royale d’Architecture with his influential textbook Cours d’architecture (1675-1683), it is likely that his ideas achieved

154 A few scholars have said that Perrault did in fact say that architecture had become a matter of decoration, but if he said this in the Ordinance, I do not see where he said it. Karsten Harries, Ethical Function of Architecture: Perrault understands architects as “the artist who applies an ornamental dress of various kinds to the immutable substance of architecture.”(2) Robert Middleton makes a similar comment in the introduction to De Meziere’s Genius of Architecture: “The orders, he argued, had become little more than a decorative system applied to wall surfaces…”(20). Although in practice this is true for Perrault, it was not his stated intent. 155 Perrault, 48. 156 Perrault did understand that he was no different, but he was compelled to put forth his idea all the same. 157 Perrault, 61. “The orders of architecture are utilized in two kinds of works, that is to say, either in edifices built for current use, such as temples, palaces, and other buildings, both public and private, which require ornamentation and a magnificent aspect, or in historical representations involving architecture…” 158 Perrault, 34. Pérez-Gómez Introduction. 61 wider circulation than Perrault’s.159 Pérez-Gómez describes the professor as a moderate in the ancient versus modern querelle, accepting ideas of custom or taste and that the antique and the contemporary were equally beautiful, but rejecting taste or custom as the ultimate recourse in matters of beauty.160 Remembering Alberti, he provided three items from which the pleasure in

‘objects of great beauty or ornament’ is derived: invested intellect, labor, or ‘some inherent property.’ Blondel’s labors to prove some kind of non-arbitrary source of beauty show that ‘some inherent property’ is not yet ready to be discarded.

3. 18th Century Writers and J.N.L. Durand

The 18th century ushers in what has been called ‘growing rationalism.’ Michel de Frémin and

Abbe de Cordemoy become interested in representative tectonic expression of the true, physical structure as opposed to the representational structure. Marc-Antoine Laugier’s focus on structural symbolism will have a restrictive effect on ornament. The communicative ability of architecture, which historically was predominantly executed by ornament, begins to move into form and plan with the adventurous paper architecture of Boullée and Ledoux. Sir William Chambers and

Nicolas le Camus de Mézières present the 19th century view on ornament, decorated structure, just slightly before the 19th century actually begins. Lastly, Durand, writing from a unique social situation and reacting to Laugier, provides some comments on ornament that, together with various excerpts from other 18th century writers, could create the bulk of many Modern

Movement texts.

Michel de Frémin’s 1702 Mires critiques d’architecture and Abbé Jean-Louis de

Cordemoy’s 1706 Nouveau traite de toute l’architecture have been cited by Kenneth Frampton as some of the earliest texts putting forth a tectonic stance for ornament. Cordemoy will be referenced favorably in Laugier’s 1753 Essai sur l’architecture. From these three 18th century texts we can see the modern stance on ornament and structure beginning to take shape well before

159 Perrault, 13-15. Pérez-Gómez Introduction. 160 Perrault, 13-14, 34, 35. Pérez-Gómez Introduction. 62 the modern movement or the introduction of new structural materials. Frampton’s summary shall be relied upon for Cordemoy:161

Cordemoy proposed an architecture of simplified geometric forms [think of Victor Hugo], set one in relation to another, to result in a unified whole. …He vigorously condemned the bas relief effect of contemporary architecture and rejected scornfully the numerous motifs that were scattered over the surfaces of buildings, blurring their outlines with continuous and uneasy modeling. …He liked plain masonry surfaces. And, in accord with Frémin, he discouraged the use of ornament. He went even further; he declared that pedestals, applied orders of columns and pilasters should be dispensed with, although he conceded that pilasters could be used in antis or to express the external junction of walls. When pilasters were to be used, however, he insisted… there was to be no diminution in their width form top to bottom. He desired, above all, a simplified rectangular architecture. He disliked acute angles and all curves. He approved only of rectangular door and window openings. He liked roof lines to be horizontal. Demanding the use of flat roofs or, as a more practical alternative, Mansart roofs, he sought to do away with the pediment altogether.162

What we actually have here precociously early in 1706 are several of the elements of the architecture presented in Hitchcock and Johnson’s 1932 The International Style: flat roofs, plain surfaces, no sculpture, and ‘true’ structural expression. The insistence on external pilasters aligning with interior walls shows movement towards the idea that ornament should be structural expressive in a more physically true sense, a reaction to Perrault’s ornamented architecture of engaged columns and pilasters in ‘bas relief.’ Cordemoy and Frémin were appreciative of the

Gothic architecture of France,163 the objection to bas relief architecture shows a desire for the structure to play a more integral role in the expression, as in the awe-inspiring cathedrals.

Despite these extremely forward-looking ideas, regarding ornament both Frémin and

Cordemoy remain traditionalists. Classicism is accepted and ornament still expresses the social hierarchy, as Frampton goes on to say: “Cordemoy insisted on the hierarchical principles of propriety in architecture, arguing that all utilitarian structures should be left entirely devoid of

161 Emil Kaufmann has an interesting note on Cordemoy in his Three Revolutionary Architects: “De Cordemoy, whose treatise is just another book on the orders, with some feeble disapproval of the exaggerations of the Baroque.” (448) But Laugier seems to be quite impressed with Cordemoy. 162 Frampton, 29-30. 163 De Mézières, Robin Middleton introduction, 20-21. “Michel de Fremin and the Abbe Jean-Louis de Cordemoy took up Perrault’s ideas in the early eighteenth century. They thought likewise primarily in terms of classical tradition, though, like Perrault, they enlarged their understanding of the rational nature of architecture with reference to the Gothic. Their enthusiasm for Gothic extended even to spatial effects.” 63 ornament, thereby serving to express the difference in cultural stature between everyday building and works of institutional and symbolic import.”164

Marc-Antoine Laugier takes structural expression, rationalism, and romanticism to new heights all at once in his 1753 Essai sur l’architecture. The Renaissance revival occurred when scholars suddenly became interested the Roman ruins surrounding them, and here we have a case where the discovery of previously little known Greek architecture, with its noble disengaged columns, has an effect on the discourse.165 In Laugier can be seen an intense romantic desire to emulate the ancient Greeks combined with a rigorous structural rationalism, putting all the traditional ornamental devices of classicism in a rather difficult position. Laugier’s purist drive to remove ornament, architectural historian Emil Kaufmann notes, also has a component of being a reaction to the profuse ornament of Baroque and Rococo architecture.166 Church rocaille ornament is no longer an aid to worship, but a ‘distraction.’ Due to a change in philosophy, the pendulum swings from Suger back to St. Bernard; ornament is no longer seen as glorifying labors made manifest in form, but as an affront to the geometric order in building that might confuse the worshipper.167 All the sensuous lines of the Baroque were exciting everybody a bit too much; a period of calm with more pure forms was felt to be needed.

After Perrault’s even-handed relativism, Laugier seems to descend into the depths of fantastic bigotries – but they are all rationally argued bigotries. It seems as though all the great polemic works of the 19th century owe much to Laugier. But, to explain his position: Laugier starts from a point similar to Perrault. All artistic decisions must be backed with reason; art is based on clear principles governed by fixed, unchangeable laws. Inborn genius must be subject

164 Frampton, 30-31. 165 Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture. 79-81. It may seem too easy to relegate these writers ideas to a consequence of influences and reactions combined with a philosophy of the age, but the discovery of the Greek ruins, accelerated foreign travel, and a reaction to the Baroque obviously have some very important effects. 166 Kaufmann, 449. “…a new purism arose, hostile to all superfluous ornament.” “Denouncing lavish ornamentation, Laugier wanted the interior of the church simple and grave, to make the deepest impression on the visitor without distracting him.” Some commentary on Kant will take a similar stance. 167 Kaufmann provides two other French writers who put this stance forward; Germain Boffrand 1745 Livre d’Architecture: “He objected to the confusion of curves and straight lines, and praised the noble simplicity and calmness…”(447) and Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger, a few years later in Supplication aux orfèvres “Cochins main point was a warning against the curves of the Baroque, or, in his words, “ces formes baroques,” with a plea for straight lines and right angles…”(448) 64 to these laws.168 This may sound rather cold and restrictive, but beauty and a pleasurable emotional reaction in the observer are the intended goal: “Whenever I have looked at our greatest and finest buildings, my soul has been aroused.”169 The Albertian ‘investment of intellect’ is returned to, “[architecture] stirs in us noble and moving ideas…which works of art carrying the imprint of a superior mind arouse in us.”170 However, ornament is not the source of the investment, the imprint is more general, in a response to the entire building. But where does the beauty come from? “The parts that are essential are the cause of beauty, the parts introduced by necessity cause every license, the parts added by caprice cause every fault.”171 To find the essential beauty-providing parts, he imagines his famous primitive hut, which yields columns, entablature, and pediment.172 Walls are the first license for necessity. With the hut established,

Laugier uses his rationalism to re-define the classical vocabulary in terms of the hut, stripping off many ornamental parts of the classical vocabulary; pedestals, pilasters, rusticated columns, and even arches – “Let us keep to the simple and natural, it is the only road to beauty.”173 To continue Perrault’s linguistic analogy, if Laugier were successful in extirpating his ‘faults’ from the language, the classical vocabulary would have been simplified to a grade school school level.

Because ornament is not considered essential –Laugier would call it a caprice– it does not figure as part of the primitive hut. Laugier starts with some hard words for the ornament of improper styles:

The barbarism of succeeding centuries… called forth a new system of architecture in which neglected proportion and ornament childishly crowded produced nothing but stones in fretwork, shapeless masses and a extravagance – a new architecture which for too long has been the delight of . Unfortunately, most of our cathedrals are fated to preserve the remains of this style for generations to come.174

168 Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture. trans. Wolfgang and Anni Herman, Los Angeles California, Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1977. 1-3, 12. 169 Laugier, 3. 170 Laugier, 8. 171 Laugier, 12. 172 Laugier, 11-12. Since Vitruvius was actually observing real primitive huts in his time, I prefer his origin story. 173 Laugier, 19. 17: “The is a frivolous ornament.” 18: “Rusticated columns are only a capricious fancy…” (he pays some homage to Philibert de l’Orme) 20: “…to place pedestals under columns at ground level is an inexcusable fault.” 23: “I go further: arches are entirely useless.” 174 Laugier, 8. 65

Such a dismissal of Gothic will be matched perhaps only by Le Corbusier.175 He continues with:

[men of genius] gave up the fancy and absurd ornaments of the Gothic and styles and put in their place the virile and elegant adornment of the Doric, Ionic, and the Corinthian. …Everything now seems to threaten us with complete decadence.176

With columns referred to as adornment, this shows a partial return to the Renaissance conception of ornament. The injection of ‘virile’ may be an important first. Healthiness, virility, and decadence will be common argumentative words used by various authors in the 19th and 20th centuries as they attempt to argue the ornament question, from Pugin to Ruskin to Sullivan to

Loos to Corbusier. It is somewhat off-color to see appeals to manhood so regularly in the discourse.

Laugier does not delve into the tectonic eccentricities of the orders that Perrault described

(in the modillions, dentils, etc), but he does take issue with the ornamental use of pediments.

Palladio’s use of them to accentuate entrances and coats-of-arms is totally unacceptable.

Pediments have to be used truthfully, at the gabled ends of buildings only, where they do in fact represent the end of a roof truss system. John Summerson has written about the psychology and symbolism of ‘aedicular’ architecture, noting how “it has become a part of the ornamental systems of various styles of architecture.”177 Laugier’s cry for structural rationalism: “How many doors, how many windows are surmounted by a ridiculous pediment!”178 shows how rationalism can conflict with one of the more profound, universal and meaningful elements of architecture provided by ornament; Laugier refuses allow a little primitive hut to symbolically shelter every window from the elements.

One final comment on Laugier. He notes:

In the hands of mediocre architects the pavilion has become an ornament, an expedient for all occasions, whenever they wished to avoid monotony. This is an abuse. I always

175 Laugier’s objection to Gothic seems to be primarily an objection to its barbarous ornaments. Kaufmann writes “he could not overlook the character of Gothic building. He admired the contrasts of its masses, which began to mean more to him than “order.” He saw in the choir of the Gothic church the atmosphere of the forest.” (449) 176 Laugier, 9. 177 John Summerson, Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays. 5. 178 Laugier, 17. 66 come back to my main principle: never to put anything into a building for which one cannot give a sound reason.179

With Serlio and Alberti describing towers as ornaments, it breaks no ground that Laugier would call a pavilion an ornament, but the pejorative connotation shows how the term ‘ornament’ will be more often used by architects as an accusation of superficiality. For the Renaissance writers, ornament had always been a ‘good’ thing. Decoration also receives use in a pejorative sense by

Laugier.180

Despite Laugier’s intense bigotries, one has to admire him. He remains thoroughly classical in the sense that he builds a logical system of order and then carries it to every detail of the work (Mies van der Rohe association intended). It is important that Laugier believes his rational arguments are natural, putting him in a long line of writers ever since Vitruvius and ending with Wright.181 Unfortunately, structural rationalism yields poor prospects for ornament, unless one finds a willingness to turn the structure itself into ornament – an approach that will be realized in the 19th century.

According to Kaufmann, Laugier was enthusiastically read by the next generation, notably Etienne Louis Boullée (1728-1799), and Claude-Nicholas Ledoux (1736-1806).182

Kaufmann characterizes Boullée and Ledoux thusly: “Boullée represents primarily the struggle for new forms; Ledoux, the search for a new order of the constituents…”183 The two continue to ride the crest of anti-ornament sentiment spawned by Baroque excesses.184 Their moderate

179 Laugier, 25. 180 Laugier, 13. “We have, indeed, moved far away from it through the grand gout of decoration…” 21 “…sham columns with one decorates retables.” 181 Kauffman, 448. “As a panacea against these and similar follies, the “natural” made its appearance. Laugier still understood “natural” as the affinity to nature, ignoring Lodoli’s great discovery, that every thing has a naturalness true to itself.” 182 Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects, Boulée, Ledoux, and Lequeu. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1952. 448. “I should like to discuss Abbé Laugier, whose writings, according to Blondel’s report, were so avidly read by they young revolutionaries. Laugier was not an architect, but his thought appears to have influenced the students more than did the teaching of their instructors [notably Jacques-François Blondel].” 183 Kaufmann, 435. 184 Joseph Rykwert, The Necessity of Artifice. 62. Kaufmann, 446-447. In the discussion of Boulée and Ledoux’s teachers, the reaction against the excesses of Baroque and Rococo are mentioned. Germain Boffrand makes the very modern sounding claim that “materials were to be treated according to their nature.” Kaufmann does not list Piranesi in the list of influences on Boullée, but it seems as though Piranesi’s spirit must have had a contribution in some of the renderings. Boullée does mention Piranesi in his ‘Statement of the Problem’: “I cannot visualize any products of an art based on fantasy, other than ideas 67 teacher, Jacques-Francois Blondel (1705-1774), took a more sensitive, typical stance on ornament within the classical tradition.185

Concerning the painter-paper-architect Boullée,186 the important item is that form is seized upon as a device to enhance the expressivity of ornament. Boullée was revolutionary in many ways, and his conception of ornament was certainly one; describing his Opera House,

Boullée declared that the audience was to be “the chief ornament of the interior.”187 To rely on human beings to provide the ornament demonstrates a fantastically novel approach. All buildings that receive any human use, ornamented or not, will therefore be ornamented.

It is difficult to characterize Boullée easily. His Memorial for Isaac Newton is his best known fantasy, but his other works of paper architecture actually use ornament in a traditional manner with sculptures and inscriptions to aid in the communication of the form’s meaning; implied massive scale and neglect for the usual classical proportions is what makes these drawings so alien in appearance. His teacher J.F. Blondel criticized him for this: “Those artists whose immaturity must account for their imperfections are not aware that their oversized features are ridiculous, that their scale does not fit human measurements”.188 Consider his oversized ‘City

Gate with ’, described by Kaufmann:

[Boullée] set a frieze of warriors over the arch and palaces cannons in front of the side towers. …The frieze of the warriors may be interpreted as “Narrative” architecture. The warriors represent vigilance; the are the guardians of the city. …The crenelated roof line, the brackets below it, the horizontal layers of the podium repeat, with varied intensity, the line of the ground. The concept of horizontalism reaches a climax in the frieze of the warriors.189

The articulations of form accentuate the primary semantic ornament. Several of his other explorations follow a similar vein, his Palais d’Assemblée Nationale (here carefully ordered thrown out at haphazard, incoherent, disconnected and pointless, in short, just dreams. Piranesi, architect and engraver, has turned out a few such extravaganzas.” 185 Kaufmann, 436-446. J.F. Blondel criticizes his students: “Those artists whose immaturity must account for their imperfections are not aware that their oversized features are ridiculous, that their scale does not fit human measurements …During the last fifteen years they have made progress only in depraving taste; their boldness has increased. They dogmatize, and are against anything contrary to their system. They regard their teachers as stupefied with habit… They have read the essay of Laugier, but there is no reason in their reasoning.” 186 Kaufmann, 454, 455. 187 Quoted from Kaufmann, 467. Boullée may have been joking. 188 Kaufmann, 445. 189 Kaufmann, 465. 68 shrubberies provide ornament for the building in addition to swords in voussoirs, inscriptions, modillions, and friezes), Triumphal arch with aisles, Triumphal arch with inscription, Library with pedimented portal, Library entrance with Atlantes, Square temple, and Columned cenotaph – all have large semantic ornaments carried on extremely exaggerated forms. He seems to have enjoyed putting chariots pulled by large numbers of horses on top of his compositions.190

Crenellated for city gates and pyramidal forms for cenotaphs show a clear associational philosophy. This leads to the question; is Boullée one of the first moderns, or post-moderns?

Labels do not matter, but if part of being a post-modernist is to use historic vocabularies in a wildly unconventional manner, then Boullée fits.

Yet, paradoxically, reading the opening to his 1770-84 Architecture, An Essay on Art one experiences a deja-vu of Le Corbusier, minus the machine fascination. Everybody in the past has got it all wrong, architecture is in its infancy, the artistic side of architecture, distinct from the technical side, must be re-discovered.191 His discussion of pure versus impure forms, echoing some of Laugier,192 is almost Corbusier verbatim; ornament is not mentioned directly, but constitutes a surface irregularity:

I noticed…that the number and complication of the irregular appearances of the surfaces, resulted in (I must not call it “variety”) confusion. …I…realized that it was the regularity alone that had given men a clear idea of the appearance of bodies… From these observations it is clear that man could have no exact idea of the appearance of bodies, until he had one of regularity.193

Encrusted Rococo interiors or Baroque formal manipulations contribute to the ‘complication of the irregular appearances of the surfaces,’ much as complex 19th century eclecticism will seem unbearable at the turn of the 20th. To eliminate ornament in favor of pure platonic forms makes an assumption that man somehow gains something valuable from an ‘exact idea’ of the appearance of bodies. Essentially a choice of values occurs: cognition of pure form is believed to

190 Kaufmann, figs. 16, 30, 31. 191 Etienne Louis Boullée, Treatise on Architecture. “Architecture, an Essay on Art.” in From the Classicists to the Impressionists: A Documentary History of Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Elizabeth Gilmore Holt. Anchor Books, New York, 1966. 192-193. Kaufmann, 470-471. 192 Kaufmann, 499: from Laugier’s Essai: “Toutes les figures geometriques, depuis le triangle justqu’au cercle, peuvent servir a varier sans cesse la composition de ces sortes d’edifices.” “The new architect was to work undeviatingly with simple geometric forms.” 193 Boullee, 194, 195. 69 have greater value than the symbolism of ornament. Although, Boullée had it both ways; form and ornament worked together, but enriching, surface-covering ornament was stripped off in favor of large representational sculptural pieces placed at carefully-selected positions on the building’s exaggerated form.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from Boullée with regards to ornament is his foreshadowing of the difficulty of ornamenting absolutely monumental buildings. The historic vocabularies begin to look odd when attempted on buildings larger than a or on extremely large planar surfaces outside their frame of accustomed association. Alberti had in fact already noticed this problem: “perhaps… the columns cannot relate to a work of vast scale.”194 How could one possibly compose an ornamental scheme for a building the size of Isaac Newton’s Cenotaph?

Dignified concentric circles of trees are the only recourse.

Ledoux built more than Boullée, and consequently had to take a more evolutionary stance on the classical language. His treatise, L’Architecture, apparently written in the 1790’s, appears in 1804.195 Kaufmann places it in context: “The book reveals the architect’s personality, and reflects the ideas of the era of the Enlightenment, the philosophy of Conorcet, as well as the ideals of Rousseau. …Many of his statements might serve as an introduction to an architectural textbook of our time [1952].”196

Regarding ornament, Ledoux simply cannot be neatly categorized. Form and ornament receive vigorous exploration from both within and without tradition. Some of his more unusual works of paper architecture are what we are most familiar with today, the spherical ‘Shelter for the rural guards,’ the Boullée-esque ‘Cimetière des Chaux,’ the ‘House of the surveyors of the river,’ or his plan for a ‘house of pleasure.’ But many of his projects remain within the bounds of conventional classicism, while others flirt with what might be called post-, and still others, such as the rural guards shelter, are completely indefinable.

To illustrate his unconventional and conventional exploration of ornament, consider his

Hunting lodge [4.1] and his Tabary house and Storehouse at Compiègne [4.3, 4.4].

194 Alberti, 221. 195 Kaufmann, 476. 196 Kaufmann, 477. 70

[4.1] Ledoux, Hunting Lodge design, c. 1790. [4.2] University Library, Mexico City, 1952.

[4.3] Ledoux, Storehouse at Compiègne [4.4] Ledoux, Tabary house

The latter use semantic ornament more traditionally in the classical system, and the lodge takes a revolutionary approach. The pure rectangular prisms are nearly completely covered with reliefs composed of trophies.197 The plane of the wall becomes a canvas for ornament with no implied relationship between the structure and the adornment. If the building were put on columns and the ornament continued all the way to the edge rather than have a frame of blank surface, it would be fairly close to the 1952 Library of the National Autonomous University of Mexico [4.2].198

Despite several examples of highly ornamented works, Kaufmann notes: “Generally,

Ledoux was more interested in spatial composition than in surface decoration… He aimed for serenity and grandeur, believing architecture without ornamentation to be the architecture of the future. …It tells of the desire for innovation and for a new order of the elements; of the struggle

197 Kaufmann, 525. 198 Jaun O’Gorman with Gustavo Saavedra and Juan Martínez de Velasco, 1952 Biblioteca de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Mexico City. 71 of form for form’s sake, grandeur for grandeur’s sake.”199 It is important to note that, apart from buildings which absolutely have to be in an urban context – city gates, a marketplace – almost none of Ledoux’s projects are depicted in an urban setting, but always against a pastoral backdrop.200 Formal explorations cannot occur in tight urban sights; such expression needs generous free space, not only to work practically but also for appreciation from many viewing angles. There will be severe consequences for the urban environment when dramatic formal expression attempts to supplant the ornamental expression of typical street walls in a city context.

At the King’s Salt Works near the villages of Arc and Senans Ledoux appears to be one of the first to deal with the architectural expression of a new building type: the industrial site.

Ornamenting a villa or a public building had a long tradition, but the plethora of new building types that arrive in the 19th century will prove daunting for ornament. In the 18th century, the scale of industrial buildings has not yet increased to the point where the traditional ornamental vocabulary of classicism feels inappropriate, so for now, the new type is assimilated without extreme difficulty. Kaufmann describes the planning issues and Ledoux’s motivations, noting the extremely exaggerated rusticated columns as a play with material, light and shade, while “Side- by-side with this modern tendency appears the Romantic trend –Architecture Parlante– in the urns seemingly pouring forth the precious fluid, to tell us of the saline, the source of the city’s wealth [4.5].”201

[4.5] Ledoux, The King’s Saltworks. Ornament adapted for industrial building types.

199 Kaufmann, 531… 532… 535. 535 is specifically referring to the House of the surveyors of the river. On 516, Kaufmann discusses Ledoux and Carlo Lodoli’s Functionalism of 1750. “The inclination towards the ideal of functionalism, and the hostility against decoration, are reflected in several other passages of L’Architecture.” If one wishes to trace ‘functionalism’ all the way back to its roots, it appears as though Carlo Lodoli might be it, besides some remarks in Plato’s Cratylus., noted by Guthrie in Greek Ways of Thinking: “the essential in purpose or function, with which they included form, for (as is pointed out e.g. by Plato in Cratylus) structure subserves function and is dependant on it.” (21) 200 The two exceptions I am referring to in Kaufmann are Ledoux’s dramatic rendering of a church for Chaux, and a gun foundary. 201 Kaufmann, 514. 72 Ornament was used in an attempt to make apparent the purpose of the construction, and the was used to link many of the buildings on the site. It is important that this is a King’s salt works; the ornament serves the dual purposes of satisfying decorum as well as functional expression.

Before discussing Durand, two writers will be mentioned briefly, Le Camus de Mézières

(1721-1793202) and Sir William Chambers (1723-1796). Boullée and Ledoux are the non- traditionalists of the period, De Mézières and Chambers will stand in as representative of the more conventional view of ornament. The Frenchman publishes his La génie de l’architecture; ou, L’analogie de cet art avec nos sensations in 1780, the Englishman publishes his Treatise on the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture in 1759, 68, and 91.203 They are both significant in that they finally present architecture predominantly as ornamented building, thus a truly 19th century idea arrives slightly before the 19th century begins.

Perrault was a scientist concerned with using mathematics to objectively describe phenomena, Mézières also attempts to investigate architecture scientifically, but for his purposes objective mathematics does not make a favorable model. Rather than impose science upon architecture, Mézières rather takes up a study of human sensations to achieve a greater understanding of architecture’s effects, as the book’s subtitle suggests.204 His approach lacks what we might today call science, as he simply asks questions and suggests answers, but it is difficult to consider how one would approach a science of architectural response even today.

202 De Mézières, 57. Introduction, Robin Middleton notes that de Mézières death date is actually uncertain. 203 The first two editions of Chambers were entitled “A Treatise on Civil Architecture,” with only the 1791 edition having “Decorative” added into the title. It was reprinted in 1862 by the English ‘Battle of the Styles’ camp who favored Modern Classicism. Sir William Chambers, The Decorative Part of Civil Architecture, int. by Joseph Gwilt, ed. W.H. Leeds. Kelly and Co. Printers, London, 1862. notes on 61 and 311. 204 De Mézières, Robin Middleton introduction, 52-54. Middleton discusses the influence of Condillac’s philosophy of the sensations on De Mézières: “…a recognition of the capacity of external phenomena to stir sensations is not to imply that the same sensations or the same associations will be aroused on all occasions by a particular object. Condillac issues a clear warning. Sensations are not intrinsic to objects; an object cannot be relied upon to produce the same emotional response in each of us, nor indeed even in ourselves on different occasions. Le Camus de Mézières took no heed of this warning. The premise of Le Genie… is that particular sensations are aroused by particular forms and that these can be manipulated and arranged to specific effect – that there is indeed a science of sensations.” De Mézières might be one of the first architectural ‘phenomenologists’. 73

Mézières’ constant comments on taste205 show an understanding that perception and pleasure are subjective, yet he attempts to advance a theory of sensual response to architecture.206 Consider one of his questions and answers:

Today, in the suburbs of the Capital, an endless succession of new buildings seems to promise enjoyment and delight. What is the cause of these sensations? The choice of proportions; the forms that are employed, and the position in which they have been set with taste and deliberation; the ornaments, and their reciprocal relations, all combine to produce this character and to establish the illusions that architecture creates.207

Like Perrault, De Mézières lacks concern for ‘true’ expression of the structure, and understands architecture as a pleasing illusion created by carefully arranged form and ornament in light.208 He attempts to adopt the traditional associations of the orders into his theory of the sensations; for instance, Corinthian should be used to evoke “grandeur and magnificence”, while Doric for a

“martial quality”, and Ionic for “the tone appropriate for the Palace of .”209

De Mézières has quite a few interesting things to say about ornament/decoration, reiterating some points of previous writers within his model of the sensations.210 Architecture finds very close relation with decoration, but, in order to achieve beauty, the decoration must be disposed with careful proportion. When describing the orders, he states: “The word Order signifies a regular and proportionate arrangement of masses, moldings, and ornaments, which,

205 De Mézières, 88, 89, 94, 101, - and most of the quotes presented in the text have ‘taste’ figuring in them. Few pages actually go by without some reference to taste, prudence, propriety, appropriateness, or social custom. 206 De Mézières, Robin Middleton introduction, 54. “The theory that Le Camus advances as to the way the shapes and forms of architecture under different conditions of and shade can stir different sensations and moods is, however, borrowed from the theories of landscape gardeners – and borrowed from Morel, it would seem, more directly than from Watelet, whom Le Camus acknowledges. All three men were in thrall to the sensationalist philosophers.” Camus advances his sensual theories in the text on 70-75, and 93-99. On 93-99 he discusses the attempt to create various emotions in the observer by use of mass, ornament, light, and proportion. 207 De Mézières, 79. 208 De Mézières, 96. “The first glimpse must hold us spellbound; the details, the masses of the decoration, the profiles, the play of light, all conduce to this same end.” 209 De Mézières, 96. Middleton says that by Themis, De Mézières means ‘justice’. 210 De Mézières, 77: (opening line of the book) “Architecture, or the art of building, is divided into a number of branches. It is our purpose to consider this Art relative to decoration, in which true beauty consists in the proportions that relate the various parts of buildings to each other” 88: “The principal rooms in an apartment must be in keeping with the exterior, as we have said; but they must also be in harmony with each other in extent, in the height of the ceilings, and in the decoration. A progression in the richness of the ornament is prescribed; but this is a delicate matter, and it requires great taste and prudence.” 89: “Ornaments, therefore, must be sparingly employed and disposed with taste; one cannot devote too much consideration to their genre, their character, and their necessity.” 90: Comments about interior cornices disrupting the space (sim. to Palladio). 74 when incorporated in a façade or other architectural decoration, make up a beautiful whole.”211 A whole façade makes a decoration; while in practice many previous architects did this, nobody has gone quite as far as to call an entire façade a decoration. Durand and Pugin will not approve.

As his theory has great complexity, it may be unfair to position Mézières as the first to declare that architecture is the art of decorated construction, but as he associates architecture so closely to decoration in his opening lines and suggests that architects look to stage decorations for the inspiration of emotive effect, it seems partly just.212 Fundamentally, Mézières proposes equally balanced composition relying on well-proportioned form and prudent use of ornament, all carefully modified to evoke intended sensations. De Mézières’ eccentricities could be further discussed at great length, but it will only be pointed out how he continues the idea of ornament’s display of the social hierarchy and shows an extreme displeasure with the ‘frivolous’ ‘ephemeral diseases’, and ‘depravities of taste’ that are the Baroque and Rococo styles.213 He also uses

‘ornament’ and ‘decoration’ synonymously quite frequently.

Sir William Chamber’s 1791 Treatise on the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture shows an English conception of architecture in the 18th century: rational, cool-headed, ‘proper,’ classicism, with twinges of romanticism and a conscious allowance for the basic absurdities of classical architecture.214 While De Mézières refers to sensationalist philosophers and produces a handbook for making a French hôtel,215 Chambers refers strictly to architectural writers and produces a treatise that could stand proudly next to Vitruvius. He carefully considers all that have come before in the classical tradition, dissects, and selects what he decides as the most

211 De Mézières, 80. 212 De Mézières, 71, 77. 213 De Mézières, 72, 128-129, 89, 91-92. On 128-129, it can be noted that ornament not only shows the wealth of the owner, but also is modified to express his character. 214 By “basic absurdities,” I refer to Chambers on the Corinthian order, 240: “beauty and fitness are qualities that have very little connexion with each other; in architecture they are sometimes incompatible... And there are many things in that art which, though beautiful to the highest degree, yet carry with them, in their application, an evident absurdity; one instance whereof is the Corinthian capital, a form composed of a slight basket, surrounded with leaves and flowers. Can anything be more unfit to support a heavy load of entablature, and such other weights as are usually placed upon it? Yet this has been approved and admired some thousand years, and will probably still continue to be approved and admired for ages to come.” Sir John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1993. 38: Summerson explains the English 18th century “addiction to Palladio,” with a “puritanical” yet “incurably romantic” stance on architecture. 215 De Mézières, 17. Robin Middleton intro: “Le Camus’s study is, indeed, essentially a handbook for the planning of the French hôtel.” 75 appropriate – a true classical eclectic.216 Chamber’s draws from , the Renaissance, and the very last generation, upholding none to be absolute, but on occasion agreeing with

Perrault here, Vignola there, Scamozzi there, Vitruvius here. Laugier stands as the only writer who does not receive camaraderie, but several witty barbs for his inability to contain his rationality appropriately.217

Chambers uses the word ornament in the Albertian sense.218 The title of the treatise alone suggests a conceptual distinction between construction and ornament, and indeed, he divides architecture into two parts:

…in architecture, there are certain elementary forms which… are the principal constituent objects of every composition… of these there are in our art two distinct sorts, the first consisting of… those that were essentially necessary in the construction of the primitive huts [column shafts, base, , architrave, classical timber roof parts] …All these are properly distinguished by the appellation of essential parts, and form the first class. The subservient members contrived for the use and ornament of these, and intended either to support, to shelter, or to unite them gracefully together, which are usually called mouldings, constitute the second class.219

Though he disparages Laugier,220 Chambers does in effect use the same primitive hut model, only accepting a much more diverse vocabulary. Even though the columns are the first

216 Those frequently mentioned include: Vitruvius, Alberti, Serlio, Delorme, Palladio, Scamozzi, Perrault, Blondel, Vignola, Bernini, Le Clerc, De Chambrai, De Cordemoy, Sangallo, Gibbs, Vanbrugh, , Wren, Bramante, Bernini (among others), and special mention of Abbé Laugier. He notes in the preface, 59-60: “Few subjects have been more amply treated than architecture… Yet one thing of great use remained to be done – at least in our language – which was, to collect in one volume what lay dispersed in so many hundreds,… and to select from mountains of promiscuous materials a series of sound precepts and perfect designs.” Which he then does. 217 Chambers, 173: “A certain French Jesuit…who, some thirty years ago, first published an essay on architecture, which from its plausibility, force, and elegance of diction, went through several editions, and operated very powerfully on the superficial part of European connoisseurs.” 239: “In this, however, they seem to carry their reasoning rather too far; a step further would lead them into the same road with Father Laugier, who, having sagaciously found out that the first buildings consisted of nothing but four trunks of trees and a covering, considered almost every part of a building, excepting the column, the entablature, and the pediment, as licentious or faulty; and in consequence thereof, very cavalierly banishes at once all pedestals, pilasters, niches, arcades, attics, etc. etc. it is only by special favour that he condescends to tolerate doors or windows, or even walls.” 218 Chambers, 201. “In imitation of the ancients, the moderns have made the orders of architecture the principal ornaments of their structures. …On some occasions they are employed alone, the whole composition consisting of only of one or more ranges of columns with their entablature. At other times the intervals between the columns are filled up, and adorned with arches, doors, windows, niches, statues, bas- reliefs, and other similar inventions.” 219 Chambers, 100. 220 Chambers is not at all enthralled with the mania for Greek architecture that set Laugier off. 83, 86-87. 76 ‘essential’ class, he refers to them as ornament and decoration.221 Chambers does bring a unique appreciation of one of the facets of ornament to the table, reflective of Britain’s growing prominence as a commercial power:

But these [advantages], however great, are not the most considerable; that numerous train of arts and manufactures, contrived to furnish and adorn the works of architecture, which occupy thousands, and constitutes many lucrative branches of commerce… …for where building is encouraged, painting, sculpture, and all the inferior branches of decorative workmanship, must flourish of course; and these have an influence on manufactures, even to the minutest mechanic productions; for design is of universal benefit, …the importance of which, to a commercial people, is obvious; it requires no illustration.222

Much more could be said about Chambers, but he will be left as a classicist who understood the semantic dimension of ornament,223 and called for a certain level of restraint, echoing all the anti-baroque sentiments of his contemporaries. He will be reprinted by the

‘modern classics’ at the height of the 19th century battle of the styles to help stem the tide of the

Goths. Lastly, Chamber’s division of the practice of architecture into “distribution, construction, decoration, and economy”224 is exactly what Durand will find so displeasing.

As a professor for engineers at the French École Polytechnique, it should not be surprising that Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (1760-1834) has absolutely nothing positive to say about applied ornament. He ruefully notes in the introduction to his 1802-5 Précis des leçons d’architecture données à l’École Polytechnique: “Most architects take the view that architecture is not so much the art of making useful buildings as that of decorating them. Its principle object, accordingly, is to please the eye and thereby arouse delightful sensations…”225 This would all have to change. The intensely romantic imagined primitive hut drove Laugier’s rationalism, but

Durand does not appear to have a hair of romanticism behind his reasoning.

221 Chambers, 141: “In composing the orders and other decorations which are contained in the present publication, this method has constantly been observed…” 277: “With regard to the beauty of the exterior decorations, if an order comprehends two stories…” For ornament references, see note 85. 222 Chambers, 56…57…58. 223 Chambers, 108: “when freizes or other large members are to be enriched, the ornaments may be significant, and serve to indicate the destination or use of the building; the rank, qualities, profession, and achievements of the owner…” 289, 292. Some of his comments mirror the anti-Baroque sentiment on the continent. 107-109. “With regard to the manner of executing ornaments, it is to be remembered, that as in sculpture a drapery is not estimable unless its folds are contrived to grace and indicate the parts and articulations of the body it covers, so in architecture the most exquisite ornaments lose all their value, if they load, alter, or confuse the form they are designed to enrich or adorn.” 224 Chambers, 97. 225 Durand, 79. 77

In one of De l’Orme’s comments already mentioned, the Vitruvian triangle of commodity, firmness, and delight was skewed towards the commodity and firmness direction, away from ornament. Durand effectively does away with the triangle altogether, replacing it with a linear equation: Firmness + Commodity = Beauty.226 Such a diagram will appear in Learning from Las Vegas in 1972 as an accusation against Gropius, showing how far the long arm of

Durand’s ideas reached.227 But De l’Orme is rather distant; Durand primarily works forward from Perrault.228 Perrault accepted the arbitrary beauty of customs and association, Durand does not, letting his rationalism tread into realms previously left calm. It would seem that an engineer could handle the basic task of “satisfaction of our needs”229 laid out by Durand, but Antoine Picon assures us that “in his eyes, the imperatives of utility, fitness, and economy did not mean that architecture was in any way subordinate to engineering.”230

A very important statement made by Perrault to defend the classical timber ornaments was: “…the grace and beauty of these things [timber roof parts in stone] do not depend on such imitations and resemblances, for if they did, the more exact the imitation, the greater would be their beauty.”231 This shows Perrault scientist’s idea of beauty where an equation exactly matches the phenomena. E = Mc2 has a certain ‘beauty’ about it, but to apply the same thought to art suggests that a photograph must be more beautiful than a charcoal sketch, something which may not necessarily be the case. What held Perrault back was this allowance for arbitrary beauty.

Durand uses the clarity of imitation argument to attack the classical tradition’s ornaments, insisting that pleasure derived does indeed depend on their imitating accurately the originals, and since they do not, “that such decoration is itself a chimera; and the expense that it entails is

226 J.N.L. Durand, Précis des leçons d’architecture données à l’École Polytechnique, trans. David Britt, intr. Antoine Picon. Getty Research Institute Publications Program, Los Angeles, 2000. As he wishes to completely disassociate himself from the ancients, Durand does not actually use the Vitruvian terms, but says: 84: “fitness and economy are the means that architecture must naturally employ, and are the sources from which it must derive its principles… a building is to be fit for its purpose, it must be solid, salubrious, and commodius.” 86: “…economy is one of the principal causes of beauty.” Between the jumble of terms, the old Vitruvian expression is in there. 227 Learning From Las Vagas, 142. 228 Durand, 33. Picon places Durand thusly: “In many ways, Durand stands between Perrault and Comte in seeking to deconstruct everything that might appear chimerical in the chosen objectives of architecture.” 40: “Durand’s system is closely modeled on that proposed by Claude Perrault in his Ordonnance…” 229 Durand, 85. 230 Durand, 52, Picon introduction. 231 Perrault, 52. 78 folly.”232 Photographs are therefore more beautiful than charcoal sketches. Durand concludes:

“From this it follows that, if the principal aim of architecture is to please, it must either imitate to better effect, or choose other models to imitate, or adopt other means than imitation.”233 He chooses to adopt other means than imitation, and the classical system of ornament is thus cast off.234

With regards to the ornament question, Antoine Picon comments on Durand’s rather odd- seeming purism:

Considering that Durand had given the world a number of projects for revolutionary monuments [which are ornamented], his outright dismissal of the symbolic dimension is surprising, to put it mildly. The same goes for his denunciation of decoration, in view of the numerous examples of decorated buildings in his book. ...again, the orders, which he dismisses as of no real interest, nonetheless form part of his syllabus. The paradox is partly resolved if we remember that the utilitarian role of architecture must involve some concessions to usage and taste…235

Foremost, however, Durand illustrates how ornament can move into unconventional places; for him, the plan. Some of his plans make a fine examples of patterned abstract ornament on the scale of the entire building [4.6, 4.7, 4.8].

232 Durand, 83. 79: “If architecture is to please through imitation, it must, like the other arts, imitate nature.” (he then analyzes Laugier and Vitruvius, showing how they are poor imitations of nature) 82: “The forms of the orders were no more imitated from a hut than their proportions were derived from the human body. …It is evident, therefore, that the Greek orders were not an imitation of the hut at all; and that, if they had been, this imitation would have been utterly imperfect and consequently incapable of producing the effect that was intended.” [italics added] 233 Durand, 83. 234 I would like to document here some of Durand’s more odd arguments. On 82, in an extremely strange paragraph, he appears to argue against the timber origin story: “It would be vain to argue that planks or boards were subsequently laid on the pots to broaden the upper part and make it more capable of carrying the entablature; seeing that for an equal length a piece of wood made up of longitudinal fibers is less likely to break than a piece of stone composed of an aggregation of little grains. If one of these objects had served as a model for the other, it would be more natural to suppose the wooden boards to have been imitated from stone capitals than to suppose the latter to have been imitated in stone.” Or, 84: “…the Greeks attached no importance whatever to architectural decoration…” 235 Durand, 35. Picon introduction. 79

[4.6, 4.7, 4.8] Durand, Sullivan, and Wright. From integral ornament to application to integral.

Durand will of course not call his plan developments exercises in ornament,236 but later, Frank

Lloyd Wright will use the term to describe his own work, and it appears to be justified. Using the

Précis as a textbook that the École des Beaux-Arts,237 newly resurrected 1818, will transfer

Durand’s expertise at this kind of ornamenting to later generations, including Louis Sullivan.

Thus Durand, one of the greatest figures in the anti-ornament argument, actually enriched the possibilities of architectural ornament by using abstract patterned figures in plan, an idea which had never before been explored with such rigor except perhaps in religious buildings.

Architects simply cannot be separated from their social context, and Durand is no exception. Durand was writing, Peter Collins notes, in the wake of revolution when “The French state was in fact too poverty-stricken to ornament new public buildings even if it had wanted to.”238 Such an observation gives weighty significance to comments such as “the expense that it entails is folly,” and:

…no one can decorate without money; and it follows that the more one decorates, the more one spends. It is therefore natural to consider whether it is true that architectural decoration, as conceived by architects, gives all the pleasure that it is expected to give; or at least, whether the pleasure justifies the expense.239

236 He does come close to saying this. 86: “…decoration cannot be called beautiful or give true pleasure, except as the necessary effect of the most fitting and the most economical disposition.” 237 Durand, 1. Picon introduction. “…the Précis was soon to outgrow its intended audience of Polytechnicians to become a staple at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts itself. Thumbed by generations of students throughout the nineteenth century, it lost its influence only with the triumph of the modern movement…” 238 Peter Collins, “Towards a New Ornament” The Fifth Column, Vol 4 No. ¾ 1984. Reprinted from the June, 1961 issue of Architectural Review, originally entitled “Aspects of Ornament.” 1. 239 Durand, 79. 80 The only means of expression left to an architect when money is not available is in the artistic distribution of form or structure; Durand’s efforts show the resilience of ornament in extreme situations. It must be conceded that he does attempt to justify his choice of plan arrangement by economy “…it will be readily supposed that the more symmetrical, regular, and simple a building is, the less costly it becomes.”240 But it seems impossible that economy could be the driving force behind all these arrangements, as putting a circle in a square, as he often does, invariably creates quite un-economical dead space.

Antoine Picon and Pérez-Gómez have discussed Durand thoroughly; one theme, however, will be culled for discussion in relation to ornament.241 It is the matter of method.

Durand appears to begin the question of the ‘How’ and the ‘What.’ Picon notes: “By replacing transcendental origins with an insistence on method, and by preferring clarity of argument to the seductions of form, the Précis… earns a place among the earliest rationalist manifestos of the nineteenth century… Like Violet-le-Duc after him, Durand was pursing “a means of producing, even more than a product.”242 This shows a dramatic turn to process or method-based design; a rational desire to justify the end result somehow by the means, the eidos is supplanted by the techne. While not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing, it shows that the architect has no idea of their own to attempt to put forth, and rather turns to the process of architectural production as the idea, making the important assumption that this will be found interesting by society. Ornament can be found on the side of the ‘what’ in this theme.

One does have to give sympathy to Durand in some of his arguments; classical architecture’s grand beliefs are indeed fundamentally irrational. Fortunately, few demand for art to be completely rational. As has been discussed, Serlio understood that the intended maleness and femaleness of the orders was too abstract to be understood, and thus put maids in his

Corinthian fireplaces. Rather than replace the ornaments with something that might be more

240 Durand, 85. 241 Pérez-Gómez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science, 298-326. Antoine Picon, “From Poetry of Art” to Method: The Theory of Jean-Nocolas-Louis Durand” from Jean-Nicolas Durand, Précis of the Lectures on Architecture.1-54. Also, Joseph Rykwert, “The Nefarious Influence on Modern Architecture of the Neo-Classical Architects Boullee and Durand”, The Necessity of Artifice, 60-66. 242 Durand, 53. Picon introduction. 81 legible, in his theory Durand simply decided to remove them entirely, taking the meaning inherent in ornament along with them.

3. Late 18th Century Philosophy’s influence on Ornament

In the late 18th century the philosophical discourse will put forward two strong ideas that shape the 19th century’s sentiments, ’s 1790 Critique of Judgement and writings from the

Scottish school of Associationist philosophers. The former created the urge for the artist to express individual creative genius, the latter justified adaptation of historic styles. For ornament, this sets up the idea that, to be original, a new style will require a totally new ornament, while the impulses of associationism hold the architect back to recognizable, older styles of ornament.

The influence of the Associationist philosophers (Hume and Hutcheson, Gerard, Kames,

Dugald Stewart and Archibald Alison) has been described by Joseph Mordaunt Crook in his The

Dilemma of Style.243 It has been argued that something like this idea has been at work since

Vitruvius, but only now finally achieves systematic description. The philosophy was highly influential on the picturesque English movement, wherein architecture is not important for its direct communication of ideas, but for the indirect associations with memories and moods that the various styles and treatments of ornament are capable of instilling in the viewer. Crook provides a selection from Richard Payne Knight’s 1805 An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste to describe the stance of association:

As all the pleasures of the intellect arise from the association of ideas, the more the materials of association are multiplied, the more will the sphere of those pleasures be enlarged. To a mind richly stored, almost every object of nature or art, that presents itself to the senses, either excites fresh trains or combinations of ideas, or vivifies and strengthens those that existed before: so that recollection enhances enjoyment…244

Knight’s Downton Castle in Heredforshire (1771-8) shows his ideas in action; the exterior is ornamented as a medieval castle, the interior is classical.245 This shows the beginning of ornament being appropriated not for communication of any specific ideas, but to satisfy a

243 Joseph Mordaunt Crook, Dilemma of Style:Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post- Modern. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987. 17-21 discusses the philosophy of association and its relationship with the architecture of the period. 244 Quoted from Crook, 20. 245 Example taken from Crook, 29. 82 picturesque taste; conclusively demonstrating Victor Hugo’s observation as correct, architecture is no longer communicating the great ideas of society, but merely satisfying our pleasures, a not unimportant role in itself.

The philosophy of the associationists can be seen as a response to the loss ornament was experiencing; a re-validation of its use for romantic connections with the historic ornamental vocabularies. A universal study of the classics among the educated made classicism seem appropriate, while a growing nationalism and nostalgia for the medieval period made Gothic also seem like a real possibility. American architects throughout the 19th century will use the idea of association as a justification for their choice of styles. Consider a passage from Andrew Jackson

Downing’s influential 1850 The Architecture of Country Houses:

There are positive and human elements of beauty in these styles which appeal at once to the feelings. But there is, besides, another source of pleasure to most minds, which springs not from the beauty of form or expression in these styles of architecture, but from personal or historical associations connected with them; and which, by a process half addressed to the feelings and half to the intellect, makes them in the highest degree interesting to us.246 [not my emphasis]

Associational theory will remain strong until early moderns such as Violet-le-Duc, Sullivan, and

Otto Wagner begin to directly assault it. After dismemberment by the modern movement and a period of dormancy, scholars such as Alan Colquhoun will re-discover it and use it as a device for the justification of post-modernism.247

While the Scottish school was bolstering a case for eclecticism and romanticism (and therefore historic ornament), Brent C. Brolin identifies Kant’s roughly contemporaneous 1790

Critique of Judgement as important in the philosophic origins of the problem of ornament.248

Brolin describes Kant as putting forth that originality is the essence of genius. This tends to make

246 Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses, int. J. Stewart Johnson. Dover Publications, New York, 1969. 27. 247 Learning From Las Vegas, 89: “…architecture depends on its perception and creation on past experience and emotional association…” 129: “Artistically, the use of conventional elements in ordinary architecture – be they dumb doorknobs or the familiar forms of existing construction systems – evokes associations from past experience.” Venturi, Brown, and Izenour credit Colquhoun’s essay “Typology and Design Method” in Arena, Journal of the Architectural Association, June 1967 pp 11-14. During the ‘period of dormancy’ some sensitive architects, such as August Perret, will still understand the importance of association. 248 Brent C. Brolin – Architectural Ornament: Banishment and Return. This is one of the starting points for Brolin’s arguments on why ornament became so difficult for modern architecture. It marks the beginning of the philosophical shift towards the modern artist’s accepted role in society. 83 the evolutionary approach to art less acceptable; where is the originality in doing ornament as it always has been done? Or, Kant helped architects discover, as John Summerson puts it: “that architecture was almost entirely an affair of copying...”249 The historic styles as applied in the

19th century were essentially defined by their ornaments; Kant’s role for the artist was going to create serious trouble by helping feed the dilemma in the Battle of the Styles; neither classic nor gothic was good enough, voices were to cry for a new style with a new ornament.

Karsten Harries provides a similar commentary on Kant, showing how completely the

Rococo style had managed to confuse and alienate philosophers as well as architects:

Already in Kant’s Critique of Judgement we find hints of this death [of ornament]: the same considerations that led Kant to assert the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere force him to question the role of ornament in architecture, especially in . Kant shares the Enlightenment’s inability to accept the profusely ornamented churches of the Rococo, an inability that led to decrees actually forbidding such use of ornament. The Enlightenment’s conception of a church had to find this ornament not only inessential but altogether out of place. A purified religion no longer has any use for the aesthetic, just as the pure art demanded by the aesthetic approach refuses to serve religion.250

So philosophers, too, helped force the pendulum of ornamental appreciation from Suger back to

St. Bernard. All this focuses on the aesthetics of ornament rather than the meaning – a manifestation of labor, necessarily modified by aesthetics. Looking at some of the more splendid

Rococo interiors, one can perhaps sympathize [4.8]. Kaufmann, describing J.F. Blondel’s frustrations with his adventurous students Boullée and Ledoux, makes apparent that the intense urge for novelty pre-dates Kant’s work,251 but Kant seems a significant enough figure to mark as a turning point.

249 Summerson, Heavenly Mansions, 197. 250 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture. 44. 251 Kaufmann, 443. 84

[4.9] Rococo in full splendor. Music Room, Sanssouci, Potsdamn. 1746 onwards. Photo from Gombrich.

6. Conclusion

Between Boullée and Ledoux’s work an intense unrest is apparent for innovation that cuts free all the chains of tradition, and this is well before new structural methods and building types will give a greater sense of urgency to the situation. It should also be apparent that taking various selections, one could, if they wished, create a good portion of the main points in Towards a New

Architecture. The field for the 19th century has been set, and the twentieth is already almost present.

A large question looms: with increasing literacy, will ornament have anything important to say as it moves forward in time? As Hugo put it, is architecture as the great book of humanity going to be closed? Ornament was supplanted by print as the means for communicating the real meaty ideas of human civilization somewhere between the 17th and 19th centuries. In the pre- literate ancient and medieval worlds, ornament was the primary means of communicating lasting messages to a mass audience; architecture played an integral part in educating individuals about their culture and what was expected of them. The rise of mass printing and literacy rates between the 17th and 19th centuries means that people no longer learned everything they needed to know about their culture and world-view from having a priest explain pictographic stories in their local church’s windows. Despite ornament’s lesser role in explaining a society’s view of 85 itself and of the cosmos, ornament was still used by most architects to communicate semantic messages directly all the way through to World War II. Ornament serves many functions; to consider striking it off of architecture because one of them has lost its purpose will be a consideration requiring most careful reflection.

86

5. The Use of Ornament: The Nineteenth Century______

Architecture, the “art of ornamental and ornamented construction”.252 James Fergusson, 1855

It is not an understatement to say that in the 19th century the question of ornament received more theoretical examination than any other part of architecture. The extravaganzas of ornamentation could almost be described as an agonizing love affair between many tempting mistresses. If the

18th century could be grossly generalized, thinking primarily of Laugier, as rationalism guided by romanticism, the 19th might be grossly generalized by adding moralism into the mix.

Ornament weathers the storm, and was even looked to as a solution for the problem of a new style. The major theoretical stances shall be discussed, along with a discussion of how some architects of the century practically responded to the new pressures in a manner other than historicism. For the theoreticians, the implications of Pugin, Ruskin, Owen Jones, Viollet-le-Duc,

Semper, and Otto Wagner will be discussed in relation to the theme of the machine, ornament’s interaction with the structure, and the new desire for a rational, process, or a “how” based architecture. For the practitioners (some also theoreticians), examples will be limited to: Henri

Labrouste, John Wellborn Root, Louis Sullivan and Otto Wagner, who, among many others, all attempted to work with ornament in a progressive manner. Otto Wagner achieves something approaching a resolution with the question of the machine, but he does not solve the great question of the 19th century: how to address the new metal frame.

1. Pugin, Ruskin, Owen Jones and Robert Kerr

With Durand already discussed, Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) becomes the next figure to put forth major arguments. He marks the rising tide interest in ever since Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill (begun 1749).253 Pugin does not begin any unique theoretical points, but he does begin to shape the character of the debate surrounding ornament in the 19th century. Essentially, combine the moral social vision and revivalism of Alberti with the

252 Crook, 112. 253 See Peter Collins, Changing Ideals, 100-105. 87 structural rationalism of Laugier, and you arrive at something approximating Pugin.254 Except now Gothic is the style to be revived, based on somewhat intense nationalist and religious sentiments.255

Brent C. Brolin has commented on how Pugin’s 1841 True Principals of a Pointed or

Christian Architecture, if carefully quoted from, can sound remarkably modern with its ideas of functional and structural expression.256 Take his first precept in True Principles:

The two great rules of design are these: 1st, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building.257

The only difference between Pugin and the modernists is that Pugin revives a style with associations rather than attempting to create a new one. His principles would seem to create an entirely tectonic architecture, but Pugin does allow for representational semantic ornament under

‘propriety,’ stating the conceptual division of ornament used within this thesis: “We shall therefore have to consider ornament with reference to construction and convenience [tectonics], and ornament with reference to architectural propriety [semantics].”258 The form is not the primary expression of the function; Pugin’s propriety-ornament expresses the function or purpose of the building: “What I mean by propriety is this; that the external and internal appearance of an edifice should be illustrative of, and in accordance with, the purpose for which it is destined.”259

There are certain rational contradictions to be aware of [5.1].

254 Crook, 51. “Now these principals [of Pugin’s] were by no means new. They can be traced back to Laugier, and Lodoli, and the Neo-Classical rationalists of the eighteenth century.” Pugin’s discussion in Principles, 36-37 nearly exactly echoes Alberti’s rules for propriety of ornament between churches and other building types: “…it is incumbent on all men to render the buildings they raise for religious purposes more vast and more beautiful than those in which they dwell.” 39: he discusses the semantic ornaments. 255 Crook, 48: Pugin’s simple reasoning in the battle of the styles was: “We are not Italians, we are Englishmen.” Pugin, Principles, 47: “God in his wisdom has implanted a love of nation and country in every man, and we should always cultivate the feeling… [via English Gothic revival]” The pagan associations of classicism, which the Renaissance authors had either attempted to ignore or adapt, is made much of by Pugin – he assaults both the ‘falsity’ of replicating timber in stone, and its pagan nature (2-4). 256 Brent C. Brolin, Ornament: Banishment and Return, 94. 257 Pugin, Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, 1. 258 Pugin, Principles, 2. 259 Pugin, Principles, 35. 88

[5.1] Pugin’s True Principles. Left: structural ornament or ornamented structure, right, each hides its own.

How rational is it to force wood into a form resembling a Gothic arch? The simple triangular truss makes for a convenient and rational structural system; the system that the Goths had in fact used on every cathedral, but had been concealed by the non-bearing stone vaulting. Had the suspended been partly integrated with the true roof trusses, Pugin would not have known what to say. Small eccentricities such as this show associational desire pre-empting ‘truth in the materials’260 arguments, as rationalism had served to protect the classical system, Pugin uses rationalism to argue his romance. In the Gothic, the stone vaulting which actually bears no structural load at all hid the roof trusses, and in St. Pauls, a stone screen hides flying buttresses; both examples conceal what was perceived to be the undesirable elements of their tectonics.

For non-structural enriching ornaments such as and flooring patterns

(semantics, or his ‘propriety’), Gombrich has noted how Pugin’s dogma took enough hold to inspire a satiric reaction in contemporary literature in Charles Dicken’s 1854 Hard Times.261

Pugin upheld that representational ornament could not attempt to suggest too much realism in certain instances:

260 Pugin, Principles, 1-2: “…the architects of the middle ages were the first who turned the natural properties of various materials to their full account, and made their mechanisms a vehicle for their art.” 261 Gombrich, 34-35. “This objection to three-dimensional representation in the decoration of walls or floors soon developed into a dogma among Victorian reformers of design. Dickens was to make fun of it in his novel Hard Times…” The specific passage from Pugin is in Principles, 23-24. “Nothing can be more ridiculous than… highly relieved foliage… for the decoration of a floor.” Pugin would absolutely detest some of the floor decorations at Koolhous’s Seattle Public Library. 89

“So you would carpet your room… with representations of flowers, would you? “If you please sir, I am very fond of flowers… “And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots? “It wouldn’t hurt them sir, They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy… “Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,” cried the gentleman… “for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colors) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.”262

The authority’s need for rationalism was most perplexing for the young flower-lover.

To close, Pugin sets a tone of taste-reformation for ornament. Pugin was an associationist,263 but a very strict one, the later Goths themselves had even begun to cross the line of “bad taste” with some of their more elaborate tectonic ornament.264 He was quite ready to adapt Gothic to new building types such as railway stations and commercial buildings.265 Though he was very much a proponent of tectonic ornament, he uses ‘ornament’ and ‘decoration’ interchangeably throughout his writings with ease.266

Pugin died young, and John Ruskin (1819-1900) succeeded him as the next leading

British writer. Ruskin and Viollet-Le-Duc’s writings are without doubt the most influential of the

19th century, and the question of ornament figures largely in both. Ruskin’s importance stems from his rejection of the machine in favor of handcraft. Gombrich puts it:

…the new polarity he had established in art had an immense influence on subsequent developments. …The contrast between death, as symbolized by the machine, and life, as symbolized by the traces of the human hand, soon turned into an opposition between drill and spontaneity, imitation and expression. …we are still under the spell of the polarities

262 The passage in Dickens is quoted from Oleg Grabar, who included the full passage in his Mediation of Ornament. 229. 263 Crook, 49. From True Principles. “[English Gothic revival is] warranted by religion, government, climate, and the wants of society. It is the perfect expression of all we should hold sacred, honourable and national, and connected with the holiest and dearest associations.” 264 Pugin, Principles, 6-7: “Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at Westminster is justly considered one of the most wonderful examples of ingenious construction in the world, but at the same time it exhibits the commencement of the bad taste, by constructing the ornament instead of confining it to the enrichment of its construction. I allude to the stone pendants of the ceiling, which are certainly extravagances.” Tectonic ornament could apparently go too far. 265 Crook, 49. “Could Gothic really assimilate the functions and materials of the new industrial age? Pugin affected to see no problem. He produced model Gothic designs for shops and railways structures.” 266 Pugin, Principles, 22-23. He refers to flowery floor patterning and , which are hardly tectonic elements, as ornament. Tectonic elements are also often described as decoration. 90 introduced by Ruskin and like to see the handmade article display those signs of happy carelessness which he praises as a sign of life.267

Ruskin did not establish this spell of empathy with the hand, it back at least as far as

Alberti’s “The pleasure to be found in objects of great beauty and ornament is produced either by invention and the working of the intellect, or by the hand of the craftsman…”268 but Ruskin thoroughly romanticized the spell based on his strong moral vision for society. The intellect no longer has precedence; everything depends on the craftsman’s hands. Owen Jones and

Christopher Dresser will somewhat balance this by focusing more on the ‘investment of mind’ made manifest by ornament.

Ruskin, like Hugo, sensed that architecture had lost something fundamental by losing its social importance and being reduced to a commodity.269 As he wrote his 1849 The Seven Lamps of Architecture the crafts were being slowly destroyed by industrial production; so Ruskin, apprehensive of the individual’s prospects for the future (appearing to be destined for enslaving factory work), pulled out every moral stop he could to argue for a return to an imagined happy medieval worker who stood at the peak of virtue for all human civilization; departing from such a state marks a descent into depravity.270 His entire argument becomes a morally-couched defense of the crafts, which were slowly being eradicated.

Consider some of his statements:

“at all events one thing we have in our power – the doing without machine ornament… all the short, and cheap, and easy ways of doing that whose difficulty is its honour – …They will not make us happier or wiser. …For we are not sent into this world to do any thing into which we cannot put our hearts.”271

267 Gombrich, 41…42…43. 268 Alberti, 159. Or even Vitruvius’s comment mentioned in chapter 2. Or Suger. 269 Crook, 74. “Good art,” he [Ruskin] told a Cambridge audience in 1850 “has only been produced by nations who rejoiced in it; fed themselves with it, as if it were bread; basked in it, as if it were sunshine; shouted at the sight of it; danced with the delight of it; quarreled for it; fought for it; starved for it; did, in fact, precisely the opposite with it of what we want to do with it – they made it to keep, and we to sell.” 270 James Trilling comments on this in his Ornament: A Modern Perspective, 195: “The ideal of craft as free expression, limited only by the imagination and skill of the worker, but embracing every level of imagination and skill, looks back to a pre-industrial golden age when society allowed its artisans to live and work by the dictates of their craft alone. Such a golden age has almost certainly never existed. Even before industrialization as we know it, craft was regulated, and often highly industrialized by the standards of the day. The conditions of life for the artisans could be very poor.” 271 Ruskin, Seven Lamps. Quoted from Gombrich, 38-39. 91

“All art which is worth room in this world… is art which proceeds from an individual mind, working through instruments which assist, but do not supersede, the muscular action of the human hand.”272 “The right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: was it done with enjoyment? Was the carver happy while he was about it?”273 “For it is not the material, but the absence of human labour, which makes the thing worthless; a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by the human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery.”274

The machine commits an immorality by imitating hand crafted ornament.275 While Durand’s rejection of ornament sounded decisive, Ruskin’s opinion becomes far more influential. As

James Trillings says, it leads to the idea of: “If we cannot have the real [handcrafted rather than industrial] ornament, then let us have no ornament.”276

The obvious question for Ruskin is: how can the observer be aware of the psychological condition of the craftsman during production by simply looking at the work? From his description of the work of the stone carvers at Soissons cathedral and a church near Rouen,

Ruskin believes himself to be capable of reading the mood of the craftsmen through the chisel strokes on the stones.277 He explains his position:

…all our interest in the carved work, our sense of its richness… of its delicacy… results from our consciousness of its being the work of a poor, clumsy, toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our discovering in it the record of thoughts, and intents, and trials, and heart breakings – of recoveries and joyfulnesses of successes: all this can be traced by a practiced eye; but, granting it even obscure, it is presumed or understood; and in that is the worth of the thing.278

Human toil makes the root of all significance; though its presence might be ‘obscure,’ Ruskin assumes it to be ‘presumed or understood.’ As mentioned, other writers have understood this, from Suger to Alberti, but Ruskin uses the idea as a moral weapon to resist the coming of the machine. But he admits that the form of a machine product can take a beautiful form:

272 Ruskin, Seven Lamps. Quoted from James Trilling, 188. 273 Ruskin, Seven Lamps. Quoted from Gombrich, 42. 274 Ruskin, Seven Lamps, 55-56. 275 Ruskin, Seven Lamps, 52-53. 276 Trilling, 198. 277 Ruskin, Seven Lamps. Discussed in Gombrich, 40. “It will be plain to see that some places have been delighted in more than others – that there have been a pause, and a care about them; and then there will come careless bits, and fast bits; and here the chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly, and anon timidly; and if the man’s mind as well as his heart went into the work, all this will be in the right places…” Compare that with his discussion of a church near Rouen, 173: “many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently by a man who has studied his work closely. But it is all dead as December; there is not one tender touch, not one warm stroke, on the whole façade. The men who did it hated it, and were thankful when it was done.” Ruskin’s fine eye for emotional chisel strokes is unmatched. 278 Ruskin, Seven Lamps, 54. 92

Ornament… has two entirely distinct sources of agreeableness, one, that of the abstract beauty of forms, which, for the present we will suppose to be the same whether they come form the hand of from the machine; the other the sense of human labour and care spent upon it.279

This is a return to Alberti’s ‘inherent property’ and ‘hand of the craftsman.’ The immense perceived difference between the machine product and the hand product for Ruskin lies in the moral component. Had Ruskin embraced the machine as a valid form of expression, the history of architectural ornament would no doubt be hugely different.

Regarding tectonics, Viollet-le-Duc will be hard at work envisioning a metal architecture, but for Ruskin, the prospects of such an endeavor are not bright, showing that though the ‘how’ had ultimate significance in the production of ornament, he prefers the associational ‘what’ to the

‘how’ when the question regards constructional form.280 Structural concealment or display, although display further ennobles the work, does not constitute a point of failure or success as it did for Pugin.281

The moral polarization established by Ruskin will do much to limit ornament; the machine was the new tool of the age which absolutely demanded some kind of integration, but

Ruskin chose to reject it with a vain hope that it could be ignored. Today the building crafts have

279 Ruskin, Seven Lamps, Quoted from Gombrich, 39. 280 Ruskin, Seven Lamps.39-40: “Abstractedly there appears no reason why iron should not be used as well as wood; and the time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction. But I believe that the tendency of all present sympathy and association is to limit the idea of architecture to non-metallic work; and that is not without reason. …I think it cannot but be generally felt that one of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical use, and since the latter is partly dependent on consistency of style, it will be felt right to retain as far as may be, even in periods of more advanced science, the materials and principles of earlier ages.” Associationism – he does not approve of Classic, but he is essentially sympathizing with the ancient builders when they moved from wood to stone and kept the timber forms. Faced with stone to metal, Ruskin choses to stay with stone for the sake of the old form. He compromises: “metals may be used as a cement, but not as a support.” 281 Ruskin, Seven Lamps. 35: He shows an appreciation for how tectonics can enhance the experience, but an acceptance that they are not fully necessary: “…The architect is not bound to exhibit structure; nor are we to complain of him for concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer surfaces of the human frame conceal much of its anatomy; nevertheless, that building will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers the great secrets of its structure…” Pugin had lamented the overly- embellished tectonic ornament of the later Gothic, but Ruskin is somewhat more amenable, 37: “…so long as we see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points of support in architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dexterous artifices…” The elaborate artifices of Gothic architecture are a 36: “legitimate appeal to the imagination.” This shows a favor of the “what” over the “how.” 93 been largely eradicated, so we should feel little concern with duplicating hand work with machines, as the machine will not be stealing any medieval-tradition artisan’s livelihood.

Owen Jones (1809-1874) and his 1856 The Grammar of Ornament show just how much the Victorians loved ornament. His use of motifs from all corners of the British Empire exacerbated the problem of cultural selection; exotic revival styles, as searches for romantic novelty, would later form excellent ammunition against the eclecticism of ornament. As a work,

The Grammar of Ornament makes an almost scientific inquiry into ornament’s techniques, attempting to discover ‘laws’,282 and categorizing it as nobody ever had before. Unfortunately, in the modern mindset, as soon as something achieves a category, it becomes history, and to be ‘of the age,’ obviously one cannot use anything from history. Jones, though a progressive, does believe that the past can and should be utilized to inspire new ornaments.283

Gombrich describes Jones’ importance as one of the first to discuss the psychology of human perception in relation to ornament.284 How the eye reacts to certain geometries of lines receives investigation: “gradual enrichment leads to that ‘harmony of form’ which he finds in the

‘proper balancing and contrast of the straight, the inclined, and the curved…”285 How to smoothly transition the eye between curves receives a consideration which “look[s] forward to the empirical work of Gestalt psychology.” The goal is to create a pattern where “the eye has now no longer any want that could be supplied.”286 Color, too, receives study under his

‘propositions’ 14-34.287 While specific preferences for color will always remain a matter of taste,

282 Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament. DK Publishing, In., New York, 2001. 18: “In the following chapters I have endeavored to establish these main facts,- First. That whenever any style of ornament commands universal admiration, it will always be found to be in accordance with the laws which regulate the distribution of form in nature. Secondly. That however varied the manifestations in accordance with these laws, the leading ideas on which they are based are very few.” (his 37 propositions) 283 Jones, 19. “To attempt to build up theories of art, or to form a style, independently of the past, would be an act of supreme folly. It would be at once to reject the experience and accumulated knowledge of thousands of years. On the contrary, we should regard as our inheritance all the successful labors of the past, not blindly following them, but employing them simply as guides to find the true path.” 284 Gombrich, 51, 53. 285 Gombrich, 53. 286 Gombrich 54. 287 Jones, 25-27. 94 – some of his propositions seem rather didactic – certain useful observations regarding the use of contrast to modify the appearance of shapes are recorded.288

Jones’ intent was far from providing a sourcebook for copying.289 By providing his tome of ornament and education in its use, he was attempting to provide nothing less than the raw materials for a new style of architecture:

We therefore think we are justified in the belief that a new style of ornament may be produced independently of a new style of architecture; and, moreover, that it would be one of the readiest means of arriving at a new style. The chief features of a building which form a style are, first, the means of support; secondly the means of spanning space between the supports; and, thirdly, the formation of the roof. It is the decoration of these structural features which gives the characteristics of style, and they all follow so naturally one from the other, that the invention of one will command the rest.290

This rather novel-sounding idea of inventing a new style backwards, from the ornament rather than the structural system, receives a defense from Jones:

Some will probably say, a new style of architecture must first be found, and we should be beginning at the wrong end to commence with ornament. We do not think so. We have already shown that the desire for works of ornament is co-existent with the earliest attempts of civilization of every people, and that architecture adopts ornament, does not create it.291 [italics added]

These observations have huge consequence, as a large part of the modern movement’s effort will be to replace historic ornamental effect with elaborations of form or structure; the ornament cannot be adopted for simple enrichment. Once again this returns to the how or the what – does the flow of ornamental expression come from the arbitrary demands of the structure of the age

(the ‘how’ of construction), or does it come from the sentiments of the people of the age (the

‘what’ of desire)? Perhaps both? Jones may be optimistic, as it is hard to imagine how tectonic ornament, playing such an important role in all historic styles, could be derived by the application of patterned ornament, as no patterned ornament has anything to do with construction. But his patterns will be found applied, multiplied dozens of times in scale, to many structural framing plans of the 20th century [5.2].

288 Jones, 26-27. Jones acknowledges his debt here to a Mons. Chevruil. 289 Jones, 17. “I have ventured to hope that, in thus brining into immediate juxtaposition the many forms of beauty which every style of ornament presents, I might aid in arresting that unfortunate tendency of our time to be content with copying…” again on 476. 290 Jones, 475. 291 Jones, 473. 95

[5.2] 1856 Grammar of Ornament patterns with various structural plans and sections, including: Nervi’s 1952 Gatti Wool factory, Anatole de Baudot’s paper project salle des fêtes, c. 1910., Jorn Utzon’s 1964 Zurich Opera House, Herman Hertzberger’s Centraal Beheeer, Louis Kahn’s 1952 Yale University art Gallery, and a partial plan of Victor Horta’s 1897 Maison du Peuple.

Jones claims that the “means of varying these structural features [column and beam versus arch] has been exhausted,”292 implying that varying ornament would be the only recourse.

Gombrich rightly points out that as Jones was writing in 1856, such a statement was blatantly untrue,293 the steel frame and frame were not yet standardized. Today, however, the modern steel frame and concrete frames appear to be the standard structural systems, which have remained relatively unchanged since early in the 20th century. From figure 5.2, it seems as though Jones was right, architectural structure has adopted ornament in many cases, but at a scale larger than he might have intended. Jones condemns this practice with his echo of Pugin:

“Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed.”294

One more English writer’s stance must be described, illustrating the extent to which the

19th century thought of architecture in terms of ornament. Architectural critic Robert Kerr noted

292 Jones, 475. 293 Gombrich, 55. 294 Jones, 23. This is what Learning from Las Vegas is all about. 96 four ways of creating architecture via the integration of ornament and structure in his 1869 lecture to the Royal Institute of British Architects:295

1. Structure Ornamented (Venturi’s term: “decorated shed”) 2. Ornament Structuralized 3. Structure Ornamentalized 4. Ornament Constructed (Venturi’s term: “duck”)

Kerr’s four points produce a powerful a-stylistic system for categorizing architecture by its use of ornament. Kerr himself is somewhat restrictive, classifying a work within one category based on the initial conception of the architect, but in many cases the architect’s intent might not be known,296 and it is apparent that in all highly-admired works of architecture much overlap between categories occurs. For instance, the fits ‘structure ornamented’ with its sculptures adorning the tympanum and frieze, and its columns fall within ‘structure ornamentalized.’ Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie houses for the most part fall under ‘ornament structuralized’ due to the conception of their plan forms, and ‘structure ornamented’ due to the application of his ‘efflorescence.’ August Perret’s elegant concrete frames with applied ornament meet points 1. and 3. Gothic Cathedrals manage to meet all four categories.

Fundamentally we learn from Kerr that if ornament is not applied to a building, it shall migrate into the building’s form or structure, thus radically inflating the ornament’s scale and potential comprehensibility (shortly, Otto Wagner will make sensitive comments about the importance of scale), especially if the ‘ornament constructed’ is rendered in an abstract fashion.

We can also see that these four options can be simplified as a tension between the order of architectural aesthetics or symbolism and the order of ‘plain honest straightforward building’ (the age old theory versus practice). Option one allows aesthetics be applied to building, options two and three integrate aesthetics and building to a degree, and option four completely bends building

295 The four modes of ornamental expression defined by Kerr are discussed by Thomas Beeby in his “The Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar”, and Peter Collins in Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 125-127 296 Ornament structuralized, for instance, depends on an initial diagram generating the form of the building. It might be possible to classify Eisenman’s School of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning within point 2., depending on how much the diagram actually drove the end result. Since we do not know for sure, the building could fall under the more sculptural point 4, or even point 1. 97 to the whim of the architect’s aesthetic or symbolic choice. The practical advantages and disadvantages of each approach will be discussed in chapter 7.

The slightly different meaning of the word ‘structure’ between points 2 and 3 should be clarified. In 2, structure means formal structure (which can include the real structure within the poche of the plan). In 3, structure means the real load-bearing structure. ‘Ornament formalized’ for point 2 might have been more clear; a small distinction. It can also be noted that Kerr, writing in 1869, did not anticipate environmental control systems being utilized for ornamental effects.

Because such systems, while functional, are not absolutely necessary (much like ornament,

HVAC systems are designed to keep us happy, if not in psychological comfort, in physical comfort) rather than introduce a fifth category, ducts, pipes, and such exploited for ornamental purposes shall be considered under point 1. The classification offered by this thesis, using the division between the concepts of applied vs. integral, semantic vs. tectonic, patterned vs. free, and representational vs. non-representational, still does not avoid all overlap; but it offers a slightly more broad approach than Kerr.

2. Viollet-le-Duc

While Jones busied himself with applicative ornament, Eugene-Emanuel Viollet-Le-Duc297

(1814-1879) was hard at work coming from the other end of the problem, attempting to find a metal structural system “within the nature of the material”298 and hoping the new ornament would suggest itself. While he remained a paper architect in this regard, many who followed attempted to execute his theories, and Henri Labrouste, had already achieved his goal; a rare case where practice precedes theory.299 But Labrouste had remained too closely within the classical vocabulary with his libraries to achieve the desired holy grail of a completely new style; however of the 19th century they were, they were still classical.

297 Texts relied upon for VLD include: Frampton, 49-54. Summerson, Heavenly Mansions, 135-158, Crook, 85-88. Collins, Changing Ideals, 162-164, 213-217. And M.F. Hearn, The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary, 205-214. 298 Frampton, 51, quoting from Entrentiens. 299 Frampton, 51. 98 Summerson argues for a hidden romanticism behind VLD’s reasoning: he “was the alchemist who produced a workable concept of rational architecture out of romantic archaeology

[of Gothic].”300 Frampton states: “Viollet-le-Duc was to adduce from the French twelth-century

Gothic a set of principles that were not that different from Pugin’s True Principles...”301 The difference is that Pugin was an associationist, VLD, in order to create a new style, could not be.

In some ways this should sound not dissimilar to the situation of Laugier and Durand from the previous chapter; Viollet, however, turns to metal for expression rather than the plan; the new materials are close enough now that they appear to be a possible way out from historicism.

Viollet’s first significant employment was as a “Professor of Composition and Ornament at a small independent Ecole de Dessein in Paris.”302 And indeed, he shows a great sensitivity to the ornament question, essentially re-stating Owen Jones in his 1863 Entrentiens sure l’Architecture:

Does the architectural conception comprehend its ornamentation, or is the ornamentation an afterdesign of the architect? In other words, is the ornamentation an integral part of the edifice, or is it only a clothing more or less rich with which the edifice is covered when its shape has been determined?303

As we have seen, Pugin had already allowed for ornament of both types (and the ‘clothing’ was not expected to be completely full-cover), and Viollet, in his historical explanation shows an appreciation for ornament’s semantic role, but ends in favor of a close structural relationship:

In our opinion the best architecture is that whose ornamentation cannot be divorced from the structure. …If there is one thing worthy of the architect’s best considerations, it is the perfect agreement between all the parts of his building, that correspondence between the case and what it contains – the frank expression outside of the arrangements within, not only in point of structure, but of ornamentation, which ought to be in close alliance with it.304

One can appreciate VLD’s less authoritarian stance, with ‘in our opinion’ and ‘ought.’ Such reserve will be short lived. The inclusion of the word ‘frank’ marks the gentle beginning of

300 Crook, 86., quoting Summerson. 301 Frampton, 49. 302 Summerson, 137. 303 Hearn, 206. From Entrentiens, XV. Another vision of VLD’s conception of ornament is given by François Loyer in Art Nouveaux Architecture, 104: “Ornament is seen not only as a means of illustrating the structure, but also as a symbolic indication of the function of the building linked, more generally, to a vision of the world based on the scientific worship of nature.” 304 Hearn, 209…210 99 something that Peter Collins has discussed related to the changing conception of the artist.305

“Frank,” “sincere” expression of ornamentation changes the whole relationship between the client and the architect – the goal becomes to satisfy the architect’s conception of ‘how’ it should be produced.

So what did VLD’s proposed iron architecture and accompanying ornament actually look like? He provides some illustrations in his Entrentiens [5.6]. He wants to be understood that “my purpose is simply to suggest to our younger professional brethren the proper method for proceeding in the search for novel elements of structure…”306 Jones had given up with the pursuit of “varying these structural features”, but Viollet sees it as the only means of finding the necessary new forms.

At the market hall what are essentially banded classical columns cast in iron are set at sixty degrees to bear a large girder, which terminates at the facade with a slight-looking metal saddle. The saddle in turn carries the springers for massive stone arches, which carry the building’s upper story walls and roof.307 At the street corner, the façade pays homage to associations with an ornamental gothic-style column and capital.308 In the shadows underneath, tectonic ornament in the form of floral bosses can be seen lining the major girder, each probably meant to express the ends of fasteners used to build up the major beam from separate parts.

Exposing the system of brick vaults would equate today with leaving the concrete slab or corrugated metal decking exposed from below, showing VLD’s ‘sincere’ expression. There is no directly message-bearing semantic ornament, only some a-tectonic enrichment in the form of the decoratively treated glass canopy-edge and the floral work carved around the upper story arch. The tectonic canopy brackets become an item that overlaps between semantics and

305 Collins, Changing Ideals, 248-249. “The sincere architect is the architect who designs a building the way he believes it should be designed, and not just the way his client or the public will most readily accept it.” Collins also notices this in the writings of VLD. 306 Hearn, 237. Entrentiens,XII. 234: “if we would invent that architecture of our own times… we must certainly seek it no longer by mingling all the styles of the past, but by relying on novel principles of structure.” 307 Hearn, 236-237. 308 The column is cropped out of [5.6], but is present in Entrentiens. The dress of the persons depicted in the rendering also seems strangely medieval (I am not aware of 19th century French fashion, but it seems out of place). 100 tectonics; they are truly structural, but are rendered to a point where they provide enrichment, even becoming representational with metallic flowers helping carry the glass.

[5.3, 5.4] VLD 1863 Entrentiens market hall, and Hector Guimard, 1895 Ecole du Sacré Coeur.

At the market hall, VLD’s rendering appears to be a massive effort to avoid a typical historic which, had it been used, would have only used 3 vertical columns rather than four canted columns. Pugin had discussed ornament that grows from the “construction and convenience,” but what VLD does is go to extremely inconvenient lengths for the purpose of achieving a non-traditional appearance. For convenience of construction – and also the nature of a material given to compression and under gravity – vertical columns make a lot of rational sense, but they would not be new. Because the canted members would only experience compression, a solid stone canted column could have achieved the same effect (Gaudi will prove this with his out-of-plumb masonry columns – some of which are even built up from small units309). However, building a stone column of drums would be difficult at sixty degrees; so Viollet does at least reveal one of the more technical differences between iron and stone with his canted columns: the impossibility of constructing a canted stone column of drums beyond a certain angle, something which, though true, seems of marginal interest.

309 Colonia Güell chapel, and also at Sagrada Familia. 101

Viollet’s younger professional brethren answered his call, Hector Guimard will build

Viollet’s canted columns, somewhat modified to accommodate reality,310 at the 1895 Ecole du

Sacré Coeur [5.4]. Guimard uses ornament to render the canted columns in a sinewy, muscular, anatomical fashion; yet also with traditional fluting for roughly two-thirds of the shaft. The base and capital plates are ornamented in an ambiguously muscular or vegetative manner. Directly above the column-beam connections, angles fasten to the beam’s web, strengthening the point of connection and giving the vague appearance of a triglyph, yet no member connects from behind.

Tectonic expression might have gone farther by connecting a single plate underneath each of the brick vault’s I-sections to represent a response to the major accumulation of load at those points.

Overall, Sacré Coeur makes an extremely non-traditional composition, tectonically rendered and structurally ‘honest;’ aside from some enrichment at street level in the form of elaborately wrought hand rails, there is no purely semantic ornament at all on the building.

Viollet’s second build-able fantasy, his proposed apartment building [5.8], adopts metal into the traditional half-timber method of frame construction.311 Metal’s greater strength allows for thinner members, creating a different aesthetic effect, but quite analogous with the old method of construction wherein the real structural timbers were often arranged for patterned ornamental effect. The simple triangular frame arrangement

310 It would seem that VLD asks four wrought-iron plates, each roughly 6” wide (and probably 1/2” thick at most), to carry: 1. a 2’ thick masonry wall, double-story height, and 2. half the roof. Also note that the perimeter columns, which carry the above load plus an additional large floor load, have the same diameter of the interior columns, which only bear a floor load. If the canted columns act as ‘two-force members’ (purely in compression or tension along the axial line of the member), which they appear to, the tie-rods between them - which appear to be the justification for the ornamental banding - are completely unnecessary, unless they are left-over from the construction process. Guimard’s version will dispense with the tie rods, instead using an ornamental, hand-height, non-structural railing between the columns. Other inconsistencies with VLD’s structure include a beam running longitudinally underneath, parallel with the brick vaults, which is not shown in his section and would be completely unnecessary. The glass canopy system appears as though it might work, but a bracket is not shown at the corner, leaving the glass to support itself for a good distance. Peter Collins has commented: (214, Changing Ideals) “Unfortunately, however, his anxiety to discover new forms betrayed him into devising combinations of iron and masonry which no experienced building contractor would have countenanced for one moment, and into devising systems of triangulation which any engineer would have laughed to scorn.” Collins refers to his more famous Auditorium proposal. 311 See Larson, Gerald. “The Iron Skeleton Frame: Interactions Between Europe and the ” Chicago Architecture 1872-1922, ed. John Zukowsky. Prestel-Verlag and the Art Institute of Chicago, Munich, 1987. 44-45: “The iron framework, reminiscent of traditional European half-timber construction, was enclosed with an infill of polychromed terracotta , using the technique earlier employed in Bogardus’s shot towers and Badger’s grain .” 102 here, however, suggests that the members are following a more structurally rational approach, while colorful glazed terra-cotta tiles in the spirit of Semperian carpets provide

[5.5, 5.6] Left: VLD, 1863 Entrentiens apartment building. Right: 1871-72 Jules Saulnier, the Menier chocolate factory. Metal frame finds expression similar to half-timber construction. the primary enriching ornament for the wall. Artistic crafting of the ironwork around the windows and the shaping of the provide additional enrichment. There is actually little in terms of tectonic ornament on the building, besides the detailed treatment of the metal corbels at the shop front and the adoption of the frame itself for a patterning effect. Using glazed masonry to enrich a façade will reach great heights in , but stringent building codes requiring thick masonry walls will suppress any expression of a metal frame on the exterior in most European cities.

Yet again, at least one prime example of Viollet’s idea being achieved by another exists. The 1872 Menier chocolate factory by Jules Saulnier [5.6] shows a unique blend of tectonic and semantic ornament used to achieve an extremely festive piece of industrial architecture. Polychromatic brick patterns take a cue from the enclosing frame 103 and form a rich texture of diamonds and other figures. At the junctions of the frame, black heighten the sense of connection that occurs by appearing to help stitch the iron members together; the simple enrichment suggestively heightens the drama of the construction. Over the main entrance, a stylized ‘M’ figures as a primary semantic ornament, celebrated with a wealth of colorful glazed tiles. If one were to venture into the interior, the child’s fantasy of a magical chocolate production would evaporate; the interior lacks ornament altogether, making the factory’s exterior a whimsical advertisement.

Let us briefly examine two of VLD’s Entrentiens pages which attempt to offer some ornamental expression of metal which are to inspire architects:

[5.7] Violet-le-Duc, 1863 Entrentiens. Attempts at tectonic metal ornament.

104 For the compressive elements the ball-and-socket connections bestow an almost anatomical feeling. It appears as though old methods of ornamentation are used for the various new parts; a mutated classical capital, an almost Egyptian-like bundled reed canted column, and a leafy cast setting block. This is romantic ornament, with soft organic materials receiving huge loads. Angled member C, though organic, does use its ornament to greater express its stress with the repeated lines in the direction of the load and the encrustation forming an outward bulge, like flexing sinew. For the truss, the primary structural parts remain identifiable as industrial angles mechanically fastened together, while the chords of the truss create an organic playground foreshadowing the heights of Art Nouveau fancy. Ornamental expression of metal had been developed before this in several English greenhouse buildings and railway stations (and

Labrouste’s 1838-1850 St. Geneviève); Viollet is certainly not the only one working on this, but he brings the question into the realm of widely-read theory.312 The various proponents of Art

Nouveaux will thoroughly explore this kind of ornament.

The real question to ask in relation to VLD is what his view on semantics was; did he cut the cord, or did he retain Pugin’s “propriety” ornament? Looking at his projected ‘ideal mansion’ perspective in Entrentiens, while not overly-bedecked with ornaments, faces do peer from keystones, statues perch on a port-cochere’s piers, and stone banners in relief drape from the top of a parapeted . The usual repertoire of masonry tectonic ornament is also present; quoins, belt courses, rustic courses, drip edges, keystones, and so on. What Viollet probably wants us to appreciate are the slim lines of the arched, apparently metal port-cochere. The semantic element of ornament as an expression of class is grudgingly acknowledged.313 His schemes for ornamenting a table and a set of doors in Entrentiens certainly surpass mere tectonics.314

While Viollet was instrumental in beginning the hunt for new forms arising from new methods of construction he still maintained both of ornament’s major roles, but theoretically, a

312 Frampton notes Botticher’s 1846 “The Principles of the Hellenic and German Way of Building” 83-84. Botticher discusses iron expression in a manner “that anticipates Viollet-le-Duc” and indeed, from Frampton’s selection, it appears that Botticher says most of the things VLD said 17 years earlier. VLD and his adventurous renderings combined with written theory apparently win him the spot as more influential. 313 Hearn, 253, 263, and Summerson 139-140 show VLD was quite sensitive and aware of matters regarding politics and class. 314 Hearn, 211-213. 105 new tectonic ornament was of eminent importance. What has driven tectonic ornament before, as discussed at the Greek temples, was a desire to enhance the overall symbolism or function of the building; for Viollet, tectonic ornament was not driven by any idea, but constituted part of a felt need to escape historicism.

3. Gottfried Semper and Otto Wagner

Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) and Otto Wagner (1841-1918) form a line of theoretical thought somewhat apart from the English and French theories, but aiming towards the same elusive goal: a unique modern style and accompanying ornament. Semper, like Viollet, does not actually build his theories,315 but Wagner attempts to interpret some of his ideas and carry them forth into built form.

Semper immediately begins his 1851 The Four Elements of Architecture with a statement that greatly differentiates him from Viollet-le-Duc, among many others:

…the store of architectural forms has often been portrayed as mainly conditioned by and arising from the material, yet by regarding construction as the essence of architecture we, while believing to liberate it from false accessories, have thus placed it in fetters. Architecture, like its great teacher, nature, should choose and apply its material according to the laws conditioned by nature, yet should it not also make the form and character of its creations dependent on the ideas embodied in them, and not the material?316

With other early moderns surrendering themselves to ‘the nature of the materials’ in order to decide the design process and form, this puts Semper on the side of the ‘what,’ the eidos. A beginning such as this allows Semper to take what can only be described as one of the more unique positions on architecture ever gestated. Like Alberti before him, he breaks architecture into elements, and like Laugier, a primitive hut takes a decisive role – but with a hipped roof.

Unlike Laugier, who disapproved of ornament, Semper will quickly reach ornament, making one wonder if he like Jones slightly after him considers ornament – in the form of ancient colorful space-dividing carpets – to be the solution to the modern problem of style.

315 Art Nouveaux Architecture, 12. Gombrich, 47. 316 Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings. trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave, Wolfgang Herrmann. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1989. 102. He does follow this selection with the common sense notion that the material can and ought to be related to the form; but the material properties do not constitute the driving force. Also, see Mallgrave introduction, 19. 106 The four elements or motives317 include the “moral” , and the roof, enclosure and mound. Despite the seemingly structural nature of these elements, Semper’s final expression is anything but, as he quickly distinguishes the enclosure, provided by a hanging carpet, as highly important.318 He identifies the craft related to the space-dividing enclosure, , as one of the oldest ornamental arts.319 Walls therefore achieve a primordial connection to the most ancient decorations; the Greeks petrified their timber construction, but for Semper, masonry walls are petrified primordial space-dividers, carpets, the “true and legitimate” representatives of the wall.320 Semper then interprets of many cultures within this model; according to

Frampton, he will go so far as to re-interpret the Parthenon’s entablature ornaments as devices for pinning down an ancient tent fabric.321 A section on practical applications concludes with prescriptions for how semantic messages related to social customs and the character of the building must be communicated on the surface.322

Semper’s efforts make a very heartfelt attempt to bring forward an idea rather than a turn to method, but since he evades the question of structural expression with his “invisible structure,”323 a problem that architects felt had to be resolved, this will lead to the ’s

317 Semper, 24. Joseph Rykwert introduction. “Semper conceived them not as material elements of forms, but as “motives” or “ideas,” as technical operations based in the .” 318 Semper, 103. “Thus I seem to stand without the support of a single authority when I assert that the carpet wall plays a most important role in the general history of art.” 319 Semper, 103-104. “The oldest ornaments were either derived from entwining or knotting materials or were easily produced on the potter’s wheel with the finger on soft clay. [Potters wheel are rather sophisticated machines, it is unlikely they were used. Tattooing and small carved ornaments, however, might have pre-dated knotted ornaments – though it is impossible to tell]” 320 Semper, 103-104. “Wickerwork, the original space divider, retained the full importance of its earlier meaning, actually or ideally, when later the light mat walls were transformed into clay , brick, or stone walls. Wickerwork was the essence of the wall.” 321 Frampton, 87: “According to Semper, this would explain the transposition of motifs into the polychromatic ornamental dressings of the triglyphs and metopes in the Doric order. Contrary to Abbe Laugier, Semper did not feel that such forms arose from the petrification of timber construction, of beam ends and rafters, but rather from features used to tie down the textile fabric of the roof.” This should remind us of Le Corbusier’s re-interpretation of the Parthenon to serve his own theoretical agenda as an assemblage of pure forms in his Towards a New Architecture. 322 Semper, 127. “2. The climate and even the customs of a country must be considered in the selection of the color key and the subject matter, and nothing new may be sought which is not, in a manner of speaking, already present in the motive. 3. The painting should be suited to and emphasize the character of the building in general and the purpose of its parts in particular.” Sculpture can also be included. 323 Semper, 104. “…Hanging carpets remained the true walls, the visible boundaries of space. The often solid walls behind them were necessary for reasons that had nothing to do with the creation of space; they were needed for security, for supporting a load, for their permanence, and so on. …Even where building solid walls became necessary, the latter were only the inner, invisible structure hidden behind the true and legitimate representatives of the wall, the colorful woven carpets.” 107 accusation of ‘lying facades.’ However, a few buildings constructed in Vienna seem to follow the spirit of Semper’s writings [5.8-5.11].

[5.8] Otto Wagner, 1898-99, 38 and 40 Linke Wienzeile. [5.9] Wagner, 1898 Majolica House

[5.10] Hans Schlecta, façade drawing, 1900. [5.11] Max Fabiani, Portois & Fix Apartment building, 1900.

Two of the above buildings were designed by Otto Wagner, the next figure for discussion. Wagner was directly influenced by Semper, and Debra Schafter notes another progressive ornament-related text he was familiar with, Eduard van der Nüll’s 1845 Suggestions regarding the artistic relationship of ornament to raw form.324 Botticher’s distinction between

‘core-form’ and ‘art-form,’ also influential on Wagner, seems close to the distinction of tectonic

324 Schafter, Debra. The Order of Ornament, the Structure of Style. Cambridge, : Cambridge University Press, 2003. 131. Schafter says the text had three points: 1. use materials logically, 2. rational design and construction, and 3. the sensitive and artistic ennoblement of constructional form. 108 and semantic ornament.325 Looking at his work, it is obvious that Wagner put some serious thought into the question of a modern ornament from both, as Frampton observes, a tectonic and an a-tectonic direction;326 and it is impossible to judge either as more or less successful. In fact,

Wagner ran the complete gambit: eclectic ‘Empire’ historicism, Semperian ‘carpet’ a-tectonics, and finally his own tectonically suggestive system of bolted revetment.327 He vehemently rejected the associational qualities of historicism, forcing himself to find a method of expression within modern techniques, but unlike Semper, Wagner has the “courage” to carry it out.328

His treatise, the 1896329 Modern Architecture, has been boldly described by Harry

Mallgrave as “the first manifesto of modern architecture”.330 Mallgrave summarizes the three overriding themes of the text: “…a plea for simplicity in the accommodation of modern needs, the artistic and ethical ruin of eclecticism, and the demand for a new style based on present technologies and methods of construction.” Like Viollet, the new style will somehow arise from the construction; “…new purposes and new materials give birth to new methods of construction, which in turn gradually acquire artistic value and lead to new art-forms.”331 Because Wagner’s buildings for the most part remain within old materials and old purposes, (artistically clad load- bearing brick for churches, banks, and apartment buildings in a traditional urban setting) he was perhaps premature, but unlike Ruskin, he shows an enthusiasm for exploring machine ornament unlike anybody had before. A highly articulated skin produced from small pieces of machine-cut stone becomes his primary means of surface expression.

325 Wagner, Mallgrave introduction, 32. “Each part was conceived as having a structural or constructional function (its core-form) that was dressed in a sophisticated artistic veil (its art-form) articulating its purpose.” Tectonic elements, such as columns, dressed with matronly robes/fluting, fit this idea perfectly, but purely semantic, non-constructional sculpture such as the figures in the tympanum would fall by the wayside, unless they are considered as dressing for the structure at large. 326 Frampton, 340. Wagner in his early career was a historic eclectic, making his experience with architecture about as full and varied as possible. 327 Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture, int. Harry Francis Mallgrave. Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, 1988. Mallgrave introduction, 8, 25-26, 28. 328 Wagner, Mallgrave introduction, 17, 33. Semper “lacked the courage” to carry his ideas out. 329 Subsequent editions in 1898, 1902, and 1914. 330 Wagner, Mallgrave introduction, 27. 331 Wagner, Mallgrave introduction, 31. Wagner, 83: “Every composition is essentially influenced by the material to be used in the construction and the technology to be employed. …the composition must always conform to the material and to the technology, and not the reverse. Therefore composition must clearly reveal the material of construction and the technology used. This is true whether it concerns the presentation of a monumental building or the design of the smallest decorative object.” 109

Wagner’s comments in his treatise show an acute level of understanding of how form, ornament, and the human eye result in a sensuous architectural experience:

The architect must also place great importance on the relation of the statue to his building… It makes no difference in this regard whether these statues sculpturally adorn a square, a building, or a room. …if the scale is too large or too small, it will have… adverse effect. …A similar correlation exists between ornament and architectural form, where an improper relation can also have a very harmful effect on the total appearance. The Modern Movement proceeds impressionistically in the use of sculptural and ornamental decoration, and employs only those lines whose definite visual effect can be predicted. As a result, there is in the new style a merging (convergence) of tectonic and sculptural form, a minimal use of sculptural decoration in general, an objection to the arrangement of portrait statues as tectonic building elements, a clarity of ornamental form, and so many other things.332

When composing, the architect has to place great importance on the effect of perspective, that is, he must organize the silhouette, the massing, the projections of the cornice, the distortions, the sculptural line of the profile and ornaments in such a way that they appear properly emphasized form a SINGLE VANTAGE POINT. This point will, of course, be that location where the work can be viewed most frequently, most easily, and most naturally. …Buildings on narrow streets, therefore, must be profiled very differently and present flatter ornaments and a more delicate structure than buildings on broad streets… One of the attributes peculiar to human perception is that in examining any work of art the eye seeks a point of rest or concentration [Owen Jones said ‘repose’]; otherwise a painful uncertainty or aesthetic uneasiness occurs. …333

Wagner’s most important comments are those concerning scale. The size of his small pieces of marble bolted to the building are chosen not based on how big the machine can efficiently make them, but are calculated for satisfying perceptual effect on the observer, based on a feeling of what textural scale will avoid ‘aesthetic uneasiness.’ This shows Wagner finding a subtle artistic blend between the ‘what’ of the final effect and the ‘how’ of the process.334 Mies, for instance, when he cuts his marble block for the Barcelona Pavilion, will rely on the arbitrary initial size of the block to determine the size of the cladding, and even the space itself.335 Kahn, too, follows the same idea when he becomes excited about making his building’s pieces as large as a crane

332 Wagner, 84-85. 333 Wagner, 86-87, also, 88 and 89. 334 Wagner, 37. Mallgrave introduction. “[Peter] Haiko has termed this decorative artifice “symbolic functionalism,” in that the bolts represent the technological, economic, and time-saving attributes of this type of construction. It was the appearance, rather than the reality, upon which Wagner’s artistic conception was based.” 335 Frampton, 171. “His recollection of the way in which he selected the onyx core of the Barcelona Pavilion reveals the respect he felt for all materials and for the capacity of nature to influence the result. “Since you cannot move marble from the quarry in winter because it is still wet inside and would easily freeze and break into pieces, we had to find dry material. Eventually, I found an onyx block of a certain size and since I only had the possibility of this block, I made the pavilion twice the height and then we developed the plan.” Thus, ‘nature’ decides form via the choice of ornamental material and the extremely peculiar restrictions imposed on handling it. 110 can feasibly place them;336 the arbitrary load a crane happens to be able to lift becomes the deciding factor in ornament-making.

Because Wagner will not allow himself to use historical ornament, he must dispense with any device that might be recognized as a traditional tectonic means of expressing masonry construction, however much that means might be congruent with the bricks actually present in his buildings (his American contemporary H.H. Richardson was thoroughly exploiting these historic techniques slightly earlier). For instance, his Church of Steinhof [5.12-5.13] has a large arch in what is actuality a thick brick bearing wall, but to express the arch’s method of construction something approaching the historic method of voussoirs with a keystone would inevitably appear.

The skin, when it intersects the arch, is simply punched without any display of the significant constructional feat occurring underneath. While he does not allow himself to express his openings in the wall at both his church and post office he does express how the building meets its foundations in a typical historic manner with a story of rustication (showing allegiance to tradition, and Semper’s ‘mound’). At the church, the rough base sits upon an even more rustic sub-base of rubble stone. He allows for this, as he notes: “The architect may dip into the full repository of traditional forms, but… he must adapt it to us and to the purpose by reshaping the form…”337 Though he rejects historic eclecticism, his projects do bear vestigial reminders of classicism, obviously most notably at his church, but also at his Post office and Savings bank’s

[5.12-5.14], both of which have base, entablature, and cornice elements.

336 Kahn, Essential Texts (Twombly), 251. “The architect says “Oh! They’re using a crane on my building. Isn’t that nice – so they can pick it up more easily,” never realizing that the crane is a designer; that you can make something that’s twenty-five tons coming to something that’s twenty-five tons, and you can make a joint that’s so magnificent, because that joint is no little thing. In fact, if you’d put gold [or, apparently, strips of marble] into it, you wouldn’t be spending too much money, because it’s so big. So realization that joint-making, which is the beginning of ornament – because I do believe that the joint is the beginning of ornament – comes into being again, you see. What you can lift as one thing should be something that motivates the whole idea of making a single thing which comes together with another single thing.” 337 Wagner, 80. Also, on 85, he acknowledges the use of certain historic symbolic forms; domes, towers, quadrigae, columns, but pleads for moderation in their use. 111

[5.12] Otto Wagner, 1905-7 Church of Steinhoff. [5.13] Longitudinal Section.

[5.13] Otto Wagner, 1904-6 Austrian Postal Savings Bank. [5.14] Interior.

At the Postsparkasse, Ruskin would not approve of Wagner forcing the workman to slavishly drive in the hundreds of façade bolts with no outlet for individual creativity, but Wagner contrasts this machine work with his large hand-produced sculptural work riding atop his forms.

The supposedly tectonic bolts are actually quite unnecessary,338 they celebrate the building by showing a much greater effort than if the simple traditional, hidden, method of keying the stones to the brick backup wall was used. A Ruskinian eye would perceive that, although the tyrannous machine is present, the human involvement with the building has been doubled by the use of bolts, and even better, that the efficiency of the machine has been defied for the sake of achieving

338 Wagner, Mallgrave introduction, 37. 112 a fine textural quality. A normal person’s eye appreciates a memorable and richly articulated façade that has something oddly non-traditional about it - which was exactly Wagner’s intent.

The interior of the bank, in contrast with the exterior, has little immediately recognizable ornament. The bottom eight feet of the tapering steel box columns (the ‘people’ zone) are treated a different color and detailed with ornamental plates and bolts, a height also carried by similarly pinned white marble revetment on the walls of the space. Again, as on the exterior, the pins are completely unnecessary; ornamental. The soft white glass barrel vault itself which dramatically shapes the space is also ornamental to a degree, the true weather-shedding skylight above takes a simpler gabled form. The lines of the mullions in the vault are continued onto the beam they rest on with an applied narrow plate accompanied by more bolts; enriching the surface of the long beam. It was commented how Guimard could have used this device on the exterior beam of his

Ecole du Sacré Coeur, but he did not – Wagner does. Though these small intersections of mullions are expressed, the major intersections of column and beam, beam and wall, are not celebrated with any tectonic ornament. A simple pattern of squares breaks up the floor surface, the major lines of which flow from the column grid. A delicate stencil pattern of rectangles accents the lines of doors and openings, and follows the top line of the white marble. The ornament most commented is undoubtedly the cylindrical heating elements. Wagner here, possibly for the first time, celebrates mechanical systems with a machine aesthetic rather than a floral or organic application of the type often found on steam radiators. The stacks are carefully ordered into the composition of the building, occurring on the column grid and creating lines in the floor pattern; and are made to be exactly the same height as the marble wall paneling.

Enriching bands on the bottom of the stacks are carried up to a line which matches the height of one of the breaks in the wall revetment. On the interior, Wagner has accomplished an almost purely tectonic machine aesthetic, the only direct message-bearing applications are a clock and various necessary signage.

Wagner’s exterior expression mostly involved brick walls clad with bolted revetment, but at his Karlsplatze station he attempted to develop exterior frame expression [5.15].

113

[5.15] Otto Wagner, 1899-1900 Karlsplatz station.

By colorful enrichment and the use of an arch form, he has created an extremely grand gateway to the underground despite the building’s actual quite modest size. One is reminded of Alberti’s

‘pomp and finery’; the ornament here helps make the simple act of getting onto a train a memorable event. Even the of the vault’s sheltering receives polychromatic tiles.

In Wagner’s work, the primary semantic ornaments are segregated; sculptures rest as punctuation atop form, rather than being integrated within niches or aedicular frames. Many previous architects discussed have attempted to integrate the two kinds of ornament to achieve greater synthesis, but Wagner does not approve of such integration.339 This might be part of the beginning of divorcing sculpture from building; first it sits on top, then when the building gets too tall, the sculpture sits in the plaza in front. A secondary level of semantics occurs within

Wagner’s tectonics. Had the bolt-heads at his bank been gilded, as Wagner desired,340 the tectonic device would have acquired the semantic dimension of richness; similar to De l’Orme’s tectonic devices of bands to express French nationalism. Except Wagner’s gilded heads would probably have been more readable, the sight of gold connotes a message more directly than a band – De l’Orme was rather hopeful his bands would be read by the average observer as a uniquely French product. Wagner shows the viability of machine ornament and the importance

339 Wagner, 85. He deplores the sculpture being too integrated with the building. “an objection to the arrangement of portrait statues as tectonic building elements.” 340 Wagner, Mallgrave introduction, 37. 114 of a detail-scale, but fundamentally, as his major buildings remain masonry wall construction, the great boogey man of metal frame expression goes unresolved.

4. Louis Sullivan

Akin to Semper, Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) was attempting to put forward a powerful idea rather than turn to a method based in materials or construction. He felt strongly enough about this idea to theme his autobiography around it rather than himself. Through prose Ruskinian in richness, Sullivan makes clear what he thinks about ornament in his 1892 “Ornament in

Architecture,” 1896 “Tall office building artistically considered,” 1901 Kindergarten Chats,341 and finally his 1924 A System of Architectural Ornament. Like Wagner, associational historicism repulses Sullivan; the modern architect must find a new, free means of expression. A virile ego is important here; man’s powers342 of expression cannot be satisfied by servile imitation of others.

Wagner found his new means of expression in a careful machine aesthetic, Sullivan finds an equally artistic result; a sensitive blend of form, structure, and ornament with a keen eye for the final effect on the observer343 and displaying the character and function of the building, while allowing the artist to satisfy his own individuality with an indulgence of surface ornament. It is important that the ornament, not the form, served as the means of individual344 expression. The ornament, for Sullivan, formed the artist’s needed personal creative outlet, the fulfillment of

‘man’s powers,’ while the structure and form where derived from the perceived character and needs of the building: “to be lofty!”, so the form attempts to express loftiness with uninterrupted verticals. The ornament, although purely applied, attempts to express the spirit of the form by

341 The edition of Chats quoted from is not the 1901 serial edition, but Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1979, a reprint of the 1918 edition. 342 Louis Sullivan, A System of Architectural Ornament: According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers. Eakins Press, New York, 1967. “In discussing man’s powers it is here and now postulated that they are congenital; that they are not “gifts” received from any outer source, but are, more simply, and on reflection more obviously, phases or sub-activities of that integral solitary ego, which, and alone, is the index of racial and individual identity.” 343 Louis Sullivan, “What is the Just Subordination, in Architectural Design, of Details to Mass?” Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, 183: “…as a factor in the total complex impression on the beholder” 344 Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture” Chats and other Writings, 188: “…a decorated structure, harmoniously conceived, well considered, cannot be stripped of its system of ornament without destroying its individuality.” 189: “Mere difference in outward form does not constitute individuality.” The 20th century will attempt to use form to pursue individuality. 115

“differential growth.”345 Whether or not the surface encrustation actually does aid in the expression of loftiness is an open question, (while Gothic tectonic ornament certainly does heighten the sense of loftiness) but Sullivan did intend for the ornament to aid in the expression of the building’s character as well as mark the building as the product of an individual mind.

There are many influences on Sullivan,346 including the already mentioned distant relationship from Durand’s compositional methods via the Ecole des Beaux-arts,347 but the

English writer Christopher Dresser seems quite influential in forming Sullivan’s ideological understanding of ornament.348 While Ruskin was obsessed with the hand of the craftsman,

Dresser appreciated ornament more as an emanation of the mind:

It will be found that the amount of pleasure derivable from the contemplation of an ornament will be largely dependent upon the extent to which mind is embodied in it. Stephenson invested coal with a new interest when he told us that it was buried sun’s rays – a lump of heat and light! A strange statement this, yet true; and it is also strange and true that the man, while yet dead, speaks through his works.349

Dresser’s comment forms a development of some of his mentor Owen Jones’ statements, who also understood ornament to be the best measure of care shown in the work350 (and the mind and the hand go back to at least Alberti), but consider Dresser’s comment next to Sullivan:

345 Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture” 189. full quote: “If now we bring ourselves to close and reflective observation, how evident it becomes that if we wish to insure an actual, a poetic unity, the ornament should appear, not as something receiving the spirit of the structure, but as a thing expressing that spirit by virtue of differential growth.” 346 See David Van Zanten, Sullivan’s City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan, ed. Wim de Wit’s Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament, and Lauren S. Weingarden’s “Louis H. Sullivan’s Ornament and the Poetics of Architecture” in Chicago Architecture 1872-1922. 347 David Van Zanten also notes how Sullivan’s compositional methods are influenced by Beaux-Arts training, Sullivan’s City, 10-11: “Behind the entire concept of elaborating a design through a sequence of graphic and intellectual moves lay the broader compositional strategies taught at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the geometric strategies framed by the architectural polymath E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc…” 348 Zanten, Sullivan’s City, 9-10. 349 Christopher Dresser, The Art of Decorative Design. American Life Foundation, New York, 1977. 8. He continues on 9-10: “We glory in these works, but not because of the perfection of the drawing, for this is often defective, nor through any extraordinary handling of the colours, for in this respect also there is nothing calculated to command our interest, but because of the mind which they embody. As a rule, the greater the manifestation of mind in a work of art of any description, the more pleasure we derive from it; also, the absence mechanical labour in its construction tends to the same result. “Those arts,” says Sir Charles L. Eastlake, “are generally considered the most worth in which the mental labour employed and the pleasure produced are greatest, and in which the manual labour, or labour of whatever kind, is least apparent.” The play with the Albertian triangle here weights mind over labor, with no emphasis on the “inherent property.” 350 Jones, 472: “By the ornament of a building we can judge more truly of the creative power which the artist has brought to bear upon the work. The general proportions of the building may be good, the mouldings may be more or less accurately copied from the most approved model; but the instant that 116 “…every building is the image of a man whom you do not see.”351 [A building is the] “outpouring of a copious, direct, large and simple mind.”352

While Sullivan does not ever directly equate ornament to an expression of mind in a single sentence, but he does believe ornament raises a building up from a ‘trivial’ level into the realm of true art.353

The idea of poetry plays a strong role in Sullivan’s writings. He says, for instance, that

“the architect is one kind of poet, and his work one form of poetry.”354 He reveals what poetry actually consists of in another important statement to his young Chats apprentice: “You are not clever enough as yet to be disingenuous with words; but I warn you that ultra-shiftiness, super- cunning, is the basis of fallacy. In truth, it is the basis of much poetry.”355 A flexible conception of poetic truth allows Sullivan to carry out acts that will disgruntle structural rationalists, notably the ’s use of false piers between each of the real piers. In such use, Sullivan approaches the classical use of ornament in relation to structure; the pilasters are used ornamentally to express solidity, and the order selected expresses character; Sullivan has no concern for ‘truthful’ structural expression, his ornamental piers are used to express the character of loftiness. Sullivan does not call the piers ornaments though, for Sullivan such a manipulation would be called form; his ornament is always applied.

Regarding semantics and tectonics, Sullivan certainly cannot be said to be a tectonically expressive architect. His ornament also does not have any direct semantic messages; it only carries the basic message of enrichment, a glorification of function. It appears that only one of his buildings, the Union Trust Building in Chicago,356 did he include large representational

ornament is attempted, we see how far the architect is at the same time the artist. It is the best measure of the care and refinement bestowed upon the work.” 351 Sullivan, Chats, 24. 352 Sullivan, Chats, 30. Sullivan here refers directly to Richardson’s Marshall Fields Wholesale store. 353 Sullivan, “Ornament in Architecture” 190: “Few works can stand the test of close, business-like analysis – they are soon emptied. But no analysis, however sympathetic, persistent or profound, can exhaust a truly great work of art. For the qualities that make it thus are great not mental only, but psychic, and therefore signify the highest expression and embodiment of individuality. Now, if this spiritual and emotional quality is a noble attribute when it resides in the mass of a building, it must, when applied to a virile and synthetic scheme of ornamentation, raise this at once from the level of triviality to the heights of dramatic expression.” 354 Sullivan, Chats, 141. 355 Sullivan, Chats, 42. 356 See Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament, 102. 117 sculptures: full-story tall winged lions, each bearing a large crest. Otherwise, he limits his directly semantic ornament to simple signage telling the observer the name of the building.

5. Conclusion

With Jones and others studying the psychology and perception of ornament, Pugin making explicit the conceptual break between tectonic and semantic ornament, Alois Reigl rigorously tracking its history in his 1893 Stilgrafen, and Robert Kerr realizing the various methods and scales of its application, ornament seems to have reached a near full understanding in the 19th century.

The most important product of the 19th century comes in the form of the new metal frame structural system. The new material compels architects to seek new forms with a new ornament.

We have seen how changes in material and structure did not pose a problem for other cultures, but several combining factors in the 19th century pushed architects to their limits. In a society where an awareness of history357 leads to the teaching of for the first time358 (implying each generation must take its place in the succession of styles, if only for the art historian to be able to categorize us later), accompanied with a greater demand to be ‘rational,’ with exposure to other cultures making the question of ‘style’ ever more complicated,359 and new building types demanding architectural response, and originality as the essence of genius (and every artist wants to be a genius), the historicist bubble stretches beyond all possible capacity. Joseph Mordaunt

Crook and John Summerson have commented sympathetically on the intense state of psychological suffering this put many architects through. Sympathy might be in order if all the suffering were not self-inflicted; it is hard to imagine anybody outside the art community ever breaking down the doors of an architect’s office and demanding a “new style expressive of the

357 Alan Coqulhoun, “Three Kinds of Historicism” 358 Crook, 98. quotes Gilbert Scott, 1857: “The peculiar characteristic of the present day, as compared with all former periods is this – that we are acquainted with the history of art.” 359 And, with styles doing no more than satisfying taste, taste is ephemeral and must change – leading to the problem of “cultural exhaustion,” there are only so many styles to run through before history is completely tapped and other directions must be explored. Frampton notes how Owen Jones accepted this, Frampton, 96-97. “…one may cite Jones’s own recognition of the cultural exhaustion of the West, condemned to the eternal repetition of the same depleted syntax, and his insistence that we need to return to nature as the Egyptians and the Greeks did rather than in the manner adopted by the Chinese and the Goths.” 118 age,” but in the 20th century, Corbusier will even go as far as to suggest that without a new architecture, the masses would violently revolt.360

What enabled the Romans to put frame pediments in front of their masonry vaulted structures was the fact that they felt strongly enough about the ancient Greek form that replicating them became a matter of social decorum, and there was enough agreement among architects that all other choices did not seem attractive. A 19th century exposed to multiple cultures was presented a much larger choice of forms, and relativism makes them all equally just and attractive; none had the power to suggest itself universally before the others. Perhaps a hangover of the medieval master-builder; who as a member of a strong tradition had little choice, the progressive 19th century architect also wished to have no choice. Choice breeds doubt, doubt is absolutely intolerable for those with large responsibility. Rather than make a questionable choice and stand by it, the result is, as Antoine Picon put it, the turn to method; methods guided by various analogies, as John Summerson put it. Fortunately today we seem much more amendable to variety; no longer do we vehemently argue the moral merits of one set of forms versus another; symbolic ornament, however, is still felt to be something only for post-modern and reactionary architects.

360 Towards a New Architecture, 8: “It is a question of building which is at the root of the social unrest of to-day: architecture or revolution.” 101: “Entire cities have to be constructed, or reconstructed, in order to provide a minimum of comfort, for if this is delayed too long, there may be a disturbance in the balance of society.” And again: 288-89. “Society is filled with a violent desire for something which it may obtain or may not. …Architecture or Revolution. Revolution can be avoided.” 119

6. The Use of Ornament: The Twentieth Century______

At the onset of the twentieth century calls became more numerous and urgent among leading architects for an architecture of pure unornamented forms. These calls often exactly mirror statements made by Laugier, Boullée, Ledoux and Durand, but with the new steel and concrete frames, the possibilities of grand formal exploration – as opposed to ornamental – are now real.

The late 19th century’s extreme indulgences with ornament perhaps formed a large part of the modernist reaction; a period of simple forms was felt to be necessary, which establishes the second low-point in the curve of ornament’s favor in the discourse – the first being the upheaval caused by Rococo. The theory of ornament withers; as ornament had reached a complete understanding, there was little dramatically new ornament to be explored; form, however, had exciting new possibilities. In 1925, for instance, H. Wijdeveld, an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright who appeared to have invented tantalizing new forms, remarked in the introduction to the

Wendingen series: “The new ornament is architecture itself, it is the shaping of spaces, the structure of the monolithic masses, it is the span of the plane, the rhythm of the details, the three- dimensional of the construction.”361

1. Adolf Loos

It is perfectly natural that the occasional person might find ornament disagreeable. Saint Bernard found ornament disagreeable because it tempted him towards the devil. Adolf Loos (1870-1933) rejects ornament for two major reasons: its presumed erotic content, and its representation of wasted resources. Which of the two actually has more importance to Loos is difficult to tell.

Joseph Rykwert suggests that his “passion for smooth and precious surfaces was an unconscious preference – which... he later rationalized.”362 Some of Loos’s statements sound so outrageous that how he acquired such an influential place in the seems odd:

361 Frank Lloyd Wright, et. al, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete 1925 “Wendingen” Series, int. Donald Hoffman. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1992. 3. 362 Joseph Rykwert, “Adolf Loos: the New Vision” Necessity of Artifice, 67. Loos, Cultural Degeneracy, 164: “I will go so far as to say I do find my smooth, gently curving, precisely finished cigarette case beautiful. It gives me profound aesthetic pleasure, while I find the one by a associated with the 120

The first ornament that was born, the cross, was erotic in origin. The first work of art, the first artistic act which the first artist, in order to rid himself of his surplus energy, smear on the wall. A horizontal dash: the prone woman. A vertical dash: the man penetrating her. The man who created it felt the same urge as Beethoven, he was in the same heaven in which Beethoven created his Ninth Symphony. But the man of our own day who… smears the walls with erotic symbols is a criminal or a degenerate.363

Aside from the intense moral charge, there are certain interesting ideas in the above; notably that

Loos considers an ornament to be the first work of art. Possibly music pre-dated ornament, but ornament certainly was the first visual art. He also recognizes ornament as a product of surplus; which seems to be correct; but in the twentieth century, “We have art, which has taken the place of ornament. After the toils and troubles of the day we got to Beethoven or to Tristan.

…Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength.”364 Basically, art and busy life should be segregated, an argument that Ruskin actually started with his demand for railway stations to go undecorated.365 Ornament, which provides an enriching background material, because it is not

‘high’ art, receives Loos’s rejection. Loos consciously preaches to the ‘aristocrat,’ not the common man;366 to reject ornament becomes the aristocrat’s means of rising above the still- developing masses. Unfortunately, architecture’s realm undeniably involves the common man.

Despite a recognition that ornament provides the “highpoint of their existence, for they have no other means [as Beethoven and other high artists had] of achieving,” Loos attempts to impose his aristocratic artistic values on the layman.367

Werkbund (design: Professor What’s-his-name) awful. And anyone who has a stick with a silver handle made by these people is, for me, no gentleman.” 363 Adolf Loos, quoted from Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, 41. 364 Loos, “,” 175. From Architecture trans. Harry Mallgrave, in Midgard 1, 1987. 365 Gombrich and Karsten Harries have discussed this, Gombrich, 60, and Harries, 33. Ruskin pleaded for railway structures to be undecorated because he did not think a railway station was an appropriate place for the calm appreciation of beauty – too loud, busy, and bustling. In order to read the stones, the observer must pause and actively contemplate; ornament does not work subliminally. 366 Loos, Crime, 174-175: “The ideal I preach is the aristocrat. I can accept decoration on my own person if it brings pleasure to my fellow men. It brings pleasyre to me, too. I can accept the African’s ornament, the Persian’s, the Slovak peasant woman’s, my shoemaker’s, for it provides the high point of their existence, which they have no other means of achieving. We have the art that has superseded ornament. After the toil and tribulations of the day, we can go to hear Beethoven or Tristan. My shoemaker cannot. I must not take his religion away from him, for I have nothing to put in its place. But anyone who goes to the Ninth and then sits down to design a wallpaper pattern is either a fraud or a degenerate.” Although he says he must not take away the shoemaker’s ornament, he does attempt to anyways. 367 See note 6 for quote. Loos, Crime, 168: “Soon the streets of our cities will shine like white walls! Like Zion, the Holy City, Heaven’s capital. Then fulfillment will be ours.” Fulfillment via emptiness. 121

Loos’s polemic goes well beyond simple taste reformation and an attempt to define the proper role and social habits of the modern aristocrat-artist.368 Pugin selected his style of ornaments based on religious and nationalist sentiments, Loos too builds his principle argument around a nationalism, but he stresses an economic argument against ornament:

“The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from the objects of everyday use.” “Woe betide the people that lag behind in their cultural development. The English are getting richer, and we poorer...”369 [ellipses not added]

Loos shows great admiration for English industrial products in his writings, yet two Englishman had advanced arguments for ornament which bear on exactly the same points, yet are diametrically opposite. Opening his discussion on the ornament of ‘savage tribes’ Owen Jones said: “The desire [for ornament] is absent in none, and it grows and increases with all in the ratio of their progress in civilization.”370 As previously discussed, William Chambers was perhaps the first to argue the positive benefits of ornamentation as a stimulus for economic activity (among the other benefits). To what extent the ornamentation of buildings and objects of everyday use directly helped the burgeoning economic power of the British Empire is an open question, but based on the share of the economy the building trade holds today, it must have had a not insignificant contribution. Aware of the economic argument for ornament, Loos rejected it, but did not say where the saved labors would go other than being bottled up into capital savings, which contribute to ‘cultural development,’ i.e., competitive industrial power between nations.371

Ruskin had loved ornament as a sign of the hand, but Loos hated it for exactly the same reason;372

368 Loos even makes two gastronomic analogies; food cannot even be ornamented for the modern man. 169: “For me, and with me for all people of culture, ornament is not a source of increased pleasure in life. When I want to eat a piece of , I choose a piece that is plain, not a piece shaped like a heart, or a baby, or a cavalryman, covered over and over with decoration. …The supporters of ornament think my hunger for simplicity is some kind of mortification of the flesh. No, my dear Professor of Applied Arts, I am not mortifying the flesh at all. I find the gingerbread tastes better like that.” And 170: “The vegetables he likes are simply cooked in water and served with a knob of butter. They taste good to the other only if there are nuts and honey mixed in, and a cook has spent hours over them. Decorated plates cost more, while twentieth –century man likes his food on white crockery alone.” 369 Loos, Crime, 167, 170. 370 Jones, Grammar of Ornament, 31. 371 Loos, Crime, 170, 171, 172. “The one saves money while the other throws it away. And it is the same with whole nations. Woe betide the people that lag behind in their cultural development. The English are getting richer, and we poorer….” Also note 10. 372 Loos, Crime, 173: “Only when these ornamented things have been made from the best material with the greatest care, and have taken up many man-hours of work, do they become truly unaesthetic.” 122 it is a sign of the hand wasting labor when that labor could be spent on producing productive capital.

Loos does make a powerful argument that deserves restatement:

As there is no longer any organic connection between ornament and our culture, ornament is no longer an expression of our culture. The ornament being created now bears no relationship to us, nor to any human being, or to the system governing the world today. It has no potential for development.373

This essential makes a more forceful re-statement of ornament’s acknowledged loss which had begun with Hugo, Ruskin, and others. On the contrary, the ornament of the late 19th century expresses many cultural phenomena: romanticism, the need to escape a de-humanizing industry- dominated environment, the desire for grounding in the past; but eclectically applied it does not express any unified world-ordering ideology as did the ornaments of the original Classic or

Gothic styles. In other words, Loos could not reconcile himself with ornament’s loss, and chose to dispense with it rather than fall back on its many other useful properties – significant enrichment and the articulation of a building’s purpose. His theory conflicts with his practice here, because in his actual buildings, he did take the fallback position of using ornament for simple enrichment.

Jones had hoped to find a new style in ornament, but Loos, by rejecting ornament, hoped to finally defeat the eclecticism of changing styles; the non-ornamented style would be the

‘right’, new style.374 In his “Cultural Degeneration” he offered that the style of the times was that of un-ornamented industrial production. This is a repetition of Durand, equating fitness and economy with beauty.

373 Loos, Crime, 171. Karsten Harries discusses this, 48 Ethical Function of Architecture. He uses the difference between ornament expressive of culture and ornament as aesthetic satisfaction of taste as the distinction between the terms ‘ornament’ and ‘decoration.’ 374 Loos, Crime, 172. “The changing fashion in ornament results in the premature devaluation of the product of the worker’s labor; his time spent and the material used are wasted capital. I have formulated the following principle: The form of an object should last, that is, we should find it tolerable as long as the object itself lasts. I will explain: A suit will change its style more often than a valuable fur. A woman’s ball outfit, intended for one night alone, will change its style more quickly than a desk.” Also, in his “Cultural Degeneration”: “Can anyone deny our leather goods are in the style of our times? And our cutlery and ? And our bathtubs and American washstands? And our tools and machines? And, let me repeat, none of these, none at all, are things which have thigns that have fallen into the hands of the artist. Are these things beautiful? That is not the question I ask. They are in the spirit of our times and are therefore right. They would have never fitted into another age, and they could not have been used by other nations. Ergo, they are in the style of our times. And we in can be justifiably proud of the fact that in no other country in the world, apart form England, is the quality of their manufacture so high.” 123

Among architect’s, Loos’s “Ornament and Crime” had a resounding impact, Corbusier will give a nod to Loos in his “The Decorative Art of Today”, and still smarting from it over fifty years later, Joseph Rykwert wrote an article reassuring us in its title that “Ornament is no Crime.”

Most remarkably, despite all his polemics, Loos’s architecture does in fact use ornament in applied marble, and fake applied wood ceiling beams and coffers.375 His exteriors are not particularly rich in terms of textural ornament (1910 Golman and Salatsch), but his interiors can be (1907 Kärtner-Bar). Alberti had rightly called applied revetment ornament, and Loos utilizes such cladding extensively as cheap wallpaper.376 This constitutes wasted labor; it would have been better to leave the common brick load-bearing walls exposed and unadorned, keeping the savings for capital investment; or perhaps the marble can be interpreted as the daub of butter on

Loos’s vegetable soup.377 At the very least, the use of revetment shows that Loos acknowledges that ornament provides some satisfying visual purpose to the viewer, as papering walls shows some aesthetic impulse.

2. Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was much more amenable to ornament. Thomas Beeby’s insightful article, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar”378 shows how Wright used techniques of ornament in developing the plans for his buildings, constituting Robert Kerr’s

“Ornament structuralized” [6.1]. Wright, in his 1908 In the Cause of Architecture shows candid forthrightness about the matter himself:

In the main the ornamentation is wrought in the warp and woof of the structure. It is constitutional in the best sense and is felt in the conception of the ground plan. To elucidate this element in composition would mean a long story and perhaps a tedious one though to me it is the most fascinating phase of the work, involving the true poetry of conception.379

375 Noted in Debra Schafter, The Order of Ornament, the Structure of Style. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 376 Frampton, 18: “Loos’s habitual application of thin marble revetment on the grounds that it was the cheapest wallpaper in the world, since it would never need to be replaced…” 257: “Loos’s own use natural form as a surrogate ornament is most evident in his internal application of thin marble revetment. Loos used stone as a thin screen, however, as a mask he referred to ironically as inexpensive wall-paper…” 377 Loos, Crime. See note 9, which discusses his two gastronomic analogies. 378 Thomas Beeby, “Grammer of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” from Ornament. Philadelphia, PA: Falcon Press, 1977. VIA III. 379 Wright, Wendingen, 19. 124 Reticence in the matter of ornamentation is characteristic of these structures …they are the expression of an idea that ornamentation should be constitutional, a matter of the nature of the structure beginning with the ground plan.380

This makes the first explicit statement of ‘integral’ ornament; that is, ornament applied at a scale whereat the entire building’s form takes the shape of an ornamental composition. The Ecole des

Beaux-Arts had used this method (and Sullivan used it for applicative ornament), but Wright takes a more free approach, often using unlikely program elements to fill the nooks and crannies of an ornamental conception:

The plans are as a rule much more articulate than is the school product of the Beaux Arts. The individuality of the various functions of the various features is more highly developed; all the forms are complete in themselves and frequently do duty at the same time from within and without as decorative attributes of the whole.381

Consider the plan of Unity Temple [6.2]. On the Southern wing’s corners the noble function of storage receives exterior expression as large blocky masses. A Beaux-arts plan would never articulate such a minor element so expressively, but the closets are exactly what Wright says they should be, elements doing “duty at the same time from with and without as decorative attributes of the whole.” In this specific case, the closets do little duty within, but from without, they form blocks which anchor the elevation of the building and lend a strong sense of massiveness to the composition [6.3].

[6.1] Thomas Beeby, comparison of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan’s compositional methods.

380 Wright, Wendingen, 22. Beeby’s also documents Wright’s exposure to Sullivan and Owen Jones in his “Grammer of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” article, quoting from FLW’s biography: “I would try to practice in structure by way of point, line, and plane the rhythms that he [Sullivan] preached so well in plastic clay… …Many years later as I lived, drew, and built I found in what I conceived and drew that element I now called plasticity (the master had rendered it so completely in clay) carried in its own nature implications of unexplored structural continuity and could exemplify, simplify and even prove the aesthetic validity of structural forms themselves.” 381 Wright, Wendingen, 18. 125

[6.2] Frank Lloyd Wright, Unity Temple. 1900. [6.3] Western face of Southern wing.

But Wright understood a building to be much more than a formal composition. Surfaces and materials must be sensitively treated somehow – there must be applied ornament in addition to the formal ornament. For this, many disparate as yet un-eclected sources are eclected from: pre-Columbian architecture, , combined with his own philosophy of expressing the “nature of the materials,” and a formal expression which takes its character from the rolling prairies. The ‘nature of the materials’ idea has been present in the discourse for quite some time at this point, but his idea that a building’s form should be imitative of the regional landscape seems relatively new; previously, the angle of roofs were understood to be an expression of regionalism due to varying amounts of snowfall, but Wright modifies the entire building form down to ornamental treatment of brick joints to express the mid-western prairie’s horizontality. This can be easily contrasted with Sullivan, who used the building’s form to express its human-function character rather than its regional location; Sullivan’s buildings fit their urban context well, but prairie houses can only organically grow with the free room a suburban context provides. This illustrates one of the limitations of “ornament structuralized,” which has been understood at least since Alberti.382

Regarding the machine, Wright takes a much more optimistic stance than Ruskin:

382 Alberti, 294: “…with a town house the boundary of the neighboring property imposes many constraints that may be treated with greater freedom in a villa.” Venturi also discusses this, directly discussing Wright, on 82 of Complexity and Contradiction. 126 It is a mistaken notion that the legitimate usage of the Machine precludes ornamentation. The contrary is the case. Pattern, – the impress of the imagination – is more vital than it ever was in the use of any other system or “tool” in any other age. But before we can find the significant expressions that give poetry and endless variety to this new architecture in any integral sense we shall first have protested the old “ornamentation” by reverting to clean forms expressive as such in themselves. Little by little, the use of significant virile pattern will creep in to differentiate, explain and qualify as a property of the third dimension as poetry. And the materials and structural enclosures will ever be increasing thereby in significance and what we call beauty. Imagination will vivify the background and expression of modern life, as truly and more universally and richly than was ever before seen in the world, - even in the aesthetic background of the Moors or the Chinese.383

Wagner had already utilized the machine quite successfully for rich patterned ornament on his facades; but note how Wright, as with many others, shows an understanding that the ‘structural enclosure’ will be given significance and beauty by the addition of ornament. The often present

‘virile’ ekes into Wright’s vocabulary. What constitutes a ‘virile’ patterned ornament can only be speculated upon.

Whatever one may say about Wright’s use of ornament, it is clear that a certain level of richness was desired, most especially at his Tokyo Hotel and Midway Gardens. Wagner had noted about the importance of the scale of the details in relation to the overall work, and Wright typically keeps his details at a scale where his modern ornament achieves the same density of visual stimulation found in many highly-ornamented 19th century works. At Midway Gardens,

[6.4, 6.5] some of the ornament went beyond surface enrichment to representational illustration of the purpose of the building. Near entrances abstracted statues hold aloft boxes overflowing with either bubbles or grapes. Other statues go about business as humble waitresses or producing the beverages to be imbibed [6.8]. As with Wagner, sculptural figures are set atop forms rather than integrated within niches or frames. A bubbly painted figures largely in a public space, along with a mayan-esque wall sculpture reminiscent of a fireplace with some faint echoes of the motifs present in the other ornaments - and what appear to be extremely abstracted caryatids. The method of communication is subtle and abstracted, not overly direct, but present; for those who do not wish to investigate the meanings of these abstracted ornaments, they can easily be appreciated as simple enrichment. At the Imperial Hotel [6.6, 6.7], the vocabulary of Wright’s

383 Wright, Wendingen, 62-63. 1925 addition. 127 forms remains similar, but the ornament changes to express a more eastern ‘feeling.’384 A statue holding aloft two saki(?) boxes again appears, but this time the boxes are not overflowing. The ornament of the complex is not too direct with any specific message, but subtly abstract. For example, an observer probably cannot immediately discern what Wright’s stacked spheres [6.6] represent, but they add tremendously to the character of the building. The main space explodes with enrichment, celebrating one’s arrival to the hotel. Wright, like Wagner, achieved a-historicist ornament which integrated itself well with the forms it adorned. Rather than attempt to find a new great ideological expression for ornament, they both use it effectively to express and glorify the function of the building.

[6.4] FLW, Midway Gardens. 1913-1914 [6.5] Wall ornament with abstracted brackets

[6.6] FLW, Imperial Hotel. 1916-1920 [6.7] Entrance lobby.

384 Frampton, Modern Architecture 1851-1919. 200: “Wright’s Prairie Style, which was as much influenced by Japanese culture as it was dependent on the principle of the Beaux-Arts, had here finally to confront the Japanese architectural tradition on its own terms… the general effect here seems to have been Pre- Columbian rather than Shinto…” 128

[6.8] Representational figures in Wright’s Midway Gardens, and, far right, Tokyo Hotel.

3. Auguste Perret

Wright was more concerned with form than tectonics, but August Perret (1874-1954) balances him by focusing almost completely on the tectonic expression of the concrete frame.385

Contrasting Perret with Viollet-le-Duc’s inventions, Collins notes: “Perret… simply adopted and refined a structural system which had already been evolved by engineers and building contractors…”386 The Greeks when refining the ornaments of their already-evolved timber frame had an idea with which to guide their tectonic manipulations: to express the gender of the god the temple was for. Perret lacked such a specific goal for his tectonics, but he attempted to elevate the frame above the realm of mere construction into art. He stands as an evolutionary because, while his contemporaries were discarding all historic associations, he acknowledged the importance of certain forms, notably traditional windows.387 To use non-traditional window forms as devices for patterning a façade increases the scale of ornament (assuming that no additional detail-scale ornament is applied to the new window frames), and also discards the

385 Frampton, 121-157. Collins, Changing Ideals, 163, 178, 207, 214, 239, 298-99 386 Collins, Changing Ideals, 214. Hennabique had established what is essentially modern frame construction in 1897. 387 Frampton, 143: “The development of the rue Raynouard apartment building compelled Perret to reassert the canonical status of the traditional French window as opposed to the fenêtre en longueur of Le Corbusier. …he saw the French window as being suffused with a particular cultural significance. As he put it, “la fenêtre en hauteur c’est le cadre de l’homme.” For Perret…the French window, with its hinged double doors opening inward, was indicative of the presence of man. Here, a received tectonic element assumes symbolic anthropomorphic dimensions. For Perret the porte-fenêtre went even further, for it not only established the decorum of the bourgeois interior, its rhythm, space, and graduation of light, but it also induced the cadence of human movement within the room. …It provides a certain decorum…” So, Perret’s arguments for the traditional window were spatial, associational, perspectival, and practical. 129 valuable associative qualities of recognizable windows. Unless there is a good reason, windows should be ornamented, not become a means for creating an ornamental pattern. This may seem like a ridiculous point, but it will be further discussed in chapter seven. It merely shows one of the many Corbusian reversals that the modern movement propagated; rather than decorate windows, windows become a means to create decoration.388

Perret clearly states his views about ornament in his Contribution à une théorie: “He who hides any part of the framework not only deprives architecture of its sole legitimacy but also strips from it its most beautiful ornament. He who hides a column makes a blunder, but he who makes a false column commits a crime.”389 This is literally Robert Kerr’s ‘structure ornamentalized.’ Obviously, looking at his Théâtre de l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs [6.9,

6.10], Perret allowed himself some license in this statement about false columns.390 To ensure that the observer can experience the structure from both outside and inside, columns are employed redundantly on the interior and exterior of the perimeter wall; they bear true loads, but they are certainly not necessary on both sides. If not committing a crime, Perret shows his allegiance to the classical tradition which employed columns as ornament for their psychological effect. His omission of two exterior columns on the seldom-seen back of the building shows either value-engineering at work, or a sensible consideration of the user’s approach and application of ornament to where it will be most appreciated.

388 Henry Russell-Hitchcock, Phillip Johnson, The International Style. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1932. 1996 edition, 61: “Windows constitute a more important element in modern architecture than they have in any architecture since that of the Gothic cathedrals. They are the most conspicuous features of modern exterior design. Their handling is therefore an aesthetic problem of the greatest importance.” 82: “The fact that there is so little detail today increases the decorative effect of what there is. …As has already been suggested in discussing window frames, the quality of the detail has very considerable importance… In any simple architecture where the windows are conspicuous these decorative elements are vital to the total effect.” 153: “Lettering, circular windows, and flagpole are decorative elements.” 389 Quoted from Frampton, 154. 390 Frampton, 135: “Disturbed by the lack of structural modulation on the exterior of Notre-Dame du Raincy, Peret arranged for 14 redundant columns to appear as representative orders on the blank exterior of the theater [Theatre des Arts Decoratifs], including two columns set off from each corner in order to terminate the system.” 130

[6.9, 10] August Perret, 1924-25 Théâtre de l’Exposition des Arts Décoratifs

So for Perret, the primary ornament of architecture rested in the artistic manipulation of the frame, but what about his view on applied semantic ornament? From Frampton, we learn he said:

“Decorative art should be forbidden. I would like to know who stuck these words together: art and decorative. It is a monstrosity. Where there is true art, there is no need for decoration.”391

What exactly Perret means here by decoration is unclear, because looking at his buildings, the type of enrichment often called “decoration” occurs; meaningful paintings, sculptures, and enrichment connoting significance. The enrichment can be representational; such as the leafy encrustation on his 1902-3 25 rue Franklin [6.11], or abstract, such as his precast concrete triangle grilles 1936 Musée des Travaux Publics [6.12]. Frank Lloyd Wright had also used custom precast concrete ornaments; both are continuing the tradition of ornamental precast terra-cotta in the new material. An extremely subtle poetic detail occurs in both of these examples; observe how the occasional leaf timidly overlaps onto the clad frame at Rue Franklin, and how the museum capital’s angular, abstracted leaves continue onto the beam soffit. Baroque ornament had completely blurred the boundaries between structure and adornment, here Perret shows the same tendency, but with much greater control.

Perrault attempts to adapt the classical vocabulary, but elements of classical composition that previously were used for extremely significant sculpture, such as the frieze, begin to be supplanted with less directly meaningful ornament. At the Théâtre de l’Exposition des Arts

Décoratifs he furnishes the frieze around the building with applied half-pipes and at his ecole

391 Frampton, 153. 131

Normale de Musique a system of louvers substitute for similar enrichment.392 However, in other situations, such as his 1911-13 Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the full traditional accompaniment of painting and sculpture are brought to bear within and without of the building [6.13-14]. There are undoubtedly dozens of good reasons for his inconsistency, but it shows how finding an appropriate meaning to express with a modern semantic ornament will be a difficult problem, the turn to louvers and pipes offers an easy, inoffensive, mute solution.

[6.11] Perret, 1903 25 Rue Franklin. [6.12] Musée des Travaux Publics exterior detail.

Perret attempts the same feat Phillibert de l’Orme attempted in the 16th century, the invention of a French classical order,393 this time in concrete rather than banded stone. Like de l’Orme, the idea is rather hopeful that an observer will perceive the column to be uniquely

French, but any onlooker would undoubtedly appreciate the richly detailed multi-faceted capitals and textured fluting Perret provides in the attempt.

Fundamentally, Perret heeded Pugin and Owen Jones’s calls for ‘construction should be decorated, decoration never constructed.’ Rather than turn his concrete framing plans into a large ornamental patterns, he attempted to turn basic, practical concrete construction methods into an

392 Frampton, 139. “…the building becomes a vehicle for evolving what Perret would regard as a new French classical-rational order. This surely accounts for the regular “fluting” of the columns, and for the ventilation frieze of alternating, half-round pipes running around the perimeter of the building as a vestigial entablature. A similar metaphorical frieze, composed of adjustable louvers, would be employed by Perret in the ecole Normale de Musique.” 393 Frampton, 134, 144. Perret probably never seriously expected it to catch on. 132 art. There is much to be said for this approach, as Perret proves that it makes for buildings which blend well into the urban context.394

[6.13, 14] 1911-13 Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Classicism in concrete.

4. Charles Eduoard Jeanneret

Le Corbusier actually used semantic ornament more than might be expected considering his statements in the 1925 “The Decorative Art of Today,”395 but he rarely developed what could be called tectonic ornament. For the most part, Corbusier reduced the quantity of ornament significantly and vastly inflated its scale; but traces of traditionally-scaled ornament remain in much of his work; for instance, he will ornament important doors or use the occasional artistic mural. Although this traditional detail scale ornament remains, his other applied ornament usually does not take the form of what traditionally might be recognized as enrichment. Wagner achieved a rich machine ornament that expressed the active human hand in assembly, but

Corbusier’s ornaments, except for the occasional painted mural or relief, do not read as products of the hand – even though intense hand labor quite often was involved in their production.

For the purposes of analyzing Corbusier in terms of ornament, two major angles have been identified, involving patterned and free ornament. The first is Thomas Beeby’s recognition

394 Collins, Changing Ideals, 299-300. 395 Le Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, trans. James Dunnett. Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1987. 84: “modern decorative art is not decorated.” He goes on to echo Loos, giving credit to him. He attacks Ruskin: “…having opened our eyes and rid ourselves of the romantic and Ruskinian baggage that formed our education…” 133 that many of Corbusier’s elevations and plans use traditional geometric ornamental patterns on an extremely large scale.396 The most notable of these is his plan for a city of three million, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Renaissance coffered ceiling plans and Greek fret patterns

[6.15]. This is much more than a superficial resemblance; a city plan is being generated with the same techniques that were typically used to design ornamental wall and ceiling coverings.

[6.15] Thomas Beeby’s drawings from “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar.” Upper left: Corbusier’s city for three million. Upper right: enlargement of Corbusier’s plan with Greek fret patterns. Bottom left and center, ceiling plan from Vignola’s Farnese Palace and plan from Towards a New Architecture. Bottom right, selections from Owen Jones.

Beeby’s article title, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” shows one of the reversals – ornament which had previously been applied to buildings on the detail-scale became the ordering system for the building at large, and the second reversal comes from the well- documented influence of painting. Pre-modern movement, paintings were conceived of as ornaments for buildings, but for Corbusier, paintings became ordering systems for the building.

Collins points out that Corbusier himself admitted this, “…in his book on The Modular, [he] has specifically explained how the façade of his proposed business center for (1939) was

396 Thomas Beeby, “Grammer of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” from Ornament. Philadelphia, PA: Falcon Press, 1977. VIA III. Beeby has discussed Corbusier’s education – which included significant exposure to Owen Jones. He quotes Corbusier himself: “There was a magnificent book in L’Eplattenier’s class library: “A Grammar of Ornament” by Owen Jones. Decoration is a debatable topic, but “ornament” pure and simple is a thing of significance; it is a synthesis, the result of process of putting together. Making ornaments was a necessary discipline imposed by l’Eplattenier on L-C.” 134 based on an abstract painting he made in 1931.”397 Summerson compares Corbusier’s plan for the Pavilion Suisse with a Picasso painting and observes “it seems to me that some of his plans have, in themselves, something of the quality of an abstract painting or drawing.”398 Corbusier’s process of inverting all the traditional relationships – are not decorated,399 rather than stand in the garden, the garden stands on the house, parks are not in cities, cities are in the park,400 apparently also extended to paintings; you do not paint on buildings, buildings are paintings. This focus on painting gives one of Corbusier’s unusual comments in Towards a New

Architecture a new light; he instructs us that we are not to decorate our walls with a riot of paintings, but should keep them in the until we wish to meditate upon them, “The true collector of pictures arranges them in a and hangs on the wall the particular painting he wants to look at…”401 It would, after all, seem silly to put a painting on a painting. The

Renaissance writers were quite comfortable with ornamenting ornament, but Corbusier would rather not.

It may be quite alright to use free painting and patterned ornament at a large scale to order a work, but, working under the Albertian idea that the ‘investment of mind’ and ‘hand of the craftsman’ have something to do with the appreciation of ornament, to invert the typical relationship with the increase in scale that accompanies it, a significant reduction in the apparent investment of mind and hand occurs per unit surface area of the building. Frank Lloyd Wright had used patterned ornament at a large scale in his compositions, but he introduced detail-scale applicative ornament to sustain the ‘investment of mind’ and ‘hand of craftsman’ qualities.

Two examples by Le Corbusier will be considered. First, his 1945-52 Unité d’Habitation de Marseilles [6.16-6.19]. Beeby has already shown how the railings have been used to create a large-scale ornamental pattern on either end of the building, but, consider the concrete

397 Collins, Changing Ideals, 283. 398 Summerson, Heavenly Mansions, 191. 194: “…it is often said that today [1947] architecture and the other arts do not collaborate – that painters and sculptors no longer adorn the works of the architects as they did in the past. That is, in one sense, true; but in another sense - …collaboration between the arts has never been so richly productive as it has in the last thirty years” 399 Corbusier, The Decorative Art of Today, 84: “modern decorative art is not decorated.” 400 Summerson, Heavenly Mansions, 190. 401 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1986. 120. 135 detailing that occurs around the pilotis. A Modular man cast into the base makes a representational ornament. But what should be particularly noted are the form board lines that occur in the underside of the slab; they create a simple alternating pattern. While hardly recognizable as ornament, if Corbusier controlled the orientation of the boards then this does fit the qualification for patterned architectural ornament. The intentional vertical orientation of the form-boards on the pilotis vaguely suggests the historicist device of fluting, only without the tactile allure. Functionless channels are sculpted into the pilotis underneath the major perimeter beam that carries the majority of the building’s load. To remove material at the point where structurally it is most needed forms a kind of anti-tectonic ornament. On the roof, small areas of wall receive an enriching application of blue, yellow, and white colored tiles set in a zig-zag pattern. These tiles with the inset modular man at the base seem to form the building’s only purely unnecessary applied rather than formal ornament. At an interior corridor, circular terra- cotta tiles are used as infill to create patterned relights. The floor mounted light fixtures are ornamentally scroll-shaped; the window-mullions are mirrored about an axis (repetition, pattern, ornament), lastly, the floor tile joints do not line up with anything. This shows little ‘investment of mind’ in the details, unlike Wagner, who carefully made his interior ornaments relate to each other at his Postsparkasse, none of these interior details carry any relationship from one to the other. To be generous, perhaps Corbusier focused his design energies on the large-scale ornament; or perhaps he simply did not see an ordered cohesion as significant.

[6.16] Corbusier. Unité d’Habitation, roof. Note tile enrichment. [6.17] Beeby drawing and Owen Jones ‘savage tribe’ ornament. 136

[6.18] Unité d’Habitation, mid-block shopping street. [6.19] Pilotis detailing.

Chandigarh’s (1950-1968) buildings also use ornament at an unusually large scale; always a-tectonic, usually abstract semantic, but in at least one a large directly semantic ornament occurs. First, the High Court building [6.20]. Note how the lines of the concrete bris-soleil have been formed into a simple large geometric pattern; the entire foot-ball field sized building provides about the same apparent level of investment present in a single 2’x 6’ 16th century balustrade. Note that because detail-scale ornament was not provided, potted plants have been added to enrich the building’s monumental gateway [6.19]. Over the main entrance of the

Secretariat [6.20], Corbusier uses concrete balcony walls and shades to create a pattern, which, whether he intended it or not, bears a resemblance to a painted pattern Wright used at a scale dozens of times smaller to enrich the interior of his Coonley house [6.23, 24]. Wright’s example shows ornamental pattern flowing from wall to window; Corbusier’s ornament only occurs at the macro-scale. The Assembly building has similarly large ornaments [6.22]. Under the main portico, whose curve may have been inspired by cattle’s horns,402 the series of eight concrete bearing walls are ornamented with an alternating series of holes and small blocky outcroppings.

These may have symbolism, but they appear to be merely ornamental enrichment. Unmistakably there appears to be a large semantic ornament crowning the ‘dome’ [6.25]. It must be admitted that historic sculptural ornament, even when clearly representational, can often be difficult to

402 Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 2002. 120. William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900. 428. 137 read. Wright’s modern abstracted statues at Midway Gardens and the Imperial Hotel are difficult to understand from photographs, but atop this dome we have an enigma. It appears to be a large caricature of a face, or it could be a form inspired from Indian cattle, or possibly an anthropomorphic caricature of both [6.26]. In either case, due to its prominent location, it must be the symbol of the Indian nation. To design an ornament representative of an entire nation’s ideals would be an un-enviable task; the best comparisons would be the U.S. Capital dome and

Norman Foster’s Reichstag dome. Neither of those made the attempt of using representational ornament on a massive scale to communicate; rather, the traditional form was highly enriched to connote significance; in the case of the U.S. capitol, with classical columns and all their imagined associational connections with Greek democracy, at the Reichstag, with forward-looking techno- ornament. Ornament can do many powerful things, but in special cases such as these it may be better to keep it subservient to a millennia-old form rather than attempt to re-invent the dome.

[6.20] Corbusier, 1951-5 Chandigarh High Court. Upper left: late 16th century Diwan-I-Khas. Upper right: enlarged balustrade, High court partial elevation, and Owen Jones Chinese ornament selections.

138

[6.21] High Court monumental gate. [6.22] Assembly Building.

[6.23, 6.24] Secretariat detail and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Coonley House interior.

[6.25, 6.26] Assembly Building dome and abstracted semantic ornament, with apparent inspiration.

139

5. Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, and Robert Venturi

Without a doubt those who have written most influentially about ornament in the second half the twentieth century were the Learning from Las Vegas team. After Orthodox Modernism’s reign during which all education in ornament had been removed from the schools,403 architects were in dire need of re-education concerning symbolism and ornament in architecture.404 In 1966

Complexity and Contradiction made major statements, but ornament did not form the major theme of the book; Vegas thrusts the question of meaning and ornament into the forefront and revives the late 18th century idea that architecture can make meaningful associations by connection with past experiences.405 The conditions of the American cultural and physical landscape in 1977 were analyzed, and ornament’s potential for communication was suggested.

After declaring modern formal ornament irrelevant, the most important observations for discussion are those concerning the automobile’s affect on the experience of ornament and electronic signs’ potential as a new, meaningful cladding.

Robert Kerr’s points 1 and 4 are revived as the decorated shed and the duck, and the observation is made that most of orthodox modern architecture qualifies as ‘ornament constructed’ ducks, leading to the powerful accusation that “We have been designing dead ducks”;406 a “two foot cantilever on the face of a building, put there to suit a sensitive nuance of the program discerned only by the architect”407 has little interest for anybody else. Modernism’s faith in the process of design is revealed as a romantic delusion;408 by substituting ‘articulation’

403 Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” “The originators of the Modern Movement possessed, as part of their heritage, an understanding of the formal, symbolic, and manipulative elements of historical style, even if they chose to turn away from them. The architect of today, however, has not inherited these cultural and aesthetic components, for they were consciously eliminated from architectural training by his immediate predecessors.” 404 For instance, the simple idea of “…a combination of many… ornaments at the edge of a door symbolizes the importance of the door in the face of the wall.” Needed re-statement. Vegas, 106-107. 405 Vegas, 7, 8, 89. “…architecture depends on its perception and creation on past experience and emotional association…” Alan Colquhoun’s article “Typology and Design Method,” Arena, Journal of the Architectural Association (June 1967) 11-14 is credited by Venturi & team for the revival of association. 406 Vegas, 89, 162. 407 Vegas, 139. 408 Vegas, 135. 148: “If articulation has taken over from ornament in the architecture of abstract expressionism, space is what displaced symbolism. Our heroic and original symbols, from carceri to Cape Kennedy, feed our late Romantic egos and satisfy our lust for expressionistic, acrobatic space for a new age in architecture.” 134: “What appears on the surface as a hard, rational discipline of design, turns out rather 140 for ornament,409 architecture lost its ability to communicate anything of consequence. John

Summerson said effectively the same thing in his “The Mischevious Analogy”410, but Vegas provides illuminating case studies.

Little can be added to the face-off between Paul Rudolph’s Crawford Manor and Venturi

& Rauch’s Guild House [6.27]. It is claimed that “Guild House has ornament on it, Crawford

Manor does not.”411 While not discounting the arguments regarding the substitution of articulation for ornament, it can be observed that Crawford Manor does have ornament on it, but the ornament lacks any traditional association with what would be considered enrichment. The ribbed face concrete blocks are a step above ordinary, standard blocks, they were selected by the architect, and they create a simple pattern of vertical lines. We have little problem calling patterned glazed brick, stone revetment, or carved rustication ornament (common brick or block would not be ornament), but these concrete blocks – although they are essentially for the same purpose; cladding with some added articulation – we do not call ornament. Perhaps because the visual stimulation derived from them is very low.

[6.27] Learning From Las Vegas. Ornament of Ortho-Mod versus Post-Mod.

paradoxically to be a mystical belief in the intuitive process. …the process of making architecture becomes the image of architecture.” 409 Vegas, 101. 103, 139. 410 Summerson, Mansions, 196: “Modern architecture arises from an accurate analysis of the needs of modern society and represents the logical solution to the problem of shelter achieved by the direct application of means to ends; it expresses the spirit of the machine age; it is the architecture of industrial living. It is based on a study of scientific resources and an exploitation of new materials. Finally, it is organic. Taken at their face value, such phrases as these are, shall we say, uninteresting. They tell us just nothing.” 411 Vegas, 91. 141

Analysis with an Albertian and Ruskinian eye yields a useful observation regarding the effective employment of ornament. The continuous vertical lines at Crawford Manner destroy the eye’s ability to perceive each block as an individual hand-laid unit; although it was a hand-built wall, one cannot easily appreciate the labor that went into it. Rudolph’s choice of continuous texture to imitate the lines of béton-brut concrete412 weakened one of ornament’s valuable assets – the apparent sign of the human hand.

Complexity and Vegas challenge orthodox modernism, but what is suggested for the new ornament? Ironic gaudy pop-culture honky-tonk elements? The Guild House’s windows are supposed to take a cue from Andy Warhol soup cans, and the single course of white brick

“suggests the proportions of a Renaissance palace.”413 Ornament’s great strength comes from its being special, a television antennae, apart from the vulgar symbolism,414 does not make a particularly special sight atop a building; an average observer might not even understand the antennae as an expression of anything. However, at least Venturi, Brown, and Izenour are seriously thinking about the problem. In one of their critiques of Mies; they note changing technologies and suggest an appropriate modern medium for ornament:

Less may have been more, but the I-section on Mies van der Rohe’s fire-resistant columns, for instance, is as complexly ornamental as the applied pilaster on the Renaissance or the incised shaft in the Gothic pier. (In fact, less was more work.) Acknowledged or not, Modern ornament has seldom been symbolic of anything non- architectural since the Bauhaus vanquished and the decorative arts. More specifically, its content is consistently spatial and technological. Like the Renaissance vocabulary of the Classical orders, Mies’s structural ornament, although specifically contradictory to the structure it adorns, reinforces the architectural content of the building as a whole. If the Classical orders symbolized “rebirth of the Golden Age of Rome,” modern I-beams represent “honest expression of modern technology as space”––or something like that. Note, however, that it was “modern” technology of the Industrial Revolution that was symbolized by Mies, and this technology, not current electronic technology, is still the sources for Modern architectural symbolism today.415

412 Vegas, 91. 413 Vegas, 92, 130. 414 To be fair, it is commented that “an open-armed, polychromatic plaster Madonna in this position would have been more imageful but unsuitable for a Quaker institution that eschews all outward symbols…” (92) Still, money spent on the antennae could have perhaps instead thickened the line of white bricks to two courses, or continued it on the back of the building, which is nearly indistinguishable from a modernist urban renewal project. There is little confidence in the antennae anyways, which is called “ugly” and “almost sculpture.” 415 Vegas, 114. A critique of Kahn is given on 139: “Louis Kahn once called exaggeration the architect’s tool to create ornament. But exaggeration of structure and program (and, in the 1950s and 1960s, mechanical equipment, that is, ducts equal decoration) has become a substitute for ornament. To replace ornament and explicit symbolism, Modern architects indulge in distortion and overarticulation. Strident 142

Now, architecture has seen changing technologies before; the existence of something new does not necessarily constitute a valid reason for its adaptation. A good eclectic (and all architects are eclectic to a certain degree – whether from painting, industrial products, or historic styles) carefully evaluates the source before making a selection. In Complexity, Venturi justifies the integration of honky-tonk elements into architecture simply because they exist.416 It is not felt that architecture sacrifices anything of its status as a ‘high’ art due to this interaction with popular culture.417 The prospects for electronic displays will be discussed in the next chapter. As for pop culture’s integration into architecture; perhaps experimentation in all possible avenues can be acceptable, but, an assumption for ornament – possibly a weak, idealistic assumption – involves that the building should last, if not as Ruskin said “forever”, at least 50-100 years or more. If our buildings are constructed to last under 50 years, then large amounts of ornament would indeed be pointless; temporary structures naturally do not deserve the significance ornament connotes, unless the market demands a bare minimum for the purpose of identifiable branding. Some say that the spatial demands a century from now might be radically different from those required today, therefore we should only build for the short-term, but renovations of historic railroad stations, warehouses, churches, and factories to new uses seem to prove that ‘space’ can be remarkably adaptable. But, assuming that architecture should last a significant length of time (the last bastion which separates us from industrial, interior, and fashion design), then it might seem advisable to avoid any overly blatant references to ephemeral pop iconography, even if such references will make it easier for the art historian to date us, track our influences, and classify our work.

distortion at large scale and “sensitive” articulation at small scale result in expressionism that is, to us, meaningless and irrelevant, an architectural soap opera in which to be progressive is to look outlandish.” 416 Complexity, 42: “The main justification for honky-tonk elements in architectural order is their very existence. They are what we have.” 417 Vegas, 161: “…learning from popular culture does not remove the architect from his or her status in high culture. …Irony may be the tool with which to confront and combine divergent values in architecture for a pluralist society and to accommodate the differences in values that arise between architects and clients.” 143

The final item for discussion regarding Vegas involves the automobile, the first major text to really study the implications of the car on architectural design.418 The car covers great distances at rapid speeds; the occupants cannot fully catch all the wondrous detail work on buildings as they zip by. This makes the automobile a natural enemy for detail-scale ornament; in fact, it produces a strong argument for works of the ‘ornament constructed’ type; one receives probably an equally dramatic experience of a Frank Gehry building if they drive by it on a freeway compared to walking around it. As the book shows, considering the demands of the automobile, the strip of Las Vegas makes perfect sense. Large parking lots necessitated by cars which must be negotiated before entry into a big box store are also antagonistic to the appreciation of any ornament which might be put onto the building’s façade; one has to keep an acute awareness of their surroundings lest a car suddenly back out of a space and cause physical injury. However, walk-able urban neighborhoods with sidewalks are still places where the conditions for the appreciation of ornament thrive. Not only are the conditions right for appreciation, but the demands of a restrictive site and large program also make applied ornament the most practical method of expression; there simply is no room for ‘organic’ highly form-based architecture to grow.

418 Vegas, 139: “These busy bumps and subtle dents are put there for scale and rhythm and richness too, but they are as irrelevant and meaningless as the pilaster bas-relief on a Renaissance palace (which they resemble), because they are seen mostly in big spaces (often parking lots) and at high speeds. Articulated architecture today is like a minuet in a discotheque, because even off the highway our sensibilities remain attuned to its bold scale and detail. Perhaps in the cacophonic context of our real landscape we are impatient with any architectural detail at all.” 144

7. Principles and Propriety in Ornament for the 21st Century______

It may be fair to say that among architects today the most complex understanding of ornament remains that provided by Learning from Las Vegas. While Vegas provided a ground-breaking study on the perceptual and symbolic content of ornament, the issue of a governing structural relationship and tectonically-derived ornament was not developed. This lack of structural relationship forms one of the primary reasons why the post-modern application of ornament often receives the pejorative label of “scenography” or “historicist pastiche.”419 It is believed that such accusations can be evaded by expression of contemporary structural systems and their careful integration with the ornamental system – this is the goal in general terms.

Before forming principles of usage, it must be understood how ornament actually works in relation to a human observer. For this E.H. Gombrich and Learning from Las Vegas have provided an excellent understanding. For successful conveyance of a message, a connection must be established in the observer’s mind between the form present on the building and a conventionalized meaning associated with that form. Three elements come into play: the store of knowledge in the brain, general tendencies of human perception, and the specific circumstances of perception when an observer comes into contact with an ornament.

Tapping the store of knowledge in the brain falls roughly under the late 18th century

Associationist school of thought discussed in chapter four, dismembered in the late 19th century and revived in the 1970’s.420 The learned knowledge in the brain forms an individual’s culturally-determined ability to identify signs. Geometric patterns, for instance, can be meaningless enrichment, or they can suddenly become vivid signs if they take on a certain configuration. The swastika is the best example of this. Letters forming words are another example. In order for ornament to successfully convey anything, it must to some degree work

419 Kenneth Frampton, “Rappel à L’Order, The Case for the Tectonic,” from Kate Nesbit ed., Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: an Anthology of Architectural Theory: 1965-1995. Princeton ArchitecturalPress, New York, 1996. 519. 420 Learning From Las Vegas, 89: “…architecture depends on its perception and creation on past experience and emotional association…” 129: “Artistically, the use of conventional elements in ordinary architecture – be they dumb doorknobs or the familiar forms of existing construction systems – evokes associations from past experience.” Venturi, Brown, and Izenour credit Colquhoun’s essay “Typology and Design Method” in Arena, Journal of the Architectural Association, June 1967, 11-14. Note that Joseph Rykwert’s 1957 “Meaning and Building” also discusses meaning in relation to past associations. 145 within existing conventions of meaning. Though these conventions are subjective, with thoughtful reflection every member of any society should be aware of them, as we use them on a daily basis. If not, literature now exists on the linguistic symbolism of architecture.421

An important distinction must be drawn between direct semantic messages and indirect suggestions ornament often makes. By direct, it is meant that an average observer will be able to understand an idea or concept from viewing the ornament, i.e., a written sign, 3D form or 2D image that can clearly find association with a meaning in the mind of an observer. Indirect ornament has no clear association with a specific idea, but plays to expressing the importance of individual architectural elements, and thereby the social importance of the building. For instance, in Vegas: “…a combination of many…ornaments at the edge of a door symbolizes the importance of the door in the face of the wall.”422 Frank Lloyd Wright also understood this indirect significance-symbolism facet of ornament. “It is a mistaken notion that the legitimate usage of the Machine precludes ornamentation. …Little by little, the use of significant virile pattern will creep in... And the materials and structural enclosures will ever be increasing thereby in significance”. 423 Or take Sullivan: “Both structure and ornament obviously benefit by this sympathy; each enhancing the value of the other.”424 As both Wright and Sullivan’s a-historicist ornament demonstrates, this indirect ornament does not necessarily rely upon conventions to achieve its effect; all it requires is a certain visual density of detail, or, failing that, use of a material that has associations of rarity and richness – Otto Wagner’s intended use of gilt bolt- heads at his Postsparkasse Bank would have been an excellent example of an unconventional, semi-tectonic ornament achieving this indirect communication of significance.

E.H. Gombrich has provided the superlative description of the general tendencies of human perception in relation to ornament.425 These tendencies provide perhaps the only near- objective part of the ornament equation. First, the eye tends to follow lines, or be drawn towards

421 For example: Geoffrey Broadbent, Richard Bunt, : Signs, Symbols, and Architecture. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1980. 422 Learning from Las Vegas, 106-107. 423 Wright, Wendingen, 62-63. 1925 addition. 424 Sullivan, Chats, 189. 425 Gombrich, 1-16, 117-148. 146 points of high contrast, and it comes to rest at terminations of lines or at points which form anomalous segments of a pattern. For an architect attempting usher the eye to various points in a composition where important semantic ornament occurs, the use of lines, pattern breaks and contrasting colors make invaluable tools. Second, Gombrich discusses the nature of complexity and order of form in relation to the impression made on the observer.426 When ornament becomes so elaborate that it is difficult to perceive any underlying order it loses its quality as ornament by slipping into chaos – indecipherable visual noise. Therefore, if a building’s elevation becomes so overloaded with ornament, none of it with any perceivable order or relation to any other part of the work, the eye will have difficulty absorbing the sight. This has little to do with the density or quantity of the ornament, and more to do with its perceivable ordering system based in repetition and geometry. A jumbled, complex mural can present great difficulty for the eye to decipher, while an extremely busy but ordered system of can achieve instant comprehension.

Patterns of ordered complexity can keep the eye attempting to absorb the sight almost indefinitely, what Owen Jones described as ‘repose,’ providing one of the many side benefits of ornament – visual depth and playfulness.

The circumstances at the moment of perception have a great impact on the design of ornament. These can be roughly broken down into three general considerations: line of sight, distance, and time of exposure. Learning from Las Vegas provides a full theoretical understanding of these elements for architecture in today’s automotive environment. Lines of sight must be considered from where people will most often approach a building – we must consider not only Otto Wagner’s “SINGLE VANTAGE POINT”427; but also all likely points of observation. Placing ornament where nobody will see it, or where an extreme angle or protruding mass blocks the sight are obviously situations to avoid. Distance between the observer and the ornament will always be variable, but likely any ornament can be designed to be viewed from certain controlled areas on the site which have a rough ‘range.’ The greater this range, the larger the ornament will have to be in order to be legible. Learning from Las Vegas provides explicative

426 Gombrich, 8-9. 427 Wagner, 86-87. 147 tables [7.1].428 Size of the building also becomes a consideration in distance; when a structure’s mass grows to an exceptional horizontal or vertical size, the size of any message-bearing ornament on a remote part of the building will have to increase in order for communication to be established with a viewer. Indirect ornament accomplishes its task with a certain perceivable density of detail; placing it on remote parts of a building where dense articulation blurs into a homogenous texture renders the effort ineffective.

Time of exposure is closely related to mode of transport. A pedestrian might have over a minute to view a building as they walk by, while a motorist will have only seconds. Operation of a vehicle also limits one’s capability for eye-wandering without endangering fellow motorists, and passengers have highly restricted lines of sight. Vegas makes clear how the automobile scale necessarily increases the size of ornament in a suburban or commercial strip situation. In fact all three of these primary considerations – line, distance, time – are closely related to urban versus suburban site context. Some urban sites, if located next to a highway or at the termination of a long view might find automobile-scale ornament important, but the urban condition predominantly takes a pedestrian scale.

[7.1] Learning from Las Vegas. Relationship between speed, distance, and scale.

428 Vegas, 11, 17. 148 A fourth more variable circumstantial consideration is that of natural light. This has significance if the ornament takes on a three dimensional form or incorporates artificial illumination. Reliefs or sculptures on the southern exposure will benefit from dramatic, sharp shadows aiding the clarity of their forms, while northern exposure ornaments will require more deep line work to maintain legibility. Artificial light displays will suffer from the problem of greatly reduced effectiveness during the day, which may not be a problem if the building’s major use predominantly occurs at night.

With a general understanding of how ornament, the eye, and the brain connect, the question of content must be addressed. Historically, ornament has logically always been used to express the function and significance of a building, in addition to harnessing various associative meanings. The two above-mentioned types of ornament can be adopted for each of these purposes: direct semantic ornament exposes the function, and the quantity of indirect ornament present expresses significance – both overall and ov various parts. A problem is the fact that architects have no control over deciding which buildings are significant enough to merit ornament; developers and the public decide how many dollars per square foot to spend on a building. Budget becomes a very natural and honestly expressive limiting factor in showing significance.

Specific questions of content inevitably involve some sense of propriety, a fickle subject today. Christopher Dresser noted as early as 1862 a problem which will develop into a sense of

‘political correctness’:

It would seem difficult, at this late period of the world’s history, to originate a new scheme of ornamentation which should be an expression of sentiments; and should such be possible we might not readily be able to determine what should be expressed. Want of concord retards any expression of religious faith, for unless there is unanimity the views of the nation cannot be set forth by any one system of ornamentation, any more than by one style of architecture.429

Due to the nature of living in a diverse society, a single system of ornament can no longer be expected to accomplish a unified cultural expression. Louis Sullivan, who took up Dresser’s difficult challenge most seriously, had a few things to say about the resolution of democracy,

429 Christopher Dresser, The Art of Decorative Design. American Life Foundation, Watkins Glen, New York. 1977 Originally printed by Day and Son, London, 1862. 14. 149 individualism, and ornament. Sullivan’s ornament became the architect’s passage to responsible citizenship by individual poetic expression; the merging of an individual’s ego-driven “power” and a democratic urge.430 While Dresser was right to consider any one system incapable of expressing unanimous sentiments, Sullivan’s system attempted to meet his perceived needs of modern architecture by demanding individuality in the ornamental system – there would, theoretically, be as many approaches as there are architects and every building would have a unique system of ornament.431 Sullivan’s unity in uniqueness seems to have found victory, though the uniqueness has moved beyond ornament and into form.

While unified cultural expression may be impossible, there are a few important ideals our society holds today which form a good starting point for any concern related to propriety:

Equality, Individualism, and Relativism. Under equality, current demands of propriety seem to rule out any specific associative ornament, as to associate with any one historic style would implicitly uphold that style as superior – not Equal. Until the philosophy of the artist has been replaced with a philosophy that celebrates copying, stylistic reference also runs against our current ideal of Individualism. Relativism allows us to value and appreciate the ornaments of all cultures and times, yet individualism and equality prevent us from emulating them.

The concepts of equality, individualism, and relativism have specific implications for any displays of ornament. Consider if human figures are to be employed. What ethnicity and gender should they be presented as? Should they be dressed according to cultural stereotypes? Some sculpture can manage to abstract the human figure so that it reads ambiguously; yet such ambiguity can lose a powerful specificity. A possible, truthful way out, is to consult most recent population data and divide any human forms on the building among ethnicities by accurate proportion. The building can become a quite literal representation of the people of the time.

430 Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats and other Writings 150-153, 164, 188-189. In summary, democracy is the highest form of human civilization. Democracy is about the individual; ideally, individuals in a democratic society are allowed to engage themselves to their fullest creative capacity. Architecture is obligated to mirror society; therefore, the architect must act as an individual. How does the architect express individual creative capacity on buildings? For Sullivan, by ingenious schemes of ornament. “…a decorated structure, harmoniously conceived, cannot be stripped of its system of ornament without destroying its individuality.” “Mere difference in outward form does not constitute individuality.” Among other things, Sullivan’s ornament became his vehicle for a democratic social vision. 431 Sullivan, Chats, 189. 150 The already discussed items that ornament can communicate – hierarchy of significance, function, and unified cultural ideals – are the most important, but there remain a few other items that ornament has historically conveyed that were discussed in previous chapters. They include: nationalism, politics, emotive effect, and structural elaboration. The vast majority of architecture today need have little concern with expressing anything specific about nationalism and politics, but emotive effect and structural elaboration are more viable pursuits.

Guidelines for calculated use of ornament for specific emotive effects have always been an elusive subject. Observing various precedents, it might be possible to say that certain applications can give a building a soaring, lightening quality, or a heavy, massive quality; though applying lessons from precedents remains largely a working of the intuition. Associations with specific types of late-19th century ornament have been used for great emotive effect by Disney’s haunted-house-themed ride. It is apparent that for the truly grand emotions architecture wishes to evoke – awe, wonder – ornament alone does not suffice, but form, structure, ornament, and light all play a role.

Structural elaboration and emotions can be related, as Palladio’s comment should remind us:

With regards to the projections of cornices and other ornaments, it is a gross abuse to make them project too far, because when they extend further than is reasonably appropriate, apart from the fact that if they are in an enclosed space they will make it narrow and displeasing, they will frighten those who stand under them because they always look as though they are about to collapse.432

While emotions remain fickle and difficult to predict, structure definitely exists in every building, and is fairly easy to elaborate. Kahn called “exaggeration the architect’s tool to create ornament”,433 without applied ornament, structure and form are consequentially turned to for manipulation. According to Vitruvius, the structurally elaboration carried out by the ancient

Greeks was not aimless, but had the purpose of association with the gender of the deity to be housed (as discussed in chapter 3). Today we have no comparably grand purpose for our structural elaborations. So what purpose should structural exaggeration serve? Several equally

432 Palladio, 56. 433 Learning from Las Vegas, 139. 151 important points suggest themselves. First; as a possible avenue for the indirect-type ornament; exaggerations of tectonics can, by the greater level of attention paid, show that the building has a greater significance. Local exaggerations occurring within the building can highlight individual elements which are more important, such as entrance doors. Second, by ornamentally developing primordial symbolic parts of the building (roof, frame, foundation – going back to Laugier and

Semper, thinking today of Frampton), architecture makes evident and celebrates its primary function - shelter. Lastly, an important relationship exists between the direct semantic ornament and the indirect tectonic ornament. Structural systems typically create a regular pattern – the beginning of ornament. With Gombrich’s discussion in mind, it is easy to see how the two can be utilized in conjunction with one another for greater effect. Patterns aid legibility, the regular structural bays of a building can be used to break up and order ornament, and carefully breaking the system at strategic points can show a greater importance of certain items. As was discussed in chapter 4, Perrault was possibly the first to comment on this type of ordering relationship between tectonic and semantic ornament.434

The discussion above formulates several principles. To conclude with a summation:

1. A building should have ornament expressive of both its function and its significance. Expression of function is achieved by direct semantic ornament. Societal significance is achieved by enriching indirect semantic ornament, and the building’s ultimate significance – shelter – is celebrated by tectonic ornament which elaborates the shelter- providing structure. 2. Any ornament wishing to communicate a meaning directly must necessarily work closely with conventional associations of forms and language. 3. The building’s tectonic systems can and should provide an ordering framework for the building’s primary semantic ornament. 4. All ornamental considerations must consider issues of human perception and the circumstances of that perception, as discussed in Learning from Las Vegas and Gombrich.

434 Perrault, 65: “These are the only parts dealt with here [columns, architraves, friezes, cornices – tectonic- symbolic ornaments], and it is their proportions that the ordonnance regulates, giving to each part the dimensions appropriate to its intended application, such as a greater or lesser size calculated for the support of a great weight or a greater or lesser capacity for accommodating delicate ornaments [semantic ornaments], which may include sculpture or moldings; these ornaments also belong to the ordonnance and provide an even more visible sign than proportion for designating and regulating the orders.” [italics added] 152

8. The Project______

In order to demonstrate the principles of ornament, a public institution has been selected. Public buildings are typically built to last, fulfilling an important precondition for ornament – that which is felt significant enough to last a great length of time merits the extra celebration of ornament.

The project is a 1,200 student, 200,000 s.f. public high school (grades 9-12) located in an urban situation in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood.

The Site

Currently the site, bounded by Sycamore, Broadway, Reading, and 12th, is predominantly an empty parking lot. On the north, the Cincinnati school for the Creative and Performing Arts forms the most important immediate relationship. In this conjectural project, it is suggested that

SCPA would receive renovation rather than abandonment, and would become a pre-k through 8th grade school and community center whose students would graduate to become part of the student body at the proposed high school, thus creating a small urban academic campus. Just to the north of the site, SCPA forms a massive dignified block which demands some kind of acknowledgment by any building.

South of Reading Road, a ragged back edge of under-used warehouse and industrial buildings addresses the site. Beyond lies the extreme eastern end of Central Parkway, followed by the angular form of the Justice center. The industrial buildings, while not adding anything themselves to the site, form an effective buffer from the undesirable view of the Justice Center.

One the east, Broadway addresses the site with a nearly un-interrupted late 19th century five-story urban street wall of Italianate brick tenement buildings. Currently, the wall is lifeless; the majority of the buildings are vacant.

On the west, the urban street wall has lost all integrity, but there is more active use. A four-story parking creates a large mass on the southwest corner, and a one-story stainless steel diner makes a possible active use off the northwest area of the site. One block over, the active Main Street corridor provides a center of urban energy which would benefit from strong 153 activity in its immediate vicinity. A half-block sized playground and the Peaslee Center are slightly north of the sight.

Grade: a not insignificant slope occurs on the site, about an 18 foot vertical rise across its narrow east-west width.

Access: It is assumed that a good portion of the student body would be able to walk to school, but accommodations will be made for school to pull up at the building and the maximum amount of parking possible will be provided under the school’s football field

(estimated 200 spaces), which will be sufficient for the faculty and staff, but not all of the over-16 student body. Parking privileges for remaining spaces would be distributed on the basis of seniority and class rank.

Site Solution

With a 200,000+ square foot program and a football field to accommodate, the site solutions become limited. Given a desire to establish a relationship with SCPA, the options become even less numerous. The 120+ yard length of the football field could be oriented either north-south or east-west; orienting it north-south would divide the site into narrow strips. Placing it east-west on the southern side of the site accomplishes many things: the field does not suffer from addressing the backside of warehouses and a large parking garage, and the parking underneath the field will have easy access at this location from Reading and Sycamore roads. The school itself is placed so as to create an entry plaza between it and SCPA. In perhaps a debatable decision, two small chunks of the urban fabric have been maintained on the northern corners of the site, which act as public walls containing this entry plaza, making the space smaller and more defined. To demolish these small pieces of urban fabric would allow for better views of the proposed school, a larger plaza space, and a more full relationship with SCPA, but, the old elements are being maintained as a possible asset.

154 Building Solution – program resolution.

The initial parti was a symbolic stepped-pyramid hierarchy of major program spaces; gymnasium in the , with auditorium, cafeteria, and library stacked one after the other on top; all surrounded by wings of classrooms presenting a solid dignified mass to the urban environment and ‘facing’ SCPA. Light would fall between the inner pyramid and the outer wings. Egress, structural, and site issues have modified the initial parti; rather than one ‘stack,’ there are instead two stacks separated by a main public circulation space. This main circulation becomes the important public space of the building; all major program spaces relate to it. All student lockers are located on the walls of the atrium, with spaces on the periphery for art displays and study lounges. Placing all the lockers in the main atrium allows the normal circulation corridors to become slightly narrower, and also allows the corridor walls to be used for user-created ornament.

Structural System and Ornament

The structural system of the building uses the standard systems for large institutional buildings today – concrete and steel frames. These two systems are used strategically throughout the building. Remembering exaggeration as a source of ornament, the choice of structural systems at any one location is based in enhancing the primordial elements of foundation, frame, and roof.

Therefore, the base two stories of the building are composed of massive site-cast concrete walls, the middle two are standard concrete frame, and the top attic story changes to lighter steel, which is topped with an exaggerated continuous sheltering, overhanging roof. The central mass of the building, which encloses the top-lit atrium, adopts steel framing for a less massive structural profile. The change in structural materials for this central element is meant to enhance its unique character and also help establish a lighter character to the space.

A problem occurs in the internal-external structural expression through the building’s enclosure. Skin is meant to protect the structure; running major structural members through the skin creates an undesirable break in the envelope and a thermal bridge situation. Some level of 155 symbolism representing the structure behind is inevitable due to practical considerations, much like Mies van der Rohe’s attached I-sections expressing the hidden structural steel.

The solution will be as follows: after constructing the interior frame, which bears all the floor and roof loads, two secondary skins will occur. The first skin, sandwiched between the exterior and interior, will be a light-gage metal stud wall of sufficient thickness to meet insulation standards, which runs continuously on the outside of the structure, spanning from to deck.

The inside of this stud wall can support the interior gypsum board finish (with a more durable knee wall built up on the inside around the people zone, taking similar details as those in the public spaces). The expression of the skin outside of the insulation wall depends upon the material of the structure behind. Where the structure is the concrete frame, massive precast concrete panels will be applied. Where the structure behind is steel, steel will be applied. The detailing of the connections from interior to exterior will be a point of tectonic ornamental elaboration.

Between the orthogonal steel or precast frames occurs infill material, windows, and; resting on beams above the ground floor, semantic ornament panels. Thus the structure is used to order and divide the semantic function-describing ornament. Each panel will be themed to a particular subject or act that forms part of the educational experience; the building will directly tell you what goes on inside by using ornament rather than form, and implicitly gives society’s expectations of what you should know about before you become a productive adult. A standard syllabus of expected material for history, science, math, and English will be used; other extra curricular activities that could form the subject of the panels include drama, debate, music, art, and various athletics (the athletics panel will be located on the side of the school addressing the football field, and also located underneath the gymnasium’s windows). Iconography will include inscribed names of famous historical, literary, or scientific figures, and various imagery associated with their work. The panels are not intended to be directly learnt from, but to remind and represent the salient necessary points of a high-school education. The material of the panels is not important so long as it is durable and of a contrasting color to the rest of the building’s material palette. It would be executed in collaboration with one or several local artists. 156 Remembering the principles from Gombrich, there will be two kinds of panels: standard subject- related panels, divided by the structural bays, and two more important scenes, which run continuously – breaking the pattern of structural bays – and are located over the main north and south entrances. These two major scenes are to be programmed as follows: the one on the north, addressing SCPA, depicts the major events in a student’s life in preparation for graduation.

Directly over the northern doors students will be depicted progressing for graduation with one receiving a diploma – the end goal of education. This plaza, between SCPA and the school, could be utilized for the ceremony when students graduate from one school to the other, and for the final high-school graduation ceremony. The other major scene, on the south, – the football field elevation – is meant to be an honest depiction of how youth today receive all the lessons that teach them about the world. The various sources of education will be documented with images and simple text: parents – by intent and by example –, peers, siblings, television, film, and teachers. While teachers may not form the backbone of an individual’s real education, because the building is a school, teachers will be given the prominent position directly over the entrance.

In line with the principles, the major pedestrian paths are controlled to bring students into close contact with the semantic ornaments. Every student will walk within 20 feet of the panels at least twice a day. There are two opportunities for automobile-scale ornament on the site. One occurs along Reading Road as one approaches the garage entrance. The backside of the football seating provides a large blank wall well suited to bill-board-like displays. While many things could be put on this, it might be best to simply put the school’s name in tall letters, as a motorist will have only a few seconds to view it before turning into the garage. The second opportunity for automobile-sized ornament occurs where 12th street intersects Sycamore. As one drives down twelfth, they will have about 15 seconds or so to view the western end elevation of the building.

The gymnasium occurs here, and with only occurring high in the space, the ornamental panels can increase in size. They will depict student athletes in action at various sports – football, basketball, and soccer.

157

Bibliography______

Primary texts:

Vitruvius, The Ten Books On Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1960 edition. 167, Book VI Introduction.

Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church of Saint Denis and its Art Treasures, trans. Erwin Panofsky. Princeton University Press, Princeton New Jersey, 1979.

Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books. trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1988.

Sebastiano Serlio, On Architecture: Volume I, Books I-V of ‘Tutte L’Opere D’Architettura et Prospetiva’, trans. Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks. Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1996.

Sebastiano Serlio, The Book of Architecture, trans. Robert Peake, intr. A.E. Santaniello. Benjamin Bloom, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1970 reprint of 1611 London edition.

Anthony Blunt, Philibert de l’Orme. A. Zwemmer Ltd., London. 1958.

Andrea Palladio, The Four Books on Architecture, trans. Robert Tavernor, Richard Schofield. MIT Press paperback edition, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2002.

Claude Perrault, Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns After the Method of the Ancients. trans. Indra Kagis McEwen, intr. Alberto Pérez-Gómez. Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, California. 1993.

Marc-Antoine Laugier, An Essay on Architecture. trans. Wolfgang and Anni Herman, Los Angeles California, Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1977.

Nicolas le Camus de Mézières, The Genius of Architecture; or, the Analogy of that Art with our Sensations, trans. David Brit, intro. Robin Middleton. The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, California, 1992.

Sir William Chambers, A Treatise on the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture, intr. Joseph Gwilt, ed. W.H. Leeds. London, Lockwood and Co., 1862.

Etienne Louis Boullée, “Architecture, an Essay on Art”, From the Classicists to the Impressionists: A Documentary History of Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Elizabeth Gilmore Holt. Anchor Books, New York, 1966.

Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Précis of the Lectures on Architecture, trans. David Britt, intr. Antoine Picon. Getty Research Institute Publications Program, Los Angeles, 2000.

Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses, int. J. Stewart Johnson. Dover Publications, New York, 1969.

Augustus Welby Pugin, Contrasts: Or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages, and Corresponding Buildigns of the Present Day; showing the Present Decay of Taste, intr. Henry Russell Hitchcock. Leicester University Press, Humanities Press Inc., New York, 1969. (1836)

158 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1989.

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice. ed. J.G. Links. Da Capo Press, New York, 2003.

Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament. DK Publishing, In., New York, 2001.

Christopher Dresser, The Art of Decorative Design. American Life Foundation, Watkins Glen, New York, 1977.

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-Duc: Readings and Commentary. ed. M.F. Hearn. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990.

Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings. trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave, Wolfgang Herrmann. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1989.

Frank Furness, “Hints to Designers” (1878) Frank Furness: The Complete Works, George E. Thomas. Princeton Architectural Press, Inc. New York, 1996 revised edition.

John Wellborn Root, “Architectural Ornamentation” (1885) The Meanings of Architecture: Buildings and Writing of John Wellborn Root, Donald Hoffman. Horizon Press, New York, 1967.

Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture, trans and int. Harry Francis Mallgrave. Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, 1988.

Adolf Loos, “Ornament and Crime,” from Architecture, trans. Harry Mallgrave, in Midgard 1, 1987.

Louis Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1979.

Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1956.

Louis Sullivan, A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers. Eakins Press, New York, 1967.

Frank Lloyd Wright, et. al, Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete “Wendingen” Series, int. Donald Hoffman. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1992.

Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture. trans. Frederick Etchells. Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1986.

Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Phillip Johnson, The International Style. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1995.

Louis Kahn, Essential Texts. ed. Robert Twombly, W.W. Norton & Co, NY, 2003.

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random house, Inc., New York, 1961.

Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Second Edition reprint, 1998.

Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour, Robert Venturi, Learning From Las Vegas. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1977.

159

James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man- Made Landscape. Touchstone Book published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 1993.

Central Focus on Ornament texts:

E.H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford, 1979.

Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1992.

Kent Bloomer, The Nature of Ornament: Rhythm and Metamorphosis in Architecture. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2000.

James Trilling, Ornament: A Modern Perspective. University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2003.

James Trilling, The Language of Ornament. Seattle, WA. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 2001.

Brent C. Brolin, Architectural Ornament: Banishment and Return. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2000.

Schafter, Debra. The Order of Ornament, the Structure of Style. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Robert Jensen, Patricia Conway, and Paul Goldberger: Ornamentalism: The New Decorativeness in Architecture and Design. Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., New York, 1982.

Michael Snodin, Maurice Howard: Ornament: A Social History Since 1450. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1996.

Geoffrey Broadbent, Richard Bunt, Charles Jencks: Signs, Symbols, and Architecture. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1980.

Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown: Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2004.

Peter Collins, “Towards a New Ornament” The Fifth Column, Vol 4 No. ¾ 1984. Reprinted from the June, 1961 issue of Architectural Review, originally entitled “Aspects of Ornament.”

John Summerson, “What is Ornament and What is Not” VIA III Ornament, ed. Stephen Kiernan. Falcon Press, Philadelphia, 1977.

Thomas Beeby, “Grammar of Ornament/Ornament as Grammar” VIA III Ornament, ed. Stephen Kiernan. Falcon Press, Philadelphia, 1977.

David Van Zanten, “Architectural Ornament: On, In, and Through the Wall” VIA III Ornament, ed. Stephen Kiernan. Falcon Press, Philadelphia, 1977.

Joseph Rykwert, “Ornament is no Crime” The Necessity of Artifice. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York. 1982.

Gianni Vattimo. “Ornament/Monument” Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach. Routledge, New York, 1997. 160

Ernst Bloch, “Formative Engineering Form; Ornament” Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach. Routledge, New York, 1997.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Ontological Foundation of the Occasional and the Decorative” Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach. Routledge, New York, 1997.

George Hersey, The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture: Speculations on Ornament from Vitruvius to Venturi. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989.

Theory, history, and criticism:

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1983.

Joseph Rykwert, The Necessity of Artifice. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York. 1982.

Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture: 1750-1950. McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal, 1998 edition.

John Summerson, Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1998 edition.

John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1993.

Joseph Mordaunt Crook, Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post- Modern. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987.

Emil Kaufmann, Three Revolutionary Architects, Boulée, Ledoux, and Lequeu. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1952.

Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France 1500-1700. Penguin Books, Ltd., New York, 1980.

George E. Thomas “Frank Furness: The Flowering of an American Architecture”, Frank Furness: The Complete Works. Princeton Architectural Press, Inc. New York, 1996 revised edition.

John Onions, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1988.

Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2000.

Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 2001.

Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture 1851-1919. A.D.A EDITA Tokyo Co., Ltd. Tokyo, Japan, 1981.

Frampton, Kenneth. “Rappel â l’Ordre, the Case for the Tectonic” Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, ed. Kate Nesbitt. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996. 161

Cobb, Henry N. “A Note on the Criminology of Ornament: From Sullivan to Eisenman.” Eleven Authors in Search of a Building, New York: Monacelli Press, 1996

Moravánsky, Ákos Competing Visions: Aesthetic Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867-1898. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1998.

William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900. Phaidon Press Limited, London, 2000.

Lauren S. Weingarden, “Louis H. Sullivan’s Ornament and the Poetics of Archtiecture” Chicago Architecture, 1872-1922, ed. John Zukowsky. Prestel-Verlag, Munich, in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987.

William de Wit, ed. Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1986.

David Van Zanten, Sullivan’s City: The Meaning of Ornament for Louis Sullivan. W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2000.

Frank Russell, ed. Art Nouveau Architecture. Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, 1979.

John Zukowsky, ed. Chicago Architecture, 1872-1922. Prestel-Verlag, Munich, in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987.

162

Grades 9-12 High School, 1200 Students

MAJOR PROGRAM ITEM TOTALS: Academic Core Spaces 49600 Special Education Spaces 4000 Administrative Spaces 5800 Media Center Spaces 6720 Visual Arts Spaces 3500 Music Spaces 6010 Technology Education Spaces 4800 Business Education Spaces 2350 Family and Consumer Science Spaces 2850 Physical Education Spaces 32120 Student Dining Spaces 13450 Food Service Spaces 2650 Custodial Spaces 200 Main Hall and Circulation Spaces X Auditorium 12850 Building Services 41922 Parking (240 cars) 96000 Athletic field, concessions buildings Exterior spaces 197425

INDIVIDUAL MAJOR SPACE BREAKDOWNS:

ACADEMIC CORE SPACES qty s.f. each Classroom 32 900 Classroom - Science 8 1200 Teacher Prep/workroom 8 400 Individual Restroom 6 50 Small Group Room 8 150 Storage 4 150

SPECIAL EDUCATION SPACES qty s.f. each Classroom 3 900 Workroom/conference 2 150 Restroom/shower 1 100 Special Education/Resource 1 900

ADMINISTRATIVE qty s.f. each Reception 1 500 Secretarial 1 500 Principal's office 1 150 Assistant principal 2 120 Conference 1 250 Mail/work/coffee 1 400 Admin storage 1 200 Records 1 110 In-school suspension 1 450 Restroom 1 50 Guidance Counselor's office 4 120 Guidance records storage 1 200 Health Clinic 1 500 163

MEDIA CENTER SPACES qty s.f. each Reading Room/Circulation 1 4200 Librarian office 2 120 Workroom/storage 1 500 Main cross-connect (circulation) 1 380 A/V storage 1 350 Conference Room 1 250 Multimedia production Room 1 500 Document storage 1 300

VISUAL ART SPACES qty s.f. each Art Room 2 1,400 Kiln/ Storage 2 200 Art Material Storage 1 300

MUSIC SPACES qty s.f. each Instrumental room 1 2,500 Instrument storage 1 600 Orchestra storage 1 250 Music library 1 120 Uniform storage 1 300 Vocal room 1 1200 Ensemble room 1 300 Practice Room 4 80

TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION qty s.f. each Computer Lab 2 1,400 Storage/IT workroom 1 200 Production Lab 1 1600

BUSINESS EDUCATION qty s.f. each Computer classroom 1 1200 Marketing classroom 1 900 Workroom/storage 1 250

"CONSUMER SCIENCE" qty s.f. each Life skills lab 1 1200 storage 1 300 Laundry 1 150 Child development 1 1200

PHYSICAL EDUCATION qty s.f. each Gymnasium 1 14000 Student Lockers 2 700 Student Restroom/Shower 2 300 PE storage 1 800 PE Office 2 75 Staff shower 1 75 Althetic Director's office 1 120 Training room 1 400 PE Health classroom 1 1200

STUDENT DINING qty s.f. each 164

Dining area 1 8000 Staff dining 1 750 Table storage 1 600

KITCHEN AREA qty s.f. each Warming 1 2400 Prep Area 1 1512 Serving Area 1 1428 Dry storage 1 462 Cooler/Freezer 1 420 Ware washing 1 378 Dietician office 1 75 Restroom 1 50 Staff locker 1 125 Loading 1 150 Dumpster 1 200

AUDITORIUM AND DRAMA qty s.f. each Stage 1 2400 Scene shopp and storage 1 500 make-up/Dressing 1 250 Theatrical control 1 200 Drama storage 1 500 Auditorium seating (1200) 1 9000

MAIN HALL AND CIRCULATION qty s.f. each Entry hall and stairs 1 flex. Student elevator 1 flex. Freight elevator 1 flex. Student Restrooms x total 4,702 Student sitting spaces 2 flex. rough Corridors 26870

AUDITORIUM AND DRAMA qty s.f. each Stage 1 2400 Scene shopp and storage 1 500 make-up/Dressing 1 250 Theatrical control 1 200 Drama storage 1 500 Auditorium seating (1200) 1 9000

CUSTODIAL SPACES qty s.f. each Workroom 1 400 Custodial office 1 100

BUILDING SERVICES qty s.f. each Custodial closet 4 30 Electrical closet 4 30 telecomunications 4 30 Mech/Electrical space/decks 9270 Storage 1 250 Central storage 1 350

165

ATHLETIC FIELD qty s.f. each 1 full-size football/soccer field flex. Seating flex. Lights flex. Concessions buildings flex. Field equipment storage flex. Restrooms flex.

EXTERIOR SPACES qty s.f. each Covered outdoor space adjacent to building flex. Outdoor eating adjacent to cafeteria flex. Entrance plaza spaces - north and south flex. Bicycle racks, possibly sheltered. flex. Circulation ramps around building flex.

PARKING qty s.f. each Eventful stairs to entrance plaza 2 Elevator or ramp - handicapped access est. 240 Maximum parking allowable for space cars