Introduction
The following thesis takes six leading architects of the 20th century, discussing eight key projects designed throughout a thirty year period spanning from 1950-1980. Represented as a series of eight chapters, each chapter contains the analysis of a singular project, investigating the architect’s beliefs and ideologies impact on the ‘centrally disposed plan’.
While also considering how their treatment of various elements such as context, society, materiality, & light can add to the impact and presence of a design, these projects display an over-riding theme. Despite differing ideologies, functions and contexts these projects are designed ultimately with the users in mind.
Presence & Place
Gertrude Stein’s anology ‘is there a there there’ represents the ideology of the middle thing accurately. The comment originating as a reaction to the city of her childhood, Oakland. ‘The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn't any there there’, Stein refers to the lack of presence of place, that there is no real feeling of arrival in Oakland. It has no character or personality unlike some of the iconic European cities we know and love today – Dublin with its red brick cliffs bars, restaurants & Georgian squares, Rome with its narrow winding streets, espresso bars and piazzas, or Paris with its angular wide streets, art, fashion and its extensive volume of street cafes. All these things create a character and presence within a place that people can resonate with.
Similar to compelling cities and streets have character and presence, compelling buildings need to contain a character and presence, a binding element that elevates the perception someone feels when inhabiting a place. The projects investigated in this thesis not only epitomise the ability to find common ground between society, culture & function but contain a unifying element within that the public and users can resonate with.
The Middle Thing
There is a natural organisation to something revolving around a middle thing present all around us. The purpose of the egg white is not only to provide additional nutrients for the growth of the yolk but also to form a protective layer between hard shell and yolk. In atoms the electrons are present in order to balance the positive charge of the atom. Hans Scharoun alludes to the natural process of a crowd forming around a busker, Romans created the great coliseum for the entertainment of its citizens, still evident today in sports fans visiting their chosen team on match day or music fans travelling to see their favourite musicians. All of these encapsulate the essence of the middle thing, a binding element or natural structuring in which the life of something revolves around on the periphery influencing and aiding the life of the middle itself.
The essence of a project is born out of need and place, which form the DNA of a project. It is the role of an architect as translator in order to take the ingredients of culture, place, society and need in parallel with their own beliefs in order to create a building that contains a presence, a unifying element that elevates the experience of the user and serves as an extension to its place and community.
Drawing Ideals
Charles ‘ Edouard Jeanneret better known as Le Corbusier was the primary figure of the modern movement in the early to mid 20th century. His social agenda soon evolved into an international style, not one of unification but one that was filled with variations and contradictions. It became more of a collection of movements with modern architects rejecting the ornamental excesses of previous times, finding clarity in primal forms and geometric shapes that expressed the rapid changes in technology and society. Beliefs in simplicity, the implementation of expressed structure and clean lines all embraced an architectural idealistic and buildings quickly became objects of personal ideologies.
Plans became a direct communication of these personal ideologies that seeked to prove and demonstrate rational information. They were the most dominant design tool at that time and remain today one of the key tools employed by architects to convey their own ideologies. Plans represent an easy method of expressing ideas of proportion and spatial relationships; they indicate how rooms and building functions may relate to both one another and the whole, express the simplicity or complexity in a project, aswell as represent the goals and spatial treatment of a scheme. The plan represents the DNA of a scheme in which a three dimensional built reality cannot be realised without.
Ideologies
Le Corbusier a pioneer of the modern movement developed an ideology which revolved around five key points. The first being and most influential is the employment of ‘pilotis’ or load bearing columns, free design of the ground floor plan, free design of the facade, horizontal windows and finally roof gardens. The freedom created by these key points allowed Le Corbusier to manipulate vast amounts of light, air and space. Le Corbusier was obsessed with the technological developments of the time. Mass production was an attractive prospect leading to Corbusier’s development of the Dom-ino house. He envisioned the Dom-ino house as the first mass produced home, envisioned to be layed out as a series of terraces with facades and partition walls to be freely applied based on the needs of the owner. The Dom-ino house epitomises Le Corbusiers ideology, offering ultimate flexibility & movement.
‘Space is made architectural when the evidence of how it is made is seen and comprehended’ ‘ Louis Kahn, Architectural Forum, October 1957. Louis Kahn’s ideology grew out of a love for the pure expression of geometry and materiality. Three projects are investigated as part of this thesis to highlight a clear development in his position regarding centrally disposed plans. Kahns obsession for geometrical order alongside the expression of materiality, structure and light is coupled with the idea of assembly. His projects express a deep understanding of place, program & culture creating a rich dynamic with ideas of assembly.
At a time in Finland of major reconstruction and urbanism after the devastation of towns and villages during world war two, Alvar Aalto stood as a father figure to Scandinavian architecture at a time of rediscovery; he did not operate within a distinct style but believed in the application of a more humanist philosophy. His buildings are designed to work as intermediaries between human life and the natural landscape, emphasizing the importance designing for community and society. Differing to the strict geometric ideas employed by Louis Kahn, Alvar Aalto heavily emphasizes the need of designing to place ‘ loci, allowing the form to arise out of climatic conditions of place while also expressing ideas of local craft & culture.
In comparison to Alvar Aalto’s of form arising from place Hans Scharoun was a functionalist. Often designing from the inside out, Scharoun believed the form should arise freely from the internal functions, trying strongly to rely on the organic nature of the program to spatially organize itself. His architectural ideals were both ambitious and humanistic always attempting to find the essence of a brief and provide a solution that magnifies the user’s experience. While still expressing the need for buildings to fit into their surroundings organically it is about maximising the connections between people and function.
Forming a unique set of architectural beliefs during the height of the modern movement, British Architect James Sterling was regarded as a non conformist. Drawing from a wide range of references and influences from Le Corbusier, the Italian Renaissance all the way to Russian Constructivism, Sterling subverted the compositional and theoretical ideas of the modern movement to a large degree. Within Sterlings work he always seeked to associate people with their cultural past taking historical elements and reinterpreting them in order to provide the opportunity for the user to empathise with the past. Believing that buildings indicate and display the use and life of its occupants he was a functionalist to a degree always citing historical references.