Designed environment

History of utopian architecture and designed space

Built environment

Étienne-Louis Boullée - classicist

(February 12, 1728 – February 4, 1799)

Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton

From Wikipedia:

Boullée's fondness for grandiose designs has caused him to be characterized as both a megalomaniac and a visionary. His focus on polarity (offsetting opposite design elements) and the use of light and shadow was highly innovative, and continues to influence architects to this day. He was "rediscovered" in the 20th century and has influenced recent architects such as Aldo Rossi.

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux - classicist

The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans: House of the director

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (21 March 1736 – 18 November 1806) was one of the earliest exponents of French Neoclassical architecture. He used his knowledge of architectural theory to design not only domestic architecture but also town planning; as a consequence of his visionary plan for the Ideal City of Chaux, he became known as a utopian.

Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton

The Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans

Utopianism

Utopianism from Wikipedia

Around the time of the royal saltworks, Ledoux formalised his innovative design ideas for an urbanism and an architecture intended to improve society, of a Cité idéale charged with symbols and meanings.
Along with Étienne-Louis Boullée and his project for the Cenotaph of Newton, he is considered a precursor to the utopians who would follow.
Boullée and Ledoux were a specific influence on subsequent Greek Revival architects and especially Benjamin Henry Latrobe who carried through the style in the United States for public architecture with the intention that the spirit of the ancient Athenian democracy would be echoed by buildings serving the new democracy of the United States of America.

An environment of the mind

In the 19th century, at the start, there were two main conflicting ideas or tendencies in art and design.

Neoclassicism

The first of these was Neoclassicism which pretended to be cool, calm, rational and scientific.
Neoclassicism was based on the discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. and a growing sense of the development of the 18th century idea of the Enlightenment
Neoclassicism is an expression of the idea to create rational and scientific solutions to the problems which faced mankind: Neoclassicism is the art of the French Revolution, David etc

Neoclassical artists

Romanticism

Romanticism is the opposite of neoclassicism
Romanticism does not mean “romantic“ in the way that cheap love novels and pop songs are romantic and sentimental
Romanticism calls on the human psyche: the darker side of the imagination where fantasy, horror and strong emotion can be found
Romanticism when it is concerned with this movement should be written with a capital “R”.
Romanticism was important for many of the ideas that would inform the 20th century: the unique personal identity; the unique creative intelligence of an individual- such as an artist; the authenticity of expression of emotion and feeling; the importance of a new and personalised vision
In the early years of the 19th century, remind to Susan was particularly strong Germany German poets.
For example, Heine and Novalis are Romantic poets. Schubert worked on their poems and other poet’s verses, setting them to music a slider or songs, most notably in the song cycles Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise.

Fantasy and imagination

Casper David Friedrich - Romantic

On a sailing boat 1818

Casper David Friedrich

Friedrich often paints people on boats, and the boats represent the journey through life

In this painting, the people are a young couple who look into the deeper space of the painting in front of them

On the horizon we can see the ghostly outlines of a fantastical city which represents their future life

Central to amongst them, and most importantly, the future is the church and a large German, Gothic church is the most important building we can see

The young man wears a German hat next to Friedrich’s intense Christianity is his desire for a national German identity and that of a unified German experience

Therefore, fantasies city that they sailed to walls idea of an idealised, Gothic, Germanic authentic future state with Christian faith featuring as it is most important element

Sir John Soane - classicist with elements of Romanticism

Soane was an important British architect who built the bank of England and the Dulwich picture Gallery amongst others

He was responsible for a return to classical buildings and used a watercolourist to project drawings of his buildings before they were built

In many ways these drawings and paintings works like computer visualisation to sell the building that he will build to make his artistic vision more real

Generally, the paintings show the buildings in the idealised lighting conditions so that all the facets of space and structure reveals perfect spaces

When he was building the Bank of England Soane got his watercolours to paint a romantic version of the building ruins at some point in the future when the English culture will be long since past forgotten. This is a romantic version which is quite out of keeping with the rest of Soane’s work and projections. It is almost like a private self doubt of everything that he had done

Piranesi

Piranesi (pre 19th century but associated with Romanticism)

From Wikipedia:

Even though the social structure by an aristocracy remained rigid and oppressive, Venice revived through the Grand Tour as the center of intellectual and international exchange in the eighteenth century. The ideas of the Enlightenment stimulated theorists and artists all over Europe including Paris, Dresden, and London. New forms of artistic expression emerged: veduta, capriccio, and veduta ideata, topographical view, architectural fantasy, accurate renderings of ancient monuments assembled with imaginary compositions in response to the demand of increased visitors.

The remains of Rome kindled Piranesi's enthusiasm. Informed by his experience in Venice and his study of the works of Marco Ricci and particularly Giovanni Paolo Panini, he appreciated not only the engineering of the ancient buildings but also the poetic aspects of the ruins. He was able to faithfully imitate the actual remains; his invention in catching the design of the original architect provided the missing parts. His masterful skill at engraving introduced groups of vases, altars, tombs that were absent in reality; his manipulations of scale; and his broad and scientific distribution of light and shade completed the picture, creating a striking effect from the whole view.

One of the main features of Neo-Classicism is the attitude towards nature and the uses of the past. Neo-Classicism was prompted by the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii. Rediscovery and revaluation of Greece, Egypt, and Gothic was also active as well as the various expeditions of unfamiliar Roman empire. The view of a Golden Age was changing from static to mutable, inspired by Rousseau and Winckelmann in response to the dynamic growth of society.

Carceri Plate VII – The Drawbridge

The prisons - Carceri

The Prisons (Carceri d'invenzione or 'Imaginary Prisons'), is a series of 16 prints produced in first and second states that show enormous subterranean vaults with stairs and mighty machines.

These images influenced Romanticism and Surrealism.

While the Vedutisti (or "view makers") such as Canaletto and Bellotto, more often reveled in the beauty of the sunlit place, in Piranesi this vision takes on what from a modern perspective could be called a Kafkaesque distortion, seemingly erecting fantastic labyrinthine structures, epic in volume.

They are capricci, whimsical aggregates of monumental architecture and ruin.

The series was started in 1745. The first state prints were published in 1750 and consisted of 14 etchings, untitled and unnumbered, with a sketch-like look.

The original prints were 16" x 21". For the second publishing in 1761, all the etchings were reworked and numbered I–XVI (1–16). Numbers II and V were new etchings to the series.

Carceri Plate VI – The Smoking Fire

Carceri Plate XI - The Arch with a shell ornament

William Morris - Romantic

William Morris believed that many people suffered from the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution:

wage slavery
core living conditions
the mass reproduction of low quality and bad taste articles with which they would furnish their lives

He proposed that the only way to alleviate was to return to a medieval world (the middle ages, before the Tudors) in which things were handmade as one off's of good quality.

The Red House is a good example of his notion of a designed environment in which all of the fittings and fixtures are designed at the same time as the house.
In this sense, the design language is full and complete and the owner or person inside the house lives in a totally design space that is intended to improve him or her.
The problem with this approach was that of course handmade and unique handcrafted objects were/are very expensive and could not be afforded by the majority of society and so, William Morris designs were reserved, as they are today, for the rich and the middle classes.
This meant that the poor and the working classes could not afford the luxury of the experience of a William Morris designed environment.

De Stijl - classicist

In the early years of the 20th century, in Europe there were many fast moving and fast changing movements in art and design.

Artists and designers along with writers, philosophers and critical thinkers form the group called the avant-garde.

From amongst these ever-changing movements short-term solutions new ideas fused to make design formulations. Whilst being experimental and ‘new’, each of these ideas and design-formulations were quickly superseded by other ideas and philosophies.

Each of these design formulations tried to be a solution which was radical and more advanced than those which had preceded it, and yet each was then in turn, itself, made redundant by future advances.

The Dutch art movement called De Stijl, is a good example of this fast moving and changing environment. There are several key ideas which could be used to identify the various aspects of the still and these are:

Asymmetrical
Interlocking forms
Primary colours
Black white distinction distinction
Modern materials
Moving parts– Reducing or clearing away decoration
Reshaping and reforming social relations by creating new social spaces

The Rietveld Schröder House

Built in 1924 by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld for Mrs. Truus Schröder-Schräder

"a fierce commitment to a new openness about relationships within their own families and to truth in their emotional lives. Bourgeois notions of respectability and propriety, with their emphasis on discipline, hierarchy, and containment would be eliminated through architectural design that countered each of these aspects in a conscious and systematic way."

Friedman, Alice T. (2006). Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 68-69.

From Wikipedia:

The Rietveld Schröder House constitutes both inside and outside a radical break with all architecture before it. The two-story house is situated in Utrecht, at the end of a terrace, but it makes no attempt to relate to its neighbouring buildings (although it shares an exterior wall with the last house in the terrace). It faces a motorway built in the 1960s.

Inside there is no static accumulation of rooms, but a dynamic, changeable open zone. The ground floor can still be termed traditional; ranged around a central staircase are kitchen and three sit/bedrooms.

The living area upstairs, stated as being an attic to satisfy the fire regulations of the planning authorities, in fact forms a large open zone except for a separate toilet and a bathroom.

Rietveld wanted to leave the upper level as it was. Mrs Schröder, however, felt that as living space it should be usable in either form, open or subdivided. This was achieved with a system of sliding and revolving panels.

Mrs Schröder used these panels to open up the space of the second floor to allow more of an open area for her and her 3 children, leaving the option of closing or separating the rooms when desired.

A sliding wall between the living area and the son's room blocks a cupboard as well as a light switch. Therefore, a circular opening was made within the sliding wall.

When entirely partitioned in, the living level comprises three bedrooms, bathroom and living room. In-between this and the open state is a wide variety of possible permutations, each providing its own spatial experience.

Red-Blue Chair 1918

Zig Zag chair

The Berlin chair

Rietveld chairs - classicist

Alongside Theo van Doesburg, Rietveld was the most important member of De Stijl.

Rietveld shared all of the ideas associated with the still and was interested in the way that design and art could be part of society's values. He felt that his work was designed to interact with people and to help fabricate the new modern world.

Although he built the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, Rietveld is most widely known for his series of chairs. And these can be seen to represent his most important ideas.

The chair is a design formulation for somebody else, the notion of the chair, it’s ideological essence and is visionary formulation exists in brief bouts head. From time to time, he makes the ever evolving formulation manifest, real and present in the world. These chairs then are like snapshots of the ever evolving ideal in his head

Simple materials
Simple cuts and joins
Techniques which other people could create for themselves
The plans and measurements are released in public
The chairs exist in the world – each one is a new iteration of the idea of the perfect chair which exists in the head of Rietveld

Works by Rietveld

Red and Blue Chair (1917)
Dining Chair (1919)
Chair for P. J. Elling (1920)
Wheelbarrow (1923)
Berlin Chair (1923)
Divan Table (1923)
Chair (1926)
Tubular Chair (1927)

The Bauhaus- classicist

Oskar Schlemmer Bauhaus Stairway painting and photograph (right)

Oskar Schlemmer performance piece - human space machine

Dormitory balconies in the residence, Dessau

Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius
This became a school, fine and applied
In two different faces – initially more spiritual and other-worldly, it was run by Johannes Itten and featured artists like Wassily Kandinsky
Later it was taken over by Theo van Doesburg and the ideas of De Stijl
In this phase the Bauhaus will become a place to design a new space for society in which all the elements were made to fit together with cleanliness and precision
The idea was that everything, from type and carpet designs through to common utensils, furniture and tapestries and onto paintings and architecture could be designed/ taught to make a new world in which poor taste like dirt and disease, could be left behind like the religious superstitions of the 19th century.

Le Corbusier - classicist

‘Machines for living in’

Quotes from his book ‘Towards a new architecture’

‘A grand epoch has just begun. There exists a new spirit. There already exist a crowd of works in the new spirit, they are found especially in industrial production. Architecture is suffocating in its current uses. "Styles" are a lie. Style is a unity of principles which animates all the work of a period and which result in a characteristic spirit...Our epoch determines each day its style..-Our eyes, unfortunately don't know how to see it yet’

A house is a machine to live in

A house, he wrote, "is a cell within the body of a city. The cell is made up of the vital elements which are the mechanics of a house...Decorative art is antistandarizational. Our pavilion will contain only standard things created by industry in factories and mass produced, objects truly of the style of today...my pavilion will therefore be a cell extracted from a huge apartment building."

The unity building in Marseille

In the 1930s planned to board as part of Paris and replace the nurseries with large geometric grid plan featuring huge tower blocks.

This was derided by politicians but did offer some thoughts on how to deal with the overcrowding poor areas for the working classes

“Why call bottles, chairs, baskets and objects decorative?" Le Corbusier asked. "They are useful tools….Decor is not necessary. Art is necessary."

"The ideal is to go work in the superb office of a modern factory, rectangular and well-lit, painted in white Ripolin (a major French paint manufacturer); where healthy activity and laborious optimism reign." He concluded by repeating "Modern decoration has no decoration".

The United Nations

1947 he submitted a design for the headquarters of the United Nations which was to be built next to the east river in New York

Church of Saint-Pierre, Firminy (1960–2006)

Interior of the Church of Saint-Pierre in Firminy. The sunlight through the roof projects the Constellation Orion on the walls. (1960–2006)

Unité d'habitation de grandeur conforme

Internal "street" within the Unité d'Habitation, Marseille (1947–1952)

Post-war building project on behalf of the government to reconstruct the heavily bomb- damaged city of Marseille
Build on concrete pillars which were massive because of the lack of steel, it is a large structure with hundreds of flats inserted into it like bottles in a rack.
Documents had a choice of 23 different functional designs cleverly fitted together
There were only mildly decorative features on the building and residents had to choose the colours that they were given
It was seen as a big success and raised his reputation
he used the same Modular concept for measuring the ideal living space that he had used in the Unité d'Habitation in Marseille; height under the ceiling of 2.26 metres (7 feet 5 inches); and width 1.83 metres (6 feet 0 inches)

Salon and Terrace of an original unit of the Unité d'Habitation, now at the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris (1952)

Chandigarh (1951–1956)

From Wikipedia:

Le Corbusier's largest and most ambitious project was the design of Chandigarh, the capital city of the Haryana and Punjab States of India, created after India received independence in 1947.

Le Corbusier, as always, was rhapsodic about his project; "It will be a city of trees," he wrote, "of flowers and water, of houses as simple as those at the time of Homer, and of a few splendid edifices of the highest level of modernism, where the rules of mathematics will reign."

Open Hand Monument in Chandigarh, India

His design made use of many of his favorite ideas; an architectural promenade, incorporating the local landscape and the sunlight and shadows into the design; the use of the Modular to give a correct human scale to each element; and his favourite symbol, the open hand; ("the hand is open to give and to receive'.") He placed a monumental open hand statue in a prominent place in the design.

Le Corbusier defined the principles of his new architecture in Les cinq points de l'architecture moderne, published in 1927, and co-authored by his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret. They summarised the lessons he had learned in the previous years, which he put literally into concrete form in his villas constructed of the late 1920s, most dramatically in the Villa Savoye (1928–1931)

The five points are:

The Pilotis, or pylon. The building is raised up on reinforced concrete pylons, which allows for free circulation on the ground level, and eliminates dark and damp parts of the house.
The Roof Terrace. The sloping roof is replaced by a flat roof; the roof can be used as a garden, for promenades, sports or a swimming pool.
The Free Plan. Load-bearing walls are replaced by a steel or reinforced concrete columns, so the interior can be freely designed, and interior walls can put anywhere, or left out entirely. The structure of the building is not visible from the outside.
The Ribbon Window. Since the walls do not support the house, the windows can run the entire length of the house, so all rooms can get equal light.
The Free Façade. Since the building is supported by columns in the interior, the façade can be much lighter and more open, or made entirely of glass. There is no need for lintels or other structure around the windows.

The failure of modern architecture - not freedom and clean living but oppression

Giant American capitalist and corporate triumph
Alienation
Morphing people – in human architecture
Enormous structures dominant and dwarf people, they do not liberate them
They make 'perpetual surveillance culture possible'
Work dominates life and drives experience

Philip Johnson/ Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The Bauhaus in America

The Bauhaus was founded in Germany in 1919, and moved around from Weimar to Dessau onto Berlin. It was closed in 1933 with the rise of the Nazis. The last of his directors was the architect Mies van der Rohe.

After the war, Mies was persuaded to restart the boathouse in Chicago with the American architect Philip Johnson

Post-modernism

Philip Johnson and the AT&T building

With this building, Johnson recreate the Acropolis in the middle of New York

It takes all the gigantic scale which has been made possible by modern materials and the model of modern architecture and replaces them with an idea of the classical, quality and permanence

Critics suggest it is just packaging/ it is ridiculous because of its scale and its lack of meaning

With this building, Johnson recreate the Acropolis in the middle of New York
It takes all the gigantic scale which has been made possible by modern materials and the model of modern architecture and replaces them with an idea of the classical, quality and permanence
Critics suggest it is just packaging/ it is ridiculous because of its scale and its lack of meaning

Philip Johnson and glass buildings

Reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe Berlin Museum of modern Art
Also has an idea of the American myth of the log cabin on the frontier
Nature is allowed to come inside the building/the building has no walls and flows out through nature
The owner is therefore connected with nature at all times and not in a social space which is designed and controlled, whilst at the same time enjoying the creature comforts of warmth, security, protection as well as furniture and flush toilets

With these buildings, Johnson recreates an idea – an image of well-known buildings and architectural meanings

He recreates these buildings on a massive gigantic scale
He uses the reflective surface of class to create uniform and articulated services which show the basic shape that he is quoting
The specifics of the local architecture:
the Neo Gothic of the House of Commons in London
The built up overhanging houses of Amsterdam with their upper stories designed to carry winches for the movement and transport of goods and furniture
Are quoted on a massive scale in which those details can have no specific meaning
These buildings are an image of themselves
These buildings are post modern spectacles

What does Postmodernism mean?

Denying individual meanings and reflecting or creating/appropriate in other meanings
Post modernism is radically eclectic, appropriate style and appearance and forsakes meaning

Post-modernism allows for the radical appropriation of specific historical local meanings to be used merely for the purposes of style - extreme example, PM: ‘I like Nazi uniforms because they are so 1940s-looking.’

Random elements are apparently mixed together or presented as an image which creates a sense of connotation in the mind of the viewer

Denotation means the specific pointing to a unique thing – that thing, there
Connotation means the idea of arousing association, a reminiscence of a familiar notion - something that is generic and abstract, a reminder

Denotation:‘ I like this picture of Mary and Jesus by Raphael, it is beautiful. The use of the colours to create space and form in this work gives it a sense of harmony, and I think of the way that paint and drawing has been used to make creative solutions to the idea of unity’.
Connotation: This picture of Jesus and Mary that I saw in the church really has the whole madonna thing going on, it really reminds of the whole God-thing’

The triumph of surface over substance - the appearance of something becomes its meaning rather than its actual meaning. There is no specific and local meaning but a meta or ‘sign’ meaning that is applied and generalised.

The implosion of meaning - when objects and events no longer have their own meanings, they draw and suck in meaning from the other objects and events which surround them.

Modern example

The Museum of Modern Art in NYC by Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone 1939

In architecture a modernist building explodes with its new identity. It proclaims its own identity and all its new meaning. It says ‘look I am offering you a new vision for now and the future. This is the new way to be.’

Another postmodern example

Post Modern example

Architecture spectacle
Glass exterior lift
The glass lift inside the shopping mall

The MI6 (Secret Service) building in London. This building is Postmodern because it recalls the mid twentieth century and timeless notions of the big city and the gothic of Gotham City (the town of batman).

It doesn’t look like anything specific but has playful references to the wedding cake buildings of the Soviet union - ‘the enemy’ that british intelligence was pitted against.

Ironically, to keep this building a secret, it is not listed on official maps. It has been blown up in several films and used as a backdriop to drive the plot of movies as a visual reference for James Bond’s HQ.

The Robert Venturi extension to the National Gallery in London. Neither a new building nor a true extension, this building takes ‘classical’ references and details from the buildings around it.

This building has pilasters - pillars set into the wall. The central one is decorated to mimic the top of nelson’s column opposite (Corinthian detailing)

What had been proposed - a Modernist new building by Richard Rogers - This was stopped by Prince Charles. He wanted architecture that reflected his view of the correctness of social order with God at its top and his position as appointed and anointed by that God.

Postmodernism is therefore The appropriation of meaning and the loss of the local particular meaning - things are fashioned to show themselves as ideas and associations like the forms in opera costumes and sets

The blur of the perpetual present - when there is nothing local and specific, you can get everything everywhere. McDonalds, Coke, Michael Korrs etc on sale in north, south America, Europe, Asia and Australasia etc. Same shops, same experience, same reference points.

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