Words and Buildings

A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture

Adrian Forty

With 216 illustrations

-c. Thames & Hudson

To my parents, Ray and Gerald Forty, with whom I first discovered the
pleasures of language

(() 2000 Adrian Fortv

Ali Rigbrs Rescrved. No part of rhis publication rna y be reproduced or transmirred in an y forrn or by any means, elecrronic
or mcchanical, including phorocopy, rccording or ,lny othcr information storage and rcrrieval sysrem, wirhour prior
pcrmission in writiug from thc publishcr.

Firsr published in hardcover in the Unired Srares 01 America in 2000 hy Tuarnes & Hudson 1nc., 500 Fifth Avenue,
Ncw York, New York 10110

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ISBN 0-500-28470-9

Prinred anel bound in Singapore bv Srar Srandard Indusn-ies (Pre) Limired

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------------

Contents

Acknowledgments 6 Part One Part Two

Preface 7 Introduction 10 Character 120
1. The Language of Modernism 18 Context 132
2. Language and Drawing 28 Design 136
3. On Difference: Masculine and Feminine 42 Flexibility 142
4. Language Metaphors 62 Form 149
5. 'Spatial Mechanics' - Scientific Metaphors 86 Formal 173
6. 'Dead or Alive' - Describing 'the Social' 102 Function 174
History 196
Memory 206
Nature 220
Order 240
Simple 249
Space 256
Structure 276
Transparency 286
Truth 289
Type 304
User 312

Bibliography 318
List of Illustrations 326
Index 330
 Transparency
Ideas concerning transparency are one of the most relevant
features of oUI time. T. Mayne, 1991, 79
'Transparency' is a wholly modernist term, unknown in
architecture before the twentieth century. This is not
merely to do with the developments in the archirectural
use of glass, for to think of 'transparency' as limited to
a descriprion for rhe properries of glass would be [Q miss
much of irs significance. There are three senses in which the
word exisrs in architecture: rhe disrincrion berween rhe firsr
two, 'literal' and 'phenornenal', was first ma de explicir in
two arrieles by Colin Rowe and Roberr Slursky. The rhird
sense, 'rransparency of meaning', is more diffused and has
neve r been codified so precisely.
1. Literal transparency; meaning pervious to lighr, allowing
one to see imo or rhrough a building, was made possible by
the development of frame construction and techniques for
fixing large areas of glass. These developments, undeniably
important to architectural modernism, were seized upon
by modernisr architects for rheir aesthetic significance -
in dissolving the wall as an architectural elernent, and in
reversing the rradirional relarion berween exrerior and
interior. This, for example, was how the German architect
Arthur Korn saw the marter in 1929:
The contribution of rhe present age is thar ir is now
possible to have an independent wall of glass, a skin
of glass around a building: no longer a solid wall
with windows. Even rhough the window might be the
dominam part - rhis window is rhe wall irself, or in
other words, this wall is itself the window. And with
this we have come to a turning poinr. Ir is somerhing
quite new compared to the achievements through the
centuries ... ir is rhe disappearance of the outside wall -
the wall, which for rhousands of years had to be made
af solid rnaterials such as stone or timber ar elay
products. But in the situation now, the outside wall is
286
no longe r the first irnpression ane gers of a building.
It is the interior, the spaces in deprh and rhe srrucrural
frarne which delineares them, rhat one begins [Q notice
through the glass wall. This wall is barely visible, and
can only be seen when there are reflected light
distortions or mirror effects. (170)
The aesrheric possibilities Korn ourlined were described
by László Moholy- agy in the same year in The New
Visian (Von Material zu Architektur) as 'rransparency' -
and rhis is rhe terrn that has sruck. Literal transparency
has continued rhroughour rhe period of archirectural
modernism, and was only remporarily abandoned wirh rhe
postrnodernists' taste for fake solid walls; the purging af
postmodernism was marked by a retum to glass skins of
unprecedented expanse and invisibility. ln France especially,
where the tradition of technocratic rarionalism was strong,
rhe word has been used with specific political connorations:
as Colquhoun wrote of the literal 'transparency' of rhe
Centre Pompidou: 'the building is seen as an object which
is accessible ro everyone and can be appropriared by rhe
public' (1977, 114). The same could be said of some of the
works of Jean ouvel, and Foster's Carré d'Arr ar Nimes,
2. Pbenomenal transparency - the apparenr space between
solid objects - was rhe subject of two arrieles written by
Colin Rowe and Robert Slutsky in 1955-56. Their
1
discussion of it was introduced by a quotation from
Gyorgy Kepes's Language af Vision (1944):
li one sees rwo or more figures overlapping one
another, and each of thern elaims for irself rhe cornmon
overlapped part, then one is confronted with a
conrradiction of spatial dimensions. To resolve rhis
contradiction one must assume rhe presence of a
new optical qualiry, The figures are endowed with
transparency: rhar is, they are able to interpenetrate
without an oprical destrucrion of each other.
._---~-_._~---------

Transparency however implies more rhan an optical

characteristic, it implies a broader spatial order.
Transparency means a simultaneous perception of
different spatial locarions. Space not only recedes
but fluctuates in a continuous activity. The posirion
of the transparent figures has equivocal rneaning as
one sees each figure now as the doser, now as the
further one. (160-61)

Kepes's sense of transparency obviously related to the

spatial devices of Cubist painting, and the first part of
Rowe and Slutsky's discussion was devoted to rhis, Yer
to apply the same idea to architecture gave rise, as rhey
noted, to 'inevitable confusions':

For, while painting can only imply rhe third dimension,

architecture cannot suppress it. Provided with the
reality rather than the counterfeit of three dimensions,
in architecture, literal transparency can becorne a
physical fact; but phenomenal transparency will be
more difficult to achieve - and is, indeed, 50 difficult to
discuss that generally crirics ha ve been entirely willing
to associate transparency in architecture exdusively
with a transparency of materiais (166).

They proceeded then to show how certain works of

Le Corbusier - the Villa Stein at Garches, the League of
ations competition design, and the office block project
for Algiers - created by implied layers of planes an illusion
of spatial depth that was at variance with the spatial reality
of the buildings, and so created in the viewer's mind the
'equivocal meaning' noted by Kepes. In the second of the
two artides, rhey went on to show that such illusions
were not exclusive to modern architecture, but could, for
example, be found in the facades of Renaissance palazzi,
and in Michelangelo's proposed facade for San Lorenzo
in Florence.
Although Kepes, in 1944, was apparently the first to
give this type of transparency the name 'phenomenal', the
property had certainly been rernarked upon previously in
architccture. Rowe and Slutsky themselves notcd that in
Moholy-Nagy's references to 'transparency' in The New
Vision, there were implications of this sort of transparency.
Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris. J. Nouvel. G. Lezens, P. Soria and Architecture Studio,
And in another book published the year before Moholy-
1987. Literal transparency.
Nagy's, and equally important in the dissemination of
architectural modcrnism, the Swiss historian and critic Housing scheme at Pessac. near Bordeaux, Le Corbusier, 1925-28 © FLC l2(6)1-46.
Sigfried Giedion drew attention to the similar ilIusions of 'transparency' created by
Sigfried Giedion's Building in France (Bauen in Frankreich,
the interpenetration of objects in Le Corbusier's cubist paintings, and by overlapping
1928), there was reference to 'transparency' in terms solids in photographs of his architecture.

suggestive of the 'phcnornenal'. Following comparison of

the purist paintings of Le Corbusier and Ozenfant wirh

287
 Transparency
Le Corbusier's villas (see also ill. p. 25), Giedion wrote
'Not only in photos but also in realiry do rhe edges of
the houses blur. There arises - as wirh certain lighring
conditions in snowy landscapes - thar demarerializarion
of solid demarcarion rhar disringuishes neirher rise nor
fall and that gradually produces rhe feeling of walking in
clouds' (169). Like his successors, Giedion artribured the
discovery of this effecr to painrers: 'We owe ir ro rhe Durch,
to Mondrian and Doesburg, that rhey first opened our eyes
to rhe oscillaring relarions rhar may arise from surfaces,
lines, air' (176).
3. Transparency af meaning. This sense, and its significance
within modernisr aesrhetics, is best explained by thc
American critic Susan Sonrag in 'Againsr Inrerpretation'
(1964). 'Transparence is the highest, mosr liberaring value
in art - and in criticism - roday. Transparence means
experiencing the luminousness of the rhing in irself, of
things being what they are' (13). This idea, that rhere
should be no distinction berween form and comem,
between object and meaning, lies ar rhe very heart
of modernist aesthetics, in ali the arrs, and nor just
architecture. The ideal of modernist art was thar ir should
need no interpreration, because wharever meaning ir had
was immanenr in rhe sensory experience of the work; ir
was, to quote Sontag again, 'by making works of art whose
surface is so unified and clean, whose momenrum is so
rapid, whose address is so direct that the work can be ...
just whar it is' (11). Orhers have called this property by
differenr names: rhe American sculptor Robert Morris
called ir 'presentness' (1978), and Donald Judd 'direcrness'.
Wirhin architecture, there has been a strong
predisposition to assume that diaphonous materiaIs are
the natural means of achieving this property which Sonrag
called 'transparence' - 'the luminousness of rhe thing in
itself'. An early instance of this occurred when Mies van
der Rohe, writing in 1933 in answer to the question
'What Would Concrete, what Would Steel be without
Mirror Glass?', responded
The glass skin, the glass walls alone permit the
skeleton structure its unambiguous constructive
appearance and secure its architectonic possibilities ....
Now it becomes clear again whar a wall is, what an
opening, what is floor and what ceiling. Simplicity of
construction, clarity of tecronic means, and purity of
material reflect rhe luminosity of original beauty.
(Neumeyer, 314)
288
Alternative models - as transparent, and as a solid - of competition entry for
French National Library, Paris, OMA, 1989. Uncertainty whether the building
would appear dear or opaque, depending on time of day and weather conditions,
could be anxiety-lnducinq: not at ali the intention of modemlst 'transparency'.
Similar assumptions underlie recenr and more
remarkable fears wirh glass than Mies van der Rohe
was able to achieve.
Transparency of meaning is more cornrnonly expressed
in relation to its converse, 'opaciry' - the condirion to
which, as Anrhony Vidler has poinred our, many buildings
wirh lireral transparency revert for much of the rime.' After
posrmodernism, which rejecred rransparency (in ali senses),
Vidler saw signs of the emergence of a new approach to
modernism rhar accepred its rechnological and ideological
herirage, bur sought to problemarize its premises. As an
insrance of rhis, he suggesred thar OMA's 1989 comperition
entry for rhe French National Library - a glass cube wirh
various amorphous solids suspended wirhin ir - mighr be
seen as 'ar once a confirmarion of transparency and its
complex cririque' (221). The impossibility of making out
exactly what rhe various amoebic shapes within are,
rhrough the somerimes rranslucent exrerior (depending on
wearher or lighr condirions), is such as to throw rhe subjecr
into a state of anxiety and esrrangement that Vidler saw
as presaging the 'uncanny'. In Vidler's essay, rhere is,
therefore, the suggesrion that 'transparency' mighr lead to
aesthetic resulrs nor envisaged by rhe modernist pioneers.
1 'Transparency. Literal and Phenomenal', Parr 1, (firsr published 1963) in Rowe,
Malhemalics or
lhe Ideal vííía, 1982, 159-83; Part 2 (fim published 1971), in
Ockman (ed.), Archítecture Cultnre, 1993,206-25.
2 See Vidler, The Arcbítectural Uncanny, 1992, 'Transparency', 216-25.