Xe SA |

ox EX LIBRIS 2K
xEA
TAS NEW YORK INSTITUTE aAEN
LS,

OF TECHNOLOGY ine

SCIENCE
TECHNOLOGY
HUMANITIES
Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and the Road to Modern
Architecture

Contemporary architectural theory emphasizes the importance of “tectonics,” the

term used to articulate the relationship between construction, structure and archi-
tectural expression. Despite the term’s currency, little consideration has been given
to its origins or historical significance. In his study, Werner Oechslin examines the
attempts by early modern theoreticians of architecture to grapple with the rela-
tionship between appearance and essence, which is crucial to the discourse of
tectonics. Referring to the writings of Karl Bétticher, Gottfried Semper, Otto
Wagner and Adolf Loos, Oechslin follows this development from theories of a
Classical architecture without columnar orders to a Modern architecture uphold-
ing the “truth” of its own architectural expression. Oechslin locates the culmina-
tion of this discourse in the work of Adolf Loos and in Le Corbusier's frequent
references to Ancient Greece as the precedent of Modern architecture’s honesty.
This volume includes an anthology of primary texts by several theorists published
in English for the first time.

Werner Oechslin is professor of art history and architecture at ETH Ziirich

(Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) since 1985, where he directs the
Institut gta (Institute for history and theory of architecture). He was the editor of
Daidalus and he founded the Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin in Einsiedeln.
Lynnette Widder is an independent architect in New York and is a visiting
professor at the Rhode Island School of Design.
 ar)

e
i.

z
a 2

by A P r oi “d c rf py Fre's

a
; TBF, ‘wing
wih iol ¢

'
’ a3 a

a
te i bes ett : 4 anes? » ict = Teer ry ceoet

orl iA ia pe
i '
| |
oul
' ’ 7 ‘i ccc -t) oe ers 2 oat
F 2

|
: a lienl

Sia ial listens idiitoe3

1 130
: eo ‘ . : git a! porte Marre yes |

——— j . y 7h Lye 7 Aira Praty bay ciel oeache

air At f oe en sige SW SUING, Ur y4reaard 3 cant quest Twi ais

a3) opi

’ oe c ; y anlicad 3iy tet. la toteu: 2 _ es Raph ae anal oe

oad

ra’ : Ait? ere go> Tibet) Aneta ee eA. patentee wa

7 = 76 ailuset! isin sriiatey ras é i ay? tind thie) iced eae.

| i aber =a0et Hiren vetolvi: a it vtoiiract sa aigina Hii sate ahaa:

_ es eihndina
eltFrac wit fiat veskeyiyre lusuizaaraen nt ae epee
fig? 4Sk taric old Gobi Hy atv al
seinepr patna SS a
—) dP attvettin firalakt 1panshegicsng ily gee ail oe

ce gneciasnrt linvei-ra wiley quay Re a

: ~~ =
a : ~ : a2 7
a — _ | .
oem :

a 48 0 ee ree
" zi»Eee 4
Cada a st peter oe |
_
_ vee are =9 -0

a Laie ar Galt
till ons SaapieCae
ia si @ = Ve BS ’

re |
aA Sater
: 7
oe
Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and the
Road to Modern Architecture

Werner Oechslin
ETH Zurich (Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich)

Translated by

Lynnette Widder

= CAMBRIDGE
ay UNIVERSITY PRESS
 PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Rd., Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcén 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

~ http://www.cambridge.org A & A MANHATTAN LIBRARY

Ay gn
© English language translation Cambridge University Press 2002 MPRE o7
© Werner Oechslin 1994
,
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception :
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, b0 >
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press. /
Copy,
First published by gta/Ernst & Sohn Verlag g
ETH-Honggerberg, Zurich in 1994.

First English edition published 2002

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typefaces Adobe Garamond 11.5/15 pt. and Futura System DeskTopPro,,x [Bv]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Oechslin, Werner.
Wagner, Loos, and the road to modern architecture / Werner Oechslin, Lynnette Widder.
p- cm.
Includes bibliographical references and itidex.
ISBN 0-521-62346-4 (hb)
1. Architecture — Philosophy. 2. Architecture - Composition, proportion, etc.
3. Architecture, Modern — 19th century. 4. Architecture, Modern — 20th century. 5. Wagner,
Otto, 1841-1918 — Criticism and interpretation. 6. Loos, Adolf, 1870-1933 — Criticism and
interpretation. I. Widder, Lynnette. I. Title.
NA2500 .042 2001
724'.5—dc21 2001035029
ISBN 0 521 62346 4 hardback

Publication of this book has been made possible, in part,

by a grant from Pro Helvetica, the Arts Council of Switzerland.
Contents

Preface page vii

1 Introduction 1

On the Problem of Accessing and of Reassessing Modern

Architecture in a Broader Cultural Context 3

On the Internationalism of Otto Wagner and the Wagner School.

Wagner’s Identification with the Zeitgeist and with the
Development of Modern Architecture. Wagner’s Highly
Developed Consciousness of Time and of Temporal Processes of
Development 13

2 Wagner, Loos, and the Road to Modern Architecture 2

The Opposite of the Issue of Style: Necessity, Unity, Immanent
Coherence, the Naked, Simple and True oF.

“Tectonics” and the “Theory of Raiment” 44

Disenchantment with “Bétticher’s Overly Intellectual Work” and

the Postulation of a Way to Overcome the “Semperian
Mechanistic Conception of the Essence of Art” 64

“Stilhiise und Kern” — From Theory to Metaphor and Its

Application to the Work of Otto Wagner 83
Adolf Loos — Against the Zeitgeist i?
“...ad usum Delphini” — The “Elemental Event” of the Raiment
Dissolved, and the Ineluctable Return — or Recognized Tenacity —
of the Hull 120

3 Plates th)

4 Anthology of Primary Sources 17%

Index 261
 onion

4 nt al)

a ram or

sii ved ra ‘ A a ot ft
eee —
te ‘

; byads cpa ae a
AMA te
in! Pe
OS eee .

is

yj fuze

e
He jttin Sai thSeeds o
/ i rok
a nan! "
Preface

For Anja, Anna and Luca

Stilhiilse and Kern — “stylistic hull” and “kernel”: it was Joseph Bayer who couched
this metaphor in precisely these terms. In his 1886 essay entitled “Moderne
Bautypen” (Modern building types), Bayer predicted that architecture’s future
development would be predicated upon the liberation of the healthy kernel from
its hull. He wrote, “... then, certainly, the beautifully ornamented historical
stylistic hulls will fracture away; they will disappear forever and the new kernel
will emerge naked and clear in the sunlight.” Thus, an image was coined that
would enjoy the greatest popularity. Even after the hull had been discarded, the
image was still implicit in Le Corbusier’s definition of architecture as “jeu savant,
correct et magnifique des volumes assemblés sous la lumiére.” At the time of the
metaphor’s first usage, however, Otto Wagner's architecture was still encased in a
hull of columns and pilasters, which would shortly be replaced by hulls in the
“Zopf” and “Empire” manner, as the Secession was often called. In this respect,
the image of a kernel that is slowly liberated from its hull seems to suit Wagner
and the Wagner school. This correspondence between image and work seems
especially appropriate because Wagner saw himself as the corporealization of the
Zeitgeist and therefore as a vessel of contemporaneous developments. As if he had
intended to realize Bayer’s vision, he wrote, “That emerging style, which will
represent us and our time, which is built upon the basis described, requires for its
further development much the same preconditions as that which precedes it.” In
the same passage, he envisions the goal of this development: “Our fast-lived
century also yearns to achieve this goal more quickly than has been the case
previously; and thus, the world will achieve that goal soon, much to its own
surprise.” In 1914, the analogous passage in Baukunst unserer Zeit (Architecture
of our era) reads, “and thus, the world has already achieved that goal, much to its
own surprise.” According to his own interpretation, Otto Wagner had participated
in this development through to its culmination. His biographer Josef August Lux
would characterize this process as the working through of decisive positions — the
Schinkelesque, the Semperesque, and his own, the Wagneresque. In Lux’s account,
Wagner has come to represent the quintessence of an architectural evolution.
In the evaluation of any such developments, the relative position of the judge
is, admittedly, of considerable significance. The Wagneresque “Demands of the
Present” remain current, but they shift along with the gaze focused upon them.
 For Strzygowski, Wagner is still a “master of disguise” (Verkleidungskiinstler) even
after the Post Office Savings Bank. Such judgments were appropriate to that time,
in which everyone could grasp the fittingly popular issues of fashion and dress
(Kleidung). In 1922, Wagner’s later biographer, Hans Tietze, extended this meta-
phoric image beyond Wagner’s original usage, an image that can be identified
with the radical purging of all “insignificance” (Unwesentliches) by means of an
“elementary event” (Elementarereignis). Tietze’s postulate counterposes universal
validity to “the momentary preference for Modernity” (Augenblicksvorzug der
Modernitat), as Wagner would have meant it. At the same time, Tietze sets an
ideal endpoint in opposition to progress. His adaptation of this metaphor seems
even more suited to Adolf Loos’s radical position, even if Loos, the so-called
negator (Verneiner) of Vienna — according to Karl Marilaun — did his best from
the outset to exclude himself from this highly plausible genealogy — and its
seemingly persuasive endpoint. Loos is closer to a theoretical tradition that must
have seen the image of hull and kernel as an inadmissible reduction and restriction
of a much more essential and fundamental question. The decisive point is the
immanent necessity of coherence, the unity between content and form, which is
conjoined to the demand for “decorum” (Sittlichkeit), as Schinkel used the term.
According to Loos, “Modern” is anything that does not call attention to itself.
Whatever does the opposite — for example, the products of the German Werkbund
— is “superfluous.” The “saddler” makes Modern saddles without knowing what
Modern is. In these statements of 1898, Loos is almost ostentatiously close to
Semper. Loos speaks not only about the “hull” but also about “raiment.” Behind
the “Theory of Raiment” (Bekleidungstheorie), which had been appropriated by a
variety of interpretations even to the point of ill repute, Loos seems to have found
a “principle of raiment” in a higher sense, much as Semper had in 1860. Bot-
ticher’s 7ektonik (1844) was even earlier and focused precisely on the topic of a
work’s immanent coherence. It described this coherence in such terms as “the
kernel form and the artistic form” (Kern- und Kunstform), as well as by a number
of variations, such as “volumetric form” (Kérperform), “kernel schema” (Kern-
schema), “schema of the structural organization” (Schema der struktiven Organi-
sation) and, of course, “ornamental hull” (Ornamenthiille). All these concepts
were, however, always channeled into the indispensable “totality of the work, as if
developed from one single formal organism.”
In truth, the metaphor of hull and kernel comprised much more than an
apparently highly plausible explanation of the act of “disrobing,” an act greatly
desired by the proponents of “naked” Modern architecture. At stake here was not
only the tendency toward disrobing but also the theoretical foundations of that
tendency and their claim to suprahistorical validity. These stakes are expressed in

Vili
the axiomatic search for the “true kernel.” But many factors must be taken into
account here, including the deviating interpretations and misinterpretations and
the inadmissible truncations that resulted in a new set of misinterpretations. And,
inasmuch as the Classical architecture theoretical issues — such as immanent
coherence, “necessity,” and “truth” — recur constantly, even these developments
do not occur as would be expected. But how, for example, should the fulfillment
of a demand for “immanent unity” — a unity dependent upon the correspondence
between interior and exterior — be demonstrated once the historical raiment has
been discarded? Or once the “outward form” (Erscheinungsform) of Modern archi-
tecture has been achieved, but the disappearance of decoration has made the most
direct explanation, hull and kernel, obsolete? Recognition that the hull and kernel
metaphor became reality at a specific historical moment is by no means adequate.
It is more interesting to study the intersections between this quasi-theoretical
universal formula and more penetrating positions in older or more recent intellec-
tual models and theories of architecture, aesthetics and art history. Not only is the
external hull disparaged from the Modernist standpoint, for example, but it had
been subjected to clear and, in many cases, restrictive rules even earlier. Carlo
Lodoli writes: “Nessuna cosa si dee mettere in rappresentazione che non sia anche
veramente in funzione.” This statement could be understood as an extreme version
of the “precepts of character” (Charakterlehre), tailored according to “decorum”
(Angemessenheit), as related to “use character” (Zweckcharakter). By the same
token, it could be read “functionalistically” or, in an Italian context, “rationalisti-
cally.” Of course, the image of the hull and kernel is, directly or indirectly, bound
to this precondition, recognized quite early on as a demand for the “decorous” (in
the assumption of sittlich) which dictated the correspondence of interior and
exterior. It is precisely at this juncture that the two branches of art historical
thought — the systematic, demanding immanent coherence, and the mimetic,
predicated on internal correspondence or analogy — are reciprocal. (Both thoughts
are bound to each other in Bétticher’s 7ektonik.) Such theoretical questions in
architecture may be traced to more general philosophical theses, for example,
those formulated by I. P. V. Troxler in his Blicke in das Wesen der Menschen
(Insights into the essence of human beings) (Aarau, 1812). His postulates associ-
ated internal and external with past and present, parallel to the metaphor of hull
and kernel: “It is a strange reversal that the tendency of life seems, on the one
hand, to be focused from the external toward the internal and from the past to
the future; and on the other, from the internal to the external and from the future
to the past.” It is, however, more important that theoreticians, architects and
historians brought such images or philosophical theses as these to bear concretely
upon architectural issues. Thus, it is not only the concepts themselves, but also
their shades of difference and values — including all their implicit and ineluctable
contradictions — that could influence these precepts. In the mid-seventies, when
Philip Johnson built an “empty” facade, a “billboard,” across Fifth Avenue from
the Metropolitan Museum, moral outrage and protest was heard from all quarters.
This episode merely revealed the deep-seatedness of architectural theory’s eternal
demand, echoed by Schinkel, Botticher and Semper in their concept of the
(“decorous”) basis for architectural “artistic form” (Kunstform). The consequences
of the concept “decorum,” whose exegeses and evolution blossomed into the
“precepts of character” in the eighteenth century, are far-reaching. This tradition
is accompanied by the demand that architecture be explicable or grounded, a
demand respected by Otto Wagner. Wagner accords this grounding such attributes
as “logical” and “consistent,” thereby reinforcing the Classical definition of theory
as a descriptive entity (“ratiocinatio,” “explicatio,” “discorso,” “discours”). That a
demand of this magnitude can not always be met is obvious in the common
tendency to interject theory in the form of a reductive image, such as the meta-
phor of stylistic hull and kernel. This image’s strength rests in its particularly
plausible (if vague) character and its proximity to practice. Its theoretical ambigu-
ity also facilitates the evocation of other associated thoughts. In the case at stake
here, these associations include the discourse of (pure) volumes propounded by
the branch of art theory that drew upon “psychologically oriented factors,” as in
the work of August Schmarsow. Also included is the aesthetic of volumetrics
(Baumassendsthetik), which aligns the theoretical positions of the eighteenth cen-
tury with those of Modernism. The image of stylistic hull and kernel was, in
contrast, apparently so familiar to the architectural culture of that era that many
architects — not only Bayer and Tietze — made extensive use of it. Otto Wagner’s
development, which attracted considerable attention even outside of Vienna, both
before and after 1900, was understood as paradigmatic and exemplary.
This study is predicated on this basic interest — in contrast to Giedion’s
postulation of Wagner’s “isolation” — and particularly on the capacity of the hull-
and-kernel metaphor to provide insight into the avant-garde account of Modern-
ism’s abrupt break with history. Its publication followed a seminar on Wagner and
Loos held at the Free University of Berlin in 1979, as well as several lectures and
an article entitled “Contro lo storiografia della ‘tabula rasa’” (Rassegna, 1979/5)
that was based upon these considerations as well as on the paradigm formulated
by Joseph Bayer. This study first appeared in the form of a far too brief essay,
“The Evolutionary Way to Modern Architecture: The Paradigm of Stilhiilse and
Kern,” published in the proceedings of a colloquium on Wagner sponsored by the
Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in 1988 (Otto Wagner.
Reflections on the Raiment ofModern Architecture, edited by H. F. Mallgrave, Santa
Monica, 1993). The author asks for the readet’s patience when he cites other texts
of his own in the introduction. His intention is to set the thoughts and consider-
ations described here in a broader context of similar or similarly inclined studies,
as part of a progressive work subject to constant flux and to the process of
teaching. This intention arises from the desire to treat this complex of issues not
only as a historically contained topic that can, accordingly, be studied in isolation
but also as a means to participate in the difficult and ever-shifting process of
evaluating recent architectural history, even admitting the influence of current
conditions. The fact that intellectual effort is called for here need not be empha-
sized. It must be equally clear that, above all, a critical rapprochement with the
scholarship already completed — especially the theoretical models such as those
developed by Bétticher, Semper or Schmarsow — should also be part of this effort.
This is a difficult path to follow, and its course cannot be foreseen, especially if
the matter at hand is to describe the advantages of a plausible metaphor. None of
this implies, however, an acceptance of any and every arbitrarily shortened and
apostrophized “theory,” including “soft/hard architecture” — all incapable of sur-
viving beyond a brief season of fashion in New York. This is precisely the reason
that Stilhiilse and Kern can be discussed only against the background of an all-
encompassing theoretical framework. It is troubling to see that the title blocks of
current periodicals are again full of hulls, as if the mere announcement of their
liberation at an academic level could suffice. In any case, it cannot be the goal of
a work such as this one to appeal to the “hasty reader” or the “hasty thinker” who
eschews the complexities of the underlying theory only to be duped by the
metaphor.
If only on this basis, the following study cannot be a history of the relationship
between hull and kernel, or even less so a positivistic history of the evolution of
“kernel form” (Kernform) to an architectural form in its own right. Instead, the
focus is on the forms of thought, their adjudications and points of orientation,
their contradictions and incompatibilities. Any attempt to ignore the inconsisten-
cies of an image such as Stilhiilse and Kern and to read it on only one level — for
example, on the level of construction (which, according to Otto Wagner, is
supposed to develop into “artistic form” [Kunstform]) — would necessarily lead
only to an arbitrary and, finally, a tendentious reduction of historical perspective.
In this sense, no continuous “tectonic culture” exists. The reduction of such a
study to a position located in the intersection between construction and tectonics
would at most reinforce the “Modernist prejudice.” The prospect of measuring
the history of technology and applied material against the scale of “material truth”
is no longer attractive. The need to broaden the perspective on this issue might
be proven by citing Loos, that there is no technical culture. There is only culture,

xi
 one culture. In culture, technology plays its role, along with other, different models
that serve to unlock this and related problems in architecture. It is essential that
Bétticher speaks of “tectonics” and Semper, of the “principle of raiment and
encrustation”: both were trying, at least in part, to answer the same questions. At
the moment, research on Semper is enjoying great favor. This is especially true of
the theoretical work. Since Wolfgang Herrmann’s efforts made the handwritten
theoretical work accessible, this seed has fallen on fertile soil, especially in America,
where Mallgrave’s monograph has been recently published. It is likely that this
renewed interest will lead to a new evaluation of the broad field of German
architectural and art historical theory in the nineteenth century. The manner in
which this work will proceed remains to be seen. The author has, of course, drawn
upon the standard works on Wagner and Loos, although they are quoted only
infrequently here. These include the large monographs on Wagner by Otto-
Antonia Graf (Vienna, 1985) and on Loos by Burkhardt Rukschcio and Roland
Schachel (Salzburg and Vienna, 1982). The author thanks these scholars and all
his intellectual precursors. Anyone who writes about topics such as these naturally
wishes to fulfill the demand Graf made in the first volume of his comprehensive
catalogue of Wagner’s work. His aspiration was to participate in the “work of
scholarly reconsideration” and not merely to portray a “sex and crime story of
turn-of-the-century Vienna.” Roland L. Schachel’s comment, in the catalogue of
the large Loos exhibition mounted in 1989/1990, is not only a challenge but also
an encouragement: “There is still much to discover about Loos.”
The author thanks his readers who participated during the short production
period of the manuscript: Anja Buschow-Oechslin; Sabine Felder and Verena
Rentsch; the editorial staff of the gta Institute, Verena Rentsch and Philippe
Mouthon; and Helmut Geisert of the publishing house Ernst & Sohn in Berlin,
who incorporated this book and its series into his publication program. Parallel to
the publication of this book, an exhibition of the same name provided the
illustrations and visual examples of the concepts probed here. For their support
and assistance in acquiring the images, I thank Dr. Renate Kassal-Mikula (Histo-
risches Museum der Stadt Wien), Universitats-Dozent Dr. Richard Bésel (Gra-
fische Sammlung Albertina), Dr. Burkhardt Rukschcio and Klaus Spechtenhauser.

xii
Introduction

On the Problem of Accessing and of Reassessing Modern

Architecture in a Broader Cultural Context

On the Internationalism of Otto Wagner and the Wagner School.

Wagner's Identification with the Zeitgeist and with the Development
of a Modern Architecture. Wagner's Highly Developed
Consciousness of Time and of Temporal Processes of Development
 ) » : =

ov: voltpulbotink
GaAr
‘
ey:
y an ry
—=-, wy ni

r ig

he ee
a

oF Beg er ee Peat eC atlas

= . ean Was ee |) red spite Fly ie. :

?

: Sins, SEES 4 i wepie .

~~ i = he cs

Q
oe - nied oA, ta edareiue nett ela oe
if 4 al es eC; Vite x td rey ach ae a are ee eae

penance seri, se * panty erat onl 9 Raigh

mgs byes ajen> "es Tele rit ae
of * aril ¥ a sue
oa

; ae
ay ; =:

ee we

1
iO rn _ : i
. 7
4 ’is
7 a in - “|
7 7
»

M See ae we ioe Mass

aids Se vy A Se
ee ed aii aangona
aiaell sae - alPig de

n: — Calero
ies Y

fee nese eo —
i eee Ses
ov blah tenes ifie :
— rari ror ‘

hie.

_ =
Li
On the Problem of Accessing and of Reassessing
Modern Architecture in a Broader Cultural Context

Frey not only distinguished between the initial design and the design as
executed — in other words, he did historical work. By means of this
distinction, he uncovered the line of demarcation between the early and
the high Renaissance — in other words, he did art historical work.
Paul Frankl on Dagobert Frey’s analysis of Bramante’s planning for St.
Peter’s (P. Frankl, review of “Dagobert Frey, Bramantes St. Peter-Entwurf
und seine Apokryphen” [Vienna: 1915], in: Repertorium fiir Kunstwissen-
schaft, XLII [1920], p. 128/129).

In truth, there is hardly any other scholarly pursuit that requires such
sobriety in its proofs, such refinement in its perceptions and comparisons,
and such manifold knowledge of discipline-specific and historical matters
as the theory of art, especially in architecture.
Aloys Hirt, Die Baukunst nach den Grundsitzen der Alten (Berlin: 1809),
pix

Need it be repeated? “Modernist ideology” has long been in the process of

dissolution. It has receded sufficiently into history to allow one, in the meantime,
to predict that architectural Modernism — its specific achievements and qualities
critically reconsidered at a distance — will be rediscovered. This is precisely the act
that is necessary to prevent the most recent permutations of the history of
architecture from dissolving in the primordial soup of endlessly expanding, undif-
ferentiated singular historical phenomena. Much of what is currently being studied
in response to a legitimate need is nonetheless presented in the narrow framework
of a monograph or in an analysis limited to a single building. And only a small
portion of the fundamental insights gathered in this fashion — at least in this phase
of research on Modernism — has been reintegrated into a holistic overview and
synthesis.
Excepting singular points of contact, the factors that constitute the conceptual
and humanistic framework and cohesion of Modernism are most frequently ig-
nored. There is indeed a danger that greater knowledge of subtly differentiated
historical relationships could be directed against the inherently simplified programs
of the era, as if this standard of truth — the coincidence of theory and practice —
were the appropriate one. Admittedly, the “Modernist ideology” — even more
reduced and recombined as a result of other contingencies — used its rhetoric and
its programmatic character as provocation. In this sense, it has always willingly
opened itself to attack. Nonetheless, whether one likes it or not, the coincidence
of an architectural Modernism, of the new “style,” or even only of affirmedly
common architectural aspirations, arose despite all sentiment to the contrary, first
and foremost at the level of the program, of contemporaneous points of view and
interpretations. !
This insight has, of course, been made difficult: more often than not, the
physical objects were subject to a considerable loss of their self-sufficiency. They
were instead subordinated — if not yoked — to programs “in order to demonstrate
the commonalties postulated.” This process is exemplified by Walter Gropius’s
statement, not exactly indicative of modesty, as it appeared in the second edition
of his book Internationale Architektur in 1927: “Since the first edition appeared,
the Modern architecture of the different cultural nations has followed with sur-
prising alacrity the lines of development sketched in this book.”
That posture was shocking then — and apparently still is. There is a desire to
“expose” this programmaticism and rhetoric and finally to avenge the Dadaist
claim that “Art is dead, long live art,” as well as the Futurist battle cries, “distrug-
gere il culto del passato” and “considerare i critici d’arte come inutili e dannosi.”
But rather than condemn manufactured ideologies in toto, it is more important
to situate them in a broader historical framework and to follow them through
their various furcations. Those people who today continue to combat the “tabula
rasa’ tone of these manifestos, rather than try to understand the way in which the
pronouncements were rooted in the early Modernist era, still lack historical dis-
tance some two generations later. They risk obstructing an open rapprochement
with history.
This intellectual history is an exceptionally rich one. Its polyvalence and self-
contradiction were, of course, as already has been mentioned, suppressed or
sometimes concealed even then by an unquestionably reductive form of propa-
ganda — or simply sacrificed to a systematic reticence about sources, as with Le
Corbusier, for example. This situation produces an even greater task for critics
and historians. They must not merely dismiss the ideology of Modernism — or,
phrased more simply and less contentiously, dismiss the propagandistic way in
which Modern architecture represented itself — nor adapt it blindly as a nominal
standard, whether affirmatively or as a “demon” is unimportant. Instead, they are
called upon to situate it in relationship to an intellectual history that is rich in
commentary and texts on all imaginable issues.
At stake here is not the generalized recourse to roughly sketched contours and
ideas of a distanced, abstracted history of culture. The inextricabilities — not the
points of concurrence! — of theory and practice are much more concrete. Even
such topics as the relationship between Modern architecture and the art history of
that period lie largely fallow, although everyone knows that, without Wolfflin,
without the simplifying categories of the “fundamental concepts” (Grundbegriffe)
or without the differentiated use of the concept of “artistic form” (Kunstform) and
its complementary correspondents from “core, or fundamental, form” (Kernform)
to “purposive form” (Zweckform) and “technological form” (Technikform) — all
borrowed from Bétticher and Riegl — much would be unimaginable.‘ Anyone
who does not understand that a qualitative difference (the topic of Giedion’s
Building in France) existed between industrial architecture, including its artistic
complement (in accordance with an ideal still current at the beginning of the
century),’ and the declaration that industrially produced components represented
Modern architectural form, will overlook the essential point. He will have to be
satisfied with tracing the history of Modernism back, perhaps to 1851 or perhaps
to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England, but always in a manner
limited to partial aspects.
Even greater deficiencies exist in the consideration of that period’s architec-
tural theory that was phrased “in addition to the manifestos” in the form of a
discourse. Friedrich Ostendorf himself has become a victim of petty moralism
because no one wanted, or wants, to see that a traditional, Classicist understanding
of architecture can be reconciled with a radically Modern theoretical position (“To
design means to find the simplest formal manifestation”).° Even more obscure are
those theoreticians who could not insure their place in posterity’s memory by
leaving behind works of architecture. Who has heard of Hermann Sérgel or Leo
Adler, to mention only two theoretical voices — between 1918 and 1926, respec-
tively — who should be taken seriously? Of course, forgetfulness has its ineluctable
place. Even then, the literature made it apparent that everyone was speaking about
“space” but that almost no one knew the father of that concept — Schmarsow —
much less his work, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schépfung (The essence of
architectural creation) (1894). And Paul Frankl — another important figure in the
definition of a theoretical realm between architecture and art history — wrote in a
1920 book review that Schmarsow’s predecessor Richard Lucae and his 1869
lecture “On the Power of Space in Architecture” (Uber die Macht des Raumes in
der Baukunst) was “never cited”! Although contributions such as these remain
forgotten or without consequence — however one makes that determination — they
retain extraordinary significance in elucidating the intellectual historical back-
ground.
These comments are enough to suggest an approach in which the gaze does
not remain fixed on a specific object (whatever that may be) but instead takes in
 Abb. 6

Hundertjahrferer! Abb. 2

TREPPENHAUS.-
ARCH ETEK TUR
daher
«NEVE SA CH LICH KETT=

ut ae FI Fa
a Hf
Abb. #

RUMMELSBURG
WIRD HANSESTADT

Abb. S$

EEINFAHRT
INDEN SCHLOSS HOF
Balkon fiir Ansprachen
wt wetness ole"
Wandelgalerie fiir den Hot

Figure 1. The True Variety of the Architecture of the Twenties

(from: Bruno Taut, Bauen. Der neue Wohnbau [Leipzig and Berlin: 1927], “Bilanz,” p. 5)

the respective branches of theory and practice and their various related or unre-
lated levels. A “hermeneutic” but unfortunately less than oft-fulfilled assumption!
It would be worthwhile interrogating Postmodern “arbitrariness” and its concom-
itant pleasure in attacking a — complementary — “compact” Modernism about its
disregard for the richness of the earlier period’s architectural positions as well as
its explanatory paradigms and theories. Not everything associated with Modern-
ism is “monothetic” or “monocausal” — or even only conclusive and compact. The
idea that contention and reality, in all their various hues, were bonded was too
widespread. And that is exactly the point at which criticism should begin. Because
it is in this respect that Postmodern critiques of Modernism are founded upon an
 Abb.3u. 4: Zolthofanlage in Frankfurt a.M.
: Abb. 5: Maschinenhaus
i einer Werkaniage, Abb.6: Landhaus Brockmann, Langet in Hessen. Abt.7:
Abb. 8- Rappoithaus in Hamburg. Neuzeittiche Arbeiterhaus:
Abb. 9: Werenhaus Tietz, Elberfeld. Abb. 10: Residenzkaufhaus in Dresden.

Miltelbild: Blidet in die Ausstellung der Freien und Hensestadt Hamburg. Abb, 11: Newes Rothaus in Chemnitz, Abb. 12: Kunsthalle in Mannheim. Abb. 13: Vorhalle des
Kunstgebjudes in Stotigart. Abb. 14: Kirche for Cotla. Abb. 15: Pauluskirche in Darmstadt. Abb 16: Kirche mit Pfarrhaus, Arditekt Grurein, Charlottenburg

Figure 2. Panorama of German Architecture circa 1913

German Architecture of the Twentieth Century — “Deutsche Baukunst des XX. Jahrhun-
derts” at the International Building Industry Exposition, Leipzig, 1913. (from: Bericht
tiber die Internationale Baufach-Ausstellung mit Sonderausstellungen, Leipzig 1913 (Leipzig:
1917], p. 139/141)
error. Concerning the topic of “Postmodernism and Architecture,” this is, of
course, as true of those critics, such as Jiirgen Habermas, who wanted to use a
compact ideology of the Modern as a shield against the destructive dissolution of
Modernism (including architectural Modernism).
The Smithsons, naturally, reduced Modernism to cubic, white and autono-
mous, just as the “international style” had previously tailored all selected images
to conform to these qualities. But it is necessary to leaf through the books and
magazines of the period to discover that the variety of forms assumed by Modern
architecture is as large as that of what is nowadays called “arbitrariness.” When
Bruno Taut subjected every conceivable form of architecture to his ridicule in the
publication Bauen. Der neue Wohnbau (Building. The new residential building),
published by the “Ring” — the “most Modern” architectural circle in pre-
Weissenhof Germany — he referred not to the past, but to the present. It was a
present that considered itself sometimes more and sometimes less Modern and, as
such, was assigned such epithets as “Field, River and Meadow Style,” “Mr. Bie-
dermeier ... ,” “An Architecture of Staircases — ergo ‘Neue Sachlichkeit,’ ” “Char-
lotte 1926,” “Aunt Meier’s Cottage!” or “Not Made of Cardboard.”” Seen in this
way, the heterogeneity of twentieth-century architecture is second to none. At the
International Building Exposition in Leipzig in 1913, the panorama entitled
“German Architecture of the Twentieth Century” paraded this heterogeneity offi-
cially at a time when the form of Modern architecture had “yet to be found.”®
Also in the twenties, in 1927, Peter Meyer not only differentiated between
“Modern” and “pseudo-Modern” buildings (buildings by the Dutch architects,
from de Klerk to Rietveld, who misused a modern formal language for decorative
purposes), he also employed categorizations such as “Functionalist Symbolism” or
“Sacral Faustic, Nordic, Vienna” to explain his precise understanding of Modern-
ism. It is plain that his categories were quite specific but nonetheless deviated
considerably from those of the “Ring.”® And shortly after World War I, when
Modernism began its triumphal march in earnest, Franz Schuster still saw a “chaos
of forms and opinions” rather than a unified Modern architecture. He went so far
as to subsume both Le Corbusier's work and Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces
Falling Water and Johnson Wax under the category of deceptive form, which he
opposed to the “unified world of essential forms.” (These essential forms were in
turn to nurture the “root of the style.”)!° Despite programs and rhetoric, the three
positions selectively presented here bespeak little of the perceived compactness of
a Modern style, even if the smallest common denominator still seems interesting
enough. In fact, the three, somewhat arbitrarily chosen, examples do not prove
that there is, and that there can be, no “Modern architecture.” All the authors
Figure 3. The Permutations of Modern Architecture in Departure from the Mainstream
Functional Symbolism. (from: Peter Meyer, Moderne Architektur und Tradition (Zurich:
1927], plate VII)
Figure 4. Sacral Faustism, Nordic Directions, Vienna. (from: Meyer, op. cit., plate IX)

quoted are concerned at least with moving toward the ability to define Modern
architecture with some clarity.
All of this proves just how one-sided and misrepresentative it is to measure
the “Ideology of Modernism” against built reality alone and vice versa. This
practice is especially inappropriate in view of the discrepancies, the lack of corre-
spondence, between theory and practice, and in view of the dissynchronicity of
the simultaneous — this, too, being a particular approach in the art history of thé
twenties.!! All of these inconsistencies often more articulate, not to mention being
the ingredients of every vital culture throughout history. Consequently, we may
not ignore the relative autonomy of the intellectual historical framework — also as
the prerequisite to all concepts based upon simplifications and typifications — even
if we give close attention to the relationship between theory and practice. It might
be contended that the typical models that describe the derivation of Modernism
from construction and industry, and from abstract art forms, produce only a
partial solution to the problem of defining clearly this “Modern” style. In that
 case, the integration of statements of intention, of programs or even of mere
“opinions” is even more important. The goal of “Modernism” — and, of course,
at least mediatedly, of the accompanying rationalizations and legitimations as such
— remains the actual object of scrutiny if we are to speak about Modernism and
not about only a few of its representatives. It is no accident that Hugo Haring —
here in accord with his “opposite,” Le Corbusier — derived his first principle of
“intellectual content”! from the quickly recognizable multitude of plausible Mod-
ern positions. Thus, “architecture — pure création de l’esprit” assumes additional
significance.
Both time and patience are needed to arrive at such differentiated views — or
even merely to rediscover them! And in each case, the first requirement is sufficient
distance to see both the forest and the trees. In this sense, it is legitimate and
necessary to attempt to evaluate Modernism’s historical value, despite all deep-
seated internal objections to the enterprise. Modernism has become part of history.
Like the Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-Classical and Historicist eras before it, it
demands new and distanced evaluation. At issue in Modernism, too, is the way in
which a qualitative standard was applied to a sea of knowledge and facts. Just as
such concepts as Baroque or Renaissance retain their currency despite all objec-
tions — either because of or despite the minimal consensus that inheres to them —
the concept of Modernism will retain its currency. Perhaps this is even truer for
Modernism, since the discussion of Modernism and its aims, especially those
related to Modernism as a “stylistic concept,” were part of the ongoing discussion
even at the movement’s genesis (and not in retrospect, as with the Baroque
movement).!2
An additional difficulty, however, must be taken into consideration. Because
the discussion of Modernism’s specific orientation or particular distinctions devel-
ops along with Modernism itself, there can be no hope of finding coherent,
distanced, complete theories in the primary source material. Much is expressed
quickly and aphoristically in “Manifestas.” At the same time, the “hasty reader” is
also the quintessence of, even the standard for, the stenographic style used to
communicate difficult theoretical material.‘ The “visual discourse” represses more
comprehensive argumentation, a fact that has also already been criticized.!* And
thus, an even greater number of different communicative forms, each possessed of
a theoretical ambition, must be considered — and with them all, the incompatibil-
ities arising from this kaleidoscope.
It is not merely that the image replaces the word. (To cite Gropius again, “In
order to serve a broad lay audience, the editor has essentially limited himself to
exterior images.”)'° There is also a language of images. There is metaphor. And
one of these semitheoretical metaphors is the image of “Stilhiilse und Kern”

10
Wohknhaus in der Schweiz

Einzeiheite

Figure 5. Simple Architectural Forms, in Contrast to Deceptive Forms

“Deceptive Forms and Others.” (from: Franz Schuster, Der Stil unserer Zeit [Vienna:
1948], p. 74)
Figure 6. “The Confusing World of Deceptive Forms.” (from: Schuster, op. cit., p. 78)

(stylistic hull and kernel). It attracts such great interest not only because it is
understandably “graphic” but also because it bespeaks the very tangible theories
upon which it is based — from Bétticher’s “tectonics” to Semper’s “theory of
raiment.” No one will deny that this metaphor is eminently suited to represent so
plausible a development, which otherwise might not be recognizable as such. Once
again, our irritation might lead us to demand a better fit between reality and
(theoretical, if not, in this case, rather graphic) explanation. Here, there is merely
a need for affirmation, especially if one considers the need to explain the concept
of Modernism within a contemporary context. One should affirm that this image
developed parallel to the phenomena that it describes: it is not an afterthought
that springs from the workshop of an inventive historian or theoretician.

NOTES
1 Instead of unnecessary repetition, I prefer to cite the following series of articles: W.
Oechslin, “A Cultural History of Modern Architecture: 1. The ‘Modern’: Historical

1]
 Event vs. Demand,” in: atu, no. 4 (1990), p. 50 ff. “2. Modern Architecture and the
Pitfalls of Codification. The Aesthetic View,” in: atu, no. 6 (1990), p. 29 ff. “3. The
‘Picture’: The (superficial) consensus of modern architecture?” in: atu, no. 2 (1991),
p. 28 ff.
W. Gropius, Internationale Architektur, 2nd ed. (Passau: 1927), p. 9.
“Manifesto dei Pittori futuristi” (Boccioni, Carra, Russolo, Balla, Severini) of February
11, 1910: “Conclusioni” (quoted here are articles no. 1 and 5)
The latter was emphasized with the greatest clarity, for example, by W. Nerdinger (Walter
Gropius, exhibition catalogue [Berlin: 1985], p. 36).
This fact is already expressed in the title of the publication by H. Jordan and E. Michel,
Die kiinstlerische Gestaltung von Eisenkonstruktionen (Berlin: 1913), which resulted from a
like-named prize given by the Royal Building Academy in Berlin on January 15, 1908. It
is useful to compare it with the entirely different approach of such publications as Werner
Lindners, Die Ingenieurbauten in ihrer guten Gestaltung (Berlin: 1923) and Bauten der
Technik. Ihre Form und Wirkung (Berlin: 1927). Lindners, who sought a connection with
the “cultural issues of the present,” is attentive to “manifestations in form” (Formerschei-
nungen) and — inspired by W6lfflin’s statement that “revealed regularity is the highest
form of life” — aspired to a “unified basis for architectural production.”
W. Oechslin, “ “Entwerfen heisst, die einfachste Erscheinungsform zu finden.’ Missver-
standnisse zum Zeitlosen, Historischen, Modernen und Klassischen bei Friedrich Osten-
dorf,” in: Moderne Architektur in Deutschland, 1900 bis 1930. Reform und Tradition, ed.
V. Magnago Lampugnani and R. Schneider (Stuttgart: 1992), p. 29 ff.
B. Taut, Bauen. Der neue Wohnbau (Leipzig and Berlin: 1927), p. 1 ff, “Bilanz.”
H. Herzog and H. Miederer, Bericht iiber die Internationale Baufach-Ausstellung mit
Sonderausstellungen, Leipzig 1913 (Leipzig: 1917), p. 142 ff. and plate no. 139 ff. At the
very least, the text on p. 144 stated “that German architecture of the Twentieth Century
wishes to be taken seriously and to represent some eternal value, as did the famous
historical architectural styles of earlier periods.”
P. Meyer, Moderne Architektur und Tradition (Zurich: 1927 and [corrected second edition]
1928).
F. Schuster, Der Szil unserer Zeit. Die fiinf Formen des Gestaltens der dusseren Welt des
Menschen. Ein Beitrag zum kulturellen Wiederaufbau (Vienna: 1948).
The reference here is to Wilhelm Pinder’s book Das Problem der Generationen in der
Kunstgeschichte Europas, published in 1926 and 1928. In this book, the author demon-
strates his debt to his teacher, Schmarsow, and to Walfflin’s dictum — here also intended
as a correction to unified concepts of style — that “not everything is possible at all times.”
(See Pinder’s preface of 1926.)
12 W. Oechslin, ““Das Neue’ und die moderne Architektur, ” in: Daidalos, no. 52 (1994),
p12:
13 W. Oechslin, ““Baroque’: Zu den negativen Kriterien der Begriftsbestimmung in klassi-
zistischer und spiterer Zeit,” in: Europdische Barock-Rezeption, ed. K. Garber (Wiesba-
den:1991),p, 125 ff,
14 On the occasion of a Giedion Colloquium organized in 1989 by the gta Institute, much
was made of Giedion’s relevant commentary in Bauen in Frankreich. The concept was
evaluated in various ways. See, for example, S. von Moos, “Kulturgeschichte fiir den
‘eiligen Leser,’ Giedion, Mumford and Their Iconography of the ‘Machine Age.’ ”
See Karl Vosslers on W6lfflin, especially his criticism on the adepts, “Uber Vergleichung
und Unvergleichlichkeit der Kiinste,” in: Festschrift fiir Julius Schlosser zum 60. Geburts-
tag (Zurich, Leipzig and Vienna: 1927), p. 25 ff. (For comparison, see ‘W. Oechslin,
“Fragen zu Sigfried Giedions kunsthistorischen Pramissen,” in the catalogue Siegfried
a 1888-1968. Der Entwurf einer modernen Tradition (Zurich: 1969], paola
p. :
16 See note 2, p. 5
On the Internationalism of Otto Wagner and the
Wagner School. Wagner's Identification with the
Zeitgeist and with the Development of a Modern
Architecture. Wagner's Highly Developed
Consciousness of Time and of Temporal
Processes of Development

There is no doubt that our era is ready for a genetic treatment of architec-
tural history...
They all want nothing more than to associate themselves with the
moments at which, seen from their respective positions, the acme of
architectural production is located.
Leo Adler, “Zur Methodik der Architekturtheorie,” in: Wasmuths Monat-
shefie fiir Baukunst, vol. V, no. 21 (1920), Appendix (P. Zucker), “Archiv
fiir Geschichte und Asthetik der Architektur,” p. 45 ff.

In our short-sightedness, we are hardly capable of seeing a small sequence

of things, to say nothing of the overall complex in which they stand. It is
therefore impossible to establish instances of the new, as this necessarily
would require general insight of this sort.
L. E von Hopffgarten, Ueber das Besondere und die Neuheit (Leipzig:
Tapas

Modern is only a relative term.

Paul T. Frankl, New Dimensions (New York: 1928), p. 15 (“I. What Is
Modern”).

This is the way it was, this is the way it will always be.
Otto Wagner, Moderne Architektur (Vienna: 1898), p. 155.

No one has ever attempted to poke his clumsy hand into the spokes of
time’s spinning wheel without having his hand torn off.
Adolf Loos, “Kulturentartung” (1980), in: Trotzdem (Innsbruck: 1931),
p. 76.
 One of the greatest falsehoods of Modernism is its purported ahistoricity. A full
spectrum of evidence, even a comparison with contemporaneous models for
viewing history, attests to that fact. At that time, even Heinrich W6lfflin and his
“principles” (Grundbegriffeé) were accused of being ahistorical in viewpoint, of
neglecting the historical dimension — to cite yet another parallel between architec-
tural Modernism and art history. To be persuasive, an argument need not describe
in further detail the way in which the proclamation of the “new” paradoxically
requires the foil of the old. It is clear, then, that every justification for the new
finally returns to history.'” In fact, the demand for the “new” and “ahistorical” in
Modernism was, of course, rife with countless compromises. Even the manifesto
“Architettura futurista” (1914), by Antonio Sant Elia, cannot avoid beginning
with a commentary on history: “Dopo il 700 non é pid esistita nessuna architet-
tura.” “Circa 1800” (Um 1800) is thus more than a sleight of hand used by the
more sensitive compromisers in the circle around Paul Mebes. “Classicists” and
“Futurists” are at least in agreement about history. By shifting its point of reference
back, beyond the point at which history was purportedly rent, the new was
supposed to seem even more plausible. Movement forward and new beginnings
could therefore seem the order of the day. It was a matter not of a continuous
development but, rather, of reverence for a far distant past. Back to the “primitive
hut,” to the Acropolis, to the primitives.
Not even ahistoricity is an invention of Modernity. Every edition of the
“querelle des ancienes et modernes” postulates it in some form or other. Yet the
invocation of a new tradition — and with it, the demand for influence over future
history — is as old as Modernism itself. And that bit of reclaimed autonomy and
distance in the face of history’s assertively approaching footfall was criticized
harshly, whenever noted. J. P. Mieras, for example, wrote, in his Hollandischen
Baukunst von heute (Dutch architecture today) (1937): “The mien of the “Neues
Bauen” is very appealing. Nonetheless, insight into the course of cultural devel-
opment would have to be extremely superficial and the prejudice that cloaks the
individual opinion equally great if its revolutionary behavior is somehow to be
attributed to the evolutionary essence of culture.”!®
“The evolutionary essence of culture”? “Revolutionary behavior”? One indi-
vidual who believed that he had united these two poles in his own person and in
his creative production was certainly Otto Wagner. At the very least, the almost
ostentatious number of his comments on time, developments, historical processes
and temporal distance — both the distance achieved and the distance necessary —
would seem to indicate this belief. Of course, the issue of a complete break with
tradition and history, too, is significant in Wagner's case. His biographers have
exhaustively described his approach in the terms of the “new” and the production

14
 Wagner-Schule.
Reatisanus, Wakrhelt, war dee Feldgenchse: schiviere Raturhoobarht eng,
tele Bri tit ihver Gesstze, sehulidie Grandicge — eines heute im Krwnchen
degiifters: tig newen Rienat
Dheties und Bestnes, Mater vad Masiker ertsnmen Hinget echoes tre mrcen,
Daina ys eget hag Patluny est des Volks,
K akes, die aim teiten in diss exele Leberwboddrinis bineingreitt,
sie was anf Nebsitr und Teist Seghetien soitte. sucht kewt btich mach:
Vorstintnt vad Vatuathianlishken, eee Sere
Lie Architeksor.
Hegine anseree Julthumberts die aciden Forman der apdtee Hasocke
and Kmpivezelt nicht mehr geadigtes, xsi reach, und aware dberadl. Ge Fordens
am nich, dew Pormen Qurck Madies der Antibe, Reramance, lax Vereangener
She <n e ee veringys.
“ ipeneinesagg he one ar Sber,
wallee Weise ‘comenMey genset Zetakter
vos Binrsinen bubertacht. Bedtichtungen}
oe esr
ee ro)
ee ¥
ie shag nothucedig gewrsen seis
_ Unteshegt <2 doch ketnem Zweidtl, dam ratichen unserer Colterepachs wast
amancher vergangenen viele Beihrangspenkte und Paraiiele legs; dem gar
manches sich mit Verthed betibernchmen tet ond vertdediich extn mies.
Aber wae darwischon Hagt, daa sind dic moadernen Lebensvediitinien, dic
Skhee bGbece coastractiveg Rikemtas whseres jabrhanderts, tie Teckactagic gans
stort Marerialien,
Wabrend der Studien wad Stilesperimente cilte tle Nasuraimensbatt, dan
Koanen des Ingentoury sit Ricstnachent vorait, wo Gober daa Zommmengehes
webatcermindtion war, entuand ise Kesh, ein Abstand hau ox dherkedeben in
dus fri det Stibetangenhelt
Ber Anctutekter fete die Wabrieit der Poems, der Reatieenax im Anedrack
San Meteriads wot dex Construction

as typographische Arrangemeat dieses Heftes besorgte Herr Architekt 3, M. Olbrich, DR.

Figure 7. Frontispiece from Aus der Wagner Schule with the dome of Josef Hoffman’s
“Forum orbis, insula pacis.” Graphics by Josef Maria Olbrich. (from: Der Architekt. Wiener
Monatshefie fiir Bauwesen und decorative Kunst, |, Jg. [1895], p. 53)

of “epochal thresholds.” According to Josef August Lux, Wagner’s instantiation of

the paradigmatic shift from architecture to “building arts” (Baukunst) is obvious,
a fact that the author cloaks in phrases reminiscent of the Bible: “A new era
arrived, the Modern. Architecture became ‘“Baukunst.’ Otto Wagner had ushered
in this new era. His word caught fire; it became fact and went forth into the
world.” By titling his book as he did, Wagner himself anticipated this interpre-
tation of his work. Thus, he replaced the 1895, 1898 and 1902 title, Moderne
Architektur (Modern architecture), in 1914 with Die Baukunst unserer Zeit (The
building arts [or architecture] of our era).?? But the call for “modern life” to
emerge as the “only point of reference” already appears in the preface to the first
edition of October 1895, and the plea for a “strong and heartening ‘forward’ ” is

1S
 directed to the world at large. “The basis for all points of view with regard to the
building arts must be shifted”?! within an epochally conscious perspective. Accord-
ingly, Wagner can already tabulate the following in 1898: “Hardly three years have
passed since that time, and even more quickly than I myself might have thought,
my words have proven true; ‘Modernity’ has been victorious almost everywhere.”
Of course, this self-fulfilling prophecy belongs among those rhetorical forms used
later, in even more adamant tones, by Gropius.?* This flourish placed the author
himself at the center of a development. Wagner also used the image of the phoenix
rising from the ashes, an image employed by Semper to describe the crisis of his
own era in the “Prolegomena” to his work Der Stil (Style). There, he wrote,
“And this victory, it is here.”
Otto Wagner thus intimates that Modernism has become reality in the course
of the 1890s.2> Nonetheless, although he presents himself not only as a witness to
but also as a protagonist in this development, he was more often considered
atypical by the subsequent historiography of Modernism, if not simply neglected.
Wagner’s biography makes this fact seem entirely understandable in retrospect.
Wagner’s dates correspond to the phenomenon of the Ringstrasse and end with
the Danube monarchy in 1918. Even if he presented himself as a pioneer in the
cause of Modernism, and stubbornly kept silent about his early career, he never-
theless remained inextricable from the self-contradictory and complex world prior
to the First World War. His struggle for the new did not prevent him from
seeking acknowledgment in his later years from “Beaux-Arts” circles.7° As a “Mem-
bre du Comité permanent,” he represented Austria at the “Congrés international
des Architectes,” which was held in Paris in 1900 on the occasion of the World’s
Fair.?” And in the official publications of the time, he seems to have had an affinity
for his position as “architecte de S. M. I. et R. PEmpereur d’Autriche, professeur
a l’Académie impériale et royale, correspondant de la Société centrale des archi-
tectes frangais.”** A glance at the projects of the “Wagner school” is sufficient to
ascertain the concord in several respects between the products of that school —
despite the Secessionist influence — and those of the Parisian Beaux-Arts.2? The
school’s “internationality” — or better, its “internationalism” — is illustrated alone
by the topics of the idealized projects: the “Nicaragua Canal Entrance,” the
“Design for a Palace for a Peace Congress on Lacroma,” or even the “Ideal Project
for Moving the Papal Residence to Jerusalem.”*° Otto Wagner certainly stood in
the midst of this ambitious internationalistic movement in Vienna. After all,
Wagner had declared to the academy that the graduation project of his “favorite
pupil,” Josef Hoffmann — a project depicting a “Forum orbis, insula pacis” in a
manner that aspired to Wagner’s “Artibus” in its intricacy and academic difficulty
— was a masterwork.*! Internationalism also corresponded to the quality that

16
Figure 8. The Architectural Maximum in the Academic Tradition of the Tour de Force
Otto Wagner, “Artibus,” 1880. (from: Otto-Antonia Graf, Otto Wagner, vol. 2 [Vienna,
Cologne and Graz: 1985], p. 37)
Figure 9. Antonio Canaletto (attributed to), “Capriccio Architettonico with Hadrian’s
Tomb and Triumphal Bridge.” (Parma, National Gallery)

Wagner recommended to his students. In his speech on acceding to Hasenauer’s

professorial chair, he referred to the Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts as “a form of
fantasy training.”?? When Max Fabiani introduced the Wagner school in the first
issue of the Viennese periodical Der Architekt in 1895, he emphasized the way in
which the master “whipped through every stylistic direction” and spoke of “an
entirely new art that is awakening today.” The dome and entrance hall of Hoff-
mann’s project adorned the magazine’s cover.** No one objected at the time.
It would certainly be unfair to Wagner to reduce him to the Modernist aspects
of his work. Yet no one has been more subject to this tendency, as a result of the
typical presentation of Modernism “from the perspective of the twenties,” which

17
 relegated everything prior to itself to the status of a “precursor,”* including
Wagner. This approach represses the actual complexity of Wagner’s position. At
least, that is the only explanation for Giedion’s paradoxical reference to “Wagner's
isolation,” although Giedion may well have been the victim of his own, narrow
point of view.?> With Berlage and, even more importantly, with Victor Horta,
Wagner is listed by Giedion as a “Precursor of Contemporary Architecture” along
the temporal axis of Modernism. This again is reminiscent of the evaluations
made of the work, for example, in Adolf Behne’s Der moderne Zweckbau (The
modern functional building), which holds to earlier models and passes its judg-
ments from the perspective of Modernism. There, the triumvirate includes Ber-
lage, Messel and Wagner. In Gropius’s writings, the list of “men of the first hour”
includes other names, as well as his own.*° This all goes to prove that, despite
differences, the affirmation of Otto Wagner’s role in the development of Modern
architecture — that is, in anticipation of a more exactly established set of the
reasons for this development — was secure.
Nevertheless, Wagner’s role remains one of a protagonist of transition. Revo-
lution, yes, but the desired qualities are more continuity and interpolation. Again
Wagner himself should be allowed to speak to this point: while subscribing to
“modern life,” he is able to perceive retrospectively precursors and lines of evolu-
tion and thus to give Semper his due. This position stands in contrast to that of
Behrens, for example, whose dismissive assessment only ascertained the need to
overcome a “mechanistic conception of the essence of the artwork.” For Wagner —
speaking of the necessary relationship between need, purpose and construction —
the following held true: “No less a figure than Gottfried Semper was the first to
direct our attention to this truth (even if he himself unfortunately strayed from it
later), and by this action alone, pointed us toward the path that we will have to
follow.”*” Wagner’s posture vis-a-vis the issues of history and evolution is carefully
considered. The phrases by which he refers to Semper are, moreover, subject to
numerous adjustments and changes in the text’s various editions.** Semper’s role
is generally criticized beyond the qualification already mentioned, “even if he
himself unfortunately strayed from it later.” Semper had lacked the courage,
Wagner claimed, to “bring his theories to completion, working upward and
downward.”*®
All of this confirms that Wagner was conscious of a tradition comprising
relevant thoughts and models and their status in a temporal context. The architect
should not only be looking forward, Wagner says. The architect should also — to
cite another specific formulation — “do everything in his power to regain that
position and to receive that which is owed to him absolutely in accordance with
his ability and knowledge.” The attitude expressed in the afterword bespeaks this

18
well-considered determination: “Culture’s grandiose progress will show us clearly
what it is we may learn from our forebears, and what we should avoid; and the
proper path along which we have begun to move will certainly lead us to the goal
of creating something new, something beautiful.”4' The architect may lend the
postulate of Modernity a historical generality — “The task of art, also of Modern
art, has remained the same as it has been in all eras.” In the same manner, he may
step forward as a defender of a true tradition: “by virtue of the advance of
‘Modernism,’ tradition has acquired its proper value and lost its excess value,
archaeology has been reduced to a scholarly handmaiden to art and will hopefully
remain so forever.”*
Is it coincidence that someone who stands in the midst of a situation such as
this one would develop a particular sensitivity for the passage of time, and equally,
for the need to shift one’s perspective in accordance with one’s relative position?
“Every artistic epoch has approached earlier eras with disdain, and has clothed
itself in another ideal of beauty.”4? In statements such as this, insight into historical
processes — at a distance — may be recognized. This is predicated on the fact that
“not everything that is Modern, is beautiful.” At the same time, “our sensibility
[must] point out to us” that “today, only that which is Modern can truly be
considered beautiful.” Wagner identifies with his role but does not want to reflect
upon himself beyond that condition, against the background of a history that is
already in progress. He knows how to characterize temporal processes, and he
distinguishes between “periods of becoming [Werden]” and “peaks,” just as he
recognizes the respective advantages and disadvantages.“* He describes the genesis
of a new style as “deriving . . . gradually from earlier things” and can connect that
development with the demand for responsibility “that art and artists represent
their own epoch.”* He summarizes all this again, more generally: “The task of
art, also of modern art, has remained the same as it has been in all eras. The art
of our time must offer us modern forms that we have created, which correspond
to our ability and to our action.”“* The immediate connection to our time — a
connection demanded by the thrust of Modernism — is presented as a general
historical truth. With it fall the usual concepts necessary to evaluation and differ-
entiation. Fashion is marginalized, as is lethargy.” “History” in the improper sense
of the word produces “copies and imitations of older precedents.” In the positive
sense, it is tradition, even if the rhetoric sometimes describes the “trance of
tradition” in negative terms.
Wagner described the way in which a point of view may change over time
with the statement “that there is a greater gap between the Modern and the
Renaissance than between the Renaissance and antiquity.”*” This depiction seems
even more drastic if we consider that everyone in Vienna associated the Renais-

19
 sance with Semper and his exegetes. It proves that Wagner experienced and
observed time quite concretely, in very specific temporal blocks. In his lecture
“The Quality of the Building Artist [Baukiinstler|!” (1912), he comes rather
quickly to the question “how does the recognition, how does the judgment, of an
artist’s quality occur?” He answers just as quickly by establishing that the ability
to judge quality correctly is dependent upon the factor of time.” He demonstrates
this point with the example of the Vienna Opera house: the press attacked the
building’s architect so virulently after its completion “that they [the architects]
went willingly to their deaths.” At the time at which Wagner was writing, however,
the building enjoyed great popularity: “The general public thus needed twenty to
forty years to come, finally, to this conclusion.”>! In the case of the Milan
Cathedral, Wagner notes the sum “twenty-three years,” the amount of time
between the competition for the facade and the “correct” decision to leave the
building — at least for the time being — in its uncompleted state.
The span of a generation is generally a good unit of measurement for the
distance needed to understand history. Wagner, who had grown up with the
Ringstrasse, had had sufficient experience with such things. His language —
charged with the energy of immanent Modernism, of course — flowed from his
pen when he was a mature man, especially after 1896 and, even more so, after
1912, and not an ebullient youth. He is capable of both accepting history in its
inevitable and ever-consistent gait, and “nevertheless,” propagating his own posi-
tion as the valid one. Insight into the patterns and mechanism of temporal
processes seems almost inextricable from a highly self-aware perspective on the age
in which one lives. The insights quoted here on the judgments of taste — sedi-
mented over the course of a generation — follow on the heels of Wagner’s professed
conviction that decisions should be made in and of the spirit of the present. This
complex is clear in Wagner’s lecture of 1912. He conceives the rebuilding of the
fallen campanile in Piazza San Marco within the contours drawn by history but
in the materials of the present: “If architectural monuments still serve a practical
purpose today, if they require additions or readaptations, then this work is to be
completed by artists, and therefore in the style of our era.”>? The “and therefore”
means here again — in conformity with the convictions he sets out in his book
Moderne Architektur — that every true artist could work only by drawing upon his
own era. “To maintain as precisely as possible the silhouette of the old tower”:
here, a sense of compromise with history has furtively found its place next to a
“preservationist” attitude. More recent critics of Wagner will avenge richly his
sensibility for historical processes and conditions with the accusation that his
insight was limited by his entrapment in his own era. It is no coincidence that
Wagner — a witness to shifts in architectural sensibilities - was so conscious of

20
 ENTWURF FUR BINEN FRIEDENSCONGRESSPALAST
IF LACROMA. SPECIALAUFGABE, IIL. JAHRGANG, SITUATION. OSKAR FELGEL. NICARAGUA-CANAL-EINFAHRT, SITUATION.

Figure 10. Wagner School: Internationalism, Beaux-Arts-ism

Alfred Fenzl, “Design for a Palace for a Congress of Peace on Lacroma. Special Edition,
III, Year.” (from: Aus der Wagnerschule MCM (Vienna: 1901))
Figure 11. Oskar Felgel, “Nicaragua Canal Entrance.” (from: Aus der Wagnerschule MCM
[Vienna: 1901])

time and history. He himself both carried and led that development. He is assured
of his place in history in its literal sense, just as his first biographer, Josef August
Lux, formulated it: “Schinkel and Semper were replaced by Wagner.”*? And
(again): “A new era arrived, the Modern. Architecture became “Baukunst.’ Otto
Wagner had ushered in this new era. His word caught fire, it became fact and
went forth into the world. Wherever new architectural impulses could be sensed,
there, too, Otto Wagner may be sensed to the very core. That should not be
forgotten. He created an atmosphere in which the seeds of future greatness could
live and grow.” And rightfully so: in Wagner, the past, the present and the future
seemingly found their confluence!

21
 NOTES
17 On the topic of the “new,” see the various permutations and evidence presented in:
Daidalos, no. 52 (1994).
18 The text is quoted from an official — and by no means anti-Modern — publication of the
“B.N.A.” (“Bond van Nederlandsche Architecten”), of which Mieras was the secretary!
See Eibink et al., Hedendaagsche Architectuur in Nederland (Amsterdam: 1937), p. 18.
19 J. A. Lux, Otto Wagner (Munich: 1914), p. 11.
20 On the one hand, the shift evident in this case, in Wagner’s formulation of his book’s
title, proves that outward signs such as these can more plausibly be evaluated only
symptomatically. Wagner himself notes the reason for the retitling in his preface of
November 1913, in which he cites Muthesius’s book Szlarchitektur und Baukunst — or
Stylistic Architecture and the Building Arts (see: Die Baukunst unserer Zeit |Vienna: 1914],
p. 4; on its misquotation, see H. FE Mallgrave, Otto Wagner, Modern Architecture {Santa
Monica: 1988], p. 142). On the other hand, Lux quotes the subtitle “Von der Architektur
zur Baukunst” (From architecture to the building arts) in the title of the central chapter
of his monograph: “Reifezeit” (time of maturation). (The same subtitle appears errone-
ously again on p. 61, attached to the chapter entitled “Kampfzeit” [Time of struggle],
although not in the table of contents.
20 “One thought suffuses the entire text, namely, THAT THE BASIS FOR ALL POINTS OF VIEW
WITH REGARD. TO THE BUILDING ARTS MUST BE SHIFTED, AND RECOGNITION TAKE HOLD,
THAT THE ONLY STARTING POINT FOR OUR ARTISTIC CREATION IS MODERN.” (EIN GEDANKE
BESEELT DIE GANZE SCHRIFT, NAMLICH, DASS DIE BASIS DER ANSCHAUUNGEN UBER DIE
BAUKUNST VERSCHOBEN WERDEN UND DIE ERKENNTNISS DURCHGREIFEN MUSS, DASS DER
EINZIGE AUSGANGSPUNKT UNSERES KUNSTLERISCHEN SCHAFFENS NUR DAS MODERNE LEBEN
SEIN KANN.) (Quoted here after O. Wagner, Moderne Architektur, 2nd ed. [Vienna: 1898],
p12).
2D See above, as well as note number 2: “What was only speculation then, has today become
clearly defined reality.”
ae G. Semper, Der Stil, I (Frankfurt a. M.: 1860), p. v.
24 “Victory,” too, was a central theme repeatedly throughout the development of Modernism
(for example, see W. C. Behrendt, Der Sieg des Neuen Baustils [The victory of the new
style of building] (Stuttgart: 1927]).
25 Despite all caution in dealing with the borders between eras — and while also respecting
what was said at the beginning of this text — it may be concluded that the model that
positions Modern’s inception in the 1890s has gained greater acceptance than other
models in recent times. This is true not least of all because the “teleology” — the
conscious orientation toward a new style of building — begins to take hold at that time.
Regarding Austria, see: G. Dankl, Die “Moderne” in Osterreich. Zur Genese und Bestim-
mung eines Begriffes in der osterreichischen Kunst um 1900 (Vienna: 1986), p. 55 ff. and
pio;
26 Following his induction as a tenured professor on the retirement of K. von Hasenauer,
O. Wagner served in varied official functions. He was the representative to the interna-
tional architectural congress in Brussels in 1897, in Paris in 1900 and in London in 1906.
In 1908 he became the president of that congress at its meeting in Vienna, at which the
issue of ferroconcrete in monumental architecture was discussed in the most conventional
of terms. (See Bericht tiber den VIII. Internationalen Architektur-Kongress Wien 1908
[Vienna: 1909], p. 55 ff.) Wagner was awarded the “Jeton d’Or” of the “Société centrale
des architectes frangais” on that occasion. The society's president, Guadet, was the author
of the Beaux-Arts bible, the famous Eléments et Théorie de l’Architecture.
Dif The German members of the “Comité permanent” were the Berlin architects K. Hinck-
eldeyn and J. G. Stiibben.

22
28 See Exposition universelle internationale de 1900. Congres international des Architectes .. .
(Paris: 1906), p. xix.
29 Both Otto-Antonia Graf (Die vergessene Wagnerschule [Vienna: 1969]) and Marco Poz-
zetto (La Scuola die Wagner, 1894-1912 [Trieste: 1979]; Die Schule Otto Wagners, 1894-
1912 |Vienna: 1980]) are apparently entirely uninterested in an analysis of this sort.
Their attitude is certainly related to the enormous prejudices against the French Beaux-
Arts movement! Even in Beaux-Arts circles, there were moderate positions, especially in
the assimilation and deployment of Modern technology and construction. On the other
hand, Dagobert Frey has accorded France the significance due in the epilogue to Wagner’s
book Einige Skizzen...: “The French spirit, too, influenced Wagner’s development
decisively and sustainedly. He himself heralded the exemplary status and superiority of
the French, and as a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, has followed the ‘Ecole des
Beaux-Arts’ tradition in many respects.” (So war es auch franzisischer Geist, der auf
Wagners Entwicklung nachhaltig und entscheidend eingewirkt hat. Er selbst hat auf die
Uberlegenheit und Vorbildlichkeit der Franzosen hingewiesen und ist als Lehrer der
Akademie der bildenden Kiinste in vielem den Traditionen der “Ecole des Beaux Arts”
gefolgt.)
30 See Aus der Wagnerschule MCM (Vienna: 1901), p. 33 ff. (O. Felgel, “Nicaragua Canal
Entrance”); p. 39 ff. (A. Fenzl, “Palace for a Congress on Peace”). Also see (O. Schénthal),
Das Ehrenjahr Otto Wagners (Vienna: 1912), p. 48ff. (J. Heinisch, “Papal Residence in
Jerusalem”).
31 Eduard F. Sekler, Josef Hoffmann (Salzburg and Vienna: 1992), p. 13. (See below in
connection to Wagner’s “Artibus.”)
a2 Ibid., and Lux, Wagner, op. cit., p. 141.
33 See M. F, “Aus der Wagnerschule,” in: Der Architekt, vol. I (1895), p. 53.
34 S. Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture (Cambridge: 1941), p. 214 ff.: “The Nineties:
Precursors of Contemporary Architecture”; p. 238 ff.: “Otto Wagner and the Viennese
School.”
25) Ibid., p. 239: “Wagner’s Isolation,” “We miss the significance of Wagner’s work if we do
not realize what it is to work in complete isolation.” This statement relates to a compari-
son of the situation in Vienna with that in Brussels at the time. — Giedion refers in
general to Wagner and his architectural production. Thus he cannot have meant the
“tragedy” that Lux intended when describing the fall of the Stadtmuseum. Even then,
Wagner stood at the center of public interest despite his failure.
36 A. Behne, Der moderne Zweckbau (Munich, Vienna and Berlin: 1926), p. 12: “Almost
simultaneously, a decisive opposition in Holland, Germany and Austria began to assert
itself. The names associated with this movement were H. P. Berlage, Alfred Messel and
Otto Wagner.” “Berlage (b. 1856), Messel (b. 1853) and Wagner (b. 1841) comprise the
first generation to engage in the struggle for renewalin the building arts.” (Fast genau
gleichzeitig setzt sich in Holland, Deutschland und Osterreich eine entscheidende Op-
position durch, gekniipft an den Namen H. P. Berlage, Alfred Messel und Otto Wagner.)
(Berlage [geb. 1856], Messel [geb. 1853] und Otto Wagner [geb. 1841] sind die erst
Fiihrergeneration in dem Kampfe um die Erneuerung der Baukunst.) In a footnote,
Sullivan is mentioned as the “first American Modern architect.” — In reference to the
Postsparkasse, Gropius says of Wagner: “Today, it is almost impossible for us to imagine
what a revolution such a step implied.” On the other hand, his list of the founding
fathers of Modernism does not include Wagner’s name. It does, however, include Loos:
“T will begin with the precursors of the prewar era and confine myself to contrasting the
actual founders of the new architecture up to 1914: Berlage, Behrens, myself, Poelzig,
Loos, Perret, Sullivan and St. Elia.” See W. Gropius, “The Formal and Technical Problems
of Modern Architecture and Planning,” in: Journal of the Royal Institute ofBritish Architects
(London, May 19, 1934); reproduced in: W. Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture (New
York: 1955 [1943]), p. 61 ff.

23
 37 O. Wagner, Moderne Architektur, op. cit., p. 65 ff.
38 See below.
39 O. Wagner, Moderne Architektur, op. cit., p. 66.
40 Ibid., p. 19.
4] Ibid., p. 120.
42 Ibid, p. 36 and p. 9 (Preface of 1898).
43 O. Wagner, Die Baukunst unserer Zeit (Vienna: 1914), p. 8.
44 Ibid., p. 23 (in the context of the artist’s suitability for teaching art).
45 Ibid.; pas 1
Ibid. ;p. 33:
47 Ibid., p. 17.
48 Ibid., p. 17 and p. 36.
49 Ibid., p. 42.
50 O. Wagner, Die Qualitit des Baukiinstlers (Leipzig and Vienna: 1912), p. 6 ff.
i Ibid., p. 10.
Sw Ibid., p. 18.
53 Lux, Wagner, op. cit., p. 11.

24
Wagner, Loos, and the Road
to Modern Architecture

The Opposite of the Issue of Style: Necessity, Unity, Immanent

Coherence, the Naked, Simple and True

“Tectonics” and the “Theory of Raiment”

Disenchantment with “Botticher’s Overly Intellectual Work” and the

Postulation of a Way to Overcome the “Semperian Mechanistic
Conception of the Essence of Art”

“Stilhtlse und Kern” — From Theory to Metaphor and Its Application

to the Work of Otto Wagner

Adolf Loos — Against the Zeitgeist

.. . ad usum Delphini” — The “Elemental Event” of the Raiment

“l

Dissolved, and the Ineluctable Return — or Recognized Tenacity

— of the Hull
 eit ert Hon! 200) asap ae
f., hades To ; aT manoy or

f J te hee
gE |
,
cA gal
E ’
ml z)
i

7
q

” ennavenios
*

: pe

ag

SS«
Sieg EE ee a wdaihi” aw tosveteiewt neti es
:

= PAirabhaM rmiegre atiuegve: ci woW o to nokeaanecd

Ronotug e as7 ce-
¥

’ ; hi > womeaes salt le

7
iy
at 7
_
The Opposite of the Issue of Style: Necessity, Unity,
Immanent Coherence, the Naked, Simple and True

I have taken the liberty to “de-Vignolize” architecture ...— Monsieur

Vignola... thought that he should establish for posterity the canons of
the highly regarded Greek art, which, however, he knew only through the
clumsy adulterations by the Romans.
Le Corbusier, Précisions sur un état présent de Varchitecture (Paris: 1930),
Ded LD2:

We have our Romans and our Negroes. We are awaiting our Greeks.
A. Ozenfant, Art (Paris: 1928), p. 146.

One could, it seems to me, answer simply that the superiority or the
perfection that the Greeks obtained in this domain occurred because for
them the arts were a necessity.
Quatremére de Quincy, Considérations morales sur la destination des ouvrages
de lart (Paris: 1815), p. 1.

We have more internal affinity for the truth, be it hundreds of years old,
than for a lie that walks at our side.
Adolf Loos, “Das Andere,” in: Trotedem (Innsbruck: 1931), p. 27.

...and he now lives happily and contentedly. And makes saddles. Mod-
ern saddles? He doesn’t know. Saddles.
Adolf Loos, “The Saddlemaker” (in: “Das Andere”), in: Trotzdem (Inns-
bruck: 1931), p. 16.

Modernism has been promoted as a victory over historicism, over the architecture
of styles and thus of the columnar orders — Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. “This is not
architecture, these are styles” (Ceci n’est pas l’architecture, ce sont les styles). In
Le Corbusier’s rhetoric, the “styles” — temple facades and columnar orders crossed
out in red — represent the opposite of architecture.” “Once living and magnificent,
they are nothing more than cadavers.” Le Corbusier rails against blind imitation,
represented by Vignola, who only accessed the Greek tradition by imitating
Roman imitations. Vignola, unlike Le Corbusier, had never been to Greece. Thus,
the Greek ideal continues to be upheld. This value judgment had a tradition,

2h
 particularly in France. Even Quatremére de Quincy had lent it the “proper” tone
by beginning his Considérations morales sur la destination des ouvrages de lart with
a description of the true basis of Greek art’s superiority: “It has often been asked
what were the moral causes of the perfection of the arts in Greece. For this there
to a
is an answer that, even if it does not include all the causes, at least applies
great number. One could, it seems to me, answer simply that the superiority or
the perfection that the Greeks obtained in this domain occurred because for them
the arts were a necessity.”
Le Corbusier expanded upon this statement in various ways, beginning in Vers
une architecture. He associated the “perfection” — or, elsewhere, the calibrated cogs
and wheels of the machine — and the “moralité dorique” with the Acropolis. It
was easier to argue against more recent history from such secure historical ground.
In his many-layered puns, Le Corbusier asserted the difference between the pri-
mary moral claims of history and its mere “cadavres.” He contrasted Vignola’s
orders with the maxim “To make architecture is to make order.” (Architecturer,
‘c'est mettre en ordre.’)>° The counterpart to the styles that had to be abandoned,
he argued, would be a single future “style,” which he characterized as “the moral
tenor in every created work” (tenue morale dans tout oeuvre créé).”” In his
writings, “the different styles” are also called “the trifles of fashion” (les frivolités
de la mode), “masquerades.”** And these pitfalls can be avoided only if approached
with the moral ambition that derives from necessity — as in Wagner’s famous
challenge to students: “Artis sola domina necessitas” (Art’s only mistress is neces-
sity).°°
Behind this renunciation of style, this “dévignolisation,” is a more general
ambition. It encompasses the ability both to recognize what is to be condemned —
arbitrariness and blind imitation — and to assume the only “moral” posture — the
systematic, fundamental search for defensible connections and rules. The caption
beneath the picture of the Parthenon in Vers une architecture reads: “Architecture.
Pure creation of the mind and spirit.” This axiom belongs to a tradition that had,
since Alberti, unwaveringly asserted architecture’s spiritual nature — “certa admir-
abilique ratione et via” — as well as its systematic procedure for achieving its goals.
Again, in Le Corbusier’s diction, “The architect, through the arrangement of
forms, establishes an order that is a pure creation of his mind and spirit”
(L’architecte, par l’ordonnance des formes, réalise un ordre qui est une pure
création de son esprit).° The architect does not imitate the orders, he creates
order and brings the — necessary — systematic coherence into being.
There is only one obvious shortcoming in Le Corbusier’s exposition: the
polemic, one-sided assessment of recent history. He should have realized that
Vignola, who subsumed the various columnar orders within a unified principle, a

28
 f opepnXe fous Co TE:
Bt Sak ion Fy ke wu Soleig *

aad vat pee(ack

=
“<tob te Fagenennai

Wrnats b renyn ree

4 Ad ge $e Bees
wv

Figure 12. Devignolization

. And Vignola — finally — is finished! Thank you! Victory!” (from: Le Corbusier, Le
poeme de langle droit, Foundation le Corbusier [Paris: 1955], p. 66)
Figure 13. “Vhat is not architecture, those are styles.” (from: Le Corbusier, Précisions sur
un état présent de larchitecture et de l'urbanisme [Paris: 1930], plate 47)

single “regola,” for the first time and thereby systematized them, was on his side.°!
Like so many others, Le Corbusier is susceptible to the temptation to disdain
certain fundamental issues as part of the past in order to emphasize his own
position at the crossroads of history and supratemporal Modernity. Nonetheless,
the opposition of “good and bad” cannot beso simply translated into “today and
yesterday.” Research on Historicism has also been subject to this falsehood of
Modernism in many respects. It has therefore tried to reevaluate the nineteenth
century, considered by Modernism something “to be overcome,” with regard to
precisely that attribute that had been condemned before: its concatenation of
stylistic caprice. Every other tradition in which the issue of essence, of immanent
coherence, of the principle of necessity was primary has only considered this
strategy obliquely, as opportunity permitted. This fact can be explained by admit-
ting that not everything (or, to be honest, very little) of that to which the rhetoric
aspired was actually embodied in the built architecture. More often than not,
these aspirations remain no more than theory. In the genre of theory, however,
the obvious continuity cannot be overlooked.
To what else should theory aspire than to the most persuasive and coherent
exposition of its subject matter? The pursuit of systematization and theory are

29
 RE PMD AL PO
WANA CANNOTa
largely one and the same. The postulate of a science of architecture built upon
theory and practice — modeled freely on the Vitruvian precedent — has repeatedly
introduced the systematic and the fundamental into the discourse. While search-
ing among the ruins of Rome for old fragments or valuable statues, Brunelleschi
stumbled upon the rule that the various architectural fragments had in common,
“their symmetries.” According to his biographer Manetti, this insight prompted
him to shift the focus of his work from sculpture to architecture. The significance
of this specifically systematic quality of architecture is again revealed in Manetti’s
surmise that Brunelleschi told his companion Donatello nothing about his insight
because the sculptor would not have understood at all. Alberti had made a
fundamental claim for architecture’s theoretical nature in his De Re Aedificatoria
by defining the architect as he who not only moves all loads and conjoins volumes,
stone layered upon stone, but also grasps and plans these duties systematically.
Despite the variations in accounts, the assertion of a responsibility to the
systematic and coherent weaves through the history of architecture theory. It is no
surprise that the columnar orders, reconstructed from the comparison of ancient
remains with Vitruvius’ description, played a central role: they embodied a form
of modular and proportional theory. Jacques-Francois Blondel, the leading French
theoretician of the eighteenth century, therefore argued for the need to study the
orders by describing the commonalities between the columnar orders and a theory
of proportion, as well as the values of expression and character already postulated
by Vitruvius: “On the need to study the orders of architecture!” “The knowledge
of the orders of architecture consists in the reflective study of their origin, of their
type and of their distinctive properties; this knowledge guides the choice that one
must make for this or that expression and leads the young artist to the character
suitable for the decoration; with this knowledge he will know how appropriately
to decorate and to vary his work to give not only to each building but also to
each suite of rooms and to each room itself the form, the distinction and the
expression that suits it; to neglect this knowledge is to turn away from the
perfection of art and to put oneself in the position of producing only mediocre
and thoughtless compositions.” The central role of the orders can hardly be
more comprehensively described. They are the means to achieve “perfection.” And
Blondel, like Le Corbusier, identifies perfection as the ideal goal of architecture.
Blondel uses the knowledge of the orders to distinguish mediocrity from superla-
tive achievement: “It is in the study of the orders that the great men who preceded
us have, as at a bountiful fount, imbibed the seeds of the masterpieces that they
have created . . . It is there that they will feel the birth within them of that sublime
enthusiasm that produces great works: a dazzling light will shine before their
astonished eyes to pierce the obscurity of the cloud that had enveloped them, and,

30
 NGI WT INO III UIE
. OF TECHNOLOGY LIBRARY
inflamed with a new ardor, they will stride forward into the arduous career that
leads to immortality.”®
From the study of the orders to immortality! The apotheosis of the orders can
hardly be taken further. Yet, even before these texts of Blondel’s were published,
another author had already offered logically deduced proof, derived in an equally
systematic manner, that the same goal could be reached without recourse to
columns and capitals. After all, as Scamozzi had already written, architecture as a
science is “sublime in speculation” (sublime nella speculatione).® It is open and,
appropriate to modern linguistic usage, “creative.” Its tendency is to inspire desire
for the opposite of the usual and familiar while maintaining its respect for general
principles. In his 1753 Essai sur U'Architecture, first published anonymously, the
Jesuit architecture dilettante Laugier devoted many pages to the discussion of the
various orders and their components. His preface already indicates that a different
hierarchy has been ascribed to architecture’s theoretical standards. There may be
any number of tracts that describe precisely enough the measurements and pro-
portions of the orders, that study them in detail and thus provide precedents and
models for the act of building. However, “We still do not have a work that solidly
expounds the principles [of architecture], that demonstrates its true spirit, that
designates rules appropriate for guiding talent and establishing taste.” Laugier
believed that traditional architectural theory was excessively preoccupied with the
orders; in this sense, he anticipates Le Corbusier’s anti-Vignolesque stance. He
claimed that this preoccupation subordinates theory to the demands of practice
and to the whims of the arbitrary. He demands a more fundamental definition in
theory of architecture that would then be characterized by a “true spirit” (véritable
esprit).
“More fundamental” could mean that Laugier intended a description of the
principle concealed behind the manifold applications of the orders and that he
would attempt to reintroduce that principle to architecture. That principle is
proportion — what else! Once this was established, Laugier could offer proof that
his goal could be both defined and achieved. He gives credence, moreover, to the
relevance of practical needs and preconditions that architecture must fulfill. The
chapter that he appends to his commentary on the orders, provocatively titled
“On Buildings that Use No Architectural Order” (Des Edifices ot lon
n’employed aucun ordre d’Architecture), begins with the somewhat lapidary state-
ment that the great columnar orders are not appropriate to every type of building,
if only for economic reasons. Laugier thus underlines the fact that the theoretical
discourse of that time on architecture frequently suppressed the existence of simple
residential and functional buildings and instead chose to discuss monumental
architecture.® The orders were intended for churches, palaces, public buildings.

31
 Everything else required simple and less elaborated solutions. Laugier lashed out
against narrow academic norms, and continued in a very “Modern” tone, that
because composition without columns is freer, it is easier to find more flexible
solutions: “The freer the act of composition, the easier it is to invest it with
novelty and invention. One can lavish it with charms at will. There one can carry
out all manners of elegant, noble and sublime thoughts. Most importantly, one
can vary the design infinitely.”® There is only one thing upon which Laugier
insisted: “However free the composition of a building’s facade, the proportions
there are never free.””° This statement conforms to a typical position based upon
Palladio’s paradigmatic “several universal rules.” Moreover, these “regoli” are also
confirmed in Laugier’s catalogue of the priorities that determine a building's
quality: “exactitude of proportions,” “elegance of form” and — in the third place —
“choice and disposition of the ornament.” Here, again, “ornamens” is consciously
defined quite generally, in the Albertian manner.’! This hierarchy of principles
leads to further conclusions: the proportions of any work of architecture no longer
derive from its parts, that is, from the module of the columnar order. Instead, and
to the contrary, the proportions of the individual components must accord with
the “proportion of the whole,” formulated here for the first time with such
clarity.”
Laugier associated the “proportion du total,” the proportion of the building
as a whole, with the eye of the beholder, which he believes infallible; and to the
“natural sense of taste” (goiit naturel) schooled by considerable experience. Lau-
gier’s effort to shift attention from the parts to the whole is, of course, not unique.
Bernini, too, to cite only one example, justified his opinions in his recommenda-
tion for the facade of the Milanese Cathedral as follows: “Because if upon first
encounter the eye recognizes in the whole such a form, which, with its contour,
satisfies it and fills it with wonder, certainly at this point one has realized the ends
of art.” Here, the “proportion du total” is already embodied in the “nell tutto una
tal forma.” What is decisive in Laugier’s case, however, is that he counterposed
this “perceptual” insight, itself common to the entire discussion of taste in
eighteenth-century France, to the code of proportions immanent within and
exclusive to the orders. His conclusions follow accordingly.
“It is here that the facility of judgment is at work” — with this statement,
comparable to Laugier’s, Le Corbusier describes his regulating lines (traceés régu-
lateurs), which served, in turn, to guarantee “a high degree of precision in the act
of proportioning” a composition regardless of any columnar order.” Laugier, with
near-prescience, speculated upon the possibility of achieving a building of quality
independent of ornamentation and instead derived from the mere proportions of
the whole. As he expresses, in still-defensive diction: “Every building that is precise

32
in its proportions, were this its only quality, even if it were of the greatest
simplicity, always will produce a satisfactory effect.””4 Laugier, too, felt compelled
to discuss the “regular geometric figures.” And wherever the most simple of
decoration is appropriate, he concluded that the nudity of the wall, “le nud du
mur,” must remain visible. Here, in other words, the kernel has already freed itself
of the hull. With regard to the codex of the columnar orders, his thesis reads at
first: “They [the architects] currently see that one can design buildings of all types,
of all manners of beauty, without using any of the great orders of architecture.””5
Laugier added, however, that it is now the architects’ responsibility to develop this
tendency further, “to follow, to elaborate, to perfect what I have just pointed out
to them.”
If only between the covers of a book, architecture had already freed itself from
all decoration — Doric, Ionic and Corinthian — to expose the naked wall. But it is
true that in Laugier’s case, his logical conclusions did not come at a remove from
reality; he had not forgotten the architecture scene of his time. Of course, there
are dozens of architectural works that in a sense ante litteram boast well-
proportioned “naked” volumes. They are not only to be found in those cultures
of the past in which the literature of the Modern era preferred to seek the sources
of its “basic forms.” Instead, they coexist with so-called high architecture in the
form of functional buildings or other “secondary” and therefore less closely con-
sidered architecture. This is, of course, true of the category of buildings that
would be featured in one of the most popular genres of pattern books in nine-
teenth-century England, that of the country house or “cottage.””° But even in
Baroque buildings, which prejudice would dismiss as overly decorated, numerous
examples may be cited in which the decoration has been reduced to a mere
abstract framework concurrent with Laugier’s description. In France, precisely in
Laugier’s time, the Palladian model was slowly achieving prominence. There, the
Classical temple facade was combined with, and contrasted to, a naked volume,
an approach quite similar to that of the Modernism of the 1920s in its search for
a new form of representative architecture.”
Thus, even in Laugier’s time, there were an adequate number of clear signs
that proportion would acquire authority next to and, increasingly, over the various
systems of surface subdivision and articulation. Alberti had already described the
two recurrent aspects of what later would be called the “aesthetic of volumetrics”
(Baumassen-Asthetik): the connection to optical perception and the nudity of the
volumes themselves. Just as Laugier associates the effect of “proportion du total”
with the “goat naturel,” Alberti had done the same. The latter had based his
conviction upon the applicable Aristotelian theories that enjoyed great popularity
in the age of humanism in the numerous editions of and commentaries on De

33
 Anima. With reference to the problem of decoration (!), Alberti asserted that the
forms and figures of buildings, by their very nature, emanate something that can
move the human spirit (“quod animum excitat”). It is no coincidence that Alberti
uses here the concept central to his work, “concinntas,” in describing the ideal
demands placed upon the subject as he gazes upon architecture. The following
criticism of the erroneous tendency to transpose ornament from public to private
buildings recurs in Laugier’s text. In Alberti’s work, the demand is already made
that the naked volume — prior to its decoration — be granted the necessary
attention: “Nudum absolvisse oportet opus, antequam vestias.” The building
should be completed naked, before it is clothed.”
These thoughts had been present for quite some time. All that was needed to
make them bear fruit was an equally clearly formulated theory. Boullée perfected
the aesthetic of volumetrics, a code that asserted, with even greater radicality, that
the effect evoked by the architecture of near-Pythagorean edges and volumetric
formis was invested with every effect that architecture could possibly achieve in
the human soul. Here, the concept of “€mouvoir,” borrowed from the theory of
the sublime, was transposed to architecture with the greatest consistency. The
“effect of the volume” (l’effet des corps), rather abridged in comparison to Lau-
gier’s “proportion du total,” became the quintessence of architecture’s responsibil- |
ities. From this point on, in fact, a direct path — by way of Charles Blanc, for
example — leads to the Modernist theory of a Le Corbusier. It is in Le Corbusier's
work that Boullée’s postulates — “the art of producing images in architecture
proceeds from the effect of volumes” and “the art of moving us through the effects
of light belongs to architecture” — are unified in the famous synthesis: “architecture
is the knowledgeable, correct and magnificent play of volumes assembled under
light.””
To recapitulate: Alberti had already employed the image of a naked volume
that should be clothed only once it existed. Nudity, of course, demanded interpre-
tation. In Laugier’s rendition, nudity was initially considered analogous to pure
proportion in its abstract form; but it could assume a concrete form — “le nud du
mur.” To what aesthetic ideal could nudity be wed? Once again, the answer may
become clear by comparing this conception and that of the leading theoretician
of the time, Jacques-Frangois Blondel. The relationship between form and expres-
sion, as Blondel of course knew, is regulated by “caractére.” In this sense, Blondel
knew of all conceivable expressive forms that may occupy a position in the
spectrum bounded by “unité” and “variété.” Basically, he was acquainted with
solutions for everything, even an “architecture frivole” or an “architecture amphi-
bologique.” He discussed his reservations, expressed his own inclinations, but in
the end, he lost himself in the enormous variety of character designations. At least

34
Figure 14, Agelessly Modern under the Sign ofSimplicity and Cubic, Undecorated Architecture
A Double Cottage for Laborers
Figure 15. A Cottage with Conveniences for Keeping Poultry, Pigs and Pigeons. (from:
Joseph Gandy, Designs for Cottages, Cottage Farms and Other Rural Buildings |London:
1805], plates V and XIV)
Figure 16. Georg Muche and Adolf Meyer with the Bau-Atelier Gropius, the “Demon-
stration House” in Weimar, 1923. (from: Hans M. Wingler, Das Bauhaus, 3rd rev. ed.
[Bramsche: 1975], p. 371)

35
 he is able to define a coherent architecture as a “style vrai” (true style) in which
everything “without any type of admixture” has its place. The opposition is
constructed in terms of “unité” — unity in the sense of the correspondence between
the parts and the whole — and “variété,” although not merely between those two
terms. “Simplicité” as an aesthetic ideal has not yet come of age. Blondel did
speak of a “flat architecture” (architecture méplate) in which the relief is too low
but he considered this a deficiency and an error.8° He made no mention of an
“architecture simple,” whose lack of decoration would be considered an asset. Such
an architecture did appear, however, in the Principu di Architettura Civile of
Francesco Milizia, who was in many respects directly dependent upon Blondel.
There, between the chapters on “unita” and “varieta,” Milizia described “sempli-
cita” as well.*! Nevertheless, his tone quickly proves that Milizia’s intention was
to refute both an existing misunderstanding and a tendency to draw conclusions
too swiftly. “In architecture one does not do other than to recommend simplicity,
and with reason.” With these words, Milizia affirmed that everyone was talking
about simplicity, a development that, apparently, he also supported. Then, how-
ever, he added his qualifications: “But if this is the consensus, what is really
intended?” Simplicity must not immediately be construed to mean that the orders
are irrelevant: “otherwise, a naked wall would be the most beautiful.” To declare
the naked wall “automatically” to be the most beautiful architecture was not
Milizia’s wish, although Milizia, like Laugier, did differentiate between facades
“with the architectural orders or with none at all.”® In doing so, he did at least
admit that “simple” might be understood as a periodic counterpoint to “rich” and
that “simple architecture,” accordingly, might be understood as one that could do
without the orders: “simple architecture might be used to describe that which
does not make much use of ornament, especially of the orders.”®? Milizia, other-
wise so radical, insisted on the authority of classical antiquity, including its
columnar orders, and presented himself as “Classical.” This is not contradicted by
his occasionally arguing the principle of simplicity in absolute terms, as in the
judgment he passes on the Palladian facade of Calderari for the Tempio di S.
Orso. Here, he anticipates Ostendorf’s definition: “Optimus ille est qui minimis
urgetur, and therefore, that particular edifice is beautiful as a whole.”*4
“Optimus ille est qui minimis urgetur!” Something else is apparently still
necessary to proclaim the aesthetic qualities of this kind of reductionism — and
not to see it as inadequacy. Because his logic consistently derived from the
premises of the observer's point of view and of sensual impression, Boullée was
able to find this element: light, which modulates as it endows naked matter with
form or allows the proportions of volumetric form to be recognized — which is
another aspect of the “I too am a painter!” (Anch’io son pittore!)®> The thesis

36
 Page 782
Demonstration IVaite d objet.

yl Fig. 2.

oe seal ober.

Figure 17. The Play of (Geometric) Volumes in Light

The Grouping of Objects and the “Unité d’Objet.” (from: Roger de Piles, Cours de
Peinture par principes |Paris: 1708], p. 382)
Figure 18. Aldo Rossi, “Libro azzurro — Alcuni dei miei progetti.” (Jamileh Weber Galerie
[Zurich: 1983], p. 41)

upon which art history would again focus in the Modern period as it responded
to Hildebrand’s theory — which raised the issue of a sculpture’s best side or of the
reduction of a volume to the benefit of unified effect — was even then implicated
as a fundamental theoretical discourse. As de Piles, among others, had made clear,
light is the ingredient that can persuasively demonstrate the success of an ensemble
of objects and the unity of the object, even in the composition of a picture.* Just
as the ear cannot distinguish a single entity according to which it might orient
itself within the cacophony of many voices, he adds, so, too, does the eye require
a “unified” point of reference in order to penetrate an image. Light not only
modulates but also unifies form.*” Seen with this degree of generality, form and
light are the factors that determine the effect and — as already contended by

37
 Figure 19. Ring and Sphere. (from: Fedor Flinzer, Lehrbuch des Zeichenunterrichts an
deutschen Schulen [Bielefeld and Leipzig: 1888], plate VI)
Figure 20. Shadows Projected on Convex and Concave Surfaces. (from: C. M. Delagar-
dette, Lecons élémentaires des Ombres dans l’Archiecture faisant suite aux Régles des cing
Ordres de Vignole {Paris: 1786], plate 6)

Richard Lucae — the “power” of space.§* At the same time, the only logical
development to be expected here is that light will eventually be coupled with
form, with “naked” volumes, to create that divine spectacle about which Le
Corbusier writes in his definition of architecture. In Boullée’s time, it was already
customary for the student of architecture to study both “clair-obscur,” the defini-
tion of shade and shadow, and the primary volumes directly. Delargadette (1786),
for example, praised Vignola for the “Legons Elémentaire des Ombres dans
Architecture faisant suite aux régles des cing ordres de Vignole.”* Volumes, their
abstract and regular behavior in light, would henceforth belong to the ABC’s of
an artist's education.” Le Corbusier’s reminder that “our eyes are made for
looking at forms in light” is part of this tradition. The same is true of his symbolic
image of the fundamental geometric volumes of cylinder, pyramid, cube, prism
and sphere, released from the complexity of archaeologically correct Roman forms.
Apparently, everything converges here. The nudity of the wall — “le nud du
mur — and the volumes are revealed by the elimination of the columnar orders.

38
The volumes then emerge into the light and are sculpted as befits their visible
proportions. They acquire a unified appearance and thus manifest architecture’s
true kernel. This might summarize the ideal conception that more or less clearly
motivates the various theoretical positions since Alberti, as discussed here. Along
the way, architecture sheds its raiment. That the argument is built theoretically as
well as “art philosophically” need not be emphasized in light of the evidence
presented thus far. Nonetheless, it is precisely this fact, the uncompromising
consequence of argumentation and logical derivation, which should not be under-
estimated. Texts such as Boullée’s are rich in ratio-logical calculation, couched in
terms exemplified by the introductory comments to his Essai sur Uart: “What is
architecture? Would I define it, as does Vitruvius, as the art of building? No.
There is a serious error in that definition. Vitruvius mistakes the effect for the
cause.”?! The argument should, he claims, actually be inverted: “One must imag-
ine in order to execute.” “It is this production of the mind and spirit, it is this
creation, that makes architecture.” Corbusier’s “architecture — pure création de
lesprit” in nuce! He who wishes to leave the well-worn path of (blind) imitation
to reach a higher one must then contend with the hindrances he will encounter
on the rocky path of systematic thought.
In this respect, the Jesuit-schooled Laugier’s counterpart was the Franciscan
monk Lodoli. His theory, to the extent that it may be reconstructed from the
notes made by Memmo, is built with extraordinary stringency upon rational
procedure, conceptual clarification and clearly defined categories. It is even more
radical in its rejection of Vitruvius and in its blithe disregard for much that was
perpetrated as a result of that theory in the name of architecture-theoretical
convention. Lodoli strives toward an “impartial and philosophical examination”
and therefore approaches architecture in a strictly scientific manner. The result is
a set of formulas that allows for little deviation but must nonetheless be acknowl-
edged as clearly logical, if theoretically limited. A general maxim is derived based
upon the conclusion that the “retta funzione” and the “rappresentazione,” that is,
function and form, are inextricable from the intention to treat architecture scien-
tifically. This maxim will allow the dissemination of Lodoli’s theory uncorrupted
by the deviant interpretations of various exegetes: “Nothing should be given a
form that does not truly have a function.””
The maxim mediates between form and representational function, as is only
true and fitting once the obscuring effect of — superficial — decoration has been
eliminated to the benefit of the true kernel. These are the extreme consequences
of rational procedure: architecture may not remain indifferent to the relationship
among its various elements, but must also subject itself to the most stringent and
systematic examination if the truth is to be revealed — and even more so in pursuit

eh
 Figure 21. The Canon
of Pure Volumes
(from: Le Corbusier,
Vers une architecture,
I, la lecon de Rome
[Paris: 1923], p. 128)
Figure 22. (from:
John Wood, An Ele-
mentary ‘Treatise on
‘
Ryme seyae ee
aia io we
2 Wee
ay Ta 3
Graeo mS
: ea | ‘

Sketching from Nature

LT ee ‘3 ea > sea ie) ;
/ with the Principles of
_ Light and Shade, the
Theory of Colours &e.
[London: 1850], plate
2)
of virtue: Lodoli, “perhaps the Socrates of architecture!” He would rather take
poison than belie the capabilities of his incisive intellect and refuse to think things
to their conclusion.
The systematic structure of the tenets always attributed to Vitruvius — he is
the first to speak of a “science” of architecture — has become a certainty in the
case of Lodoli; it has evolved into a strictly rational construct that cannot be
eluded. The relationship between the two concepts of “rappresentazione” and
“(retta) funzione” can only be one of necessity and determinism. If this dictum is
related to the issue of the (naked) volume and its raiment, to the kernel and hull,
the conclusion is Bétticher’s equally restrictive relationship between “kernel form”
(Kernform) and “artistic form” (Kunstform). He, too, applies to this relationship —
the nexus within the nexus — the force of a “juncture” (Junktur). In the case of
Quatremére de Quincy, this kind of nexus is a precondition in the creations of
the Greeks — as the visible guarantee of the validity of their artistic posture — and
there it achieves necessity. Thus, the theoretical rigor of a writer such as Lodoli
operates in another context. Necessity as the principle of artistic quality also
always means coherence, truth. This is the path to “perfection.”

NOTES
54 See Le Corbusier, Précisions sur un état présent de larchitecture et de l'urbanisme (Paris:
1930), p. 70 fF.
55 Quatremére de Quincy, Considérations morales sur la destination des ouvrages de Vart (Paris:
1815) 9p."
56 Le Corbusier, Précisions, op. cit., p. 70.
57. Le Corbusier, “Lettre adresée au Groupe des Architectes Modernes de Johannesbourg
(Paris, 23 septembre 1936’),” in: Ocuvre complete, 1910-1929 (Zurich: 1943), p. 5/6.
58 Le Corbusier, “Introduction” to Oeuvre complete, 1910-1929, op. cit., p. 3/4.
59 Lux, Wagner, op. cit., p. 138. — Lux uses “need” (Bediirfnis) to translate everything that,
relative to the meaning of necessitas/necessity in architectural theory since Vitruvius, is in
fact negligible!
60 This quotation is taken from the famous definition that opens Vers une archiecture,
“Esthétique de l’Ingénieur, Architecture.”
61 After centuries of misunderstanding, this fact has finally been brought into perspective
by Christof Thoenes (Vignola’s “Regola delli Cinque Ordini,” in: Rémisches Jahrbuch
fir Kunstgeschichte, no. 20 [1983], p. 347 ff.). In other places, Le Corbusier has only
words of praise for the mathematically precise compilation of the columnar orders, for
example, in his judgment of Jean Martin and his illustrations of Vitruvius after Fra
Giocondo.
62 A.T. Manetti, The Life of Brunelleschi, ed. H. Saalman (University Park and London:
1970), p. 51.
63 Compare to Alberti’s definition of architecture in the prologue to his De Re Aedificatoria
(ed. Orlandi and Portoghesi [Milan: 1966], p. 7-9; ed. Theuer [Vienna and Leipzig:
1912 (Darmstadt: 1975)], p. 9/10).
64 (J.-E Blondel,) Cours d’Architecture ou Traité de la décoration, distribution & construction

Al
 des batiments; contenant les lecons donnérs en 1750, & les années suivantes, par J.E Blondel,
Architecte, dans son Ecole des Arts, Il (Paris: 1771), p. xxv ff.
65 Ibid., p. xviii.
66 V. Scamozzi, Idea dell’architettura universale (Venice: 1615), p. 5.
67 (Abbé Laugier) Essai sur V’Architecture (Paris: 1753), “Préface.”
68 For those buildings that art history acknowledged having neglected for far too long,
which in turn contributed to the dichotomy between history and Modernity, the ominous
concept “architettura minora” was later invented.
69 (Laugier,) Essai, op. cit., p. 122.
70 Ibid., p. 123. — Of course, this permutation of the theme “Fidelity to Rules and Freedom”
is part of the tradition deriving from Palladio’s “De gli abusi” (On abuses) (Quattro Libri,
I, Chap. XX) in which liberties taken are regulated by “alcune regole universali, &
necessarie dell’Arte.” (Several universal and necessary rules for art.) - The commonalities
between this approach and a Corbusian position need not be emphasized.
71 Regarding Alberti, see below.
V2 (Laugier,) Essai, op. cit., p. 123: “A la proportion du total, doivent répondre avec la méme
exactitude les proportions de chaque partie.” (To the proportion of the whole must
correspond with the same exactitude the proportions of each part.)
1 Le Corbusier, “Tracés régulateurs,” in: L ‘Architecture vivante (Spring and Summer 1929),
Dri.
74 (Laugier,) Essai, op. cit., p. 125
75 Ibid., p. 136.
76 An eloquent example of this phenomenon is the Designs for Cottages, Cottage Farms and
Other Rural Buildings by Joseph Gandy (London: 1805). The author is also known for
his extremely historically elaborated renderings.
Ti Here, Le Corbusier’s project for a Palace for the People is worth mentioning.
78 As evidence that Laugier depended on this passage from Alberti’s text, it may be noted
that the next sentence, which seems to entrust the execution of allowable ornamental
forms not only to the virtuoso individual but also to the mediocre artist, recurs in
Laugier’s text with a slightly different inflection: “Since the composition there is freer and
less learned, it is also more suited to artistic genius while simultaneously coming within
the reach of the artist of more modest talent.” (Comme la composition en est plus libre
& moins savante, elle est aussi plus a portée d’un génie & d'une capacité médiocre.)
({Laugier,] Essai, op. cit., p. 122.)
72 For a more comprehensive discussion of this relationship, see: W. Oechslin, “Emouvoir —
Boullée und Le Corbusier,” in: Daidalos, no. 30 (1988), p. 42 ff.
80 (Laugier,) Essa, op. cit., p. 443: “One says: This architecture is flat, has too little relief,
to refer to its lack of projecting features and hence to the defect that it causes in the
decoration of a building that is to be seen from a certain distance.” (On dit: Cette
Architecture est méplate, a trop peu de relief, pour exprimer son manque de saillie & le
défaut qu’elle occasionne a la décoration d’un batiment qui doit étre vu dans un certain
point d’éloignement.)
81 FE. Milizia, Principii di Architettura Civile, I (Bassano: 1785 [1781)), pe 252.4
82 B. Milizia, “Saggio d’Architettura,” in: Memorie degli Architetti antichi e moderni (Bassano:
1785 [1781]), p. xxx. The definition of ornament evocative of Alberti also may be found
here: “that (which) is used or is superimposed on a building.” (che s’impiega, o si
sovrappone al vivo di una fabbrica.)
83 Ibid, p. 254.
84 Letter dated May 2, 1778, to Conte Francesco di Sangiovanti; cited in: O. Calderari,
Opere Complete, IX (Bologna: 1827), p. 256/257.
85 In fact, at this point it is necessary to look beyond architecture to general art theory. See
below and as an example: L. Volkmann, Grundfragen der Kustbetrachtung (Leipzig: 1925),

42
 p. 241 ff. (The artist supports his concept by including reference to Vasari’s suggestion
that the removal of excess is to the benefit of a clearly legible volumetric form.)
86 Roger de Piles, Cours de Peinture par principes (Paris: 1708), p. 381 ff.
87 It is well-justified that Thomas Puttfarken (Roger de Piles’ Theory ofArt [New Haven and
London: 1985], p. 94) discusses Alois Riegl’s “optical levels” (optische Ebenen) in con-
nection with de Piles’s work.
88 R. Lucae, “Ueber die Macht des Raumes in der Baukunst,” in: Zeitschrift fiir Bauwesen,
XIX (1869), col. 293 ff: “... Only those who, gifted in this way with a more finely
organized sensibility, are able to create a space of particular character — and the philoso-
phers of art — will have to command the factors capable of being unified in that entity
that may be called the effect — or as I have suffered myself to say, — the power of space in
architecture! These factors are: form and light. Form is aligned with scale, which modifies
it and transforms it under its influence. Next to light may be found color, as the former’s
immediate effect but also as an independent artistic moment. I have intentionally ne-
glected to mention style. In my opinion, style is significant for the effect of a space only
inasmuch as it may shift the relationship among the four factors already mentioned in
one way or another.” (... Nur diejenigen, die vermége einer nach dieser Richtung feiner
organisierten Empfindung berufen sind, einen Raum von bestimmtem Charakter zu
schaffen — und die Kunstphilosophen — werden die Faktoren kennen miissen, welche in
ihrer Vereinigung zu Dem werden, was man die Wirkung — oder wie ich mir zu sagen
erlaubt habe — was man die Macht des Raumes in der Baukunst nennt! Diese Faktoren
sind: die Form und das Licht. Zu Form tritt, sie modificierend und ihren Einfluss
wesentlich verindernd, der Maassstab und neben dem Licht erscheint, zwar als sein
unmittelbares Resultat, aber oft als selbstandiges kiinstlerisches Moment, die Farbe. Den
Styl habe ich absichtlich nicht genannt, weil er fiir die Raumwirkung nach meiner
Meinung einzig in sofern eine Rolle spielt, als er die vier obengenannten Krafte in ihrer
Machtstellung so oder so gegeneinander verschieben kann.)
89 See also for bibliographic references: W. Oechslin, “Lichtarchitektur,” in: (I. Flagge,)
Architektur. Licht. Architektur (Stuttgart: 1991), p. 101 ff.; idem, in: (V. Magnano Lam-
pugnani and R. Schneider), Moderne Architektur in Deutschland, 1900-1950: Expressio-
nismus und Neue Sachlichkeit (Stuttgart: 1994), p. 117/131.
90 This is of course also true for the painter who is charged with integrating architecture
into his landscape. See, for example, the method depicted in: J. Wood, An Elementary
Treatise on Sketching from Nature with the Principles of Light and Shade, the Theory of
Colours, ec. (London [1850]), pl. 2.
91 Boullée, Essai sur l'art, ed. Pérouse de Montclos, p. 49.
92 (A. Memmo,) Elementi d’Architettura Lodoliana ossia larte del fabricare con solidita scien-
tifica e con eleganza non capricciosa, II (Zara: 1834), p. 16.

A3
 “Tectonics” and the “Theory of Raiment”

Cum in omnibus enim rebus, tum maxime etiam in architectura haec duo
insunt: quod significatur et quod significat.
Vitruvius, De Architectura, I, 1, 3.

1. Art is a representation (mimesis), in other words, an activity by means

of which the internal becomes external... 2. In art, the specific determi-
nants are given by the character of the bond between the internal and the
external, the representative and that which is represented. This bond must
be necessitated entirely by human nature, and not determined by arbitrary
regulation .. . At the same time, this bond is so immediate and immanent
in art that the internal is entirely sublated in the external and achieves its
full spiritual development only by virtue of its representation.
K. O. Miiller, Handbuch der Archiiologie der Kunst (Breslau: 1830), p. 1/2.

I believe that I have presented the true essence of the matter as entirely
suffused in, and in itself a matter of, veracity. One cannot, however,
presume a frictionless and complete system. Research cannot afford to
rest, and much still lies in obscurity, although its meaning must approxi-
mate the simplicity of older forms of expression without being recognized
as such. Many gaps must be filled between two things that are already
known. And all of this can occur only through the constant movement
and recapitulation of thought, by consulting those older sources still
unknown.
K. Botticher, “Einleitung und Dorika,” in: Die Tektonik der Hellenen
(Potsdam: 1844), p. x.

We conceive of sections in the more narrow sense: the activity of building

or of making objects of use, as soon as this activity is ethically inasmuch
as it is able to infuse with an ethical content the suffused and can rise to
the charges placed on it by intellectual physical life. At that point, this
activity not only seeks to satisfy more needs by forming a volume in
accordance with material necessity but instead may elevate that volume to
a Kunstform.
K. Botticher, “Einleitung und Dorika,” in: Die Tektonik der Hellenen
(Potsdam: 1844), p. 3.

44
‘Nothing should be given a form that does not truly have a function.
F Algarotti and A. Memmo, after Lodoli, Elementi d’Architettura Lodoli-
ana, \I (Zara: 1834), p. 16.

The principle according to which Hellenic tectonis constitutes its volumes

is entirely identical to the constitutional principle of living nature: the
concept, essence and function of every volume is satisfied by a rationally
deduced form, which is developed so that its exterior characteristics openly
bespeak its function.
K. Bétticher, “Einleitung und Dorika,” in: Die Tektonik der Hellenen
(Potsdam: 1844), p. 3.

Among all the inherited formal elements of Hellenic art, none has such
deep-reaching significance as the principle of raiment and encrustation. It
holds sway over all of pre-Hellenic art and by no means weaken, or waste,
away in the Greek style. Instead, it becomes intellectually charged to the
highest degree and lives on in a structural-symbolic — more so than in a
structural-technical — sense to serve beauty and form alone.
G. Semper, “Textile Kunst,” in: Der Stil in den technischen und tekto-
nischen Kiinsten, | (Frankfurt: 1860), p. 220.

Both artistic form [Kunstform] and decoration, however are bound so

intimately and inextricably in Greek architecture by the influence of the
principle of surface raiment that it is impossible to regard the two sepa-
rately.
G. Semper, “Textile Kunst,” in: Der Stil in den technischen und tekto-
nischen Kiinsten, \ (Frankfurt; 1860), p. 220.

It can therefore by no means be alienating to hear THAT THE HIGHEST

EXPRESSION OF HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENT AS IT SKIMS THE REALM OF THE
DIVINE MAY BE GLIMPSED IN ARCHITECTURE.

Logical thought must therefore convince us that the following system

cannot be shaken: “EVERY FORM OF BUILDING HAS ARISEN FROM CON-
STRUCTION AND SUCCESSIVELY BECOME ARTISTIC FORM.”
Otto Wagner, Die Baukunst unserer Zeit (Vienna: 1914), p. 14 and p. 60.

“What is decisive will occur nevertheless.” [Nietzsche]. The perfidious

book Die Form ohne Ornament, published in Stuttgart in 1924, is silent
about my battle and belies it at the same time.
Adolf Loos, “Introduction” (“October 1930”), in: Trotzdem (Innsbruck:
£931).

45
 Immanent coherence and truth were accepted standards of a comprehensive un-
derstanding of architecture. Growing stores of archaeological material led to
deeper knowledge but often diverted attention from more fundamental issues of
clarification. Otto Wagner was among those who, in the interest of asserting basic
tenets, would later warn against losing oneself in archaeological detail.* But this
state of affairs nonetheless held sway for a long period of time. In Aloys Hirt’s
opinion, contemporary architecture theory had reached a stage that could be said
— as had been said of an older debate — to have surpassed that of antiquity. In his
book Die Baukunst nach den Grundsdtzen der Alten (1809), he formulated this
thought as follows: “Incidentally, we believe that a theory of architecture in
accordance with the fundamentals of the ancients is not only possible, but even
more so, that it could exist more completely today than in antiquity itself.”
At the very least, the statement indicates enormous confidence in the capaci-
ties of the theoretical paradigms at stake. This confidence is counterposed, of
course, to the increasingly complex reality of the exchange between theory and
practice, and the dilemma it presented, which Schiller summarized in his letters
of 1793 entitled “On the Aesthetic Education of the Human Being” (Uber die
asthetische Erziehung des Menschen): “Is this perhaps not a circle? The culture of
theory is to usher in that of practice, and the practical is to be the precondition
to the theoretical?” These sentences read like a parable of Schinkel and Botticher —
and their reciprocal interests. In the words chosen by E. Jacobsthal for his rectoral
speech on William II’s birthday in 1890 at the Technical College of Berlin
(Technische Hochschule), Schinkel “was, in the strictest sense of the word, never
a teacher. His buildings functioned as precedents, but the thoughts that he
couched in words were first offered to posterity after his death and largely in
fragmentary form.””* Regardless of this assessment, Jacobsthal entitled his speech
“Retrospective on the Architectural Principles of Schinkel and Bétticher” (Riick-
blicke auf die baukiinstlerischen Prinzipien Schinkels und Béttichers). And this
relationship — in principle — was constructed by Jacobsthal as follows: “If in
Schinkel’s persona, the imaginatively gifted artistic genius held court, a genius
that succeeded in creating works of art so independent and nevertheless so contig-
uous with tradition ... then it was Bétticher who, inspired by his impressions of
Schinkel’s buildings, especially his museum, and supported by great artistic capa-
bilities, acceded to an understanding of the formative laws of Hellenic art by the
sheer force of a logic that he turned upon all available art historical material . . .”%
As in answer to Schiller’s question, Schinkel himself had written: “In art,
thought must always be directed toward realization; and in its representation, it
must anticipate the censure that of necessity accompanies the creative spirit.””” It
is also well known that Schinkel attributed a proprietary and moral power to this

46
relationship. The “moral effect” was based upon the “final necessary unity and
specificity of the essence” of every art object, as well as upon the “highest truth”
and “highest essence,” as opposed to “that form of action pieced together from
deception, appearance and half-truth.”°* Thus, Schinkel’s precepts, which Jacobs-
thal so desired to belie, had in fact been formulated in their essence with adequate
precision.” They lacked for nothing that had been expressed before with equal
consistency and clarity. Necessity, Unity, Essence, Truth: these were the logical
consequences of systematic procedure in dealing with the essential issues of archi-
tecture upon which theory was focused. And — in keeping with the statement “the
physical building which has as its prerequisite a spiritual one, that is the object of
my observations here” — Schinkel, whose proximity to practice was greater still,
had declared that accordance with need was the true basis for decision.!° Accor-
dance with purpose governed the requisite immanent coherence of architecture’s
various facets. In much the same way, Lodoli described his concept as “retta
funzione,” which was meant to hold “solidita,” “analogia” and “comodo” together.
Schinkel differentiated here: “purposefulness in the spacial distribution,” “pur-
posefulness in construction,” “purposefulness of decoration.” He gives preference
to the fundamental concepts that Rondelet also preferred in his classic work Traité
théoretique et pratique de lart de batir, to the Vitruvian terms “firmitas,” “utilitas”
and “venustas.”!°!
For someone like Bétticher, this assertion was both foundation and inspiration
enough to assemble an extensive compilation of examples. Schinkel had entitled
his notes on purposefulness “The Principle of Art” (Princip Kunst).'° And Bét-
ticher would later offer proof of precisely such a principle in his Tektonik, a
principle that was the equivalent of the “law of form,” which “stands high above
the arbitrariness of the working subject” and lays claim to truth.’ Schinkel’s
“purposefulness” was closer to the practice of architecture inasmuch as the “artistic
principle” (Princip Kunst) could be realized in individual works of architecture, as
described in his observations on the “determinants of art” (Bestimmung der
Kunst). There, theory is not predetermined, but instead portrayed as a human
need: “The need that is awakened through this premonition, the need to probe
the relationship among the largest possible number of examples, has produced
science; the need that arises in the same manner, the need to examine the largest
possible number of examples in relation to one another, has produced art. The
determinants of art are thus engaged in this kind of representation of art’s objects
such that the greatest possible number of relationships is made apparent.”'™
Schinkel seems to have wanted to leave as much open here as possible,
although he does hold onto immanent coherence, even if it is defined only by its
relationship to various concepts of purposefulness. His biographers have confirmed

47
 this. For Hermann Grimm, the following held true for future evaluations of
Schinkel: “It is already clear that, even more so than the heritage that Schinkel
left behind in his completed buildings, these are the things that assert themselves
most prominently in our intellectual vision, the things he could have and wished
to accomplish. As useful as the forms of his art have become in expressing his
thoughts exceptionally well, these thoughts themselves go far beyond that which
may be achieved by architecture alone.”!® There, the intellectual heritage is
described in terms that contrast with those applied to Semper — and even to Otto
Wagner. Even those who “merely” based their analysis on the built work found
ample reason to assert Schinkel’s fidelity to principle, in contrast to the cheap
imitation practiced elsewhere. Even Kugler devoted one chapter in his Charakter-
istik (1842) to the Schinkel’s artistic influence: “Schinkel’s Artistic Tendency in
General.” He studied Schinkel’s ability to orient his work “without a specific
precedent” on the “essential characteristics of Greek architecture” in contrast to
the usual imitation of archaeological models.'°°
Schinkel’s position was unquestionably the great challenge to which Bétticher
wanted to respond with his theoretical construct. Regardless of differing opinions
in the evaluation of his Tektonik, there was a general recognition of the fact that
he had achieved this goal “penetratingly” and “with the force of logic,” as Jacobs-
thal described it. Botticher’s Tektonik could not and, of course, was not intended
to replace Schinkel’s primer, which, indeed, was never written. Furthermore, the
extent to which Bétticher believed that he had fulfilled Schinkel’s ambition in
detail must remain unknown.!” In any case, he was able at least to show Schinkel
the first galleys of his Zektonik. And in that work, even at first glance, it is obvious
that the “other nature” is comprehensively treated, in the form of a rigorously
structured theoretical treatise subdivided into numbered paragraphs and aug-
mented by footnotes.'°® Hermann Lotze, discussing Bétticher in the former’s
Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (The history of aesthetics in Germany)
(1868), wrote in his introduction that Bétticher had “developed a theory whose
sharply drawn formulations give impetus to reiterate its basic considerations.”!
He responds to this impetus with a brief summary of Bétticher’s thoughts: “Greek
architecture produced the total form of an architectural work in accordance with
the nature of the material. It constructed it out of singular volumes that were
necessary for the existence and usage of the building; and it disposed and subdi-
vided these volumes in accordance with the corresponding spaces.” And there we
have it again, the argument of necessity, understood as the coalescence of elements
to form that “structural unification in the whole,” applied here to Greek architec-
ture.'!° According to Lotze, Bétticher’s “shifting conceptual structure” was in-
tended to facilitate this line of argument. Lotze summarizes Botticher’s ambitious

A8
intellectual construct, if reduced to the metaphor of raiment, as follows: “And so
it would happen that one would at first conceive of a formal scheme related to
the part that, in its nudity, would completely fulfill the tectonic function to which
it was subordinate, but then, thereafter, would attach extremities to this kernel, or
clad it in a form or a hull, such that its internal concept would be described in all
regards most suggestively.”!!!
Bétticher’s own depiction of the subject matter is — regardless of Lotze’s
praise, which cites its “taut coherence and methodological assertiveness” — much
more complex. That leads one to expect that its theses could be disseminated only
in a reductive and sometimes unreliably simplified form, limited to only a few
central theses, as the example of Lotze himself indicates. The same fate will be
suffered repeatedly by Semper and his work Sv, so often represented in the
“theory of raiment.” What, then, remains of the “fruit of the garden of that art
tended by [Schinkel],” which, according to his dedication, Bétticher had wanted
to incorporate, and how could it be grasped and conceptualized? It is certainly
more than the mere formula of necessity, of the — negative — description of the
“exclusion of arbitrariness,” as the Kassel professor J. H. Wolff remarked, for
example, at the end of his Beitrige zur Aesthetik der Baukunst (Essays of the
aesthetics of architecture) (1834).!!2 Botticher’s merit consists not least of all in
the conceptual development of the discussion. It is not for naught that he also
turns to philology in his foreword and advocates the “reintroduction of ancient
terminology,” claiming that “there is no essentially sharp nomenclature in
German” for “the forms and parts of a building.” Bétticher builds his theory on
the basis of Greek architecture in all its particularities. In his preface and especially
in his introduction, ambitiously entitled “On the Philosophy of Tectonic Form,”
he predicates his theory on certain fundamental considerations differentiated to a
degree not previously achieved.
The first definition of the “principle of Hellenic tectonics” can already be
found in the foreword. Bétticher sees it as “identical to the principle of generative
nature,” just as Laugier — and all of French art theory, too — associated that which
is valid in nature with the “godt naturel.”!! It is from this principle that “the law
of form arises.” This law stands “high above individual arbitrariness” and is thus
valid and universal. Bétticher speaks here of the “Hellenic building” as a “space-
generating organism” in which the relationship of parts to whole — a formulation
amenable to the issues raised by previous architecture theoretical discussion — is
to be defined. Embedded in this image of the organism is the old fundamental
philosophical issue of matter and form. The “condition of formlessness” “within
matter,” existing initially in a state of “repose,” releases its “latent life” in a
“dynamic expression” and thus compels that matter to assume “a static function.”

49
 Every part is thus necessarily integral to an “ideal organism.” Bétticher qualifies
this as a “higher existence.” And in order to describe this “self-sufficient and
complete mechanism” in a broad sense, he introduces the concepts with which
his theory was later summarized: Kernform and Kunstform. Botticher’s first defini-
tion of the concepts: “The Kernform of every part is that which is mechanically
necessary, the statically functional schema; the Kunstform, on the other hand, is
only the functionally descriptive characteristic.” By way of comparison, Lodoli
also — as far as can be deduced from the fragmentary indications that his theory
offers — presumed that only the “retta funzione” and the “rappresentazione”
manifested themselves and were thus decisively “the only scientifically derived
entities.” The Kunstform, to exhaust this comparison, would then correspond to
“rappresentazione” of “the geometric-arithmetic-optic.” And Kernform, the term
parallel to “solidita,” would bespeak the “static-physical-chemical” requirements.
This enormously complex description, to which nonetheless clear and persuasive
categories inhere, is, of course, also bespoken by the useful formula — derived from
a simplified and adapted tenet that had long become part of a general cultural
heritage — that Otto Wagner, for example, would later formulate as a thesis:
“Every building form arises from construction and successively becomes Kunst-
form.”'* Construction is, of course, that realm that is allied to “firmitas,” to
“solidita,” to the static, physical and, if one will, chemical conditions. In any case,
construction was hardly understood anymore in Wagner’s era in the abstract and
general terms of Bétticher’s “mechanically necessary” and “statically functional
schema,” and the danger that an increasingly broad understanding of the concepts
would finally lead to a conflation of Kernform with the Chicago Frame cannot be
ruled out. Regardless of any acknowledgment of the universality that Bétticher
certainly intended, this state of affairs might indicate the degree to which the
transformation, adaptation and above all the reduction and simplification of an
extremely ambitious theory of tectonics was in fact ineluctable!!!> It is thus even
more important to note that Wagner still speaks expressively about the Kunstform,
and subscribes in this sense to the “structural symbolic” rather than the “struc-
tural-technical sense,” to use Semper’s distinction.''® Furthermore, Wagner’s insis-
tence upon the unshakable and logical necessity of this fundamental principle
recalls Bétticher: “logical thought” must prove this axiom unshakable. “This
fundamental principle withstands all analysis and explains every Kunstform to
us.” !!7

The demand for immanent coherence, for necessity in the relationship among
the elements that comprise an essential definition of architecture, seems better
justified than the individual categories that were applied to architecture. The
nuance that separates Bétticher’s theory from all other reductive formulas for

50
describing the relationship between content and form, and the aspect that
therefore has seldom been noted by the “hasty reader,” is that the “functionally
explicative characteristic” of the Kunstform, derived from the Kernform, is not
described only through its respective components. Rather, those components’
connection, the “reciprocal conceptual bond,” is integral to them and permits the
whole to become a “single indivisible organism.” The integrity of the whole could
scarcely be more strongly expressed. Botticher chooses to describe this concept as
(“juncture”) (Junktur).!"8 He thus can speak of the “total form” as a result of
Hellenic tectonics and can formulate the definition: “subsequent to structural
unification in a total form, all these structural components appear in one expres-
sive entity that represents most obviously and impressively both the internal
concept, the essence or the mechanical function of each part for itself; and the
reciprocal conceptual bond — juncture — of everything in the whole. This is the
decorative nature or the Kunstform of each part.”!"°
One peculiarity cannot be overlooked. The abstraction of the theoretical
language may perhaps distract from the fact that Bétticher does not intend to
expose Kernform externally, as did, for example, Laugier who describes “le nud du
mur’ as “essentiellement” in the chapter of his Essai mentioned earlier.'2° On the
contrary, in this case we are exclusively in the domain of the Kunstform, as in the
orders of Greek architecture — as is obvious from an inspection of the other
chapters and the plates of Tektonik. Bétticher’s theoretical constructs reveal his
true ambition to be the systematic juncture of the internal with that which is
described as the “decorative,” as “decoratio,” and — revealingly — as “kosmos.”
Kernform is linguistically complimented by mention of the “hull” (Hille). To
repeat once again: for Bétticher, the essential quality that characterizes Hellenic
architectonics in general and that lends it the status of “principle” is the “ideal
quality” of the organic bond between Kernform and Kunstform. An entirely ethical
dimension inheres to this bond. And so it is raised to “a truth” that must lay
claim to validity “for all future peoples.” Here, too, in anticipation of what will
come, it is important to note the inversion of values, which — once again, with a
claim to decorum or better still, to morality — will signify the image of kernel and
hull so as to privilege the good and true kernel as opposed to the superficial hull.
Thus, a distinction is introduced that inverts the otherwise acceptable categories
of “characteristic” and “juncture:” Botticher’s Kunstform and hull are understood
to be unconditionally positive. They are the fulfillment of the Schinkelesque — or
Goethesque — “manifestation.” Here again, reference can be made to Botticher’s
first definitive sentence in the introduction to “Zur Philosophie der tektonischen
Form”: “We conceive of tectonics in the more narrow sense: the activity of
building or to making objects of use, as soon as this activity is ethically suffused,

at
 and can rise to the charges placed upon it by intellectual or physical life. At that
point, this activity not only seeks to satisfy mere needs by forming a volume in
accordance with material necessity but instead may elevate, that volume to a
Kunstform.”'?
Bétticher had already depicted the fundamental bases of his theory in the
foreword. The following offers further definitions and reformulations and sketches
the manner in which the theory may be applied to Greek architecture. Thus, the
relationship between the Kernform and the Kunstform is described more precisely
within the concrete example of the “necessarily cubic scheme” derived from “static
and structural” preconditions. The intention is to trace the way in which the
concept of Kunstform can manifest itself only in a manner “entirely analogous to
the tectonic concepts of the structural component,” that is, so that the “concept
becomes externally measurable.”'?? The eye schooled in Modernism may again
discern the skeleton structure in this description. Here, too, the “volumetric form”
(Kérperform) is also described in greater detail. Its conception, essence and func-
tion — as opposed to its mere appearance — are to be “accounted for in logically
derived form.”!?3 The volume has a certain inherent “structural function,” which
is only delimited by the “spatial borders drawn.”!*4 The greater the precision with
which Bétticher describes this function, the closer he seems to understanding the
naked kernel as a “beautiful” physical form. His formulation of this idea might
thus seem less dependent upon the immanent coherence between kernel and hull.
But it only seems so! In light of our knowledge about later permutations of the
metaphor of stylistic hull and kernel, it is obvious that the connection between
the two is still present. Nonetheless, the formulation is seductive enough to inspire
the tendentious readings that were to follow: “... one believes himself prepared
for the pre-delineated boundaries of space — the statically determined volumetric
proportions, the volumetric kernel [Kérperkern] or Kernform that conforms to
this formal contour [Formenschnitte] or schema — which, in its nudity, already
accounts completely for the tectonic function. Then, instead, extremities are
annexed to this kernel, or it proves to be clad in a hull comprising such forms,
which, in all their relationships, elucidate the kernel’s innermost concept with the
greatest suggestiveness. This is the decorative characteristic, the ornamental hull
of the core schema that organizes the structural components whose continuity is
given by the singular conceptual analogies of the formal schemae.”!25
“... Which, in its nudity, already accounts completely for the tectonic func-
tion.” Taken out of context or contrasted hastily to the “ornamental hull,” the
kernel seems here in fact to have freed itself from its hull. Once again, this does
not represent Bétticher’s conviction accurately. Nonetheless, it is foreseeable that
the conceptual juxtaposition of Kernform and Kunstform would, in time, become

Sy
an opposition. This tendency was supported by the other pictorial representations
or concepts employed in the subsequent descriptions and elaborations of these
concepts (Kernform replaced by the seemingly more concrete “corporeal kernel,”
or “Kérperkern,” or “schema”; and Kunstform as mere “ornamental hull”). Bét-
ticher had been too adamant about the Kernform’s vitality to prevent the forma-
tion of such opinions, reinforced by the appearance these developments assumed:
“The kernel of each structural component, denuded of all decorative attributes (!),
is, in its naked corporeality, already entirely capable of fulfilling all functions
related to a building.”!7° And again, Bétticher emphasized this fact in the opposi-
tion to “decorative symbols,” whose role in a building’s statics could not be
demonstrated in any work of Hellenic architecture.
Thus, it may be maintained that, in his Tektonik, Bétticher had not only
constructed a strictly logical intellectual framework for describing the immanent
coherence of matter and form in architecture, a coherence he understood as
equivalent to necessity and truth. He had also employed new terms and ideas
such that they could liberate themselves all too quickly from their original concep-
tual context and become catch phrases: “Kernform,” “K6rperform,” “Kunstform,”
“Ornamenthiille.” Moreover, Bétticher of course also used the image of raiment:
he spoke alternately of the object “clad in a... hull,” or of its “decorative rai-
ment.”!’” As has already been suggested, it was only a question of time before the
original precepts of character would recede in favor of a polarization between
kernel and hull. Character had instead been intended to describe an essential
connection between form and content and had been incorporated into Bétticher’s
Charakteristik to this end. A quick glance at the Grimms’ dictionary, however,
shows that the conceptual pair could already be seen as opposites by definition.
The favored party was, of course, the (true) kernel. Here, the ambiguity of
Botticher’s terminology is apparent. He certainly had not intended the dissolution
of his concepts in elaborating his theory “by means of a constant dynamism and
clarification of the thought,” as he explained in the foreword to his Tektonzk.'**
Semper’s “Theory of Raiment” would suffer a similar fate. Originally con-
ceived as the basis of a theory on the essence of artistic creativity, and soon
disdained as too determinist and “mechanical,” Semper’s thoughts were finally
reduced to a frustratingly abbreviated and judgmental statement. Bétticher and
Semper share something more than this fate, however, although they are more
often seen as opponents than as allies. For Carl Bernhard Stark, they embody two
“opposing points of view” that “confront each other as do matter and spirit, as do
form and idea”: “The one presupposes the existence of needs inherent to human
nature — the drives, the suffering, as well as the corporeal nature of materials and
the way in which they are worked as being derivative of that nature, in addition

53
 to the resultant appearance, even if it has been transposed to another material
(Semper). The other presumes the concept of function to be an artistic idea that
evolves from matter (Bétticher). The one approach acknowledges only an evolu-
tion from the purely material to the formal, to the spiritual and to the realm of
free play. The other can conceive only of a completed, content-sated form, of the
apparition of an idea and of a degeneration that diminishes content.”!” Later, in
Tietze’s commentary, the mere distinction between Bétticher’s approach and
Semper’s had been elevated to the supercession of the one by the other: “No
example can show the essence of this style even more clearly than the diametrically
opposed accounts given of the Greek style of building by Bétticher and Semper.
For each believed equally ardently that he had understood its ideal, which was the
tectonic, according to Bétticher. According to Semper, it was the supercession of
the tectonic.”'2° The next sentence makes clear that it had become customary to
describe the related built work in reference to the theory, or at least to presume a
“resonance” — to use Tietze’s cautious phrase — of the latter in the former: “The
reason for this difference of opinion may rightfully be sought in the relationship
between their fundamental aesthetic postures; and these postures have their roots
in the tectonic building style of Botticher’s time and in the formal architecture of
Semper’s.” In the end, the parable of the two leading theoreticians, Bétticher and
Semper, resembles the way in which Gurlitt depicted the development of nine-
teenth-century architecture “in an art historical manner,” as the “triumph of the
artistic genre of Semper over that of Schinkel.”!%' And finally, along the same
lines, Lux evaluated Otto Wagner’s significance as “the greatest after Schinkel and
Semper,” which has “become a milestone of development itself.”!*?
Before this “development” is trumpeted all too tendentiously, it is important
to point to the similarities between Semper’s “Theory of Raiment” and Botticher’s
Tektonik. The fact is that Semper was familiar with Botticher’s Tektonik, in
particular with the theoretical portions of the foreword and introduction of 1852;
thanks to the precise records of the British Library, his reading of the book can be
traced to the day.'* It is clear and indisputable that Semper was unshaken by
Botticher’s theoretical precedent and went on to develop his own theories. In and
of itself, that Semper presupposed a “technical source for the most important
basic forms, types and symbols in the building arts,” and therefore categorized the
nature of materials according to their application — distinguishing among the
“textile arts,” “ceramics,” “tectonics” (for “carpentry”) — and “stereotomy” (for
“construction in stone”) — is sufficient to demonstrate the discrepancy between
his approach and Botticher’s. Even more importantly, it indicates the differences
in the way Semper and Bétticher supported their arguments. Yet it has often been
noted that Semper was not able to do justice to all these categories equally in his

24
unfinished work. Thus, it is no coincidence that the section “Textile Art,” which
comprises the entire first volume, includes a discussion of all the fundamental
problems he anticipated despite the boundaries drawn among the different mate-
rial categories. The “Principle of Raiment in the Building Arts” is already obvious
in the title, which itself differs so greatly from the other titles that it appears as if
the issue at stake were something as fundamental as the Schinkelesque “Principle
of Art.” This impression is not false. At the heart of this emerging “Theory of
Raiment,” which appeared early and then gained force, there is an unmistakable
connection to earlier ideas on form and content, interior and exterior. And this
time, it is apparent — despite Semper’s claim in the “Prolegomena” to his magnum
opus — that he is concerned with distancing himself from traditional “philosophers
of art.” Principles, beginning with those of Vitruvius, are exclusionarily replaced
by “authorities,” and at the same time, they are attributed entirely new derivations.
That he directs his theoretical efforts toward establishing a renewed and true
relationship to the practice of architecture is equally emphatic in his “Prolegom-
ena,” a fact that separates him again from his precursors: “The philosopher of art
is concerned only with the solution of his own problem which has nothing to do
with that of the artist . . . For him, the appreciation of art is a means of exercising
the intellect, it is philosophical pursuit in which the beautiful is traced back from
the world of appearances to the idea; and in which the beautiful is subdivided
into tiny bits; in which it is distilled to the conceptual kernel.”!%4 Of course, all of
these judgments can be applied critically to Botticher. The conviction that Bét-
ticher “had attempted to comprehend the essence of Hellenic architecture by only
conceptual means,” whereas Semper based his analysis on “the needs arising from
human nature and on the preconditions defined by the structure of the materials
used in responding to the same” appears, for example, in Conrad Burstan’s
Geschichte der classischen Philologie.'*°
Semper summarized one portion of his “Textile Arts” in a comprehensive
thesis that maintained that “the principle of raiment has exercised a great influence
on the style of architecture and the other arts in all eras and among all peoples.”'%°
One of the first sections is entitled “Generalities,” whereas the title of a second
comprises two briefly stated theses: “The originary formal architectural principle,
based upon the concept of space, independent of construction. The masking of
reality in the arts.” This title suggests a markedly different emphasis than Bot-
ticher’s, which weighted precisely the opposite, the immanent coherence between
kernel and form. But what does Semper’s Sti/ share with Botticher’s texts? Most
likely, it is the category that — despite the apparently contradictory categorization
according to material — is labeled “Generalities” and presented schematically in
the title as the “Principle of Raiment.” In the end, this, too, is described with

53
 greater or lesser clarity. The part of the thesis already stated in the title, a thesis
that would have irritated the archaeologist most, was the phrase “in all eras and
amongst all peoples.” A short time later, Semper would criticize precisely this
approach to history for “severing the ties that bind Classical antiquity to a
grandiose holistic construct and setting it adrift,” as being “more Hellenistic than
the Hellenistic Greeks themselves.”!37 Semper had incidentally deplored this ten-
dency with the pointedly polemic phrase the “collapse of an obsolete scholarly
theory.”!38 But archaeological wrangling about the Greeks’ supremacy by no means
prevented Semper from situating the most universal and highest conception of art
within Greek culture, which he characterized as a “splendid blossom” and as a
“final goal to be attained” by art. This was so, he maintained, because “the creative
geniuses of the Greeks had a more noble aspiration, a more lofty goal, than to be
the inventors of a new type or motif in art. They inherited art from the ages, and
it remained sacred to them. Their mission consisted of something else: to con-
ceive, on a higher level, of this art, as inextricable as it already was from the
physical, in its next telluric expression and conception, to arrive at a symbolism
of form in which opposites and principles — mutually exclusive and conflicting in
the state of barbarism — are bound together in the freest confederation, in the
most beautiful and richest of harmonies.”!°? Thus, Semper attributed a “more
lofty goal” to the Hellenic Greeks. Here, he concurs with Botticher once again.
Furthermore, the way in which the “higher level” was very generally associated
with a “symbolism of form” is entirely parallel to Botticher’s work, although his
reasoning was decidedly different. Semper finally remains faithful to the tradition
of Schinkel and Bétticher despite his references to the “collapse of obsolete
scholarly theories” and regardless of “idealistic aesthetics.” Or, at the very least, he
remains faithful to that tradition when defining the nature of “principle” and
“generalities” in the chapter describing the “Principle of Raiment.”
Any attempt to find a “common,” source for Bétticher and for Semper may
lead to their common mentor or teacher, Karl Otfried Miiller. A Classical philol-
ogist, he approached scholarship “in a broad style” combining philology with “the
archaeology of art.” This approach allowed him to see antiquity “as a vital and
complete whole.” Bétticher dedicated his Tektonik to Miiller, “to the researcher,”
and to Schinkel, “to the precursor.” It was Miiller who inspired the young Semper,
once his interest had turned not to law but to mathematics and ancient philology
during his studies in Géttingen in 1823-1825. In Miiller’s Handbuch der Archiio-
logie der Kunst (Handbook on the archaeology of art) (1830), an anthology of his
Gottingen lectures compiled under his direction — and incidentally, a book that
was to serve generations as a standard reference work — he established the defini-
tions of art that could act as both Bétticher’s and Semper’s cardinal points. These

56
definitions once again are based upon the criteria of necessity and truth. They
presume art's representative function and place value on the relationship between
interior and exterior: “1. Art is a representation (mimesis), in other words, an
activity by means of which the internal becomes external — It desires nothing
other than to represent, and is distinguished by its capacity to satisfy itself with
activities from those of any practical concerns to those of a particular purpose.”
“2. In art, the specific determinants are given by the character of the bond between
the internal and the external, the representative and that which is represented. This
bond must be necessitated entirely by human nature, and not determined by
arbitrary regulation...” »
“3. At the same time, this bond is so immediate and
«

immanent in art that the internal is entirely sublated in the external. Its spirit
achieves its fullest development only by virtue of its representation. For this
reason, from the moment of its inception in the soul, the practice of art is focused
toward an external representation; and art is understood everywhere as an act of
making and creation (art, techne).”!“°
The idea that “intimate mutual determinacy” qualifies the reciprocity between
interior and exterior was also the topic with which Botticher set out to contend
in his Tektonzk. It led him to arrive at the concepts of Kernform and Kunstform.
Semper, too, reiterated the “inextricability” of this relationship as described by
Miiller: “so inextricably bound together as one.” He used Miiller’s theory in
describing this bond with regard to the “influence of the principle of surface
raiment.”'4! Bétticher and Semper both built upon Miiller’s ideas from different,
even contradictory, approachs. Precisely for that reason, it is no wonder that, in
their discussions of the general theoretical issues, Semper thought most closely
along Bétticher’s lines, or perhaps even adapted his thoughts. At the same time,
Semper was just as swift to make relative or to criticize those thoughts by
arguments that were oriented differently. Of course, he did not quote Bétticher
directly, but the covert relationship is palpable, not only because Bétticher “al-
ready” used the “raiment” metaphor or even because he — if differently — had
defined the “total form of a building” as “corresponding to the nature of the
material at issue.”'42 On the other hand, Semper’s statements on the “symbolism
of form” “in a higher sense” and his expostulation on the difference between the
“structural-symbolic” and the “structural-technical,” in which the former is fa-
vored, evidence his attempt to come to terms with the specific statements made
by Botticher. That in turn proves even more clearly that he knowingly distanced
himself from Botticher. He instead intended to represent the “practical tendency
to see form not as a product predetermined by the school of aesthetic idealism;
instead, to understand the Kunstform and the higher idea that lives in that form
and thus offers itself to us.”!°

57
 It is quite clear that Semper himself only seldom strays from concrete obser-
vations in describing the aforementioned “generalities” and the “principle.” The
two sentences that deal with the “principle” have already been cited: “Among all
the inherited formal elements of Hellenic art, none has such deep reaching
significance as the principle of raiment and encrustation. It holds sway over all of
pre-Hellenic art and by no means weakens or wastes away in the Greek style.
Instead, it becomes intellectually charged to the highest degree and lives on in a
structural-symbolic — more so than in a structural-technical — sense to serve beauty
and form alone.”!“4 And: “Both, artistic form and decoration, however, are bound
so intimately and inextricably in Greek architecture by the influence of the
principle of surface raiment that it is impossible to regard the two separately.”!*
Of course Semper — here, too — based his speculation on practical observation,
particularly within the context of the polychrome debate, rather than on pure
theory; he wished to deduce an argument from these concrete insights. Semper
celebrated the discovery already implicit in the fact, recorded by Quatremére de
Quincy, that ancient architecture and sculpture were enrobed and did not present
themselves in their nude state. He attempted to generalize this point so as to favor
the principle of raiment from the concrete evidence that even Greek architecture
was clad, evidence that had been tested and upheld. Semper chose to treat this
archaeological evidence as a general truth. As such, his work differed from Bét-
ticher’s, which remained within the parameters of art philosophical thought, but
also from that of Quatremére, who did not pursue the consequences of his own
observation. Because Quatremére did not see the relationship — between the
Phidiassic depiction of Zeus and the “ancient” principle of encrustation — he did
not approach the mind “with a sufficient desire to generalize and to discern the
principle of the matter at hand.”!“° This failing was noted by Semper specifically
about architecture: “all previous work was related to a pre-architectural set of
circumstances, the practical interest of which for architecture may well have been
questionable. The issue is now, what is to become of the principle of raiment now
that the mystery of transfiguration of an entirely material and structural-technical
antecedent, the simple shelter, has evolved into wholly monumental form and has
given rise to true architecture.”!47
The issues — initially of practical interest — that had most clearly recalled
Botticher had at this point been distanced from their practical origins through a
“mystery of transfiguration” to develop more effectively a body of evidence both
historical and concrete. A few pages later, Semper shifted his argument — not
surprisingly, although, in the final analysis, polemically — from the principle to a
discussion of the ephemeral. Festival celebrations, the “celebratory apparatus” and
the “enrobed scenographic framework” make their appearance in the text.’ It

58
seems here that Semper did not develop his postulates to describe a progression
from interior to exterior, or even in a fundamental vein, as did Bétticher. Instead,
he increasingly focused his investigation upon exterior decoration and raiment.
Thus, Semper ended the chapter on the theory of raiment with the conclusion
that “my primary concern in assembling these examples was to emphasize the
principle of the exterior decoration and raiment of the structural frame. This
principle, so vital to improvised celebratory architecture and so much the bearer
of the nature of the thing at hand, leads one to conclude that the same principle
of cladding the structural members, in conjunction with the monumental treat-
ment of tent roofs and tapestries, which were stretched between structural com-
ponents, must appear equally natural wherever it is embodied by the monuments
to earlier architecture.”!*°
Semper spoke explicitly of the principle of exterior decoration. Here, however,
this principle seems to retreat behind a concrete historical explanation, a fact that
would later support an interpretation of his work as predicated on “mechanistic”
paradigms. This was not yet adequate. Semper included a footnote at this point
in Stil, which is perhaps his most frequently cited text and certainly the one most
frequently associated with Semper’s “theory of raiment.” It was also to bring him
increasingly martial criticism over time. In this note, Semper referred again to the
immanent coherence of hull and kernel: “the act of masking is useless, however,
if the entity behind the mask is incorrect or if the mask is inadequate.”1°° In fact,
however, his comments almost fueled the desire to mask: “T believe that the act of
enrobing and of masking are as old as human civilization, and the pleasure related
to both is identical to the pleasure derived from the activity that motivates humans
to become draughtsmen, painters, architects, poets, musicians, dramaturgists, in
brief, artists. Every artistic creation on the one side, every experience of pleasure
in art on the other, is predicated upon a certain carnival frame of mind, to speak
in modern terms, — the glow of carnival candles is the true atmosphere of art.”!°!
This passage could later be read to favor opulent decoration. In truth, the fact
that Semper could mention the “glow of carnival candles” and Phidias’s Parthenon
gable sculptures in the same breath must have been a thorn in the side of those
sworn Hellenists — who were Hellenic to the point of dogmatism.
“The pleasure of masks and candlelight,” “carnival ambiance”: epithets such
as these clung to Semper’s theory of raiment, a theory derived from ideas put
forth by Miiller or Botticher. And that was only the second greatest evil. The
greater one still was the “mechanistic” way of thinking of which he was accused —
he who had wanted to deduce everything from material, concrete historical evi-
dence and not merely “idealistically,” from abstract ideas. Even so, he used no
material without warning again and again about the danger of hastily drawn

a9
 conclusions. Rather than claiming that the “exclusion of all whim” was art’s
highest goal, he chose as his subject history itself, in its dauntingly unbounded
and limit-defying form. He did so to discover new laws and rules in history, and
and mechanistic.
5°99 <9 e is »

not in ideas. His choice was instead construed as “Darwinistic”

. . . . . 3

NOTES
We Wagner, Moderne Architektur, op. cit., p.9 (Foreword to the second edition): “The
forward thrust of the ‘Modern’ has lent tradition its true value and removed its excess
value. Archaeology has sunken to the role of art’s helpmate and will hopefully remain so
forever.” (Durch den Vorstoss der ‘Modernen’ hat die Tradition den wahren Werth
erhalten und ihren Ueberwerth verloren, die Archaologie ist zu einer Hilfswissenschaft
der Kunst herabgesunken und wird hoffentlich immer bleiben.)
94 A. Hirt, Die Baukunst nach den Grundséitzen der Alten (Berlin: 1809), p. ix. — On Hirt’s
significance for Bétticher, an aspect that will not be elaborated upon here, see: H. W.
Kruft, Geschichte der Architekturtheorie (Munich: 1985), p. 334-335.
De) E. Jacobsthal, Riickblicke auf die baukiinstlerische Prinzipien Schinkels und Bottichers (Ber-
lin: 1890), p. 5.
96 Idem, p. 6.
97 See Gedanken und Bemerkungen tiber Kunst in Allgemeinem, in: Aus Schinkel’s Nachlass,
III, ed. A. von Wolzogen (Berlin: 1863), p. 345.
98 Ibid., p. 357: “The Moral Effect of Beautiful Art” (Moralistische Wirkung der schénen
Kunst). Schinkel of course speaks of “decorous progress,” as to be expected in this era.
99 See Jacobsthal, op. cit., p. 5.
100 See “Aphorismen aus Schinkel’s nachgelassenen Papieren,” in: ed. A. von Wolzogen, Aus
Schinkel’s Nachlass, p. 208.
101 J. Rondelet, Tiaité théoretique et pratique de l'art de batir, \ (Paris: 1808), p. 8. — The
extent to which Schinkel held to the tradition established by Rondelet’s famous work
can be left open inasmuch as the parallels are essentially limited to the categories them-
selves, which nevertheless differed in their sequence, and to a very few other examples.
Nonetheless, commonalties with regard to the general emphasis placed on construction
versus decoration or superficiality by many contemporaneous architects is interesting
enough (see Rondelet, op. cit., p. 6/7: “The majority of modern architects are more
decorators than builders, they hardly know anything about the arts or crafts that are
needed in order to realize their projects...” [La plupart des architectes modernes étant
plus décorateurs que constructeurs, connaissant 4 peine les procédés des arts qu'il faut
mettre en oeuvre pour exécuter leurs projets... ]. Volume I of Rondelet’s work, cited
here, was first published in 1802. Gerd Poeschken (K. F Schinkel. Das architektonische
Lehrbuch (Berlin: 1979], p. 21) places the text quoted here in 1804 as an appendix to the
Italian copybook. He cites in this text increasing evidence of “a search . . . for the basis of
his own position as... his own doctrine” (Von Umschau und Suche... nach Begriin-
dung einer eigenen Position, als... eine eigene Doktrin). Poeschken does not preclude
more precise dating.
102 Regarding this speculation on the tectonic, however, also see Botticher’s “Speech on the
Occasion of a Schinkel Celebration in Berlin on March 13, 1848” (Rede am Schinkelfeste
zu Berlin am 13. Marz. 1848 [see (C. F. L. Forster,) Allgemeine Bauzeitung, 1848/XIII,
p. 143 ff.]), in which he describes Schinkel’s intention as “the unification of the science
of art with the act of production” (Die Wissenschaft der Kunst mit der Werkthitigkeit
zu vereinen). Earlier (p. 147), he formulates the thought: “That which in Schinkel’s
account, on the one hand, strengthens the man engaged in the act of production, and

60
 that which, on the other, makes him an example for us to follow, is the love of the science
of art as he so conscientiously tends it. His insightful spirit recognized the fact that today
the site of the arts’ construction is not the only place at which learning occurs, that art
not only can reach fruition there, but that this science must move closer to the act of
production; that only craft as such can be the ground upon which the edifice of art may
rise; for if this were not true, then the hardest-working practitioner would be the greatest
artist and Schinkel would only have been a lesser man.” (Was zum andern also zum
werkthatigen Manne in Schinkel hinzutrat, was ihn zum andern als Vorbild fiir uns
hinstellt, ist die Liebe zur Wissenschaft der Kunst, wie er sie so innig gepflegt. Wohl
erkannte sein scharfsehender Geist dass heute nicht blos auf dem Bauplatze der Kunst
erlernt werde, dass nicht dort die Kunst reifen kénne, sondern wie zur Werkthatigkeit die
Wissenschaft hinzutreten miisse; das Handwerkliche blos als solches kénne nur erst der
Boden sein der den Bau der Kunst trage; denn sonst wiirde ja der tiichtigste Praktiker
stets der erste Kiinstler sein, Schinkel aber wire ein geringer Mann geblieben.)
103 K. Bétticher, Die Tektonik der Hellenen (Potsdam: 1844), p. xiv; see below.
104 See “Aphorismen aus Schinkel’s nachgelassenen Papieren,” Op citsipn207.
105 H. Grimm, Rede auf Schinkel gehalten vor der Festversammlung des Architektenvereins zu
Berlin (13.Marz.1867), (Berlin [and Giitersloh]: 1867), pas.
106 FE Kugler, Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Eine Charakteristik seiner kiinstlerischen Wirksamkeit
(Berlin: 1842), p. 22 ff. (Kugler’s example of “imitation”: “If one builds a temple of
Theseus in a public park in Vienna, or an Erectheum in London [as in the Church of St.
Pancratius], then it is nothing more than imitation. This kind of copy can, in the best
case, be valued only as a dexterous imitation” [Wenn man im Volksgarten zu Wien einen
Theseustempel, in London ein Erechtheum (als St. Pancratius-Kirche) erbauet, so ist das
eben nichts weiter als Nachahmung, und es kann eine solche Copie im besten Falle nur
das Verdienst einer geschickten Nachahmung haben.]. Idem, p. 23.)
107 In general, see: K. Botticher, C.F Schinkel und sein baukiinstlerisches Vermiichtnis. Eine
Mahnung an seine Nachfolge in der Zeit in dre Reden und drei Toasten an den Tagen der
Geburtstagsfeier des Verewigten gesprochen (Berlin: 1857).
108 For another way in which this difference may be categorized; see: Hirt (Die Baukunst
nach den Grundsédtzen der Alten, op. cit., p. xii/xiii), who clearly differentiated between
the “general theory” of architecture and the “primer of buildings.”
109 H. Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (Munich: 1868), p. 517.
110 Ibid.
111 Ibid., p. 518.
112 J. H. Wolff, Beztrige zur Aesthetik der Baukunst oder die Grundgesetzte der plastischen Form,
nachgewiesen an den Haupttheilen der Griechischen Architectur (Leipzig and Darmstadt:
1834), p. 153: “As explained in the introduction, the primary intention of this work was,
on the one hand, to show that the strength of Classical Greek work lies in the exclusion
of all whim; that therefore everything that occurred to the benefit of beauty was based
either on an effect of construction or seemingly on that which such an effect might
produce in the most natural and unforced manner possible. On the other hand, it was
meant to show that what appeals to us as appropriate in the noble and pure forms of
these exemplary works is based largely upon the simple rules followed by the masters,
whether consciously or unconsciously.” (Die Hauptabsicht dieser Abhandlung war, wie
wir in der Einleitung erklart haben, einestheils darzuthun, dass der Vorzug der classischen
Werke der Griechen in der Ausschliessung aller Willkiihr liegt, dass daher Allem, was zur
Beférderung der Schénheit geschah, entweder eine constructionelle Veranlassung wirklich
zum Grunde lag, oder ihm doch der Schein einer solchen, so natiirlich und ungezwungen
als méglich, gegeben wurde; anderntheils aber zu zeigen, dass das, was uns in den edlen
und reinen Formen der Musterwerke so angenehm anspricht, gréssentheils auf einfachen,
von den Meistern, sei es bewusst oder unbewusst, befolgten Gesetzen beruhte.)
113 Botticher, Zéktonik, op. cit., p. xiv ff.

61
 Baukunst, op. cit, p. 60. This conviction echoes in the statement that “the
114 Wagner,
architect always has to derive the Kunstform from the construction” (idem, p. 61).
to add here that
IS) Nonetheless, if premature conclusions are to be avoided, it is important
these statements by Wagner appear in a chapter entitled “Construction,” which coexists
with others such as “Komposition.” Thus, it does not point toward that immanent
coherence of the “principle of art,” which was Bétticher’s stated intention! In regard to
the latter, see also below.
116 Semper, Sz/I, op. cit., p. 220. See below.
UV Wagner, Baukunst, op. cit., p. 60.
118 It is worthwhile to recall the affinity for, but also the differences from, Lodoli’s theory.
Lodoli had defined “analogia” (comparable here to ‘Junktur’) separately, as the “propor-
zionata regolar convenienza” in relation to the parts and the whole — in the sense of the
characteristic. But Botticher, integrates and anchors these “ragionevoli norme” in external
form, where they manifest themselves as a result of the artwork’s unity.
119 Bétticher, Tektonik, op. cit., p. 4.
120 On the opposite observation, see below.
(DAL Béttcher, Tektonik, op. cit., p. 4.
122 Ibid...p. 9:
8) Ibid., p. 6.
124 Tbid., p. 4.
125 Ibid.,-p. 8.
126 Ibid.¢ p.9,
127 Ibid., p. 8.
128 Ibid., p. x
129 C. B. Stark, Systematik und Geschichte der Archiiologie der Kunst (Leipzig: 1880), p. 15.
130 H. Tietze, Die Methode der Kunstgeschichte (Leipzig: 1913), p. 110. — Tietze notes here
Prinzhorn’s and Streiter’s interpretations of Semper and Bétticher. He himself, however,
was concerned with rebutting an altogether too deterministic relationship between theory
and practice as an “illusion.” This concern prevented him from considering more conser-
vatively a “resonance achieved by this effort in the intellect.”
131 Demonstrated by the competition for the Hamburg City Hall: see C. Gurlitt, Dze deutsche
Kunst seit 1800 (Berlin: 1924), p. 431/432.
132 Lux, Wagner, op. cit., p. 100 and p. 10.
133 W. Herrmann, “Semper und Bétticher,” in: W. Herrmann, Gottfried Semper. Tiheoretischer
Nachlass an der ETH Ziirich, Kataolog und Kommentare (Basel: 1981), p. 26 ff.: p. 27
(with additional literature).
134 Semper, Stil, I, op. cit., p. xviii/xix. — In describing the difference between artist and
aesthetician, Semper.cites Zeising.
135 C. Burstan, Geschichte der classischen Philologie im Deutschland von den Anfingen bis zur
Gegenwart (Munich and Leipzig: 1883), p. 1108.
136 Semper, Sz, I, op: cit, p. 217.
oy! Ibid., p. 218/219.
138 Ibid., p, 218.: “The most significant result of this latest victory in the field of art history
is the collapse of an aged scholarly theory that did much to hinder an understanding of
the ancient world of forms. Rather, Hellenic art should be seen as a native plant growing
from the soil of Greece: this art is only the glorious blossom, the final goal to be attained,
the last permutation of an ancient principle of form giving whose roots are equally deep
and wide-reaching in the earth of all countries that were even ages ago the seats of social
organisms.” (Das bedeutendste Resultat dieser neuesten Eroberung auf dem Gebiete der
Kunstgeschichte ist der Zusammensturz einer verjahrten Gelehrtentheorie, welche dem
Verstehen der antiken Formenwelt unendlich hinderlich war, wonach hellenische Kunst
als ein dem Boden Griechenlands urheimisches Gewachs betrachtet wird, da sie doch nur
die herrliche Bliithe, das letzte Bestimmungsziel, der Endbezug eines uralten Bildungs-

62
 prinzipes ist, dessen Wurzeln gleichsam in dem Boden aller Lander, die vor Alters der
Sitze gesellschaftlicher Organismen waren, weiterverbreitet sind und tief haften.) — It may
be noted here briefly that his polemic against the primacy of the Greeks had already been
voiced in the nineteenth century, sometimes with identical arguments, for example, by
Bailly (Lettres sur Vorigine des sciences, et sur celle des peuples de l’Asie adressées & M. de
Voltaire... [London and Paris: 1777].
139 Ibid., p. 220.
140 K. O. Miiller, Handbuch der Archiologie der Kunst (Breslau: 1830), p. 1/2.
141 Semper, Szi/, I, op. cit., p. 225.
142 Botticher, Tektonik, op. cit., p. 4.
143 Ibid., p. 221. — This statement was directly related to Quatremére’s Jupiter Olympien. See
note 146 below.
144 Semper, Si, I, op. cit., p. 220.
145 Ibid., p. 225.
146 Quatremére, Le Jupiter Olympien ou l’Art de la Sculpture Antique considéré sous un nouveau
point de vue... (Paris: 1815), p. x. Quatremére was in fact satisfied to consider the
technical aspects, in which he found enough to admire. He found it necessary to scold
Winckelmann and Caylus on that count. He only suggested “more” than that: “I noticed
that this object was foreign to their practices and to their theoretical or practical knowl-
edge; that none of them had had the opportunity to apply their minds to studying these
procedures, that nobody even had divined the extraordinary difference in work between
the procedure that has a statue emerge from a block of stone or from a mold and the one
that through an artificial composition creates the mass itself and the forms of the statue.”
(Je m’apercus que cet objet était étranger 4 leurs connaissances théoriques ou pratiques;
qu’aucun d’eux n’ayant eu l’occasion d’appliquer son esprit a la recherche de ces procédés,
personne n’avait méme soupconné l’extraordinaire différence de travail qui dit exister
entre l’opération qui fait sortir une statue d’un bloc de pierre ou d’un moule, et celle qui
tend a créér par une composition artificielle la masse méme et les formes de la statue.)
147 Semper, Sz), 1, op. cit., :p. 229.
148 Ibid., p. 229 ff.
149 Ibid., p. 231.
150 Ibid. p: 232:
[Sy Ibid: 92231.

63
 Disenchantment with “Béotticher’s Overly Intellectual
Work” and the Postulation of a Way to Overcome
the “Semperian Mechanistic Conception of the
Essence of Art”

A rush of enthusiasm, of absolutely honest admiration, coursed through

the architectural world and through aesthetics. Finally, the long-sought
truth had been found; the essence of beauty was revealed in art that had
until then seemed most brittle in comparison to philosophical dissection!
C. Gurlitt, Die deutsche Kunst des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Ihre Ziele
und Taten, 3rd ed. (Berlin: 1907), p. 77/78 (on Bétticher).

Outside of Berlin, the signs of disenchantment with Bétticher’s excessively

intellectual work had appeared early; among architects whose curlicues
were antithetical to tectonics, the opponents grew progressively in number.
By genuflecting politely to those opposing the book’s spirit, one learned
to excuse a lack of familiarity with its contents. Finally, in the eighties,
even the Berlin archaeologists had to admit that Bétticher’s precepts were
untenable.
C. Gurlitt, Die deutsche Kunst des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Ihre Ziele
und Taten, 3rd ed. (Berlin: 1907), p. 78.

A teleological conception must arise in opposition to the Semperian

mechanistic conception of the essence of art. This could occur inasmuch
as the result of a specific and purposeful will to art [Kunstwollen] is
perceived within the artwork, a will that prevails in its conflict with
functional purpose, raw matter and technology.
Alois Riegl, quoted by Peter Behrens in: “Uber den Zusammenhang des
baukiinsterlischen Schaffens mit der Technik” (On the relationship be-
tween architectural creation and technology), in: Kongress fiir Aesthetik
und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin 7.—9., Oktober 1913 (Stuttgart:
1914), p. 251 ff: p. 253.

Just as it is important to distinguish the Darwinists sharply and strictly

from Darwin, so it is with the Semperians and Semper. If Semper claims
that, in the genesis of artistic forms, matter and technology are also to be
considered, then the Semperians simply claim that an artistic form was
the product of matter and technology. “Technology” quickly became the

64
 favored battle cry. In linguistic usage, it quickly became as important as
“art,” and finally, it was used more often than the word art. Only the
naive spoke about “art,” the layman. It sounded more knowledgable to
speak about “technology.”
Alois Riegl, Stilfragen. Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik
(Berlin: 1893), p. vii.

The compelling technical reasons to assume the originary nature of build-

ing in stone may, however, be made more clear than has been the case
until now.
H. Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland (Munich: 1868), Peo22:

It may be admitted that the principle of raiment was predominant at the

beginning of architecture in the past, as Semper attempted to prove. This
admission does not, however, prove that it would be a nonartistic propo-
sition to declare construction the initiator of the architectural form. Ar-
chitecture begins with construction and ends where there is nothing left
to construct. We therefore pursue a different path and try to derive
architectural motifs from construction. If our results are thus far the same
as those generated by the other theory, then we must be satisfied that the
proponents of that other theory may find something worthy of recogni-
tion in our observations; and were Semper also to make the principle of
construction the object of his speculation, then we would agree with him
of our own accord.
R. Redtenbacher, Die Architektur der modernen Baukunst (Berlin: 1883),
pol.

More than everything else, that which Bétticher and Semper finally shared was
the rejection and the misunderstanding to which they were both subject. To the
art historian, both authors’ texts were not sufficiently art historiographic. To
philosophers and theoreticians, Tektonik and Stil were too specific in their focus
on architectural issues; the two books were neither integrated into nor subordinate
to a more global aesthetic theory. Others characterized Botticher’s adherence to
concrete proofs as “discipline-specific scholarship.”'°? That which had emerged
from the midst of architecture theoretical tradition and intention was, in the end,
categorized as one of several “literary hybrid forms incorporating art theory, art
history and archaeology” that arose after the scholarly disciplines and competencies
had been restructured. This categorization relegated the work to a scholarly no-
man’s-land.'°3 Nonetheless, everyone spoke about “tectonics” and the “theory of
raiment.” Even Waetzoldt, who had relegated the two works to the realm of

65
 “literary hybrid forms,” did not mean for this moniker to be derogatory. Instead,
he considered the two books, along with Hildebrand’s Problem der Form, to be
among the three most inspiring “artists’ books” of the nineteenth century.'™
This superficial categorization of Bétticher’s and Semper’s primary works
bespeaks a general move away from large-scale theoretical-intellectual structures in
architecture. The two theories were also greatly weakened by imprudent abridg-
ments that amounted to no less than complete misrepresentations. Gurlitt
therefore represented Bétticher as an “elitist,” a presumptuous and intolerant
theoretician who simply described everything that did not suit his doctrine as
“incomplete, corrupted or appropriate to a lesser era.” “He brought the wily
scholarship of that era’s idealism to its acme,” argued Gurlitt. “There were, to his
mind, only a couple of buildings in the entire world that could be ‘good.’ ”"
Gurlitt wondered how Bétticher’s eminence could have been so long-lived: “A
rush of enthusiasm, of absolutely honest admiration, coursed through the archi-
tectural world and through aesthetics. Finally, the long-sought truth had been
found; the essence of beauty was revealed in art that had until then seemed most
brittle in comparison to philosophical dissection!”'*” If nothing else, the discovery
in archaeology “that all presumptions of his finely sensitized doctrine were incor-
rect” should have been sufficient to topple Bétticher’s theory. For Gurlitt, Bot-
ticher’s theory therefore remained nothing more than “know-it-all-ism”: “Tt is
furthermore proven that Vitruvius, demoted by archaeological ‘know-it-all-ism’ to
the status of a fool, knew more about this matter than the Berlin elder, even if
the latter rants against the know-nothings who have dared to speak out against
him.”'** The subsequent description of Botticher’s deposition is more than a
parable of the rise and fall of a great mind of the nineteenth century — and even
more than that, the quintessence of propriety in all scholarly enterprises at that
time: “Outside of Berlin, the signs of disenchantment with Bétticher’s excessively
intellectual work had appeared early; among architects whose curlicues were anti-
thetical to tectonics, the opponents grew progressively in number. By genuflecting
politely to those opposing the book’s spirit, one learned to excuse a lack of
familiarity with its contents. Finally, in the eighties, even the Berlin archaeologists
had to admit that Bétticher’s precepts were untenable. Since they had veiled their
retreat in the face of Schliemann with the tempestuous assumption of orneriness,
Botticher stood alone in the twilight of his life. His doctrine is buried, interred at
the side of all his precursors.”!*?
Considering this state of affairs — of the 1880s — it is hardly surprising that
the author, who, at that time, published a standard reference work entitled
Tektonik, could almost do without Bétticher, whose theories he had used only in
considering “ancient works” — or so he would have one believe.’ Rudolf Redten-

66
bacher dedicated his 1881 Tektonik, the first of “four simultaneously conceived
and accordingly executed works”'®! to Rudolf Hermann Lotze, the author of
Mikrokosmos and Geschichte der Aesthetik. The subtitle, “Principles of the artistic
formation by the human hand of structures and complexes that belong to the
areas of architecture, engineering and the art industry,” suggests that Redtenbacher
had dealt with the issues addressed by Bétticher and by Semper. He had accom-
modated them — as befit the spirit of the era — under the heading of “art industry,”
rather than the old Botticherian “apparati,” and had thus stressed their relationship
to the “industrial genres.” It is only his direct precursors to whom Redtenbacher
paid no attention; he describes them as tending “entirely in a dogmatic direction”
and chose instead to refer to the grand philosophical tradition.'** Redtenbacher’s
thoughts, expressed in the address conveying his gratitude to his mentor, Gustav
Theodor Fechner, may be construed in precisely the opposite manner than they
were ultimately, as an attack on Bétticher: “Based upon this psychological fact” —
meaning Fechner’s statements on convexity and concavity, and the concomitant
precepts — “a justification for the articulation of contour has been introduced to
architecture that ignores the particularities of architectural style. It instates univer-
sal validity rather than the dogma with which we had been compelled to make
due thus far.”!© Fechnerian aesthetics thus offers that which had earlier been
derived from the hull and the kernel, from the immanent coherence of form and
content. What had then been considered a general truth untouched by concerns
of style is now revealed to be mere dogma. Thus unburdened, Redtenbacher can
make his arguments even more forcefully by referring to the “Definition of
Building” supplied by Lotze, which Redtenbacher described as Lotze’s “principle
of gravity.”'
As already mentioned, Lotze himself had dealt extensively with Bétticher in
his Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland, finally to assume a clearly critical
position. He still accepted the authority of Schinkel and of the great figures of
nineteenth-century architecture who had succeeded him — so much so, that he
tried to distance himself from each one of their theoretical positions individually:
“Schinkel, Hiibsch, Wolff, Semper, and Bétticher most emphatically consider the
forms of Greek architecture explicable only if an originary architecture of stone
construction is assumed.”'® This rather technical interrogation — neither the
“tectonic” nor the “more in the structural-symbolic than in the structural-technical
sense” of Semper — slowly proliferated and established itself independent of a
larger context.! Lotze did not consider the art theoretical and philosophical
reasons for these things to be worthy of mention. That which once had been
celebrated as the logically compelling consequence of “truth” was labeled “merely
declamatory.” Lotze was brief in his criticism of this proposition — and still in

67
 conjunction with the theory of stone construction: “The compelling technical
reasons to assume the originary nature of building in stone, may however, be
made more clear than has been the case until now.”°”
Redtenbacher’s Tektonik addresses these “compelling technical reasons,” not
Botticher’s theory. The advantage of the practical scholarship that derives from
this approach, if at the price of a considerable loss of an intellectual tradition, is
evident in Redtenbacher’s description of the “role of tectonics”: “Based upon a
single criterion, the roles of tectonics may by and large be divided into two areas:
(1) into the one that is largely governed by the principle of gravity; and (2) into
the other, in which this principle recedes into the background. We consider the
former role to belong to the genre of building, and the latter, to the genre of
industry; and since the industry we have in mind is only that which lends its
constructs and composites a form in excess of the dictates of material necessity,
we will say in particular the industry of the applied arts.”'°
There is little need to spend time debating the ambitions and theoretical value
of such pedantic statements. Redtenbacher’s indiscriminate acceptance of Lotze’s
“principle of gravity” has more to do with the philosopher's authority — categori-
cally refuted elsewhere — than with the demand for a thoroughly considered
theory. Lotze himself had by no means granted such great importance to this
“principle.” Rather, he had included it as a desperate measure after a brief discus-
sion of Hegel and Kant’s architectural aesthetic concepts.'® Lotze wrote that
Hegel must have had a “good reason... to have expanded its [architecture's]
boundaries — probably in order to avoid providing a more precise foundation,”
whereas “Kant’s definition leads toward expansion in a different direction.” Thus,
according to Kant’s criteria of the “appropriateness of a product to a particular
use,” it must be established that “the piece of paper upon which Kant wrote this
definition would also have been a product of the art of building.”'”° Both Kant
and Hegel, it is implied, failed simply on the basis of “linguistic usage” — meaning,
a philosophical and inadequately architectural language. Thus, even Lotze, in his
period, had already noticed the extent to which philosophy and its attempts to
define an excessively broad aesthetics had moved away from architecture. Yet he
overlooked the fact that architectural theory had emancipated itself and, since the
late-eighteenth century, had developed into a kind of “philosophy of art.” He
rejected the works that remained within this tradition, particularly Botticher’s.
Lotze was left with no more than a solution by default: “Thus, we may initially
find architecture wherever a number of weighty volumetric elements that remain
discrete from one another are bound together in a whole. This whole in turn
maintains an equilibrium in the reciprocity among its components resting upon a
supporting plane.”!7!

68
 That which is merely “preliminary” for Lotze reappears in Redtenbacher’s
work — in which it has been atomized from its systematic context — as a saving
grace or a substitute for the all-encompassing system that has been lost. Once the
pattern was established of apostrophizing each concept and definition in lieu of
the discursive architectural theory which had been predominant at an earlier date,
many different things became possible. This is true for Redtenbacher’s Tektonik
and Architektonik as well as for the subsequent reference works in which a system
of thought is too often replaced by a system of representation. The reduction of
complicated theories to easy-to-handle maxims may have seemed refreshing, but
it is also obvious that these maxims succumbed even more quickly to the mean-
ingless banality of mere primers and the musty odor of their mouse-gray theories.
“Culture and material determine form” or “the human being requires food,
clothing and housing.” Who would debate these statements? And who would
object to the related “conclusion”: “Considering this way of thinking (the deter-
mination of form by culture and material), an attempt may be made to describe
objectively the individual forms of architecture.”!”? This was the contention for-
mulated by Constantin Uhde in the extraordinarily brief foreword to his four-
volume work Die Konstruktion und die Kunstformen der Architektur. Ihre Entste-
hung und geschichtliche Entwicklung bei den verschiedenen Vélkern (1902). The
remainder of the work is primarily descriptive or employs equally lapidary theses:
“Construction and artistic form, of course, go hand in hand.”!”3 “Of course?” The
very elements that had once given rise to the greatest intellectual exertion aimed
at elucidating this difficult relationship are reduced here to triviality and platitude.
The absence of a penetrating intellect, of a coherent theory — once a stated purpose
— is obvious. And it is obvious precisely at the point at which later attempts would
be made to fill this vacuum by establishing a new foundation after Bétticher’s and
Semper’s theories had been discarded.
At the same time as Redtenbacher, Rudolf Adamy published a book, whose
title, Architektur als Kunst (Architecture as art), already indicates the degree to
which their approaches to aesthetic problems differed. Adamy is even more radical
in that he subscribes to a new conception of aesthetics in a philosophical vein
distant from the concrete understanding of history that Bétticher and Semper
pursued.!”4 Adamy bases his argument on such theses as “the spirit is initially a
universal spirit” and indulges in such philosophical niceties as “form in art is thus
the expression of a spiritual entity.” He speaks of architecture as “an image of the
macrocosm” and of the sublime as “the quality evoked by architecture.” In
comparison to this broadly conceived universality, Botticher’s theory must have
seemed a narrow “theory of imitation.”!”> Accordingly, Bétticher and Semper were
rejected in their entirety to make way for the new set of theories: “Bétticher’s

69
 cloddish, complicated and utilitarian theory of imitation, itself a contradiction to
the nativity of the oldest peoples, falls apart by itself. It seems no more than a
vain effort to explain the convexity of a Doric capital in terms of analogy to leaves
withstanding a load, or even to try to derive the former from the latter. To do so
in order to favor the concept of imitation is mere insistence on principle, an
approach of which little can be made in art. By the same token, Semper’s principle
of encrustation, of surface raiment, loses its oft-excessively trumpeted significance.
For it is indifferent to aesthetic sentiment whether the wall surfaces were clad or
not and in which material a building was built. The universal forms arise more
from an inherent feeling; and only the correct instincts of fantasy has called them
into existence.”!”° Adamy sought to explain art by means of a “historically and
psychologically based necessity.”!”7 He underestimated everything that Bétticher
and Semper had already established in this respect, and — understandably — he
tried to distinguish his posture from theirs. This difference is described by psycho-
logical factors. To this end, he quotes Maertens’s influential work, first published
in 1877, Der Optische-Maassstab (The optical standard). Based upon Helmholtz’s
postulates, this work developed a “theory and practice of aesthetic vision in the
visual arts.”!78 Thus, Adamy gained a new, scientifically grounded basis and, by
means of this detour, returns to the old perceptionistic approach. Everything
achieved by the development of a theory based not on historical but on aesthetic
and “spiritual” considerations — spanning from Schmarsow to Riegl and Worringer
— became entirely predictable here. A brief comparison of Redtenbacher, Adamy
and Uhde, however, evidences the many different ways in which the new theories
tended to force aesthetics and construction apart. Bétticher and Semper had
demanded coherence and unity of the two. It was already clear that this unity,
newly invoked in the name of “Kunstwollen” and “Spiritual Suffusion” (Durch-
geistigung), would remain belief and program rather than become reality and could
thus never serve as a complete substitute for a comprehensively grounded theory
of architecture. One person who had unquestionably understood this dilemma
was Adolf Loos.
“Architecture as art is a psychologically guided activity of the human being.”'”
Naturally, an approach such as this “replaces” a theory that concretizes, explains,
describes historical contingencies and legitimizes the process of formal derivation.
Botticher and Semper are “superseded.” Nonetheless, much of their work contin-
ued to be influential. It is therefore necessary to search again for clues that will
betray the residue of Bétticher or Semper’s theories.
Even in Lotze’s provisional definitions, based on gravity and balance, traces of
the other works remain. They reveal themselves in turns of phrase, such as “bound
together in a whole” or the “reciprocity among its components” — once central to

70
the approach described by Bétticher’s Téktonik. The same is true to an even
greater extent of Redtenbacher. In the passage already quoted on the “role of
tectonics,” the stipulation of a “form that in excess of the dictates of material
necessity” is part of the definition of the craft of art. In the same introduction in
which he proved his reverence for Lotze and Fechner, he also cited an image from
Lotze that had appeared in another and more contemporary (more natural scien-
tific) form in Botticher’s central theoretical investigation, that of the relationship
between the form of the kernel and artistic form (Kern-und Kunstform). At stake
was the “impression that the actual space-enclosing mass of the walls appears to
be a universal substance from which the single constructive forces crystallize at
particular points. It is much like the limbs of a living organism, formed from an
indifferent primordial liquid: This primordial matter remains visible between the
pieces that have already taken shape. It is a formless, but form-generating, sub-
strate.” The image of the organism was not foreign to Botticher, even if the word
“yet” and the vague substrate situated between “formless” and “form-generating”
imbue the elements conceived in the categories of Classical philosophy with a
clear and dynamic tension. In reference to the “hull” and “kernel,” it seems al-
most predictable that, in time, the “act of liberation from the hull” — closer to
natural scientific conceptions — would prevail over the merely abstract, Classical-
philosophical duality. Freed from the structure of a comprehensive philosophical
framework, such concepts as “simplicity” and “purity” of form appeared in Red-
tenbacher’s work with great frequency.'®° And in Adamy’s case, the “purity of
forms” was conceived aesthetically, and is again aligned with the “ideal elements
of architectural beauty,” as “simplicté” once had been.'*!
In the first portion of his Zektonik, Redtenbacher had dealt with “aesthetic
principles.” They were included in the chapters “Purposefulness and Beauty”
(Zweckmassigkeit und Schénheit), “The Characteristic and Style” and “Symbol-
ism.” Here, Redtenbacher advocated the maxim that “beauty lies in simplicity”
and builds an argument on engineering by referring to the locomotive and the
machine as examples of “absolute purity of the external appearance.”'*? He em-
phasized the ability to respond to standard questions in a manner close to the
practice of architecture, as simply as possible. He associated the characteristic with
truth in nature, but even more so with the demand to “eschew excessive details,
so that the viewer’s attention is not distracted and the clarity of the unified
interrelationship among the manifold not undermined.”'** Apparent here are
“modern,” psychologizing concepts, if at the cost of more complex ideas, for
example, the merely cursory mention made of general principles. “External unity
in style is, however, only possible when generally valid requirements are in unison
with the generally valid means of fulfilling requirements.”'* In considering the

7|
 difficult case, for example, of sacred architecture, Redtenbacher averred: “All unity
of a higher form would only occur in tectonics if internal and external unity as
defined by generally accepted aesthetic principles were pursued.” Would! He made
his statements in no way dependent upon an attempt to describe a church, a
mosque, a synagogue and an Indian temple according to the same aesthetic
principles. He simply omitted more complex cases that could not be accounted
for using his simple guidelines. He intended nothing more than “to present the
guidelines of a practical sylistic code since we do not wish at this point to engage
in further discussion of the concept of style.”
Redtenbacher remained reticent and instead quoted extensively from Fech-
ner’s Vorschule der Asthetik (Preliminary teachings on aesthetics). Aesthetic princi-
ples remain nothing more than a preamble, condensed in as few sentences as
possible. They appear in Architektonik as a “recapitulation” in which the traces of
the theories that precede the work, including Botticher’s, are at the very least
apparent: “8. Based upon higher concerns, the unified interrelationship of the
manifold must correspond with the idea of that manifold; and the idea in turn is
to invoke the whole. We call this demand that of immanent truth, and it must be
fulfilled.”'®> Otherwise, the accounts given of “tectonics” and of the “architec-
tonic” are from strictly “objective” criteria: from the geometric basis of the subdi-
vision of surfaces in systems that are woven, gridded, cellular, and so on, to forms
generated according to the cohesion factors and aggregate conditions of their
materials, to the tasks of architecture, engineering, machining or the industrial
arts. The exception in this natural scientifically oriented handbook are the expla-
nations of “symbolic form.” Their formal and psychological bases bear almost no
resemblance to Botticher’s concept of the “symbolic” function of “decorative
raiment.”!®° They do, however, share much with Fechner’s ideas.'*” And in accor-
dance with a similar combination of building physical and psychological consid-
erations, the “architectonic” is described as “space delimiting” by means of such
components as walls, ceilings, columns carrying ceilings, floors, and so forth.
Artistic considerations are again traced to constructional bases. In essence, Redten-
bacher assumed the premises also used by Bétticher in his discussion of the
sublation of the form of the kernel in the artistic form. Redtenbacher, however,
meant “immanent coherence” as an attack upon Semper’s “superficial” theory of
raiment: “It may be admitted that the principle of raiment was predominant at
the beginning of architecture in the past, as Semper attempted to prove. This
admission does not, however, prove that it would be a nonartistic proposition to
declare construction the initiator of the architectural form. Architecture begins
with construction and ends where there is nothing left to construct. We therefore
pursue a different path and try to derive architectural motifs from construction. If

Ge
our results are thus far the same as those generated by the other theory, then we
must be satisfied that the proponents of that other theory may find something
worthy of recognition in our observations; and were Semper to make the principle
of construction the object of his speculation, then we would agree with him of
our own accord.”!88
[The critique of Semper was sharper in the earlier book, Téktonik, in a section
entitled “The Tasks of Architecture.” There, Redtenbacher ended with a plea for
a global rejection not only of a kind of theory based upon history but also of
history itself:] “Io elevate not construction, matter and purpose to the first
principle of tectonics, but instead the principle of raiment, as Semper has done,
means to deny the products of nature their justification to be considered beautiful.
It would mean that a rose or a lemon may first be considered beautiful when it
has been covered with oil paint; it would mean, at the same time, regression to
barbarism if we did not strive to distance ourselves from the past and to liberate
ourselves from that which is justified or significant merely on the grounds of
history. The things which the past has produced and intended to be considered
universally valuable are preserved in tectonics as long as we can still use them. We
throw the rest onto history’s junk heap.”!®°
“Architecture begins with construction and ends where there is nothing left
to construct.” The adequacy of “deriving architectural motifs from construction,”
once this has come to be considered desirable or self-evident. The discarding of
everything which is deemed superfluous beyond that adequacy onto “history’s
junk heap.” These are new battle cries. The argumentation runs along utilitarian
lines. In comparison, the phrases used by Otto Wagner to describe the problem
of construction are much closer to Bétticher or Semper: “Logical thought must
therefore convince us that the following system cannot be shaken: ‘every form of
building has arisen from construction and successfully become artistic form.’ This
conviction may be subjected to any analysis and explains every artistic form.” As
if he had wanted to contradict Redtenbacher directly. It is not a matter of
replacing architecture with construction, or of granting architecture its raison
détre only to the extent that it is construction. It is even less a matter of using
construction as a kind of source of inspiration for architectural form, as Redten-
bacher’s polemic statements regarding Semper might suggest. In Wagner's case, as
had been true for Bétticher and Semper, it is still a matter of the immanent,
logical and explicable interrelation between construction and architectural form,
and the expression of the two in artistic form. This investigation is undertaken
from the point of view of the architect, the initiator of the investigation, and not
from the point of view of the recipient’s aesthetic vision. Redtenbacher’s critique
of Semper proves “more materialistic” than one might have thought. As the irony

73
 ism,
of fate would have it, Semper would bear the brunt of accusations of material
as if he, and not the quickly forgotten Redtenbacher, were the epitome of a
century of natural science that still had to be routed. Instead, the call for greater
“spiritualization” — which was precisely the quality attributed by Semper to Greek
art — is at the center of the attempt to subvert precisely this Semperian “mecha-
nistic” conception. The spirit is dead, long live the spirit. Amnesia and misunder-
standing have resulted in the decline of Botticher’s and Semper’s theories. None-
theless, at the same time, the image of “hull and kernel” in its metaphorical guise
represents their apotheosis.
Any inquiry into the more deep-seated reasons for the official discomfort with
Botticher’s and Semper’s theories will soon be forced to plumb the depths of
psychologizing judgments passed upon intellectual achievements. In Gurlitt’s
work, for example, Botticher was portrayed as arrogant and self-aggrandizing,
although in Gurlitt’s own words, he had already been relegated to oblivion by the
true Gurlitt wrote that sentence.!% In Friedrich Jodl’s Asthetik der bildenden
Kiinste, a transcription of lectures Jodl gave at the Technical University of Vienna
between 1903 and 1913, one sentence referred to the “overextension of a theory,
in and of itself fruitful and correct.”!°' Apparently, there was no longer great
receptivity for such all-encompassing theories. Perhaps their ambitions had be-
come untenable, and a vacuum had resulted, to be filled by substitute theories
and by a renewed call for “spiritualization,” which derived the support and au-
thority it required from the vague but imperative concept of “Kunstwollen.” Jodl,
whose positivism, historical orientation and even idealism were attested to by his
editor, Wilhelm Borner, formulated this point as follows: “Today, we no longer
wish to follow the intellectual author of the “Tectonics of Hellenism’. And we no
longer can because our historical conscience resists it. Our conscience rejects the
attempt both to see only a few artistic forms as normative and valid among the
entire rich span of architectural history and the development of its stylistic forms
and to see subsequent architectural developments as missteps.”!°? As had already
been evident in Redtenbacher’s work, it seems that the relationship to architectural
theory had been severed. “We no longer can... ,” “our conscience rejects!” A
theory that had striven toward the unification of phenomena — of a manifold
reality — had become an issue of the conscience. The consequence was no less
than a tabula rasa for architectural theory, especially if the theory were bound to
such “old” ideals as unity, necessity and truth.
It is all, of course, graver than mere ignorance of Botticher and Semper’s
aspirations to systematization. This is clear in the case of Eduard von Hartmann’s
Philosophie des Schénen, in which tectonics, “or the art of useful objects and
buildings,” was classified in terms of the “materials used.” Semper was still good

74
enough to be cited at this one point.'? Such ignorance was predicated upon a
break with the tradition of architectural theory. It is therefore no surprise that
Otto Wagner, apparently left to himself amid the battle over Modernity, and Adolf
Loos, a loner by the accounts of others, would have preserved a continuity with
the theories of Bétticher and Semper so effectively.
The openly declared critique of Semper did not desist with the attempt to
overturn the influence of the century of natural science, but instead redoubled. It
was in the German Werkbund, most harshly criticized by Adolf Loos, that the
strongest censure of the patriarchal figure Gottfried Semper found its broadest
audience. The central thesis of the Werkbund program, established in 1907, was
the “combined efforts of art, industry and trade,” an intention that at least
superficially recalled the Semper text entitled Science, Industry and Art and was
intended as a response to the World’s Fair in London. But Semper’s enemies were
inspired by a different concept upon which the Werkbund’s founders predicated
the triad of art, industry and trade: the “spiritualization of work.” The “spirit,”
only recently dispelled, once again swept through Germany. No one — certainly
no advocates of the Werkbund — was concerned that this new tendency had a
dubious lineage, at least in part. Its foremost spokesman was the Nietzsche fanatic
Julius Langbehn, the “Rembrandt German” who later resided in Weimar and for
a time was supported by Gurlitt. Langbehn formulated the program of “forward
orientation” that was again writ large on the Werkbund’s banner.'* During the
Werkbund’s rise, an anti-Semper thesis was most emphatically articulated and
disseminated. Semper’s theories were presented as a “dogma of materialistic meta-
physics,” of which he was the founder; and style was to be understood accordingly
as the result of the “function-determined purpose,” “of the matter, the tools and
the procedures . . . of production.”'”* This thesis was immediately juxtaposed with
the following, that “art derives only from the intuition of a strong individuality
and is a free realization, untethered by material conditions, of a psychic drive. It
is not generated arbitrarily but is a creation of the intense and conscious will
endemic to the liberated human spirit.” The psychologizing account of art had
thus born fruit: “intuition,” “creation,” “will,” “liberated spirit” and, of course,
“strong individuality” were the concepts dictated by the Zeitgeist.'°° The author
of these words was considered the personification of the Werkbund ideal at that
time: Peter Behrens. His all-encompassing design activities for the large AEG-
Konzern in Berlin, ranging from product design to factory building, was the first
proof of this new, comprehensive artistic activity in the service of industry and
trade. Behrens explained his ideas in a lecture entitled “Uber den Zusammenhang
des baukiinstlerischen Schaffens mit der Technik” (On the relationship between
architectural production and technology) on October 8, 1913, in Berlin, at the

75
 first congress on “Aesthetics and General Scholarship of Art,” at which he spoke
in place of the indisposed August Schmarsow. The minutes of the discussion show
the great interest that greeted his comments. Behrens had correctly assessed the
Zeitgeist. The question of individuality versus industry and standardization did
not become a topic of discussion only at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition of
1914, where the conflict surfaced. And whether or not it was openly discussed in
the case of Behrens, Semper’s work was the battleground. Behrens’ “On the
Relationship between Architectural Production and Technology” again addresses
an issue raised by Semper, even if this issue had, for example by Redtenbacher,
long been redefined. Wilhelm Worringer, who spoke at the same congress on the
“Derivation and Form-determining Principles of Ornamentation,” had also incor-
porated Semperian theses into his work — although he did not mention Semper
by name. Worringer placed Semper’s theses in the past, far “from any semblance
of deduction or rational explanation,” into the dark spheres of the “psyche of
primitive man.”!” “Every conception of a conscious, reflected procedure on the
part of primitive man” had to be excluded; yet “the purely instinctual aspect of
this creative history” could not be emphasized enough.'* In the same vein,
Semper had done his best to refute his predecessors’ idealist claims with a theory
built upon practical considerations, concrete observations and recognizable indi-
vidual facts. Thereafter, however, this line of argumentation was simply discredited
post facto with reference to the unfathomable psyche of primitive man. “The
primitive man need not be conscious of the essence of his creation.”'°? To empha-
size even more clearly his distance from the “predominant theory of decoration,”
Worringer sought refuge in the “formal character of that magical invulnerability
attributed to early geometric ornamentation,” and in the “originary immanent
meaning.” He placed “religious value” above “aesthetic,” the “sacred power of
enchantment” above the “aesthetic.”?°° As in Behrens’s case, this entire construct
implied the liberation of the spirit, that is, the liberation of the unfettered power
of human fantasy. Any attempt to explain it would necessarily mean a limitation,
and limitations were precisely not desired in the atmosphere of liberation after
1900. Emotion was placed before sober argumentation.
Behrens’s spokesperson was no less a figure than Alois Riegl. “A teleological
conception must arise in opposition to the Semperian mechanistic conception of
the essence of art. This could occur inasmuch as the result of a specific and
purposeful will to art [Kunstwollen] is perceived within the artwork, a will that
prevails in its conflict with functional purpose, raw matter and technology.””°! For
this reason, Behrens quoted Riegl in his Berlin lecture. In the discussion that
followed, Behrens’s biographer, Fritz Hoeber, argued, the polarization of Semper
and Rieg! was too schematic.” Behrens’s thesis, propounded with such unques-

76
tioned authority, was nonetheless seductive. And that was more important than
any complicated argumentation. “Materialistic metaphysics” versus Kunstwollen,
Semper versus Riegl, as the formula would thenceforth run. This oversimplified
approach had repercussions for Semper, but also for Riegl. It had been premature
to read only the Passages in which Riegl, then the source for contemporaneous
Semper criticism based upon the most impeccable and competent research, di-
rectly attacked Semper.? It is obvious even from the title of Riegl’s Stilfragen
(Issues of style) of 1893 that Riegl intended to censure Semper’s work Der Stil
And in his explanations of geometric ornament, textile techniques, tatting and
weaving, Riegl referred to many of Semper’s considerations. Riegl had been wrong,
however, to reduce Semper’s intellectual construct to a “theory of raiment as the
source of all monumental architecture.””°* On the other hand, Riegl had also
admitted that the argument in Semper’s Szi/ did not proceed from the “matter
and material related” but from the “plane of ideas.” Finally, Riegl wrote, “The
elaboration of his theory in the coarse, materialistic sense” was first “authored by
his countless followers.”?°° Unfortunately, Rieg] himself — much less his audience —
hardly heeded this distinction. Behrens does so least of all. Moreover, Semper is
condemned as typical of that epoch in accordance with the general cultural
criticism of the retrograde, natural scientific nineteenth century. One must again
recall the image of the “Rembrandt Germans.” This accusation was then inter-
preted as the explanation for the “willing acceptance” of Semper’s theories “in art
research circles”! Riegl explained the success of Semper’s theories as follows: “The
historical and natural historical sensibility of our era, which feels compelled to
retrace the causal relationships behind each phenomenon, must be pleased with a
hypothesis that can offer a generative history of such naturalness and surprising
simplicity for an area as eminently spiritual as that of art.”?°° And thus, the
judgment passed by Riegl on Semper described the work as the “theory of a
technical-material genesis of all artistic originary forms.”?°” Riegl saw this as part
of a particular intellectual lineage: “It is a Weltanschauung presaged by Lamarck
and Goethe, and given its mature expression by Darwin; an approach based upon
material and natural scientific concerns that has infiltrated the area of art research
with difficult consequences.” Here, too, the difference between Semper and his
followers is hardly mentioned, despite Riegl’s intention to promote this distinc-
tion. Again, he discusses — this time critically — the attribution of the “theory of
the technical-material genesis of the oldest ornament and artistic forms altogether”
to Semper: “It is equally, or rather, as little justified as the identification of modern
Darwinism with Darwin; the parallel —-Darwinism and Materialism in art — seems
to me all the more appropriate inasmuch as an internal causal connection exists
between these two phenomena. The materialist tendency in question in the

WU.
 discussion of art-related issues is nothing more, so to speak, than the transposition
of Darwinism to the sphere of intellectual life. Just as it is important to distinguish
the Darwinists sharply and strictly from Darwin, so it is with the Semperians and
Semper. If Semper claims that, in the genesis of artistic forms, matter and tech-
nology are also to be considered, then the Semperians simply claim that an artistic
form was the product of matter and technology. “Technology’ quickly became the
favored battle cry. In linguistic usage, it quickly became as important as ‘art’ and
finally, it was used more often than the word art. Only the naive spoke about
‘art,’ the layman. It sounded more knowledgable to speak about ‘technology.’ "°°
Despite Riegl’s differentiation between Semper — the pioneer who expressed
himself so carefully, who “locates the form-defining role of ‘technology’ essentially
only in the advanced eras of artistic development,” so that even Worringer had to
accept this postulate; — and the Semperians, the tendency to conflate the two
persisted. The-entire argument is structured to make the reader crave Kunstwollen.
As such, it overlooks just how curiously vague and ill-defined that concept was
and apparently was meant to remain — in obvious contrast to all (excessive)
aspirations to its definition.
The background of anti-Semper sentiment permeates Riegl’s work. In his
Spatromische Kunst-Industrie, first published in Vienna in 1901, Riegl could ex-
press himself more essentially and programmatically, ignoring his previous at-
tempts to differentiate between Semper and his adepts. Here, in Kunst-Industrie,
are the standard anti-Semper statements that Behrens quoted in 1913, and which
determined opinion for a long time to come: “This is the theory that is usually
mentioned in association with the name Gottfried Semper. According to this
theory, a work of art is nothing more than the mechanical product of functional
purpose, raw material and technology. At the time of its first appearance, this
theory was rightfully considered an essential improvement over the entirely unclear
ideas of the Romantic era that immediately preceded it. Today, however, it is long
ripe to be relegated to history. As with many other theories considered in the
middle of the last century to represent the triumph of exacting natural research,
the Semperian theory of art has revealed itself to be no more than a dogma of
materialist metaphysics.”*!° Riegl’s alternative follows: “In opposition to this
mechanistic conception of the essence of the art work, I have advocated a teleo-
logical approach in ‘issues of style,’ and have been the first to do so, as far as I
know. In the work of art, I perceive the result of a specific and purposeful
Kunstwollen, which emerges from its struggles with useful purpose, raw matter
and technology. These three latter factors no longer play the positive, creative role
attributed to them by the so-called Semperian theory, but rather a restrictive,

78
_ negative role. They also comprise the frictional coefficient within the overall
product.”?!!
With the concept of the Kunstwollen as “a guiding factor,” Riegl introduced
an opposition that, according to the statements quoted previously, was never
intended to be so extreme. As stated, the validity of useful purpose, raw matter
and technology was not at issue. Only the scope of their influence was the topic
of debate. And there is no need to read much of Semper’s work to recognize that
he himself was, of course, far from ready to admit that the reciprocals of these
factors were “mechanistically” determined. Yet it is impossible to overlook the
degree of indeterminacy in the proofs to which Riegl had recourse once he
inquired into the “true,” superordinate artistic purpose beyond mere “functional
purpose,” “decorative purpose” or “conceptual purpose.” The fact that the “im-
pulse to create art” went hand in hand with the “need for harmony” recalls all too
obviously inherited (idealist) aesthetic preconceptions.”!* To relegate prehumanist
art to the genre of religious art remains no more than an odd generalization
despite the explicit attempts at explanation in a Semperian vein. Thus, Kunstwollen
was more a promise for the future than an explanation of the past. The forward
orientation that the spirit demanded was granted, and Riegl could relegate Sem-
per's theory to history or — to use Redtenbacher’s formulation — to history’s “junk
heap.”

NOTES
152 C. Gurlitt, Die deutsche Kunst des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Ihre Ziele und Taten, 3rd. ed.
(Berlin: 1907), p. 77.
153 W. Waetzoldt, Deutsche Kunsthistoriker, \1 (1924) (Berlin: 1986), p. 131. To assist an
understanding of Waetzoldt’s explanation: “Its importance lies in the area of the descrip-
tion of styles and aesthetics, and not in the area of art historiography. For this latter, it
has only indirect value. The many related art historical observations and assumptions
have led to a certain valuation of Semper’s and Bétticher’s theories as working hypotheses.
For us, however, the issue is not the correctness or incorrectness of the facts, but instead
a literary type that is most clearly represented by the three works of Semper mentioned
here (see below).” Ihre Bedeutung liegt auf dem Gebiete der Stillehre und Asthetik, nicht
auf dem der Kunsthistoriografie. Fiir diese haben sie nur einen indirekten Wert. Die
mannigfachen eingesprengten kunstgeschichtlichen Beobachtungen und Annahmen ha-
ben zu einer gewissen Uberschatzung auch der Theorien Sempers und Bottichers als
Arbeitshypothesen gefiihrt. Fiir uns kommt es aber nicht auf Richtigkeit oder Unrichtig-
keit der Fakten an, sondern auf den literarischen Typus, der am klarsten von den drei
[vgl. Unten] genannten Biichern Sempers Werk reprasentiert.
154 Ibid.
155 Ibid, p. 76.
156 Ibid.
1S57albid.sps77178:

79
 158 Ibid., p. 78.
159 Ibid.
160 R. Redtenbacher, 7ektonik, Principien der kiinstlerischen Gestaltung der Gebilde und Gefiige
von Menschenhand welche den Gebieten der Architektur, der Ingenieurficher und der Kunst-
Industrie angehéren (Vienna: 1881). (See below and note 162.)
161 This remark is extracted from the foreword to Architektonik of 1883 (p. v): see below.
162 Redtenbacher described his own impartiality in the introduction (see Tektonik, p. 9):
“These three great modern theoreticians — meaning Hiibsch, Botticher and Semper — all
belong to an entirely dogmatic tendency in the field of architecture. Each defends that
which he holds to be true against all nonbelievers with all his power; moreover, each
elucidates all other directions in architecture, from which he has chosen his own, from
his own point of view. I have had from the beginning no particular predilection for one
architectural tendency or the other. They interest me equally, and I arrived at the
conviction that it is necessary to study all of them in order to define a position. I therefore
sought out the best teachers for these most important tendencies: Botticher for antiquity,
Nicolai for the Renaissance, Schmidt for the Middle Ages. The grounding in the natural
sciences and mathematics, and a certain training in the methods of examination and
criticism, which I derived from the study of Kantian philosophy, lent me the ability to
recognize with ease that the errors of the dogmatic point of view lay in its limited capacity
to judge architecture. I essentially adopted the positions of the two great philosophers
named in the dedication in all matters regarding the establishment of aesthetic principles,
as a universal validity may be attributed to these two.” (Diese drei gréssten modernen
Theoretiker — gemeint sind: Hiibsch, Bétticher, Semper — auf dem Gebiete der Baukunst
gehoren durchaus der dogmatischen Richtung an, indem jeder das von ihm ftir wahr
Gehaltene mit allen Kraften seines Geistes vertheidigte gegen Andersgliubige, indem
ferner jeder von seinen Standpunkt aus die anderen Baurichtungen, unter denen er seine
eigene ausgewahlt hatte, beleuchtete. Ich hatte zum Voraus gar keine Voreingenommen-
heit fiir diese oder jene Baurichtung, sie interessierten mich gleichmassig, und ich kam zu
der Ueberzeugung, dass man sie alle griindlich studieren miisse, um zu ihnen Stellung
nehmen zu kénnen. Ich wahlte mir daher die besten Lehrer dieser wichtigsten Bau-
richtungen aus, Botticher fiir die Antike, Nicolai fiir die Renaissance, Schmidt fiir das
Mittelalter. Die naturwissenschaftlich-mathematische Grundlage und eine gewisse Schu-
lung in der Art des Untersuchens und Kritisierens, welche ich dem Studium der
Kant’schen Philosophie verdankte, liessen mich nicht allzuschwer erkennen, worin die
Fehler des dogmatischen Standpunktes auch in Bezug auf die Beurtheilung der Baukunst
lagen. Den in der Widmung genannten beiden geistvollen Philosophen bin ich im
Wesentlichen gefolgt, soweit es sich hier um Feststellung asthetischer Grundprincipien
handelt, denen man eine allgemeine Giltigkeit zusprechen darf.)
163 Ibid., p. vii.
164 Ibid., p. v.
165 Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik, op. cit., p. 523.
166 Ibid. — The historiography of Modern architecture often begins at this transition from a
“philosophical” to a “technical-historical” approach, which depicted technical achieve-
ments positively. This is relevant, too, to the most recent account, Kenneth Frampton’s
Studies in Tectonic Culture.
167 Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik, op. cit., p. 522.
168 Redtenbacher, Zektonik, op. cit., p. 229. — This differentiation is already suggested in the
introductory dedication to Lotze (p. v.): “The following is also inherent to this definition
(in accordance with Lotze’s ‘principle of gravity’): that the manmade ‘constructs and
composites that belongto the genre of handicrafts must differentiate themselves from
buildings in their form because they are not subject to the principle of gravity.” (In dieser
Definition [gemass Lotzes “Princip der Schwere” liegt zugleich enthalten, dass die men-

80
 schlichen Gebilde und Gefiige, welche dem Gebiete des Kunsthandwerkes angehéren,
sich von den Bauwerken in der Form unterscheiden miissen, weil sie eben nicht dem
Princip der Schwere unterworfen sind.)
169 Lotze, Geschichte der Aesthetik, op. cit., p. 540 fF: p- 504/505 (on Kant and Hegel): “...
but these two definitions inadequately capture the architectural essence of works that
unequivocally belong to the genre of architecture.” (... Aber diese beiden Definitionen
treffen doch zu wenig das, was der Baukunst wesentlich ist in den Werken, die ihr
unbestreitbar angehéren.)
170 Ibid., p. 505.
171 It is obvious just how clumsy this attempt at definition is when one considers Alberti’s
nearly four hundred year-old statement, which connected the joining of volumes to a
guiding spirit in much the same sense as that intended by Bétticher and Semper. The
maxim “mens agitat molem” was always at least known in architectural circles.
WA C. Uhde, Die Konstruktionen und die Kunstformen der Architektur, \ (Berlin: 1902),
Foreword.
Wd) Ibid., p. 69. — Of course, it is true here as it was for Redtenbacher that other significant
biases interests assert themselves in Uhde’s admission — at the same point in the text —
that the precondition for “sculptural aesthetic formal configuration” (plastisch asthetischer
Formengestaltung) is its “deviation” from the construction of plumb masonry walls.
“Kunstwollen” — derived from psychological factors — is already the author’s implicit
interest.
174 See R. Adamy, Die Architektur als Kunst. Aesthetische Forschungen (Hannover: 1881).
VW Ibid., p. 33, and p. 28.
176 Ibid., p. 144/145.
7, Ibid., p. 144.
178 See H. Maertens, Der Optische-Maassstab oder die Theorie und Praxis des dsthetischen
Sehens in den bildenden Kiinsten. Auf Grund der Lehre der physiologischen Optik fir die
Ateliers und Kunstschulen der Architekten, Bildhauer etc. (Bonn: 1977); quoted here from
the “second, entirely revised edition,” Berlin, 1884. - Adamy makes explicit reference to
Maertens’s work: see Architektur als Kunst, op. cit., p. 97 ff: “Aesthetische Optik.”
79) Adamy, Architektur als Kunst, op. cit., p. 37.
180 See, for example, the chapter entitled “Das Charakterische und der Styl” (The character-
istic and style), in: Redtenbacher, Tektonik, op. cit., p. 42 ff
181 Adamy, Architektur als Kunst, op. cit., p. 73 fiaandsp,./9;
182 Redtenbacher, Tektonik, op. cit., p. 37 ff.
183 Ibid., p. 43.
184 Ibid.
185 Redtenbacher, Architektonik, op. cit., p. vill.
186 See again Bétticher, Téktonik, op. cit., p. 8 (“2”).
187 Redtenbacher, Zéhtonik, op. cit., p. 192 ff.: “Form of Relations,” “Form of Limitation,”
“Transitional Form,” “Decorative Form.”
188 Redtenbacher, Architektonik, op. cit., p. 1.
189 Ibid, p. 234/235.
190 See above.
191 E Jodl, Asthetik der bildenden Kiinste, ed. Wilhelm Borner (Stuttgart and Berlin: 1917),
p. 374.
192 Ibid.
193 Eduard von Hartmann, Philosophie des Schénen (Leipzig 0. J.: 1887); (Ausgewahlte Werke,
zweite wohlfeile Ausgabe, Bd. IV. Aesthetik, Zweiter systematischer Theil), p. 599.
194 See (J. Langbehn,) Rembrandt als Erzieher. Von einem Deutschen (Leipzig: 1890). — Much
of what is discussed in this “eccentric” book is relevant to our considerations, for example
— in reference to the purported “overextension” of its arguments by Bétticher — the

81
 sentence “Super-culture is in fact even more vulgar than un-culture” (Ueberkultur ist
thatsachlich noch roher, als Unkultur). It was here that Langbehn located the educational
approach that would salvage German culture.
195 Peter Behrens, “Uber den Zusammenhang des baukiinsterlischen Schaffens mit der Tek-
tonik,” in: Kongress fiir Asthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft Berlin 7.-9. Oktober 1913,
Bericht (Stuttgart: 1914), p. 251 ff; p. 253.
196 See — among many other possible references — (Langbehn,) Rembrandt als Erzieher, op.
cit., p. 3: “Individualism is the root of all art; and since the Germans are undoubtedly
the most unique and strong-willed of all peoples: so they are also — assuming that they
succeed in reflecting upon the world — the most artistically important of all peoples.”
(Individualismus ist die Wurzel aller Kunst; und da die Deutschen unzweifelhaft die
eigenartigste und eigenwilligste aller Vélker sind: so sind sie auch — falls es ihnen gelingt,
die Welt klar widerzuspiegeln — das kiinstlerisch bedeutendste aller Vélker.)
197 W. Worringer, “Entstehung und Gestaltungsprinzipien in der Ornamentik,” in: Kongress
fir Asthetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft Berlin 7.-9.Oktober 1913, op. cit., p. 222 ff.
198 Ibid., p: 225.
199 Ibid.
200 Ibid., p. 225 ff
201 Behrens, “Uber den Zusammenhang,” op. cit., p. 253.
202 Ibid., p. 260: “The alternative described here of Semper or Riegl seems to me framed in
a conceptually one-sided manner in order to correspond to the experienced reality of art
history and architectural artistic production.” (Die hier zum Ausdruck gelangte Alterna-
tive Semper oder Riegel erscheint mir begrifflich einseitig gefasst, um mit der erlebten
Wirklichkeit der Kunstgeschichte und des architektonischen Kunstschaffens iibereinstim-
men zu k6nnen.)
203 See Alois Riegl, Stilfragen, Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik (Berlin:
1893).
204 Ibid., p. 6.
205 Ibid.
206 Ibid., p. 7.
207 Ibid., p. 11.
208 Ibid., p. vi/vii.
209 See above — Riegl, Szi/fragen, op. cit., p. 12.
210 Alois Riegl, Die spdtrémische Kunst-Industrie nach den Funden in Osterreich-Ungarn. Im
Zusammenhange mit der Gesamtentwicklung der bildenden Kiinste bei den Mittelmeervilkern
(Vienna: 1901), p. 5:
AM Ibid.
AND See (Karl M. Swoboda and Otto Pacht,) Alois Riegl, Historische Grammatik der bildenden
Kiinste (Graz and Cologne: 1966), p. 217 ff. (Kollegheft: 1899).

82
“Stilhilse und Kern” — From Theory to Metaphor and
Its Application to the Work of Otto Wagner

Finally, the architecturally generative spirit of the epoch had ultimately to

make itself felt from the roots upward. Those roots seemed long dead;
but now, secret vital powers forced their way upward and the actual, true
and essential architectural form of the epoch grew, forming powerful limbs
behind the applied stylistic masks and draperies. And once these forces
are thoroughly organized and matured, then certainly the beautifully or-
namented historical stylistic hulls will fracture away; they will disappear
forever, and the new kernel will emerge naked and clear in the sunlight.
Joseph Bayer, “Moderne Bautypen” (1886), in: Baustudien und Baubilder
(Jena: 1919), p. 280/281.

I would wager the following claim: the kernel of a Modern style has
already been generated. But its characteristics cannot be deduced from
looking at the exterior of our era’s buildings with their well-known histor-
ical stylistic details. Looked at in this way, these buildings reveal to the
eye only that which is different and not that which they have in common.
That which may be proven to be new, however, reveals itself in the overall
tendency of the building complexes, in their articulation derived from the
ground plan, in the compositional demands peculiar to our era in and of
themselves. Many still resist resolution, but a considerable number have
been given expression by the most important and far-seeing architects in
an architecturally inventive manner. Even if the form of expression chosen
is no more than an inherited stock form — that which is expressed in it is
unique and a new result.
Joseph Bayer, “Stilkrisen unserer Zeit” (1886), in: Baustudien und Bau-
bilder (Jena: 1919), p. 295.

That is his transition to the Modern.

He throws all historical detail overboard and begins again where architec-
ture’s natural development had broken off, with the Empire style.
L. Hevesi, Osterreichische Kunst im 19. Jahrhundert, Zweiter Teil: 1848-
1900 (Leipzig: 1903), p. 286/287.

He [Otto Wagner] is a master of disguise, in other words, his buildings

do not reveal their structural material on their exterior but are instead
clad with decorative panels.
J. Strzygowski, Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart (Leipzig: 1907), p. 15.
 In it [Wagner’s theory], the architect’s desire results in rational acuity; that
desire is to make his art purely and immediately a vessel of the era’s need.
This need — phrased in the language of architecture — is the elucidation
of the tectonic.
Hans Tietze, Oto Wagner (Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig: 1922),
pays

His surrender to the Jugendstil wave seems to us today to be Wagner's

most temporally bound characteristic. That which possesses the momen-
tary advantage of Modernity must naturally also lie in the shadow of the
past... It is possible to conceive of a natural phenomenon that would
wash away all that is not essential from Otto Wagner’s buildings and
would not maim them, but instead intensify their effect.
Hans Tietze, Otto Wagner (Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig: 1922),
p. 15/16.

“Tectonics” and “theory of raiment” continued to be quoted with frequency.

Although they periodically were reduced to mere provocation, they nonetheless
remained a fixture in the collective memory. The same is true of other related
concepts such as “Kernform,” “Kunstform,” the hull and raiment. But it is often
forgotten that the complex relationships upon which the comprehension of these
concepts relies has atrophied, to the benefit of other concepts and turns of phrase.
The more vividly such concepts were able to represent a theoretical construct,
despite all unavoidable simplification, the greater their success. And the further
their distance from the original and specific structure of a theory, the more
adaptable they were to other, new tendencies.
In addition to determining architecture’s essence and explaining processes of
formal genesis, what was at stake had always been the search for a new style — or,
phrased more generally, the search for an adequate expression of a contemporane-
ous or modern architecture. These two differently inflected desires could not in
any case be entirely separated. That fact is apparent in many phrases that fre-
quently invoke future developments. Eduard van der Niill admitted in 1845 that
he was “still far from the goal of finding a rational, independent expression for
modern architecture.”*!° In Zurich, Wegmann promised as early as 1839 an
architecture built “solely upon the simple precepts of construction” “leaving aside
all useless decoration.”*!* This statement recalls Laugier’s image of an architecture
without columnar orders, but it also presages Redtenbacher or Adamy’s words —
if from an entirely different point of view — on the ideal of purity and simple
form.’ Here again is the immediate association to the metaphor of raiment by
virtue of nudity, its complement. The image of hull and kernel is paradigmatic of

84
Figure 23. Enrobing, Disrobing, Dressing Anew: Variations on the Architecture of the Hull
The German Agrar- und Industriebank in Prague, before Renovation
Figure 24, The German Agrar- und Industriebank in Prague, after Renovation. (from: A.
Foehr, Bauten und Entwiirfe (Prague: 1925])

this pattern. This metaphor offered itself as the ideal vessel for all these mostly
vague and somehow related thoughts that derived from the (architectural) relation-
ship between the kernel form and the artistic form, or from their permutation, as
in Bétticher’s description, as “hull” and “raiment.” In this, and in the broadest,
sense, these ideas could be seen as a variation on “kernel and hull.” Once their
nuances had been stripped to reduce them to mere concept, their affinity for the
usual linguistic usage of “kernel and shell” was more or less established. It was
that much easier to appropriate their meaning, a meaning that must be obvious
to everyone, than to deal with the complicated philosophical propositions of
Botticher and Semper. Botticher had already attempted to concretize the abstract
idea of “kernel form” in “volumetric” or “corporeal form.” He had described this
form “in its nakedness” and relative independence, adding that it might be “clad
with a hull.”2!° No further attempt is made to differentiate between purely rational
theory and an associative generation of images. The simplified images remain in a
more or less vague relationship to the theories that precede them. The very large
extent to which Semper’s “theory of raiment” was treated in this manner — even
disembodied by Riegl as a “favorite theory”?!” — need not be explained further.
The supporting statements are all too numerous, as if, at the turn of the century
with the apotheosis of arts and crafts, architecture and fashion were as close as
siblings.

85
 It is even more interesting to consider the new meanings acquired by these
kinds of images and metaphors. The fact that the image of kernel and hull
corresponds to the concepts of inside and outside can be traced, if one considers
even the smallest pieces of evidence along the way, through the genesis of the idea
that form developed “from the inside to the outside.” This can already be recog-
nized in Bétticher’s work. And as soon as this image was understood more
dynamically, it was rephrased in terms of “freeing the kernel from the hull.” The
theory of raiment had itself invoked Semper’s theory of “masking”— and with it,
all imaginable positive and negative associations.
Another development concurrent to this rapid transformation of the one thing
into its opposite — Semper’s positively valued “masking” into concealing and
obfuscating drapery — is the way in which the terms were valued. The Grimms’
dictionary catalogues every conceivable image used to describe the concept of the
hull and the kernel: “To get to the heart [Kern] of the matter” is only one of
many expressions that indicate clearly the degree to which the kernel enjoys a
moral advantage over the hull.?!* Accordingly, “(Kernel) Used as an image for the
essential content, primary matter, etc., as opposed to Shell or (Hull), which merely
serves the kernel so that the kernel and shell bespeak the relationship between the
essence and the appearance, between the primary and secondary matters or con-
tents, between the essential content to the inessential cladding.”?! If this image is
compared to the traditional concepts employed by architecture theory, the differ-
ence is obvious.?”° In the latter, the “morality” of architecture was often guaranteed
by the inevitability of the coherence between interior and exterior. And, on a less
moral note, the precept of character was based thematically and emphatically on
this coherence. Bétticher, like Semper, consequently wanted to justify through
immanent coherence the essence of architecture. It is thus not surprising that
Botticher ascribes “moral power” (sittliche Kraft) to the coherence arising from the
immanent symbolic reciprocity between kernel form (Kernform) and artistic form
(Kunstform).
The hull suffered most in the — one-sided — redefinition of good and evil in
the literal terms of the kernel-and-shell metaphor. The result was an ascendant
critique of stylistically based architecture. The hull was rephrased pejoratively as
“stylistic hull” (S¢zlhiilse). Nonetheless, the liberation of the kernel by no means
solves the problem of architecture’s essence. On second glance, at if not earlier, it
becomes apparent that the emergent kernel is itself exterior. This problem alone
has lent importance to all those theories — from Fechner to Hildebrand and
Schmarsow — that discuss the laws of optics and their “psychological” conse-
quences in describing the nature of the plane, the volume and space. The focus of
the observations shifted, but never to the extent that the validity of structural and

86
 Figure 25. Vaclav Nekvasil, een ey inSere 1920.
mao
Tita V. Nekvasil, 1868
1928 [Prague: 1928])
Figure 26. Adolf Loos, Café Museum, Vienna, 1899. (from: Ludwig Miinz and Gustav
Kiinstler, Der Architekt Adolf Loos [Vienna and Munich: 1964], plate 16, p. 36)

architectural prerequisites — which Bétticher believed incipient in the “Kernform”

and evident most unconditionally in the “Kunstform’— could be lost.”?! By the
same token, the kernel, emerging in its naked form, would maintain its internal
essence while representing itself externally as a volume (Kérper). But architecturally
“morality” in the form of the naked volume would not enjoy its place in the sun
for long.
These are by no means subtle or petty differences, but instead true shifts both
in architectural values and in images, concepts and issues. They cannot simply be
characterized as oversimplifications. Evaluated as shifts, they support the continu-
ity, even if it is no more than a thin thread of continuity, with previous philosoph-
ical structures and theories. The ambiguities that characterize this continuity give
rise, at the same time, to the reduction of any one concept to an image. This is
merely another example of the eternal gap between conceptual content and visible
reality.*?? As such, it is easy to recognize that those statements of Botticher’s that
best depict the new metaphor are also the ones that come closest to being tangible,
and not merely abstract, concepts.?”* The appeal of tangibility, theoretical ambi-
guity, and evocative richness accounts for the appearance of such metaphors as
stylistic hull and kernel. It is also certain that this appeal is no substitute for more
intellectually demanding forms of theory.

87
 It is clear that, at that time, the image of “kernel and hull” and all other
permutations of the metaphor enjoyed great popularity, even appearing in defense
of homeopathy, a therapy that was aimed at the kernel of a disease.” The
metaphor knows almost no bounds,”?> and was assured of perpetual currency.’”°
At precisely the right moment, when architecture was ready to put on new clothes
or to undress entirely, an almost inexhaustible linguistic potential made its appear-
ance in the concept of raiment.
According to Paul Mebes’s Um 1800 (Circa 1800), the image was useful
wherever a solution was sought with which to supersede the architecture of styles,
whether that moment occurred in the Classical past or within newer models of
volumetric, corporeal architecture. Mebes thus implies a connection between the
efforts to instate “le nud de mur” and the naked building volume. In the journal
Kunstwart, Paul Schultze-Naumburg compares a school building by Theodor
Fischer, which the author describes as “monumental by virtue of its closed mass-
ing,” with an example of the usual historicizing tendency, which he characterizes
with the words: “a naught, a heap of motifs with which nothing is said, with
which nothing is achieved.””” That this opposition was also understood by the
general public is evidenced not least of all by the famous polemic surrounding
Loos’s Haus am Michaelerplatz: a caricature of the time provocatively portrayed
the “Burgtor,” which had been recently built in the Baroque style, in a naked,
modernized form.?8 Max Dvorak, too, supported this purist point of view in his
Katechismus der Denkmalpflege (1916) (Catechism of historic preservation), a book
close in spirit to the “Circa 1800” movement. In Dvorak’s case, however, the issue
at stake involved the restored beauty of a Renaissance building from which “anti-
decorative” advertising texts had been removed.?”? Later, as for Bruno Taut or
Adolf Behne, the rhetoric of images depicting correct and incorrect precedents was
a matter of course. It is nonetheless astonishing that architectural practice followed
the lead of these “receptive” writers so literally. One of several such examples is the
renovation of the German Agrar- und Industriebank in Prague by A. Fohr in the
early twenties, when all historical detail was removed and the building reduced to
its “kernel.”?°° This undertaking, which sought to adapt historical buildings to a
modern idea of form (at least on the exterior), came to be known as “de-stuccoing”
(Abstukkung) And in many places, this became the recipe adopted by official urban
planning. In the Berlin district of Wedding, for example, the general need for ren-
ovation in 1931 was used officially as an opportunity to “de-stucco.””3!
This plausible paradigm glossed over differences in the lines of argumentation
on concealed, or liberated, architecture. These include the Werkbund belief in
“Form without Ornament” as well as more penetrating discussions of purpose or
function and its accommodation. Following this criterion, Bruno Taut compared

88
the “decorative enrobing” of architecture to the “role of an applied art.”2? The
broad attraction of the issues so concisely addressed in the metaphor of stylistic
hull and kernel is, in any case, apparent.??3
Of course, Otto Wagner also availed himself of language and concepts bor-
rowed from fashion and clothing. In his discussion of style, he goes so far as to
accept fashion as fundamentally correct and infallible — just as Loos did. But the
conclusion he then draws was the erroneousness of “contemporary art.” “Modern
mankind has certainly not lost its taste — today, it notices even the smallest fashion
mistake . . .°?*4 “Our clothing, our fashion is dictated by a generality; it is found
to be correct and excludes any error by virtue of this nomenclature. There is no
disharmony to be found in it; as such, disharmony must then be incorporated
into the works of contemporary art. This is in fact the case.””°> By postulating the
objectivity of fashion, Wagner arrives at his demand that architecture be derived
from modern life and from the “demands of the present” to attain its goal of
“truth.” “Things that arise from modern perspectives . . . bespeak entirely the way
we look”: this maxim defines the boundary between “copy and imitation” as it
differentiates between “aping” and “new creation and natural evolution.””?° Wag-
ner goes so far as to insinuate that the “inherent” relationship “between taste,
fashion and style” had been ignored up until then. He thus emphasizes again that
“external appearance, the clothing worn by people, [reflects] in its form, color and
accessories the attitude toward art and the creations of art of the respective era.”
There are “no epochs and no styles” that are exceptions to this rule.”9”
In other respects, however, Wagner’s explanation of style is “Semperian” and
more comprehensive: “Every new style has developed slowly from the previous
one, so that new construction, new materials, new human tasks and beliefs have
supported a change or reconfiguration of existing forms.”*** As general as such

“In Bremen habenwir |oo 17. Jahrhundert

"
etwas gee!
|

||

Figure 27. “In Bremen, we built

vis-a-vis the seventeenth cen-
tury.” (Advertisement for the
“Neue Heimat,” 1980s)

89
 AMM. 1

if if
ra ee Bi yd, amit,
WB ii Py)
ff bi
REE o@e fie
mE ke it nM me it
nala8eens Abb, 16. Gegenbeispiel. Dasselbe Haus nach der Beseitigung
der Reklameaufschriften und des Auslagekastens.

: poe an IES AETZEN nan Abb. rs. Beispiel. —- Altes Renaissancehaus in Budweis
(KW a ZU DEN Al PSA Z Res \ - att mit Reklameaufschriften verunstaltet, ein Beispiel der pietat-
NEUE UND ALTE KUL ae :Pa losesten MiBachtung eines alten Baues, derdurch
diese Verunzierune
PAUL SCHULTZE-NAUMBURG seine kiinstlerische Wirkung vollstandig eingebiiBt hat.

Figure 28. Naked and Clothed, Right and Wrong

Paul Schultze-Naumburg, “Cultural Work/Schools.” (from: Der Kunstwart, 16/1 [October
1902], plates 1 and 2)
Figure 29. Renaissance Building in Budweis after the Removal of Advertisements. (from:
Max Dvorak, Katechismus der Denkmalpflege [Vienna: 1916], p. 18/19)
Figure 30. Renaissance Building in Budweis before the Removal of Advertisements. (from:
Max Dvorak, Katechismus der Denkmalpflege [Vienna: 1916] p. 18/19)

formulations may seem, they reveal the traces of Semper’s heritage in Wagner’s
position, even more so than the images of raiment. This in no way contradicts
the fact that the name Semper slowly disappears in the progressive editions of
Wagner’s book. In 1898, Wagner still described Semper — already with consider-
able qualifications — as the embodiment of “knowledge derived from learning and

90
thought,” a characterization that he accompanied with the statement: “In the case
of most architects, the Semperian relationship is predominant by virtue of the
incredible amount of material to be absorbed during the course of studies.””*?
Later, Wagner had apparently rejected the ballast of this knowledge: the passage is
expunged from the 1914 edition. All that remains is an anecdote that ridicules
Semper’s parsimony.” Wagner had finally set himself apart and acceded to the
plane thats, according to his biographer Lux, he shared with Schinkel and Semper.
He had lived through “three towering epochs in architecture,” those of Schinkel,
of Semper and of himself. And in the wake of his evolution, it could be claimed
that “Schinkel and Semper are succeeded by Wagner.”*4!
Considering all the metaphors that Wagner took pains to appropriate from
the genres of fashion and clothing, it is not surprising that these images in turn
were used with exceptional frequency to describe Otto Wagner’s architecture. The
relevant texts describe Wagner’s position as approximating the ideal of a “liberated
kernel,” only over time — and with differing assessments. From the point of view
of the more fully developed Modern movement, the “not yet” is still underlined.
In his brief essay “Otto Wagner zum siebzigsten Geburtstag” (Otto Wagner on
his seventieth birthday), Hermann Bahr states twice that Wagner “began academ-
ically and still mastered all stylistic forms from this academic period.” He was “by
no means a newcomer out of the clear blue sky.” Nonetheless, Bahr maintains,
“Otto Wagner is the opposite of the Viennese Ringstrasse.” The phenomenon of
the Ringstrasse is summarized as “swindle, kitsch, theater.” And so, Bahr wishes
that “we” Viennese “would finally have the strength and courage to cast aside the
masks and to show ourselves as we are!”??
Only a few years earlier, in 1907, Josef Stryzgowski passed judgment on
Wagner in a way that was balanced in its consideration of both aspects. He
considered Wagner “one of the most hard-working architects” and mourned “that
he' has no opportunity to solve a monumental problem in the grandest style.” But
however persuasive Strzygowski may have found the functionality of Wagner’s
plan, he saw Wagner as an architect who is “caught up in material and technol-
ogy”: “He is a master of disguise, in other words, his buildings do not reveal their
structural material on their exterior but are instead clad with decorative panels.”
Even as early as 1907, Wagner’s Modernity was considered conditional in this
sense. “He constructs the spatial structure and independent of it, he decorates the
resulting exterior surfaces with their door and window apertures. His buildings do
not ‘grow’ in their massing, but develop spatially, and the resulting surfaces are
then ‘decorated.’ ”2 In 1903, Ludwig Hevesi had described Wagner’s develop-
ment in a manner similar to the “architecture of appearance” — just as the “wit of
the day” had described the work of his earlier phase as an Empire-adorned

91
 architecture of Piranesian ambitions: “that,” wrote Hevesi, “is his transition to the
Modern.” “He throws all historical detail overboard and begins again where
architecture’s natural development had broken off, with the Empire style.”?“°
Gustav Adolf Platz followed a similar line of argumentation, if without the
irony.?*” Recalling the metaphor of hull and kernel, he wrote in 1927: “The clear
forms of the buildings’ massing, the construction is appropriate to the material
used, but seems still largely overwhelmed by decorative ingredients, which, despite
all their novelty, are still clearly derived from the ‘Zopf’ and ‘Empire’ styles.” Platz
accords Wagner recognition — in this respect differing from Strzygowski's assess-
ment — because the later buildings clearly reveal the attempt “to replace decoration
... with the true effect of the material.”*“*
Hans Tietze’s comments on Otto Wagner are more extensive and precise. He,
too, saw Wagner as “raised . . . on the historicizing architecture of the Ringstrasse
style,” but he added, “raised on precedent and on contradiction.” This contra-
diction is finally accorded a “moment of decorum” that is recognizable in Wag-
ner’s theory and in the “will to purity” and the “architect’s desire . . . to make his
art purely and immediately a vessel of the era’s needs.” “This need,” Tietze
continued, was “phrased in the language of architecture [as] the elucidation of the
tectonic.”2>° On the other hand, Tietze also saw — with the distance of an author
writing in 1922 — not only the past of the Ringstrasse and its conquest by Wagner,
but also the period to which the architect nonetheless remained bound: “His
surrender to the Jugendstil wave seems to us today to be Wagner’s most temporally
bound characteristic. That which possesses the momentary advantage of Modern-
ity must naturally also lie in the shadow of the past.”*! After the radical experience
of an architect such as Loos, it was impossible to see Wagner’s position as more
than intermediary, which Tietze implied with such words as “fashion of the day,”
“frivolity” and “individualistic decoration” that “does not grow from the building’s
kernel.” To make his point even clearer, he employed the metaphor of a deluge
that would lay the kernel bare: “one could imagine an act of nature that would
wash all unessential elements from Otto Wagner’s buildings without disfiguring
them but instead lending them a more concentrated effect.”?>? It is easy to
understand that this model of an intermediary position, unique within the rhetoric
of Modernity purely by virtue of its “momentary advantage,” was particularly
powerful as Loos increasingly became the center of attention. When Karl Marilaun
described Adolf Loos’s tragic fate in the same year, 1922, he drew his borders
even more radically, not at Wagner’s work, but at Josef Hoffmann’s and the
Wiener Werkstitte. His pronouncement could not, however, be generalized. Fol-
lowing the elimination of decoration (Makartbukett), two routes were possible.
The one recognized the purposelessness of beautiful in our everyday world, and

92
the other found it necessary to “bedeck with lacy collars those things that one
could not do without. To cloak their usefulness with ‘beauty, "2
The metaphor of stylistic hull and kernel, evoked more or less directly here,
seems applicable to Wagner’s work primarily to describe its external appearance.
It quickly becomes obvious, however, that this metaphor must be infused with a
new content, that the intention is to describe a development of fundamental
significance using the image of raiment — a development that had long been
recognized within the issue of Modernity. It is not so much a matter of rejuvenat-
ing “spiritual life” in general, a theme, widely propagated since 1890, in which
architecture was supposed to serve as an “axis of the visual arts” just as philosophy
was to be the “axis of all scholarly and scientific thought.” At stake here was,
quite generally, the “transformational determinacy of formal development and
intellectual activity,” which had already been recognized as a central theme in
Vienna and in Viennese art history. One figure who had participated in this
discussion and later wrote about it at great length was none other than Hans
Tietze, whose observations on Otto Wagner have already been cited.?** Tietze,
who defined himself as a figure in the “intellectual science of art history,” a
nomenclature particularly associated with Max Dvorak, assumed that the “aim of
intellectual scholarship” (Geisteswissenschaft) is not to refute an approach based
upon historical development, but instead to bring about “its necessary and appro-
priate extension.””°° Building upon the “heritage of the eighteenth century,” in
other words, on the “emancipation of the aesthetic realm,” the task at hand
involved the collection of art’s particular characteristics and the deduction of its
tules.2*” Tietze describes this process as the distillation of the “true form of the
relationships” from the “discursive intellectual faculty of sight” by means of an
“act of stabilization.”?°* The product of this synthesis is the “Kunstwollen,” the
“sum of all creative and determinative forces inasmuch as they influence art.”
Tietze makes a connection between this process and the “possibility of removing
the shell [Ausschalung] in conceptual terms artistic activity from all other forms of
human activity.”?°° His sights are set on a “spirit that stands behind the individual
creations of art” and that he describes as the “concurrence of the art historical
orientation with the artistic.”2©° Thus, at least in Tietze’s work, architecture and
its conceptual summation converge — in the self-same image of shell and kernel.
If one accepts this framework in its broadest sense, methodically described by
Tietze, the rich theoretical discussion of the hull and the kernel acquires even
greater significance. With increased knowledge of the related theories and models,
an approach such as this — moving from the hull to the unhusked kernel —
encompasses more than a mere description of a stylistic development. That which
had been conceptually purged can then be filled with new contents. Art history

93
 had no difficulty in finding analogous images and constructs in the traditions of
art and art history. In the lectures given by Ludwig Volkmann in the Leipzig
Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Applied Arts) and entitled “Kiinstlerische
Bildung” (Artistic education), for example, the author contributed to and com-
mented upon the discussion surrounding the “liberation from the column.”**! He
juxtaposed the “curse of the column as decorative element” to the statement that
“the essence of an architectural work of art is grasped from within, not on the
basis of the exterior hull.”26? Volkmann went further, however, to situate this idea
in its art historical context. By way of characterizing architecture as the “most
stringent and abstract of arts,” and noting the “natural limitation to the possibili-
ties of volumetric composition,” he arrived at the fundamental conclusion that
there has always been a “spatial unity” that again limits possibilities to several
“principle viewpoints.”?° Volkmann’s proof was the work of Hildebrand and
Michelangelo. He cited the latter’s credo that a figure caught within a marble
block could be liberated “from the hull,” and he ended with a quotation from
Vasari: “Sculpture is an art in that it eliminates all excess from a given material,
and reduces it to the corporeal form conceived in the artist’s idea.”?

Figure 31. Autonomous Decora-

tion Transformed into a Monu-
ment
Otto Wagner, Culture. Monu-
ment in Front of the Kaiser-
Franz-Josef-Stadtmuseum on
Karlsplatz, Vienna, 1903-1909.
(from: Einige Skizzen, Projekte u.
ausgefiihrte Bauwerke von Otto
Sere saovsced
Wagner, Band IV, Heft 1 and 2
te ycadmonpconidoromoc [Vienna: 1910], p. 14)

94
 . i oe es ei e
Athy

Am eee tray Peer

Figure 32. For the International Architecture Congress in Vienna: Buildings by Ott
Wagner. Portal of the Church St. Leopold am Steinhof, Vienna, 1902-1904. (from:
Illustrierte Zeitung, no. 3385, vol. 130 [Vienna: May 14, 1908] p. 940)
Figure 33. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Competition Project for the League of
Nations Palace in Geneva, 1927, Lake Elevation. (from: Institut gta)

Hildebrand’s work assured that the statements made about sculpture were also
relevant to architecture.*® And the art theoretical discussion that developed from
this point onward — or, alternately, that began with Herder’s Plastik?®> and in-
cluded the work of August Schmarsow — did much to juxtapose a new and
assertive theory to the metaphor of hull and kernel.?°? Schmarsow, who, by his
own account, had arrived at his doctrine of architecture as “the entity that gives
form to space” through his attempt to “wrestle with Gottfried Semper’s Szi/,”
investigated psychological conditions and discussed not only optical impressions
but also corporeality, movement from place to place, tactility and bodily sensa-
tion.2 Behind the emptiness of the Stil/hiilse metaphor, a new reality appeared,
recognizable by its allocation to the image of the “omnipotent elements” of space
and corporeality. Liberated from the image of the kernel and the hull, nonetheless
“still” bound to undesirable decoration, Schmarsow formulated his thoughts ab-
stractly: “... the new means with which to take control of the spatio-corporeal
whole as a unified entity — in other words, the visible world; with which to

95
 represent the interdependence of things according to their appearance, [is] possible
only when each of the two elements relinquishes a part of their full existence.
Volume [Kérper] and space lose the third dimension as soon as they are depicted
two-dimensionally, but only to regain it, at least in appearance, more purely and
immediately thereafter, and thus to communicate the third dimension to our
imagination more directly — in the ‘distanced image,’ in the ‘pure visual impres-
sion’ of the so-called latent supposition of the effects of movement.”*® In a grossly
oversimplified form, the perceptual model inherent to decorationless Modern
architecture is anticipated here, as early as 1899. It is already foreseeable that the
image of stylistic hull and kernel will have become obsolete once the last bit of
decoration has been removed.
And thus, the image fulfills its purpose even more, as Otto Wagner proceeds
upon the road to Modernism. It seems as if the conceptual arsenal had been
prepared in advance to allow for the easy and plausible depiction of Wagner's
career in retrospect. “The more completely the quality of the basic forms approx-
imates what is seen, the most advantageous these appear in the aesthetic
sense.”?”° Such statements as the one by Redtenbacher just quoted can always be
cited. He noted in abstract terms precisely the quality that Tietze would later
describe dramatically and concretely in Wagner’s work using the image of an act
of nature that would wash everything superfluous away from the kernel. As early
as the eighties, another author had already applied this image — and the implied
desire that the hull would actually fall away — to the contemporaneous state of
architecture. This author is a largely neglected figure who even in his own time
retreated from public life — preferring to maintain intimate contact with Johan-
nes Brahms. Nonetheless, he was prominent, especially in the eighties, as a writer
on architecture: Joseph Bayer.?”! Sometimes referred to as the last authentic
Hegelian, Bayer was compared by his biographer Robert Stiassny with EF. Th.
Vischer, although Bayer could only have dreamed of having that kind of cha-
risma.””* Bayer had taught between 1871 and 1898 at the Technical College in
Vienna, often to half-empty auditoriums, as his biographer admits.?” Stiassny
called Bayer, on the one hand, a “patriarch of critical writing in Vienna” and
“the most reliable chronicler of the monumental new Vienna.” On the other
hand, Stiassny does not deny that Bayer was banished to isolation under the
stigma of “aesthete.””4 Despite Bayer’s apparent lack of success, his concepts and
paradigms are symptomatic and revealing of his era. Bayer, considered a propo-
nent of Semper and author of important texts on Semper, wrote widely in the
1880s on the state of contemporary architecture, including “Modern Building
Types” and the “Stylistic Crisis of Our Time.”?”> In these texts, he was concerned
with the developments in contemporary architecture and wrote about them with-

96
out ingratiating himself with one school of thought or another. He saw architec-
ture as “the responsible leader of the living arts,” but at the same time, he
differentiated: “Thoughtful architects have existed in all periods . . . However, the
conscious thought of science, the virtue of historical justice, these are usually not
their concern.”?”° Nevertheless, he saw architects (Baukiinstler) themselves as “the
born aestheticians of buildings” “because of their familiarity with technical con-
struction.”*”” Bayer’s position on this matter is equally differentiated. In issues of
style and of the “compositional laws of the visual arts,” he opposed the “formal-
ism of the Herbartians who ‘mathematicize’ beauty.” At the same time, according
to Stiassny, “the aesthetes of fashion [went] against the grain of the. . . aestheti-
cian.”*”* He was openly skeptical of new developments that lacked an immanent
“formal logic”: “The purported discovery of unique forms is in fact deforma-
tion.” Based upon this belief, any “escape from history” seemed impossible to
himy?
If Bayer’s statements are studied more precisely, it becomes clear that, despite
the limitations enforced by this advocate of the “conscious thought of science,” a
forward-looking option can certainly be discerned. Bayer could therefore postulate
the “genesis of a Modern style’s kernel” as early as 1886. Two texts published in
that year are especially significant in this respect. In “Stilkrisen unserer Zeit”
(Stylistic crises of our time), Bayer presumes a “free-for-all of stylistic forms” as
well as a “purported ‘new style’ of the present” in formulating his critique that
Schinkel’s “style in general” had very quickly become a “style in particular... in
accordance with certain religio-romantic and artistic-patriotic points of view.”?°°
His systematic consideration of the issues of style and formal development is
incompatible with the Historicist practice of deriving style from the formal detail:
“how foolish it would be to demand of our architecture that it derive from itself
alone a new and unique formal detail — that which is often called by the central
concept ‘style.’ ””8! Bayer draws the logical conclusion that any new development
can be possible only by overcoming the “multiplicity of elements that clad our
buildings” and by casting off the garment of style: “At times, the stylistic garment
has split its seams.” Similar to Wagner’s later thoughts on the relationship between
construction and “Kunstform,” the reasons cited by Bayer are based upon the
“new building organism” and the “changed cut of the formal garb” to fit that
organism. Bayer formulates these thoughts in general terms: “Finally, the new
problems of building are slowly and inconspicuously leading to new formal
thoughts; and even the transformed rhythm of the old forms, structured according
to the new architectural laws of existence, are a great improvement in them-
selves.”2®? To illustrate this point more effectively, Bayer has recourse to the image
of hull and kernel. Writing about the historical coexistence of the “separate

97
 building religions,” he writes: “and thus, as a result of the natural erosion over
time, their all-too-sharp and thorny stylistic edges and corners will become
rounded, and, as soon as the force of erosion can again take its proper course, will
themselves be sculpted into new forms.”**? Bayer summarizes his thoughts in a
prognosis: “I would wager the following claim: the kernel of a Modern style has
already been generated. But its characteristics cannot be deduced from looking at
the exterior of our era’s buildings with their well-known historical stylistic details.
Looked at in this way, these buildings reveal to the eye only that which is different
and not that which they have in common. That which may be proven to be new,
however, reveals itself in the overall tendency of the building complexes, in their
articulation derived from the ground plan, in the compositional demands peculiar
to our era in and of themselves. Many still resist resolution, but a considerable
number have been given expression by the most important and far-seeing archi-
tects in an architecturally inventive manner. Even if the form of expression chosen
is ho more than an inherited stock form — that which is expressed in it is unique
and a new result.”?84
It is important not to overestimate Bayer’s prognosis, and therefore, it is vital
to emphasize that he limits his contention that “the kernel of the new style has
already been generated” only to an “overall attitude” and to the “new building
organism.” In short, he observes this phenomenon only in the organization and
articulation of the plan. Bayer recognizes these changes despite the unchanged
Historicism of the facade. One glance at Otto Wagner’s contemporaneous archi-
tectural work helps to allay possible misunderstandings. In 1886, Wagner built his
villa on Hiittelbergstrasse. This work was preceded by his ambitious designs
completed for the Berlin Reichstag and the Budapest parliament, both of which
testify to Wagner's aloofness from the Historicist tradition, a characteristic already
documented in the “Artibus” project of 1880. It is possible to consider the
situation in terms of theory, however, so that Bayer could easily have recognized
that “the kernel of a Modern style has already been generated” in such projects as
the Landerbank, begun in 1882. In that building, a historical facade concealed
new construction methods as well as a ground plan organization whose greatest
innovation was its use of a “central complex.”*°
Not coincidentally, Bayer had proposed a similar line of thought that same
year, in a text entitled “Moderne Bautypen” (Modern building types).?8° Wagner
would later express the thought in a similar manner. Here, too, Bayer presumes
an inevitable Zeitgeist according to which style “can assume a specific manner of
thought and formal expression in art deriving from the innermost basis and
essence of the era that itself can offer only an initial, if obligatory, general

98
direction.”**” While acknowledging the “style-forming power” of an era, Bayer
continues in a manner amenable to his conviction that “the kernel of the Modern
style” has been produced: “The architecturally generative spirit of the epoch had
ultimately to make itself felt from the roots upward.” The following image de-
scribes just how this is to occur: “Those roots seemed long dead; but now, secret
vital powers forced their way upward and the actual, true and essential architec-
tural form of the epoch grew forming powerful limbs behind the applied stylistic
masks and draperies. And once these forces are thoroughly organized and matured,
then certainly the beautifully ornamented historical stylistic hulls will fracture
away; they will disappear forever, and the new kernel will emerge naked and clear
in the sunlight.”28*
It would be unfair to deny a certain visionary character to these statements
made in 1886, even if they were based — in accordance with Bayer’s own concep-
tion — on the “conscious thinking of natural science.” It seems to presage what
actually happened, and what is, in fact, already apparent in Otto Wagner’s archi-
tectural development. These are events that Tietze would later describe in retro-
spect using the same metaphors and the demands that would be made with greater
urgency. The metaphor of Stilhiilse and Kern plausibly presents the architectural
development from the Historicist to the Modern Wagner and beyond, to the
radical solutions of Adolf Loos, at the same time showing that development to be
a logical process. As long as it is understood as a paradigm, little can be said
against it. Under this precondition, it is possible to acknowledge that, here, an
almost complete correspondence between theoretical discourse and actual architec-
tural development had evolved — a correspondence that thereafter would be
postulated again and again, as, for example, in Tietze’s concept of the “reciprocal
qualifying factors of formal development and intellectual activity.”** That is in
itself noteworthy, even if it results from the inadequate precision with which the
theoretical approaches of such thinkers as Bétticher and Semper were dissemi-
nated. Here, the metaphor plays its mediating role in the broadest sense and thus
becomes a connective element between the two relatively autonomous realms of
architecture and theory.
With Semper in mind, Bayer had already described the mediation between
theory and practice as a strange “paradox” but also as the “practical intention of
his theoretical discourse,” as a kind of “pedagogy of artistic invention.”*° That
nonetheless remained a theoretical ambition. A comparison of the metaphor with
the architectural developments associated with it nonetheless underpins the para-
digm’s plausibility. And this fact is useful because it directs attention to the
particularities of the architectural development at issue.

oN
 a ann mn pt
Fe ona tama gn tata nce oe teeta a —
leence ee Annan ct nen Me a

iSLES SIOEEASSS SSIIGEN |One, oe aU GRA Fa

ees ky

nitie
oe ji Nanereea oot—— :
_ininininiatainiotal ete pAegail — fate do ooo
Hono
a gi ROE aS

Babe 34, Friedrich Pindt, anes iene for the vaicetictsofeen Canna
Pavilion. (from: ed., Otto Schoenthal, Das Ehrenjahr Otto Wagner an der K.K. Akademie
der Bildenden Kiinsten in Wien. Arbeiten seiner Schiiler. Projekte und Skizzen [Vienna:
1912], p. 30)
Figure 35. A.J. Derkinderen, Project for a New Rijks Academy Building. (from: Wendin-
gen, 12, 1921, p. 4)

In general, the development of Wagner’s architecture from his neo-Semperian

position to an architecture free of historical decoration may easily be read in
accord with the metaphor in question here. In the process, certain things become
apparent, for example, that which Bayer suggests in his interpretation of the
“genesis of a Modern style’s kernel” as expressed in the “articulation derived from
the ground plan” and the “building organism.” This lineage is best illustrated by
one example in particular, for which a certain Viennese characteristic, the ever-
present memory of the great architecture of the Baroque, is significant. A reference
to Fischer von Erlach not only was central to the now-famous caricature that
depicts the polemic surrounding Loos’s Michaelerplatz project, it also determined
certain architectural assessments and characterizations of Otto Wagner.??! For
Hermann Bahr, Otto Wagner was “Austria’s most Austrian architect since Fischer

100
von Erlach.””? Tietze wrote, “Wagner’s art, like that of Fischer, has the healthy
force of a tree trunk.”2%3 For Strzygowski, the domed roof of the reception pavilion
for the Viennese underground was reason enough to recall the “time of Fischer
von Erlach” despite its “entirely Modern” forms.2% And even Adolf Loos, in
answering a 1907 survey, described the Palais Lichtenstein as Vienna’s most
beautiful palace — if with a polemical undertone directed against the “petty
Viennese Baroque style” in favor of “Rome’s powerful language.”2° Only when
seen from the perspective of Prague did Wagner’s artistic ideal approximate the
“Semperian sense of the Classically poised and harmonically articulated material
of Renaissance architecture” and was then — “in Baroque Prague, accordingly,
subject to transformation.”2%
It is easy to prove that several of Wagner’s buildings contain Fischeresque
typologies “at the core” and to elaborate further upon these typologies, and by the
same token, to recognize the “Karlskirche” in the centralized building flanked by
two triumphal obelisks in the project entitled “Artibus” of 1880. Here, Wagner
presents the entire palette of well-known typologies in all the wealth of their
possible permutations. His effort is in every way comparable to the demanding
Prix-de-Rome tradition of the Parisian Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which may have led
Lux to characterize the work as an “architectural poetry.”*°” A comparison of the
Berlin Cathedral of 1890/1891 with the central portion of Wagner’s project may
help to reconstruct the way in which Modern architecture emerged from the
inside out, through the reorganization of the ground plan and the use of new
materials and construction technologies. In the process, the external garb, still
mired in tradition, is slowly cast off. If the comparison is extended to the “House
of Glory” of 1907, it becomes evident that, in the meantime, it was not only the
ground plan that seems to have been completely rationalized: the historicized hull
has also been set aside. As criticized later by such authors as Marilaun, however,
what remains is still ornamented with the “imputed lace collar,” or in other words,
with the decorative forms of the Secession.?°* This observation could be extended
to other elements, for example, to the “dome” that has been reduced to no more
than a tambour. Not all of Wagner’s sacred buildings (or their typological “rela-
tives”) can be forced to fit this pattern. By the same token, the development is
not always consistent. Nevertheless, it is easily established that “historical” ap-
proaches are rejected bit by bit, that an architecture defined as Modern in Wag-
ner’s sense of the word emerges, and that the image of stylistic hull and kernel
thus assumes meaning.
Wagner’s oeuvre and biography is analogous at various points to that of
Fischer von Erlach. His interest in regularizing the Karlsplatz begins in 1892 with
a project that, not coincidentally, is entitled “Parallele.” In the accompanying text,

101
 Wagner calls the Karlskirche “Vienna’s most beautiful building.”?°? Later, begin-
ning in 1900, when his designs for the Kaiser Franz Josef Museum appear in rich
variation, the allusions to the Karlskirche are nevertheless still present. The unmis-
takable signs of a Modern architecture are thus embedded in an exhilarating
relationship to the past. This example, too, may demonstrate the way in which
architectural innovations, such as the dependency between internal organization
and new means of construction, go hand in hand with the continuing invocation
of Baroque and Fischeresque facade-typologies, especially in the side facade.*”
That Wagner consciously took up the challenge of the genius loct is unmistakable.
In doing so, he also led the charge against the “phalanx of the traditional,” with
complete consideration of an artistic sensibility and with the intention to “strip
away all traditions.”2°! Wagner expressed this sense of competition with the city’s
architectural context in his lecture “Die Qualitat des Bauktinstlers” (The quality
of the building artist): “The majority always demands of us that we build as did
Bramante, Michel Angelo, Fischer von Erlach, etc., etc. It refuses to admit that
we, too, must have our place in the history of architecture alongside these heroes.
They overlook the fact that the artist cannot find it compelling to have built as
did Bramante, Michel Angelo, Fischer von Erlach, etc. Rather, he is compelled by
the thought of how these artists would have built, had they lived among us today
and known about our way of perceiving, our way of living, our materials and our
construction techniques.”*°?
Returning to the metaphor of Stilhiilse and Kern, it is quickly established that,
in general, the “genesis of a Modern style’s kernel” (to repeat again Joseph Bayer’s
imagery) flourished in Wagner’s later work in which the hull had been reduced to
the fewest possible decorative elements. The late design for the Ministry of War
(1907/1908) is exemplary here. Wagner describes the project as a “certain unifor-
mity in the architectural structure” and as a combination of “placid planes” with
a “contrasting central motif.” Even in this building component, the architecture
is unconcerned with “works of sculpture and ornamentation that take primacy
over the building itself.”°°> The middle pavilion, designed in the form of a tri-
umphal arch flanked by columns and incorporating the Radetzky monument,
seems heavily decorated at first glance. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that
the strict treble of the window-to-wall rhythm is hardly interrupted. The decora-
tive components are largely separate from the system of architectural articulation
and are instead positioned on the remaining expanses of wall: in the squinches
and in the attic zone that crowns the entire building, as is only appropriate to a
triumphal arch. As is customary, flattened ornament replaces the capitals. The
only exception is the “floating, shimmering gold connective element.” This strat-
egy embodies Wagner’s words, that “this combinatory motif” would “emboss [the

102
project] as the official building of the Ministry of War.” The increasing libera-
tion of the decoration reflects the forms of collaboration between artists and
craftsmen, which, incidentally, had also often been expressed in the designs com-
pleted within the context of this collaboration. A historical parallel may be sought
in the Classical era, as Paul Mebes’s Um 1800 would indicate. The celebratory
architecture designed by Percier and Fontaine for the Tuilerie Gardens on the
occasion of Napoleon’s wedding, for example, demonstrates the comparably clear
separation of recognizable building volumes from the rich applied decoration, a
strategy representative of that era.*° This is also the point made by Wagner’s
critics with their references to “Zopf” style. G. A. Platz implied the same critique
by discerning the “heritage of “Zopf’ and ‘Empire’ ” in the decorative patterns of
the Secession.>”
Despite all Wagner’s restraint in the use of decorative forms, it is nevertheless
obvious that he did not reveal the building’s naked core but instead achieved a
clear, Modern facade form by using panel or tile cladding.*”” This fact recalls the
development taken by the theoretical discourse after 1890, especially in the case
of August Schmarsow. At the center of this discourse, partially in reference to
Hildebrand’s theses, is the relationship between space and volume, as well as the
wall that comprises the boundary or threshold.*°* Schmarsow, basing his thoughts
upon sensual impressions, observed the movement of the gaze as it confronts the
“parallel plane of the wall, which appears perpendicular to us.” In a similar vein,
he writes, “ornamentation and decoration remain above all on the surface, which
they cover with manifold adornment; they cling to its exterior but do not pene-
trate to the interior, in order to transform the existing to the new.” In considering
the attempt to achieve a “unified vision,” Schmarsow finally arrives at the concept
of a “greater unity of space and volume: the image.”*® Residual “applied” orna-
ment is justified from the opposite perspective. The same observation could also
be deduced from Bétticher’s concept of hull and kernel. Wagner, describing the
“exterior architectural form” of the central portion of the Ministry of War, stated
that the “combinative motif” marks the building as what it is. This statement
describes the function of the “analogous symbol,” embodied in a visually percep-
tible form, which Botticher ascribes to the hull. It is obvious that Wagner by no
means intended to deprive himself of these architectural functions, which were in
fact safely ensconced in the tradition of Classical architecture theory. It is here
important to note that, in his discussion of the doctrine of character, Jacques-
Francois Blondel referred to the “attributs de la Sculpture,” which would largely
have assumed the role of decoration in the broadest sense, and to the “belle
disposition des masses générales.” Seen more generally, it could be contended that
the expressive function of a building’s articulation and decoration is transferred to

103
 its massing in the process of a historical development that extends from Blondel
to Boullée. By the same token, Wagner’s position on the threshold to a completely
formulated Modernism and its aesthetic of a building’s massing, in the sense
evident in Le Corbusier’s work, should be recognized.
The models and theoretical references presented here do not replace a precise
architecture historical analysis of Otto Wagner’s work. They may, above and
beyond the metaphorical image, indicate the complexity and richness of the
conditions under which Modernism was conceived and pursued before the web
of argumentation was abandoned in favor of greater radicality. In light of the
notorious poverty of contemporary attempts to deal with architecture theoretical
issues, the intensive effort to understand the “reciprocal dependency of formal
development and intellectual activity” should at least earn respect. A more general
framework for viewing such issues was both desirable and available at that time.
Gottfried Semper formulated this thought quite generally in his 1853 “Entwurf
eines Systems der vergleichenden Stillehre” (Sketch of a system of comparative
stylistic pedagogy): “Like the works of nature, they [works of art] are related to
one another by a few basic thoughts that are most simply expressed in certain
originary forms or types.”*'° August Schmarsow continued this approach, for
example, in his 1915 study Peruginos ersters Schaffensphase (Perugino’s first creative
phase): “However, our way of thinking with regard to the process of history will

&. FRIEDL«

AUnfer Projeft fiir dad nene Burgtor.

(Jnfiuloe Modermiternng der Wade au Land” und der Mat guxr See" i D 8

Figure 36. The Metaphor of the Stylistic Hull and the Kernel in Caricature
“Our Project for the New Burgtor.” (from: H. Czech and W. Mistelbauer, Das Looshaus
[Vienna: 1976], p. 77)

104
always relate the comparison of temporally antecedent or subsequent forms to an
understanding of the most current forms. The more manifold the threads that are
woven together, the more convincing the organic coherence of the constructs
among one another is to us.”3!!

NOTES
2 Eduard van der Niill, “Andeutungen tiber die kunstgemasse Bezichung des Ornamentes
zur rohen Form” (Osterreichische Blatter fiir Literatur und Kunst, Vienna: 1845), in: O. A.
Graf, “Der Pfeil der Zukunft. Umriss eines Desideratums,” ed. G. Peichl, Die Kunst des
Otto Wagners (Vienna: 1984), p. 15 ff: p. 21.
214 See “Bericht iiber die am 27., 28., und 29. Januar d.J. in Ziirich Statt gefundene
Versammlung schweizerischer Ingenieure und Architekten,” in: ed. C. R von Ehrenberg,
Zeitschrift tiber das gesamte Bauwesen, VV (Zurich: 1839), p. 128.
PINS See above.
216 See above. Also see Bétticher, Tektonik, op. cit., p. 8.
MVE Riegl, Szilfragen, op. cit., p. 32.
218 J. Grimm and W. Grimm, Deutsches Worterbuch, V (ed. R. Hildebrand) (Leipzig: 1873
[Munich: 1984]), col. 600.
219 Ibid., col. 599.
220 It must be obvious that the metaphor seems very one-sided and narrow from this
perspective. — Andreas Haus has shown, on the other hand, the degree to which the
“internal,” the “immanent rectitude,” was emphasized, in Schinkel’s case, for example;
and the degree to which this approach was related to the general conceptual and political
attitude common to Prussia in that era: A. Haus, “ “Die durchaus neue Idee. . .’ Bemer-
kungen zu Texten Karl Friedrich Schinkels’,” in: Daidalos, no. 52 (1994), p. 56 ff. p. 62.
PA Fritz Neumeyer has emphasized that, under the influence of these changes, the “tectonic”
was reduced to the “doctrine of building construction and its artistic form” (F. Neumeyer,
“Tektonik: Das Schauspiel der Objektivitat und die Wahrheit des Architekturspiels,” in:
ed. H. Kollhoff, Uber Tektonik in der Baukunst (Braunschweig: 1993], p. 55 ff: p. 61).
His assertion is equally admissible, that the twenties offered “no theoretical parallels to
the aesthetic-emotional reassessment of the concept of the tectonic.” Theoretical interests
shifted, for example, toward the issue of space.
222 At this point, it is important to note Heinrich Rickert’s classic work — incidentally, a
product of the era under discussion here: H. Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaft-
lichen Begriffsbildung (Tiibingen: 1913 [1902]): see p. 193: “Whatever the content of
these concepts might be, the decided opposition to the empirical world of the visible
increases as the natural scientific derivation of concepts becomes more highly developed
in its logic.” (Welches auch immer der Inhalt der Begriffe sein mag, zur empirischen Welt
des Anschaulichen steht er in um so entschiedenerem Gegensatze, je weiter fortgeschritten
im logischen Sinne die naturwissenschaftliche Begriffsbildung ist.)
223 It may be added that Bétticher used the metaphor elsewhere in a moral-decorum-related
sense: Bétticher ended the “dedication” of his Tektonik to C.F Schinkel and C. O.
Miiller with the following: “I profess with the same words my great admiration of the
other man as well... who so often made my heart rejoice with his beautiful and pene-
trating words, and showed me what research was capable of solving as soon as that
research — disrobing of everything that is selfish — had penetrated entirely its appearance by
means of dedication and clear-sightedness.” (Mit gleichem Worte der Hochverehrung
gedenke ich auch des andern Mannes, . . . der mit der Gewalt seiner schon eindringlichen

105
 Rede noch oft mein Herz erfreut, und mir gezeigt hat, was Forschung zu lésen vermége,
so bald sie alles Selbstischen sich entkleidend, mit Hingebung und klarem Auge ihren
Vorwurf ganz durchdringt.)
224 See B. Hirschel, Kern oder Schale? Entgegnung auf Herrn Prof: Hoppe’ Wiederlegung der
Homéopathie (Dresden: 1860).
els Even in its most negative connotation, the kernel appears in a better light than the hull,
as shown by Habermas in his paper “Die zweite Lebensliige der Bundesrepublik: Wir
sind wieder ‘normal’ geworden” (in: Die Zeit, December 11, 1992, p. 48): “The problem
is not the kernel of the violence but the shell in which it prospers.” (Nicht der Kern der
Gewalt ist das Problem, sondern die Schale, in der sie gedeiht.)
226 Kernel and hull and the concept of the “extraction” of the kernel (Auskernung) — naturally,
negatively connoted — have belonged to the vocabulary of historic preservation since the
1970s. The press notice in a column in the Zurich Tages-Anzeiger of October 1, 1994,
entitled “Befreiter Riick-Konzern” is equally moralistic: “To concentrate on the kernel of
the business is the essence of the solution offered by the executive offices of international
concerns.” (Konzentration auf das Kerngeschiaft heisst die Losung in den Chefetagen
weltweit tatiger Konzerne.) — In architecture, the discussion of the hull, of de-hulling, of
the building shell and of building contents has regained currency since Jean Nouvel and
Herzog and De Meuron began again to celebrate the art of the facade.
Daf P. Schultze-Naumburg, “Kulturarbeiten/Schulen,” in: Der Kunstwart, no. 16, vol. 1 (Oc
tober, 1902), p. 12 ff. and plates 1/2. On the imagistic rhetoric (p. 12): “We want only
to depict a few of the problems and, in accordance with normal usage, to use a few of
these images of bad modern buildings as counterexamples.” (Wir wollen von ihnen nur
einige Proben zeigen und wollen einigen dieser Bilder schlechte moderne Anlagen un-
serem Brauche gemass als Gegenbeispiele entgegensetzen.)
228 H. Czech and W. Mistelbauer, Das Looshaus (Vienna: 1976), passim and p. 77.
29) See M. Dvorak, Katechismus der Denkmalpflege (Vienna: 1916), plate 15 (“Example”) and
plate 16 (“Counterexample”).
230 See Architekt Baurat Foehr, Bauten und Entwiirfe (Pragae: 1925): plates of the building
before and after renovation.
231 See: H. Bodenschatz, Platz fiir das Neue Berlin! Geschichte der Stadterneuerung seit 1871
(Berlin: 1987), p. 86 ff.
Zon. B. Taut, Die Stadtkrone (Jena: 1919), p. 50: “To see architecture only as the beautifully
formed satisfaction of need, in the decorative raiment of that which is no more than
necessary — to ascribe to architecture the role of a kind of applied art — that is in fact an
all-too-inadequately valued understanding of its significance.” (Die Architektur nur in
sch6n gestalteter Zweckerfiillung in schmuckhafter Einkleidung dessen zu sehen, was man
nun einmal notwendig braucht, also ihr die Rolle einer Art Kunstgewerbe zuzuweisen,
das ist in der Tat eine allzu geringschatzige Auffassung von ihrer Bedeutung.)
j43)3) Wolfgang Pehnt has studied a different complex of signification than the one discussed
here: see W. Pehnt, “Kern und Schale.” Ein architektonisches Motiv bei Bruno Taut,” in:
Pantheon, no. | (1982), p. 16 ff.
234 O. Wagner, Baukunst unserer Zeit (Vienna: 1914), Op, CiEy pase:
W335) Ibid.
236 Ibid., p. 36/37.
237); Ibid., p. 35.
238 ibids" p23
Piss) Wagner, Moderne Architektur, 2nd ed. (1898), p. 17. For the purpose of clarification:
Knowledge here is opposed to ability; see Wagner (Moderne Baukunst, 1914, p. 43): “Art
is, as the word itself implies, an ability, a capacity that lends beauty to sensual expression
when practiced by the chosen few.” (Die Kunst ist, wie schon das Wort andeutet, ein
Konnen, sie ist eine Pahigkeit, welche, von wenigen Auserwahlten zur Vollendung er-
hoben, der Schénheit sinnlichen Ausdruck verleiht.)

106
240 Wagner, Baukunst, op. cit., 1914, p. 14.
241 Lux, Wagner, op. cit., p. 11.
242 H. Bahr, “Otto Wagner zum siebzigsten Geburtstag,” in: H. Bahr, Essays (Leipzig: 1921),
2nd ed., p. 133 ff.
243 J. Strzygowski, Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart (Leipzig: 1907), p. 15 and p. 17.
244 Ibid., p. 89. — In oppositon to the usual approach, Strzygowski is not at all impressed by
the (Modern) advantage that engineering enjoys. On the contrary, the critical passage
quoted on the “decoration” of facades immediately follows the statement: “Now, Wagner
is more ‘engineer’ than ‘architect.’ ” (Nun, Wagner ist mehr “Ingenieur” als “Architekt.”)
245 L. Hevesi, Osterreichische Kunst im 19. Jahrhundert, zweites Teil: 1848-1900 (Leipzig:
1903), p. 286.
246 Ibid., p. 287. — Hevesi also speaks about the “new linear forms.” But the descriptions he
applies to the villa in Hiitteldorf, “all male and female handicrafts of the present,”
“appliqué embroidery” and “painted glass” seem almost to ridicule Wagner’s postulate of
a style that develops from its own era. In comparison, Fabiani’s “two fundamentally
Modern” department stores are given quite favorable treatment.
247 On the terms “appropriate to the times,” “Modern,” “building in the old style” (zeitge-
miiss, modern, Altstilbau) relative to Wagner, Hevesi is most vocal in: “Otto Wagners
moderne Kirche (1907),” in: L. Hevesi, Altkunst-Neukunst-Wien, 1894-1908 (Vienna:
1909), p. 249 ff.
248 G. A. Platz, Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit (Berlin: 1927), p. 15. Platz, too, emphasizes
both aspects of Wagner’s position: the “student of the Renaissance” and the “pioneer of
the new architectural sentiment in text and practice.”
249 H. Tietze, Otto Wagner (Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig: 1922), p. 4.
250 Ibid., p. 6/7. This “clarification of the tectonic” (Klarung des Tektonischen) is related to
the “standard-setting architectural theory of the time, by Gottfried Semper” (massgebende
Bautheorie der Zeit von Gottfried Semper).
251 Ibid 7p.) 5:
252 Ibid., p. 15/16. Tietze is conscious of his lack of perspective and foresees a “historical
evaluation” in the future.
299, K. Marilaun, Ado/f Loos (Vienna and Leipzig: 1922), p.17. — PB. Westheim (“Loos.
Unpraktisches kann nicht schén sein,” in: Die Form [1930], p. 573/574), for example,
has emphasized that Loos himself was favorably inclined toward Wagner, that the latter
“could slip out of his own architect’s skin into the skin of any craftsman” (aus seiner
Architektenhaut heraus in eine beliebige Handwerkerhaut hineinschliipfen konnte).
254 These, the words of the “Rembrandt German” (Rembrandt als Erzieher, Von einem
Deutschen, op. cit., p. 1).
255 In his autobiographical article for the book edited by J. Jahn, Die Kunstwissenschaft der
Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (Leipzig: 1924), p. 183 ff., Tietze refers to the “first years
of the second decade” as “a significant turning point in intellectual life” (einem bedeu-
tungsvollen Wendepunkt des geistigen Lebens). He mentions the “transformational deter-
minacy of formal development and intellectual activity” (Wechselbedingtheit von Formal-
entwicklung und geistigen Geschehen) as the goal of his future book, Klassizismus und
Romantik.
256 Ibid., p. 185.
Zar Ibid., p. 185/186. According to Tietze, rules are “not objective givens,” “but instead a
mediation with current attitudes” (nichts objektiv Gegebenes; sondern eine Relation zur
jeweiligen Einstellung).
258 Ibid., p. 186: “In proportion to the distance of the point of view and the intensity of the
gaze, different lines of development may be perceived among the incredible wealth of
unrelated individual facts — all of which are anchored in the creative energy of the
individual human being; by means of an act of stabilization, the true form of the
relationships is distilled from the discursive intellectual faculty of sight — almost in the

107
 manner that a definitive, contemporaneous doctrine of art can permit a visual image to
become an image of the imagination.” (Je nach der Entfernung des Standpunktes und
der Intensitiit des Blickes werden in der ungeheuren Fiille unzusammenhangender Einzel-
tatsachen — die ja alle unmittelbar in der schépferischen Kraft individueller Menschen
verankert sind — verschiedene Entwicklungslinien wahrnehmbar; aus dem diskursiven
geistigen Sehen wird erst durch einen Fixierungsakt die wahrhafte Gestalt der Zusammen-
hiinge herausgehoben — beinahe wie die massgebende gleichzeitige Kunstlehre das Erschei-
nungsbild zum Vorstellungsbild geldutert werden lasst.)
Se) Ibid., p. 187. (Even here, one finds the metaphor of the “Ausschalung,” or extraction
from the shell!).
260 Ibid., p. 189 and p. 187. Later (on p. 194), the criticism is more precise in describing the
“causal regress in a purely intellectual activity such as art, as it moves from the intellectual
to the physical” as a “entirely questionable step.” (“Kausalregress bei einer rein geistigen
Tatigkeit, wie die Kunst sie ist, aus dem Geistigen ins Physische” als “ein héchst bedenk-
licher Schritt” kritisiert.)
261 See L. Volkmann, Grundfragen der Kunstbetrachtung (Leipzig: 1925). The book — here in
a “new, more unified and expanded” edition — is based upon lectures that Volkmann had
“held more than twenty years ago in the Leipzig Museum of Applied Art.” — Also see
above.
262 Ibid., p. 317 and p. 320.
263 Ibid., p. 323 and p. 241.
264 Ibid., p. 243.
265 Here it is important to emphasize that Adolf von Hildebrand, to whose theories Volk-
mann subscribed, argued emphatically in a transdisciplinary manner in his Das Problem
der Form in der bildenden Kunst (1893). In this sense, his statement that “the relationship
between architecture and sculpture can only be of an architectural nature” is as remarkable
as the attempt he made in the foreword of the third edition to explain his concepts: “. . .
here, I naturally relinquish the usual meaning of the word architecture. I understand
architecture only as the building of a formal whole, independent of the formal language”
(“. . . wobei ich natiirlich die iibliche spezielle Bedeutung des Wortes Architektur bei Seite
lasse. Architektur fasse ich dann nur als Bau eines Formganzen unabhangig von der
Formsprache).
266 See J. G. Herder, Plastik. Einige Wahrnehmungen tiber Form und Gestalt aus Pygmalions
bildendem Traume (Riga: 1778).
267 A. Schmarsow, Plastik, Malerei und Reliefkunst in ihrem gegenseitigen Verhiiltnis (Leipzig:
1899), p. 218 ff. — Schmarsow assumes an understanding of artistic production deter-
mined “by the human being’s inner world as much as by his exterior world, either by the
imagination or by sensual impressions” (von der Innenwelt des Menschen wie von der
Aussenwelt, entweder von der Vorstellung oder von den Sinneseindriicken).
268 Ibid., and A. Schmarsow, “Riickschau beim Eintritt ins siebzigste Lebensjahr,” in: J. Jahn,
Die Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (Leipzig: 1924), p. 7.
269 Schmarsow, Plastik, Malerei und Reliefkunst, op. cit., p. 225.
270 Redtenbacher, Architektonik, op. cit., p. x. — In the interest of avoiding an all-too-one-
sided depiction, it is also important to mention the following thesis (ibid., psix)s*The
complete accordance between form and purpose is the necessary precondition to all beauty
in tectonics, and it demands the absolute purity of the object’s external appearance as the
lowest level of beauty. . . .” (Die vollstindige Ubereinstimmung von Form und Zweck ist
die unerlassliche Vorbedingung aller Schénheit in der Tektonik, und sie verlangt die
absolute Reinheit der dusseren Erscheinung des Gegenstandes als niedrigste Stufe des
Schénen ...). See above.
Af On J. Bayer and his theoretical writings on O. Wagner, see: W. Oechslin, “Contro la
storiografia della ‘tabula rasa,’” in: Rassegna, no. 5 (1981), p. 36 ff; J. Duncan Berry,
The Legacy of Gottfried Semper (Ann Arbor: 1990), p. 289/290.

108
2f2, R. Stiassny, “Ein deutscher Humanist: Joseph Bayer (1827-1910),” in: J. Bayer, Baustu-
dien und Baubilder, Schriften zur Kunst; published by the estate of Robert Stiassny (Jena:
1919), p. iv ff. (This collection of texts, whose difficult history is described by Herman
Nohl in his foreword, was published by the reputable Eugen Diedrich Verlag, publisher
of Bruno Taut’s Die Stadtkrone and the texts of Muthesius, Fritz Schumacher, Paul
Schultze-Naumburg, et al.)
AS) Ibid., p. vii.
274 Ibid., p. iv and p. v: “It would be even more decisive for his biography that, once he had
been stamped with an incorrect label, he would thereafter be known as an ‘aesthetician. ”
(Umso verhangnisvoller sollte es fiir seine Laufbahn werden, dass er, einmal falsch ange-
meldet und abgestempelt, fortan bloss als “Asthetiker” gegolten hat.)
Dil The relevant texts are collected in Stiassny, op. cit., under the title “On the Modern
Movement in Architecture” (Zur modernen Architekturbewegung). They include “Wie
sollen wir bauen?” (1880); “Glas und Eisen” (1866); “Moderne Bautypen” (1886); and
“Stilkrisen unserer Zeit” (1886).
276 Stiassny, “Ein deutscher Humanist,” op. cit., p. viil.
Die, Ibid.
278 Ibid, p. vii ff.
279 Ibid, p. x.
280 J. Bayer, “Stilkrisen unserer Zeit” (1886), in: idem, Baustudien, op. cit., p. 289 ff.
281 Ibid., p. 293. The statement is preceded by the contention that “a complete unity of style
in the formal appearance of Modern buildings is still unsuccessful, if initially.” (Eine volle
Stil-Einheitlichkeit in der formalen Erscheinung der modernen Bauten ist allerdings fiirs
erste nicht zu verlangen.)
282 Ibid., p. 293/294.
283 Ibid., p. 294/295.
284 Ibid, p. 295:
285 See Otto Wagner’s own commentary on the “central complex” and the particular advan-
tages it provides, in: O.-A. Graf, Ozto Wagner, 1, Das Werk des Architekten, 1860-1902
(Vienna, Cologne and Graz: 1985), p. 49.
286 J. Bayer, “Moderne Bautypen” (1886), in: idem, Baustudien, op. cit., p. 280 ff.
287 Ibid., p. 280. See the analogous formulation (p. 281): “Since time immemorial, the
building-organism has been the symbolic instatiation of the societal-organism; it should
and must be this again in our day.” (Seit jeher ist der Bau-Organismus ein symbolisches
Abbild des Gesellschafts-Organismus gewesen; er soll und muss es in unseren Tagen auch
wieder sein.)
288 Ibid., p. 281.
289 See above.
290 J. Bayer, “Gottfried Semper” (1879), in: idem, Baustudien, op. cit., p. 280 ff.
Ae) See H. Czech and W. Mistelbauer, Das Looshaus, op. cit., p. 73 ff. A fictional encounter
between Fischer and Wagner is also the subject of a caricature entitled “Die Manner vom
Karlsplatz,” published in: P. Haiko and R. Kassal-Mikula, Ozto Wagner und das Kaiser
Franz Josef-Stadtmuseum. Das Scheitern der Moderne in Wien (Vienna: 1988), p. 107.
292 H. Bahr, “Otto Wagner zum siebzigsten Geburtstag,” op. cit., p. 115. For comparison,
with regard to the Wagner school, Bruno Méhring speaks about a “national Austrian
style.” See B. Méhring, “Der Baudilettantismus und die kiinsterlerische Erziehung des
Architekten,” in: Berliner Kunst, Zweites Sonderheft der Berliner Architecturwelt (Octo-
ber 1902), p. 4.
25 Tietze, Wagner, op. cit., p. 3.
294 Strzygowski, Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart, op. cit., p. 15.
295 A. Loos, Trotzdem, 1900-1930 (Innsbruck: 1931), p. 61/62.
296 V. V. Stech, in: J. Gocar, P. Janak and EF. Kysela, Cechische Bestrebungen um ein modernes
Interieur (Prague: 1915), p. 2.

109
 Wien in der Rarifatur.
XXXVI.
Das {oos-Haus auf dens Midaclerplay.

Figure 37. “Vienna in Caricature”

“The gracious Fischer von Erlach: What a pity
that I didn’t know this style. Then, I wouldn’t
have ruined this beautiful plaza with my absurd
Der selige Sifcher v, Erlach: Schade, daf ich dicfen ornament!” (from: H. Czech and W. Mistel-
Stil nicht fchon gekannt hab’, dann hdtt’ ich den fchdnen Piay
nicht mit meiner dalkerten Ornamentik verichandelt!*
bauer, op. cit., p. 75)

297 Lux, Wagner, op. cit., p. 126.

298 See above.
DO) Graf, Wagner, 1, op. cit., p. 81 and plate 142.
300 The embattled project is comprehensively documented under the title “Failure of Mod-
ernism in Vienna,” in: Haiko and R. Kassal-Mikula, Otto Wagner und das Kaiser Franz
Josef-Stadtmuseum, op. cit. In this book, Haiko discusses the definitive opinions of the
Viennese art historians whose statements prove that more than mere architecture was at
stake: it was as much a matter of the various approaches to the interpretation of Wagner-
ian and Fischeresque architecture.
301 The concepts are defined in Wagner’s own commentary. See Graf, Otto Wagner, 2, Das
Werk des Architekten, 1903-1918 (Vienna, Cologne and Graz: 1985), p. 457 ff: p. 458.
302 O. Wagner, Die Qualitit des Baukiinstlers (Leipzig and Vienna: 1912), p. 37.
303 Graf, Wagner, 2, op. cit., p. 567.
304 Ibid.
305 Compare the famous image of the central pavilion of Wagner’s project (Graf, Wagner, 2,
op. cit., plate 798) with the engraving by Percier and Fontaine, in: Ch. Percier and
PEL. Fontaine, Description des Cérémonies et des Fétes qui ont eu lieu pour le mariage de
SM. l'Empereur Napoléon avec S.A. Madame l’Archiduchesse Marie-Louise d’Autriche
(Paris: 1810), plate 4. It is emblematic that “ornamentation” was accorded greater auton-
omy within the official structure of the academy. Percier and Fontaine are themselves

PO
 prominent examples of this development, as are the Albertolli in Milan, where the name
is bound up with a particular class of “Ornato.”
306 See above.
307 In this regard, the description by Strzygowski is fitting (see above and note 41).
308 August Schmarsow also presented this thought in his lectures on art and pedagogy. See
A. Schmarsow, Unser Verhiiltnis zu den Bildenden Kiinsten (Leipzig: 1903); Fifth lecture,
“Das Raumgebilde und seine Grenze: Die Wand... ,” p. 108 ff. See above.
309 Ibid., p. 114, p. 115, and p. 117.
310 See Gottfried Semper, “Enwurf eines Systems der vergleichenden Stillehre” (lecture held
in London, 1853), in: (Manfred and Hans Semper,) Gottfried Semper, Kleine Schriften
(Berlin and Stuttgart: 1884), p. 259 ff: p. 261.
311 See A. Schmarsow, Peruginos erste Schaffensphase (Leipzig: 1915), p. 6.

kt
 Adolf Loos — Against the Zeitgeist

This intellectual-historical approach tries to derive and to continue the

developmental-historical from its own essence. It has sought to catalogue
the issues that are concentrated in the work of art and has evaluated them
as evidence of various autonomous lines of development; the new ap-
proach wishes at the same time to discern the outpourings of universally
potent intellectual forces in the same artistic entities.
Art is not an illustration of intellectual development, but rather a com-
ponent of the latter; the way in which form is defined, a way in which
the recent extreme isolation of formal definition has taught us to look
more penetratingly, is an intellectual factor of the greatest significance.
The concurrence of art historical orientation with artistic orientation is
telling. .
Form and content... regain their old historical unity, the inseparable
manifestation of the same intellectual state.
Hans Tietze, “Geisteswissenschaftliche Kunstgeschichte,” in: J. Jahn, Die
Kunstwissenschaft der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (Leipzig: 1924),
p. 187 and p. 191.

Our education is based upon the Classical education. An architect is a

mason who has learned Latin. Modern architects seem, however, more
likely to have mastered Esperanto.
Adolf Loos, “Grundsatzliches von Adolf Loos,” in: Heinrich Kulka, Adolf
Loos (Vienna: 1930), p. 17.

As an architect and as a human being, Adolf Loos is revolutionary com-

pared to the rearguard and reactionary compared to those who want to
turn the world upside down.
Franz Gliick, in: Heinrich Kulka, Ado/f Loos (Vienna: 1930), pet,

The new form? How uninteresting that is for the creative person. What
matters is the new spirit. It makes everything that we new people need
out of the old forms.
Heinrich Kulka, Adolf Loos (Vienna: 1930), p. 15.

ik2
And finally, everything seems to converge in Adolf Loos. The image of stylistic
hull and kernel comes to a halt once the kernel has become visible “in concen-
trated form” in Loos’s work, and once it has become possible to speak of the
architecture’s “formal appearance” (Erscheinungsform) in the Modern sense. Hans
Tietze's description of the Wagnerian rejection of historical raiment reads like the
advance notice of this next and last step, taken by Loos. This predictive quality is
even more apparent inasmuch as Tietze emphasizes the underlying moral signifi-
cance of the image of hull and kernel: “. . . he tore off the veil of historical style,
not because it seemed to him to undermine the clarity of his own intentions but
rather to veil it.”>!* Wagner, motivated by an “urge to confess,” saw this veil as
“inadmissible” because “that which had been rejuvenated on the interior wanted
to show itself in all its consistency on the exterior.”3'3
The phrase that is emphasized here again, “from the interior to the exterior,”
had already been cited as a demand of propriety in Schinkel’s era. According to
Botticher, it necessitated the closest possible bond between the external artistic
form and the internal form of the kernel. In speaking about Semper, Tietze
described this Wagnerian impulse as the “elucidation of the tectonic.” It is under-
pinned by the “will to purity” — understood as a “moment of decorum” — and by
the intention “to make [art] a vessel of the era’s needs,” to make it “pure.” Tietze
offered a variation on the Stilhiilse-Kern metaphor in which the kernel is even
more emphatically central. Tietze’s argumentation is retrospective in historical
terms: “[The ability] to conceive of the building volume itself as architecture's
given kernel was lost in the facade art of the second half of the nineteenth
century.” “The essence of architecture was sacrificed to its appearance.” Tietze sees
Wagner’s work at this critical moment as an initial “return to a more healthy
tradition,” which leads the architect “automatically” to the Baroque style. From
it, he gains his “own strength,” which allows him to vent the architectural “veil.”
These lines were written in 1922. That may explain why many of the obser-
vations that refer to Otto Wagner — propriety as motivation as well as the reference
to tradition — are equally appropriate to Loos. This is especially true of Tietze’s
explanation of the developments that led Wagner’s work to remain unfulfilled.
Tietze opposes the compromises made to the Secession and other “ties to the era”
to the “elemental event” that might best be illustrated by Taut’s theatrical “Welt-
baumeister,” if its provocative eschatological mood is to be conveyed adequately.
The “washing down” (Herabwaschen) is directed against evil, against the “individ-
ualistic decoration” that “does not grow from the building’s kernel.” And what
has become visible once the rains have been blown away by a brisk wind is
architecture in its “concentrated effect,” its “essence,” a “new unity.”>'4
This image makes clear that the roles played by Wagner and Loos respectively

bis
 in this theater, located somewhere between Taut’s “Weltbaumeister” and Karl
Kraus’s “Weltgericht,” are quite different. Wagner's position is evaluated according
to the scale established by the development that he led and which left its mark
upon his “intellectual will.” That development would be easier to identify histor-
ically, “from the more greatly distanced point of view.” Loos, on the other hand,
seems atemporal, located at the end of this development, himself its conclusion.
He is the meteor, the phoenix from the ashes, to use the image that Semper
evoked in the prolegomena to Der Stil. The development is aborted. With the
complete purging of decoration, the process implied by the metaphor has run its
course. It has overtaken transformation as a goal and can celebrate the conquest —
according to Lux — of the Schinkelesque, of the Semperesque and, by Wagner, of
his own era. All that remains now is a static, firmly structured position “in the
concentrated effect.” The work on the kernel itself has replaced progressive devel-
opment. On the one hand, there was fidelity to the “healthy” tradition of the
Viennese Baroque?!> “in which [Wagner’s] clannish eccentricity could get a foot-
hold.”3!6 On the other, there was Loos’s alienation from Vienna, the result of his
absolute demand for universal validity: “Adolf Loos was obviously no longer
Viennese. He was not jovial, he wasted neither fundamentals nor time, he was
unpleasantly devoid of humor in important matters.”>!7
Loos could not have been any more clearly excepted from the easily recon-
structed Viennese development than occurred once he had been dubbed a resister,
or the “negator of Vienna.”*!* In fact, despite his texts, which made frequent
reference to daily life, he remained aloof of all daily business. Only the fundamen-
tal and valid interested him. “In petty details, he [Loos] may be wrong. But
strangely enough, he is always right about the significant things.”>'? In his descrip-
tion of the “new spirit” of the Wagner school, Alois Ludwig had written in 1896:
“The continuity of development is the mark of all culture.”*° Loos was placed in
opposition to a national culture characterized by unchanging factors and valid
constants.*?! For Loos, it was no longer history that was decisive, but tradition.>”
In other words, it was not that which merely developed in the course of history,
but instead, that which had become articulate and proven itself valid, the “primary
things,” the “self-evident,”*> the opposite of the fashionable, of the novel that
profits from the moment. For him, culture could not be reduced to an activity,
but was instead all of “Western culture.”
Time had come to a halt. In principle, it had been suspended. Semper had
already apostrophized the “future-ists.” And precisely at the point at which Semper
had argued in terms of fundamentals, Loos began to produce his many parables
on everything related to clothing and fashion. These are “parables” because they
are not focused on anecdotes but on the kernel of truth, on the thing itself. Miinz

114
 233 e
rivista internazionale di architettura e urbanisti¢a sasononescences

LOOS
ADOLF
AD
DEDICATO
NUMERO BERG,
KRAUS,
DI
“SORITTI
SCHOENBERG,
GROPIUS,
NEUTRA
TAUT,

1924 Progetts per le souderie dei Princips Sangusko.

Ped ance darsi che dipenda da us mic

quando degli weitd, come detle ax
Atorssa parteipasione ¢ con un cer di
Be rimaene tanta poco, che son mere cx pariarne. Il
piacere, ly gicks, ba simpatia che uno dimosta per fe cose,
sono Vunica realta che faccia nascere ie alere resieh

Aldo Rossi
Crosthe, letters a Scdilier del 14 gemgua 1796

Adolf Loos, 1870-1933

Figure 38. The Rediscovery of a Volumetric Modern Architecture
Figure 39. “Numero dedicato ad Adolf Loos.” (from: Casabella, no. 23 [November 13,
1959], ed. Aldo Rossi)

b1S
 later wrote that Loos “would have, in his own way, better understood the modern-
ity of the great theoretician Gottfried Sempet’s demands than all the others.”>”4 It
must be added that Loos’s text “Das Prinzip der Bekleidung” (The principle of
raiment) (1898) has a close affinity with a Semperian understanding of the issue
of materials. In general, it is true that Loos no longer spoke about a hull, but had
returned to speaking about the raiment, or garb — more about the “principle”
than would have been of value to Semper. Decoration is no longer the issue.
Instead, it is the old demand for “decorum,” or appropriateness.
Of course, Loos had internalized the metaphor of hull and kernel and all its
inherent intellectual developments. In “Ornament und Verbrechen” (Ornament
and crime) (1908), he described its moral as follows: “Cultural evolution 1s
synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of use.” Even his
evaluation of Wagner is overlaid with the image: he praised Wagner as the greatest
architect of the new Vienna “because he could slip out of his own skin and into
that of any arbitrarily chosen craftsman.”??¢ It should nonetheless be noted that
the metaphor’s simplistic either/or always caught up with Loos, at the latest in his
Haus am Michaelerplatz. In response to the attacks made on Loos, Karl Kraus
wrote: “Based only on the appearance of the boards [around the construction
site], the newspaper critics made presumptions about the building.” (Schon von
dem Aussehen, das die Planken boten, haben die Feuilletonisten auf das Werk
geschlossen.)*?” Even today, great powers of persuasion are needed to direct atten-
tion not only to the building’s naked walls but also to the Greek marble. This
proves the extent to which the event described in the scandalized headlines
referring to the naked kernel has engraved itself into memory and, in turn, has
determined history.
In fact, Loos’s Haus am Michaelerplatz followed from an entirely different
kind of architectural tradition than the one concerned with the application or
omission of a more or less thick decorative hull. The building’s construction and
sense of “decorum” was closer to the Greek tradition, with a recollection of
Chicago. It eschewed the misconceptions endemic to the metaphor of hull and
kernel, according to which the hull could, or had to, admit elements that were
new or fashionable. Instead, Loos’s critique was aimed in particular at the German
Werkbund. “To perceive architecture only in the attractively formed fulfillment of
need, in the decorative enrobement of that which one needs, in other words, to
relegate architecture to the role of a decorative art” was, for example, in Bruno
Taut’s opinion, an “all too base estimation” of architecture’s importance.*?8 The
decorative arts could be only a poor substitute for something more essential.
Loos’s understanding of culture was bound to the less than obvious, in all its hues
and shades, as he described in his text “Clothing” (Die kleidung), published in

116
 Figure 40. Adolf Loos, Miiller House,
Prague, 1928-1930

Das Andere.*”? The titles of his critique of the German Werkbund leave no doubt
about his opinion: “The Excessive” (Die Uberfliissigen) (1908) and “Cultural
Deviation” (“Kulturentartung”) (1908). His barbs were directed against the Zeit-
geist that Wagner had still praised as a welcome impetus to Modernity, an
invaluable point of orientation and the measure of true artistic accomplishment.
Loos expanded upon Wagner’s sentence: “it may be considered proven that art
and artists always represent their own epochs,” contending that the intent to
create “out of one’s own era” offers no protection against fashionable stylistic
forms. “A common culture — and there could only be one such culture — produces
common forms. And the forms of Van de Velde’s furniture vary quite considerably
from the forms of Josef Hoffmann’s furniture.”%°° (The unified Modern style is,
at this point, still far off.) Loos continued, “Which culture should the German
choose? The culture of Hoffmann or that of Van de Velde? That of Riemerschmid
or that of Olbrich?” None of these, of course. Loos wrote: “I believe that the
whole issue of culture is actually nothing at all.” He answered the question “do
we need the ‘decorative artist’?” with a resounding “no.” In opposition to the
applied arts, he juxtaposed a “culture of cabinetmakers.” As in the parable of the
saddle maker, who always makes his saddles new and modern although he has no
concept of modernity and no need of such a concept, Loos condemned the
paradox of the Werkbund. He judged their conviction that a style of our time
could be invoked in accordance with a program and the “will to art” to be a

IZ
 contrivance. “That is unnecessary effort. We already have the style of our time.”
Loos presented his ideas in a highly tendentious manner. Nevertheless, they reflect
his demand for validity, not development and Zeitgeist. The belief that a style
might be defined only in retrospect, when things have proven their validity, will,
incidentally, also be voiced by Le Corbusier in an entirely Loosian sense in which
style is understood as a moral position.*?!
Despite such parallels, Loos’s position was that of the disenchanted, of the
loner. He extricated himself from the continuum of — Viennese — history with all
its well-known consequences, described by Marilaun as “fate.” Bruno Taut would
later describe Otto Wagner’s work and teachings — including that of his “exegetes”
Hoffmann and Loos — as “cut off” from Vienna “in order instead to conquer the
world and to exercise its influence on international soil.”>5? And nonetheless, in a
corner of Europe entirely remote from Vienna, Maurice Casteels would later
ponder the phenomenon of Loos, finally recognized on an international level.
“How great was the astonishment of those, the architects and decorators of the
West who commissioned the French translation of an article by Adolf Loos in the
‘Cahiers d’aujourd’hu? in 1923. The article had been published shortly before in
the Viennese ‘Neue Freie Presse.’ The fact that an Austrian architect, an uncom-
promising Modernist and a designer, the leader of a school, the creator of an
austere, a very austere architecture — the fact that he would instruct us in the
Greco-Roman aesthetic and thereby turn us back to the French tradition. He not
only contends it; he proves it.”*°* Casteels seemed initially to have understood
that, in Loos’s estimation, “truth in its simplest form is the most long-lived.”
Later in his text, however, he preached the “normative return” to conformity and
“openness,” mentioning the names Loos and Hoffmann almost systematically in
the same breath. Loos’s position remains misunderstood and adrift in a Zeitgeist
beyond historical developments. The power of the momentary, of the impulse to
mount the horse of the Zeitgeist or to take a bite out of history, was allotted
greater importance than a superordinate interest in the valid and true: “And he
lives happily and contentedly. And makes saddles. Modern saddles? He does not
know. Saddles.”3*4

NOTES
312 See Tietze, Wagner, op. cit., p. 7.
313 Ibid., p. 8.
314 Ibid., p. 16.
315 Of course, Loos is also an admirer of the “proud natural force” of Fischer von Erlach,
whom he also calls a “king in the realm of materials” (kénig im reiche der materialien).

118
 See: . Loos, “Die Baumaterialien” (1898), in: Ins Leere gesprochen, 1897-1900, op. cit.,
p. 104.
316 See Tietze, Wagner, op. cit., Pei:
ely See Marilaun, Adolf Loos, op. cit., p. 10/11.
318 Idem, p. 32: “... Namely, of a negator of that fidelity, of that backroom pleasantness, of
that Viennese wallpaper society with those ornaments that had rescued us from the end
of the Austrian world” (... Némlich des Verneiners einer Fidelitat, einer Backhendlbe-
haglichkeit, einer wienerischen Tapeziererei mit Ornamenten, die uns den éstereichischen
Weltuntergang beschert hat).
oly Ibid.
320 See A. Ludwig, “Aus der Wagner-Schule an der Akademie der Bildenden Kiinste Wien,”
in: Der Architekt, no. 2 (1896), p. 45.
O21 See A. Loos, “Kultur” (1908), in: Trotzdem, op. cit., p. 68 ff.
SVD In “Meine Bauschule” (1907), Loos writes: “At the beginning of the nineteenth century,
we abandoned tradition. That is where I want to begin.” (In anfange des neunzehnten
jahrhunderts haben wir die tradition verlassen. Dort will ich wieder ankniipfen.) Loos’s
variation on Um 1800 thus cites tradition as the more deep-seated reason for this return.
323 See Marilaun, Loos, op. cit., p. 13.
324 See Ludwig Miinz and Gustav Kiinstler, Der Architekt Adolf Loos (Vienna and Munich:
1964), p. 13.
325 See Loos, Trotzdem, op. cit., p. 82.
326 See P. Westheim, “Loos. Unpraktisches kann nicht schén sein,” in: Die Form (1930),
. STA.
327 ae K. Kraus, “Das Haus am Michaelerplatz,” in: Adolf Loos. Zum 60. Geburtstag am 10.
Dezember 1930 (Vienna: 1930), p. 25.
328 See B. Taut, Die Stadtkrone, op. cit., p. 50
329 See A. Loos, “Die Kleidung” in: Trotzdem, op. cit., p. 34 ff.
330 See A. Loos, “Die Uberfliissigen” (1908), in: Trotzdem, op. cit., p. 72/73.
Boll “...In a hundred years we will be able to speak about a style. This we cannot do today,
but only oF styze, that is to say, the moral bearing of every work that is created, truly
created.” (... Dans cent ans, nous pourrons parler d’un style. Il n’en faut pas au-
jourd’hui, mais seulement Du sTyLe, Cest a dire de la tenue morale dans toute ceuvre
créé, véritablement créé.) (1936). See above.
332 See B. Taut, Bauen, op. cit., p. 50.
Bao See M. Casteels, Die Sachlichkeit in der modernen Kunst (Paris and Leipzig: 1930), p. 16.
334 See A. Loos, “Der Sattlermeister” (from: “Das Andere”), in: Trotzdem, op. cit., p. 16.

Tho
 "ad usum Delphini” — The “Elemental Event” of
the Raiment Dissolved, and the Ineluctable Return
— or Recognized Tenacity — of the Hull

Our culture is erected upon the knowledge of great Classical antiquity

that towers high above everything.
Adolf Loos, “Meine Bauschule” (1907), in: Trotzdem, 1900-1930 (Inns-
bruck: 1931), p. 65.

Are there still people today who work as the Greeks did? Yes. They are
the British as a people and the engineers as a group. The British, the
engineers, these are our Hellenic Greeks. We derive our culture from
them; it emanates from them to spread across the entire earth. They are
the citizens of the nineteenth century in all their perfection...
Adolf Loos, “Glas und Ton” (1898), in: Ins Leere gesprochen, 1897-1900
(Paris and Zurich: 1921), p. 66.

No matter how high the throne, no matter how soft the seat, one is never
sitting on anything other than one’s ass.
Montaigne, quoted by Le Corbusier, in: Une Maison — un palais, (Paris:
1928), p. 86.

Athénes en 13 heures. Air France.

Advertising supplement to: Amédéé, Tour de Gréce (Paris: 1938).

There is yet another context in which the metaphor of Stilhiilse and Kern should
be discussed, if not fundamentally questioned. What happens if, one day, the
expectations implicit in the image of Stilhiilse and Kern are realized? If all residual
garb “would wash away” from the facade in the “elemental occurrence” that Tietze
had invoked in his assessment of the less-than-entirely Modern and temporally
bound Otto Wagner, who had capitulated to the “Jugendstil wave?”>*> If we ignore
that ornament always seemed to make room for itself or was complemented, if
not replaced, by sculpture and painting, then it would seem that Modernism in
fact effected a radical denuding of the kernel. At the very least, this assessment

120
 Figure 41. “Perfection,” “Moralite Do-
rique” and the Greek Ideal
“No matter how high the throne/no mat-
ter how soft the seat/one is never sitting
on anything other than one’s ass.” (from:
Le Corbusier, Une Maison — un palais,
[Paris: 1928], p. 86)

would reflect a widely held consensus about Modern architecture and the “new
style.” Once the force that spawned the metaphor has achieved its goal, then the
image of Szilhiilse and Kern became obsolete. All that remained was the liberated
kernel. It stood there, nude and pure, geometrically unambiguous, timeless and
eternal. That is at most ove aspect of the ideal of Modern architecture. But —
consistent with the metaphor’s plausibility and general understandablity (which
was the source of its effectiveness) — this is only its most obvious and most
immediately grasped aspect. It consequently plays a significant role in the attempt
to arrive at a consensus about the meaning of Modern architecture, a role that is
still evident not least of all in the trivial characterization of Modernism as “cubic-
white-autonomous.”
The development of metaphors such as this, which are intended to offer a
quick understanding of complicated matters, supports a tendency to see things
superficially. “Internationale Architektur is a picture book of Modern architec-
ture.”3° This is the first sentence of Walter Gropius’s book, the first in the
Bauhaus series. The buildings depicted were chosen “according to a particular
selection process.” Little more was said explicitly, at least not about these build-
ings’ physical appearance. Instead of an explanation, Gropius offered an affrma-
tion of their “kinship,” which any layperson could see. Finally, the text dealt with
the precursors of a “general will to form of a fundamentally new kind” and with
the “contemporary development of architectural form.” That statement requires
little explanation. The “psychologizing” approach to architectural form and the

12]
 then-new thoughts on a theory of space and the body have long since evolved
into Gestalt psychology. That, too, has had its influence on the didactic models
underlying the related theories and canons of form.**”
No one would think to claim that Gropius’s understanding of Modern archi-
tecture is summarized exhaustively in the passage just quoted. But he did make
use of this, the most simplistic and easily understood explanation. It was an
explanation appropriate both to the level of understanding at which the metaphor
of Stilhiilse and Kern was directed and to the issue of massing and form that had
gained importance as the kernel had been “uncovered.” Gropius apparently pre-
sumed the existence of an established external form for Modern architecture and
its images, evident in the buildings’ “common characteristics.” In Internationale
Neue Baukunst, too, Ludwig Hilberseimer spoke of the “astounding commonality
of exterior formal appearance.”**8
And so, in an odd inversion of the forward thrust implied by “Kunstwol-
len,”33° an approach was conceived quite early that again built upon the assessment
and recognition of that which had already come to pass. Admittedly, it is reassur-
ing to base any argument upon visible evidence as soon as that evidence is
available. The authority of the new development was established quickly by the
first built products of that development, or rather, by their images. The “histori-
cal” point of view maintained its continuity and could even begin anew in this
manner.
It is even more astounding, if understandable in light of the haste involved,
that this “new” and recently established style was classified but not thoroughly
described. It is impossible to know if Gropius and Hilberseimer too were over-
whelmed. In any case, whether demonstrable or at least suggested, their astonish-
ment was intended to magnify the effect of the new reality that had appeared
overnight. On the other hand, they make no mention of the catchphrase “cubic-
white-autonomous” with which this development will later be described and
summarized. The common formal appearance, the “contemporary architectural
development in form,” was described retrospectively, ex negativo. In fact, these
descriptions operated in a mediated fashion, once again in conformity with the
metaphor of Szilhiilse and Kern. “In the era recently past, the art of building fell
prey to a sentimental, decorative approach that saw its purpose in the external
application of motifs, ornament and contours of past cultures. These elements
covered the building’s mass without regard for a necessary immanent relationship.
The building was thus reduced to the bearer of dead exterior ornamental forms,
instead of being a living organism.”*“° It was, of course, not the first time that
everything which was found lacking here — the “immanent relationship,” the
“living g organism”
organism” and
and | later the
he “vital dvanci
“vital connection to advancing technology, its new

[22
building materials and new methods of construction” — had been demanded. On
the contrary. These demands reflect the fundamentals of the theories propounded
by Lodoli, Bétticher and Semper. The difference is that these earlier theoreticians
could base their claims on an architecture enrobed, or more precisely, on a
fundamentally evident, legible relationship between kernel and hull, between form
and content or — to use Bétticher’s paradigm — between Kernform and Kunstform.
Under the circumstances, the important question must be: what is to be done
if half of the metaphor has been eliminated, especially of a metaphor predicated
on a complimentary pair and vital to the line of argumentation? How is it possible
to describe an “immanent coherence” or even a “symbolic correspondence” be-
tween the exterior and the interior once the garb or cladding has been removed?
This is the root of the difficulty and of the potential for misunderstanding that
was recognized early, for example, by Schmarsow, although it was not necessarily
understood immediately, as he also notes.*#' In any case, the initial rejoicing over
the naked kernel seems to have overshadowed further questions. Gropius relied
above all upon the mere acknowledgment of the development and its articulation
as an intention. The new “spirit of formal creation” was proclaimed the return “to
the root of things.” That is a statement to which all the writers who based their
theoretical work on an attempted definition of architecture’s essence would have
subscribed. Even Gropius spoke about “research into the essence” of things and
about matters such as proportion that inhabit the “spiritual world.” But instead
of describing these things more precisely, as did Bétticher, he went on to make
further demands that could hardly be surpassed in their absolutism. He spoke
about the “development of a common Weltbild,” about the liberation from “indi-
vidual limitation” in favor of “objective validity.” That was also the dictum of the
De Stijl manifesto, a parallel that indicates the lineage of the demand for univer-
sality to concrete tendencies and influences. In fact, a comparison such as this
would show that no proof or explanation follows of necessity from these concepts,
that in themselves evidence a bond to past principles of architectural theory more
than clearly.
We have accounted for one difficulty created by the apparent dissolution of
one of the two complementary terms, Stilhiilse and Kern, which described the
problem of form and content in architecturally explicit terms. But recourse to a
“taut relationship among volumetric elements” was made quickly. Le Corbusier
expanded upon this principle, for example, in his discussion of “volume” in the
first of three “rappels 4 Messieurs les Architectes” published in Vers une architec-
ture. Paradoxically, another decisive component of the argumentation used until
then had vanished with the maligned hull. And a replacement for it was nowhere
to be seen. “The building was thus reduced to the bearer of dead exterior orna-

123
 mental forms.”3“2 The entire intellectual construct that had built upon the hull
was destroyed out of sheer boredom. Any attempt to re-erect this complex, based
upon older fundamentals and principles could be undertaken only with enormous
effort and often to little visible effect.*
It is certain that new proofs are pursuant to new points of view. But even
concerning to the concept of “use” or “purpose” (Zweck), which was pushed so
decisively into the foreground, the resonance of the old principles of architectural
theory is more than clear. This holds especially true for the discussion surrounding
the “appropriateness to a use” (Zweckmiissigkeit), a discussion that moved away
from the isolated kernel in favor of its relationship to the hull. Hilberseimer spoke
of the “purpose-related character of the building,” a turn of phrase that immedi-
ately extended the relationship between content and form to include purpose and
character. The bases for this relationship were identified as “material and con-
struction,” once again in the manner intended by Bétticher and Semper. Modern
additions to this equation were production technology, business management and
economic and social considerations. Immanent coherence was decisive. Hilbersei-
mer saw in the “creative will of the architect” that principle that would unify all
this. That which is apparent on the exterior must be the respective “expression of
the mutual interpenetration of all elements governed by the creative will.” Such
rhetoric in fact accorded with the theories that preceded it. Nonetheless, the limit
upon Modern exegeses was set at the point where all the demands of propriety
can no longer be said to produce inevitably the new formal manifestation. Even
Gropius’s early references to Riegl’s concepts of “technical form” and “artistic
form” seem to have been banished to the realm of the “spiritual.”%4° No longer at
stake was the Kunstform as Botticher so precisely and comprehensively defined it.
And even the “structurally operative volume of the kernel” or its capacity to define
the “schema of the structural organization” as “architectural style” would have
described more concretely the new architectural forms than did the definitions
attempted at that time.*“° Nonetheless, Hilberseimer turned his back on the
construct of style. He no longer accepted “problems of style” but, wanted only to
deal with “problems of building.” As a result, he remained incapable of offering
the answer he owed to himself and posterity, with wide-reaching consequences.
Let us return, then, to the “kernel,” to the “kernel form.” This term no longer
designates one of the characteristics of an external “Kunstform” in which the
“functioning schema” was enrobed (in accordance with the use character). Rather,
it indicates the concrete result of the kernel’s liberation from the hull. Architec-
tural Modernism has become a reality. It expresses itself corporeally, if in other
ways as well. Many paths led to this goal, the new formal manifestation: reduction,
disornamentation, derivation from abstract geometries. These paths were accom-

124
panied by just as many different and by no means necessarily related theoretical
models. There is one fact that is ineluctable, regardless of the path chosen: whether
a retrograde reformation in the manner of Um 1800; a reduction in the manner
of Ostendorf’s statement that “to design means to find the simplest formal
appearance,” or an attempt to conceive and then to find the new architectural
form by means of Cubist or Constructivist theory. Once these new forms have
been found, they require a new set of descriptions and clarifications. Therefore,
the rhetoric must deal concretely with the new buildings’ volumes and thus with
the naked kernel. And this must be accomplished despite the precondition that
one of the two elements used by Tietze’s image to demonstrate immanent coher-
ence has been vanquished. Tietze used the phrase “in concentrated effect” to
describe the coherence of the entity that was seeking its justification. It is not
surprising that the clearest permutation of the rhetoric in this vein can be found
primarily, if not exclusively, in the genre in which the image was the focus: in
photography. That which may be forced back from the picture plane and is
therefore not dependent upon the “structural” or “symbolic” means of integration
now forces itself up against the lens and cornea with equal force. Franz Roh
described this effect as the “expression-saturated plane.”347 This phenomenon
reflected the old canon of effect and expression. Other turns of phrase may also
be compared with architectural theory. The “fusion and reduction of the outside
world” recalled the reduction and washing down of the kernel.348 The central
relationship between interior and exterior resonated in the postulate and the
demand that “today, one clearly works from the inside out.”34? And _finally,
photographs that are “suffused with expression” were judged according to the old
criterion of necessity.>*°
In comparison to these attempts to maintain the canon of expression, the
architect preferred a platonic line of argumentation, at least in the example of De
Stijl. He looked favorably upon proportion and harmony, qualities that often were
described in vague and nonbinding ideas, yet he proclaimed the victory of the
“modulor” as an exception to the rule. He was hardly disturbed by the fact that
the call for objectivity had been met not by ideal platonic solids but by consider-
ably eroded, recombined, cleft aggregates of volumes and fragments of volumes.
(Even the Loosian cube was realized only in the didactic model of the exhibition
and was consistently debased to a kind of playground furniture.) The application
of platonic proportions remained in most instances entirely abstract.
In this context, Le Corbusier’s manipulations of the newly liberated building
volume were even more remarkable. He knew and used the aesthetic of volumet-
rics, including émouvoir, as an instrument of architectural expression, as well as
the rules of proportion in all their subtlety.**! It is here that one can best observe

125
 the way in which Le Corbusier dealt with the desire for a new line of argumenta-
tion subsequent to the dissolution of the hull. He based his argument upon optic
constants (“ce que l’oeil voit”).**? The concrete observation of form replaced the
pure platonic canon, even if these observations were no longer comparable to
Bétticher’s Vitruvian discussion of capitals and columns. Rather, they dealt in
“analogy” and in discernible and measurable dimensions. The point at which the
eye can begin to understand concretely a composition (on which the abstract
“regulating lines” are supposed to be based) was, according to Le Corbusier, the
point at which the architect could resume his critical, intellectual endeavors: “It is
here that judgment is at work.”*°? And for anyone who, recalling Schoenmaker’s
postulates, might have mistaken this for a general, purely philosophical, universal-
ist canon of proportion, Le Corbusier added: “ni mystique, ni mystére.” Instead,
at stake here was the ability to lend an artistic, and therefore also an architectural,
composition? “une précision trés grande dans le proportionement.” Thus, in Le
Corbusier’s theory, the naked kernel again could achieve a concrete and systematic
(if not scientific) “formal appearance.”
The rhetorical crisis described here, which arose from the dissolution of the
hull, was noted quite early in art historical literature. The most significant impetus
to these observations was the third of the three “artists’ books” already mentioned:
Bétticher’s Tektonik, Semper’s Stil and Adolf Hildebrand’s Das Problem der Form
in den bildenden Kiinsten (1893).>°> August Schmarsow had also developed his
theses on architecture as “spatial complex” concurrent to the latter’s work.**° These
theses are formulated for the first time in the lecture “Das Wesen der architekton-
ischen Schépfung” (The essence of architectural creation), which Schmarsow gave
on assuming his professorship in Leipzig, on November 8, 1893, only a few
months after the first edition of Hildebrand’s Problem der Form was published.
Directed to the study of aesthetics by Lotze, Schmarsow had dedicated his atten-
tion quite early to a scholarship of art that was based upon a “psychological point
of view.” This pursuit led him, as he said, “to wrestle with Gottfried Semper’s . . .
Stil” and to architecture as the “determinate of spatial form.”*°” Under the influ-
ence of the one-sided conclusions drawn by Redtenbacher, Schmarsow concluded
that the concept of the “art of raiment” (Bekleidungskunst) could “in practical
terms have only forms of exterior expression as its consequence.” He derived his
definition of architecture as the determinate of spatial form from his recognition
of the limitations of “technical” definitions and “psychological facts” and, finally,
from the desire to conceive of architecture once again as art and not merely
technology.*** In this regard, Schmarsow concurred with the older demands of
architectural theory that an “essential content” be the object of knowledge.** He
began by postulating that the concept “architecture” had been lost: “In fact, it

126
 Ctiché Dreger.

DES YEUX
QUI NE VOIENT PAS...
it.
Les Avions
LE Se sivas

on et de
« ty a an esprit nouveau > c'est un esprit de coristracti :
avithése guide par une conception claire.
“Quoi quen en pense, il anime aujourd’hin la plus grande partie de
Tactivit« humaine.

NE G “DE EPOOUE VIENT DE COMMENCER

Getobre 1820
Ec ee te fiat fu Beprit Nouveau >, N° 1,

degage cog oben de

« Nul ne nie aujourd'hui Pesthetique qui se ions, - arr
Vindustrie moderne. De plus en plus, tes construct ae toe yo
Sttablissent avec dex proportions, des jeux de volumes dart, car ¢
tels que heascoup Centre elles sent de veritables osuvees

YEUX QPF NE VvorRNt pas... Lee Paguebois >.

lire Ryprit Nowe n° 8, «PS

Figure 42. Le Corbusier-Saugnier, Des Yeux qui ne voient pas, II, Les Avions. (from:
Esprit Nouveau, no. 8 [June 8, 1921], p. 973)

seems that today, no one knows how to answer the question of what architecture
in fact is.”3°° Schmarsow made his case for “horse sense” (rather than “speculative
aesthetics”) and “introspection” (rather than scientific thought “in the most purely
abstract forms”). He widened the scope of his definition by virtue of these
preconditions and his faith in the “imagination’s will to power,” which erects walls
“where only lines have been:” “Architecture is thus the determinate of spatial form
in accordance with the ideal forms inherent to the human ability to conceive
space.”°¢! He was compelled to go so far as to compensate for the “loss” of such
elements as columnar orders, which had, until then, offered the basis for whatever
interpretations were desired. Like Le Corbusier later with his regulating lines,

V27
 Schmarsow employed concrete precepts and images to supersede more general
concepts. His “introspection” is Le Corbusier’s “pure création de lesprit.” Just as
he cited the imperative “will to power of the imagination,” which is then able to
make walls of lines, so Le Corbusier referred concretely to the eye that fixates on
a point in a composition from which lines may be drawn and facades built. The
one was, despite the use of concrete images, pure art historical theory. The other,
design method and architectural practice.
The application of the new spatial concept to architecture proved in general
to be a risky undertaking, and the sense in which it was intended required a
concrete example, as described earlier. Only a few years later, Schmarsow wrote,
referring to Semper: “It is admittedly easier to apprehend a material construct and
its individual external forms than to do the same for space and its immanent
constitutive laws.”3° The statement reads like an admission of the space’s enor-
mous conceptual abstractness, despite Schmarsow’s insistence to the contrary. The
same may be deduced from Schmarsow’s strange claim that the banality of the
spatial imagination (“as if it were saying nothing new to the unbiased subject”)
would only strengthen the “predominance of this conception,” although he added
in the same sentence “that the majority of experts does not properly evaluate just
what the emphasis of the spatial construct in a building wants to mean.”*® In this
manner, Schmarsow avoided the issue of a development “from the inside out” by
setting his stakes upon the “creative act of form giving.” Both are jibes directed at
Wolfflin, who had by then evidenced his reliance upon Semper. The maxim that
later seemed to assert the presence of a unified vision in the “image” described
precisely the problems of architecture at that time, as well as the crisis of descrip-
tion to follow.
Marilaun had apparently proven that both solutions — radical nudity on the
one hand and “buttoning on the lace collar” on the other — were the only
alternatives available to architecture in its continued development. If, as Wolfflin
claimed, decoration was the “cradle of a new style,” then Schmarsow knew how
to answer in support of the progressive version of the story: “ ‘Rebirth’ does not
begin here, but rather, decoration offers the easiest point of attack to the new
formal impulses.”° The same might then be said of concurrent Secessionist
attempts to produce contemporary decorative form. The other variations in which,
according to Schmarsow, “the higher unity of space and volume” would be
produced in the “image”*® led to the problems already discussed: the loss of a
concrete basis for exposition subsequent to the dissolution of the hull—exempli-
fied by Gropius’s “picture book” — and its potential replacements — in Le Corbu-
sier’s work, for example.
One way or another, the image — whether derived from Schmarsow’s psycho-

128
logical, perceptionist perspective or from Gropius’s simple “assertion” — had been
realized. For both Schmarsow and Gropius, the section cut through the cone of
vision assumes increasing urgency as it comes to rest upon the pure plane, the
new “exterior of the kernel” after the dissolution of the stylistic hull. The eye does
not see into the kernel but instead remains on the surface of the — “liberated”
(depending on the point of view) — corporeal volume. According to Schmarsow,
the power of imagination begins to work on the naked kernel; and, according to
Le Corbusier’s theory of regulating lines, it seeks out a point from which it can
project an idealized network of lines, overlaying the volume with a series of well-
proportioned articulating systems.
This process is not dissimilar to that implied by Brunelleschi’s attempt to
make “simetrie” the basis for a set of rules already presaged in the spirit. Here, the
link can be recognized between the fundamental architecture theoretical interest
in systematization and the practical theory that produces rules. The decisive
difference is apparent in the shift already observed, from the (Vitruvian) articula-
tion of the naked plane to the dissolution of the stylistic hull. Here, too, as in the
canon of the pure volume, expression and “émouvoir” may again be applicable.
The rapidity with which the two paths — the “pure” and the “lace collar” —
converge again is obvious in Hitchcock and Johnson’s postulates in International
Style (1932). There, they offered a primer of the first principles of “Architecture
as Volume,” which includes, as a practical complement, a discussion of “surfacing
material”: “The character of the surface of the volume is not expressed merely by
the general design of a Modern building: the actual materials of the surface itself
are of the utmost importance. The ubiquitous stucco, which still serves as the
hallmark of the contemporary style, has the aesthetic advantage of forming a
continuous covering. But if the stucco is rough, the sharpness of the design, which
facilitates the apprehension of the building’s volume, is blunted.”>°° The washing
down, the “removal of stucco,” was in fact not meant so radically after all.
Apparently, in the “International Style,” the application of stucco to the building’s
volume has been officially reintroduced, even if the stucco has become smoother.
And since the curtain wall was unable to fend off comparisons with historical
trabeation and systems of articulation — for example, a comparison of Mies to
Schinkel — any fear that the hull would be lost was ultimately unfounded. Even
tectonics — a term used much too readily as an abbreviation for Bétticher’s
precepts to mean an equation of construction and formal qualities — could acquire
new meaning. Hans Kollhoff speaks about the new “tectonic sensibility.”°°” Even
Schmarsow perceived “spatial sensibility and spatial fantasy” that then generated
spatial form. The degree to which Kollhoff allows construction and technology to
influence and to be manifest in his tectonic sensibility, whether he tends toward a

129
 Perret-like approach or toward another, is solely the prerogative of his own
architectural and artistic decision.
These were and are the approaches that might be expected in the future, once
the systems of articulation and decoration that had been adequate to all demands
of character and content had been vanquished. And in considering these possibil-
ities mitigating the original radicality of the vanquished hull, it is not out of the
question — although Loos absolutely excluded it — that the old clothes might be
taken out of the closet again. Of course, there has been no lack of new possibilities.
Form and color have unfolded their form-giving potential. Formalism has been
transformed until it is little more than the accusation of formalism. The loss of
meaning has been followed by the largely unsuccessful attempt to reestablish
architecture’s sign character and by an even clumsier attempt to use the rediscov-
ered “repertoire” of history. Everything, then, has been mobilized to reestablish
the seemingly lost relationship between content and form. Finally, it might be
possible to superimpose a new hull on the naked kernel using the Semperian or
Wachsmannian concept of networks and textile patterns. Without much ado, this
hull could become aesthetically independent: on some occasions, symbolic of
technology and on others, illustrative of construction — or, to use Semper’s
classifications, on some occasions, “structural-symbolic” and on others, “structural-
technical.” Even the veil that Tietze had wished away has been reintroduced by
Nouvel and Herzog and de Meuron as an exquisite theme, a new architectural
luxury despite the (readily veiled) cost factor and the quick acknowledgment that
the light lenses in the Centre du Monde Arabe in Paris do not work (this, too,
being a subversion of Functionalism). And what might be said of the “curtain
wall” and its tradition?
The naked kernel did not remain naked for long. The hull returned trium-
phant in the most manifold permutations and formal richness. That is not neces-
sarily grounds for complaint. Nonetheless, the radicality of Loos’s position be-
comes even clearer in comparison to this almost limitless richness of new stylistic
plurality and formal development. The true reason for this radicality is his dis-
missal of the development prevalent not only in Vienna, as Marilaun noted, but
anywhere at all. His aim was not the progressive removal of the stylistic garb, and
certainly not its reintroduction or substitution. It is paradoxical that Loos and his
Haus am Michaelerplatz could be seen, at least within this limited perspective, as
the ideal termination of the development described in the image of “Stilhiilse und
Kern.” He, however, distanced himself fundamentally from any conception of
progress and from a metaphor that culminated in a superficial image, which is
why he never spoke about the hull and instead chose the term “raiment” (Beklei-
dung). Loos set himself apart from history. Necessity replaced history in his

130
 FOND AUCH ‘a : ss UCHOM Ae fEaNe

ATHENES EN 13 HEURES

ATR FRANCE
Figure 43. “Athénes en 13 heures. Air France.” Advertising supplement to Amédéé, Tour
de Greéce. (Paris: 1938)

131
 construct: necessity as the principle of immanent, logical coherence. This principle
was coupled with appropriateness, which regulated form and content; and with
tradition, the essential and ever-valid core of history. There were more than mere
rules at stake here. Instead, these are the reflections of a demand for “propriety”
or “decorum” (Sittlichkeit), as Schinkel had conceived it. It is a demand for
architectural virtue, “Franciscan,” as observed earlier in this book. Loos was as
rigorous as the “Socrate dell’architettura,” the Franciscan monk Carlo Lodoli. In
any Case, it is certain that figures such as Loos are not common. That also explains
why he did not fit into either progress or history.
An escape from history into the realm of the eternally valid: that, too, is a
parable of architecture. Loos, still impressed by his experiences in Chicago, once
spoke to the question of Greek culture: “Are there still people today who work as
the Greeks did? Yes. They are the British as a people and the engineers as a group.
The British, the engineers, these are our Hellenic Greeks. We derive our culture
from them; it emanates from them to spread across the entire earth. They are the
citizens of the nineteenth century in all their perfection. . . .”°°° Loos’s statement
anticipated Le Corbusier’s sibylline definition: “Esthétique de l'ingénieur. Archi-
tecture.” Le Corbusier, like Loos, also saw Greece as the only valid standard, a
fact that reveals again both architects’ more general larger-scale affinities. In
Greece, according to Quatremére de Quincy, culture was subject to the condition
of necessity, which at the same time insured its coherence. Bétticher claimed that
Hellenic art represented the ideal instantiation of the most intimate bond between
Kernform and Kunstform. In Semper’s work, Greek art is the only art form that
could be characterized with the words “in the highest sense,” despite his inclusion
of all Oriental cultures in his view of history. And at the Acropolis, Le Corbusier
found the “moralité dorique” as well as the “perfection” that, as an ideal, derived
from necessity. That perfection alone can satisfy the highest demands. “Athénes
en 13 heures,” announced the Air France advertising supplement in Amédéé’s 27)

“Tour of Greece.” Off to Greece!

NOTES
335 See above; Tietze, Wagner, op. cit., p. 15/16.
336 See W. Gropius, /nternationale Architektur (Munich: 1925), p. 5.
337 There is a need for a more exacting and detailed account of the way in which — aside
from the significant exception of the Froebel principles — such didactic theories developed
from a more linear-ornamental model at the turn of the century (to cite Walter Crane or
Eugéne Grasset) to a more volumetric-spatial model in the twenties,
338 See L. Hilberseimer, Internationale neue Baukunst (Stuttgart: 1927), p. 5.
339 The relevant terminology surfaces in Gropius’s texts in the formulation “a new will is

132
 becoming palpable” (ein neuer Wille wird spiirbar) and in the description of the “prefig-
uration of a general will to form” (Vorboten eines allgemeinen Gestaltungswallen[s]).”
340 See Gropius, Internationale Architektur, op. cit., p. 5/6.
341 See below.
342 Ibid., p. 5.
343 A comparison between Le Corbusier’s Five Points and the Vitruvian criteria of necessity,
commodity and beauty might seem quite plausible to an unprejudiced audience, but it
can today still cause dissent in the architectural community. In other places, the idea that
Modern architecture was “antihistorical” was less prevalent. The advertising brochure
“What is modern architecture?” printed by the Museum of Modern Art (1, Introductory
Series to the Modern Arts) [New York: 1942]) used the Vitruvian triad to prove the
validity of Modern architecture. The slight adaptation — “strength” rather than “firmitas”
— is within the framework of the adaptations made by, for example, Rondelet (see above).
344 See Hilberseimer, Internationale neue Baukunst, op. cit., p. 5.
345 See above.
346 See Bétticher, Tektonik, op. cit., p- 8 and p. 17; also see above, especially Bétticher’s
definition: “The Kernform of every component is the mechanically necessary, the statically
functional schema; the Kunstform, on the other hand, is only the characteristic that
explains the function.” (Die Kernform jedes Gliedes ist das mechanisch nothwendige, das
statisch fungirende Schema; die Kunstform dagegen nur die Funktion-erklarende Char-
akteristik.)
347 See Franz Roh, “mechanismus und ausdruck. wesen und wert der fotografie,” in: ed. FE.
Roh and J. Tschichold, foroauge (Stuttgart: 1929), p. 3 ff: p. 4.
348 Ibid., p. 5.
349 Ibid., p. 6.
350 Ibid., p. 4: “here, a question is raised by many people as a result of their education: can a
photograph in fact be laden with expression, composed even into its outermost corners,
can it be ‘necessary’?” (hier erhebt sich — als bildungsprodukt — bei manchen menschen
noch immer die frage, ob denn ein foto iiberhaupt ausdruckserfiillt, bis in die ecken
durchgestaltet, “notwendig” sein kénne.)
351 On Le Corbusier’s aesthetics of volumetrics, see above.
De, See Le Corbusier, “Tracés régulateurs,” in: L’Architecture vivante (Spring and Summer
1929), p. 13 ff: p. 18.
353 Here, see the clarification: “We thought that the eye would transmit sufficiently evident
points of the composition for the mind to be able to reconstruct the precise spaces, and
it is these spaces that we have organized according to a system of regulating lines.” (Nous
avons pensé que l’oeil transmettrait des points suffisamment évidents de la composition
pour que l’esprit en puisse reconstituer des espaces précis, et ce sont ces espaces que nous
avons ordonnés par un tracé régulateur.) (Ibid., p. 20.) In the process of expanding upon
his canon of how a ground plan is elaborated by means of the establishment of concrete
points that the eye determines and thereafter always recognizes, Le Corbusier runs up
against difficulties. But that is another story.
354 Le Corbusier speaks, of course, of the “composition plastique” (and also about “plasti-
cien”). In comparison with Schmarsow’s discussion, which is based upon Hildebrand’s
work and thus moves continuously between the various artistic genres, this fact is doubly
interesting.
CBy) Compare the above to Waetzoldt’s characterization of the Kiinstlerbuch. — With regard to
Hildebrand, reference must be made to the definitive edition by Henning Bock: A. von
Hildebrand, Gesammelte Schriften zur Kunst, annotated by H. Bock (Opladen: 1969 and
1988).
356 See A. Schmarsow, as above.
5D/) See A. Schmarsow, “Riickschau beim Eintritt ins siebzigste Lebensjahr,” op. cit., p. 141.
Schmarsow himself dates these beginnings to 1883.

133
 358 See A. Schmarsow, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schopfung (Leipzig: 1894), p. 3 and
LO}
Spy) & Conrad Fiedler, Ueber die Beurtheilung von Werken der bildenden Kunst (Leipzig:
1876), p. 2.: “One may speak of a real understanding of art, of a real facility to judge art,
only when this understanding or judgment of a work of art is based upon that work's
essential content.” (Von eigentlichem Kunstverstindniss, eigentlichem Kunsturtheil ist
nur dann die Rede, wenn sich Verstandniss, Beurtheilung eines Kunstwerkes auf dessen
wesentlichen Inhalt bezieht.)
360 See A. Schmarsow, Wesen der architektonischern Schépfung, op. cit., p. 3. — Here, didacti-
cism and its alienation from the work is accused of lacking “warm engagement with the
inner human being” and thus a “natural relationship” to art.
361 Ibid., p. 5, p. 11 ff, and p. 14.
362 See A. Schmarsow, Zur Frage nach dem Malerischen (Leipzig: 1896), p. 15: “The assump-
tion of the columnar order of a Greek temple, or of the vaulted construction of the
Gothic cathedral, or, perhaps, of the applied arts of all eras, on the basis of which all
architectural styles could be judged ‘in their essence to construct’ (Semper, Szz/, II, p. 333)
— this has thrived in the form of a dangerous prejudice, as if any other path, for example,
beginning at the other end, were impossible.” (Das Ausgehen von der Saulenordnung des
griechischen Tempels oder von der Gewolbekonstruktion der gotischen Kathedrale, oder,
wenn’s hoch kommt, von der Kleinkunst aller Zeiten, aus der man sogar das Ganze der
Baustile, “in ihrem Wesen zu konstruieren” sich vermass [Semper, Szz/, II, S. 333] — es ist
zu einem verhangnisvollen Vorurtheil gediehen, als sei ein anderer Weg, wohl gar vom
entgegengesetzten Ende her, gar nicht méglich.)
363 Ibid., p. 14.
364 Ibid., p. 16.
365 On the later development of Schmarsow’s ideas, see above and notes 269 and 308.
366 See H.-R. Hitchcock and P. Johnson, The International Style: Architecture since 1922 (New
York: 1932), p. 50. Of course, Le Corbusier had already followed his discussion of “le
volume” with that of “le surface” in Vers une architecture by asserting: “A volume is
enveloped by a surface, a surface that is divided according to the directing and generating
principles of the volume, thereby highlighting the individuality of this volume.” (Un
volume est enveloppé par une surface, une surface qui est divisée suivant les directives et
les génératrices du volume, accusant l’individualité de ce volume.)
367 See H. Kollhoff, “Der Mythos der Konstruktion und das Architektonische,” in: ed. H.
Kollhoft, Uber Tektonik in der Baukunst, op. cit., p. 19. Because the theme of Kollhoff’s
brief essay is broadly drawn, many of the theoretical positions discussed here are noted.
Even “gravitas” — discussed here in relation to Redtenbacher and his debt to Lotze — has
enjoyed an impressive comeback in architecture through the work of Richard Serra.
368 See A. Loos, Ins Leere gesprochen, op. cit., p. 66.

134
Plates

The selected images serve to describe the metaphor of the Stilhiilse

and the Kern and the implicit progression by which the kernel is
separated from the hull. They describe the slow process in which
the historical shell was stripped away, replaced by the Secession,
Empire and “Zopf” styles — the so-called reapplication of the “lace
collar” — and, finally, was vanquished by the naked kernel. It also
becomes apparent, that although this process was conceived in
terms of the kernel, it was nonetheless always evaluated for the
external hull. Botticher’s cautionary maxim, “every built form de-
rives from its construction and successively assumes its artistic form
[Kunstform],” is reflected in the work of Otto Wagner. Loos would
have protested such a one-sided argument. Yet during the twenties,
Modern architecture’s external appearance and its dissemination
to a “broad lay public” in “picture books” were of primary con-
cern.
The selection that follows is arbitrary and partial. It assembles
images relevant to the point of view suggested by the metaphor.
The three groups loosely trace the following issues: the facade
development of public buildings; domestic facades and secondary
facades; and the paradigm of Fischer von Erlach’s Karlskirche, the
Artibus project and the successive reduction and modernization of
the type. In addition to the Viennese precedents, the series include
comparative examples that evoke other routes taken to achieve the
simplification of form (by means of a geometricizing style in the
Dutch examples); the problem of the renewed search for a repre-
sentative sign after the dissolution of decoration (Le Corbusier’s
project for the League of Nations with its architectural-sculptural
monument in front, in analogy to Wagner's liberation of decorative
elements); and the rediscovery of the Loosian ideal of the volume
(in Aldo Rossi’s work).
 ae
f) ,
‘fs i; rn } \ | i W ; : f : ‘ aay aes
i ,)e
ans! | at -ae . x eT hee bow msc +f

jh ie — tt mat) ny 4 a Su nee: =o
i mh byes ee pew efi nue th) nb ¥ ahveae
- an a i i sy nan "s hay
i 5aaL if
win! mia its. ‘i 40 fu PAP : his-kest ¢ } _ . a atc ie
She . aftr ni ieaanaatl apy oOo tall
Corre Lh wiv? © uv, & De fi ws TSI zi at ic ores
ee a eee ae be - be Ae 3 -

“Py pail QhED TSF eID OOS Heino Osh = OStestHI AWD ce -
-
—. W@Ghrekoges, Lait acruinhehnt deiMstwe 26nd matted vo tusbotte © Roi, -
Z ait ea si ede sitchoe, ot beseech ESF
_
* j * er, *

eer & —_ {
nr ePaper: Sea, AOR
Z ety iteJoa anysee sited tr hy wrallataud Fics _—gilla
acoles wat

i ae aied eee Rontiyeere wR

+ aan fas balvgiigh,Log
"CN SE
ik eaewal pa i 7 a
bor dinsie 2 * pesos Siege ' is
git
Priva
alee Yih NEC yak a
hale
‘ora ie ae
lapels aa .
 'Bihhkhh) Pacats qt qess den Quai
.
ae
“a
Bie

Figure 44

ei
merit
wmevaagens

g
RNR
eaenentanneeson

RRR
EA
Ree
§ee
oe

weee
su
i

Figure 45

137
v
 Figure 46

Figure 48

1 38
Figure 49

{
PROIEAT PVA DASHA) SER FRANZ 30 Se F-STAITMVSEVM: AM-AARLEePLATZ EIN WIE
EEE]

SES
iba)

aan —

Figure 51

139
 Figure 52

(OS
Sew SS ee atta
al
tina
Seta
a

Figure 53

140
ENTWURF'SUR!DENNEUBAUIEINER!
LNIVERSITATS
Bis UOTaERCIN WIEN

Figure 57

141
 eR rma is

eo

Figure 59

UREA A TM
SeSterersrerrrrs

Baet
aadeyal on

Bs
BS
i

PAR ADOLF LOOS

Figure 60

142
 —_

i : tame
ANs 10 8
4
TESS ES
=f —se
iene Away wAi
. ‘
oe tpn en ene ~
pape pm ORL ee HE ree HE
Liao ew ieneHe Tit
i th hat Heeeat

Figure 62

143
 ADEMISCHER VERBAND FiUR LITERATUR U.MUSIK

“IM SOPHIENSAAL
MEIN
MONTAG, DEN 11. DEZEMBER 191i UM HALB 8 UHR
ABENDS ‘VORTRAG DES aiic. ADOLF . LOOS

MIT SKIOPTIKONBILDERN
Karten bei Kehlendorfer |, Krugerstr. 3 zu K 4, 3, 2,1, —.50
Mitylieder des »Akademischen Verbandes: fur Literatur und Musik in Wien” und des "Vereines
tig Kunst und Kultur“ zahlen halben Preis - Die Mitgliederaufnahme erfolgt tagl. von 10-12 Uhr
4 . vormittagsim Hause |. Bezirk, Reichsratsstrasse 7

Figure 63
 iPiy

aod
LLU

Figure 65

145
 VILLA BRBHERAD WAGNER HUTTELBEROST. 26
Figure 66

Figure 67 Figure 68

146
Figure 69

Figure 70

147
 Figure 71
as
Sh c aat are
an),

Figure 72 Figure 73

148
PLATES ON! PP? 1372148
Figure 44. Otto Wagner, First Project for a New Stock Market, Vienna, 1863. (from:
Otto-Antonia Graf, Ozto Wagner, vol. 2 [Vienna Cologne and Graz: 1985],
p- 9)
Figure 45. Otto Wagner, Project for a Town Hall, Hamburg, 1879. (from: Graf, Op. cit.,
p- 28)
Figure 46. Otto Wagner, Study for the New Hofburg, Vienna, 1898, View of the Throne
Room Tract. (Otto-Wagner-Archiv, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 47. J. Zietsma, Project for a Large Government Building. (from: Wendingen,
December 1919, p. 8)
Figure 48. Franz Schwarz, Project for a Building Complex on the Schmelz. The College
of Art. (from: ed. Otto Schoenthal, Das Ehrenjahr Otto Wagners an der K.K.
Akademie der Bildenden Kiinste in Wien. Arbeiten seiner Schiiler. Projekten und
Skizzen [Vienna: 1912], p. 35)
Figure 49. Otto Wagner, Project for the Exhibition Hall of the Union of Austrian Artists
on Karlsplatz, Vienna, 1912-1914. (from: Graf, op. cit., p. 679)
Figure 50. Franz Schwarz, Project for a Building Complex on the Schmelz. Historical
Museum of the City of Vienna (from: Schoenthal, op. cit., p. 3)
Figure 51. Otto Wagner, Project for the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Stadtmuseum on Karlsplatz,
Vienna, 1901-1907, View of the Side Elevation. (Otto-Wagner-Archiv, His-
torisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 52. Otto Wagner, Design for a Clinic for Lupus Patients, Vienna, 1908. (from:
J. A. Lux, Otto Wagner (Munich: 1914])
Figure 53. Otto Wagner, Design for a Clinic for Lupus Patients, Vienna, 1908, Center
Portion. (from: Lux, op. cit.)
Figure 54. Otto Wagner, First Project for the New University Library, Vienna, 1910,
View of the Entry Facade. (Otto-Wagner-Archiv, Historisches Museum der
Stadt Wien)
Figure 55. Otto Wagner, Project for the Offices of the K. u. K. Imperial Ministry of War
on the Stubenring, Vienna, 1907/1908, Ringstrasse Facade. (from: Graf, op.
cit., p. 564)
Figure 56. Adolf Loos, Project for the Offices of the K. u. K. Imperial Ministry of War
on the Stubenring, Vienna, 1907/1908, Ringstrasse Facade. (Adolf-Loos-
Archiv, Graphische Sammlung Albertina Vienna)
Figure 57. Gottlieb Michael, Project for an Art Exhibition Hall. (from: Schoenthal, op,
cit., p. 27) For images by Adolf Loos: Copyright © 1994 ProLitteris Zurich.
Figure 58. Adolf Loos, Project for the Offices of the K. u. K. Imperial Ministry of War
on the Stubenring, Vienna, 1907/1908, Variation on the Middle Tract. (Adolf-
Loos-Archiv, Graphische Sammlung Albertina Vienna)
Figure 59. Adolf Loos, Project for a Hotel on Friedrichstrasse, Vienna, 1906, Friedrich-
strasse Facade. (Adolf-Loos-Archiv, Graphische Sammlung Albertina Vienna)

149
 Figure 60. Adolf Loos, Perspective, Project for a Hotel in Juan-les-Pins, 1931. (Private
Collection, Vienna)
Figure 61. Adolf Loos, Haus Goldmann & Salatsch am Michaelerplatz, Vienna, 1910,
Meander-striped Facade on Herrengasse. (from: Burkhardt Rukschcio and
Roland Schachel, Ado/f Loos [Salzburg and Vienna: 1982], p. 150)
Figure 62. Adolf Loos, Apartment and Office Building for the K.K. Priv. Allgemeinen
Verkehrsbank, Vienna, 1904, Photomontage of the Street Elevation. (Photo-
graphed in 1904, Adolf-Loos-Archiv, Graphische Sammlung Albertina Vienna)
Figure 63. Poster Advertising the Lecture by Adolf Loos, “Mein Haus am Michaelerplatz,”
Vienna, 11.12.1911. (Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 64. Otto Wagner, Villa Wagner, Vienna, 1912. (Otto-Wagner-Archiv, Historisches
Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 65. Rudolf Weiss, Project for a House. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit., p. 25)
Figure 66. Otto Wagner, Villa Wagner, Vienna, 1912, Details of the Facade. (from: Graf,
op. cit., p. 651)
Figure 67 and 68. Adolf Loos, Project for the Villa of Alexander Moissi, Venice/Lido,
1923. (from: Rukschcio and Schachel, op. cit., p. 287)
Figure 69. Adolf Loos, Project for a Building Complex on the Gartenbaugriinde, Vienna,
1917, Variation with Low-Corniced Towers. (Adolf-Loos-Archiv, Graphische
Sammlung Albertina Vienna)
Figure 70. Adolf Loos, Project for the Stables of Prince Sanguszko in Southern France (?),
1924, Perspective of the Courtyard. (Adolf-Loos-Archiv, Graphische Sam-
mlung Albertina Vienna)
Figure 71. Adolf Loos, Sketch for the Project for a Forum with a Kaiser-Franz-Joseph
Monument on the Gartenbaugriinde, Vienna, 1917. (Adolf-Loos-Archiv, Gra-
phische Sammlung Albertina Vienna).
Figure 72. Adolf Loos, Model of a Tombstone for Max Dvorak, 1920. (from: Heinrich
Kulka, Adolf ‘Loos, Das Werk des Architekten (Vienna: 1979])
Figure 73. Aldo Rossi, Sketches for a Cemetery in Modena, 1970. (from: ed. Alberto
Ferlenga, Aldo Rossi, architectture, 1959-1987 |Milan: 1987], p. 15)

150
Finally, the architecturally generative spirit of the epoch had ultimately to
make itself felt from the roots upward. Those roots seemed long dead;
but now, secret vital powers forced their way upward, and the actual, true
and essential architectural form of the epoch grew, forming powerful limbs
behind the applied stylistic masks and draperies. And once these forces
are thoroughly organized and matured, then certainly the beautifully or-
namented historical stylistic hulls — will fracture away; they will disappear
forever, and the new kernel will emerge naked and clear in the sunlight.
Joseph Bayer, “Moderne Bautypen” (1886), in: Baustudien und Baubilder
Jena: 1919), p. 280/281.

That is his transition to the Modern.

He throws all historical detail overboard and begins again where architec-
ture’s natural development had broken off, with the Empire style.
L. Hevesi, Osterreichische Kunst im 19. Jahrhundert, Zweiter Teil: 1848-
1900 (Leipzig: 1903), p. 286/287.

He [Otto Wagner] is a master of disguise, in other words, his buildings

do not reveal their structural matter on their exterior but are instead clad
with decorative panels.
J. Strzygowski, Die bildende Kunst der Gegenwart (Leipzig: 1907), p. 15.

In it [Wagner's theory], the architect’s desire results in rational acuity; that

desire is to make his art purely and immediately a vessel of the era’s need.
This need — phrased in the language of architecture — is the elucidation
of the tectonic.
Hans Tietze, Otto Wagner (Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig: 1922),
Puiie

His surrender to the Jugendstil wave seems to us today to be Wagner’s

most temporally bound characteristic. That which possesses the momen-
tary advantage of Modernity must naturally also lie in the shadow of the
past...It is possible to conceive of a natural phenomenon that would
wash away all that is not essential from Otto Wagner’s buildings and
would not maim them, but instead intensify their effect.
Hans Tietze, Otto Wagner (Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig: 1922),
p. 15/16

151
 wal

Pep hio
rot me ta?
ahaa, os ia

sabi con ie
« avatantl teileabh
AN‘ rer?
Liga
eo é
_, > few \ '

: Aa " % aeRe
ioe
.&

ay
: os ‘: in. ee=

c e r e 4 seg We) alt ‘a

y-
i d g l a viipeek
!wnt
7 K -_ si e
ir s e t t h o et ol
ny ith, m Teaars Vh
+, ing Ad d Riid bl’oo a ’

a aishaeerel
bliaaie ee ?
can

a kes
a bi

rae seh
we - Wijalan
7" ina = y Toa

H aia se 4 eee .
ptha ; >
a Seen
Rawk ee
ne Sree v -
_ ‘ ire >
a 7
= =
7 7
az
=p .
4

;
a. i.- t =
—- ~ os le A als os _ 7 - :
4 71 1
9
4 At =
4 “9 7
: _ — ~~

i a
=
 wubodee

AEA
Ke
x

Figure 74

Te caedetate teas

iMIETHAY. co
ah

{ ¥ 4 i 4 ui i | i
eS

Figure 75

{53
 Figure 76

Figure 77

154
Figure 78 Figure 79

1335
Figure 80 Figure 81

156
Figure 82
a ea<u oso sme Giles
&
= —— —
| SES
SES
E — U\asee
=
‘GSA
i 1

ae =
(oT

] 57
 ENTWVAPRUR
DEN NEVE V’EINER VNIVERSITATS
8 IBUOTHEKIN WIEN Tee,
Figure 83

Ae pees), Hety cates

Move. Fy ;
i eo Pe
j PEUX KURU. wher aEta:
Ge

Figure 84

158
PLATES ‘ON’ PP? 153-158
Figure 74, Otto Wagner, Apartment Building, Universitatsstrasse, Vienna, 1887. (Otto-
Wagner-Archiv, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 75. Otto Wagner, Apartment House, Wienzeile 40, Vienna, 1898, Preliminary
Design for the Facade. (from: Graf, op. cit., p. 322)
Figure 76. Hans Schlechta, “Apartment House. Facade Detail. School Project. I. Year.”
(from: Aus der Wagnerschule MCM [Vienna: 1901})
Figure 77. Otto Wagner, Apartment House, Wienzeile 40, Vienna, 1898. Elevation with
Majolika tiles. (from: Graf, op. cit., p. 324)
Figure 78. Otto Wagner, Project for an Office Building for the K. u. K. Imperial Ministry
of War on the Stubenring, Vienna, 1907/1908, Facade Detail. (from: Graf,
op. cit., p. 566)
Figure 79. Franz Kaym, Project for a Hotel on the Kolowratring. (from: Schoenthal, op.
cit.’ p. 10)
Figure 80. Franz Kaym, Hotel Ring, Facade Facing the Ring. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit.,
p. 9)
Figure 81. Hugo Zimmermann, Project for an Apartment in Seilerstatte — Weihburggasse,
Facade Detail. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit., p. 4)
Figure 82. Otto Wagner, Apartment House, Neustiftgasse 40, Vienna, 1909. (from: Einige
Skizzen, Projekte u. ausgefiihrte Bauwerke v. Otto Wagner [Vienna, 1910] (1.
partial printing), “Band IV, I., I. u. II. Heft,” p. 3.
Figure 83. Otto Wagner, Design for the New University Library, Vienna, 1910. (from:
Einige Skizzen, op. cit., “Band IV, I. u. II. Heft,” p. 16)
Figure 84. Felix Kleinoscheg, Project for a Hotel Austria. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit.,
p. 15)

159
 me
ee

‘St ute dees

ays é dl
as ea
ar ©
ed | ~ Foe
2 =
cy
Tai Bg" “ sag, aa
a4 7 —_—
7

on:

ws Kark
ae

y~
oh aa oa
w 22!

see : a
= oe e _
a
‘ie
.
"—. a

.- ae 7 ice
eae
; Mog.
a
a al -.
2
’
faihe
Soiled
4
- ost | Ae a taal —
> (hee a meet
ro 7
; Her wee | J A .ae i
, a? OUT Gtot « vl as, inh é nig
7

a alt OF0) airalT qarlid even

a BM JANI ehs* o gemel

The majority always demands of us that we build as did Bramante, Michel
Angelo, Fischer von Erlach, etc., etc. It refuses to admit that we, too,
must have our place in the history of architecture alongside these heroes.
They overlook the fact that the artist cannot find it compelling to have
built as did Bramante, Michel Angelo, Fischer von Erlach, etc. Rather, he
is compelled by the thought of how these artists would have built, had
they lived among us today and known about our way of perceiving, our
way of living, our materials and our construction techniques.
Otto Wagner, Die Qualitat des Baukiinstlers (Leipzig and Vienna: 1912),
peeys

A new era arrived, the Modern. Architecture became Baukunst. Otto

Wagner had ushered in this new era. His word caught fire; it became fact
and went forth into the world. Wherever new architectural impulses could
be sensed, there, too, Otto Wagner may be sensed to the very core. That
should not be forgotten. He created an atmosphere in which the seeds of
future greatness could live and grow.
Josef August Lux, Oto Wagner (Munich: 1914), p. 11.

The name Otto Wagner has a sonorous tone, as the names of Austrian
artists tend to have. It has the resonance of something valid and worthy
of attention throughout the world. We may only find this resonance
elsewhere in the history of our indigenous architecture until Fischer von
Erlach.
Hans Tietze, Otto Wagner (Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig: 1922),
pre:

But every time that the small-minded ornamentalists put distance between
architecture and its great precedents, a great architect is close at hand who
returns it to Antiquity. Fischer von Erlach in the South, Schliiter in the
North — these were the great masters of the eighteenth century. And on
the threshold of the nineteenth was Schinkel. We have forgotten him.
May the light of these superlative figures fall upon our next generation of
architects!
Adolf Loos, “Kulturentartung” (1908), in: Trotzdem (Innsbruck: 1931),
p. 112/113.

161
 nal

ay € eens

vide Abe ida

y Gir ¢ baty we
os

Poel. a re Milena -
; ae a 7 ~
Vi
Hs aeis On
reg oun
i_af

RE Nees
Sein Ds wit 410) 4
wanes bate a laty Al rms
_ weit bal lant ule
y mel’? tare Sei? how ene

eshag ae
ee-
aii
ee: _

¥
(ta _ ba
uJ ’ 7 -
i |
7
a "
we
a -° _
'
a ,
_ = 7
:
_
a
—_
iy i 7

3
Figure 85

YesEOE OR CECE CHOEOSOEEOE ORO RGN SEO RS ESESE SET BOM OND SON ORS £5 ROR SECEOIO
LD 10£01010 FF SECEOEO
AONOLORON OFOLOIGFOLOROROLOUO: ONOROR
AOE NOISE SROBOR ORGAO TOES OLDE
OE NORIO IDO OICIAEOMONOFSI ON BONA O

99H
108
FOLD
GPOROTOROED
FOOT
ORONE
#6:
IO
HOKSI
COLO
CON
DION
FG

ORONO
EONS
HOR
FO
IS
TOF
TOLOID
MEOHO
LOL
FOFQTORO
OHONM
ROES
IGEOLONO
LONONO
10
OZOI0NO}:

FO
HO
FAO
RO
BOLO
LOCI
PAQEDACI
EDICE
BORD
FOI
ITI
ORGE
LOSE
TORE
ATO
FOE
DEO
FO
OES
=
OVOMOECIOIONGIOTOIOROTOROBONGSO| CMOLOIOIOFOLOLO ONONOMOLOVON ONO: OPOLOLONDE OFOLOEGHONOH OF CIOLONIOL OFS LALOR OUR GIOROLOROROES
ONO
FOESEO
POIGI
LOFT:
PUNO
GIG
FOS
FORO
FORONOSOTO
EO
10
ROFONO
1G
LO
ORORO
OTOP SEQRORGECION ONORBOR
CRON DIOS OR CORON CL OR OD CFOS ONCE OEOTORON

Figure 86

163
 Figure 88

164
 Figure 89

Figure 91

165
 Figure 92

leet
;eee
mt
ae Scag

Figure 95

166
 MAGNITUDO NUM:
MOREA, AP MRMORIAN
HUIS TEMPLL, AVRO

Figure 96

Figure Dy
1 67
 Figure 99

168
 ORSAY OF ORA ONE IEROETOTIO
Fa0 IMU GOB OBOE OES GGA ObAL0 NAO 310 9 OF ORI ORSTORAOEEIO
ENO EA a0 401030
0 EA0 BIORAOF AON MNON MOL MPS OL ANE IU! lO fof jOt Fok Yer AG Mune Gert

ESOS

Cum
eRe

tos

OES
SIO
OtSIO
ORRIN
ESOS
ORRISSORGOEHO
ECE
PEM
OBS

“Ouro WHENER' 3
ORIO0EAOEIOEIOF 108 408:IRAE JORIOERCE \OESIOFIOTAOEIOF JORSIOES OF IO AGENOIO FIO EHO FMOBMOMAOEIOLIONNOD AOUAIGFAGLAOP AO IOI ORO RAC
SI ORI OL O PRON A CEA OES CM 10 SIO ENO ES

PROJEKT ZUM! KAISER! FRANZ) OOSER ' STROTMUSEUM!

Figure 100

PROJECT We~ DEN? NEVBAV?

GLAKADEMIE ©
& DeeBIDENDENKUNSTE:

A MO BUNSEN

Figure 101 : Figure 102

169
 Figure 103

Py ‘\,
¢ STALT
gesmmncrane— /
ig DES IARENAN Mi: erect
secre

Figure 104

170
wis
Feeaess
moms enn
onno
Siro

cosas tence
wd
Pome!
waa msatas

> a ib

GO Ra O RRO O RAD ERD!

Sank eae

Figure 106
Figure 105

Figure 107

171
 Figure 108

| Ailmi
seen eeeA

Figure 110

172
REATES ONSPR:163—172
Figure 85. Otto Wagner, “Artibus,” 1880. (from: Graf, op. cit., p. 37)
Figure 86. Otto Wagner, the Karlsplatz, Vienna, 1909. (from: Einige Skizzen, op. cit.,
“Band IV, Heft 1 u. 2,” p. 8)
Figure 87. Josef Heinisch, Ideal Project for the Relocation of the Papal Residence to
Jerusalem. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit., p. 49)
Figure 88. Josef Hannich, Project for the Vienna Hofburg, Western Edge of the
Museumsplatz. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit., p. 46)
Figure 89. John Soane, “Bird’s-eye View of Design for a Royal Palace,” London, 1821
and 1831. (from: The Works of Sir John Soane, ERS., ES.A., R.A. [1753-
1837], The Sir John Soane Museum Publication no. 8, p. 123)
Figure 90. Wunibald Deininger, “Perspective for the Project ‘Artists’ Colony.’ Federal
‘Traveling Scholarship.” (from: Wagnerschule 1902 [Vienna: 1903], p. 65)
Figure 91. “Anno 1912. International World Centre, Perspective generale, Vue a Vol
d’Oiseau. Hendrik C. Anderson. Ernest M. Hébrard, Architecte.” (from:
Ernest M. Heébreard, Création d'un Centre mondial de Communication par
Hendrik Christian Andersen [Paris: 1913] Deuxiéme Partie: Créaton d’un Cen-
tre mondial de Communication)
Figure 92. Otto Wagner, “Artibus,” View from Front, 1880. (from: Graf, op. cit., p. 38)
Figure 93. “Concours du Grand Prix de Rome — Japy. éléve de M. Pascal — ler second
grand Prix. Un monument 4 le gloire de 'Indépendance d'un grand pays.”
(from: Institut de France — Académie des Beaux-Arts. Le Grand Prix de Rome
d Architecture 1911, publié par Armand Guérinet, Paris, Pl. 6-7)
Figure 94. Marie-Joseph Peyre, “Plan d’une Eglise Cathédrale pour une Capitale, avec
deux Palais, l'un destiné a l’Archevéque, l’autre aux Chanoines. Perspective. Ce
plan fut proposé 4 Rome en 1753 pour Prix de |’Académie.” (from: Oeuvre
d Architecture de Marie-Joseph Peyre |Paris: 1765], Pl. 14)
Figure 95. Josef Hoffmann, “Forum orbis, insula pacis.” (from: Der Architekt. Wiener
Monatshefte fiir Bauwesen und decorative Kunst, |. Year., plates 93 and 94)
Figure 90. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Facade of the Karlskirche, Vienna. (from:
Entwurff einer Historischen Architectur [Vienna: 1721], IV. Book, plate XII)
Figure 97. Otto Wagner, Project for a Parish Church in Soborsin, today Romania, 1879.
(Otto Wagner-Archiv, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 98. Leopold Bauer, Project for a Parliament in Mexico. (from: Leopold Bauer,
Verschiedene Skizzen, Entwiirfe und Studien (Vienna: 1899], plates XXXI and
XXXII)
Figure 99. Alfred Keller (Entry title “Gral”), “Hall of Austrian Peoples and Fame on the
Burgstall.” (from: Wettbewerbs-Ausschreibungen der K.K. Reichshaupt— und Resi-
denzstadt Wien im Jahre 1915 (Vienna: 1916], no. 28, p. 84)
Figure 100. Otto Wagner, Project for Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Stadtmuseum on the Karlsplatz,
Vienna, 1903-1909. (from: Einige Skizzen, op. cit., “Band IV, Heft 1 und 2,”
p- 13)

73
 Figure 101. Otto Wagner, Project for a Cathedral in Patras, Greece, 1902. (Otto-Wagner-
Archiv, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 102. Otto Wagner, Project for the New Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, 1897/1898,
View of the Entry Building. (from: Graf, op. cit., p. 321)
Figure 103. Otto Wagner, Project for the House of Glory, Washington D.C., or San
Francisco, 1907. (Otto-Wagner-Archiv, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 104. Otto Wagner, Preliminary Project for the Church of St. Leopold, Vienna,
1902-1904. (Otto-Wagner-Archiv, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien)
Figure 105. Otto Wagner, Project for the Office Building for the K. u .K. Imperial Ministry
of War on the Stubenring, Vienna, 1907/1908, Central Tract. (from: Einige
Skizzen, op. cit., “Band IV, Heft I u. II,” p. 2)
Figure 106. Friedrich Pindt, Ideal Complex for an Airport in Aspern, Detail of the Central
Building. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit., p. 29)
Figure 107. Rupert Pokorny, Project for a Thermal Bath and Spa in Véslau, View of the
Open Air Pool. (from: Schoenthal, op. cit., p. 40)
Figure 108. Otto Wagner, Project for the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Stadtmuseum on the Karls-
platz, Vienna, North Facade, 1910. (from: Einige Skizzen, op. cit., “Band IV,
lumi ett. <p.)
Figure 109. Otto Wagner, Study for the new K.K. Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, 1910.
(from: Einige Skizzen, op. cit., “Band IV, I., IL. u. II. Heft,” p. 19)
Figure 110. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Competition Entry for the Palace of the
League of Nations in Geneva, 1927. (from: Institut gta)

174
Anthology of Primary Sources

The following anthology of texts is intended to counterbalance the

essays that precede it. Yet it also represents an attempt to do justice
to the fact that although central texts by Bétticher and Semper are
constantly cited and discussed, they are — or were — seldom studied
in their original wording. All in all, the selection is consciously one-
sided and tendentious. It is intended to document the issue at stake
here, the opposition between “naked” and “clothed,” an opposi-
tion that is mutually exclusive only in the context of this particular
theoretical fiction. Nonetheless, the anthology may also provide
evidence of the usefulness and advantageousness — not to mention
the frequency — of such simple images applied metaphorically to
architecture. In fact, even as early as Alberti, references may be
found to the “naked” volumes of a building as such, although
Alberti then went on to enrobe them according to all the rules of
his art; or that Laugier emphatically recognizes architecture’s nude
permutation (“le nud du mur”); or even that Boullée sought to
achieve his most important goal, the architectural effect, not by
means of the orders and ornament, but with the play of light and
volumes. All of this is truly remarkable in light of the “Modern
approach to architecture.” It suggests continuity, a fact that clearly
contradicts the claim that Modernism broke radically with history.
Brief introductions precede the chronologically earlier texts, al
though in some cases these introductions duplicate the preceding
essays. The later texts have been more comprehensively discussed
in the essays, making additional introductions superfluous.
 wb ate a
Mei Ah mit ay
“ih on 2) tot north ; x

=t cagrorry Pe Toast,
Niet Wste “
:
poiinen ae 68a Sen ise |nines os ReLi’ od lo ‘$on ve. i

panees F aba, aM sale ace faveIO, Kanan BNr a=

LYM canes is ieciwl, 40 chingSte OVA, ee a a

“ Raf 2 itd ie abe > “hy aeawhksar saaon! oh th. 9

me : ighibaresae anit, sale .ot la mewsne at o 7;
—_ ao ipa ac singel vinpitodqmo. ‘torgue Peds
Bie tert, reevesfsi sei ben

ra
ib yitoaits . s 7
4 7 e “
Q
soren
~
?.
a
wiles
apta .* a > &
Oe : 7 j
*
4 on 7 a ~in b
- ! igub 2 a 3 ae = ~
La > £11 - } | ’
* 4
ar
a a ae = ak i. ht
ATT? o
».

= = ~~
en _ ic
The “Omission of All Purposeless Decoration”

L. B. Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria (ca. 1452), ed. Orlandi and Portoghesi

(Milan: 1966); Zehn Biicher tber die Baukunst, ed. Max Theuer (Vienna
and Leipzig: 1912; 1975)

These quotations are from the last chapter of Alberti’s ninth book, in which he
again summarizes his tenets in a set of recommendations and cautionary maxims.
He is also concerned here with a decoration of buildings that best embodies both
“beauty” and “decorum.” Important here is that, even at this early date, the effect
of architecture (by virtue of its “forms” and “figures”!) on the senses is emphasized.
Alberti anticipates the Classical critique of “historical” architecture — that it
sprinkled decoration and ornament arbitrarily over every conceivable kind of
building. He emphasizes heavily the (Vitruvian) differentiation between public
buildings, which should receive decoration, and private buildings. His critique of
“incorrect” ornament in this context includes painted decoration, and it ends with
the statement that architecture should first be considered “naked” before it is
clothed. The phrase “nudum enim absolvisse oportet opus, antequam vestias” thus
bears witness to both the abstract concept of the naked building in Alberti’s work
and the architectural metaphor of raiment. Superficially, it might be considered,
as such, a kind of “theory of raiment” ante litteram. As in Semper’s work, the
sequential relationship between naked and clothed is upheld. Even more interest-
ing for a modern reader versed in this debate is Alberti’s subsequent recommen-
dation that any applied “ornamenta” be so conceived that an average group of
skilled craftsmen (and not an individualistic artist) be able to complete it. The
logical conclusion to be drawn from this statement is that architecture and the
architectural should maintain its predominance over decoration.

p.843 Est enim in formis profecto et figuris aedificiorum alquid excellens per-
fectumque natura, quod animum excitat e vestigioque sentitur, si adsit, si
vero desit, maiorem in modum desideratur. Et sunt praesertim oculi
natura percupidi pulchritudinis atque concinnitatis, et in ea re sese praes-
tant morosos et admodum difficiles.

(p.509 In fact, something particular radiates from the forms and figures of build-
ings. It is something that is evoked by nature and by which we are moved,

77
 when it is present. If it is lacking, however, it 1s greatly desired. It is above
all the eyes that by their nature desire beauty and measure, a quality in
which they prove themselves to be strong-willed and difficult.)

p. 845 Erit etiam vitium, si quae publicis debentur ornamenta, ea privatis ad-
iunxeris, aut contra, quae privatis, tu ea publicis apposueris, praesertim si
erunt illa quidem suo in genere nimia; si erunt non mansura, veluti qui
futilia caduca putidulaque picturae ili “ni”-menta publicis adegerit: aeterna
enim esse publica oportet.
Et vitium profecto grave est, quod ipsum apud nonnullos ineptos
videmus, qui opera vixdum inchoata fuco picturae et sculpturae insignibus
expoliaunt atque explent; ex quo fit, ut caduca istaec prius deleantur,
quam opus eductum sit. Nudum enim absolvisse oportet opus, antequam
vestias; ultimum erit, ut ornes; cui rel et temporum
et rerum ocacasio et
facultas sese tum demum praestabit, cum id commodissime et sine ulla
impeditione poteris.

((o, DUC It is also a mistake to apply ornament fit for a public building to a private
one of, vice versa, to use that for a private building on a public, especially
if the latter are smaller buildings of that sort; if they are ephemeral, then
these small trivial, expendable things may be painted with pictures that
are appropriate to public buildings. For public buildings should be built
for eternity. And in truth, I often perceive a grave error among people
who burden or overlay a building still under construction with a false
exterior made of paintings and sculpture. This is why such trifles often
have aged even before the building is finished. Thus, a building should be
built naked, before it is clothed. Finally, it should be decorated as time,
opportunity and possibility allow, most conveniently and without any
hindrance.)

178
Abbe Laugier, Essai sur |’Architecture (Paris: 1753); Essay on Architecture,
translated and with an introduction by Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann (Los
Angeles: 1977), pp. 61-67.

“(Chapitre Il. Des différens orderes d’Architecture)

Article VII
Des Edifices o¥ |’on n’employe aucun ordre d’Architecture”

The theoretical works of highly intellectual architectural dilettantes (including the

Jesuit Laugier and the Franciscan Lodoli) are often free enough from either
convention or practical requirements to permit their authors to develop their ideas
and prescriptions with great consistency. Because of this consistency, these works
are (even today!) misunderstood in a narrow-minded way as polemical or radical,
precisely at those moments in the text when their authors use logic to deduce
their postulates “rationally.” Laugier’s recommendations, which were intended to
guarantee that architecture would be correct and codified even without the use of
the columnar orders (which were in his time still propagated by Jean-Francois
Blondel as the alpha and omega of good architecture), have often been overlooked
by art historical literature. They are the fruit of a simple conclusion — that the
laws of proportion, inherent in the orders, could be applied directly — an insight
of astonishing simplicity. This insight presages the “aesthetic of volumetrics”
advocated by Boullée, who defined the effect of architecture in terms of its
volumetric characteristics while eschewing the use of the orders. By the 1780s at
the latest, the departure from entire facade systems based upon the orders is
complete. These systems are replaced in public buildings by the combination of
the pure volume and the temple facade, a motif which had been defined much
earlier by the Palladian type.
The precise wording of Laugier’s text is also conclusive. He deduces architec-
ture’s aesthetic value from three factors, in the following order: the precision of
its proportions, the elegance of its form and — only then — the choice and
disposition of its ornament. Proportion is, in this sense, no longer a mere measure
of individual components according to a modular theory. Laugier speaks explicitly
about the “proportion du total.” The absolutism of this formulation is — in an
equally “universalistic” sense — aligned with the “gofit naturel.” His other conclu-
sions accord with these tenets: that exact proportions are allied with the “simplicité
la plus grande” and therefore will always create a satisfactory effect; that, of course,
the “figures géometriques réguliéres” (here, again, is architecture's old predilection
for geometry) are important; and finally, that “le nud du mur” must be visible in

179
 its essence in order to assume the function of ornament. These are all, of course,
the tenets of “Modernism” ante litteram, as they sprung from the sharp mind of a
Jesuit!

p. 121- The five orders are not suitable for every kind of building because they
131 involve expense that not everybody is able to afford and require a facade
of a scale feasible for few buildings. The five orders really only belong to
great churches, royal palaces and public buildings; for all other buildings
one must necessarily fall back on much simpler and less costly decoration.
Attractive and even beautiful buildings can be built without the help of
entablatures and columns. Our architects know that very well, and I
daresay that it is in this sort of building that they ordinarily succeed best.
The composition, being much freer and less dogmatic, is equally within
reach of a genius and of an architect of average ability. A great architect
should not regard this work as beneath him; the freer the composition the
easier it is to bring something that is novel and ingenious, to make it as
graceful as one pleases, to embody in the composition all kinds of elegant,
noble and sublime thoughts and, what is even more valuable, to vary the
design ad infinitum. Thus, a skillful person, applying himself to this task,
will always achieve something to be proud of.
The beauty of the buildings I am talking about depends mainly on
three things: accuracy of proportions, elegance of forms and choice and
distribution of ornaments.
However free the composition of the facade may be, its proportions
are never arbitrary. Of all variations possible for an elevation there is only
one that is right for a given length. The spectator, looking at an elevation,
will always find it too high or too low until he encounters the one and
only ratio that he unconsciously looks for. The artist’s skill consists in
studying this ratio and grasping it accurately. The proportions of each part
must correspond to the whole with the same precision. The dimensions
of the stories, doors, windows, and of all attending ornaments are to be
regulated so by the length and height of the whole building and must be
so well balanced that the resulting whole pleases. About all this we really
have no rule which is well established. The single point which one must
attain and beyond which one should not go is not sufficiently known to
us. Only natural taste together with great experience can safely guide
architecture on this obscure path. They come more or less close to this
limit according to how subtle their sensibility is or to what extent long
practice has made their visual judgment infallible. It would be desirable if
critical research were undertaken in this field that in time could arrest
uncertainty and determine for every kind of building the precise limit and

180
the exact point of the dividing line between the too high and the too low,
between the too great and the too small. This side of the art has been too
much neglected. How many buildings are either too thin or too squat,
how many elevations of stories, doors, windows, plinths or cornices on
the same building err by either too much or too little! This is one of the
most essential parts of art. Any building that has accurate proportions,
though it has only this quality and is otherwise of the greatest simplicity,
will always be satisfying in its effect. If, on the other hand, proportions
are wanting, that is a fault that rich ornaments will never correct, and one
will be grieved to hear it said by anybody: This is too high, or that is too
low.
I mentioned in the second place elegance of forms. This subject is not
to be neglected if one wants to make buildings that please. Forms are
determined by plans. The only way to make forms look pleasing is to
avoid ordinary and hackneyed plans, seeing to it that they always contain
something new, ornamental [/istorié] and even uncommon. It will be of
help here to take advantage of regular geometrical figures, from the circle
to the most elongated ellipse, from the triangle to the many-sided poly-
gon. Shapes can be made up from straight and curved lines; this device
makes it easy to vary the plans almost ad infinitum and yet give each plan
a form that is in no way ordinary and yet is always regular. The rectangle
is the most common form of our building. However, this far too universal
form has become hackneyed and is not interesting anymore. It is our
nature to love novelty and variety; the fine arts must all be adapted to this
inborn taste. We value their excellence only in as much as we find in
them something that stimulates and satisfies taste. If the examination of
most of our buildings makes so slight an impression on us, it can be
attributed to the extreme monotony of their plans. He who has seen one
has almost seen them all: always a rectangle varying only in size. The
Collége des Quatre-Nations is virtually the only one of our buildings that
is new and uncommon in its shape and, therefore, never fails to attract
special attention. On close inspection one will realize that the best quality
of this charming building comes from the elegant form and the graceful
blending of curved and straight lines in its plan. The form of a building
can derive elegance of another kind from the different heights given to its
various parts and from the manner by which the sculptural decor [amor-
tissements] is varied. The Palais de Luxembourg and the Tuileries have this
latter kind of elegance through their form and not at all the former one.
The great garden facade of the chateau de Versailles has neither one nor
the other. Toward the courtyards the plan of the Chateau is slightly more
ornamental but is without taste and without elegance. There is a succes-

181
 sion of rectangular courts getting narrower from one to the next until the
last is so narrow that it is quite shocking. The plan of the stables is really
elegant since it has the right mixture of straight and curved lines. If these
two stables were joined to the first court by porticoes in the form of a
longitudinal section of an ellipse this part would outshine everything else.
I mentioned choice and distribution of ornaments. For a simple
decoration it is sufficient to mark the corners of a building from top to
bottom by quoins and the stories by a plain band projecting slightly, to
give doors and windows plain casings, and to have the whole building
crowned by an uncomplicated and gracefully designed cornice. Since in
decorations of this kind the plain wall must necessarily appear, there are
no great objections to making the heads of doors or windows in the shape
of a segmental or even semicircular arch. Should richer decorations be
wanted, one can mark all the spaces between the windows [trumeaux]
with panels of various shapes filled in with decorative bas-reliefs. Carved
fleurons can be placed over doors and windows; this is better than mark-
ing the keystone with animal masks, consoles or, what is even worse, with
cartouches, a type of ornament that can only be in bad taste because there
is nothing like it in nature; it would be better never to use it.
All I do here is to offer my views to the architects. It is up to them to
follow up, extend and improve what I have indicated. They know now
that one can design all kinds of buildings in varying degrees of beauty
without employing any of the five orders. From that they should conclude
that even on grand buildings a good way to vary the impression of
magnificence is to join to the splendor of the orders the elegance of
buildings without orders. These then are many resources that I place in
their hands. If they understand how to profit hereby, it will be easy for
them to embellish and vary everything.

182
Andrea Memmo, Elementi d’Architettura Lodoliana ossia I‘arte del fabricare
con solidita scientifica e con eleganza non capricciosa, Tomo 2 (Zara:
1834) (translation of this passage by Richard Etlin)

Lodoli’s reputation, “Forse il Socrate Architetto,” as the caption beneath his

portrait in the first edition of the Elementi d’Architettura a Lodoliani (1786) reads,
was closely related to the fact that his ideas and theories, too, were not directly
disseminated. Such personalities as Memmo and Algarotti contested the correct
version of his teachings, as is apparent in the following passage. The text deals
with a central precept of Lodolian “Functionalism,” not coincidentally rediscov-
ered by the Italian Rationalists. Memmo quotes Algarotti’s transcription of Lodoli
and attests once and for all that “queste sono originalissime parole lodoliane.”
This not only means, however, that Algarotti has quoted the master correctly here
but also that the quintessence of Lodolian conceptions were reflected in these
words: “Nessuna cosa si dee mettere in rappresentazione che non sia anche
veramente in funzione.”
Lodoli’s intention is to reestablish architecture as a science by erasing Vitru-
vian inconsistencies while nonetheless upholding Vitruvius’s definition of architec-
ture. The bond between representation and function (in which these two concepts
are defined in a very broad sense) is less important than the desire to achieve
immanent coherence in and of itself — in other words, the science of architecture.
In this sense, Lodoli’s claims may be legitimately compared to other “theoretically
inclined” attempts to establish a canon of architecture, for example, Bétticher’s
Tektontk.

p.16/_ But let’s follow Algarotti. In this passage I ask my patient readers to
7, consider how carefully Father Lodoli applied himself to conveying his
ideas succinctly and simply: “Nothing should be given a form (these are
Lodoli’s very own words) that is not truly in correspondence (“in funzione”)
with its own expression. Everything that departs from a principle, either
more or less, should be termed a misuse. This is the true foundation, the
cornerstone on which he felt it necessary to establish the art of architec-
ture. Resolute in his principles, the philosopher proceeded through reason-
ing beyond this point to derive very strong conclusions.”

p.60 That the foundation of the material used to construct buildings is that
which derives from its qualities in cases in which it is used demonstra-
tively, according to its own character and purpose, and always is consistent
with solidity, analogy and commodity.

183
 Form is the specific and total expression that issues from the material
in cases in which it is arranged according to geometric-arithmetic-optical
principles for specific ends.
Architectonic solidity is that specific and total stability that issues
from static-physical-chemical principles, applicable to the forms and mea-
surements of the architectural parts and whole.
Analogy is that one fitting correspondence between the parts and the
whole which must derive in building from stereometric-arithemtic theory
in conjunction with reasonable norms. It is applicable to the measure of
the component groups, the members, the apertures and the vessels of
architecture.

184
E.-L. Boullée, “Considérations sur l'importance et |’utilité de l’architecture,
suivries de vues tendant aux progrés des beaux-arts,” in: ed. Jean-Marie
Pérouse de Montclos, E.-l. Boullée, Essai sur I’Art (Paris: 1968) (translation
of this passage by Richard Etlin)

Boullée’s writings link that which had been expressed in terms of corporeality and
sensual expressiveness since Alberti’s time to the doctrine of the “sublime.” In so
doing, Boullée asserts these values emphatically. The art of affecting the soul —
“émouvoir” — is now the architect’s stated goal. He achieves this goal by mastering
the effects of light and mass. The issue is “l’effect des corps,” the direct effect of
the “mass,” and no longer its mere proportional and formal qualities. The convic-
tion that pure geometric forms better serve this goal will be asserted long
thereafter, from Charles Blanc to Le Corbusier. The famous Corbusian maxim,
“Parchitecture est le jeu savant, correct et magnifique des volume assenmblés sous
la lumiére” reads like a synthesis of Boullée’s two tenets: “L’arts de nous émouvoir
par les effets de la lumiére appartient 4 l’architecture,” and “l’art de produire des
images en architecture provient de l’effet des corps.” It need only be added that
this canon of volumetrics was, of course, dependent upon purging the irritating
issue of the columnar orders — in the spirit of Laugier!

Architecture is the art through which the most important needs of society
are fulfilled. All the buildings on this earth required by human culture
result from this beneficial art. It masters our senses through all the im-
pressions that it communicates to them...
Architecture, being the only art through which one can put nature to
work, offers this unique advantage, which constitutes its sublimity. The
means belonging to architecture for putting nature to work derive from
the ability to bring into being effects that poetry can only describe. For
example, the painting of the Elysian Fields could be realized if there were
an architect who had the genius of the poet. The art of moving us through
the effects of light belongs to architecture, because in all buildings capable
of making the soul feel the horror of darkness or, by means of its scintil-
lating effects, feel a delectable sensation, the artist, who should know the
way to master these effects, can dare to tell himself: I create light.
The architect, as is seen here, should make himself the one who puts
nature to work; it is with these precious gifts that he should produce the
effect of his tableaux and become master of our senses. The art of produc-
ing images in architecture proceeds from the effect of volumes and this is

185
 what constitutes its poetry. It is through the effects on our senses caused
by their mass that we distinguish light volumes from heavy ones, and it is
through an approximate application, which can only issue from the study
of volumes, that the artist succeeds in giving his works the character that
suits them.

186
“Bericht tber die am 27., 28., und 29. Januar d.J. in Zurich Statt
gefundene Versammlung schweizerischer Ingenieure und Architekten,” in:
C. F. von Ehrenberg, Zeitschrift iber das gesammte Bauwesen, bearbeitet
von einem Vereine Schweizerischer und Deutscher Ingenieure und
Architekten, vol. 4 (Zurich: 1839)

The reference to the opinions voiced by Wegmann in a lecture appears here as an

example of those eighteenth-century attempts — more or less ignored by scholar-
ship until now — to base the reform and the future of architecture upon something
other than a definition of a new architectural style. Instead, it was supposed to be
based upon the denunciation of everything that was represented by the tradition
of the columnar orders. Wegmann relies upon a “simple canon of construction,”
which, incidentally, has implications for both envisioning the future and describ-
ing the past.

p. 123 Architect Wegmann of Zurich held a lecture entitled “On the Principles
of the New German School of Architecture.” Mr. Wegmann described the
nature of architectural instruction in earlier times, when it had been
limited to imitating monuments from antiquity rather than engaging
invention. The deficiencies of this approach were enumerated. Only at
the end of the last and the beginning of this century had architecture
developed a new artistic direction through the true study of antiquity. The
primary proponent of this approach was said to be Hiibsch of Karlsruhe.
Mr. Wegmann noted disapprovingly the continuing use of columns and
pilasters wherein these are applied as mere decoration. They usually bear
nothing and are nothing more than ornament with no purpose. He
especially deplored the superposition of various pilaster orders on facades
in which such pilaster systems bespeak not a wealth, but rather a dearth
of ideas. At this point Mr. Wegmann moved on to the shifting ground of
a new German architectural style that would be based solely on the simple
precepts of construction, to the exclusion of all purposeless decoration.'

1 We regret that we are unable to offer Mr. Wegmann’s lecture verbatim, as we did
not receive the manuscript. We nevertheless believe that we have summarized the
basic ideas correctly and beg Mr. Wegmann to share with us his corrections should
this not be true. In any case, we promise Mr. Wegmann a closer study in our
journal of the basic ideas described, some of which we believe we have encountered
in Wagner's “aesthetics.” We do not wish to take upon ourselves the task of
discovering a new architectural style but will rather leave this dangerous ground,
on which many necks and legs have already been broken, to more ingenious
minds. Editors’ Note

187
 “Tectonics” — “Theory of Raiment”

Karl Bétticher, Die Tektonik der Hellenen (Potsdam: 1844)

p. xiv— It may be proven that the principle of Hellenistic tectonics is identical to

xvi the principle of nature as creator: that is, to express the concept of every
entity in its form. Only on the grounds of this principle can a law of form
be derived that stands high above the individual willfulness of the working
subject. It is only within the boundaries of this law that the only true —
the highest — freedom is attainable, and the discovery of an ever-abundant
source possible. We perceive this principle in the great monument dedi-
cated to the cult of the gods. It permeates the smallest object of use, even
the most trivial pottery for domestic use. Therefore, even the genre of
domestic objects must be included, for it contains the unquenchable
richness of the most loving thoughts that arise from a noble decorum and
a refinement in life’s necessity, from sanctified custom and actual use.
These, too, must necessarily be considered in order to complete the circle
of related thoughts. — The Hellenistic building, in both plan and struc-
ture, proves itself to be an ideal organism, one that is skillfully articulated
in order to produce a spatial entity. This space-producing organism is
thoroughly considered, from the whole to the smallest of its parts —
membra. It belongs to the imagination of the human soul and has no
precedent in its natural surroundings from which it could have been
created. Each one of its members derives only from the whole and is
therefore an indispensible and necessary patt. It is an integral element that
receives from the whole its particular function and position. In accordance
with such a conception, the tectonic’s active hand forms each member as
part of a corporeal schema. Thus, while creating a spatial entity, the
member accommodates not only its own function but also its static
interplay with all other members most completely. Inasmuch as the relevant
building material is lent a form, that is, the form of an architectural
member; and inasmuch as a// these members are related within a self-
sufficient construct, then the vital force that inhabits a building material
but lies latent as long as the material is formless, will be actualized in a
dynamic expression and forced to assume a static function. By this means,
the self-same material is lent a higher existence, an ideal existence, because

188
it now functions as a member in an ideal organism. It can be presumed
that the actualization of the concept of each member has been achieved
by means of two elements: the Kernform [kernel form] and the Kunstform
[artistic form]. The Kernform of every member is that which is mechani-
cally necessary, the statically functional schema; the Kunstform, on the
other hand, is only the functionally descriptive characteristic. This charac-
teristic embodies not merely the essence unique to that member but also
its relationship to the members tangent to it, and as such, it embodies the
juncture between it and those with which its achieves an effect. And so,
just as all members are unified mechanically in a static whole, so, too, do
the conjoining symbols unify pictorially all the members in a single, insep-
arable organism. This descriptive characteristic is thus equivalent only to
the hull of the member, a symbolic attribution of the same — decoratio,
Koos. It arises in the same moment in which the member’s mechanistic
schema is conceived. The thought from which both derive is one and the
same. They are born together. It is only in their manifestation that the
concept governing each member becomes apparent. Its inanimate matter
assumes the character of an organic vital entity, of a statically functioning
entity in a state of perpetual repose and consistency. In fact, every material
first acquires meaning at the moment of its genesis because it is stamped
by the spirit, animated by thought both of which occur when it assumes a
visible form. In truth, it must be admitted that the representation of these
internally effectual and invisible activities is a polyhymned mimcry; mute
and rigid, thought and concept are only bespoken by the sign that is
suffused with character.
Finally, it is possible to describe — pictorially and in the corporeal
scale of these symbols — the size of the concept to be communicated. It is
thus possible for the function of each individual member, the static
reciprocity and organic relationship of all elements, to be embodied mu-
tually in a manner presentable to the eye. Here, the architectural concept
has become proportionally measurable.
Let us assume that the organization and the corporeal schema of all
individual members — in other words, the mechanical schematics — existed
only in thought — a kind of thought for which no precedent is given in
the surrounding nature. In that case, the same would be true, vice versa
as it were, with the vital characteristic, with the Kunstform. The elements
or singular symbols of which it is comprised cannot exist only on the level
of thought, but must be based upon that which is perceptible. This char-
acteristic is created in addition to the mechanically necessary schema of
each member’s kernel. It is a pictorially adept transposition of objects
derived from the organic world. Inherent to these objects is an essence

189
 that is completely analogous to the concept of the corresponding architec-
tural member. The thing as it originally existed lends to the newly created
thing a cosmic characteristic. This is the derivation of the way in which the
sharpest objective consciousness expresses itself, so that the resulting sym-
bols are neither coincidental nor arbitrary. And although these analogies
from which the symbols derive are objects that possess neither a unilateral
nor a conventional validity, they are generally true, in other words, they are
universally valid within the terms of the concepts that define them. They
have thus achieved such a pure existence that they themselves are synon-
ymous with the ideal. As a consequence, this state of being ideal is also
endowed upon the built member. Therefore, neither the principles that
underlie them nor they themselves belong only to the Hellenic people.
Instead, both hold true for all peoples, even those to come.

Introduction
On the Philosophy of Tectonic Form
1. General points on the principle of Hellenic tectonics: the enunciation
of each tectonic body’s concept in its form
§1
We conceive of tectonics in the more narrow sense: the activity of building
or of making objects of use, as soon as this activity is ethically suffused,
and can rise to the charges placed upon it by intellectual or physical life.
At that point, this activity not only seeks to satisfy mere needs by forming
a volume in accordance with material necessity but instead may elevate
that volume to a Kunstform.
Thus, we conceive of the tectonic activity in two groups: the group of
the pure built work, or the architectonic; and that of the smaller forms, of
the tectonic of useful objects. Both are based upon the same principles of
formal constitution. The architectonic, because of the scope of its duties
and the compass of its means, requires that these principles be described
more broadly and drastically, so that we will deal with it first. Neverthe-
less, we want to draw upon examples from the group of useful objects —
in addition to pure architectural activity — later on, when the principles at
stake may be proven through recourse to appropriate examples. This will
offer evidence of the identity of these principles in both groups.

p. 4/5 §2
1. Hellenic architectonics constitutes the total form of a building in
accordance with the nature of the corresponding material. It does so by

190
 means of volumes that are singular, self-sufficient and vital to the existence
and usefulness of the entire building. These are then arranged and positioned
as appropriate to the spatial construct.
2. Subsequent to and based upon the initial conception of the whole,
each one of these volumes is allotted a specific structural function or
architectural role to be fulfilled. Its fulfillment of this function begins with
a schema determined by technical necessity. This schema in turn determines
its position or orientation. The volume then develops it [its fulfillment of
the function just described] further in a particular direction and ends in a
predetermined spatial boundary. A volume such as this is a structural
component or structural member of the entire building.
3. Following their structural unification in a total form, these struc-
tural components appear in an expressive form that represents most appar-
ently and suggestively the internal concept, the essence of the mechanical
function of each component for itself, as well as the reciprocal conceptual —
bond — juncture — among all within the whole. This is the decorative or
artistic form (Kunstform) of each component.
4. Once the general cubic dimensions and the structurally determined
schema have been established such that the static and structural require-
ments placed on a component are fulfilled, then, and only then, may its
concept be articulated in full by the decorative formal characteristics, or the
artistic form (Kunstform). It might be said that the concept appears to be
externally measurable because both the cubic schema required by statics
and its artistic form are entirely analogous to the tectonic concept of the
structural component. Therefore, the relationship between the mechanical
role played by a structural component alone and the measure of its
connection to all other components of the overall form appear to the eye
as commensurate and harmonious by virtue of the analogous proportions
of its cubic schema and the formal expression of its decoration.

p.6 In form, the concept of a volume as well as all its individual

components are embodied measurably. Of course, measurability is
not possible by virtue of a particular measure, unit or line, but
rather by virtue of a comparison between the parts and the whole,
thus, in relative terms. In a columnar building, the most natural
relative unit of measure is the diameter or radius of the columns.

§3
1. The principle according to which Hellenic tectonics constitutes its
volumes is entirely identical to the constitutional principle of living na-

171
 ture: the concept, essence and function of every volume is satisfied by a
rationally deduced form, which is developed so that its exterior characteristics
openly bespeak its function.
2. The form of a volume in Hellenic tectonics exists as does form in
natural creation: [it is the] embodiment or sculptural representation of its
innermost concept in space. Only form bestows upon the material of build-
ing the ability to fulfill a function, and vice versa, that function may
always be deduced from the form.

2. Volumetric form, considered entirely abstractly, can be neither

beautiful nor ugly. The criteria of volumetric form are given by
the analogy with the volume’s concept, essence and function.
There is always the form that bespeaks most consistently and
completely the innermost concept of that same form and repre-
sents its essence in an exterior form most ethically (with intellec-
tual decorum), truly and appropriately. It is the most beautiful. If
one thus speaks about the constitution of a form, then it can only
be a matter of developing its schema in the manner most techni-
cally and sculpturally holistic for its inherent concept. The law for
the constitution of all form may be derived only from this con-
cept, a law that stands out because it is a generally valid and
inviolable truth, which excludes every individual and subjective
whim in the constitution of form. From it alone can evidence be
derived to refute any development that is contrary to the concept.
This is the truth that can be found in all volumetric formations
of natural constructs. It is the law that determines the constitution
of an entire body as well as its individual parts, from the soul-
bearing body of the human being to inorganic, inanimate mineral
formation. The amorphous-seeming form of certain animals and
plants may inspire recoil and distaste if viewed superficially; but
their wondrous beauty becomes apparent as soon as the informed
physiologist opens our eyes to the concept and essence of the
whole, the function of each of its parts and the wonderful wisdom
of its organization, in which the beauty, truth and holism of the
form with regard to its essence are apparent. In the products of
Hellenic antiquity itself, which, in its own time, represented the
pure outpouring of the spirit of nature through the human instru-
ment of that race, there are certain formal configurations that
seem initially strange, unnatural and monstrous to us, because we
are so removed from that immediate and inherent connection to
nature. We must again accustom ourselves to it. We will then

192
 assimilate and reproduce these same configurations as soon as we
have regained nature’s inherent powers of understanding by way
of such true representations of her concept. These are in fact the
formal configurations to which we must return again and again,
if we are to embody and represent such concepts. I need only
mention the winged figures, fauns, centaurs, fish-tailed oceanites,
the griffins, the bases composed of animal heads, plant stems and
animal feet, etc., to clarify what I mean. By the same token, no
mere enervated contours, no bead, concavity, or convexity can
acquire a concept or determine even a single criterion if there is
no acknowledgment of the fact that they are only the contour of
a trajectory taken by those individual schema or formal elements
that in their entirety constitute a symbol. That symbol, in turn, is
intended to embody a structural concept in a particular locus.
The paunchy contour of the echinus on a Doric columns, even if
its protrusion is exaggerated, may still appear true and beautiful
as long as it assumes not the declining, accelerating contour motion
of a kymation but rather the rising, gathering one of a patera. The
enervated contour is neither beautiful nor ugly. Only in relation
to the concept that that contour of motion lends to a specific
developmental volumetric organization, or to the symbol of such
an organization, does it acquire law and validity, criterion and
justification.

§4
1. Let us assume that in every body that exists in organic nature, the
form that is inherent in the innermost seed develops slowly by means of
true, vital activity — a true functioning — to achieve its necessary propor-
tions. The smallest extremities of soft, malleable stuff slowly developed to
their utmost; thus, the external form is constituted in the most vitally
active expression through vital function and inherent essence. The reverse is
also true, that function, inherent essence — in short, the concept — is repre-
sented in the form. \n this way, tectonics can create such an expression,
which describes both essence and mechanical activity in the external appear-
ance of its representative bodies, comprised as they are of the inorganic
material formed by tectonics. It cannot do so in any other manner than
explicitly and by means of external formation. Already, one believes that
the prescribed spatial boundaries — the statically required volumetric pro-
portions, the volume’s kernel or the kernel form the state described — the
schema — is complete. It is a schema that, in its nakedness, already entirely
fulfills the tectonic function. But then, extremities are added to this kernel;

9s
 or the kernel proves to be clothed in a hull that assumes such a form that
it can convey completely its zznermost concept.
This is the decorative characteristic, the ornamental hull, of the struc-
tural component’s kernel schema. It is formed in all its continuity from
the individual conceptual analogies that comprise the formal schema.
2. This decorative raiment or characteristic attribute of the kernel
form therefore functions neither materially nor structurally but instead has
only an ethical purpose. This purpose is to represent outwardly and to
embody vibrantly the architectural function that the physical kernel itself
serves. The raiment is therefore symbolic: the kernel’s concept is described
through attribution or character that, in a symbolic sense, bespeaks exter-
nally that [concept] and makes visible that purpose that the kernel actually
does serve.
3. Aside from the particular function of the structural component,
the decorative characteristic should also represent that component's inte-
gration — juncture — into the concept of every tangential structural component,
the reciprocal organic relationship of both to each other and thus, to a large
degree, the work’s totality, as if it had developed from a single formal
organism.
4. In accordance with this approach, the tectonics of antiquity is
quite correct. It regarded the kernel’s decorative clothing as structurally
unnecessary, to be seen entirely as separate from the structurally necessary
kernel volume. TVhe clothing was therefore represented as though it were
applied or added from without. The real is thus distinguished from the
apparent, and decoration is shown to be only that which, in fact, it should
be: the hull that symbolizes the concept of the kernel as it functions in
reality. Thus, it does not only reveal the original concept of both compo-
nents. There is also an advantage in material terms to the consolidation
of the decorative raiment: the ofien quite tender extremities in which the
decoration ends are entirely safe from the destructive force that the various
structural components in their mechanical combination as material or stat-
ically functioning masses would exert upon one another.

2. The kernel of each structural component, denuded ofall decorative

attributes, is in its naked corporeality already capable offulfilling all
functions of a building. It is by no means proven that any of the
decorative symbols in Hellenic architecture really functions in a static
sense, or is intended for such a purpose. Neither the base nor the
capitol of a column, neither the decoration at the end of the beam
nor the mutulus, neither the dentils nor any symbol of the joinery
is structurally necessary, nor is it structurally justified. Nowhere is

194
 it assumed that either coherence or static integrity will be in-
creased by the decorative clothing. This fundamental truth makes
it possible to clothe the kernel form in stucco, plaster, mosaic,
bronze, etc. It would be inconceivable that two different and
independent styles could have evolved in Hellenic culture, if the
decorative extremities, capitals, bases, bearing and conjunctive
members, etc. had been structurally necessary. Had that been true
of the base, for example, there could have been no Doric column;
and if the Doric abacus actually carried the epistyle, then the Ionic
volute-abacus, which does not even touch the epistyle, or the thin
and fragile abacus of the Corinthian capital could not serve their
purposes.

Nevertheless, a formal expression that, in its appointed place,

has a purely decorative purpose, may be transmuted into an ele-
ment that actually assumes a static function. This is accomplished
by making it out of such a considerable mass of material, and in
such an analogous formal schema, that it acquires enough coher-
ence and static capacity to function. One example of this trans-
mutation is the use of Corinthian mutuli as a support for statu-
ettes and busts in front of walls or columns. This example also
shows us quite convincingly what is achieved by an independently
protruding mutulus used as the cladding of the geison: it lends
the geison a symbolic expression that is related to its function.
It is superfluous to note that if, as is the case here, the
discussion revolves around the form of the kernel and its decora-
tive raiment, then only one thing can be intended. The raiment
should not be added on as a technical enhancement, as with
stucco, metal, etc. Instead, if kernel and hull are worked out of a
single volume, as with sandstone, marble, etc., then the entire
volume of the structural component is formed in such a way that
the decorative extremities can be extrapolated from the volume
and, nevertheless, the kernel’s schema, acknowledged as structur-
ally necessary, can be maintained above all.

5. Every structural component, itself capable of constituting space, derives

from the overall organization. In this manner, and with a healthy sense of
the practical, Hellenic tectonics observed the kernel of every structural
component without decorative hull. From the onset, the kernel was consid-
ered within the context of a volumetric schema that described its space-
defining concept as a whole, its mechanical-structural combination with

hOS
 all tangent components and its function in a manner as statically solid
and technically plausible as possible. The purpose of the decorative hull that
covers the surface of this sleek, smooth kernel is to evidence this concept
as suggestively as possible in all its relationships, even in its smallest
singularity. Regardless of how many single relationships to the whole there
may be in the concept of the structural component, or how many singu-
larities exist in and of themselves, the same number of analogous symbols will
develop at the appropriate places in the kernel’s decorative hull. In this
manner, the proportion of each symbol to the entire structural component
will be logically consistent. This derivation is analogous to that of the
proportion between every singularity represented by that symbol and the
concept of the whole. Thus, when the physical presence of every singular
symbol is compared to that of the whole structural component, the
measurable relative proportion appears stable.
Here, we would like to describe in a few sentences these general
thoughts on the decorative symbolism of each structural component more
closely. Reference to examples from architecture should insure a more
ready understanding.
6. For every structural component, there is a certain position and a
certain spatial measure within which that component begins, develops and
ends its function. Furthermore, there is a particular direction in which it
moves. In this way, the decorative raiment develops the concept of the
structural component within this delimited space. The raiment will reveal
the inception of the structural component, develop its essence in a partic-
ular direction and conclude at the end of its space measured.
This law, quite simply inherent in the nature of the thing, will sub-
ordinate any subjective whim with regard to the arbitrary application of
symbols to the central schema of the component. Nowhere can whim
strike along the path that the component must take from beginning to
end. The result is the form’s placidity and the clear understanding of its
concept.
7. If the kernel form of a structural component has in the entire length
of its measure, or at all points along its compass, one and the same function,
essence and concept, these are symbolized constantly and without interruption
by the decorative raiment. If, on the other hand, it does not have a
constant function, or if various essences appear in it, so should the deco-
rative raiment disclose and develop these nuances with equal rigor.
8. The closure, or the end, of the decorative raiment is twofold,
according to the concept of the component. It is either entirely free and
independent, or it is conditional upon the static force exerted by the next
structural component.

196
 9. If no further structural component is adjacent, then the decorative
expression will characterize the form as freely ended.
10. If, however, another component is adjacent, then the end will be
characterized by symbols that represent the concept of the ending as well
as the concept of the static force that the adjacent component — in accordance
with its essence — exerts upon it. Only those symbols can represent this force
that embody not only the concept of the piece that is ending but also the
vital static influence that arises from the meeting — the conflict — of the
two components as consideration would have it. They must represent
quite evidently the magnitude of the static life and reciprocity of the two
components at this point. Thus, it is possible — in keeping with the
measure appropriate to the static force of the two colliding components —
to articulate both sculpturally and pictorially, in the schema of the con-
flict’s symbol, the measure of this static relationship between the two.
11. The so-called unfree ending may well suggest the adjacency of
another structural component. The concept of this adjacency is only
completely represented in that the ending is followed by a symbol that indexes
decisively the development and the essence of the following component, or at
least indicates the same. This affects the thought of an organic adjacency —
juncture — of both structural components.
12. The essence of the adjacent structural component thus determines
the symbol of the juncture.
13. If this essence is general, or if the essence of all following com-
ponents in general should be indexed, then the symbol of the juncture
will be, analogically, a general one, or one that relates to the essence of all
following components as a whole. If, on the other hand, only the essence
of the component that follows immediately is to be suggested, then the
symbol of the juncture will point only to this particular, singular compo-
nent.
14. The same law of expression that is valid for the end of a structural
component also holds for its beginning. It is dependent upon whether the
component is to be understood as independent and standing for itself, or
as a component that relates, and is integral to, the total organizaton.
If the essence of a structural component is such that it is to be
understood as independent, standing for itself, without reference to the
whole organization, then it must have its own independent indexes or
junctures at its inception that are valid only for its essence. If, however, it
is to appear integrated into the whole and related to the whole organiza-
tion, then it acquires junctures whose reference is general, or such as will
point generally to the essence of all that follow.

197,
 Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kiinsten oder
Praktische Asthetik. Ein Handbuch flr Techniker, Kiinstler und Kunstfreunde,
Erster Band, Textile Kunst (Frankfurt a. M.: 1860)

“Prolegomena”

Next to the brilliant wonders of the stars, patches of fog that shimmer
more dully dot the night sky — they are either old, defunct systems in the
process of dissipating into outer space, or the mist of a world generated
about a kernel or a condition somewhere between destruction and new
creation.
These are appropriate analogies for the similar phenomena that appear
in the cycle of art history, at the transitional moment when one particular
world of art slips into a state of formlessness and, by the same token, in a
phase that signals the genesis of a new art world.
These symptoms of the decay of the arts and the mysterious, phoenix-
like rebirth of a new artistic life from its predecessor’s destruction are even
more meaningful to us because we are ourselves in the midst of a crisis.
Everything that allows us to judge and to evaluate the situation intimates
this crisis. Nonetheless, we must act without the benefit of a perspective
on or an overview of these occurrences: we live in their midst.

198
Gottfried Semper, Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Kinsten oder
Praktische Aesthetik. Ein Handbuch fir Techniker, Kunstler und
Kunstfreunde, Erster Band, Textile Kunst (Frankfurt a. M.: 1860)

“Fourth Part. Textile Art. The Principle of Raiment in the Building Arts.”

p. 217- B. The Principle of Raiment Has Greatly Influenced the Architectural

23] Style and the Style of the Other Arts in All Eras and Among All Peoples

§ 59
GENERAL COMMENTS
In Part 3, much was said about the fact that most decorative symbols
used in the building arts originated in, and are derived from, the textile
arts; that sets the stage for the following passage on the deep-reaching and
general influence of the textile arts and of the covering and binding
elements that originally belonging to the textile arts; on style and on the
formal essence of the arts and architecture in particular. One could marvel
at the fact that no serious attempt has been made in the literature of art
to deal with this issue or with all of its extremely significant consequences.
It in fact contains the key to many riddles in the theory of art. In addition,
it may clarify the essence of most formal-stylistic dichotomies and con-
trasts that we find in art history. On the other hand, this kind of study
could not have been completed prior to the latest discoveries and research
upon which a general solution to this question depends. Quatremére de
Quincy was the first to initiate this work. Since then, the controversy
between scholars and artists has raged for years almost without interrup-
tion. Its result is the most recent polychrome approach to ancient archi-
tecture and sculpture, which no longer depicts that art naked, in the color
of the material used to make it, but instead clad in a colored shell. In the
desolate fields where once the ancient empires of the Assyrians, Medians
and Babylonians flourished, important excavations lead to these discover-
ies, which are the more precise representations and descriptions of earlier
known art works. The same is true of the important discoveries of new
artistic monuments in the realms of Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyrenaica
and Africa. And finally, equally important studies have been completed
over the last twenty years on Medieval art, both Christian and Muslim.
The most significant result of the latest conquests in the area of art
history is the overthrow of an obsolete scholarly theory that was an enor-
mous hindrance to a proper understanding of the Classical world’s forms.
It saw Hellenic art as the indigenous flora of Greek earth. Actually, it is
only the exquisite flower, the ultimate culmination, the final result of an

199
 ancient formative principle whose roots are widespread and deep-seated in
the soil of all countries in which social organisms thrived in ancient times
The proper understanding of Classical art was greatly hindered by the
removal and atomization of Classical antiquity from the glorious large-
scale image that the Classical world offered as a whole and in which the
former distinguished itself only as a central figure, dependent upon its
context for support and for the explication of its true meaning. By the
same token, the contextual and preparatory portions of the fractured
image, its ornamental accessories, completely lost their coherence. It is
thus understandable that so many admirers of Classicism, to whom a
sense of the greatness and manifold nature of beauty is not innate but
who have instead learned their enthusiasm for beauty by rote, have such
disdain for so-called barbaric art. They thereby overlook the admiration
accorded to it by the Hellenes themselves, such as Herodotus, Xenophon,
Ctesias, Polybius, Diodor and Strabo to the greatness and harmony of
these barbaric works. The unanimity of the Hellenic writers of the best
eras on the monuments of Asia and Egypt should have been enough to
corroborate their worth. Even in the absence of one’s own judgment, this
Hellenic court of arbitration must logically serve as a standard by which
to evaluate these works. But people can be more Hellenic than the
Hellenes themselves. They overbarbarize barbarism and thereby are think-
ing of a kind of modified cannibalism. They ignore the fact that the word
barbarism merely denotes an opposition that did not originally exist
between a Greek and a non-Greek essence, but rather was first introduced
once that long-presaged blossom of the general ancient culture of all
peoples had unfolded on Hellas’s soil. Homeric language does not contain
this word because the concept to which it corresponds, and which much
later described the difference between Hellenic and barbaric forms of
existence as an opposition, did not yet exist. Hellenic art is also barbaric
in its elements, and our research must pave the way for the study of these
barbaric elements from which Hellenic art evolved. We must again invoke
Helena, the embodiment, the vital one, from the circle of the “mothers.”
The other contrast, no less significant for us, is that between the
Middle Ages and antiquity. The Middle Ages, now finally better under-
stood in all the romanticism of its architecture and art, leads us back by
way of the Roman era to the most ancient formal principles, although at
the same time the two are engaged in a decisive conflict. In both regards,
the Middle Ages is indispensible to a proper understanding and apprecia-
tion of antiquity, whereas at the same time an explanation of it in itself
remains inadequate, complete only within the context of a comparison to
antiquity.

200
 The creative genius of the Greeks had a more noble task, a higher
goal, than the mere invention of new types and motifs in art, such as
those that they had inherited from their predecessors and held to be
sacred; their mission was different, namely, to understand those types and
motifs — which were already determined in their materiality — in their
next and simultaneously tellurian expression and thought in a higher sense,
as a symbolism of form in which opposites and principles that were
mutually exclusive or at war in a barbaric culture could be combined in
the freest symbiosis and the most beautiful and richest harmony. If one
wishes to understand this in a higher sense, how can Hellenic form — the
secondary, the aggregative — be understood without prior knowledge of its
traditional and, in a certain sense, natural components in their original
telluric meaning? This must be considered before we turn to the higher,
but derivative, meaning that the Hellenes attributed to them.
Among all the inherited formal elements of Hellenic art, none has
such deep-reaching significance as the principle ofraiment and encrustation.
It holds sway over all of pre-Hellenic art and by no means weakens or
wastes away in the Greek style. Instead, it becomes intellectually charged
to the highest degree and lives on in a structural-symbolic — more so than
in a structural-technical — sense to serve beauty and form alone.
A more extensive discussion of this opposition can only follow in the
course of this article, which aims to discuss the important principles of
raiment and encrustation as an element of the visual arts.
One work of the greatest French researcher and scholar of antique art,
Quatremére de Quincy’s Jupiter Olympien, came close to solving an im-
mensely important question for the general understanding of ancient art.
In fact, it solves the problem at least in part, if not generally and princi-
pally enough, for that area upon which it focuses, that is, for Hellenic
sculpture.
Had the famous author proved the immanent coherence of the affec-
tion for polychrome chryselephantine colossal sculpture that prevailed at
the height of the Greek era by referring to the ancient and universal
principle of encrustation as was also widespread in Greece, a principle that
dominated not just the visual arts but also architecture (and not only in
terms of the decoration but in the very essence of this art); had he shown
how even dyed ivory, among the other materials used for encrustation,
such as wood, metal, terra-cotta, stone and stucco, had been used for the
same purpose even in the most distant times; and furthermore how
chryselephantine sculpture derived from the use of this material in large-
scale sculpture, then all this would have led him to an even more impor-
tant and more universal conclusion than the one offered by his excellent

201
 treatise. In fact, his work follows the opposite procedure in order to prove
that the intention to create colossal sculpture in ivory or similar materials
that were not available in large pieces necessarily led to that technique to
whose description and revival he dedicated his work.'
And if this aspect alone were not enough to awaken our interest in
his work, then there is yet another respect in which that work has even
greater significance: its practical tendency, which does not present the
form to us as a finished object, as might the school of aesthetic idealism,
but instead opens up to us an understanding of the artistic form and the
higher idea that lives within it. Both are shown to be inseparable from the
material and from the technical execution, as the Hellenic spirit reveals
itself in the free mastery of both and in its old, sanctified heritage.
Approximately contemporaneous with the Jupiter Olympien, or some-
what earlier, a large work on Egypt was published. It was the result of the
work of scholars and artists who had accompanied Bonaparte on his
expedition there. This work contains many representations of polychrome
and encrusted monuments; and even more enlightening than those largely
unreliable, stylistically inaccurate representations, at least in regard to the
theme with which we are concerned, are the numerous points in the text
describing those representations. Nevertheless, this work had by and large
little influence on the general understanding of ancient artistic techniques
because the dominant prejudices of the time did not allow for a connec-
tion between Egyptian and Greek art. Later important publications on
the monuments of that archaic land of mystery suffered the same fate,
publications that remained almost entirely ignored by those dealing with
the issues in which we are interested. It had become accepted practice to
perceive Egypt like an ancient China, without any connection to the rest
of the civilized world. This was a double injustice, because both Egypt
and China are very important components of the overall construct of
culture in general and, in particular, of art history’s different permutations.
Accordingly, it might reasonably be assumed that the beautiful book
on Pompeii, its first volume published slightly later by Mazois and after
his untimely death the later volumes completed by Gau, would have an
even greater hand in establishing a new approach to Classical art in its
totality. This was hardly the case. Although the frescoes and other partic-
ularities of the ancient approach to art are presented here comprehensively
within their larger context, although the relationships between old Hel-
lenic art and the reborn monuments of the provincial cities of Magna

1 Quatremére de Quincy, Le Jupiter Olympien ou l’Art de la sculpture antique consi-

déré dans un nouveau point de vue (Paris: 1815), Avant-propos, p. X. sqq. and
passim.

202
Graecia are irrefutable, these bonds are all seen as nothing more than the
manifestation of a specific Roman technique dating to a time that had
already taken a capricious turn. As a result, the artifacts are portrayed as
having little in common with the frescoes and other particularities of the
Egyptian monuments.
These monuments were said to belong to the childhood of art, and
those of Pompeii to its decline, in which it had again become childish;
there was no provision for any conclusion that could be drawn from these
two moments about the nature of true Greek art.
Thereafter, around 1830, Hittorff published the first representation of
a genuine Greek polychrome monument. It caused an uproar in the world
of the antiquarians and resulted in a paper war fought by both artists and
scholars. That is of great importance for the topic that we are considering
here, since the issue at stake was touched upon many times, if only
coincidentally.
The history of this debate, in which this author was also engaged,
may be described in the greatest detail in Hittorff’s new work, “Architec-
ture Polychrome’”;? let us note now that we will have several opportunities
to discuss this work later.
The most important period in this paper war should not go unmen-
tioned here, namely, the battle surrounding the claim put forth by C. A.
Bottiger,* based primarily upon several comments made by Pliny, accord-
ing to which the Greeks had, in the best of times, painted only on wood
panels. He claimed that they had neither respected frescoes as an art form,
nor was that artform commonly used to decorate monuments. Fresco
painting should thus be seen as an agent in, and at the same time, a
symptom of, painting’s decline; the art form had become popular only
during the time of Imperial Rome, which falsely attributed it to the height
of the Greek era.
The most avid defender of this view, Raoul-Rochette, fought zealously
enough in a series of small essays that spare not means, but nonetheless
waged a full-scale battle in the scholarly but tasteless book Pezntures
antiques inédites.4 He was countered by M. Letronne, whose most impor-
tant work is his Lettres d'un antiquaire a un artiste.
With a scholarship equal to that of his opponent, although that

2 J. T. Hittorff, Restitution du temple d’Empédocle a Selinonte ou V'Architecture poly-

chrome chez les Grecs (Paris: 1851).
3 In his [deen zur Archdologie der Malerei (Dresden: 1811).
4 M. Raoul-Rochette, Peintures antiques inédites, etc., faisant suite aux monumens
inédits (Paris: Imp. R., 1836).
5 M. Letronne, Lettres d'un antiquaire a un artiste sur l'emploi de la peinture murale,
etc. (Paris: 1836).

203
 scholarship never leads him to foolishness, and with more soul, Letronne
defends the contrary opinion, stating that the majority of the most famous
paintings that decorated the walls of Greek architectural monuments —
and precisely those from the strict school of painting just before and
contemporaneous with Pericles — were truly frescoes and not panels. If
only both the antagonists had observed their subject from the point of
view of ancient art history as a whole and thereby attempted to see the
Greek and Roman use of painting to decorate their walls as akin to the
archaic principle of the architecture of all ancient peoples, transmuted
through its contact with Classical architecture and its tradition, and spiri-
tualized without in any way belying its pre-architectural origin; if only
they had then attempted to compare ancient texts on painting with the
remaining fragments of former Greek fresco painting and Roman art;
then they could have shaken hands in reconciliation on the neutral ground
defined by the monumental frescoes of Polygnotus and Micon, Panaeno
and Onatas, Timagoras and Agatharchos, all works that are by no means
panels but are truly wall paintings in the highest sense, although they are
stylistically closer to panel painting. These works were produced at the
time in which Hellenic architecture no longer retained the archaic, tradi-
tional principle of raiment in a material sense, but rather in a symbolic
and spiritualized manner. In earlier and in later periods, on the other
hand, especially after the time of Alexander, the same principle asserted
itself in a more barbaric realism. In Rome, it even came into conflict with
a new architectural principle, according to which stone construction was
supposed to be a form-determining element. Instead, both theorists held
to their positions. Raoul-Rochette sees nothing but painted wood panels
hung, whether on the wall or by some means. For him, even the largest
paintings of the historical school are nothing but panels. Only hesitatingly
does he admit that they were sometimes, as an exception, artificially
embedded into the wall. He would have done better to prove that even
true frescoes were — in their character and in the manner of their spatial
subdivision across the expanse of the wall, if not altogether in their essence
— panels, or rather painted wall raiment.
Only at one point in his work® does he indicate that he was not
entirely oblivious to the relationship between the principle of panelization
as employed by the ancient Greeks and by other ancient oriental
traditions. I nonetheless doubt whether he recognized the important im-
plications of this fact, which he calls merely a “point. curieux de
larchéologie.” In this context, he refers to his Histoire générale de V'art des

6 Peintures inédites, etc. p. 346. Note 4.

204
Anciens, a book that, to my knowledge, was never published. On the other
hand, Letronne understood the task at hand no better. In fact, perhaps he
is even farther from it than his opponent. Rather than considering the
relationship between the frequent use of panel paintings, be they on wood,
stone, terra-cotta, slate, glass, ivory or metal, and wall decoration as an
exception, he might have been motivated to focus more emphatically
upon the relationship between this tendency, which is typical in the early
and late periods of Hellenic art, and the nature of the archaic principle of
wall decoration — and thus the true essence of Classical art. He should
have noted the connection between this quite widespread method of
encrusting the walls with panels and the obvious fact that all sculpture
that (inasmuch as it did not belong to the actual ornamentation) decorates
ancient monuments also conforms to the principle of the embedded panel,
if indeed it is not actually embedded. He could have developed an argu-
ment that built upon this observation.
This tradition of encrustation in fact prevails in all of Hellenic art and
dominates above all the true essence of architecture: it is by no means
limited to the tendentious-decorative treatment of the surfaces by means
of sculpture and painting but also determines the essence of the Kunstform
in general. Both Kunstform and decoration, however, are bound so intimately
and inextricably in Greek architecture by the influence of the principle of
surface raiment that it is impossible to regard the two separately. In this sense,
Greek architecture represents the antithesis of barbaric architecture, in
which the same elements, namely structure and decoration, are combined
as befits the level of [cultural] development: they converge more or less
inorganically, even mechanically, in the merest material representation.
A more complete discussion of this important theorem within the
canon of style, which I must recognize as more than a “point curieux de
archéologie,” must wait until the chapter on the reciprocity of all the
arts within architecture. Nonetheless, because of its general validity for all
the arts, and not merely for architecture, an important observation derived
from this theorem must be discussed here. In any case, because of the
technical procedure upon which this theorem rests, that of raiment, it
logically has its natural place at this point in the discussion.
The fact that makes me most doubtful that Raoul-Rochette, as early
as 1836, the year in which the work Histoire générale de art des Anciens
was announced, had already thought of the general solution to the issues
at stake here, is that the important discoveries of Assyrian and Babylonian
monuments by Botta and Layard’ occurred only after that time. These

7 Austin Henry Layard, Esq., The monuments of Niniveh, from drawings made on the
spot (London: 1849). — A second series of the monuments of Niniveh, etc. from

205
 discoveries then allowed us to regard these particular entities in their
cultural and historical contexts without making incorrect associations and
to reconstruct the law that they express. Also at that time, new and
improved documentation of Persian monuments became available; deeper
knowledge was gained of Asia Minor’s rich classical soil, furrowed with
the strangest traces of the most ancient civilization; and new and, at least
in part, astonishing discoveries were reported in Italy, Cyrenaica and even
Egypt, which can never be researched exhaustively. The fact that this issue,
which in my opinion is of the greatest importance, has concerned me for
quite some time is proven by my notes about it. These are preserved in
smaller texts, in part in the English language.*

860
THE MOST PRIMORDIAL FORMAL PRINCIPLES, BASED UPON THE
CONCEPT OF SPACE IN ARCHITECTURE REGARDLESS OF
CONSTRUCTION. THE MASKING OF REALITY IN THE ARTS
The art of clothing the body’s nakedness (if one does not consider the
painting of one’s own skin to be clothing as discussed above) is probably
a more recent invention than the use of sheltering planes for encampments
and for spatial boundaries.
There are tribes who appear to be wild in the most originary sense.
They know no clothing, but nonetheless, they are not entirely ignorant of
the use of pelts and even of a more or less advanced industry of spinning,
braiding and weaving, which they use in the construction and reinforce-
ment of their encampments.
It is possible that the influence of climate and other conditions are
enough to explain this cultural-historical phenomenon and that it does
not necessarily represent a normal, universally valid process of civilization.

drawings made during a second expedition to Assyria, 71 plates. Oblong folio (Lon-
don: 1853). — Discoveries on the Ruins ofNiniveh and Babylon, etc. with maps, plans
and illustrations. 8vo (London: 1853). — Niniveh and its remains, with an account
of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Curdistan, etc. 5. Edition. 2 Vol. 8vo
(London: 1850). — A popular account of discoveries at Niniveh with numerous
woodcuts. 8vo (London: 1850). — J. Fergusson, The palaces ofNiniveh and Persepolis
restored; an essay on ancient Assyrian and Persian architecture.
8 Die vier Elemente der Baukunst (Braunschweig: 1851). — “On the Origin of
Polychromy in Architecture,” appendix in the publication entitled An Apology for
the Colouring of the Greek Court by Owen Jones. Crystal Palace Library, 1854. —
On the study of Polychromy and its revival in the Museum of Classical Antiquities,
No. II (London: John W. Parker and Son, July 1851).

206
It is nonetheless true that the inception of building is simultaneous with the
beginnings of textiles.
The wall is that particular built element that formally represents
bounded space as such, in a manner both absolute and in no need of
reference to tangential concepts. It makes that space visible to the eye.
We might see the corral as the earliest dividing wall produced by the
hand, as the most primordial vertical spatial boundary invented by man.
The fabrication of the fence, constructed out of sticks and twig that were
bound and woven together, required only the technology that nature
placed in man’s hands.
From the weaving of twigs, the transition to the braiding of basts for
similar domestic uses is easy and natural.
Thereafter came the invention of weaving, first using blades of grass
or natural plant fibers, and later using spun yarn from plant or animal
sources. The differences in the blades’ natural coloration soon led to the
use of varying orders, which generated the pattern. Soon, these natural
materials were surpassed by the art of artificially prepared materials, lead-
ing to the invention of the dyeing and entwining of colorful carpets for
wall covering, a surface beneath the feet [Fussdecken] and sheltering roofs
[Schirmddécher]).
The particularities of the gradual process of these inventions’ devel-
opment, whether in this manner or another, is of little importance here.
It is nonetheless certain that the use of coarse weaving, beginning with
the corral, gave rise to the means with which to separate the “home,” the
inner life, from the outer life. As the formal embodiment of the idea of
space, it preceded even the most simply constructed wall [Wand] of stone
or any other material.
The scaffold that serves to hold, secure and bear these spatial dividers
are requirements that have nothing directly to do with space and spatial
subdivision. They are foreign to the most primordial architectural idea
and, at least initially, are not formally determinative elements.
The same is true of the walls [Mauern] built from unfired brick, stone
or other materials. In their nature and in the purpose they serve, they bear
no relation to the concept of space but, rather, were made for reasons of
security and defense, to guarantee the longevity of the enclosure or as the
columns and beams for the spatial boundary above. They were meant for
storage and to bear other loads, in short, their purpose is foreign to the
essential idea, namely, that of the spatial boundary.
Here, it is of the utmost importance to observe that in places where
these secondary motifs do not appear, woven fabric serves its original
purpose — an ostensible divider of space — as in the southerly and warmer

207
 countries. Even in places where solid walls [Mauern] are a necessity, they
nonetheless remain a mere invisible scaffold beneath the true and legiti-
mate representatives of the spatial idea: the more or less artificially twined
and sewn textile walls [Wéande].
Here again, we find a phenomenon worthy of note: the earliest mo-
ments of art history were assisted by phonetics, which, in its primitive
state, clarified the symbols of formal language and affirmed the authentic-
ity of the meaning ascribed to them. In all Germanic languages, the word
Wand (which has the same root and basic meaning as Gewand, or cloth-
ing) recalls directly the primordial origin and typology of the visible spatial
boundary.
The same is true of ceiling [Decke], raiment [Bekleidung], barrier
[Schranke], fence [Zaun] (similar to Saum [meaning hem]) and many
other technical terms, which were not applied symbolically at a later stage
to building but instead are certain indication of the textile origins of these
building components.
All the preceding observations dealt only with pre-architectural phe-
nomena, whose practical interest for the history of art may be dubious.
We still may ask what became of our principle of raiment once the
mystery of transfiguration of a sheltering entity, itself entirely materially
structural and technical, had given rise to its monumental form. Or rather,
what happened once true architecture emerged. This is not the place to
delve more deeply into the How of monumental architecture’s evolution,
although that is a question of the greatest importance. Nonetheless, it
may facilitate an understanding of certain permutations of the oldest
history of monuments, to which I will soon make reference, if I note at
least in a preliminary way how the will to commemorate in perpetuity
some festive act, a religion, an event of world history, the actions of a
ruler or state still gives impetus to monumental undertakings. Nothing
can prevent the assumption — in fact, it seems unquestionable — that the
first founders of a monumental art, which always presupposes a previous
and rather highly developed culture or even luxury, were likewise inspired
by a similar festival or celebration. The festival apparatus, the improvised
scaffold that, with all its splendor and attendant flourishes, signified the
reason for celebration just as it enhanced the glory of the festival. Hung
with tapestries, arrayed in boughs and flowers, decorated with festoons
and wreaths, with fluttering ribbons and trophies — this is the motif of the
permanent monument that is meant to perpetuate the commemoration of
the celebratory act, and the event that inspired it, for coming generations.
Thus, the Egyptian temple derived from the motif of the improvised
pilgrims’ market, which, of course, even in much later eras was comprised

208
of posts and tents in which some local god or other, to whom no permanent
temple had yet been built, was rumored to perform particular miracles.
Then, the pilgrim Fellahs of ancient Egypt were attracted in unexpectedly
numerous groups to the celebration. (See second section: Egypt.) I mention
yet another example with which to illustrate what has been said, those fa-
mous Lycian gravestones, two of which are now exhibited in the British
Museum, those strange wood scaffolds built in stone. Between the beams
are decorative panelized reliefs, and as an upper level or top piece, they carry
a richly sculpted, sarcophagus-like monument, characterized by protruding
knobs, an ogee-shaped arched roof and a crest. I maintain that these sup-
posed imitations of an authentic Lycian timber building style are nothing
more than funeral pyres, which even in the Roman tradition were built in
wood and hung with rich tapestries. The bier pépetpov was placed above;
beneath it, covered and concealed, [was] the richly gilded capsule
(kadvaTnp).? But it is a funeral pyre in a monumental reconstruction.
Another decisive example is offered by the monumental glorification
of the old covenant sworn in the Temple of Solomon. These monuments
were built in accordance with the imagined or actual motif of the taber-
nacle in unheard-of splendor, about which we will speak later.
Thus, too, is the genealogy of the characteristic style of theater build-
ing, which in historical times comprised a performance scaffold made of
boards but richly decorated and arrayed.'°
In the iteration of these examples, I was primarily concerned with
noting the principle of the exterior decoration and raiment of the structural
skeleton, a principle that is necessarily in the case of improvised festival
architecture and that always and everywhere carries with it the nature of
the thing itself. I have done so in order to draw the conclusion that the
same principle of raiment of the structural members, integral to the
monumental treatment of the tents and the tapestries stretched between
the structural components of the structure that determined the motif —
that this principle must seem as natural wherever it manifests itself in
earlier architectural monuments."

9 Diodor. XVIII. 26, in which he describes Alexander’s sarcophagus. In a tomb

near Panticapea, a similar painted wooden catafalque was found. Journal des
Savants (June 1835), p. 338/339.
10 Rob. Walpole, Jtiner. Vol. 1, p. 524, mentions an inscription by Patara in Asia
Minor THv TOV hoyeiov KaTaoxEvTI xai whax@otv. The richly encrusted pro-
scenia of provisional theaters in Rome are also known from the writings of Pliny
and Vitruvius.
11 I believe that the acts of arraying and masking are as old as human civilization,
and the joy given by both is identical to the joy given by that activity that make
human beings into artists, painters, architects, poets, musicians, playwrights, in

209
 short, artists. On the one hand, every artistic activity, and on the other, every
enjoyment of art, requires a certain carnival spirit, if I am to express myself in
modern terms. The haze of candles in the carnival is the true atmosphere of art.
The destruction of reality, of the material, is necessary if form as a meaningful
symbol of mankind’s independent creation is to step forward. We should allow
the means that must be used to achieve the desired artistic impression to be
forgotten, and not betray it and thus fall miserably out of character. The natural
person is guided here by the unspoiled sentiment of earlier experiments in art; it
was to this point that all truly great masters of art in all disciplines returned, the
only difference being that those who lived in an era of higher artistic development
also masked the material quality of the mask. This fact led Phidias to his concep-
tion of the subjects for the two tympana at the Parthenon. Apparently, he
understood the work with which he was charged, in other words, the represen-
tation of a double myth and the divinity described in it, as material to be treated
(much like the stone in which he depicted them), which he concealed as much
as possible. In other words, he liberated it from all material and outwardly
demonstrative admissions of its non—image-related religious-symbolic essence.
Thus, his divinities move forward to meet us; they motivate us individually and
in concert, above all, as the expression of purely mortal beauty and greatness.
“What was Hecuba to him?” For the same reason, too, drama could be meaning-
ful only at the inception and at the acme of a people’s increasing sophistication.
The oldest vase images offer us an idea of the earliest material masks of the
Hellenes — and in a more extreme manner, much like the petral dramas of
Phidias, the ancient masks are taken up again by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
as well as by Aristophanes and the other comic playwrights. The proscenium
becomes the frame around an image of a wondrous moment in human history
that did not occur in one single place but that continues to occur everywhere as
long as human hearts beat. “What was Hecuba to them?” The spirit of the mask
lives in Shakespeare’s dramas; we encounter the spirit of the mask and candle-
light, the atmosphere of the carnival (which is not always comedic), in Mozart’s
Don Giovanni; for music, too, requires this reality-obliterating instrument, He-
cuba means nothing to the musician, either — or so it should be.
Masking does not help if things are not correct behind the mask, or if the
mask is unworthy. In order for the invaluable material to be entirely sublated in
the artistic structure as it is intended here, the full mastery of the material is a
prerequisite. Only thorough technical completion, the properly understood and
correct treatment of the material in accordance with its characteristics, can
entirely liberate the artistic structure from the material. It may raise even the
simple paintings of nature to high art. These are the moments in which the
artist’s aesthetics wishes to know nothing about symbolists or idealists. It is
against their dangerous tenets that Rumohr, the same Rumohr who is no longer
mentioned by our aestheticians and scholars of art, rightfully directed his written
work.
How might Greek architecture justify what I have said, how might it be
governed by the principle that I have tried to describe, according to which the
work of art inspires a vision that sees neither the means nor the material with
which it operates? How might it be adequate as a form itself? It is the difficult
task of the canon of style [Stillehre] to prove all this. Also see Lessing, Hamburg.
Dramaturgie, twenty-first part and passim.

210
Rudolf Redtenbacher, Tektonik. Principien der kiinstlerischen Gestaltung der
Gebilde und Gefiige von Menschenhand welche den Gebieten der
Architektur, der Ingenieurfacher und der Kunst-Industrie angehéren
(Vienna: 1881)

“Introduction”

p. 1/2 The architecture of our time has begun to move down two different paths
in an attempt to fulfill the demands placed upon it; it chose either the
one defined by the styles of the past or the one that led to eclecticism. In
other words, it chose its elements from the architecture of the past or of
other cultures that seemed appropriate to its needs and — for whatever
reason — desirable for its favor. The style fanatics and the eclectics viewed
each other with hostility. The former paid attention only to those forms
of architecture that were found within the architectural style they pre-
ferred. They intended to satisfy all the demands of modern building with
the help of these elements; they stood upon firm historical ground, but
their horizons were extremely limited. The latter sought to guarantee
themselves the broadest possible perspective, but at the same time, they
became unmoored because they deprived themselves of a definitive point
of view from which to form judgments. The former were wrong to believe
that chronologically discrete forms had to be kept separate. The latter
were persuaded that architectural forms needed only [to] appear to be
pleasing in order to be consolidated in a whole. The former wanted, in
pictorial terms, to express all our era’s intellectual richness in the limited
vocabulary of one of their various foreign languages. The latter thought
that they could pull a new language out of a hat by combining elements
of many foreign languages. The former were unable to develop a new
language by merely studying ome architectural style of the past and then
trying to understand the other architectural styles by virtue of their in-
sights into this one. The latter were equally unsuccessful because they
failed to study any of the historical forms of architecture but nonetheless
wanted to chose among forms that, once extracted from an immanent
coherence, made no sense at all.
If a critique is to be made of the architectural styles of the past, it is
necessary to know those styles well and to be able to distinguish between
an inadequacy and that which is useful, or not useful, for our purposes.
As I have stated elsewhere, many have “based their judgment of the
aesthetic value of architectural forms and thoughts too much on the
forms’ usefulness for the present, or, erring in the other direction, others
have taken everything that is pleasing in architecture to be worthy of

211
 imitation. The basis for judgment was what is useful to us is beautiful ox
everything that is beautiful is useful to us.” As mentioned elsewhere, a well-
founded and unprejudiced critique of the architecture of the past would
lead to the following conclusions:
1. That each architectural style of the past sought to be as beautiful
as possible and achieved at least some of that beauty;
2. that each architectural style created something of general value,
and, at the same time, something else — the remainder — that, although
temporally or historically meaningful, is worthless in practical terms;
3. that each architectural style contains undeveloped thoughts that
we are bound to develop;
4. that, in each architectural style, certain forms periodically appeared
that then either disappeared or maintained themselves once the precondi-
tions for their existence had been superseded; on the one hand, we have
the right to use these forms again should these preconditions reinstate
themselves. On the other hand, we are not compelled to repeat forms
whose reason for existence is lost to us. We have just as little reason to
observe the birthday of a particular form as we do to respect that form
because practice had, at some point, declared it sacred.

[as@ He who has come to know the architectures of the past most thoroughly
will quickly be persuaded that every one of them contains very fruitful
elements, if still as seeds, or that these elements have not completely
matured. Thus, they still have potential for further development. We,
citizens of the present, possess an art historical overview that the past did
not have. We therefore have the right and the responsibility to incorporate
into our architecture those elements that are either still useful or under-
developed and to bring them to full maturity.

p.4 The forms of architecture are subject to a single infinite process of trans-
formation. Without this process, further development would not be pos-
sible. It is only right that we seek out that which is generally valuable,
and that we give shelter, form and support to those yet-undeveloped seeds
of past architectural styles. At the same time, we may strip away that
which is valuable only in a historical sense and is therefore useless in
practical terms. We take what we can use from the architectural motifs of
the past without regard for their chronology and then reconfigure them
to suit our purpose. If we intended for our work to refer to a particular
historical form of architecture, then we would align ourselves most closely

202
with the Renaissance. But in many respects, the architecture of the Middle
Ages can offer even better points of departure.
We must answer for ourselves the question, whether it is possible to
build such that we may solve even the most eccentric of architectural
problems according to a unified set of principles; in other words, if we
can achieve stylistic unity not only in the architecture of our own native
lands but in the architecture of the world as a whole, and if this architec-
ture may serve posterity as a source for its architectural creation.

If there were general principles of style, then we could speak of a general

tectonics that encompasses everything within the ken of artistic formal
determination, with the exclusion of the true sculpture.

213
 Rudolf Redtenbacher, Die Architektonik der modernen Baukunst. Ein
Hiilfsbuch bei der Bearbeitung architektonischer Aufgaben (Berlin: 1883)

“Recapitulation of the Most Important Rules of the General Tectonics”

p. vill-x |. SECTION: AESTHETIC PRINCIPLES

1. Everything that is aesthetically pleasing must be unified within
itself. It is bound together in manifold unity.
2. That which is bound together in manifold unity must be easily
recognizable or deducible.
3. An unmotivated deviation from unity is a disturbance.
4. Motivated deviations from unity surpass the latter in the pleasure
they produce because they describe the beginning of the manifold.
5. The simplest visual form of the manifold within unity is symme-
try.
6. As a higher frame of reference that encompasses symmetry, bal-
ance surpasses symmetry in the pleasure it produces.
7. On principle, the unification of the manifold excludes all incom-
mensurabilities and incomparabilities.
8. Regarded within a higher frame of reference, the unification of
the manifold must concur with a single idea that should evoke the whole.
We call this stipulation the demand for internal truth; it must be fulfilled.
9. Furthermore, the whole must concur with the object that it
intends to represent or with the purpose that it intends to fulfill, as well
as with the means of its own realization. That is the demand for external
truth.
10. The pleasure that it conveys then grows or changes in accordance
with factors related to the appearance of the unified form or of the
manifold. The whole must be in harmony with these associated factors.
11. The manifold requires contrasts, whose particular quality derives
from complimentary relationships. Contrasts may be understood only by
virtue of comparison. Contrasts require preparation, interpolation or gra-
dation. Groups of contrasting effects may be combined with others to
heighten the sense of the manifold within unity. The products of contrast-
ing effects comprise things that are converging or diverging, gradated or
actualized increase, or decrease of desire or lack of desire.
12. As in nature, so, too, in art and in technology, the aim must be
reached in the simplest way. The complete convergence of form and
purpose is the indispensible precondition to all beauty in tectonics. It

214
requires absolute purity of the object’s external appearance. This purity is,
on the one hand, the lowest form of beauty, and, on the other, it gives
rise to the demand that the quality of the form conform to the purpose it
serves.
13. The principle of internal and external truth contains implicitly
the requirement that the characteristic entity be apparent, that is, that the
diverse qualities of things be emphasized. More ideal purposes demand
that secondary things retreat into the background. They demand ideali-
zation, and, for reasons of appropriateness, they demand that the work be
more than a form that corresponds absolutely to its purpose. They de-
mand stylization.
14. The representation of what cannot be represented directly — in
other words, the symbolic — includes the depiction of general concepts; of
beliefs that may achieve reality only by means of representation; of sensual
perception outside the realm of the visual or of things too large to be
perceived as a whole; of complicated things that are then represented by a
simple sign. Symbolic actions, ceremonies and symbolic objects, monu-
ments — these all stand at the side of the iconic depiction, used as a means
of artistic expression.

Il. SECTION: THE GEOMETRIC COMPONENT IN TECTONICS

1. The point, the most simple, optically perceptible geometric en-
tity, is a symbol of unity.
2. Related to any pair of points are the conceptual pairs of right and
left, above and below, back and forth, which describe the initial points’
position vis-a-vis a horizontal plane. Furthermore, if the distance between
the two points is divided into two equal or unequal halves, one has a
representation of symmetry or of balance respectively.
3. The point — the unified entity — as beginning, end, and midpoint,
as focus and as emphasis, requires particular attention in tectonics because
it represents the particular within the general; it is the characteristic. The
intermediary point requires only accentuation.
4, The subdivision of a linear quantity into two or three equal parts,
symmetrically or in a group, works well with any particular attention paid
to the middle. If the middle portion is smaller or larger than the side
portions, then the latter group is more pleasing than the former because
the accent is placed upon the middle.
5. Subdivisions of three, four and five portions are pleasing if the
midpoints or endpoints are accentuated.
6. In the case of subdivisions more numerous than three, four or
five, the whole loses its capacity to be comprehended and the pleasure it
affords decreases progressively.

215
 7. In the case of subdivision into a greater number of units, we are
afforded the image of regularity within repetition. This regularity increases
if periodically recurring sections begin to form groups, and if repetition is
made comprehensible by means of interruptions and superordinate fig-
ures.
8. The grouping of individual points about a single point can occur
in a centralized or eccentric manner.
9. The subdivision of a plane may be (a) linear, (4) according to
two perpendicular axes or three axes that intersect at 60 degrees, (c)
according to a disposition of axes from which planar elements are formally
independent, (d) central or eccentric.
The linear subdivision of a plane may be carried out so that it creates
a number of congruent elements in which the two directions, to the left
and [to] the right, are equally emphasized in relation to the longitudinal
axis and therefore remain in balance. They may also differ from one
another.
10. The subdivision of a plane by two or three axes may be called a
web system. The subdivision according to axes from which the elements
are formally independent may be called an embroidered system, a mosaic
system, a woven system, a mesh system, a knitted system, a chain system,
a net system or a cellular system as befits the properties of the underlying
structure.
11. Central and eccentric subdivisions of a plane correspond to radial
and spiral dispositions.
12. A number of mathematically regular curves that have never
played any role in art nonetheless have decisive aesthetic significance for
the forms related to motion.
13. The distribution of points in space may be organized within any
number of axial systems derived from crystallography: the regular, quad-
ratic, rhomboid, hexagonal and the three clinical systems in which the
axes are oblique.
14. Space may be subdivided by means of planes into cubic, parallel-
epiped, rhomboid and tetrahedral elements. By means of their recombi-
nation, the space may be completely occupied by rhombendodecadric
elements.
15. Values are associated with the concepts of above, below, right,
left, in front of, behind, inside, outside. They are also associated with the
concepts of coordination, subordination and inordination.

216
 Il. SECTION: DEFINITION OF FORM
A. FORM ITSELF
1. The pure visual manifestation consists of nothing that is internal
or external to form.
2. The more closely the qualities of the basic form approximate the
form’s actual visual manifestation, the more favorably these qualities will
appear to the sense of aesthetics.
3. The more closely the characteristic relationships of the pure visual
manifestation approximate those of the actual visual manifestation, the
stronger the actual visual manifestation must be, even in aesthetic terms.
4. By means of corners, edges and planes, crystalline forms become
visually manifest in reality. This manifestation is made possible by the
optical characteristics of matter. The actual visual manifestation is under-
pinned by the visual revelation of the axes, the marking of corners, of the
midpoints of edges, and of the centers of planes and planes of fissure.
5. Round volumes only become visible in three dimensions by virtue
of [their] optical qualities. The visual manifestation is intensified by me-
ridians, by drawing the formative elements and by emphasizing axes and
centers, or foci, as well as tangential planes.

“Architectonics”

INTRODUCTION
p. 1-3 We understand architectonics to be the primer of architectural form given
in accordance with the principles of tectonics.
The charges set to architecture, that is, buildings, serve the most
disparate of purposes, including those related to habitation, to public life
and intercourse and to the religious cult.
Because we proceed from the parts to the whole in order to arrive at
this conclusion, we are now compelled to consider first the components
of buildings, then the buildings themselves, and thereafter their groupings
and the structure of cities.
Our intention is the following: to derive from a specific task the
motifs that are amenable to [its] artistic treatment.
If we wished to conflate the duties of tectonics with the principle of
raiment, as does Semper, then we would have no more to do than simply
to drape our objects in some decorative cloak that seemed to us appropri-
ate to the object on the basis of external criteria. Nevertheless, this cloak
need have nothing to do with the object’s innermost essence. A wall

21%
 would then only mark the edge of a space, as a tapestry or mat might.
According to the system of raiment, one could construct walls in any way
one desired and then cover them with some protective hull that could
then be painted, chiseled or imprinted with an arbitrary pattern.
It may be admitted that the principle of raiment was predominant at
the beginning of architecture in the past, as Semper attempted to prove.
This admission does not, however, prove that it would be a nonartistic
proposition to declare construction the initiator of the architectural form.
Architecture begins with construction and ends where there is nothing
left to construct. We therefore pursue a different path and try to derive
architectural motifs from construction. If our results are thus far the same
as those generated by the other theory, then we must be satisfied that the
proponents of that other theory may find something worthy of recogni-
tion in our observations; and were Semper also to make the principle of
construction the object of his speculation, then we would agree with him
of our own accord.
We thus regard the object of our considerations from a technical,
historical and aesthetic point of view.
The particular issues with which we have to deal are the essential
components of a building: space-defining and bearing walls, ceilings, their
free-standing columns, floors, apertures between spaces, connection be-
tween stories and roofs.
Architecture’s means of construction are stone, brick, timber and
metal constructions in various combinations.
The conclusion addresses buildings for different uses, the grouping of
buildings into blocks, circulation systems and their accessories and ephem-
eral decorations.
We deal with the following issues, as outlined here:

A. Space-defining walls. 5. The dome.

1. Stone masonry walls. C. Point supports.
2. Brick masonry walls. 1. Columns.
3. Stuccoed masonry walls. 2g Piers:
4, Timber walls. 3. Posts made of stone, tim-
5. Framed walls. ber and iron.
B. Ceilings. 4. Springings for arches,
1. The stone beam ceiling. stone abutments.
2. The timber beam ceiling. 5. Strip buttresses and flying
3. The flat iron ceiling. buttresses.
4. The visible timber and D. Apertures.
iron beam construction. 1. Windows.

218
 2. Rose windows.
ae Doors:
4. Gates.
5. Tunnel portals.
Floors.
1. Stone paving (wood pav-
ing).
2. Set stone tile.
3. Ceramic tile and brick
flooring.
4, Mosaic flooring.
5. Poured concrete flooring.
Multiple story building.
1. Height and character of
the stories.
2. Base, middle and cornice.
Oo.Continuous stories.
4. Mezzanines, galleries, bal-
conies, bay windows, bal-
ustrades and cantilevers,
groin vaults, railings.
5, Stairs:
6. Towers (also on bridges).
. Roofs.
1. Caps on masonry.
2. Roof forms.
3. Roofing.
4. Penetration of roofs.
5. Roof peaks.
6. Chimneys.
7. Roof ornament.
Stone building.
et Brick building.
Hybrid stone and brick build-
ing.
Timber building.
<1. Hybrid stone or brick and
timber building.
Metal building.
Constructions spanned by
arches in iron.
O . Hybrid stone, timber and
metal building.
The disposition of the plan.
. The section of the building.
The facade. The rear facade.
The genres of building.
aoe
ae Urban configurations.
Squares, streets, gardens.
Wells. Fountains.
Monuments. Seating.
City gates. Triumphal arches.
swesG
Bridges, ramps. Canals, water
basins.
af Lighting, candelabras.
bby Festival decoration.
2G
 Alois Riegl, Stilfragen. Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik
(Berlin: 1893)

“1. The geometric Style”

p. 6/7 ... It was Gottfried Semper who first traced the geometric style’s linear
ornament to its origins in the textile technologies of tatting and weaving.
He by no means, however, arrived at this conclusion independently, as we
have done here, but rather in conjunction with the basic thought to whose
proof and consistent development his S¢i/ was primarily dedicated: to the
theory of raiment as the source of all monumental architecture. This path
led him to trace the origin of all surface decoration to the concept of the
drapery that cloaks and of the ribbon that encircles. Both concepts seem
even linguistically related to a textile character. At many points in his Stil,
it is clear that Semper had originally and primarily conceived of the cloak
and the ribbon as precedents not so much in terms of matter or material,
but rather in an ideal sense. At the same time, Semper would have been
the last to neglect the free creative artistic thought against the urge that
motivates us to imitate both sensually and materially. It was only the work
of his countless disciples that recast his theory as a kind of coarse materi-
alism. On the other hand, the impulse to set his concepts into a material
context was only natural. There is at least one point! in the text at which
Semper discusses the genesis of pattern in tatting and weaving in such a
way that his attitude toward the technological-material source of geomet-
ric ornament is undeniably revealed.
Semper’s theory was well received by art scholarship. Our era’s histo-
rio-natural scientific sensibility, which searches retrospectively for a causal
relationship behind all entities, must have felt gratified by a hypothesis
that knew how to suggest so naturally and simply that even the genesis of
a genre so eminently intellectual as that of the creation of art could be
traced

pall/ ... Archaeology lent the theory of the technological-material genesis offun-
12 damental artistic forms such universal validity. The postulate that rectilin-
ear geometric ornament derived from textile technology is only a subcat-
egory within this theory. Likewise, rectilinear geometric ornament itself
only comprises a fraction of all known primitive ornament. Archaeologists
asserted so emphatically their ability to identify the textile, metallurgic,
stereotomic, etc., techniques used for each specific decorative motif on the

1 Stil, I, 213, to which I will return later.

220
oldest of vases that it seemed they had been present and had seen the
materials and tools of the protoartistic primitives. A huge amount of work
has been wasted on this enterprise, the most diverse of combinations
attempted, the most varied of techniques employed to achieve the same
end, as might be expected anyway by the nature of the thing. And just as
the German Hackel rephrased Darwin’s theories more consistently and
authoritatively, so, too, among the archaeologists, it was the Germans who
have most decisively emerged. The extent to which they may or may not
surpass the real father of this field, Gottfried Semper, may be revealed by
quoting the following passage from his Sz/, II, 87, as below:
The rules, according to which a vessel’s decoration should be in accord
with the materials chosen and the way in which they are worked, “lead to
doubts that can be solved only with difficulty. The doubts involve the
technical source of many decorative forms now regularly employed. The
material from which they were originally fabricated is at issue because of
the early mutual influence and correspondence: materials modified the
styles under discussion. The question remains whether the zones of zigzag
ornament, waves and curlicues, some of which are painted on and others
engraved in the surface of the oldest clay vessels, are the precedents or the
decedents of similar relief decoration on the oldest bronze vessels and
weapons. Or perhaps the ornaments did not originally belong to either of
the two materials... Highly developed art marks the beginning of the con-
scious distinction and artistic valuation of the limitations and the advantages
offered to artistic production by the use of different materials in and of
itself.”
The author expresses himself so cautiously, an author who, both artist
and scholar, was able to comprehend and summarize the technical proce-
dures involved in artistic production in their entirety and their mutual
influence and to do so to a greater degree than any other in his century.
He believed that the formally determinate capacity of “technology” first
becomes essentially apparent in the latter stages of art’s development and
not in the early phases of artistic production at all, as is obvious in his
words as quoted above. This, too, is my persuasion. Nothing could be
more remote from my intentions than to belie the significance of technical
procedure for the transformation and development of certain ornamental
motifs. Gottfried Semper’s immortal achievement is that he opened our
eyes to this fact...

221
 Peter Behrens, Uber den Zusammenhang der baukiinsterlichen Schaffens mit
der Technik, in: Kongress fur Asthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft,
Berlin, 7.-9. (October 1913), Report published by the regional committee
(Ortsausschuss) (Stuttgart: 1914), p. 251 ff.

pe 292 In recent years, a new kind of German applied art has developed. Its first
serious attempts and their value in terms of taste cannot be doubted. This
renaissance in the applied arts is a happy sign for the forces of aesthetic
production in our time. It is therefore even more unfortunate that the
two most important areas of interest today, those of art and technology,
remain isolated from each other. Their opposition deprives our era of a
unified formal appearance shared by these two genres, which is both the
condition of, and a witness to, a singular style. Here, we define style only
as a unified formal expression arising from the spiritual and intellectual
production of an epoch. This unity in all expression, not from the partic-
ular or even eccentric character of a work of art, is decisive.

The engineer, on the other hand, has turned away increasingly from
artistic tendencies as he keeps pace with technical progress. It is under-
standable that the enormous developments made by technology have
claimed all available energy and dedication for themselves. It was therefore
impossible to think at the same time about the solution of aesthetic
problems.
Nevertheless, it has been noted that the work of the engineer is not
without its own particular beauty. . . .

p. 253/ Therefore, it may not be admitted that the engineer’s products in them-
254 selves are not yet components of an artistic style.
One particular pedagogic orientation of our modern aesthetics has
contributed to this misconception by attempting to derive artistic form
from use and technology. This approach to art is based upon the theories
of Gottfried Semper, whose concept of style was based upon the require-
ment that any work be the result of its use and, secondarily, the result of
the material, tools and procedures used in its fabrication. This theory
dates to the middle of the last century and, like many other theories of
that time, should be understood as the dogma of materialist metaphysics.

Art arises only from the intuition of a strong individual and is a free
realization of a psychological force, unfettered by material conditions. It
is not the product of coincidence but, instead, the creation of the intense,

222
 conscious will of the liberated human spirit, if it satisfies psychic needs —
that is, needs that have been transposed to the level of the spiritual — as
they are most clearly expressed in music. Or as Alois Riegl expressed it:
“A teleological conception must arise in opposition to the Semperian
mechanistic conception of the essence of art. This could occur inasmuch
as the result of a specific and purposeful will to art (Kunstwollen) is
perceived within the artwork, a will that prevails in its conflict with
functional purpose, raw matter and technology.” Thus, the positive role
attributed by Semperian theory to those three latter factors has been
expunged. Instead, they assume a restrictive, negative character: “they
comprise the coefficient of friction within the overall product.”
As such, technology is not a creative factor in the development of
artistic form, but rather only one component within a larger complex of
forces, if, admittedly, one of greater importance.
It should be recognized that both the new means of construction and
the new material, iron, are also important factors within artistic matters.
They should be fully valued as such, but no new beauty can be derived
from them alone. Just as there are physical laws, so, too, are there laws in
art. These laws, which have prevailed since the inception of all human
culture as a continuous tradition, cannot lose their validity for our time.

One question — whether and when the great technical achievements

of our era will themselves be raised to the level of a mature and high art —
is of great importance, of significance for the history of human culture. In
other words, whether our lives’ natural expressions, once they have as-
sumed a unified form, can become a style.

p. 257/ The duty of architecture is, and will forever remain, not revealing itself,
258 but rather the enclosure and raiment of space. Architecture is the forma-
tion of corporeal volumes. Not even the dissolution of the wall, as it was
raised to a principle in the Gothic, can be turned against that fact. Of
course, the tendency of the Gothic was to interrupt spatial closure, but
that tendency led to an attenuation of the arch, to the pointed arch. The
same idea is expressed in ground plan configuration, in that era’s prefer-
ence for long halls. All these developments arose from the mystical,
transcendental spirit of the era, within an architectural canon based upon
well-balanced spatial dispositions. It was precisely the Gothic guilds that,
more than in any other era, practiced the canon of artistic spatial form
making as dictated by a canon of systematic geometry. The interruption
of space, as opposed to the Romanesque style of building, was merely a

223
 tendency and as such a relative consequence, not a true consequence as it
might have been had it represented an aspiration to a goal within archi-
tectural thought or within architectural proportion.
In our Modern building style, iron construction’s lack of solidity is
often emphasized further by the necessarily generous use of glass. The
appearance of iron and glass cannot achieve the volumetrics of walls
layered up in stone. There are natural means to lend even these former
materials the capacity to satisfy a desire for volumetric presence. Here,
too, technology is subservient to the Kunstwollen. To name only one
example: in order to achieve the impression of a planar wall that defines a
clear volume, it is necessary that glass and iron be coplanar. In order to
make this smooth plane even more planar, it is also possible to configure
the bearing members so that they create a strong chiaroscuro. It is,
furthermore, advisable to use planar struts or columns rather than trusses.
Alternately, if trusses are used then at least one should maintain a consis-
tent angle in the struts to produce congruent figures in the constant
repetition.
The closure of a form need not be found only in unpunctured,
rectilinear walls. Closure is, finally, dependent upon unity, which may also
be achieved by employing the rhythmic principle of consistent serial rows.
Only by means of this or similar principles may glass and iron building
achieve volumetric presence. And only that presence can communicate a
sense of aesthetic stability. Without such measures, despite the proven
calculable stability of iron, the aesthetic stability, which is distinct from
the mere construction, would remain hidden to the eye accustomed to
explicitness. The engineer's constructions derive from mathematically ori-
ented thought. No one would doubt the veracity of its calculations, but it
is a different matter to determine whether the state of dynamic balance is
apparent to the eye. Only then can a work the aesthetic requirement
fulfilled unconditionally present in a Doric temple, for example. We have
admittedly already become accustomed to the effect of much modern
construction, but I do no believe that mathematically calculated stability
can produce an explicit visual effect. That would mean an art based upon
intellectual factors, which is a contradiction in itself.

224
The Metaphor of “Stilhiilse” and “Kern”... and the
Architecture of Otto Wagner

“Moderne Bautypen,” in: Joseph Bayer, Baustudien und Baubilder, Schriften

zur Kunst, aus dem Nachlass, ed. Robert Stiassny (Jena: 1919)

p. 280- There is a physiognomy of building that is apparent most clearly in those

288 works of architecture that do not merely serve great public needs but are
also intended to represent their meaning. Above all, one asks oneself:
What is the nature of these needs? What is the nature of the spirit that
builds its own architecture today? Style is a specific way of thinking that
arises from the innermost reason and essence of an age. It is art’s formal
expression and as such may have only ove binding primary trajectory. A
truly vibrant style, in control of its era, was always present as an invisible,
monarchic force that determined the direction of art as a whole. It thus
unleashed productive powers that then flourished. A manifold of valid
styles is the strange characteristic of our time. But then, these painstak-
ingly studied styles are merely applied forms, not form-determining forces.
And how did this multiplicity arise? Because artists sought to affirm their
opinions and artistic preferences rather than the demands of the Zeitgeist.
This tendency could dominate only until the Zeitgeist made its demands
more loudly and penetratingly. And once this had happened — what then?
Then the architects began to bargain with the Zeitgeist, agreeing to all
services and compromises in an effort to salvage their beloved styles. The
Zeitgeist accepted their services; it used them and exhausted them — but
unfortunately, their styles were neither untouched nor unchanged upon
return to their former owners. New requirements surreptitiously modified
the old forms, so dearly preserved. Unfamiliar signs appeared everywhere,
causing the master himself to shake his head in disbelief. Who had
contributed to all this? It was the architect himself, as much as any other.
The epochal force that determines style had grabbed hold of his hand
without his notice...
And was this unfortunate? Certainly not! The architecturally genera-
tive spirit of the epoch had ultimately to make itself felt from the roots
upward. Those roots seemed long dead; but now, secret vital powers
forced their way upward and the actual, true and essential architectural
form of the epoch grew, forming powerful limbs behind the applied

225
 stylistic masks and draperies. And once these forces are thoroughly orga-
nized and matured, then certainly the beautifully ornamented historical
stylistic hulls will fracture away; they will disappear forever, and the new
kernel will emerge naked and clear in the sunlight.
The built organism has always been the symbolic image of the social
organism; it should and must assume this quality again in our era.
The forces that effect architectural form in modern society are, how-
ever, not possessed of that ideal energy that once erected the temples of
the Greek acropoli, the cathedrals of the Medieval bishoprics or the states
of the blossoming bourgeoisie. They do not embody the conceptions of a
worldly ruler or of architectural largess, as do the Roman structures of an
imperial palace, the forums; triumphal arches, amphitheaters and baths.
They do not embody the joyful, decorous approach to life and art that
characterized the Renaissance in cinquecento Italy, in which each twig
bore blossoms and fruit simultaneously.
Above all, the time of the strong personal impulse in architectural
production seems quite over.
In Italy’s splendid artistic epochs, both great and small rulers — even
the city magistrates — had their architectural ambitions: fame and piety
resulted in the most significant buildings, and how often was the latter
merely the desire for fame cloaked in religiosity! The Renaissance popes’
sense of monumentality aspired to complete buildings of ancient Roman
grandeur and finally reached its epitome in the building of St. Peter’s in
Rome. The Baroque style built to the benefit of the proud representation
of counts and nobles, of the sybaritic court and of the restored church’s
sanctified desire for splendor. How powerful was the personality, the edict,
the individual will in all this.
Today, it is the state and the society that build by creating associations
of combined capital. Something impersonal suffuses the entire architectural
production of our era — and by the same token, its needs are broad and
general. The character of our era must also be the character of our
architecture, in its technical and artistic expression. It is here that I
perceive the general outlines of a Modern style despite all indecisive or
deviant individual counterexamples.
Today, the greatest conceivable demands are placed on architecture’s
space-ordering powers of invention — thanks to the extraordinary compli-
cations of our social existence and the many vessels and cells it demands.
Each one of these spatial riddles must be solved in a balanced artistic
manner, and therefore, there is much to do. It is extremely unfortunate
that so much time was wasted upon purely academic formal studies and
issues of historical style, rather than addressing essential issues immedi-

226
ately. A fresh, contemporary direction would have developed even in
formal matters.
It is senseless to mourn the ruins of Classicism and to sing a paean to
lost architectural ideals. Nevertheless, many of our architects are the polar
opposite of the Marquis Posa. They are not citizens of an era yet to come,
but stylistic sycophants of times long past. We must be ask: cannot the
tasks that a modern social organism requires of architecture achieve a
more lofty expression in their essence? Or is architecture, thanks to its
overly historical training, unable to find this expression?
The complete architect, the true son of his time, will find that it is a
joy to build, even today. The sobriety that today’s requirements have
introduced into architecture is balanced by the sheer size of the building
complexes required. A creative architectural talent will know how to
harness that sobriety with the energy of his use of form and the meaning-
ful character of the buildings’ arrangement. Architecture must acknowl-
edge its obedience to the so-called “material” era — which, incidentally,
provides quite a bit of money for building; literature has already acknowl-
edged this. It is also architecture’s duty to represent that which is charac-
teristic of its time, just as literature does: the former is responsible for
determining the general artistic spatial image just as the latter is called
upon to describe the intellectual life in all its dynamic chameleon multi-
plicity.
Contemporary architecture is social, just as it was monarchic, aristo-
cratic or ecumenical in the past. This fact demands that new architectural
forms be created once these forms have been articulated or at least prefig-
ured.
This is part of the reason behind the fact that the primary architec-
tural types of the past — religious buildings and palaces — have only a
subsidiary role in the present.
The monumental church buildings of the past were created by a
certain religious pathos that was expressed in celebratory commissions.
One example is Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s Karlskirche in
Vienna, which Emperor Karl VI built to celebrate the end of the plague
in 1716. A similar motivation produced Ferstel’s Votive church. But such
strong emotional reasons for church building are not likely to occur again.
At present, it is need that occasionally leads to new church building, not
religious fervor.
Whenever houses shoot out of the ground in some suburb or other
like mushrooms, whenever an industrial quarter and its accompanying
workers’ settlements continues to spread, whenever small business people
and poor families of civil servants take up occupancy — then, the time is

227,
 ripe to imagine that, among the many chimneys and black, spewing
smokestacks of the factories, a slender, “stylistically pure” tower built with
colorfully glazed brick might rise up to the light and emit the beautiful
sound of bells. Then we read something like the following notice in the
newspaper: “The continuous growth in population of Neu-Fiinfhaus and
Neu-Rudolphsheim etc. necessitated that the community arrange for a
larger community church. Herr Architect N.N. provided the drawings for
a church to be built on the land of the former foundry: nave and apse in
late Romanesque style, brick construction with articulation and details in
stone, space for 3,000 people,” etc.
By the same token, the palace has lost its significant bond to the
epoch’s architectural program. It can no longer be considered the defini-
tive building type for our monumental worldly buildings, neither as a
singular building nor as a show of splendor. The count of Wiirttemberg’s
palace on Vienna’s Karntnerring has been transformed into a large hotel
(Hotel Imperial) after extensive modifications; its exceptional, distin-
guished character was more a matter of its decorative details than its entire
architectural posture, and so the change of clothing was done quickly
enough. Since it is no longer the nobility, but the Aaute-finance, which
builds palaces, this building type’s refined solipsism and artistic-noble
independence is over. A palace in which rooms are for rent, which opens
its parterre to stores and shops, is no longer a true palace, even if its
formal luxury remains.
On the other hand, what is characteristic for the commercial life and
architecture of the present is the Modern reconfiguration, expansion and
stylization of residential rental buildings complexes. Nevertheless, despite
their often excessive decoration, they are most impressive as part of a
street facade, and less individually significant. Whatever they possess in
the way of larger decorative elements becomes part of the overall image:
for example, the high bay windows, often extended as towers in the corner
buildings, seem no more than picturesque accents along the street’s length.
It is strange that an architect of such pure Classical persuasion as
Hansen has solved this driest of architectural problems in such exemplary
fashion. He offers a solution in the best sense: that is, the consolidation
of the modern rental building into units that are characterized by a large-
scale rhythm of masses to form an impressive, harmonic unified entity.
His project for the Heinrichshof represents the canon of this new com-
positional strategy. It is the exemplary building for Ringstrasse architec-
ture, inasmuch as this strategy is profitable for leasing. Just as Hansen
created the building type of the centralized, truly metropolitan apartment
house, so, too, did Ferstel set the standard for the reassuring, semirural

228
cottage community, Admittedly, the free artistic inspiration provided by
both could not be maintained in perpetuity; speculation always interferes,
The new areas of cities, the entirely unfamiliar width of the new
streets and above all, the companies that commission buildings, all of
these have forced the normal house into extinction and replaced it by the
so-called “rental palace.” The intimate house has been exiled to the city’s
edge and to the open landscape — as a more or less contrived reminiscence
of gracious domestic conditions; for in fact, the cottage, with its garden
and symbolic greenery, is only a hybrid form of the exiled townhouse and
the half-matured villa. In the city, on the other hand, a garish but quick
form of building has flourished over the past decades. It has been accom-
panied by an appetite for forms in huge quantities, for which all conceiv-
able motifs, appropriated without concern for hierarchy or moderation,
were used within the shortest amount of time. Nothing is more suspect
than the debasement of forms that once were meaningful in their proper
context to the lowest common denominator or to the mere flourishes of
an empty architectural phraseology. From the gracious Renaissance to the
wildest Rococo, the entire collection of stylistic patterns was applied to
speculative buildings — and because in most cases, these buildings were
built quickly, in surrogate materials, there was no time to raise awareness
for the frivolity of this use of styles.
The value of some new ideas that derive from the modern residential
rental building architecture should not be underestimated, however.
Among these is, above all, the dynamic embellishment of forms of roofing.
This was motivated by the well-founded formal desire to relieve these
masses, whose lower portions are wide and compact, once they reach airy
heights. These masses should be bracketed, their uppermost boundary
should be rounded or sharply profiled to form an effective silhouette. The
results are clear in the carefully completed roof studies that are by no
means the least worthy achievement of our architectural epoch. The
inspiration of the French Renaissance is apparent here; the relationship to
the roofs of the Louvre’s pavilions is unmistakable — but also, the truly
new announces itself here and there in surprising combinations. Zinc and
iron offer their services in an industrially schooled idiom. Even our mon-
umental buildings exhibit the decisive result of these compositional exer-
cises in the upper reaches of their roofs.
Our stylistic rejuvenation is supposed to have begun high up in the
air, just beneath the turrets and weathervanes? Of course, one need not
take this so literally, since every “above” has its corresponding “below,”
which regulates and motivates the former. Thus, our roof decorations
above a building’s center and corners do, for the most part, mark the

229
 expressive primary articulation in the broad massing of the facade. Even
in the facade of our city hall, in which the Gothic yearning for upward
movement would like to do justice to itself by means of the central tower
and its four satellites, horizontalism’s truly Modern force exerts its influ-
ence so fully through all the stories and cornice lines that these towers
seem to be little more than willful, vertical excess above the height of the
last horizontal line. And even the five-tiered tower decoration can do
nothing to overcome the decisive impression of the wide, spreading mass-
ing! During the era in which Gothic urban buildings still truly grew from
their historic soil, their towers and belfries were, incidentally, more than
mere additive decoration, as is the case of our town hall’s central tower,
which is airily punctured in all of its stories. That tower has no other
purpose than to satisfy the subjective needs of the architect and to accom-
modate a clock, a minimal function that it only begrudgingly serves.
No! We no longer live in the era of tower building. All those pinnacles
that, in early days, so picturesquely formed the city’s prospects — the
Gothic towers, the domes of the late Renaissance and even the attenuated
onion-shaped double towers of the Baroque churches — were determined,
perhaps not entirely but at least to a great extent, by the tight cinch of
the city walls that forced all desire for architectural expression upward
from a narrow base. No modern tower seems to grow upward resolutely
enough to assert itself adequately in the overall panorama — and how
inadequately can our new museums’ domes compete with the old domes
of the churches when seen from a distance! Here, one intellectual demand
forces itself upon us categorically: we must abandon this architectural
romanticism, which is completely inappropriate to our times, and likewise
do without certain architectural and painterly effects, in order to exchange
them for other ideal and artistic values. It is not only in art but also in
politics, in societal life, in practical pursuits, in scientific research—we
demand a view outward, rather than a view downward. We seek a per-
spective, a point de vue. The direction of our lives is also subject to the
law of the horizontal. It is visualizing; it fixes its goals along a straight line
—and this must be valid above all in the spatially symbolic art of architec-
ture and its dispositions. The entire force of Modernity pulls architecture
inexorably toward the effects of perspective, toward the powerfully em-
phasized rhythm of massing, and not upward, to the romantic towerscape
of crows’ nests. This same force is also behind the unique demands placed
upon the plan organization of our public building complexes. Their
principle is subdivision, clear separation and comprehensive unification
only once each component has acquired the ability to express itself clearly
and emphatically. As one may easily understand, its function, separated

230
 into many parts, also requires an equally articulated monumental housing.
The large Modern buildings that truly bear the stamp of the era are
ensemble buildings [Gruppierungs-Bauten]. A certain architectural rational-
ism resounds in this specialization and in the meaningful expression of
each component’s purpose. That rationalism can nonetheless coexist with
the building’s larger overall architectural approach.
“Modern building types!” We may have only touched upon that topic
from one side or the other in our observations, circled around it, but not
grasped its core. Perhaps this is the case because the monumental build-
ings, which have the most central importance for all these questions, are
precisely the buildings that attract the most question marks.
How is it possible to come quickly to a conclusion by means of logic
if one stands as an observer at the center of almost labyrinthine loops and
connections? No — one certainly does not stand in the middle of anything
but instead moves along with the thing. It cannot be otherwise! Nonethe-
less, we can set our minds at ease to some extent: despite all moralistic
attempts to salvage style, despite all unwanted quackery aimed to heal
style, the genius of the times is apparent everywhere. He is the right client
and the right chief architect, the ineluctable leader in every field of
architecture. As it always was in the past — even today, he possesses the
mystical lyre of Amphion, whose tones gather and order building blocks
in their unique rhythm.

“Stilkrisen unserer Zeit” (1886), in: Joseph Bayer, Baustudien und

Baubilder, Schriften zur Kunst, aus dem Nachlass, ed. Robert Stiassny (Jena:
1919)

p.289- May I be permitted to introduce the following observations with a brief

295 tale?
It was not long ago (we elder statesmen can still remember it) that
the muse of the rectilinear, of the triangular and quadrangular — that is,
the building arts — sat on a cleanly chiseled pedestal, much like “Melan-
cholia” in Diirer’s famous engraving. She yearned for the lineaments of
the draughting board’s dreams, longed for the issue of stylistic choice as if
it were a sacred secret. Chin and cheek had melded into a single line as
the right side of her body bore down upon her lap; the arc of her posture
drew an alternately expanding and retracting arc. A pair of sharp gray eyes
stared out of the severe countenance, half Philistine and half demonic.

23
 Her gaze was fixed penetratingly in the distance... In the background,
the stylized Gothic hourglass, the bell, the cabalistic numeric chart, just
as in Diirer’s engraving.
Where was architecture seen in this state? The architectural muse of
our fable is much like the white lady, seen in many places at once and
always accompanied by the same legend. In fact, she was not a specter
but was only waiting; she was capable of coming to life as soon as she
decided firmly enough to do so. Ages passed in this dream state. But then,
one day, “Melancholia” was rudely awakened from her meditations by a
powerful slap on her back. “Urban expansion, easement regulation, rental
palaces, transportation buildings, market halls, arcades” — these words,
alien to her until that time, rang in her ears in a martial tone. The
building muse then stood up from her contemplative resting place — and
with the slap she received, the portfolio of studies she carried with her
slipped to the ground. As she gathered the leaves, they assumed the
strangest form of disorder. And then the strangest thing occurred: our
lovely lady mistook that hodgepodge of leaves — the product of the rude
awakening forced upon her by the Zeitgeist — for her own careful organi-
zation, the product well-considered contemplation. And so, the “new
style” of the present was born, that moniker by which that brew of stylistic
forms is now somewhat emphatically known.
It is certain that the building arts, which has the least right of all the
arts to indulge in dreams, has dreamt the longest during the past years.
Literature was alert, painting, too: painting rubbed the sleepers from its
eyes, preened in front of the mirror and rouged its cheeks. Only the muse
of architecture, more a sibyl than a muse, hung back in the twilight,
guarded with the utmost protection. Architecture, the art of necessity, liked
most to build what no one needed for the pleasure of her patrons. It
modeled its built reminiscences on art historical precedents.
“Art knows only one master: necessity. (Noting, of course, that neces-
sity is understood in a higher sense.) It loses its way when it serves the
mood of the artist or, even worse, the powerful defenders of art.” Gottfried
Semper was correct with this assessment, even as early as 1834, although
he was not yet an authority. Once he had become one, he expressed his
concerns again in the brief but brilliant text “Wissenschaft, Industrie und
Kunst” [Science, industry and art] (1852). He bemoaned the fact that
“the impulse to ennoble form did not proceed from the bottom up but
instead from the bottom down — and that in a time that knows no
omnipotent architecture.” In fact, no tendency with regard to taste could
have been more fateful for architecture than the lover’s taste; in the
moment when architecture should have been preparing herself to serve

232
the era, she was still caught in the throes of a desire for architectural
games, forced upon her from above. And as soon as she slowly began to
acknowledge the demands of the time, what was the first sign of her new
awakening? Precisely the same hodgepodge of stylistic precedents and
studies mentioned in my fable. Semper described this turn of events with
the sharpest irony in the lecture he gave in Zurich on March 4, 1869,
entitled “Uber Baustile” [On building styles]. “In Germany, more has
been made in style and with greater zeal than anywhere else, in part
thanks to the higher social orders and in part independently, by ‘brilliant’
architects. This is the genesis of the Maximillian Style in Munich, which
evolved from royal wish and instruction. This style was based upon a
deep-seated idea: our culture is a mixture, cobbled from the elements of
earlier cultures; thus, it is consistent that our modern building style also
be a mixture of as many building styles from as many eras and peoples as
possible. It should reflect all of cultural history! The newest buildings on
the Isar River demonstrate the logical conclusion of this thought. It is
supported by the chorus of inventors of private styles who give their cheap
imagination free rein in large and small residences, railroad stations and
everywhere else. They, too, have done their dubious share to contribute
to the dominant Babylonian confusion . . . Yet another sort of stylists are
the ‘traveling’ architects who return with a new style every autumn from
their excursions to far-off lands, and try to peddle it off. Finally, there are
those who seek the future of a national architecture, as well as their own
architecture, in a return to the Gothic style. In the latter case, they are
only seldom mistaken . . .”
The reinstatement of the Gothic, so sharply criticized here by Semper,
does, however, have its own merits. Our observations move away on a
tangent — and we hope for permission to pursue this brief anecdote.
At the time when architecture had exhausted all thoughts and forms,
although the strong demand for a style was still palpable, the impulse was
to look for style where the purest concept of art as such could be found:
in Classical antiquity. This impulse characterizes the era of Schinkel’
influence. It was the first step in modern architecture’s great learning
process and proceeded according to clear and admirable principles.
However, one was not long satisfied with a rediscovered Style in
General. The search continued, soon to include the Style in Particular
born of certain religio-romantic and art-patriotic concerns. The program
pursued by the great rejuvenator of architecture, K. Friedrich Schinkel,
had been purely artistic; now, however, the issue of style approximated
that of faith. Just as in literature, where the romantic school of “saints
and knights” followed Weimar’s cult of the gods, so, too, in art: the

239
 Nazarenes followed on the heels of academic art and the ancient heathen
columnar style was follwed by the pious flying buttress style with its
finials and crockets. The resurrected Gothic in Germany evolved from
these tendencies (likewise, at least in part, in France) as a religious party
style. Max v. Schenkendorf associated the erection of Cologne cathedral
with the most pious aspirations: “ “Castles, church and fatherland,’ sanc-
tified by the pious hand, should rise upon the old foundations.” In
Uhland’s words, the peals of the “lost church” rang ever more loudly and
clearly from the distant forest — “blooming in the golden light” stood the
master’s proud building, the tower’s pinnacle seemed to float in the
heavens and the “windows glowed clear and dark with the old martyrs’
pious images.”
The new buildings in the Gothic style had, for the most part, a
certain symbolic relationship to specific persuasions. During the Concor-
dat period, the passion for Gothic building was at its height here in
Austria too, and it resulted in a plethora of new church buildings. As
interested as one may be in the artistic results, however, the pleasure was
never pure. For us modern people who have no sense of integration, true
belief exists far beyond all “stylish” pointed arches, wimpergs and finials.
A false tone reverberated in those clumps of stone worked by the new
Gothic building industry, a tone that could not be integrated into the
normative mood of the present.
The architectural studies that as we saw earlier, had been brought into
disarray by the hard knock suffered by architecture, have again been
returned to order. It is hardly surprising that our epoch, which is mono-
chrome to the point of monotony in its entire lifestyle — in its social forms
and habits, in its manner of dressing and representing itself - demands
such colorful diversity in the stylistic garb of its architecture. The stylistic
formal language that the master finally chooses is only the subjective
expression of his artistic personality.
But some form of condolence is offered; there is some basis upon
which to build. Need has truly become architecture’s taskmaster. And
since architecture has begun to work in the service — in the rigorous
school — of the necessary and the essential, it can no longer go astray, at
least in principle. Its tasks are given, and each represents a test of its
ability.
Total stylistic unity in the formal appearance of Modern buildings is,
however, not yet even called for. We need rigorously formed artistic
personalities to effect the union of forces — and if we recognize their
individuality, it is only correct to allow them their particular directions. It
is enough if a harmonious sense of style in the higher sense evolves from

234
the essential affinity among today’s architectural tasks, and this process
seems to be underway.
How foolish it would be to demand of our architecture that it derive
from within itself a new, unique formal detail. It is today even more
difficult to demand that which was not even demanded of the Renaissance
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, namely, absolute formal original-
ity. The architecture of the Renaissance turned to ancient Roman details to
clad an entirely independent building composition that at that time was
modern. Our treasury of available forms is fuller because we have a longer
architectural history behind us; we thus command a much greater manifold
of raiment [Bekleidungsstiicke] for our buildings. But the new building
organism also demands that the new formal garb [Formengewande] be
tailored differently. The seams of the stylistic raiment [Stilbekleidung] are
bursting, and one must try to help somehow. Finally, albeit gradually and
unnoticed, the new architectural problems will also lead to new formal
considerations; and the changed rhythm of the old forms, structured
according to new architectural laws of existence, is in itself an essential
and considerable gain.
Otto Benndorf’s celebratory speech to the Viennese Akademie der
Wissenschaft on May 21, 1885, entitled “On the Most Recent Influence
of Antiquity,” includes the following penetrating observations on the fate
and trajectory of contemporary architecture: “We see in it a recurrent
sequence of world historical architectural styles in such rapid succession,
in such faithful and punctual chronology and with such an accentuation
of style per se that one feels as if one has been treated to the repertoire of
a long-since completed trajectory of art history. One hears the doubting
final question, whether visual imagination has exhausted the parameters
of its naturally given creative possibilities.” But this conclusion may prove
hasty and can be refuted by looking at our Viennese architectural produc-
tion. “It would be necessary to prove in all built works that the past that
they reiterate has in fact been modified, placed into a new context and
raised to an entirely modern effect. As a whole, they will be seen as a
unified group by a more perspicacious future rather than understood in
their differences as a tribute to the past...”
Entirely unified in an ideal future, certainly not. By the same token,
these forms even now do not appear so entirely diverse to the connoisseur.
It is easy to understand that even the architectural laws of such different
manners — such as the Hellenic, the Gothic, the cinquecento Renaissance
or the Italo-French late Renaissance — are already compelled to move
toward a mutual understanding and a balance of power by virtue of their
coexistence in the same epoch, the community of the modern age. And if

235
 the different architectural persuasions are brittle when they stand alone,
then over the course of time, natural erosion will ineluctably dull their
excessively sharp and stylistically amery edges and angles. Once the forces
begin to move in the same direction, they may even sand them into new
forms.
I would wager the following claim: the kernel of a Modern style has
already been generated. But its characteristics cannot be deduced from
looking at the exterior of our era’s buildings with their well-known histor-
ical stylistic details. Looked at in this way, these buildings reveal to the
eye only that which is different and not that which they have in common.
That which may be proven to be new, however, reveals itself in the overall
tendency of the building complexes, in their articulation derived from the
ground plan, in the compositional demands peculiar to our era in and of
themselves. Many still resist resolution, but a considerable number have
been given expression by the most important and far-seeing architects in
an architecturally inventive manner. Even if the form of expression chosen
is no more than an inherited stock form — that which is expressed in it is
unique and a new result.

236
Joseph August Lux, Otto Wagner, Eine Monographie (Munich: 1914)

“His Times”

On July 13, 1911, Ozto Wagner celebrated his sixtieth birthday. Intellec-
tual and artistic potentates from all corners of the earth honored the great
man and uncommon artist; humanity greeted him as a leader and pioneer
in the field of architecture. His name is not only known in his Viennese
home. Its force is even greater abroad: Rome, Paris, Petersburg, London
and the large American cities have honored him with especially great
accolades on this occasion. And Vienna?
Whoever did not yet know, or wish to know, could now read about
Otto Wagner in all the newspapers in the vicinity of his home: he is
Austria’s greatest architect since Fischer von Erlach, and beyond this
relative significance, a rejuvenator who ushered architecture's evolution
out of history and into the new century. After Schinkel and Semper comes
Wagner. What neither Schinkel nor Semper could be in their lifetimes,
what no other living architect can claim, that is Wagner: the first and thus
far only Modern architect of the metropolis. He is simply the greatest
contemporary architect, and I note with pride that he is Viennese. As a
true genius, he was destined not only to instruct the world in the ways of
a newer, more contemporary, more urban architecture but also to lend the
old imperial city’s tarnished splendor a new beauty that perpetuates and
solidifies its fame. Commissions and more commissions, that is the only
proper recognition due by a city to her greatest son — and unfortunately,
it is past due.

p. 9-10 Otto Wagner has lived through three dramatic architectural epochs.
Schinkel’s spirit was still alive during his brief studies at the Royal Build-
ing School in Berlin. As in a heraldic book, a breath of the dried blossom
of Classicism is captured in the Berlin watercolor sketches of the young
Wagner.
On his return to Vienna, the young artist and student at the academy
sensed that times were changing: architects, and at the forefront his
teachers van der Niill and Siccardsburg, were listening to a new and
ingenious prophet, Gottfried Semper. Semper’s spirit ruled over the sec-
ond half of the century, and, of course, Wagner was also under his spell,
if in his own free and personal manner.
And now, he is experiencing a third epoch that he himself has created:

237
 the development of architecture in conjunction with the spirit of engi-
neering and the problems of the metropolis, yet unfathomed.
The artist has himself become a milestone of the evolution.

A new era arrived, the Modern. Architecture became “Baukunst.” Otto

Wagner had ushered in this new era. His word caught fire; it became fact
and went forth into the world.
Wherever new architectural impulses could be sensed, there, too, Otto
Wagner may be sensed to the very core. That should not be forgotten. He
created an atmosphere in which the seeds of future greatness could live
and grow. Olbrich, Hoffmann, the nearer and more distant circle of his
students, interns and supporters were made possible only by the quality
radiated by his spirit. He had to live through two historical epochs before
he could lay the foundation for the new era. His words and his works that
deal with the architecture of the large city provide such a foundation,
upon which the future will build. Schinkel and Semper were succeeded
by Wagner. Then Vienna began to fear him; he had become too powerful.
Vienna in decline, which suffered its own tragedy.

p. 14/ ... The world recognized and acknowledged him, [but] blinded Vienna
15 belied him. Unhappy city! What occurred here as a specific case assumed
the significance of a symptom. It is a terrible struggle between two worlds,
one in decline and the other rising from the ashes of the past with the
vigor of youth. In part, Vienna could trivialize the physical manifestations
of Wagner’s ideas, but not the idea itself, which is a single, elemental force.
The current triumph of misunderstanding and mean-spiritedness is the
defeat that our own Vienna has suffered in its contemporary form. Wag-
ner’s idea has been victorious in the world, although — admittedly! — it is
the fundamental idea of his will that must be kept in mind and not the
incidental secondary ornament or exterior detail. Wagner's new spirit of
architecture must be understood on a deeper level. That spirit is synony-
mous with the new era that we in fact already inhabit. It was bound to be
victorious, just as Schinkel was bound to be victorious one hundred years
ago, or Semper fifty years ago.

“His Personality”

In his second period, the time of struggle, this liberation took place. The
Modernism of the Secession with its Sturm und Drang and its extremes —

238
 which now makes us smile — was then as necessary and healing as a spring
storm that fells withered tree trunks. We are today quite intolerant of the
excesses of the Secessionist mode, and rightfully so. But as a historical
development, it is particularly interesting because it evidences the break
with tradition that Wagner introduced into architecture. But then, the
Versacrum period was only one of transition. Something permanent has
replaced it: the evolution from architecture to the building arts [Baukunst].

The traditional “architect of style” has already been entirely van-

quished. Something entirely new and unexpected has replaced him.

orcs) After 1894, he no longer spoke of a Renaissance, but, instead, of a

complete Naissance of art. In the spirit of this tenet, he assumed his
professorship and his work for the subway [Stadtbahn].

The complete Naissance had already occurred within the man who
had for the first time recognized the nature of his higher goals, incited
contradiction and described all of his earlier work as groping, searching
and losing one’s way in the dark.
Thus, since 1894, an entirely new Wagner has appeared, a fighter,
rejuvenator and creator. But it must be said to his credit that the new did
not come to him from the outside, that it was neither the Belgians nor
the English who opened his eyes, and that he did not, as did the others,
move in trajectories foreign to him. In this respect, he distinguished
himself from most of the Moderns, in that he always remained true to
himself and that this new entity that he introduced grew from his inner-
most nature, from his powerful personality, itself rooted in a great past
but growing toward the future.

p. 39 At the same time, daring problems were tested in Germany, but the
decisive audience did not recognize the kernel of the new, tentative at-
tempts; they did not even provoke a scandal.

“His Work”

p. 61 Il. THE TIME OF STRUGGLE

It is the time of the academy and the building of the Stadtbahn. The
consistent logic developed. That which was as yet unclear, matured within
 him as he was forced to confront it with his students. Astonished, he
observed youth’s receptivity to the truth for which he had fought without
success among his contemporaries. The youthful force of enthusiasm
flowed back to him, he became someone else, someone new, and was
nonetheless fundamentally himself again because this new person, this
other existence, originated within him.
Now there is no more discussion of a “free renaissance,” no Re-
naissance at all, but instead, a complete Naissance of art.

p. 69 II] THE TIME OF MATURITY

The wild Secessionism fell away like a foreign element; the style of utility
(Nuzzstil), bound to inner truth and proportional harmony, appeared with
increasing clarity, Wagner's international influence became visible, his
competition projects inspired a worldwide discussion, the thirteen-year
struggle for the Museum of the City of Vienna [Wiener Stadtmuseum],
the Karlsplatz and the building on the Schmelz matured into cosmopoli-
tan ideas that no other architect had before formulated with such absolute
logic and unity. A process of evolution that embodies the living history of
a new ground plan.
It is in this most interesting of epochs from 1900 to 1913 that we
find the Wagner of the twentieth century, that which comes to be in this
time is the radical formulation of the ideas that he had slowly but surely
coaxed to maturity over the course of the previous years and had set down
for the first time with great factual precision in his book about Modern
architecture...

[o, V2 ... It had gone unnoticed because Wagner at that time was still working
from the treasury of motifs garnered from the Renaissance. No one yet
suspected that a transformation had occurred behind this stage set. Now
it is known. But even then, it is apparent only if one is accustomed to
seeing a deeper problem in architecture than that of the external art of the
facade or the surface.

pa7o/ From here to the Postsparkasse is only a small step. The “historical” fell
74 away, the abstract idea of the new ground plan reigned, it was concen-
tiated by the technical means of the time until it appears as a new
monumental form, the commanding idea of the functional was victorious.
The sober, practical, functional [Zweckmidssige] is clearly visible and is
thereby not without aesthetic quality, a quality that arises from the mas-
ter’s ability to lend truth a harmonic form.

240
 The internal appears with an uncommon clarity and transparency,
above all the party room [Parteienraum], largely because of the absence of
all unnecessary elements among which I also include all stylistic motifs,
be they historical or Modern.
The new technology, new means of construction, new building mate-
rials magnify this feeling of the agile, functional, organic, nearly skeletal,
dematerialized, abstract.
Admittedly, the overall exterior appearance gives more an impression
of abstraction than of sculpture, more of the constructed than of the
building-artistic, more of the idea-suffused than of the formally suf-
fused... .

241
 Hans Tietze, Otto Wagner (Vienna, Berlin, Munich, and Leipzig: 1922)

p.3/4. The name Otto Wagner has a sonorous ring, just as the names of Austrian
artists tend to have. In it rings something that does justice to the world,
that calls for attention, and in order to find that again in the history of
our national architecture, we would have to go back to Fischer von Erlach.
The nineteenth-century building barons, the creators of the splendid
Vienna of Emperor Franz Josef, do not have that particular quality — a
combination of the down-to-earth with international values; their fre-
quently fortuitous and tastefully implemented style is an international
language into which the national element — gracious and lovely in Ferstel’s
work, drier and more questionable in Hasenauer’s — has been folded; but
it amounts only to a nuance in the historicizing artistic language to which
inheres a hint of rootlessness, like an artistic gypsy. Wagner’s art, like
Fischer’s, has the healthy power of a trunk that is rooted deep in the
ground while its crown spreads broadly; it is only conceivable in Austria
and in Vienna and nonetheless belongs to the world; it is the opposite of
that which falsely lays claim to the name Heimatkunst, it elevates the art
of the homeland by turning its essence into a rightful member in the
chorus of the art nations.
The significance of Wagner’s art lies in the fact that a formal and
human capacity rooted in Vienneseness is elevated to an ideal; because
the ideal of art exists not only in the setting down of all its forms but also
in the fulfillment of its secret desires; in the masterful apprehension of its
fundamental qualities, but even more, in the augmentation of whatever it
lacks the most. In all the achievements that stand like milestones on the
road to art, Kunstwollen is not only realized but also superseded. It is this
which gives the measure of Otto Wagner and also explains his importance
for the time and place in which he lived; the natural dimensions of his
personality transported the issue of aesthetics to the realm of ethics.
For this reason, Otto Wagner's position as leader is no longer
doubted. Both friend and foe have instinctively recognized his superiority;
but this superiority does not lie in the form of his work, excessively praised
by some and hatefully deplored by others, but instead in that human
surplus value in which Vienna recognizes its own value in absolved form.
The passive aspect of his character is elevated in Wagner to a capacity to
fulfill the demands of the times, which themselves possess something of a
conquesting quality, so that the fatal giddiness of the country becomes
nearly heroic in the artist’s untainted optimism. His supra-Vienneseness
turned him into a god in the eyes of his followers and into a pompous

242
 fool in those of his enemies; his qualities made him both exemplary and
offensive simultaneously. . .

p. 6-10 Otto Wagner belongs among those men who have prepared the ways and
means for our time, but he would be no greater artist — in fact, he would
be no artist at all — if his work were nothing more than the expression of
his theory, if his creation offered no more than the transposition of a
singular architectural doctrine into physical form. In fact, that theoretical
conviction is no more than an individual element in his far richer artistic
personality, even an element that operates creatively less as an intellectual
extra than as a will to purity; in the context of his building practice,
Wagner’s theory should be seen as a decorous moment. In it, the archi-
tect’s desire results in rational acuity; that desire is to make his art purely
and immediately a vessel of the era’s need.
This need — phrased in the language of architecture — is the elucida-
tion of the tectonic. Raised to the highest dogma in the normative archi-
tectural theory of the time by Gottfried Semper, multiplied in practice in
the satisfaction of thousands of quotidian needs, this particular need can
be described in art as a new relationship to spatial values. To perceive the
building’s volume itself as the given kernel of architecture was an ability
lost in the facade art of the second half of the nineteenth century; moving
from the impression given by a building in the urban structure, one had
arrived at a kind of building from the outside to the inside — instead of
the opposite; the essence of architecture had been sacrificed to its appear-
ance. The attempt to return to a more healthy tradition had inevitably to
lead Wagner to the Baroque style, where his particular hereditarily deter-
mined character could rest upon solid ground... In fact, this Baroque
period of Wagner’s did not last any longer than he needed to draw his
own strength from matter that had already been lent form; he tore off the
mask of historical style, not because it seemed to him to undermine the
clarity of his own intentions, but simply to veil it. It corresponds to
Wagner’s uncompromising need to state his belief that this veil — the
triviality of which can hardly be doubted — was unacceptable; what had
been rejuvenated on the interior wanted to show itself with all its conse-
quences on the exterior.

All these conditions were supposed to help determine only the exter-
nal form of the technical solution; nonetheless, the underlying desire that
the architect’s tasks could be the same as those of the engineer seems
doubtful to us today. Instead, it seems more likely that the things that

243
 determine the artistic aspect are bound only indirectly to that absolute
fulfillment of technical requirements. The high quality of Wagnerian
architecture relies more on the fulfillment of an artistic requirement, on
the inspired organization of the built masses once they had been con-
trolled, on the sensually experienced balance of force and matter that is
the source of all building art. It is ancient and ever present yet nonetheless
always appears in new permutations because its structure is dependent
upon the secondary structure that always strives to overgrow and conceal
it. Thus, Wagner could also rediscover extremely ancient qualities as if
they were new. His work was resisted as if he were a revolutionary, simply
because he was conscious of the true tradition of architecture in a time at
which tradition had almost entirely disappeared behind literary, decora-
tive, and painterly goals of secondary importance. He possessed an inher-
ent sensibility for statics, a feeling for the value of the architectural mass;
these qualities allowed him to reinstate the simple, basic forms as the
foundation of architectural beauty. The closed volumetric block, equally
expressive as space, weight or optical elements, is the construct with which
he operated; he assembled his buildings from blocks, his urban quarters,
from blocks of houses.
Behind everything that he had made, this cyclopean kernel was still
palpable; even rich garb could not belie obedience to a clearly recognized
elemental law. Because — and here, we touch upon a new essential char-
acteristic of Otto Wagner — as curt as his theory sometimes seems, he
nonetheless never simplified his practice to the level of formal abstraction.
His deep understanding of the value of stereometric forms did not cause
him to overlook the fact that these are merely the skeleton of architectural
form; thus, his art theoretical persuasions did not prevent him from
cloaking this skeleton in the blooming flesh of living building form. The
earthy joy derived from sensual beauty could not be suppressed, and a
lush foliage of decoration grew from the dry rigor of the Wagnerian
architectural doctrine, a foliage whose ancestry lies in the most solid of
indigenous traditions .. .

p. 14- This joie de vivre was supposed to be specifically Modern, in accordance

16 with the artist’s will; it was supposed to monumentalize the entire rela-
tionship between modern humanity and architecture, ranging from the
smallest needs of traffic and convenience to one of the many recent visions
of the metropolis. This perhaps explains the tragedy already described, the
tragic fate suffered by artists whose cleverest plans were fated not to be
realized; the heightened forms did not offer shelter to the empathetically

244
sensed needs of an entire generation, but instead, were the expression of
the individual artist’s dream, which sought — and found — its fulfillment.
As a theoretician, Wagner wanted to serve his era by attending to its every
wish. As an artist, he instead served his era by attempting to force it to
accept his stronger will. By virtue of this ambivalence, Wagner is a true
child of his era; his fundamental tendency compelled him to extinguish
individuality in order to be a mere instrument of the objective Kunstwol-
len; and in fact, he must have had to raise his individuality to its greatest
potency in order to elevate his subjective will to the appearance of objec-
tive validity. We perceive this ambivalence with particular clarity in the
fin de siécle style of Wagner’s era, but perhaps it cannot ever be purged
from the artist’s role within art. In the artist’s persona, the most general
and the most personal, the eternal and the monumental are always min-
gled.
This double role is also obvious in Wagner’s relationship to decora-
tion, which, according to his doctrine, may only assume the appearance
of the mere decoration of the structural. Despite Wagner’s recognition of
this fact, the role of decoration in his work is altogether other than the
clarification of the building’s essence, so that nothing could be simpler
than to point out the contradictions between the postulate of tectonic
ornament and the decoration actually used on the buildings. The same
transformations undergone by the Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque
styles here in Austria, an ancient threshold culture, are also projected onto
the Modern functional style. It was the same six hundred years ago in
Austrian Cistercian architecture: tendrils of the most chaste and sober
Medieval school of art that assumed a hothouse lushness alien to their
original, essential kernel. So, too, the desired rigor will now give way to a
febrile richness. Naturalistic and oriental motifs are heaped on in prodigal
opulence while the unbounded, sprightly fantasy of the decorative ele-
ments contradicts the strict self-restraint of that which is decorated. At
this point, we believe that we have found a gap in Wagner’s consistency.
His tectonic and ornamental requirements do not always seem to be two
blossoms on a single branch but instead are rooted in different motiva-
tions; and therefore, the richness of his decorations thus far is no more
than garnish, festoons on a bare wall. The very ambiguity between con-
struction and decoration — which seems embodied by the Dioscurus pair
of the Viennese opera architects — is by no means resolved in complete
harmony in Wagner’s case; heightened ceremony is not always the fruit of
reconciliation. Instead, a sober man stands before us who has gone too
far, a priest of eternity who drapes himself in the garish clothes of the day.
His surrender to the Jugendstil wave seems to us today to be Wagner’s

245
 most temporally bound characteristic. That which possesses the momen-
tary advantage of Modernity must naturally also lie in the shadow of the
past. Because this individualistic decoration did not grow organically from
the building’s kernel, it is on the verge of sinking into barbarism. Because
it employs the naturalistic fashion of the day, it threatens to sink into
frivolity. It is possible to conceive of a natural phenomenon that would
wash away all that is not essential from Otto Wagner’s buildings and
would not maim them, but instead intensify their effect. Time will pass
its judgment upon our — equally time-bound — conclusions; but it will
not separate the inconsequential from the essential mechanically. Instead,
it will let the former melt into the latter. Then, a unity will form out of
everything that tugs at us today because we stand too close to it; then, all
contradictions that confuse us today will be explained in the human unity
of the artist. Only then will Otto Wagner enter into the peace of historical
approbation as an exceptional representative of his time, not because the
times formed him from its spiritual will, but because he helped to form
that time from his own creative force.

246
Adolf Loos and the Heritage of Semper: “| have freed
humanity from superfluous ornament”

Adolf Loos, “Die Herrenmode,” in: “Neue Freie Presse,” May 22, 1898, in:
Adolf Loos, Ins Leere Gesprochen, 1897-1900 (Paris and Zurich: 1921)

p.39/ -Who does not want to be well dressed? Our century has revised the dress
40 codes, and now everyone has the right to dress like the king. The culture
of a country may be measured according to the number of its citizens
who take advantage of this newly achieved freedom. In England and
America, everyone. In the Balkans, only the upper ten thousand. And in
Austria? I hardly dare to answer the question.
An American philosopher has said somewhere: A young man is rich if
he has sense in his head and a good suit in his closet. The man knows
what he is talking about. He knows his people. What is the use of all the
cleverness in the world if one cannot make use of it by means of good
clothing? Because the English and the Americans demand of everyone
that he be well dressed.
The Germans go one step further. They also want to be beautifully
dressed. If the English wear wide pants, then the Germans will tell them
immediately — and I don’t know if they make the determination after
consulting old Vischer or the Golden Section — that these pants are
unaesthetic and that only narrow pants may lay claim to beauty. Banging,
complaining and cursing, the Germans make their pants wider by the
year. Fashion is just a tyrant, they whine. But what has happened? Has
there been a reevaluation of values? The English are wearing narrow pant
legs, and once again, using the same means, the contrary proof is offered
about the beauty of pants. If only one could be the cleverer for it.
But the English laugh at the beauty-hungry Germans. The Venus de
Medici, the Pantheon, a painting by Botticelli, a song by Burns, yes, that
is beautiful. But pants!? Or whether a jacket has three or four buttons!?
Whether a vest is high cut or low cut!? I don’t know; I am stricken with
fear whenever I hear discussion about the beauty of such things. I become
nervous when some person, with a good measure of Schadenfreude, asks
me about a piece of clothing: “Isn’t that beautiful?”
The Germans of the better society agree with the English. They are
content if they are well dressed. They do without beauty. The great poet,

247
 the great painter, the great architect dresses in the same way. The would-
be poet, painter or architect, however, makes his body into an altar upon
which sacrifices are made to beauty in the form of velvet collars, aesthetic
pant fabrics and Secessionist ties.
To be well dressed, what does that mean? It means to be correctly
dressed.
To be correctly dressed! I feel as if I had revealed a secret with these
words, a secret in which our fashion had been shrouded until now. Using
such words as beautiful, chic, elegant, cunning and witty, one wished to
describe fashion. But that had nothing to do with the matter at hand. It
was in fact a matter of being dressed so as to be as unnoticeable as
possible... .

Adolf Loos, “Glass and Clay,” in: “Neue Freie Presse,” June 26, 1898, in:
Adolf Loos, Ins Leere gesprochen, 1897-1900 (Paris and Zurich: 1921)

p. 65/ Look at the pottery that was made by any people and it is possible to say
66 generally what kind of a people it was and at what stage of development
it lived, states Semper in the preface to his writings on ceramics.' It should
be added that not only pottery possesses this power of revelation. Every
article of use can tell us about the customs and character of a people.
However, pottery possesses this characteristic even more obviously.
Semper immediately offers us an example. He shows us a picture of a
vessel from Egypt and one that Hellenic women used to bring home
water. The first is a vessel for the Nile, the situla. It looks slightly like the
copper kettles used by Venetians to haul water. It resembles a pumpkin
with its top cut off, it has no flat bottom, and its handle is like that of a
fire pail. It can reveal to us the entire form of the country, its topography
and hydrography. We know immediately: the people who used this vessel
must have lived on a low-lying plain, on the banks of a slow-moving river.
How different it is from the Greek vessel! Semper says about the latter:
“... the hydria, which was used not to scoop water but instead to catch
it as it poured from a fountain. This explains its funnel-shaped neck and
kettlelike rump, whose center of gravity is as close as possible to the
mouth; the Etruscan and Greek women carried the full hydrias upright
on their heads and the empty ones horizontally. Anyone who tries to
balance a walking stick on his finger tip will find this trick easier if he
places the heavier end of the stick at the top. This experiment explains

1 Gottfried Semper, Der Stil.

248
the basic form of the Hellenic hydria (Its rump looks like a heart-shaped
carrot). The form is completed by two horizontal handles at the height of
its center of gravity for use in lifting the full vessel; and a fourth, vertical
handle used for carrying and hanging the empty vessel or perhaps also for
use by a third person who would help the water carrier to raise the full
vessel onto her head.”
So much for Semper. Without a doubt, with these words, he had
stabbed idealists in the heart. What? These wonderful Greek vases with
their perfect forms, forms that seemed to exist only to speak about the
Hellenic people’s desire for beauty, these can attribute their form to sheer
practicality? The foot, the rump, the handle, the size of the mouth were
all dictated by use? That would mean that these vases are, in the end,
entirely practical! And we always thought that they were beautiful! How
could that have happened to us! Because, as has so often been taught:
practicality excludes beauty.
In my latest articles, I have dared to maintain the opposite, and
because I have received so many letters that prove to me that I was wrong,
I will have to hide behind the ancient Hellenes. I certainly do not want
to question the fact that our decorative arts are at a level that entirely
precludes any comparison with other peoples or times. But I would like
the reader to consider that the ancient Greeks also understood something
about beauty. And they worked only in a practical way, without giving
the least bit of thought to beauty, without wanting to respond to aesthetic
demands. And if an object was practical, then they called it beautiful.
Subsequent peoples did the same, and even we say: these vases are beau-
tiful.
Are there still people who work as the Greeks did? Yes. They are the
British as a people and the engineers as a group. The British, the engi-
neers, these are our Hellen Greeks. We derive our culture from them; it
emanates from them to spread across the entire earth. They are the citizens
of the nineteenth century in their perfection. ... These Greek vases are
beautiful, as beautiful as a machine, as beautiful as a bicycle. Our ceramics
cannot compare to the products of mechanical engineering in this regard.
Certainly not from the Viennese point of view, but rather from the Greek.
At the beginning of the century, our ceramics moved in a Classical strait.
Here, too, the architect intervened to “save” them.

249
 Adolf Loos, “Das Prinzip der Bekleidung,” in: “Neue Freie Presse,”
September 4, 1898, in: Ins Leere gesprochen, 1897-1900 (Paris and
Zurich: 1921)

If all materials are equally valuable to the artist, they are nonetheless not
all equally suited to his purposes. Solidity and production require materi-
als that are not in accordance with the building’s actual purpose. Here,
the architect is charged with creating a warm domestic space. Carpets are
warm and domestic. Therefore, the architect decides to lay this kind of
flooring and then to hang four carpets that are supposed to form the four
walls. But it is impossible to build a house out of carpets. Both the floor
carpet and the wall carpets require a structure to keep them in their
proper place. The invention of this structure is only the architect's second
task.
That is the rightful and logical route that architecture should take.
Because humanity learned to build in this sequence. At first, there was
clothing. The human being sought protection from the inclemencies of
weather, protection and warmth while sleeping. He sought to cover him-
self. The blanket is the oldest architectural detail. Originally, it was made
out of pelts or from the products of the textile arts. One still recognizes
this meaning in the German language. This blanket had to be affixed
somewhere, if it was to offer sufficient protection for an entire family!
Soon, walls joined it in offering lateral protection. And in this sequence,
the architectural thought developed both within humanity and in the
individual.
There are architects who do things differently. Their fantasy does not
create spaces but rather mural volumes [Mauerkérper]. Whatever is left
over from the volumes, that forms the spaces. And for these spaces, certain
raiment is chosen later that seems to suit them. That is art the empirical
way.
The artist, however, the architect, first senses the effect that he wishes
to create and then sees with his mind’s eye the spaces he wants to make.
The effect that he wishes to produce in the observer, be it fear or terror,
as in a prison; fear of God, as in a church; respect for the power of the
state, as in a government building; piety, as in a tombstone; a sense of
home, as in a house; gaiety, as in a bar; this effect will be evoked by means
of material and form.
Every material has its own formal language, and no material can claim
the forms of another material. Because these forms have evolved from the
application and means of production of any one material. They have
come to be with the material and by means of the material. No material

250
will allow any intervention into its forms. Whoever tries nevertheless to
intervene is branded a counterfeiter by the world. Art has nothing to do
with counterfeiting or lying. Its paths are thorny but pure.
The tower of St. Stefan’s could be cast in concrete and placed some-
where or other — but it will not be a work of art. And what is true for the
tower of St. Stefan’s is also true for the Palazzo Pitti, and what is true of
the Palazzo Pitti is also true of the Palazzo Farnese. And with these
buildings, we are already in the midst of our Ringstrasse architecture. A
sad time for art, a sad time for the few artists among the architects of that
time who were forced to prostitute their art in order to please the masses.
Only a few of them were privileged enough to find clients who thought
generously enough to let the artists prevail. The most fortunate of all was
certainly Schmidt. After him came Hansen, who sought solace in terra-
cotta when things went badly for him. Poor Ferstel must have endured
terrible agony when he was forced at the last minute to nail whole
portions of the facade in cast concrete onto his university. The remaining
architects of this epoch, with few exceptions, had stronger stomachs.
Is it different today? Permit me not to answer this question. Imitations
and surrogate art still rule architecture. In fact, even more so. In past
years, people have appeared who even defend this tendency — although
one of them preferred to remain anonymous because the matter seemed
to him not entirely pure. Surrogate architecture is no longer forced to
stand by meekly. Nowadays, constructions are nailed onto the facade with
aplomb, and “key” stones are hung beneath the main cornice with artistic
righteousness. Come hither, you heralds of imitation, you defenders of
drawn-on inlay, retouch-you-home windows and papier-maché humps! A
new spring blooms in Vienna, the earth has been freshly fertilized!
But then again, isn’t the living room entirely clad in carpet also an
imitation? The walls are certainly built out of carpets! Of course not. But
these carpets only want to be carpets and not masonry, they never wanted
to be taken for masonry. They do not appear to be masonry, either in
their color or their pattern but instead clearly state their significance as
the raiment of the wall plane. They satisfy a need according to the
principle of raiment.
As already mentioned at the beginning, raiment is older than con-
struction. The reasons for clothing are manifold. At one point, it is
protection against the inclemencies of the weather, much like oil paint on
wood, iron or stone; at another moment, it is a hygienic measure, like the
glazed stones that clad the walls of the toilette. At another moment, it is
the means to a particular effect, like the colorful painting of statues, the
papering of walls, the veneering of wood. The principle of raiment, first

Vass
 addressed by Semper, extends to nature. The human is clad in skin, the
tree in bark.
Based upon this principle of raiment, I have established a very specific
law for myself, which I call the law of raiment. Do not be shocked. Laws,
or so it is commonly said, put an end to any development. And the old
masters did quite well without laws. Of course. Wherever thievery is
unknown, it would be dilatory to make laws against it. As long as the
materials that were used for cladding had not yet been imitated, no one
had invented a law against it. But it seems to me high time.
This law is as follows: There should be absolutely no possibility of
confusing the clad material with the material of its cladding. When
applied to individual cases, this sentence would read: wood may be
painted any color except one — the color of wood. In a city in which the
exhibition committee resolved to paint all the wood in the rotunda “like
mahogany” — that is, in a space whose only surface decoration is the
eraining of the wood — this sentence is quite risqué. There seem to be
people here who find such things noble. Because the cars of the railroad
and streetcar lines, like all wagons, come from England, they are the only
wooden objects that proudly bear the absolute color of wood. I would
wager that any such streetcar — especially one from the electrified line —
painted in primary colors is more pleasing to me than it would be were it
painted like mahogany in accordance with the ideals of beauty established
by the exhibition committee.
But in our people, too, there lies dormant, if deeply buried, a true
sense of the noble. Otherwise, the railroad company could not reckon
with the fact that the brown, wood-colored third-class wagons evoke less
noble feelings than do the green of the first and second classes.
I once proved this unconscious sentiment to a colleague in quite a
drastic manner. There were two apartments in the first story of a building.
The tenant of the one apartment had, at his own cost, painted the window
mullions white, whereas they were otherwise speckled brown. We had
made a bet: we would bring a certain number of people to this building.
Without making them aware of the difference between the window mul-
lions, we would ask on which side they felt Mr. Pluntzengruber lived and
on which side the Count Liechtenstein lived, both of whom we pretended
had rented apartments in the building. The wood-painted side was unan-
imously granted to Mr. Pluntzengruber. My colleague has since then
painted things only white.
Imitation wood grain is, of course, an invention of our century. The
Middle Ages painted wood bright red, for the most part. The Renaissance
chose blue, the Baroque and Rococo, white on the inside and green on

252
the outside. Our farmers have maintained enough healthy sense to paint
things in absolute colors. How attractive it is in the country to see a green
gate and green fence, the green shades on the freshly white-washed walls.
Unfortunately, in our own locality, the taste of our exhibition committee
has already been adopted.
One may still recall the moral outrage that arose in the surrogate art
camp when the first oil-painted furniture from England came to Vienna.
These good souls were not opposed to the paint. In Vienna, too, oil paint
was used whenever wood was employed. That the English furniture mak-
ers dared to show the oil paint off so frankly and explicitly rather than
imitating hardwood — this whipped these strange saints into a frenzy.
They rolled their eyes and behaved as if they had never used oil paint.
Presumably, these men believe that their wood grained furniture and
buildings had been taken for hardwood until that time.
If I decline to name names in this expose of wood-grainers, then I
feel certain that I have earned the thanks of the entire confederacy.
When applied to stucco work, the principle of raiment reads: stucco
may assume any form except one — that of the raw brick. One might
expect that it is wholly unnecessary to state such an obvious fact, but only
recently, someone pointed out to me a building whose stuccoed walls had
been tinted red and decorated with white joints. The popular kitchen wall
decoration that imitates stone quoins also falls into this category. And so,
all materials that serve to cover wall, including wallpaper, waxed cloth,
fabric and carpets, may not imitate bricks or stone quoins. Thus, one will
understand why the tricot-clad legs of our dancers seem so unaesthetic.
The tights should be tinted any shade expect fleshtone.
A cladding material may retain its natural color if the material to be
clad is the same color. Thus, I can paint black iron with tar. I can cover
wood with another wood (veneer, inlay, etc.) and not be compelled to
color the cladding wood. I can cover metal with another metal using fire
or galvanization. However, the principle of raiment prohibits me from
imitating the material underneath by means of color. Thus, iron may be
tarred, painted in oil paint or galvanized but never in a bronze or other
metallic color.
It is worthwhile mentioning here those artificial stone tiles that imitate
either terrazzo (mosaic) or Persian carpets. Of course, there are people
who believe it. The factory must know its audience.
But no, you imitators and surrogate architects, you are wrong. The
human soul is too lofty and sublime to be duped by your means and
tricks. The prayer of a poor farm maid will reach heaven with greater
force in a church built of real material than if she were to say her prayers

253
 with the same conviction between marbleized stucco walls. Our poor
bodies are in your power. They preside over only five senses with which
to distinguish between real and fake. And in those places where the human
being can no longer reach with his senses, that is where your kingdom
begins, your proper domain. But once again, you are wrong. Paint your
best inlay onto the wooden ceiling as high, high as you can — the poor
eyes will accept it as good and true. But the divine psyche does not believe
your swindles. Even in the best “just like real” painted inlay, it senses only
oil paint.

254
Adolf Loos, “Die Kleidung,” in: Das Andere, no. 2 (October 15, 1903), in:
Adolf Loos, Trotzdem, 1900-1930 (Innsbruck: 1931), pine!

p. 34- How should one dress?

36 Modernlly.
When is one modernly dressed?
If one is as little noticed as possible.
I am not noticed. Then I travel to Timbuktu or Kritzenkirchen.
There, people stare at me. I am noticed there. Very much so. I must
therefore introduce a condition. One is modernly dressed ifone is not noticed
at the center of occidental culture.
I wear brown shoes and a suit with blazer. And go to a ball. Here, I
am noticed again. And must therefore introduce another condition. One
is modernly dressed when one is not noticed at the center of occidental culture
on a certain occasion.
It is afternoon and I am happy that I am not noticed in my gray-
striped pants, my cutaway jacket and my top hat. Because I am strolling
through Hyde Park. I stroll and suddenly I am in Whitechapel. There, by
right, I am noticed again. I must therefore once again introduce another
condition. One is modernly dressed when one is not noticed at the center of
occidental culture on a certain occasion in the best society.
Among us, not all people fulfill these conditions. That is made diffi-
cult for us. In England, everyone recognizes Western culture. Among us
and in the Balkans, it is only the inhabitants of the cities who do. It is
difficult to be correct there. The state, too, forces us to make errors. Civil
servants — I will speak initially only about the ones who do not wear
uniforms — are forced to take care of their audiences and business in such
ridiculous clothing that they could not even cross the street without being
laughed at. Even in the most intense heat, formal dress in the morning
must be concealed beneath a smock from the mocking gaze of passersby.
And so it goes in the most diverse of situations. When in doubt, one
turns to me. I will answer all questions as I best know how.

Adolf Loos, “An den Ulk als dieser sich iber ‘ornament und verbrechen’
lustig gemacht hatte” (1910), in: Adolf Loos, Trotzdem, 1900-1930
(Innsbruck: 1931)

p. 94 Dear Ulk!
And I tell you, there will come a time when the decoration of a prison

295
 cell by the court wall-paperer Schulze or Professor van de Velde will be
considered an increased sentence.
Adolf Loos

Adolf Loos, “Architektur” (1909), in: Adolf Loos, Trotzdem, 1900-1930

(Innsbruck: 1931)

p.112/ Our culture is erected upon the knowledge of great Classical antiquity
Hs that towers high above everything. We appropriated the technology of our
thinking and feeling from the Romans. Our social sensibility and the
upbringing of the soul also come from the Romans.
It is no coincidence that the Romans were in no position to invent a
new columnar order or a new ornament. They were already too highly
evolved. They took all that from the Greeks and adapted it to their
purposes. The Greeks were individualists. Every building had to have its
own profiles, its own ornamentation. But the Romans thought socially.
The Greeks could hardly govern their cities, the Romans managed the
world. The Greeks wasted their ingenuity on the columnar orders, the
Romans used it to develop new plans. And whoever can organize the
largest plan does not think about new cornice profiles.
Ever since mankind has become aware of the greatness of Classical
antiquity, the great architects have had one thought in common. They
think: the way I build, that is the way the ancient Romans would have
built. We know that they are wrong. Time, place, function and climate,
the milieu, undo their calculations.
But each time that the small-minded, the ornamenticians, cause ar-
chitecture to distance itself from its great precedents, the great architect is
on hand to send them back to antiquity. Fischer von Erlach in the South
and Schliiter in the North — these were rightfully the great masters of the
eighteenth century. And on the threshold to the nineteenth was Schinkel.
We have forgotten him. May the light of this towering figure fall upon
our coming generation of architects!

256
Adolf Loos, “Zwei Aufsdtze und eine Zuschrift iber das Haus am
Michaelerplatz,” in: Adolf Loos, Trotzdem, 1900-1930 (Innsbruck: 1931)
pe torte

“Viennese Architecture Questions”

ooo There is something particular about the architectural character of a city.

125 Each one has its own. Something that is beautiful and exciting in one city
may be ugly and repulsive in another. The red brick buildings of Danzig
would immediately lose their beauty if they were placed on Viennese soil.
One would not speak here about the power of habit . . . Because there are
particular reasons why Danzig is a brick city and Vienna, one of lime
stucco.
I do not want to discuss the reasons for this here. The proof would
fill an entire book. But it is not only the material but also the architectural
forms that are bound to a place, to the soil and the air. Danzig has high,
steep roofs. The architectural solution of these roofs completely occupied
the ingenuity of Danzig’s builders. It is different in Vienna. Vienna has
roofs, too. If one is out toward the end of the night around the time of
Johannistag, and sees the empty streets by the light of early morning, one
believes that one is wandering through an entirely unknown city. Because
at this hour we need not be considerate of pedestrians, wagons and
automobiles. We stand astonished at the richness of detail that the day
had concealed from us. And we see Vienna’s roofs for the first time and
wonder how we could have overlooked them by day.
But the Viennese architects left the roof entirely up to the carpenter.
Their work was finished at the uppermost cornice. Palaces received an
attic story with vases and figures. Normal citizens did without.
Five minutes from Vienna, on the other side of the Glacis, today’s
Ring, “the roof” existed. The same architects who neglected to draw the
roof in Vienna were full of spirit and invention when it came to the roofs
and domes of a house or palace in the suburbs. I mention this only in
order to prove that the old Viennese architects considered the architectural
character of a place and consciously avoided anything that could disturb
it.
I accuse today’s architects of consciously ignoring the architectural
character. Even the building of the Ringstrasse still conformed to the city.
But if we were to build the Ringstrasse today, we would not have a
Ringstrasse but, instead, an architectural catastrophe.
The straight cornice line is Viennese, without roofs, domes, turrets or
other superstructures. The building code describes a height of twenty-five

25
 meters to the top of the cornice. But the roof is meant to be exploited
and to accommodate ateliers and other rentable spaces. Because land is
costly and taxes are high. Because of this financial issue, Vienna’s old
architectural character was lost. I know a way in which we could regain
it. Certainly not with new laws that would take away the rights of building
and land owners. Certainly not according to the old rule of thumb: the
same injustice for all. Instead: anyone who pledges to build nothing, and
absolutely nothing, above the height of his cornice will be granted a sixth
story. Because: it is better to have an honestly tall building than one with
roof turrets in the so-called “Belehnungsstil.” We would then again have
beautiful monumental lines and gracious proportions, we, who have en-
joyed the breezes of Italy for centuries as they have blown across the Alps
to bring with them Italian scale and monumentality, things that live in
our nerves — things of which Danzig could rightfully be jealous.
And then we have our lime stucco. One looks at it in all its profusion
and begins to feel ashamed of himself in this materialist era. The good
old Viennese stucco has been abused and prostituted. It was not permitted
to say who and what it is and was instead used to imitate stone. Because
stone is expensive and stucco is cheap. But in the world, there are no
expensive and cheap materials. Among us, air is cheap, and on the moon,
it is expensive. To God and the artist, all materials are equal and valuable.
And I am in favor of a situation in which all people see the world with
the eyes of God and the artist.
Lime stucco is a skin. Stone is a means of construction. Despite their
similar chemical constitution, there is the largest of differences between
the way in which they are used. Lime stucco has more in common with
leather, wallpaper, other wall coverings and lacquer paint than it does with
its cousin sandstone. If lime stucco shows itself honestly to be the coating
of a brick wall, it has as little reason to be ashamed of its humble origins
as the Tyrolian in lederhosen at the imperial palace does. But if both put
on a dress jacket and white tie then the man will begin to feel insecure
there, and the stucco will suddenly admit that it is a confidence man.

258
Adolf Loos, “Foreword,” in: Adolf Loos, Trotzdem, 1900-1930 (Innsbruck:
1931)

“What 1s decisive will occur nevertheless.”

I have emerged as a victor from a thirty-year battle: I have freed mankind

from superfluous ornament. “Ornament” was once an epitome for
“beauty.” Today, thanks to my reading, it is an epitome for “inferior.” Of
course, the returning echo believes that it is its own voice. The perfidious
book Die Form ohne Ornament, published in Stuttgart in 1924, is silent
about my battle and belies it at the same time.
But the two volumes Jns Leere Gesprochen and Trotzdem anthologize
the documents of the battle, and I know that mankind will only thank
me once those who had until then been excluded from the world’s
commodities reap the benefits of the time saved.

Vienna, October 1930 Adolf Loos

29
 -
:
-

—
be A

y menor. ened Vey

pt (ESS
;
~ = am.

= a ap?

ig
= =
- Ti '') are
i i o ae | 7 | i

i i “ c peak gis
:.. Yrertt
Eyes ~
=a

“teh ney
of - w eal
, ? — al te,
4
i7 , ' im © Mhi.
| ee4 ca-e?
a] pte
ie; ' Lé; sg) v7
® x We) es
Ve a fet t 7
tre tiem @ } af ’ " pW ser ns tn rads —_
j
F if i ‘4s A ak. 4 é Fre) nag.
j
WS visigte i iecaes Pept thin ‘ yeah “ree.i Voaly,
: / ote dor; Poth
ee

|
= 4
sine kb julrei
hen
;
uD SIA i
Ba. aren i 0, 8 PIN ua
6 ia

ies
ae

wal at A ,
’
a
vy
Te f 4 i ihege ‘ere of ‘ a
mtn! Yes » F P ond i A : : ee tery? aOR ‘ oo
" “ae
-

7 bls bi _
,

nh “Sy raat Pang ee

bs

7 ’ * hy Th n aie ; 6 ae i ie : Sas TF Pasi t oy . aay: a oy

; r th ma Pap oe) dts ‘ 7a ides wt i ‘ie oe i eoml wily D
: : :. A td y ee Oo Mews iv Si wtyuse 124°9 ff al: ee wade

> - a9 iad hil 0 Coed deol (her azi : pie:

> Pe
A 3A i ie a 4 pai Sit iv 4 tate «) Grae soe
iay me
pee
a 34
: ey co Ani ime

a
Pig! Cee iyi may. uae

I that
5. ar

2d
ial ieTe

Srocy et aa
mag
iz

nae
een ae ice hones
b , q

: ag Orne

BG, Sit
2

abe nn 9 ov
i

meet a
mt a
Nay ,

a ~~ ) ; an te j ere :
er yes
ee a © cae

Bee
revenge=

ie ceaot.
of
o, 2a —_
fee
_
w
-_
| 7 ne ' }
sins,

ve 7 es a ea aoe
En ih ihe 1 Ap
YF _ : » ye —_
rr ee RI
es 7 es Fo a Ls 7
’ 7 a
: a
Name index

Adamy, Rudolf, 69-71, 81, 84 Hilberseimer, Ludwig, 122, 124, 132

Adler, Leo, 5, 13 Hildebrand, Adolf von, 37, 66, 86, 94-95, 103,
Alberti, Leon Battista, 28, 30, 32-34, 39, 41— 108, 126, 133
42, 81,175, 177, 185 Hirt, Aloys, 3, 46, 60-61
Hoffmann, Josef, 15-17, 23, 92, 117-118, 173,
Bahr, Hermann, 91, 100, 107 238
Bayer, Joseph, vii, x, 83, 96-100, 102, 108— Hopftgarten, Ludwig Ferdinand von, 13
109, 151, 225, 231 Hiibsch, Heinrich, 67, 80, 187
Beaux-Arts, 16-17, 21-23, 101
Behne, Adolf, 18, 23, 88 Jacobsthal, E., 46-48, 60
Behrens, Peter, 18, 23, 64, 75-78, 82, 222 Jodl, Friedrich, 74, 81
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 32
Blondel, Jacques-Fran¢ois, 30-31, 34, 36, 41- Kant, Immanuel, 68, 80-81
42, 103-104, 179 Kraus, Karl, 114, 116, 119
Botticher, Karl, viii, ix-xii, 5, 11, 41, 44-75, 79- Kugler, Franz, 48, 61
81, 85-87, 99, 103, 105, 113, 123-124,
126, 129, 132-133, 135, 175, 183, 188
Langbehn, Julius, 75, 81-82
Boullée, Etienne-Louis, 34, 36, 38-39, 42-43, Laugier, Marc-Antoine, 31-34, 36, 39, 42, 49,
104, 175, 179, 185
Silp845
175, 17985
Bramante, 3, 102, 161
Le Corbusier, vii, 4, 8, 10, 27-32, 34, 38-42,
Brunelleschi, Filippo, 30, 41, 129 95, 104, 118, 120-121, 123, 125-129, 132—
134, 174, 185
Darwin, Charles, 60, 64, 77-78, 221 Lodoli, Carlo, ix, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 50, 62,
Dvorak, Max, 88, 90, 93, 106 12351325179; 183
Loos, Adolf, viii, x, xii, 13, 23, 27, 45, 70, 75,
Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 67, 71-72, 86 87-89, 92, 99-101, 104, 106-107, 109, 112—
Ferstel, Heinrich von, 227-228, 242, 251 120, 125, 130, 132, 134-135, 149-150,
Fischer von Erlach, Johann Bernhard, 100-102, 161, 247-248, 250, 255-257, 259
1O9= UNO MIS eGlel 35.2275 2575 242,256 Lotze, Rudolf Hermann, 48-49, 61, 65, 67-71,
Frankl, Paul, 3, 5, 13 80-81, 126, 134
Frey, Dagobert, 3, 23 Lucae, Richard, 5, 38, 43
Lux, Josef August, vii, 15, 21-24, 41, 54, 62,
Giedion, Siegfried, x, 5, 12, 18, 23 OT Ole LO el LO MAG 25,7
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 51, 77
Grimm, Hermann, 48, 61 Marilaun, Karl, viii, 92, 101, 107, 118-119,
Gropius, Walter, 4, 10, 12, 16, 18, 23, 121- 12830)
124, 128-129, 132-133 Mebes, Paul, 14, 88, 103
Gurlitt, Cornelius, 54, 62, 64, 66, 74-75, 79 Meyer, Peter, 8, 9, 12
Michelangelo, 94, 102, 161
Hansen, Theophil, 228, 251 Milizia, Francesco, 36, 42
Hartmann, Eduard von, 74, 81 Montaigne, Michel de, 120
Hasenauer, Karl von, 17, 22, 242 Miiller, Karl Otfried, 44, 56-57, 59, 63, 105
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 68, 81, 96
Hevesi, Ludwig, 83, 91-92, 107, 151 Niill, Eduard van der, 84, 105, 237

261
 Olbrich, Josef Maria, 15, 117, 238 Strzygowski, Josef, viii, 83, 91-92, 101, 107,
Ostendorf, Friedrich, 5, 12, 36, 125 WO, ah, Sul

Taut, Bruno, 6, 8, 12, 88, 106, 109, 113-114,

Palladio, Andrea, 32—33, 36, 42, 179
116, 118-119
Platz, Gustav Adolf, 92, 103, 107
Tietze, Hans, viii, x, 54, 62, 84, 92-93, 96, 99,
101, 107, 109, 112-113, 118=120, 125,
Quatremére de Quincy, 27-28, 41, 58, 63, 132, 130) 132, 15, 161, 242
201-202 Troxler, Ignaz Paul Vital, ix

Redtenbacher, Rudolf, 65-74, 76, 79-81, 84, Uhde, Constantin, 69-70, 81

96, 108, 126, 134, 211, 214
Vasari, Giorgio, 43, 94
Riegl, Alois, 5, 43, 64-65, 70, 76-79, 82, 85,
Vignola (Jacopo Barrozzi il), 27-29, 31, 38, 41
105, 124, 220, 223
Vischer, Friedrich Theodor, 96, 247
Rondelet, Jean-Baptiste, 47, 60, 133
Vitruvius, 30, 39, 41, 44, 47, 55, 66, 126, 129,
Rossi, Aldo, 37, 115, 135, 150
133, 177, 183, 209
Volkmann, Ludwig, 42, 94, 108
Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 31, 42
Schuller, Friedrich, 46 Waetzoldt, Wilhelm, 65, 79, 133
Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, vii-viii, x, 21, 46-49, Wagner, Otto, vii-viii, x-xii, 13-24, 28, 41, 45—
51, 54-56, 60-61, 67, 91, 97, 105, 113- 46, 48, 50, 54, 60, 62, 73, 75, 83-84, 89-
114, 129, 132, 161, 233, 237-238, 256 104, 106-110, 113-114, 116-120, 132, 135,
Schmarsow, August, x-xi, 5, 12, 70, 76, 86, 95, 149-151, 159, 161, 173-174, 237-240, 242—
103-104, 108, 111, 123, 126-129, 133-134 246
Schulze-Naumburg, Paul, 88, 90, 106, 109 Wagner school, vii, 15, 17, 21, 23, 114, 119
Semper, Gottfried, vii, viii, x, xi, xii, 11, 16, 18, Wegmann, Albert 84, 187
20-22, 45, 48-50, 53-59, 62-67, 69-70, 72- Werkbund (German Werkbund), viii, 75-76,
82, 85-86, 89-91, 95-96, 99-101, 104, 107— 88, 116-117
109, 111, 113-114, 116, 123-124, 126, Wolfflin, Heinrich, 5, 12, 14, 128
128, 130, 132, 134, 175, 177, 198-199, 217- Wolff, Johann Heinrich, 49, 61, 67
218, 220-223, 232-233, 237-238, 243, 248— Worringer, Wilhelm, 70, 76, 78, 82
249, 252
Stark, Carl Bernhard, 53, 62 Zeising, Adolf, 62

262
Place Index

Athens, 120, 131-132 Modena, 150

— Acropolis, 14, 28, 132 — Cemetary, 150
— Erectheum, 61 Munich, 233
— Parthenon, 28, 59, 210
— Temple of Theseus, 61 New York, xi
— Metropolitan Museum, x
Babylon, 206 Niniveh, 205-206
Berlin, 46, 60-61, 64, 66, 75-76, 88, 101,
106, 237 Paris; 16—17, 22, 101, 130; 237
— Altes Museum, 46 — Centre du Monde Arabe, 130
— Cathedral, 101 — College des Quatre-Nations, 181
— Reichstag, 98 — Louvre, 229
Bremen, 89 — Palais du Luxembourg, 181
Brussels, 22—23 — Tuileries, 103, 181
Budapest, 98 Patras, 174
Budweis, 90 Persepolis, 206
Petersburg, 237
Chicago, 50, 116, 132 Pompeii, 202-203
Cologne, 76, 234 Prague, 85, 87-88, 101, 117
— Cathedral, 234 — Appartment House, 87-88
— German Argrar- und Industriebank, 85
Danzig, 257-258 — Miiller House, 117

Florence, Rome, 30, 40, 101, 203-204, 209, 226

— Palazzo Farnese, 251 — St, Peter’s Cathedral, 3, 226, 237
— Palazzo Pitti, 251
San Francisco, 174
Geneva, 95, 174 Soborsin, 173
G6ttingen, 56 Stuttgart, 45, 259
— Weissenhof, 8
Hamburg, 62, 149
— City Hall (Competition), 62, 149 Venice, 150
— Campanile in Piazza S, Marco, 20
Jerusalem, 16, 23, 173 Versailles, 181
— Temple of Solomon, 209 — Chateau de Versailles, 181
Vienna (Wien), viii, x, xii, 16, 19-20, 61, 78,
Karlsruhe, 187 87, 91, 93-96, 100-102, 109, 116, 118—
Kassel, 49 119% 1305 1355) 14921505 1732174. 227=
D835" 2372383242245 249) 25,
Leipzig, 7-8, 94, 108, 126 253, 257-259
Londons 225 Gl, 75, WAS 173) 237. — Appartment Building, Universititsstrasse,
159
Milan, 20, 32, 111 — Appartment House, Neustifigasse, 159
— Cathedral, 20, 32 — Appartment House, Wienzeile, 159

263
 Vienna (continued) — Ringstrasse, 16, 20, 91-92, 228, 251, 257
— Café Museum, 87 — St, Stefan’s Cathedral, 251
— Church St, Leopold am Steinhof, 95, 174 — Subway (Stadtbahn), 101, 239
— City Hall, 230 — University, 251
— Haus am Michaelerplatz (Loos-Haus), 88, — Villa Wagner on Hiittelbergstrasse, 98,
100, 104, 106, 109-110, 116, 119, 130, 107,
150, 257 — Villa Wagner II, 150
— Karlskirche, 101-102, 135, 173, 227 — Votive Church, 227
— Karlsplatz, 101, 109, 173, 240 Voslau, 174
— Landerbank, 98
— Museums (for Art History and Natural Washington, D.C. 174
History), 230 Weimar, 35, 75, 233
— Opera House, 20, 245 — Bauhaus “Demonstration House,” 35
— Palais Liechtenstein, 101 Wien, See Vienna
— Post Office Savings Bank (Postsparkasse),
viii, 23, 240 Zurich, 84, 106

264
Subject Index

abstraction, 4, 9, 33-34, 38, 50-51, 59, 71, 85, 130, 175, 177-178, 194-195, 206, 208,
87, 94-96, 124-128, 177, 192, 240-241, 228, 245, 247, 250-251,
253, 255
244 = COS WD, WE) AV, HVS), QS, SOs P5S¥.
aesthetics, x, 12-13, 33-34, 36, 41, 46, 48-49, 258
54, 56-57, 61-62, 64-74, 76, 79-82, 93, — disguise (Verkleidung), viii, 83, 91, 151
96-97, 103, 105, 109, 118, 125-127, 129- — disrobing, viii, 85, 105
130, 132-133, 179, 187, 198-199, 202, — dress (Kleidung), viii, 85, 88, 119, 234,
210-211, 214, 216-218, 222, 224, 240, 247-248, 255, 258
242, 247-249, 253 — enrobing, 58-59, 85, 89, 116, 123-124,
antiquity, 19, 42, 46, 49, 56, 58, 62-63, 66, We
80, 161, 187, 192, 194, 199-202, 204— — garb, 97, 101, 116, 120, 123, 130, 244
206, 226, 234-235, 244-245, 249 — garment, 97
— the Ancients (die Alten) 3, 14, 46, 60-61, — raiment, vili-ix, xi, 39, 41, 49, 53, 57, 59,
205 70, 72, 84-85, 88, 90, 93, 106, 113, 116,
— Classical antiquity, 36, 56, 120, 200, 206, 126, 1303177759 194-196) 2.042205. 208=
2335 256 2095218; 223; 235, 250=252
appearance, 39, 47, 53, 55, 58-59, 71, 78, 86— See also hull
Soo Jen 3s 965) 1035 105, 1081109)
SS Gy T= 12214-1265 155, 191— character, ix-x, 4, 30, 34, 43-44, 53, 76, 86,
194, 214-215, 222, 224-225, 234-235, 103, 124, 129-130, 183, 186, 189, 194,
240-241, 243-245 Dil, DNS), PPD VD, DVIS, WED), WES
artistic form. See form 257-258
— characteristic, 48, 50-53, 62, 71, 81, 83,
93; 98; 100; 1225 124,133; 179; 189=
balance, 91, 180, 214-216, 223-224, 226-227, 192, 194, 209-210, 215, 217, 225, 236,
235; 244 244
beauty, vii, 19, 33, 36, 45, 52, 55-56, 58, 60— cladding. See Bekleidung
61, 64, 66, 71, 73, 83, 88, 92-93, 97, 99, Classicism, ix-x, 5, 12) 14) 33;°36) 47, 55, 61,
101-102, 105-106, 108, 110, 133, 151, 71, 88, 101, 103, 112, 199-200, 202, 204—
177-178, 180, 182, 192-193, 200-202, 206, 226, 228, 237, 249
210, 212, 214, 222-223, 226, 228, 237, Classical antiquity. See antiquity
244, 247-249, 252, 257-259 cloak. See Bekleidung
Bekleidung, 208, 235 clothing. See Bekleidung
— Bekleidungsprinzip (principle of raiment), columnar orders, 27—28, 30-33, 36, 38, 41, 51,
viii, xii, 45, 55-58, 65, 70, 72-73, 116, S401 275 134591755) 179=180) 182591855
199, 201, 204-205, 208-209, 217-218, 187, 256
250-253 composition, 30, 32, 37, 42, 62-63, 68, 83,
— Bekleidungstheorie (Theory of Raiment), 94, 97-98, 126, 128, 133, 180, 235-
viii, 11, 49, 53-55, 59, 65, 72, 77, 84-86, 236
Wis 220 construction, xi, 9, 12, 18, 23, 41, 45, 47-48,
— cladding, 49, 52-53, 58-59, 70, 85-86, 50, 54-55, 60-62, 65, 67-73, 81, 84, 89,
OiO7,, 103, 123; V51j 195, 199723525 1= 91-92, 97-98, 101-102, 105, 116, 123-
253 124, 129-130, 134-135, 161, 183, 187,
— cloak, 15, 217, 220, 244 204, 206-207, 218-219, 223-224, 241,
— clothing, 19, 34, 69, 88-91, 114, 116, WES, Poyll, DEXs3

265
 content, viii, 44, 51, 54-55, 64, 66-67, 86-87, facade, x, 20, 27, 32-33, 36, 98, 102-103, 106—
93, 106, 112, 123, 126, 130, 134 107, 113, 120, 128, 135, 179-181, 187,
See also form 219, 228, 230, 240, 243, 251
core. See kernel fashion, viii, xi, 19, 28, 85, 89, 91-92, 97, 114,
corporeality, 53, 88, 94-95, 129, 185, 188-189, 116-117, 246-248
194, 223 form, Viii-ix, xi, 5, 8-9, 11-12, 16, 19, 23, 28,
cover. See Bekleidung 30, 32-34, 36-39, 42-43, 45, 47-58, 60-
63, 65-73, 76-78, 81, 83-89, 91-92, 94—
decoration, ix, 8, 30, 33-36, 39, 41-42, 45, 47, 96, 98-99, 101, 103-105, 107-108, 112—
51-53, 58-60, 72, 76, 79, 81, 83-84, 88- 113, 116-117, 119, 121-126, 128-130,
89, 91-92, 94-96, 100-103, 106-107, 134-135, 151, 177, 179-185, 188, 190-
TBA, WIGS Ay WO IAS IMHO), ei, 204, 206-208, 210-218, 221-227, 229,
US, UPN IAS IO, US, Sy, WEISS ISIE, 232-236, 240-244, 246, 248-251, 253,
194-197, 199, 201, 203-205, 208-209 2575 259
217-221, 228-230, 244-246, 249, 252— — Kernform (kernel form), viii, xi, 5, 41, 50—
ss), 5S) 535 Dil 2 84-875 1231242133)
decorum, viii-x, 51, 60, 92, 105, 113, 116, 189, 193-196
15D 17S
Sel 925226. 243 — Kunstform (artistic form), viii, x-xi, 5, 41,
disguise. See Bekleidung 44-45, 50-53, 57, 62, 64, 69, 71-74, 77—
disrobing. See Bekleidung 78,8, 84-87, 97, 105, 1133-14
dress. See Bekleidung 152513350135089 — 9a 20252055220 —
dynamics, 49, 53, 71, 86, 188, 224, 227, 229 DS
— connection between form and content,
element, 22, 39, 43, 45, 48, 50, 58, 68-69, 71, Vili, Dil D9. 555 O7e LID 2310s
92° 94-97, 99; 1LO1=102; 116, 122-125; 132
127, 135, 183, 188-189, 193, 195, 199- function, ix, 8-9, 18, 31, 33, 39, 41, 45, 49—
2015 2042207, 2112 129 216-2175) 228; 54, 64, 72, 75—/6, 78-79, 88, 91, 103,
233, 238, 240-245 130, 133, 180, 183, 188-189, 191-196,
encrustation, xii, 45, 58, 70, 201-202, 205 223, 230, 240-241, 245, 256
engineer (/ngenieur), 12, 41, 67, 71-72, 80,
LOS. O72 ON S25 D222 49238. gatb. See Bekleidung
243, 249 garment. See Bekleidung
enrobing. See Bekleidung geometry, 33, 37-38, 50, 72, 76-77, 121, 124,
essence (Wesen), ix, 5, 8, 18, 29, 44-45, 47-48, 135, 179; 181; 184185; 21592205225
50-55, 64, 66, 76, 78, 81, 83-84, 86-87, goal, vii, xi, 10, 19, 28, 30-31, 48, 56, 60, 62,
92, 94, 98-99, 112-113, 116, 123, 126, 84. 89), 1149121)
124, 175,4185,201
132, 134, 151, 180-181, 189, 191-193, 224, 230, 239, 244
197, 199-201, 204-205, 217, 223, 225- gout naturel. See taste
D227, 234-2352 A2—246 Greeks (Griechen). See Hellenism
ethics. See morality
evolution, vii, x-xi, 14, 18, 54, 89, 91, 116, Hellenism, 45, 49, 51, 56, 58-59, 62, 74, 120,
208, 237, 239-240 132, 188, 190-192, 195, 199-202, 205,
expression, 30, 34, 44-45, 48-49, 51, 56, 69, 235, 248-249
83-84, 98, 103-104, 106, 124-126, 129, — Greece, 27—28, 45, 54, 58, 61-62, 74,
183-185, 188, 193, 195, 197, 201, 210— 116, 118, 120-121, 131-132, 134; 199,
211, 215; 222-223; 225-227, 230-231, 202-204, 248-249
234, 236, 243-245 — Greek (Hellenic) architecture, 45, 48-49,
eExtenomux 1 ON44=45. 9515205 fa 59 Olney 51-53, 55, 58, 61, 67, 194, 204-205, 210
72, 83, 86-89, 91, 93-94, 98, 101, 103, — Greeks (Griechen, Hellenen), 27, 41, 44—
1085 113391222194 26512821295 135, 45, 56, 61, 63, 120, 188, 200-201, 210,
15S 78) 19221945 20982142215)
217, 256
236, 238, 240-241 history (Geschichte), vii, ix-xi, 3-5, 9-14, 18-21,
See also interior 28-30, 37, 42, 46, 48, 54-56, 58-62, 65,

266
 67, 69-70, 73-74, 76-83, 92-94, 97-100, light, vii, 30, 34, 36-40, 43, 83, 99, 151, 161,
102-104, 107, 112-114, 116, 118, 122, Wor Soe 202282 5625/7
126, 128-130, 132-133, 135, 151, 161,
175, 177, 179, 198-199, 202-204, 206, mask, 28, 55, 59, 83, 86, 91, 99, 151, 182,
208-212, 218, 220, 223, 226-227, 230 > 206, 209-210,
226, 243
233, 235-243, 246 material,
xi, 20, 44, 48, 52-55, 57-59, 68—
— Historicism, 27, 88, 97-99, 101 75, 77-78, 83, 89, 91-92, 94, 101-102,
hull (Hiille), vii-ix, xi, 33, 41, 49, 51-53, 59, 116, 118-119, 123-124, 128-129, 161,
67, 71, 74, 84-86, 93-96, 101-102, 106, 183-184, 188-190, 194-195, 199, 201-
116, 123-124, 126, 128-130, 135, 189, 202, 204-205, 207-208, 210, 220-222,
194-196, 218 D229 ANG 5025253827
— Stilhiilse (stylistic hull), vii, xi, 83, 86, 95— 258
DCR MI2Os DONS 13 226 matter, 49, 53-54, 64, 71, 73, 75-79, 151,
See also metaphor of stylistic hull and ker- 220, 223
nel metaphor, vii-xi, 10-11, 49, 57, 74, 84-88, 91—
93, 95, 99-100, 104-105, 108, 113-114,
idea, 4, 6, 41, 53-55, 57, 59-60, 72, 77, 85— 21 123 SOR B Se 75s wl
86, 94, 105, 179, 183, 187, 202, 207— — metaphor of stylistic hull and kernel, vii-
208, 214, 223, 233, 238, 240-241 xi, 10-11, 52, 84, 86-89, 92-93, 95-97,
ideale aml Om l9se2050 945 5689s 0—o, 54, 99, 101-104, 113, 116, 120-122, 130,
56-57, 59, 66, 71, 74-76, 79, 84-85, 91, 135
LOW M2 252 127-129-130
13259135; Modernism, vii-xi, 3-6, 8-24, 27, 29, 32-34,
TS8=190502023
210; 215) 220) 226-227, 37, 41-43, 52, 60, 75, 80, 83-84, 88-89,
2305, 2355 242, 2495252 91-93, 96-104, 106-107, 109, 113, 115-
imitation, 19, 27-28, 39, 48, 61, 69-70, 89, 122% 1245 1335 135s 151, 161, 1751803
187, 212, 220, 251-253, 258 224-228, 230-231, 233-241, 244-246,
immanent coherence, viii-ix, 29, 46-47, 50, 52— DS)
DSN) o 02, 67, 72,86, 123-125, 132; monumentality, 22, 31, 58-59, 77, 88, 91, 96,
1835
20 211 208, 220, 226-229, 231, 240, 244-245,
industry, 5, 7, 9, 67-68, 72, 75-76, 78, 80, 82, 258
20s 21, 227-229 232, 234 — monument, 20, 94, 102, 135, 187-188,
interior, ix, 27, 44, 48, 51, 57, 59, 72, 86, 98, 199-200, 202-206, 209, 215, 219
LOL=103. 10551085 113.0915 24,217, morality, 5, 27-28, 41, 44, 46-47, 51, 60, 86—
240-241 87, 105—106, 113) 16, TI8=1195 1215
— correspondence between interior and exte- 132, 190, 192, 194, 231, 242, 253
HOMMxNAA4 5s 57, S6se 135) 123% 125, motif, 56, 65, 72-73, 88, 102-103, 106, 122,
207, 215, 243 179, 201, 207-209, 212, 217-218, 220-
I, VOD), WEV Sl DES
juncture, 41, 51, 62, 189, 191, 194, 197
nature, 32, 34, 40, 43-45, 48-49, 53-55, 57,
Kern. See kernel 59, 61, 65, 71, 73, 77, 83-84, 92, 94, 96,
kernel (Kern), vii-xi, 33, 39, 41, 49, 52-53, 55, 98, 104, 134, 151, 177-178, 181, 185,
59, 67, 71, 74, 83, 85-88, 91-93, 95— 188, 190-193, 196, 201, 207, 209-210,
100, 102, 106, 113-114, 116, 120-126, DIA 220227 9234 235-236) 2998 242,
129-130, 135, 151, 189, 193-196, 198, 245-246, 252-253
226, 236, 239, 243-246 necessity, ix, 18, 27-29, 34, 41-42, 44, 46-50,
= eore, 5, 21,52, 101, 103, 103, 132,°161, DOES Be Sin Sh L0= Aly /4e 122s 125305
23,238 132-133, 188-191, 193-195, 202, 208-
See also hull; metaphor of stylistic hull and D105 224,032)
234, 23941
kernel need 3, 11, 18-19, 30-31, 41, 44, 47, 52-53,
Kernform (kernel form). See form 55, 79, 84, 88, 92, 106, 113, 116-117,
Kunstform. See form 15G 85, 190207422 22353225227;
Kunstwollen. See will to art 230, 234, 243-245,
251

267
 the “new” (das Neue) 12-17, 19, 21-23, 32-33,
83, 89, 92, 95, 97-99, 101-103, 112—
MAING M2 I= 122 125 .el2 8 a lS2 elo,
161, 181, 232, 236-239,
244, 256
nudity, vii-vili, 33-34, 36, 38, 41, 49, 52-53,
58, 83-85, 87, 90, 99, 103, 116, 120-
12123 IO 5=10 OID S13 05.135 sa15 1,
175, 177-178, 193-194, 199, 206, 226
— le nud du mur, 33-34, 38, 51, 88, 175,
179
organism, viii, 49-51, 62-63, 71, 97-98, 100,
105, 109, 122, 188-189, 193-194, 197,
200, 226-227,
235, 241
origin, 30, 58, 65, 67-68, 76-77, 104, 206,
208, 220, 258
ornament, vii-vili, 32, 34, 36, 42, 45, 52-53,
65, 76-77, 82-83, 88, 99, 101-103, 105,
TO ailGwt 9= 120) 122194501325
1515
161, 175, 177-182, 187, 194, 200, 205,
220-221, 226, 238, 245, 255-256, 259
perception, 3, 32-33, 70, 96, 102-103, 161,
189, 215
perfection, 27-28, 30, 41, 120-121, 132, 249
play, vii, 34, 37, 54, 175, 185
principle, 10, 14, 28-29, 31-32, 36-37, 40-43,
45-51, 55-56, 58-59, 62, 65, 67-68, 70—
73, 76, 80, 94, 123-124, 129, 132, 134,
183-184, 187-188, 190-191, 200-201,
204-206, 209, 213, 215, 217-218, 223-
224, 230, 233-234
principle of raiment. See Bekleidung
proportion, 30-34, 36, 39, 42, 52, 62, 123,
125, 129, 179-181, 185-191, 193, 196,
224, 240, 258
purity, viii, x, 10, 28, 34, 39-40, 61, 71, 84,
88,92, 96, 108,113,121, 126,°128=129,
LSE WS So LO moD sl), 2105215,
2 Wifae2285 233312435251
putpose,.5,°8, 185.20; 475/57, 64, 69; 71; 73,
75-76, 78-79, 88, 92, 96, 108, 122, 124,
183, 187, 194-196, 201, 207, 211-212,
214-215, 217, 223, 230-231, 250, 256
raiment. See Bekleidung
rationality, ix-x, 10, 39, 41, 45, 76, 84-85, 101,
151, 179-180,
183, 192, 231, 243
reduction, viii, x-xi, 4, 17, 19, 33, 36-37, 49-
50, 53, 69, 77, 84-85, 87-88, 94, 101-—
OP, IIA aD, Waal 5), 11335)
representation, vii, ix, 4-5, 10-12, 19, 27, 33,
268
39, 41, 44, 46-47, 50-51, 57, 69, 87, 96,
103, 117, 135, 183, 187, 189, 191-194,
199, 202-203, 205, 207-208, 210, 214—
215, 224-227, 234
rhetoric, 4, 16, 19, 27, 29, 38, 88, 92, 106,
124-126
tule, 12, 28-33, 41-42, 44, 60-62, 89, 93,
107, 125, 129, 132, 175, 179-181, 214,
ZIG22 22
— traceés régulateurs (regulating lines), 32,
42, 126-127, 129, 133
simplicity, 3, 5, 9, 11, 31-33, 35-36, 44, 49—
50, 61, 71, 77, 84-85, 87, 96, 104, 125,
135, 179-182, 187, 196, 210, 214-215,
244
space (Raum), 5, 23, 38, 43, 47-49, 52, 55, 71-
T2N8G6S 915 94=96,) 1035 1055) 1 2
126-129, 132-133, 188, 191-193, 195-—
196, 198, 204, 206-208, 216, 218, 223,
226-227, 230, 243-244, 250, 252, 258
spirit (esprit, Geist), 10, 20, 23, 28, 31, 34, 39,
44, 46-47, 53, 57, 61, 64, 67, 69-70, 74—
77; 79, 81, 833 88) 93; 9981125 114, 123—
124) 127-129 IS 185, 1S 91922202;
204, 2227993) 225; 237-2385 2394246;
257,
statics, 49-50, 52-53, 114, 133, 184, 188-189,
191, 193=197, 244
Stilhiilse. See hull
structure, viii, 41, 45, 48, 50-53, 55, 57-59,
67, 715 83=84, 86-87, 91, 97,1102; 114,
424-125, 130, 151, 188, 191, 193-197,
201, 205;, 208—210; 216—217; 2269235;
244-245, 250
style, vii, 4, 8-12, 16-17, 19-20, 22, 27-29,
36, 43, 45, 49, 54-56, 58-59, 62-63, 65,
67, 71-72, 74-75, 77-79, 81-84, 86, 88—
89, 91-93, 95-102, 104-105, 107, 109-—
111, 113=1145 117—1195 121-126; 128=
130, 134-135, 151, 187, 195, 198-199,
201=202, 204-205, 209=213; 215; 220=
229, 231-236, 239-243, 245
stylistic hull. See hull
Surfaces 354.985 4s S707 OS.
129, 134, 196, 205, 207, 220-221, 240,
252
symbol, 8-9, 38, 45, 50, 53-54, 56-58, 67, 71-
72, 86, 103, 109, 125, 130, 189-190, 193-—
197, 199; 201, 204; 208, 210, 215, 226,
229-230, 234
symmetry, 30, 129, 214-215
synthesis 3, 34, 93, 185 119,130; 132, 187, 201, 204—205, 223,
system, ix, 4, 28-31, 33, 39, 41, 44, 47, 69, 72— 239, 243-244
74597, 102,104, 111,126, 129-130, truth, ix, xi, 3, 18-20, 27-28, 31, 36, 39, 41,
179, 187, 216, 218, 223 44-47, 51, 53, 57-58, 64, 66-67, 71-72,
74, 79-80, 83, 89, 92-93, 99, 107, 114,
taste, 20, 31-33, 89, 181-182, 222, 232, 242,
118, 151, 183, 188, 190, 192-193, 195,
259 200, 203, 205, 208, 210, 214-215, 225,
240, 252, 254
— gout naturel (natural taste), 32-33, 49,
type, vii, 9, 30-31, 33, 54, 56, 79, 83, 96, 98,
179-180
104, 109,135,151, 179, 201, 225; 227—
technology, xi-xii, 5, 12, 23, 45, 50, 57-58, 63—
Mke\. EM
65, 67-68, 75-80, 91, 97, 101-102, 122,
— typology, 101-102, 208
124, 126, 129-130, 161, 191-192, 195—
196, 198-199, 201-203, 205, 207-208,
unity, viii-ix, 8, 12, 28, 34, 36-37, 39, 43, 47-
210, 214, 218, 220-224, 226, 240-241,
48, 51, 60, 62, 70-72, 74, 94-95, 103,
243-244, 256
109, 112-113, 117, 124, 189, 191, 213-
tectonics, viii-ix, xi-xii, 11, 44-45, 47-54, 56—
215, 222-224, 228, 230, 234-235, 240,
57, 60-69, 71-74, 80-82, 84, 92, 105, 246
107-108, 113, 129, 133, 151, 183, 188,
190-195, 198—199, 21.1; 213-215, 217, variety, 8, 30, 32, 34, 36, 180-182
243, 245 volume (K@rper), vii-viii, x, 30, 33-34, 37-41,
textile, 45, 54-55, 77, 130, 198-199, 207-208, 43-45, 48, 52, 68, 81, 85-88, 94, 96,
220, 250 1035) WIS 123—1255.1295 132-135, 175;
theory, viii-xii, 3, 5-6, 10-11, 18, 29-31, 33— 179, 185-186, 190-195, 223-224, 243—
34, 37, 39-43, 46-57, 59, 62-63, 65-71, 244, 250
73-80, 84-87, 92-93, 95, 98-99, 103—
105, 1 1165 122126, 128=129, 134, 151, wall (Wand), 33, 36, 38, 70-72, 81, 103, 111,
175, 179, 183-184, 199, 204, 218, 220- 116, 127-130, 182, 195, 204-205, 207—
223, 243-245 208, 217-218, 223-224, 230, 245, 250-
— theory of architecture, ix-x, 3, 5, 13, 22, 251, 253-254, 258
30-31, 39, 41, 46, 49, 60, 68-70, 74-75, whole, 32, 36, 48, 51, 56, 68, 70, 72, 95, 108,
86, 103, 107, 124-126, 129, 243 179, 182, 188-189, 191-192, 195-197,
— theory and practice, 3, 5-6, 9, 30, 46, 62, 200, 204, 211, 213-215, 225, 235
70; 81, 99; 128, 243 — correspondence between the parts and the
theory of raiment. See Bekleidung whole, 32, 36, 42, 49-51, 62, 180, 184,
tradition, viii, x, 5, 9, 12, 14, 17-19, 23, 27— 1885 1915196, 217
29, 31, 38, 42, 46, 55-56, 60, 65, 67-68, will to art (Kunstwollen), 64, 70, 74, 76-79, 81,
75, 86, 94, 101-103, 113-114, 116, 118— 93, 117, 122, 223-224, 242, 245

269
 ie mat mK) See

le net; i 4

rt aks
eracne: ri
6
s, & ©

“
 _
4
.
-

~ a
9

*. -
=<
 |utysao 5

NYIT
NEw YORK INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
 sae
News eae "

nme
ad

‘a He: 0
~ -

ra -

. F i Yak Ss
cp ds SMe . TY

Le
—rs ;r f
P n re «
“~ ;
“

£ ’

. . fox

<n , Pam *
< sad {
en
‘ aA
wh . ‘ ad

, aa A)
Wen R)

i un
fh ov : ; > \
Svea a
ah ety
“

AeoSyi Oa se

wrt whiahe Dena!

Rog eelar ees Lynepescne * 2
See
om Le t SS