Thursday, July 16, 2020

Functionalism, in architecture

Functionalism, in architecture, the doctrine that the form of a building should be determined by practical considerations such as use, material, and structure, as distinct from the attitude that plan and structure must conform to a preconceived picture in the designer’s mind.

Although Functionalism is most closely associated with modern architecture (and to some extent with modern furniture), it is by no means an exclusively modern conception. Apart from the fact that even the most fanciful architecture has practical functions to fulfill, there have been times in the past when functional considerations have been unusually dominant, and the artistic character of the buildings of such times has been directly derived from the way the challenge of function has been met. Historical European examples include the military architecture of the early Middle Ages, certain periods of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture, and much of the industrial and commercial architecture of the 19th century. The expression “the functional tradition” is applied to this emphasis on functionalism, which appears and reappears throughout the history of architecture independently of changes in style.

The Functionalist creed, however, is especially associated with the modern style of architecture, which developed during the second quarter of the 20th century as a result of changes in building technique, new types of buildings required, and changing cultural and aesthetic ideals. In fact, as architects began to show discontent with the historical revivalism that had been paramount in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a type of architecture based on the clear outward expression of the function of the building was bound to develop. The slogan “form follows function,” coined in the 1880s by one of the pioneers of modern architectural design, Louis Sullivan, and the dictum of the architect Le Corbusier “a house is a machine for living,” which dates from 1920, both state the idea uncompromisingly. The latter assertion, however, although typical of the polemical statements made in the 1920s, when the battle for a more functional approach to architecture was being most strenuously fought, was not meant literally, as other statements of Le Corbusier indicate. The supporters of Functionalism in architecture have on occasion asserted that good architecture is automatically produced by the fulfillment of practical needs; yet in this fulfillment there remain many alternatives among which the architect must choose, and such a choice may determine the difference between good and bad architecture.

Le Corbusier’s and similar statements do, nevertheless, reflect the insistence of the modern architect that the process of design begins with an analysis of the building’s function and of the best technical means of meeting it and that aesthetic character, instead of being superimposed, emerges as a part of the same process. For this reason, the emphasis on Functionalism in modern architecture implies a reunion of architecture and engineering, which had become separated in the 19th century.

THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE

The term theory of architecture was originally simply the accepted translation of the Latin term ratiocinatio as used by Vitruvius, a Roman architect-engineer of the 1st century CE, to differentiate intellectual from practical knowledge in architectural education, but it has come to signify the total basis for judging the merits of buildings or building projects. Such reasoned judgments are an essential part of the architectural creative process. A building can be designed only by a continuous creative, intellectual dialectic between imagination and reason in the mind of each creator.

A variety of interpretations has been given to the term architectural theory by those who have written or spoken on the topic in the past. Before 1750 every comprehensive treatise or published lecture course on architecture could appropriately be described as a textbook on architectural theory. But, after the changes associated with the Industrial Revolution, the amount of architectural knowledge that could be acquired only by academic study increased to the point where a complete synthesis became virtually impossible in a single volume.

The historical evolution of architectural theory is assessable mainly from manuscripts and published treatises, from critical essays and commentaries, and from the surviving buildings of every epoch. It is thus in no way a type of historical study that can reflect accurately the spirit of each age and in this respect is similar to the history of philosophy itself. Some architectural treatises were intended to publicize novel concepts rather than to state widely accepted ideals. The most idiosyncratic theories could (and often did) exert wide and sometimes beneficial influence, but the value of these influences is not necessarily related to the extent of this acceptance.

The analysis of surviving buildings provides guidance that requires great caution, since, apart from the impossibility of determining whether or not any particular group of buildings (intact or in ruins) constitutes a reliable sample of the era, any such analyses will usually depend on preliminary evaluations of merit and will be useless unless the extent to which the function, the structure, and the detailing envisaged by the original builders can be correctly re-established. Many erudite studies of antique theories are misleading because they rest on the assumption that the original character and appearance of fragmentary ancient Greek and Hellenistic architectural environments can be adequately deduced from verbal or graphic “reconstructions.” Even when buildings constructed before 1500 remain intact, the many textbooks dealing with antique and medieval theories of architecture seldom make qualitative distinctions and generally imply that all surviving antique and medieval buildings were good, if not absolutely perfect.

Nevertheless, the study of the history of architectural philosophy, like that of the history of general philosophy, not only teaches what past generations thought but can help individuals decide how they themselves should act and judge. For those desirous of establishing a viable theory of architecture for their own era, it is generally agreed that great stimulus can be found in studying historical evidence and in speculating on the ideals and achievements of those who created this evidence.

Distinction between the history and theory of architecture

The distinction between the history and theory of architecture did not emerge until the mid-18th century. Indeed, the establishment of two separate academic disciplines was not even nominal until 1818, when separate professorships with these titles were established at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Even then, however, the distinction was seldom scrupulously maintained by either specialist. It is impossible to discuss meaningfully the buildings of the immediate past without discussing the ideals of those who built them, just as it is impossible to discuss the ideals of bygone architects without reference to the structures they designed. Nevertheless, since any two disciplines that are inseparably complementary can at the same time be logically distinguishable, it may be asserted that this particular distinction first became manifest in Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce (“The Ruins of the Most Beautiful Monuments of Greece”), written in 1758 by a French architecture student, Julien-David LeRoy. Faced with the problem of discussing Athenian buildings constructed in the time of Vitruvius, he decided to discuss them twice, by treating them separately under two different headings. Before this date, “history” was of architectural importance only as a means of justifying, by reference to classical mythology, the use of certain otherwise irrational elements, such as caryatids. Even Jacques-François Blondel, who in 1750 was probably the first architectural teacher to devote a separate section of his lecture courses to “history,” envisaged the subject mainly as an account of the literary references to architecture found in antique manuscripts—an attitude already developed by the 15th-century Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti.

Athens: ErechtheumCaryatid porch of the Erechtheum, on the Acropolis at Athens.© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

The modern concept of architectural history was in fact simply part of a larger trend stimulated by the leading writers of the French Enlightenment, an 18th-century intellectual movement that developed from interrelated conceptions of reason, nature, and man. As a result of discussing constitutional law in terms of its evolution, every branch of knowledge (especially the natural and social sciences) was eventually seen as a historical sequence. In the philosophy of architecture, as in all other kinds of philosophy, the introduction of the historical method not only facilitated the teaching of these subjects but also militated against the elaboration of theoretical speculation. Just as those charged with the responsibility of lecturing on ethics found it very much easier to lecture on the history of ethics, rather than to discuss how a person should or should not act in specific contemporary circumstances, so those who lectured on architectural theory found it easier to recite detailed accounts of what had been done in the past, rather than to recommend practical methods of dealing with current problems.

Moreover, the system of the Paris École des Beaux-Arts (which provided virtually the only organized system of architectural education at the beginning of the 19th century) was radically different from that of the prerevolutionary Académie Royale d’Architecture. Quatremère de Quincy, an Italophile archaeologist who had been trained as a sculptor, united the school of architecture with that of painting and sculpture to form a single organization, so that, although architectural students were ultimately given their own professor of theory, the whole theoretical background of their studies was assimilated to the other two fine arts by lecture courses and textbooks such as Hippolyte Taine’s Philosophie de l’art, Charles Blanc’s Grammaire des arts du dessin, and Eugène Guillaume’s Essais sur la théorie du dessin.

Similarly, whereas before 1750 the uniformity of doctrine (the basic premises of which were ostensibly unchanged since the Renaissance) allowed the professor of architecture to discuss antique and 16th-century buildings as examples of architectural theory and to ignore medieval buildings completely, the mid-19th-century controversy between “medievalists” and “classicists” (the “Battle of the Styles”) and the ensuing faith in Eclecticism turned the studies of architectural history into courses on archaeology.

Thus, the attitudes of those scholars who, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, wished to expound a theory of architecture that was neither a philosophy of art nor a history of architecture tended to become highly personal, if not idiosyncratic. By 1950 most theoretical writings concentrated almost exclusively on visual aspects of architecture, thereby identifying the theory of architecture with what, before 1750, would have been regarded as simply that aspect that Vitruvius called venustas (i.e., “beauty”). This approach did not necessarily invalidate the conclusions reached, but many valuable ideas then put forward as theories of architecture were only partial theories, in which it was taken for granted that theoretical concepts concerning construction and planning were dealt with in other texts.

Distinction between the theory of architecture and the theory of art

Before embarking on any discussion as to the nature of the philosophy of architecture, it is essential to distinguish between two mutually exclusive theories that affect the whole course of any such speculation. The first theory regards the philosophy of architecture as the application of a general philosophy of art to a particular type of art. The second, on the contrary, regards the philosophy of architecture as a separate study that, though it may well have many characteristics common to the theories of other arts, is generically distinct.

The first notion (i.e., that there exists a generic theory of art of which the theory of architecture is a specific extension) has been widely held since the mid-16th century, when the artist and writer Giorgio Vasari published in his Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori italiani… (The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Painters, Sculptors and Architects…) his assertion that painting, sculpture, and architecture are all of common ancestry in that all depend on the ability to draw. This idea became particularly prevalent among English-speaking theorists, since the word design is used to translate both disegno (“a drawing”) and concetto (“a mental plan”). But its main influence on Western thought was due to Italophile Frenchmen, after Louis XIV had been induced to establish in Rome a French Academy modelled on Italian art academies.

As a result of the widespread influence of French culture in the 17th and 18th centuries, the concept of the beaux arts (literally “beautiful arts” but usually translated into English as “fine arts”) was accepted by Anglo-Saxon theorists as denoting a philosophical entity, to the point where it was generally forgotten that in France itself the architectural profession remained totally aloof from the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture until they were forced to amalgamate after the French Revolution.

This theory of fine art might not have been so widely adopted but for the development of aesthetics, elaborated after 1750. Thus, when academies of fine art were being established successively in Denmark, Russia, and England on the model of the French Academy in Rome, German philosophers were gradually asserting (1) that it was possible to elaborate a theory of beauty without reference to function (Zweck); (2) that any theory of beauty should be applicable to all sensory perceptions, whether visual or auditory; and (3) that the notion of beauty was only one aspect of a much larger concept of life-enhancing sensory stimuli.

The alternative theory (i.e., that a philosophy of architecture is unique and can therefore be evolved only by specific reference to the art of building) will be dealt with below with reference to the traditional triad usually cited in the formula coined, by the English theorist Sir Henry Wotton, in his book The Elements of Architecture, namely “commodity, firmness, and delight.”

Generally speaking, writers on aesthetics have been noticeably reluctant to use architectural examples in support of speculations as to the nature of their general theories, but references to buildings have been used in most “philosophies of art” ever since the German philosophers Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel first popularized the philosophical discipline. Kant, in his Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790; Eng. trans., Critique of Judgment, 1951), distinguished between what he termed free beauty (pulchritudo vaga) and dependent beauty (pulchritudo adhaerens). He classified architecture as dependent beauty, saying that in a thing that is possible only by means of design (Absicht)—a building or even an animal—the regularity consisting in symmetry must express the unity of the intuition that accompanies the concept of purpose (Zweck), and this regularity belongs to cognition. Nevertheless, he claimed that a flower should be classified as free beauty (where the judgment of taste is “pure”) “because hardly anyone but a botanist knows what sort of thing a flower ought to be; and even he, though recognizing in the flower the reproductive organ of the plant, pays no regard to this natural purpose if he is passing judgment on the flower by taste.” What Kant’s reaction would have been to a modern plastic imitation flower is impossible to guess, but it will readily be perceived (1) why those who, in the 19th century, accepted the notion that beauty in architecture is pulchritudo adhaerens felt such antipathy toward “shams,” (2) how the distinction between “pure art” and “functional art” (Zweckkunst) became confused, and (3) why there arose a tendency to pursue definitions of “pure beauty” or “pure art” without specifically referring to the function and structure of any particular class of beautiful or artistic objects, such as buildings.

This latter tendency was reinforced when the French philosopher Victor Cousin, writing in 1835, classified the history of philosophy under three distinct headings: the true, the beautiful, and the good. The ensuing acceptance of the idea that beauty was to be studied independently of truth and goodness produced a tendency not merely to regard beauty as something added to a building (rather than conceptually inseparable from the truth and goodness of its structure and function) but to regard beauty as limited to visual and emotional qualities.

In the first half of the 20th century, philosophers grew less dogmatic about aesthetics. But its influence on theories of architecture became stronger because of the popular view that sculpture was essentially nonrepresentational. Thus, although the assertion that “aesthetically, architecture is the creation of sculpture big enough to walk about inside” was meaningful in the 20th century, it would have seemed nonsensical to any architectural theorist living before 1900, when sculpture was invariably thought of either as representational or as a carved refinement of load-bearing wood or stone.

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE

What is Architecture History?

Architecture History is the study of architecture as it has evolved over centuries and across many different landscapes and cultures. Reaching back to the Ancient Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, Greek civilizations, and more, architectural history is a global history.

The perfect subject for students interested in a combination of art, cultural affairs, and design, Architecture History is a fundamental part of any firm architectural studies foundation and is taught at the best Architecture schools, including MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. As structures and dwellings are among the chief artifacts that any civil society leaves behind, the history of architecture is, at its essence, a history of human civilization.

The study of architectural history includes religious architecture, landscape architecture, civil architecture, naval architecture, and military architecture – each offering insight into the role of history, culture, and geography in shaping the world around us. An understanding of Architecture’s history can help those in the field execute better; even when working with modern tools like architectural design software.

Online Courses in Architecture History

Learners can pursue your interest or a degree in architecture history by signing up for introductory courses at top schools like MIT where a journey around the world from 100,000 BCE to 1,600 CE is currently being offered in the online course, Global History of Architecture.

Students with a more specialized interest can also take courses like Ancient Egyptian Architecture and the History of Chinese Architecture.

Whatever architectural history course is taken, learners will explore the history and context of the important buildings that shape various cultures, the technological advances that significantly impacted the development of their architecture, and the impact of certain cultural and religious traditions on architecture.

Jobs in Architecture History

A career in architecture history can take many different shapes. A background in architectural history is applicable to the roles of Architectural Conservator, Architecture Historian, Museum Curator, Architectural Drafter, or Architectural Specifications Writer.

Of the current positions related to Architecture History listed on Indeed.com, many offer salaries upwards of $60,000. There are more than 16,000 jobs available in general architectural fields, more than half of which carry salaries of $75,000 or more a year.

Pursue a Career in Architecture History

Architecture history tells the story of architectural studies as it has developed from the engineering genius of the ancient world to today’s most advanced tools and techniques. Consider a career or pursue an interest with an online course in architecture history today and open up a world of possibilities!

Sunday, July 12, 2020