« The
relationship between abstract art and Modernist architecture was
particularly strong in the early twentieth century. Many painters
paid homage to architectural principles in their abstract
compositions. Some, such as Kazimir Malevich in works he called
architectonics, went so far as to experiment with three-dimensional
extrapolations of ideas first explored in paintings.
A number of artistic
groups and movements evolved around the formation of polytechnic
schools, which taught the integration of art, architecture, and
design. The most famous of these was the Bauhaus, founded in Weimar,
Germany in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius. His design for the
school s buildings in Dessau (constructed in 1926), a series of
interlocking geometric forms around a central matrix, embodies the
transformation of an abstract, planar composition into a functioning,
three-dimensional form. One of the great landmarks of the twentieth
century, Gropius' Bauhaus buildings exemplify the primary tenets of
Modernist architecture: the celebration of industrial materials and
construction techniques, and the banishing of ornament and
handcrafted elements in favor of a sleek, machinelike aesthetic. »
http://artnetweb.com/abstraction/architec.html
 |
| With Mondrian, gone were the references to nature, the city was to inspire us, this inserts itself in an intellectual evolution towards abstraction, Mondrian himself experienced too |
Following
this postmodernist architecture in America tried insertion of
ornaments with the likes of Venturi and the New York V,
Postmodernity in architecture is said to be heralded by the return of
"wit, ornament and reference" (to recall Dennise
Scott-Brown) to architecture in response to the formalism of the
International Style of modernism. As with many cultural movements,
some of Postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas can be seen
in architecture. The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of
the modernist style are replaced by diverse aesthetics: styles
collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing
familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects
rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural
elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building
which had been abandoned by the modern style.
Since
the 1990's certain architects have been demonstrating a position
inbetween these, the ornament exists, and it's signification aswell,
as I said in a previous post, the ornament has went from a conversion
to a conversation. We can also note that the modern concept of
abstraction has interested these architects.
So
from here on we can ask ourselves, how does this abstraction manifest
itself ? And what may have caused it ?
A
possible answer, is Gottfried Semper, conteporary architects seem to
have re-started where Semper left. For Semper adorning to « impose
a natural order to the object » and the buildings become an
extension of the natural order. Adornment, or « bekleidung »
in german was first introduced in his four elements, the adorned wall
is the « Gewänd » . In Semper's theoretical work
the
Indeed,
during an era increasingly suffused by the mechanical replication of
historicist ornament, Semper’s theoretical valuation of functional
form is prophetic of developments that emerge in the next fifty
years. It is no accident that in the first decades of the twentieth
century, August Schmarsow would still invoke Semper when describing
the formal principles (Gestaltungsprinzipien) of ornament in terms of
proportionality, symmetry, and direction. Perhaps Semper’s greatest
contribution was the transformation of the ornamental artifact into
an experimental model by which the architect, theorist, or historian
can test a number of alternative.
 |
| Ricola Center - Photographed by Thomas Ruff |
Ricola
Europe's new factory building is located at an idyllic wooded site
between the Rhine-Rhone Canal and the river Ill on the southern edge
of the city of Mulhouse. The building is to be used simultaneously as
a factory and for storage. Its simple hall with flexible floor plan
divisions offers the perfect solution.
The building’s form recalls a cardboard box lying on the floor with open flaps. The cantilevered extending roofs on the two long sides open up both to the landscape and to the entrance and loading areas for fork lifts and transport vehicles, as well they create shade and weather protection. The short sides of the factory building are each closed by a black concrete wall. Water from the roof runs down over these black concrete walls and trickles into a deep bed of Alsatian gravel. The water running down the walls forms a fine film of plant life; a natural drawing ensues.
Both long walls are light walls providing the work area with constant, pleasantly filtered daylight. Light filtering occurs through printed translucent polycarbonate façade panels, a common industrial building material. Using silkscreen, these panels are printed with a repetitive plant motif based on photographs by Karl Blossfeldt. The effect the panels have on the interior can be compared to that of a curtain – textile-like – that creates a relationship to the sites trees and shrubs. Viewed from outside, the translucent printed panels on the façade and the extended roof again recall textiles – the lining of a dress or the inner padding of a box. If daylight diminishes, the printing is barely visible from outside and the material of the façade panels becomes much stronger. Their surfaces then seem rather closed and smooth, and their expression becomes more like that of the buildings concrete side walls.
Semper's
theory is at work here, in two ways. First of all the main facade,
the leaves, taken from Blossfeldts photographs. The photographs from
Blossfeldt have a common interest with Sempers search with the
origins of forms, where Semper demonstrates mathematically an Almond,
Blossfledt question the origins of the shapes of nature, noting that
those are never regular. The leaf facade is in Semperian terms a
« Gewand » it erases the arbitrary divisions between
nature and art, between nature and art, between the « Mauer »
as an opaque element, and a « Mauer » as a « Gewand »,
a thick transparent Gewand. The second element on the building to
recieve these neo-romantic distinctions between nature and culture is
the side concrete wall that leave the rain fall down, letting the
action of water « draw » this facade.
The
ornament is also technical, indeed buildings like the Ricola
Building, or the concrete Sgraffiti technique we talked about in the
Eberswalde library demostrates exactly this, in Nottingham Caruso St
John were selected to design Nottingham’s new Centre for
Contemporary Art through an international competition in 2004. The
artistic ambition of the project, encompassing object based visual
art and time based performance art, has its origins in the artist run
spaces of down town New York in the late 1960s, and in the work of
artists like Gordon Matta Clark and Trisha Brown, whose work was
directly engaged with the spaces of the city. The site for the new
building is in a part of central Nottingham called the Lace Market,
whose history and built form has parallels with the cast iron
district of New York, giving the Centre a loose cultural connection
to its site. In our design, we set out to offer a wide range of
interiors that will have the variety and specificity of the found
spaces of a factory or warehouse, within a new building: rooms that
will challenge the installation and production of contemporary art
and offer new ways for performers and audiences to interact.
The exterior of the
Centre takes its inspiration from the amazing 19th century buildings
of Nottingham, and in particular, from the impressive façades of the
Lace Market. Once the heart of the
world's lace industry during the days of the British Empire, it is
full of impressive examples of 19th century industrial architecture
and thus is a protected heritage area. It was never a market in the
sense of having stalls, but there were salesrooms and warehouses for
storing, displaying and selling the lace.
Caruso&St-John's strategy was an austere, almost industrial building, that dared
kitsch, not wit. In EL-CROQUIS, Adam Caruso claims that he is never
scared of doing a kitsch building, and with it's golden elements, the
architects demonstrate a certain stance and courage. But what is also
interesting is in-between these golden elements, the « lace
face », it typically is an abstraction of Nottingham's context,
the ornament here has phenomenological aspect, from close we see it
differently than from far away, again, like in previous posts, the
adornment is extremely modest. To finish on the Nottingham
contemporary, the architects, in many projects want to affirm the
facade, the strength of the wall.
With such technical
feats, one last question has yet to be answered, are we ornamenting
buildings, or building ornaments?
In my next post, I will dive into historical reasons that could have caused this evolution of ornaments.
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www.artnetweb.com/abstraction/architec.html
www.carusostjohn.com/
www.herzogdemeuron.com/
Carrie Asmann : Ornament and Motion
Valery Didelon : Learning from Las Vegas - La controverse
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