History is a journey.
It consists of …a series of accumulated imaginative inventions-Voltaire.
In all imaginative inventions, I believe there is beauty…
From the ancient Greek and Roman to Modernism and postmodernism, there is beauty. The grand columns and huge scale of Greek architecture are the beauty in human creation and so are the wonderful interior space of domes, vaults and arches from the Roman Empire. Modernism has the eye of beauty on the truthfulness of materials, straight lines and limited tones of colors. Post modernism though looks like a rebellion in modernist’s eye has a beauty of interpreting of truth creatively. Its complexity is perhaps another form of beauty. Renaissance has beauty of the perfect symmetry and so does another rebellious Baroque, which has beauty in its playfulness of form distortion and expressive figures. In another word,
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it”- Confucius.
This manifesto is to investigate on one’s beauty, seeking it through different eyes of each period. Also where there is a good guy, there is a villain. History is likely to repeat itself and they usually come in a similar form- good guy first as a rescuer then later the smarter rebels which were mostly seen negatively by the society as being odd and breaking the rules. However, within the broken rules, there are things to be appreciated. Whether it is the process of breaking the rules, the innovative thought to overcome the rules or the wanting to just oppose the rules; there is beauty in it.
What makes us appreciate things, which are more beautiful, is the seeing of the less beautiful. And before receiving it as the more beautiful, the less beautiful used to be for once the most beautiful or the more beautiful than the previous of the previous one. In my point of view, in deed, in diversity there is beauty and there is strength- Maya Angelou
Chapter 1
Bauhaus and its beauty
In this very first lecture, we looked at Bauhaus as the first stop for modernism. We were assigned to read the book called 'From Bauhaus to our house' in which Wolfe, the writer, criticizes on the idea of avoiding external ornamentations. He believed that modern international style buildings were not appreciated much from the people who lived in them.
As a response to the book, I view modern architecture as a direct effect from political and social solution. As German at that time was crushed from the war and was humiliated from winners, the country itself and its people, in the state of a loser, possibly had to find some where in a standing point to grab. The suffocation from the collapse of economy and inflation, together with the ruins from the war brought the country down to the ground. This was probably the right moment for Gropius to say let's ‘start from the zero'. Let's all become socialists and anti-bourgeois! Beauty is the result from the longing for victory of losers.
The building Worker House, claimed to be the perfect architecture for workers, has a goal of rejecting ‘all things bourgeois’ (pg.17). Gropius and other architects such as Mies van der Rohe and J.J.P Oud as leaders were supported by Social Democrats in both Germany and Holland. In favor of the government who was trying to create a socialist society of equality and brotherhood, the building was advertised and backed up. This could be one of the factors why Gropius and his crew were so successful at redefining beauty in architecture. The question is did the workers who live there think it was beautiful? Or did they prefer something else? What is beauty anyways? is it something that please the eyes of most viewers or is it something that only please the eye of the high authorities and the well-educated?
Perhaps the beauty in this case is a result from the intellectual fashion and the right moment to be born. Due to the political and social background at that moment, it could just be a pure political tool to control the broken home people or to rebel after the lost –‘We’re independent of the bourgeois society around us!’ (Pg.18).
For modernist avant-garde, beauty is the purity and the honesty in the use of materials. For Gropius the structure needs to be expressed. This means to strip down the outer skin to show its bones or to leave it bare skin and say good-bye to false facades. Perhaps the beauty in another sense could be because it was odd at the moment - unique at the time.
Chapter 2
Contrasting beauty
To recap, this week we learnt mostly about the two architects who had different views on modern perspectives -Wright and Loos. If to describe their work in short sentences, Wright's beauty is how his buildings can create aesthetic on American landscape while Loos's beauty is anything but ornamentation. Beauty is the odd, the pride in one's self.
Towards the end of class, we watched this very fascinating movie called Metropolis by Fritz Lang, which is an expressionist futuristic film from 1927. It portrays modernistic scenes of a city in the future as modernism idea grew so fast that it might have been somewhat threatening people's life in terms of changing in living conditions.
Personally, the movie is very interesting when comparing the depiction of urbanism in the film to the real city life nowadays. Time, machines and human souls are perhaps the main key word in the movie. Working scenes are usually portrayed in a fast, rapid atmosphere where there is often a time motif represented by a clock ticking. Machines are illustrated in a gigantic and scary image. The workers in the scenes look so little when compared to the machine creating a feeling of being taken over and becoming parts of the machine instead of being its controllers.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rv_nV49S5-w/TLGSO37GA9I/AAAAAAAADSg/g7wO--qecbU/s1600/metropolis_fritz-lang1.jpg
There is a clear separation between the rich and poor almost like a utopian world verses a dystopian world. The rich living above the ground have a full satisfying life in terms of materialism and possessions. The poor live under the ground in a very bad condition, treated like parts of the machine. They are in deed the slavery of time and machinery, however have lives with hope. When talking about soul, even though, the machine dehumanizes the workers; they have their soul and faith up for the religious based story that Maria tells them. The rich in the opposite manner is almost heartless. Father Joh is perhaps a representative of the future person. With absolute power, he doesn’t care about anyone’s life and his relationship between him and his son is depicted poorly too. The son, Frederic is probably the representation of us with caring heart. Not only he connects the plot together and walks us the story, he draws attention, engaging us into the film, Without him it’d be like watching the two extreme worlds of the rich and the poor. The movie perhaps gives us a second thought of being the ones that should help changing what is coming.
Furthermore in the movie, I see some correlations between the clear class separations and the rise of the average man theory in 1840s. The theory suggests that industrial and capitalist society is changing and transforming who you really are and makes you become modules. The man versus machine becomes a controversy. The poor in the film as mentioned were dehumanized. They only work and that’s why they seem so soul-less. They actually become units and nothing else. They dress the same, walk the same and have a particular job they have to do. Maybe this is a negative feedback on the idea of everyone being equal also (modernism idea). The father, though is a controller, is under controlled by the machine and capitalism. He loses his role of being a father. I interpret that his absolute power depicts the threat of the colonial countries/ WWI winners. Bourgeois and non-bourgeois can also be noticed. The father being the bourgeois owns the mean of the production.
http://blog.timesunion.com/marshall/files/2010/09/metropolis01.jpg
Comparing to today, cutting the fact that the film is portrayed in an extreme sense, there is a connect link to many recent issues. Human are as expected a slavery of time and machine. Everything is rapid and fast. People revolves around the time, are told what to do by the clock instead of controlling it. One thing that is still far from the depiction is the definite barrier between the rich and the poor. Though the edge is still blurry, we are seeing that it’s coming. Maybe not in the small scale or as detail as the movie but in the bigger global picture, there are powers in rich countries. Bourgeois are living up high and the poor can only afford habitation down low.
For other points, there is an interesting futuristic cityscape of high-rise buildings and transportations. The buildings have simple geometric shapes. No trees. Still portraying the rush hour in city life, which is also seen today, his cityscape reminds me of the Radiant city of steel, pate glass and reinforced concrete. However it didn’t show the clear idea of housing being assigned by family size.
http://bluecrabboulevard.com/2007/10/30/welcome-to-metropolis/
One last theme that interests me on the movie is the idea of the dead, the living and eternity. The idea is presented in any different ways, questioning about what is actually dead and what is actually alive. If the living is the soul then there is no living man in the city. The rich lose their soul for capitalism and the poor lose their soul to the machine but technically they are still alive. Joh’s wife is dead in his mind but not in Rotwang’s and his wife becomes alive again but in a dead form that can live for eternity.
So beauty this week is dedicated to the aesthetic of well-played contrast and the living soul.
Chapter 3
International beauty
Continuing our journey on modernism, here comes a famous figure of all time, Le Corbusier. As modernism emphasizes on revealing the truth, honest use of materials is one of the key. "Mass and surface are the elements by which architecture manifests itself" (Corbu) Buildings' facades are nothing more than walls with holes. One of Le corbusier's design, Unite de Habitation has the entire exterior built with concrete. Noting is polished so nothing can be concealed.
Unite de Habitation (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Briey_unite_d_habitation.jpg)
His work is functionalist and socialist (influenced from the current situation/social system at the period of the time), only emphasizing on how things can be used. Anything which is not necessary will not be included in his design. For example, his roof has to be flat not only because it is a clean simple design but it also carries another task which is to serve domestic purposes like gardening or relaxation.
Villa Savoye's roof (http://www.mimoa.eu/projects/France/Poissy/Villa%20Savoye)
His pilotis are as smallest and slenderest possible. Furthermore as mentioned before that his work is socialist, Corbu tried to establish some kind of a new idea to change human living behavior. Unite de Habitation fro example, is identical on the outside. Every unit is equal on the inside suggesting the life of equality. Corbusier's support system, the pilotis, has to be spaced out regularly and precisely calculated. Economically and theoretically the idea works especially at that moment when war and great depression visited the country. The least amount of material use helped save the cost, making housing affordable. Also by making everything equal and the same, not only it controlled people's behavior but it made the city look clean and organized. However, it could be seen as being too ideal. Take La Defense for example,
La Defense (http://www.volker-goebel.biz/LaDefenseLeCorbusier.html)
Though it creates (or forces) a sense of community and clear functional zoning, the high-rise blocks for me almost anonymized the residents. Basically his design did not reduce only materials structure or the overall design but perhaps it reduced human's value and freedom too. In fact coming to think about the whole city turning into La Defense, I see the new debating issue of boring cityscape, which might tire people's eyes. The limitation of material usage- concrete and glass- must have made the building very uncomfortable to live in due to the thermal issue.
In conclusion, though Beauty for Corbu is the truth and the well-calculated figures, it is indeed disagreeable that beauty is also the extreme. There must be some point where clean functioning and appealing design meets with comfort and that where I see the perfect beauty.
Chapter 4
Beauty is simplicity and the nature.
Drawing history class even closer to me, may I begin this chapter with the comparison between the lead of this week - Mies Van De Rohe- and my one and only actor from my architectural design class - Tadao Ando…
One of the most famous works of Mies is the Barcelona Pavilion. The pure simple structure reminds me of a building called Azuma House in japan (Tadao Ando) from my architectural design class. Some of the sameness found in the two buildings is firstly the modern vocabulary embedded. They both have a simple geometric structure. Barcelona pavilion has straight lines and cubic forms with no curves. Azuma house also, no curves has straight lines and a rectangular form.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=9167050&mesg_id=9167060
http://www.arcspace.com/books/Minimalist_Architecture/minimalist_book.html
The two buildings, one for exhibition and another a s a residential unit, make use of walls. For Mies, the walls direct visitor movement, creating continuous turnabouts, not a straight-line circulation. They are used to create narrower and wider space for people to experience. While for Azuma house, Ando believed that the walls are one of the very powerful tools of division. They are used to divide space and for that sake only.
The main difference of the two buildings is the materials. Barcelona Pavilion uses exotic luxurious materials like marbles and travertine. They are well polished. The patterns on those materials are used as spatial divider and help with directing movement. In contrast, Azuma house uses a cheap manufactured material like pre-fabricated concrete, not polished to present what they truly are (real nature of material). So if it is to conclude, the materials for the pavilion are used mainly to direct people whereas for Azuma they are used to present the concept of getting in touch to the real nature. However, the two purposes are under the same modernist idea of using the materials themselves as ornaments (beautiful patterns- Barcelona Pavilion and natural beauty-Azuma).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=9167050&mesg_id=9167060
http://www.architravel.com/architravel/building/134
Furthermore, for the overall sense of openness, Barcelona pavilion is a vast open space while Azuma is an enclosed space (concrete box) which create a sense of privacy for residents who live in the busy town. The Barcelona pavilion looks as simplest as it can be with that minimal design of no enclosed wall or a clear hole for entrance. Azuma in the other hand, although the whole site is surrounded by thick concrete box, in the inside the selection of materials, together with the natural lighting effect, wider and emptier space is created (illusion to the eyes).
Lastly, the two building have similar kind of peaceful atmosphere they want to create using natural elements as tools. The Barcelona Pavilion uses water and stone to help create an ideal zone of tranquility. Azuma House uses natural materials like slate and stone along with the open courtyard design to have people get close r to nature, which would eventually make them realize the hard ship of life and have a Zen mind.
http://lab.visual-logic.com/academia/la-2101-advanced-digital-representation/project-2-0-objectdevice/
http://www.cgpinoy.org/t11809-azuma-house
Chapter 5
This week after Louis Kahn's tour of beauty in the heaviness, the poetry of light and detailed international style, we hopped into a plane heading to Paris with Jacques Tati and is movie Play time. One aspect of modernism viewed by the movie Playtime is the idea of conformity and dehumanization. Buildings and each unit in the buildings are shown to be indistinguishable with cubic shapes and straight lines, built with glass and steel.
wikipedia.com
People are conformed with similar kind of clothes, also with limited colour choice and tones. Shades of grey, blue, black and grayish white are predominant. Not only it homogenizes the people, it gives a dull machine look. In the movie, there's a scene showing that people look too much alike that they get called for wrong names
sensesofcinema.com
The dehumanization idea is shown mostly by the people's behaviours, for example, how they respond to time and the relationship between one another. In one beginning scene, people walk straight lines and turn on right angle. This robot manner presents how people are becoming less human like. Only construction workers and music lovers in the movie walk freely and naturally. This perhaps raises another discussion for class and rural vs. urban (free vs. conformed).
One of the main character, Monsieur Hulet is possibly the representation of the rural and 'us' the audience at that period of time. His character helps us see the futuristic world and the coming changes in a wider perspective as an outsider who steps back a bit and watch what was actually going on. Anything new or unnecessary in the modern society is seen as obstacles. Others (modernist people) are portrayed in a weird sense and lifelessly, noting that the freedom, the living are the nonconformity, the messiness and the human nature.
Beauty in the eye of modernists is perhaps the conformity, straight lines and similar colors but beauty for normal people is the messiness and freedom.
Chapter 6
Welcome to the new era of post-modernism! No more single meaning and straight lines and stucco white. New beauty of complexity and creativity has arrived!
"Actual lie is the suggestion of truth."
Here comes the very first villain of our history class - the rebellious post-modernism. The last two weeks we have been studying about high modernism and post-modernism. Personally I kind of like the idea of post-modernism a lot more than modernism. Derived from a criticism of modern movement in architecture, it attacks the idea of how modernists believe in the definite forms and how they do not borrow anything from the past. Post-modernism somewhat presents a smarter thought. The fact that it has a more complex, open-ended meanings -which can be understood in many different ways - together with idea assembling the present, the past and the future to make them unite, perhaps help to endure and lengthen its life on the fashion road. With this idea, it isn't in favour of one specific customer or one small group of people nor is it fixed in time and one interpretation. Since people's ways of understanding can change through time and according to their experiences, Post-modernism architecture then doesn't age with time. The creativity runs wider with the appearance of ornament and decoration, the play with pure forms and the obscure and uncertain meanings embedded behind it.
Michael Graves' work for example, it rejects the notion of the 'perfect' architectonic detail and play with all colors, methods, forms, materials available to architects. It does not have to be symmetrical which this gives interesting composition and shapes, making his buildings look unique and interesting than just following fixed forms.
NCAA Hall of champions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NCAA_Hall_of_Champions.JPG
Chapter 6
Expressionist beauty and Frank Gehry
Beauty is to become expressive, emotional and movable...
Flying through the architecture history timeline, our class has now landed on expressionist postmodernism where unusual massing, distortion of forms and symbolism are encouraged to create emotional effect and convey multiple meanings. The new movement also plays the same idea of forms follow function (modernism) but in a different sense. This time, the eyes of the beholders are not the architects but ordinary people (e.g. The Big Duck building is designed to be in a duck shape following its purpose of a duck selling house).
Among the famous expressionist postmodern architects, one very unique figure, who interested me the most, was Frank Gehry. Personally, his fish series are distinctive and notable in term of the invention of idea and belief. His buildings stand out from their surroundings and draw people's attention.
http://www.eikongraphia.com/?p=50
However, in some project like "the Fish dance restaurant in Kobe, Japan" the 'too fishy' shape of it makes it look nothing more than an enlarged version of a well-carved sculpture. It is just one big fish or in another word, it is unique but not intriguing. When compared to modernist buildings, it seems to have less thought and maybe too well defined. If possible, I would rather prefer the new peculiar idea and concern of functions of Frank Gehry but the more abstract and logical forms of modernism plus the ambiguous meanings with numerous ways of understandings from post modernism.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/03/video-frank-geh.html
Above is another Gehry's fish called the Vila Olimpica (Barcelona,Spain). This installation appears to be more attracting than the restaurant. I like the idea of how the fish is abstracted and becomes more open to interpretation. The form is more expressive, emotionally movable as it is subjective for the architect and also to the eye of viewers and it would be nice if this fish can actually becomes a living space.
‘It was by accident that I got into the fish image,’ said Gehry. ‘[In the Eighties] my colleagues were starting to replay Greek temples. That was hot, everybody was re-doing the past. I said, y’know, “Greek temples are anthropomorphic. And three hundred million years before man was fish. If you wanna, if you gotta go back, if you’re insecure about going forward, dammit, go back three hundred million years. Why are you stopping at the Greeks?” So I started drawing fish in my sketchbook. and then I started to realize that there was something in it.’
-Frank Gehry
Chapter 7
Bigness or the Problem of Large- Rem Koolhaas
The growth of population, the higher demand, and the more advance of technologies - these perhaps are the main factors that help with the contribution of the bigness. The main problem occurring is perchance the lost sense of controlling through the process of expanding and adding of programs. The design becomes scarce. There is a change in the idea. Teamwork becomes an important word. The scale of the building is very big--so big that one can no longer does it alone as Koolhaas mentioned that "Bigness means surrender to technologies; to engineers, contractors, manufactures; to politics; to others."
From my point of view, the bigness idea when looking at it economically, it answers the need of the people. It provides space, the quantity that architecture cannot do (if architecture being the uniqueness in this case). There is no way that everyone is going to get one's own unit of living on the Earth surface. Not only the land price becomes way too high to afford (because small groups of rich people are holding the power), it in fact is just not possible. Quantity as a whole may then be the good answer for this push driven by the economic forces that causes the city to loose its control. But where is the value or merit of architecture? There are no longer homes for ones' own but a city within a city for ones to share. The individuality as well as the stardom perhaps can be seen as the inevitable victims who are being killed brutally.
"Bigness no longer needs the city: it competes with the city; it represents the city; it preempts the city; or better still, it is the city."
Beauty here is the ability to answer to people's need and to use the advantage of technology...
However at the end of the day, beauty for me is still the balance between the two. Just like how Corbu could have been a bit thoughtful about his design and comfortable factors, beauty here should be the combination between demanding factor and individualism.
Chapter 8
New heroic beauty
Arriving now in the period of Romanesque. The history started to repeat itself again. Here comes a brand new rescuer of architectural history, born at the right moment to save the uncompleted dome. And from that moment on, came more heroes of the same kind and other helpers/ supporters…
Towards this Late Romanesque period came the idea of mannerism aiming for the harmonious ideals and naturalism. The question is how does it relate to humanism/human/or God?
Roman architecture was originally associated with god since the buildings were built to worship gods and goddesses. Buildings back then were built in such a grand scale to present the power of god. Such great building includes the famous Hega Sophia.
Borrowing the grandness from the Roman Empire, the Renaissance period built great buildings in the mean for Christianity.
However, because the big famous Hega Sophia was converted to Mosque by Ottoman Empire, the pope wanted to create a building that is as grand as Hega Sophia and dedicated it to the God - Again Beauty is the result from the longing for victory of losers.
The tools used to create the sense of grandness and sacredness are the square centrally planned building, use of domes, arches, and grand interior space, square centrally plan. The use of human proportion was also introduced. Later the sacred shifted to the profane as domestic buildings with the same square plan were built.
Beauty is the uniqueness, the avant-garde. Beauty is the ability to play with the past.
Chapter 9
Baroquen beauty
Anyone standing in a way of a hero is a villain even though s/he may be better. Baroque is second villain star of our history class...
From the most previous class, we explored the world of the "baroquen". it is clear that the history has been repeating itself over and over again - one period of new invention of style then coming with it, the period of deformation, contradicting, rebelling the previous idea.
To clarify my statements, the first example would be Modernism and is enemy, Post Modernism. While Mies was experiencing the pure geometric forms made out out of the factory made materials- glass, steel, concrete and stucco, the UN studio broke the rule (international style) by creating Villa NM.
http://www.e-architect.co.uk/chicago/farnsworth_house.htm
http://archidose.blogspot.com/2008/02/un-studios-villa-nm-destroyed-in-fire.html
Absurdly, the form is an extruded box with twisted point in the middle and curved surfaces. Though, it is also wrapped with a taut skin like Mies's creations, the skin is made differently of earth -coloured spray- on concrete and mirrored glass.
The similar way of rebelling is approached by Baroque architects- deriving from the disobedient thought of the new style, in this case, the Renaissance. On clear example is Bramente's Tempietto and Michelangelo's buildings. The perfect symmetry and the ideal depiction of Vitruvian ideology is baroque. There are uses of animated figures, bending and distorting of forms creating a play in perspective. Life is added in Michelangelo's architecture. Walls and facades became places for expression like the Church of St. Vincent for example.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/architecture/style_level4.php?area=0&ext=.jpg&id=262&object=168&parent=257
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/artwork/michelangelo-buildings6.htm
Well beauty in this sense is perhaps the ability to rebel logically and pleasingly, absurdly but meaningful.
In conclusion, history indeed repeats itself. There’s a hero, there's a villain and who are the heroes, who are the villains depend upon the viewers. And again to restate my point;
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
