2) 19th Century Theory: Concepts of Viollet Le Duc, John Ruskin, Quatramere de Quincy and Gottfried Semper
2) 19th Century Theory: Concepts of Viollet Le Duc, John Ruskin, Quatramere de Quincy and Gottfried Semper
The Industrial Revolution, which began in England at about 1760, made radical changes in every
level of civilization all over the world. The heavy industry growth brought a flood of new building
materials, such as cast iron, steel, and glass, with which architects and engineers devised structures of
unimaginable size, form, and function.
In the second half of the 19th century dislocations brought about by the Industrial Revolution started
to be overwhelming. Many were frightened by the hideous new urban districts of factories and
workers' housing and the public taste of the newly rich. Architects were employed to build canals,
tunnels, bridges, and railroad stations
Public Buildings
• Exhibit architectural features from past styles.
• Classical Ordering
• design regularity
• Monumental Scale
• Lack of ornamentation
Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879)
• A French architect, theorist and French Socialist, atheist in outlook.
• Born in Paris
• During the early 1830s, a popular sentiment for the restoration of medieval
buildings developed in France. Viollet-le-Duc, returning during 1835 from
study in Italy, was commissioned by Prosper Merimée to restore the
Romanesque abbey of Vézelay. This work was the first of a long series of
restorations. He turned out to be a great restorer.
• His writings:
1. Rational dictionary of French architecture from 11 th century
to 16th century.
2. Entretiens Sur L’Architecture (Discussions on architecture)
1858.
Abbey
the building or buildings occupied by a community of monks or nuns.
Viollet-le-Duc's restorations at Notre Dame de Paris brought him national attention.
For example, under his supervision, Notre Dame was not only cleaned and restored but also "updated,"
gaining its distinctive third tower (a type of fleche) in addition to other smaller changes.
Flèche
a slender spire, typically over the intersection
of the nave and the transept of a church.
• His writings centered on the idea that materials should be used 'honestly'.
• He believed that the outward appearance of a building should reflect the rational
construction of the building.
• In Entretiens sur l'architecture, Viollet-le-Duc praised the Greek temple for its rational
representation of its construction. For him, "Greek architecture served as a model for the
correspondence of structure and appearance. There is speculation that this philosophy was
heavily influenced by the writings of John Ruskin, who championed honesty of materials
as one of the seven main emphases of architecture.
• Viollet-le-Duc’s drawings of iron trusswork were innovative for the time. Many of his
designs emphasizing iron would later influence the Art Nouveau style, most noticeably in
the work of Hector Guimard.
• Brought new ideas and different spirit, favouring a dynamic, open eclecticism.
• To an English gothic – stylistic core were added French, german, and Italianate
elements.
• Ruskin’s first published prose work came in 1834 – he began writing a series of articles for
London’s magazine of Natural History.
• He went on to publish the first volume of one of his major works, Modern painters, in
1843. This work argued that modern landscape were superior to the so- called “Old
Masters” of the post renaissance period. The second half of Modern Painters 1 consists of
detailed observations by Ruskin of exactly how clouds move, how seas appear at different
times of day, or how trees grow.
• Ruskin followed modern painters 1 with a second volume, developing his ideas on
symbolism in art.
JOHN RUSKIN - " THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE"
The essay was published in book form in May 1849 and is structured with eight chapters; an
introduction and one chapter for each of the seven 'Lamps', which represent the demands that good
architecture must meet, expressed as directions in which the association of ideas may take the observer:
1. Sacrifice – dedication of man's craft to God, as visible proofs of man's love and obedience
2. Truth – handcrafted and honest display of materials and structure. Truth to materials and honest
display of construction were bywords since the serious Gothic Revival had distanced itself from the
whimsical "Gothic" of the 18th century; it had been often elaborated by Pugin and others.
3. Power – buildings should be thought of in terms of their massing and reach towards the sublimity of
nature by the action of the human mind upon them and the organization of physical effort in
constructing buildings.
4. Beauty – aspiration towards God expressed in ornamentation drawn from nature, his creation
5. Life – buildings should be made by human hands, so that the joy of masons and stone carvers is
associated with the expressive freedom given them
6. Memory – buildings should respect the culture from which they have developed
7. Obedience – no originality for its own sake, but conforming to the finest among existing English
values, in particular expressed through the "English Early Decorated" Gothic as the safest choice of
style.
Writing within the essentially British tradition
of the associational values that inform aesthetic
appreciation, Ruskin argued from a moral
stance with polemic tone, that the technical
innovations of architecture since the
Renaissance and particularly the Industrial
Revolution, had subsumed its spiritual content
and sapped its vitality. He also argued that no
new style was needed to redress this problem,
as the appropriate styles were already known
to man. The 'truest' architecture was therefore,
the older Gothic of medieval cathedrals and
Venice. The essay sketched out the principles
which Ruskin later expounded upon in the
three-volume The Stones of Venice published
between 1851 and 1853. Practically, he
suggested an 'honest' architecture with no
veneers, finishes; hidden support nor machined
mouldings and that beauty must be derived
from nature and crafted by man.
He had an abiding confidence in the natural, untutored instinct for rightness and beauty in the
average person: "all men have sense of what is right in this matter, if they would only use and apply
this sense; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would only ask for it
when he does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want it." There is an
easily perceived contrast here with the thread of modernism that holds that people must be taught to
appreciate good design. Another contrast with modernism is in the aesthetic of functionality:
Ruskin saw no beauty in well-designed tools: beauty is out of place where there is not serene
leisure, or "if you thrust it into the places of toil. Put it in the drawing-room, not into the workshop;
put it on domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft." It will be sensed, even in so brief a
quotation, that for Ruskin, Beauty was not an inherent characteristic but a thing that could be
applied to an object or withheld from it.
GIOTTO’S TOWER
• Ragged against modern age, against factory systems,
against iron. (the most fruitful source of corruption)
•Quatremère did not write a formal treatise; instead, he was commissioned to write the first formal
dictionary of architecture.
•In hopes of “satisfying all classes of readers by embracing the universality of knowledge comprised
by subject.”
2.For the first time, instead of writing for a patron or institutional privilege, Quatremère writes for the
public.
3.In an age of expanding readership and scholarly academic professionalism, the dictionary was
easily produced and equally a readily consumed object.
I D E A O F I M I TAT I O N
1.In the details of nature –like the certain characteristics of an individual 2.In nature
as a collective whole –like referring to a specific species
•The hut is merely the beginning, not an origin because a certain distance had to be
travelled in architectural theory to arrive at it.
• Believed the beginning of laws, principles, theory, and practice of architecture went back to the
Greeks. (typical for a neo-classicist)
• Also theorized that Laugier’shut was not the beginning of architecture, but merely one of three
original architectural types:
1.Hut
2.Cave
3.Tent
• Light and mobile structure shows traces in wooden structures of the Chinese.
• Each of the three types originated as shelter for a kind of people in a particular place, all bound
by the laws of necessity, through use, climate,or country.
A R C H I T E C T U R E & LA N G U A G E
• TYPE –is an object with respect to which each artist can conceive works of art that
may have no resemblance to each other
•Quatremère’s last theory is a metaphysical one that distinguishes the source of rules, namely
principles.
•Principles are considered to be simple truths from which many lesser truths or rules are
derived.
•Quatremère’s four classes of rules (first two are based on nature and the second two are
based on conventions):
1. Reason or “the nature of things”
• The theory of art in architecture –imitation, invention, principles, rules
3. Authority of precedents
• Retrieval of traditional knowledge –antique, restoration, restitution
• In 1832, he spent four months involved in archaeological research of the famous Acroppolis.
• During this period, he became very interested in the polychromy debate, which centred around the
question whether buildings in Ancient Greece and Rome had been colorfully painted or not.
The Four Elements of Architecture is a book by the German architect Gottfried Semper. Published in
1851, it is an attempt to explain the origins of architecture through the lens of anthropology. The book
divides architecture into four distinct elements: the hearth, the roof, the enclosure and the mound.
The origins of each element can be found in the traditional crafts of ancient "barbarians":
hearth – metallurgy, ceramics
roof – carpentry
enclosure – textile, weaving
mound – earthwork
Semper, stating that the hearth was the first element created: "The first sign of settlement and rest
after the hunt, the battle, and wandering in the desert is today, as when the first men lost paradise,
the setting up of the fireplace and the lighting of the reviving, warming, and food preparing flame.
Around the hearth the first groups formed: around the hearth the first groups assembled; around it
the first alliances formed; around it the first rude religious concepts were put into the customs of a
cult.“
"Throughout all phases of society the hearth formed that sacred focus around which it took order and
shape. It is the first and most important element of architecture.
Around it were grouped the other three elements: the roof, the enclosure, and the mound. The
protecting negations or defenders of the hearths flame against three hostile elements of nature."
Enclosures (walls) were said to have their origins in weaving. Just as fences and pens were woven
sticks, the most basic form of a spatial divider still seen in use in parts of the world today is the fabric
screen. Only when additional functional requirements are placed on the enclosure (such as structural
weight-bearing needs) does the materiality of the wall change to something beyond fabric.
The mat and its use in primitive huts interchangeably as floors, walls, and draped over frames was
considered by Gottfried Semper to be the origins of architecture.
“Sempers Four Elements of Architecture were an attempt at a universal theory of architecture. "The
Four Elements of Architecture was not the classification of a specific typology but rather was more
universal in its attempt to offer a more general theory of architecture.” Rather than describing one
building typology as being the beginning, he considers what assemblies and systems are universal in
all indigenous primitive structures.”
Sempers primitive hut theory as put fourth by the Four Elements of Architecture is considered to be
significant in contemporary theory.
Works
• Dresden
• Hoftheater (destroyed by fire)
• Villa Rosa (destroyed in the Second world war)
• Semper Synagogue (destroyed on November 9, 1938 )
• Oppenheim-Palace
• Semper Gallery (Dresden Gemäldegalerie)
• Neues Hoftheater (Semperoper)
• Zürich
• City Hall (only concept for competition; not built)
• Polytechnic School, (ETH Zurich)
• Observatory
• Winterthur
• City Hall
• Vienna
• Municipal Theatre (Burgtheater)
• Museum of Art History (Kunsthistorisches Museum)
• Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum)
ETH ZURICH
• As the onset of the industrial revolution, the Swiss Federation planned to establish a polytechnic
school.
• As the judge for the competition Semper deemed the submitted entries unsatisfactory and,
ultimately, designed the building himself.
• Situated (where fortified walls once stood), visible from all sides on a terrace overlooking the core
of Zurich.
Neues Hoftheater (Semperoper)
Hoftheater
Semper Gallery (Dresden
Gemäldegalerie)
City Hall
Polytechnic School,
(ETH Zurich)
Observatory