Even though the USSR is totally committed to the economic exploitation of its territories, especially under the influence of the five-year plans, there are indications that there are areas of productive work that are not immediately affected by this tendency and that cannot subsist by virtue of a purely scientific point of view, even though the economy has been raised to the level of state planning, thus injecting elements of a moral and ethical nature into the situation.  This much is evident: when individual self-interest is superseded by work for the community, new sources of ideas, as well as new spiritual resources, have to be tapped to provide this higher usefulness with continuing purpose.

In the publication New Russia (Vol. 5/6, 1929) the Greek poet Nikolai Kazan writes in his ‘Banquet of Georgian Poets’ about an important conversation with the Georgian poet Robakidze, who is quoted as having said the following: ‘It is the purpose of art to epress the invisible breath of the father in a tactile and visible manner.  If man [168] does not succeed beyond merely expressing or describing the son, then his art must be considered superficial and insignificant…”; and further on: ‘The Russian Revolution is a visibl phenomenon of a larger cosmic revolution that is being prepared in our hearts.  The poet must come to understand the deep meaning of Bolshevism; he is its son, and only through it can he search and find the father…’ — And Meierkhol’d, whose theater was the precursor of purism, of mechanized ‘objectivity’ and the abstraction of acting, has recently confessed that ‘…beauty must now come to the stage.  We must inundate theater with beauty!’ Surely there is no danger that Meierkhol’d will conjure up an arts-and-crafts stage in the manner of Max Reinhardt of 30 years ago.  Nevertheless, by means of objectivity on the one hand and by abstraction on the other, art strives to capture all the human senses by illuminating the universal by means of concrete reality.

The absence of such a harmonious point of view, which possibly only the Mexican Diego Rivera has brought to realization in painting, may well have been what prevented Lenin in his time from becoming the friend of revolutionary artists, apart from the fact that he may not have considered the arts of great importance in general; at any rate, even the durable People’s Commissar, Lunacharskii, was unable to give these trends full priority.  As a result, we have the well publicized debate in the Soviet press — initiated by Gorkii — and reported in our press as well, which discussed the merits and value of a thorough study of classical literature.

Architecture cannot ignore these spiritual currents; on the contrary, it is fully part of them, particularly if it is to transcend the trite concerns of a purely functional approach.  Basically, there is no limit to such an approach; but, as mentioned before, the design of straightforward industrial buildings does not recognize this problem at all, or only partially, since, strictly speaking, the problem as such is in fact the result of pure functional necessity.  It was quite proper to reduce architecture to its basic functional aspects, thus ending the confusion of mixing or confounding it with painting and sculpture, and so at long last destroying its image as one of the decorative arts.  Even though the Russians, and we as well, have thrown off this particular yoke, a new tendency has to be fought these days, namely, the tendency to proclaim that functionalism and objectivity are the highest aims of architecture.  Functionalism in the sense of trite utilitarianism or, even worse, mere consideration of cost and profit, would surely mean the death of architecture.  The dissipation of the achievements of the pioneers of modern [169] architecture shows very clearly how much damage can be done if such a thesis is accepted.  Function, understood in the sense that the whole building as well as all its component parts, its spaces, and ultimately even its exterior are permeated by a consistent spirit, will give architecture a new lease on life and re-establish it as an art in the aesthetic sense as well.  This is borne out by the fact that a number of existing examples already manifest the first ingredients of such new beauty.  A similar case can be made about the question of objectivity.  In a positive sense the consequences are the same as described above.  In the negative sense the results may turn out to be even worse: instead of seeing his task as one of building, the architect sees it as one of making programs for building.  Whereas in the past he did not concern himself at all, or only very little,w ith the needs and wants that led to building, he now attempts to deal with these questions all by himself.  A drastic example of this is the workingman’s dwelling, which the architect wants to reform according to his own ideas, and which is usually designed for the ‘new’ dweller, who is made to fit the preconceived notion of the architect in question.  Our own situation is full of examples that such experiments, should they become the rule, inevitably lead to an even more extensive proletarianization of the working classes than before.  In order to arrive at a true understanding of the whole situation, a knowledge of the worker’s life, and poverty in general, is necessary to provide food for one’s imagination.  Seen in this light, many of the exhibited plans and model layouts take on the semblance of a charity tea ‘for the benefit of the poor.’

In Russia these, as it were, self-induced dilemmas of modern architecture are quite naturally expressed in a different manner.  However, as soon as residential construction there overcomes its primitive form of organization, which so far has prevented it from arriving at any kind of concrete achievement, the same dilemmas as those described above will have to be faced.  Still, the Russians sense this danger, and it is quite possible that they are resisting modern architecture on the basis of their observations of developments abroad — often in toto — simply because they do not understand the exact nature of the danger.  Such an opposition, devoid of any real argument, and which because of a revolutionary ideology feels that it is being pushed toward a moral schism according to the laws of polarity, is now faced by architect-artists whose a priori worship of modern architecture, of construction, materials, concrete, steel, glass, etc., is essentially as unjustified as the position of their opponents.  [170] These moderns want to imbue the ‘new’ materials with revolutionary ideology, thus elevating them to symbols of their age.  Furthermore, it is really very difficult for an outsider to understand the difference between the so-called ‘constructivists’ and the ‘formalists.’  Often, these designs are accompanied by tables of [a] statistical or quasiscientific character, and the Scheerbart ‘lucky numbers’ are greeted with ecstatic delight.  Another import from the West: German city plans and/or building projects, covered with minute descriptions, the whole sheathed in scientific lingo, certainly may be partially blamed for all this confusion.

It appears that the inhibitions of both parties have the same basic source.  On the one hand ideology, science, materials; on the other, force, monumentality, representation, with both attempting to quench the thirst for beauty.  However, the real sources seem as mysterious as ever.

America teaches a good lesson concerning European weaknesses, insofar as it mirrors them as caricatures in their ultimate distortion.  I received a publication notice from New York, awaiting a book with the title The Logic of Modern Architecture. […]

[171]

In Russia the search for fundamentals takes on dramatic forms.  There, as anywhere else, human weakness becomes part of the struggle as manifested in competition work and its results, where over and over again we see the conflict between design for a functional purpose as opposed to the quest for beauty.  In a limited competition for the projected building of the Great Lenin Library on a prominent site in Moscow, the brothers Vesnin unquestionably submitted the best plans.  However, rightly or wrongly, it was found that their modern façade was not the logical solution to the problem because its large glass areas.  And so it apparently decided to give the commission to an academicioan who responded more positively to the craving for monumentality with corresponding sacrifices of functional clarity in the layout.  In accord with the above-mentioned American ‘logic,’ a case like this does call for monumentality, thereby helping this kind of logic to victory, simply because of the weak spot of the counter argument was easy to spot, in spite of the fact that there was no question about its advantages in terms of all its other qualities.  Another such situation exists with respect to another building in a large governmental complex near the Kremlin.  Le Corbusier’s design for the building of the Centrosoyuz illustrates a similar process, albeit with a different set of characteristics: in place of monumentality we are here dealing with pseudorational artistry presented by a brilliant talent, far beyond the comprehension of Moscow.

A number of functional and important buildings point the way in the direction of future developments, even in Russia.  Among these are the buildings of the Electrical Technical Institute, the Textile and Aerohydrodynamic Institute, the Stadium, the Institute of Mineralogy by Vesnin, the Moscow Planetarium and, to a certain degree, the Kharkov Administration Building.  In time the present overriding tendency to express the heroism of the Revolution in monuments will hopefully be overcome.  The provisional Mausoleum of Lenin, which is currently being replaced by a permanent structure, has in general been treated in a restrained manner, the exception being the small Greek temple at its top, which illustrates the common error of mistaking architecture for literature.  The Lenin Institute, completed in 1925, is another example of a building designed to express ‘dignity’ and ‘strength’ by its great black bulk of stone.  The extent to which its real architectural performance has suffered may be gauged by the gloomy and extremely heavy appearance of the building, especially [172] with respect to the striking contrast this produces within the charming cityscape of Moscow to its immediate vicinity.  One may also note the complete inability to provide a good solution for the urbanistically very important Palace of the Soviets, which now will be very difficult to save.  The gloomy and ponderous character of this effort represents the hallmark of a period for a whole school of architects who designed not only office buildings but also apartment houses and clubs in this particular manner.  Still, these are not half as bad as the horrible academic misconceptions of the Main Telegraph Office, in which both plan and façades are equally hopeless.  As far as the Lenin Institute and its companions are concerned, one can see these as the first ponderous attempts of the Russian muzhik trying his first steps in a new direction.

The task of Russian architecture can be seen as an attempt to bring these new ideas into harmony with the traditional Russian closeness to the soil.  In Russia this is no empty phrase, but a fact; for in their colors, dances, music, and folk-art the Russians reveal in a visible and tactile manner a true national tradition.  Therefore the transformation of something modern into something heavy and cumbersome merely means that a synthesis has not yet been achieved; but it also means that a start has nevertheless been made.  Indeed, if one has some feeling for such imponderables, one can sense that this process is at work even now as far as the above-mentioned buildings are concerned.  Just as the Russians accept as natural the idea of a fusion of opposites in their philosophy, so they may possibly also succeed in eventually translating the fusion of apparent contradictions into concrete reality.  The artists among the architects are not being taken seriously as such by practicing professionals and engineers.  However, when obliged to work together with the latter group, the artistry of the atelier changes under the influence of the practicians into heavy, earthbound construction and form, and, in spite of some vague references to Western ideas, the results eventually wind up having typically Russian traits.  This is best exemplified by the new stadium.  Even though the overriding influence of the engineer is quite evident in its design, its peculiar ponderous quality really belongs to the sphere of the Russian conception of art.

–   Unpublished manuscript, November 2^nd, 1929.

2^nd Congress at Frankfurt-am-Main — September, 1929

ANALYSIS OF THE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS

OF THE PROBLEM OF “THE MINIMUM HOUSE”

Report by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret

The dwelling place is a distinctly biological phenomenon.

Yet the vessels, the rooms, the spaces which it implies are confined in an envelope of solid materials belonging to a static system.

Biological event, static event; these are two distinct orders, two independent functions.  The mind which strives to solve one or the other of these riddles follows varied paths.

* * *

The poverty, the inadequacy of traditional techniques have brought in their wake a confusion of powers, an artificial mingling of functions only indifferently related to one another, an exaggerated solidarity which is a hindrance.  Methods of building have emerged from this, and been codified by the Schools and the Academies.  These hybrid procedures are very costly, they save neither matter nor effort; they can no longer respond to the severe economy of the present; the “Minimum House” cannot be achieved; [30] waste is the ransom of discordance between the tasks proposed and the traditional techniques.  This is true throughout the world.  The impasse had led to the crisis in housing.  We must find and apply new methods, clear methods, allowing us to work out useful plans for the home, lending themselves naturally to standardization, industrialization, Taylorization (mass production).

If our diagnosis of the sheer inadequacy of traditional methods were not more than enough in itself to impel us to look for new solutions, the history of architecture (our own past, or sometimes even the present in other climates) would show us that other methods of house construction exist or have existed which are infinitely more flexible, more deeply and richly architectural than those made popular by what is taught in the schools.  (The lake house, the Gothic wooden house, the Swiss chalet [blockhaus], the Russian isba, the Indochinese straw hut, the Japanese tea house, etc., etc.).

We must find and apply new methods, clear methods allowing us to work out useful plans for the home, lending themselves naturally to standardization, industrialization, Taylorization.

If we do not sort out two independent events: the arrangement and furnishing of the home, on the one hand, and the construction of the house, on the other; if we do not differentiate between two unrelated functions: an organized system of circulation, on the one hand, and a system of structure, on the other; if we persist in the present methods by which the two functions are mingled and interdependent, then we will remain petrified in the same immobility:

a) Industry will not be able to take over the “Minimum House” and contribute its prodigious resources to the general economy.

b) Architecture will not be able to make plans adapted to the modern economy, and society, although it is in the process of regeneration, will be deprived of the “Minimum House.”

By “the crisis in housing,” we mean not only a quantitative crisis but a qualitative one as well.  Man today is an animal deprived of its lair: he can only mope.

An exact circulation is the key to contemporary architecture

The running of a home consists of precise functions in a regular order.  The regular order of these functions constitutes a phenomenon of circulation.  An exact, economic rapid circulation is the key to contemporary architecture.  The precise functions of domestic life require various areas whose minimum content can be quite precisely determined.  For each function there must be a type of minimum “container,” standard, necessary, and sufficient (the human scale).  The order of these functions is established according to a logic which is biological, and not geometrical.  These functions can be diagrammed along a continuous line; whereupon the interplay of the necessary areas and their proximities can be clearly discerned.  It will be evident that the way these areas are connected has little in common with the more or less arbitrary shapes and areas of traditional houses.

The façades are providers of light

Standardization is the means by which industry may take over an object and produce it at a low cost, in great numbers and perfect quality.  The domestic functions have these unquestionable characteristics: they are carried out on horizontal planes which are floors; they require a flow of light which in the daytime can be admitted only (theoretically) by the façades: the façades are providers of light.  The partitions which mark off the series of “containers” necessary to the running of a home are in no way directly related to the walls; they are membranes related to the walls; they are membranes, insulating or not.  By its very definition, the façade-provider of light cannot carry the floors of the house.  The floors will be carried independently of the façade, by posts.

[31]

The floors will be carried independently of the façade

From then on, with a classification: “floors” and “light-giving façade,” the problem appears in all its clarity: to place at the disposition of the architect surfaces of free flooring covered by surfaces of free ceiling; on this available area, the architect will install, upon request, rooms (or vessels) connected to one another by a rational circulation.  Sunlight will be provided by the façades, especially arranged for this purpose; openings can be made anywhere, vertically or horizontally, in these façades; and the depth of the house will be dictated by the height of the areas to be lighted between two floors.  The flooring will be formed by a system of slabs or girders or flat vaults carried by posts which will either have foundations in the ground or be suspended from systems of bridges and hanging tongues; thanks to these, the number of posts may be decreased and the way opened for static methods which are not yet commonly used in building.  The disposition of these posts or tongues will be dictated by an accurate computation of the distances to be spanned: what we consider the indispensable principle of the “free ceiling” (in order to achieve the “free” or “open plan”) requires the elimination of visible crossbeams.

In order to permit industrialization, the spacing between posts and the spans of the girders will be standardized.  The presence of posts inside the house (a presence which represents about .5% or .25% — the three-hundredths part of the surface built upon) can in no way bother the architect when he proceeds to make the plan of the house (size, shape of the rooms, circulation, arrangement of the furniture).

Modern materials, steel and reinforced concrete, allow the supporting, or static, function of the house to be realized with precision: that is, the framework.

Independent framework, open plan, free façade

We feel that the house should be erected on an independent framework, providing an open plan and free façades.

The masonry wall no longer has a right to exist.

In 1926, during a cycle of lectures at the Labor Exchange in Paris, Auguste Perret, speaking of reinforced concrete, stated: “It is madness to think of using reinforced concrete to build small houses: it is much too expensive.  Only large buildings can be economically made of reinforced cement.”  Coming from an illustrious builder, this statement shows how widely opinions can differ.

We adopt another viewpoint; not of the present but of a near future: having demonstrated above that the ideal solution includes a framework and consequently an open plan and free façades, we say: iron and reinforced concrete lend themselves to these needs.  Concrete and iron for big projects, and iron for scattered houses, prefabricated and assembled.  Industry with all of the equipment and all of the methods for preparing iron and reinforced concrete already exists.  Qualified and specialized labor is abundant; workshops, factories, mills are available.  The open plan and free façade are conducive to equipping the house in a rational way.  Rational equipment (response to the biological function) brings an enormous saving on the area occupied by the dwelling, thus, a saving on the real volume and thus, on installation costs.  The house that is rationally “equipped,” by elements mass produced by big industry, means a considerable saving in operation and construction costs.  But rational equipment, which replaces a good deal of furniture and makes things easier than ever before, can be arrived at only in terms of the free framework and open plan.  So, the open plan and the free façade must be adopted and independent frameworks be created.

If that decision were paradoxically to be followed by greater expenditures, this would merely be the result of industry’s temporary lack of organization.  We would have to put [32] up with this period of deficit, go through it and in a short time, thanks to industrial organization on the one hand and to perfection of domestic equipment on the other, we would attain an entirely new position in the history of architecture and simultaneously solve the problem of the minimum house.

Yet already, at this precarious stage of the question, we have achieved significant results: at the request of M. Loucheur, Minister of Labor, we drew up plans for totally industrialized houses, made with the most costly materials and executed in the most meticulous way.  We extrapolated the house, so to speak, from clay and quarry and mortar; we transported it to the industrialist’s factory, the Taylorization belt.  And on the basis of one hundred houses, with contract price, we housed 6 people (father, mother, and 4 children) in conditions completely different from the usual ones — and much better — for 38,000 French francs per house.

We maintain that this price, of 38,000 francs for 100 houses, could be reduced in the same ratio as that of mass-produced cars compared to cars individually made to order.  For we actually produced the prefabricated house, and we did what the builders of cars and railway carriages do.

Walter Gropius has given us the American figures, revealing the present lack of synchronization between building and industry (the figures represent, from top to bottom, houses, general living index, the automobile industry, and Ford).

* * *

Modern architecture could get onto the wrong track, if it tried to build mass-produced standard houses (one, two, four, even ten standard models) and spread them over the country.  The raison d’être of a whole mass of architects would be eliminated.  But last year, at the La Sarraz Congress, our comrade Hoste cried: “If standardization and industrialization were to wipe out the architect’s calling, I would accept this and say that we would not have the right to react against an ineluctable event.”  Rest assured, my dear Hoste: the architect’s trade will not disappear; instead, it will be geared down, dispersed, divided into a considerable number of branches.  In reality, the field of architecture has been prodigiously extended.

This is what we believe: As far as the “minimum house” (social tool that is indispensable to the present era) is concerned, architecture can center its attention on equipping the inside of the house.  Depending on the problem (capacity), the size of the family, the sort of occupant (his way of life), the exposure to sun and winds, the topographical location (city planning), the architect of equipment can invent biological groupings within a static standard framework.  Thus the industrial methods required here, as a result of the absolute transformation of existing elements, can be employed in any climate since they can be made to fit any and all local conditions.

Normalization of standard measurements of equipment

The framework will be standardized; the elements of the house and the objects making up its equipment will be standardized around a series of varied models, worked out on an accurate human scale (stairs, doors, windows or glass walls, interior sectionals, etc.).  The home appliance industry, until now confined to sanitation, heating, and kitchen appliances, will expand indefinitely.  And the task of a Congress such as ours will be to try, through the individual efforts of each one of us, to establish an international convention normalizing the various standard measurements of domestic equipment.  This attempt at normalization (similar to that which has occurred in the field of photography) is closely linked with those questionnaires I and II which we sent you and which criticize the present regulations, concerning the dimensions of rooms, light surfaces, exits, etc.

Revision of the dwelling’s functions

To tell the truth, the industry toward which we are going to take a decisive step [33] expects our studies to result in a revision of the dwelling’s functions, with this short, concise (and so very revolutionary) phrase as a slogan: “breathe, hear, see” or again: “air, sound, light” or again: “ventilation and isothermics (even temperature), acoustics, radiation of light,” etc.

Everywhere, in everything, in our daily research, we lack scientific certainty.  Physics and chemistry are the territories which we must prospect in the search for sufficient truths.

With such a program, as you can see, we are leaving behind the customs made sacred by tradition.  We will learn more from the savages, from men close to nature whom the Academies have not touched; but above all, we will have to seal new pacts in the scientific world and in that of large-scale contemporary production.

On the other hand, we are reassured as to the destiny of modern architecture, even though certain leftist circles are intoxicated or dizzied by certain words they consider fashionable [Le Corbusier means phrases like Neue Sachlichkeit]: those who are devoted to solving the problem of the minimum house will always (even in spite of themselves) be able “to act like gods” with pieces of wood, iron, cement, or various assembled products.

Architecture will not be ruined by the “minimum house.”

* * *

One last word about these embryos of new systems which have caused a contemporary architecture to dawn (very palely so far!).

When we leave one function behind in order to take up another; when, for instance, we stop swimming in order to walk, when we stop walking in order to fly, we break up the established muscular harmonies and we fall — unless, by reacting with wisdom and perseverance, we create a new harmony wherein all the relationships are new but wherein coherence and unity of principle bring ease and proper functioning — real efficiency.

Unity: all evolution tends toward it.  Everything can be in motion, everything can change overnight, but unity alone brings efficiency through harmony.

We have told you here of our belief in the need for a free framework, making the open plan and free façade possible.  We note that this technical concept allows us to consider all the problems of architecture, from the minimum house to the apartment building, the office building, the skyscraper, and the palace (if that word doesn’t offend your ears).  The idea is simple: in order to act, man needs horizontal surfaces protected from the rain, from temperature, from curiosity.  That’s all!

If we need horizontal surfaces, we will not build any more sloping roofs, which cannot be put to use: on the contrary, the possibility of placing gardens on the roof (to counter the effects of expansion) will mean profound changes in the general layout of the house.

Pilotis

Since we no longer have to lay foundations in the ground for the carrying walls; since on the contrary all we need is posts covering only .5% of the surface built upon and furthermore, since it is our duty to make the house more healthful by raising its bottom-most floor above the ground, we will take advantage of this situation by adopting the principle of “pilotis” or stilts.

What is the point of using pilotis? To make houses more healthful and at the same [34]time allow the use of insulating materials which are often fragile or liable to decay and so should be placed far from the ground and possible shocks.

But most of all: behold, they are available to work a thorough transformation in the system of traffic on the ground.  This is as true of the skyscraper as of the office building, of the minimum houses as of the streets.  One will no longer be “in front of” a house or “in back of” it, but “underneath” it.

We have to reckon with cars, which we will strive to channel into a sort of river with regular banks; we need to park these cars without, at the same time, blocking up the river bed.  When we leave our cars we must not paralyze traffic all along the river and when we come out of our buildings, we must not obstruct the areas reserved for movement.

The President of the Work Soviet in Moscow, during the discussions prior to the adoption of our plans for the Tsentrosoiuz, concluded in these terms: “We will build the Tsentrosoiuz on pilotis because one day we would like to urbanize greater Moscow and solve the traffic problems.”

The most indispensable functions of modern life require the installation of countless utility mains.  If we agree that these mains should be able to climb freely from the bottom to the top of the house and come back down again (skyscrapers, offices, apartment buildings, villas, etc.) and that they should, as the most elementary common sense demands, be able to connect with their point of origin inside or outside of the city, and yet remain within sight for checking and within reach for repairs, then we will realize that the that the traditional wall and foundations are so many obstacles, and that burying pipelines under the ground is the most incredible nonsense of modern times.  The framework with open plan means total freedom in placing mains.  Pilotis make the “elevated street” feasible and thereby, the classification of traffic: pedestrians, cars, and parking.  And the city’s utility mains will be installed like the working parts of a machine in a factory: accessible for inspection and repairs.

As a result, the entire surface of the city will be available for traffic.  Moreover, new ground will be created: the roof gardens.  What fortunate circumstances, if we know how to take advantage of them!

From this new building statute arise new architectural attitudes.  Should we give it all up? Of course not! In the harmonization of the whole, let us create, let us tend toward unity! We feel that modern architecture is just beginning and that a new cycle has just become apparent.

As for the solution to be found for the problem of the “minimum house,” we demand not mere methods of expediency, of temporary adaptation to existing but false situations, but rather methods which are harmonized with those of work as it should be done today.  All we need is to get over the hurdle! But first we must make up our minds to get over!

– Reproduced in The Radiant City (1933)

No doubt much of what is shown can and will be criticized. Errors of detail will appear, but this is why the development was built. It is an experiment and without experiments here are no results, and no progress. In many of the speeches which were made, there were constant and anxious reassurances that this was not an end but a beginning. If these assurances were intended to forestall criticism they seem misguided. The development is bound to become a whetstone for critical opinion. But we should wholeheartedly support the attitudes which have led to the creation of these buildings, for surely no forward-looking human being can doubt that the experiment will bring results of great importance, or that it is an event of great cultural significance.

The exhibition of plans and models should complement the development itself and draw attention to the generation of architects who in every country are standing up openly and sincerely in support of the new architecture. Here one has an overwhelming impression that these developments are not the expression of a style in the old-fashioned sense, based on and embodying a specific formal language, but that they are grounded in the structure of our times, answering to the specific demands of the task in question. And as Mies van der Rohe emphasized in his opening speech, this part of the exhibition shows that the Weißenhof site is not just an example of contemporary fashion in this country but part of a movement which is spreading throughout the world. And we may count ourselves lucky that we are able to examine the designs and plans of this group from all over the world, gathered together here in one place.

The Weissenhof Housing Settlement gives evidence of two great changes: the change from handicraft methods of construction to industrialization, and the premonition of a new way of life.

Mies van der Rohe’s original plan was to interlock the house-plots so that a unified relationship could be created and the green areas would flow into one another.  This plan unfortunately could not be realized for commercial reasons.  Even so it is possible to experience how relationship and order are created by the level unassertive surfaces of flat roofs in places that would otherwise have been utterly chaotic.  In flat towns, such as the Hague, one can observe ow flat roofs create wide interconnecting bands.

The Weissenhof Housing Settlement is dominated by Mies van der Rohe’s steel-framed apartment house.  Even the apartment house, which today usually takes the form of a palace or a castle, is here transformed into a more loosely articulated structure.  The steel frame permits one to eliminate all rigid inner and outer walls.  For the outside, an insulated filling wall with a half-brick thickness is sufficient, and the inner and outer walls.  These window strips are the only limiting factors.  These window strips are wide and continuous in order to enable good light to penetrate as deeply as possible into the building.  The problem of the apartment house is today (1927) even further from solution than that of the single-family house.  [599] Mies van der Rohe’s steel skeleton shows a possible way of unraveling this problem.

Many architectural critics found the continuous steel supports that ran freely through the houses of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier very unsightly.  It seems that it is especially difficult for the architect to free himself from the appearance of traditional structural methods in which the walls were the bearing members of the house.  It is fundamentally organic to our present-day conceptions of space that complete expression is given to the inner construction of our houses.  The continuous steel support is definitely not an aesthetic focal point.  It may be allowed to run quietly through the space.  Just as the columns of ancient architecture give the onlooker a feeling of security by means of their ordered play of load and support, so the continuous steel or concrete shaft gives today’s onlooker an impression of powerful energy that flows uniformly through the house.  The free-standing visible column is thus given a new expressive quality apart from its constructive objectivity.  Here is continuous energy at work: nothing in our life remains an isolated experience: everything stands in a many-sided relationship — within, without, above, below!

Mies van der Rohe has followed the possibilities of his building through to the utmost detail.  Plywood walls that can be screwed onto the ceilings enable the occupier to alter the disposition of his space at will.  Doorless connections between rooms.  One is continually amazed at the amount of space that this method makes possible within an area of 70 square meters (750 square feet).  It acts upon us as a necessary stimulant — an impetus that can set industry into motion.

– Originally published as “L’Exposition du Werkbund à Stuttgart 1927″

In fact, as everyone will remember, the aim to achieve a Gesamtarbeit formed the basis of the modern art movement in Holland, which around 1916 propagated its ideas in the modest periodical De Stijl and took up the defense for a collective rendering as opposed to an individualistic one.  Then, in the midst of the war, no trace of this zeal was to be discerned in other countries, and this is understandable when we realize that this new tendency postulated an international orientation.

The periodical G, in which the functionalists started publishing their views on architecture in 1923, was primarily based on the ideas of the Dutch and Russian artists, the former of which were becoming more and more the aorta of the new direction in Europe.  It is because of the initiative of the architect Mies van der Rohe, by far the strongest personality of the group of German constructivists, the core of the circle around G (only five issues of this periodical were ever published), that the common ideal of a demonstrative architecture exhibition was almost completely realized.  Not only is the Siedlung Weißenhof Mies van der Rohe’s work with respect to grouping, etc., but the stands of construction materials and ingredients in the Gewerbehalle [Trade Hall] and the Plan- und Modellausstellung [exhibit of plans and models] — all of which are of great [165] importance for the entire planning of the exhibition — can be considered his mental property as well.  Neither should we forget the Versuchsgelände [testing area], located next to the Weißenhofsiedlung, where the visitor can get acquainted with the construction and building method and the materials used here.  Various kinds of solutions for roof covering of flat roofs, sound proof walls, etc., are displayed here.

Certainly nobody will be surprised that the realization of this wide-ranging demonstration required enormous energy, all the more because unexpected difficulties, prejudices, and even political complications had to be overcome; not to speak even of the financial difficulties, resulting from the tight budget with which the organizers had to work.  We have to credit the architect Mies van der Rohe, vice president of the Werkbund, for having tackled the majority of these problems, assisted by the 15 collaborating architects as well as by his faithful supporters Werner Gräff, Willi Bauermeister, [Ludwig] Hilberseimer, and [Richard] Döcker, etc.; the latter undertook the supervision and execution of the work.

It is not premature to state that — leaving the quality of the architectural products themselves aside for the moment — this undertaking of a demonstrative exhibition is the product of a modern necessity, not only putting the traditional way of exhibiting in the shadow, but surpassing it, and rendering it obsolete for future use.  Those who have visited the exhibition held in Paris in 1925 and compare it to this exhibition, will have to acknowledge that the former sinks into insignificance compared to the construction manifestation in Stuttgart.  The latter contrasts sharply with the exhibition in Paris, with respect to organization as well as to the exterior aspect.

II. Impressions of the exhibition. — When we, after visiting the Weißenhofsiedlung, come to the glass display in the Gewerbehalle, we find ourselves, without preparation, in the best and purest presentation of this exhibition in the field of interior architecture (if these words are not a misnomer!).  This glass hall, also executed after a design of Mies van der Rohe, owes its creation to the unequivocal task of displaying fragile material (semi-transparent and opaque glass of different colors) in such a way that it would be shown to full advantage.  This was realized best by raising glass plates of enormous dimensions straight in the free space as walls, unprotected from top to bottom, without base board, profile or ornament.  These glass plates are mounted in narrow, flat frames of nickel-coated steel.  The problem was a sober one, but the solution reached the highest point that blessed, inspired visual artists can attain, and that only in very special moments: conquering the material with all of its faults, such as [166-167] weightiness, resistance, and transience, with the maximum of the energy force of the material itself.

Every material has its own energy force, and the challenge is to enhance this energy force to its maximum by proper application.  The opposite is: violation of the material by wrong application, whereby a relatively large percentage of the energy force is lost.  Weighing one material against another in respect to their energy and character, and proportioning them well, most certainly belongs to the essence of the new architecture.  Only in this way can modern architecture bring to realization what it has to offer in involuntary beauty.

Only when iron concrete was, for the first time, applied in the right way (I believe this was done by Wright), were the character of the tension and the energy of the iron concrete shown off to such an advantage that architecture attained a new beauty, involuntarily, without a preconceived aesthetic intention.  The same is true for plate glass, seamless floors, and other unjointed surfaces of materials, which by their purity, simplicity, and their Gespanntheit [surface tension] are in keeping with the modern mentality.

It is my utter conviction, formed in practice, that only the ultimate surface is decisive in architecture.  “How so? and what about the construction, the mechanism?”

The answer to this question is: “The ultimate surface is in itself the result of the construction.  Bad construction leads to a bad surface.  Good construction produces a sound surface with tension.”  Indeed, the finishing touch of architecture is in the finish of the surface, interior as well as exterior.  The development of the ultimate surface is essential, from the first stone to the last stroke of paint.  Every architect having a visual sense for construction knows this, and with this glass display Mies van der Rohe proved to be on top of this construction.

What must be remembered in his problem of the ultimate surface is the following: only the surface is of importance for people.  Man does not live within the construction, within the architectural skeleton, but only touches architecture essentially through its ultimate surface (externally as the cityscape, internally as the interior).  The functional element becomes automatic, only the summarizing surface is of importance, for sensory perception as well as for psychological well-being.  It has an impact on the morale of the inhabitant.  A previous generation (for instance, that of the Jugendstil movement from Darmstadt) was impervious to the purity of the surface and violated it by a multitude of separate objects, wanting to camouflage their lack of sense of architecture and construction.  [168-169] Nowadays things are different, perhaps we have come to the other extreme, and the new ideal of an empty space and a pure surface comes closer to realization all the time.  Here we are in the midst of the problem of so-called “interior design” and I will have occasion to go into more details about this — still unsolved — problem in a special article.

III. Houses, are like people.  Their features, posture, gait, clothing, in short: their surface, is a reflection of their thinking, their inner life.  The glass hall in the Gewerbehalle is the expression of a broad-minded human being with lofty ideas.  The same is true for this housing complex, which, on entering the Siedlung, immediately strikes us by its grand conception.  The interiors also show this.  Although the dwellings are still separated from one another, they do not give us the dreary impression of juxtaposed uniform living-cells.  When shall we finally venture on centralized construction, and assemble a large diversity of dwelling possibilities and life functions under one roof (approximating the American skyscrapers)? Just as, with respect to the interior, the trend points toward the unit space, it will, with respect to housing for the masses, lead us to the “unit dwelling,” standardized in accordance with uniform dimensions (modules).  Then also the hopelessly boring repetition of one and the same type of dwelling will not be seen anymore.

This row of mass-produced houses already resembles this kind of “unit dwelling” in many respects, and belongs to the best in its kind in the Weißenhofsiedlung.  For the same recurring surface on which to build, different floor plans were designed (with a few exceptions), which warrant, with small variations, about the same economical layout.  In these dwellings finally the traditional space between ceiling and doors was abandoned.

The latter have been extended to the ceiling, which makes the rooms look much higher than they really are.  Because of a lavish use of glass the rooms, corridors, and service quarters are large and light.  The floor plan, the living function and can be followed everywhere.  Here we see the great advantage of wide windows, contrasting with the relatively dim rooms and caverns of the castle which Behrens erected between these modern houses, wherein the small openings for the window are totally out of proportion with the façades.

In the housing block by Mies van der Rohe the interior furnishings were for the most part not the architect’s responsibility.  Therefore we find many things there that are incongruous with the modern surroundings (somewhere I even saw an interior where the walls were hung with striped wallpaper!).

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But the same holds also true for the extraordinarily brash, overwrought, and very depressing “sculpted” baroque interiors by the Swiss Jeanneret (Corbusier), who showed with his two houses constructed in Weissenhof that he, in spite of his many good theories, in practice never overcame the Renaissance and the Baroque.  These interiors are speculative aesthetic, puristic paintings, converted into sculpture.

IV. Le Corbusier’s architecture in Stuttgart is strongly influenced by the German functionalists, although these were not as clever as Le Corbusier in employing their construction principles in practice.  Shifting of the pillars inward, as Corbusier practices — I believe he was the first to do so — is also derived from them.  In Russia, too, people already struggled years ago for the abolition of the traditional concepts of statics and the visual feeling of gravity in modern architecture.  Only enrichment of technical possibilities could meet this need.  The latest exhibition of Suprematist architecture in Moscow (some examples of which could also be seen in the Plan- und Modell-Ausstellung in Stuttgart) showed some bold examples of these endeavors, whereby the daring computations were important.  Basic in new architecture is the maximal use of the materials.  With the functionalists, however, the decorative as well as the visual effect has been totally suppressed.  Therefore, Corbusier’s villa construction does not agree with this, since with him everything, thus every part as well, is geared to an aesthetic (albeit purist-pittoresque) effect.  His interiors are sculptures in color, having a very surprising visual effect, which are, however, only in exceptional cases serviceable as living space.  These interiors are conceived too much as studios (like in Montmartre!).  In no building is one so much aware of the painter and so little of the constructor as in the dwellings by Le Corbusier.

Nevertheless there is something extraordinarily depressing in the narrow long corridors, which, although their dimensions are derived from the paquebots [mailboats], remind us of the narrow clefts of the trenches.  The chocolate-brown of the walls augments this impression even further.  No, this architecture, this interior, is not “of our time,” in spite of the fact that very beautiful cubist paintings are hung on the walls.

As a result, the general consensus is that Le Corbusier-Saugnier has, by aiming at outward appearance, with this architecture, except for a few constructive details, stopped being a constructor of such great importance as was accorded him until recently.

Scharoun is more conscientious.  I previously discussed these new tendencies in architecture, which I summarized under the name “Functionalism,” and I am very surprised that the found of this trend, [171] the architect Häring, is not represented here.  Principally this trend came from Russia, and therefore it concurs with the communist philosophy of life.  It is after all understandable that, as a reaction to a period of decorative squandering and overloading, another period followed of maximal restraint in architecture and the production of utensils.  However, the question whether such a dogmatically, even politically conceived spatial constraint, although only employed for factories and workers’ dwellings, can be carried through from a biological and psychological, in short: humanitarian, viewpoint, should rationally be answered with “no.”  There is absolutely no secret that in the new construction methods, the problem is sober, clear, and business-like, and the correct, logical use of the modern building materials will cause the new form of architecture to emerge quite involuntarily.  The latter facilitates a realization on a grand scale [172] (called “industrialization” by me).  The “Kossel” system may serve here as an example in miniature.

Although the dwelling has become an easily manageable apparatus for daily living, in which all aesthetics are odious, no one will deny that the surplus of human energy makes demands beyond a solely practical and hygienical space for living.  In which form these demands express themselves in the dwelling (the interior) wholly depends on the inhabitant.  Everyone carries his surroundings, his atmosphere with him and therefore the neutral living space may be called the most successful.  Built-in furniture, even that of cement or concrete, can wreak havoc here.  A modern dwelling will not press the taste or the aesthetic conscience of the individual who lives in it.

In contrast to the attempt at maximal neutralization and austerity in the dwelling (as practiced more or less consistently by the functionalists, among whom I include Stam), nearly all the other interiors may be called obtrusive or “middle class.”  In the former, the designers wanted to break with the hypocritical smugness characterizing the interior of a previous generation (with or without symmetry, with or without antimacassars!), of which there are several “modernizations” to be found here, femininely appointed interiors under French influence by designers from Frank, Taut, and Behrens to Oud.

Neither does Scharoun escape these aesthetical treatments of ceiling, walls, and details, considered odious according to functionalist ideas.  A rational functionalism, as the modern, undecorated utensils show, can be carried through in the case of passenger ships and train compartments (in which the architects Loos and Corbusier find their inspiration).  A solution for the modern dwelling which is satisfactory in all respects has as yet not been found, although the architects Mies van der Rohe, Scharoun, Stam, and also Gropius, though the latter to a lesser degree, are closest to such a solution.

If modern architecture is to become suitable for industrialization, we not only will have to sacrifice most of the aesthetic element, but also as a consequence thereof to cut off new construction completely and ruthlessly from the aesthetic architectural tradition.  This has already happened to the utensils for daily life, which have highly risen in our esteem.  We have severed them mercilessly from every notion like “art,” applied to art and arts and crafts.  Now we recognize that the best, yes — even the most beautiful, utensils are those which were not touched by craftsy designers.  Once architecture will also come to this stage.  The Siedlung Weißenhof confirms this once more.

Originally published in Het Bouwbedrijf, Vol. 4, No. 24, November 1927.  Pgs. 556-559.

Do we need flats for subsistence living?

Objections against the building of smaller flats are frequently raised.  The usual arguments are trotted out; the smaller the living space, the more expensive each unit of this space becomes; flats below a certain size are later impossible to let.  Questions of hygiene and mental health are raised and contribute to the final recommendation of larger flats, of about fifty square meters living area, should be built.  The old ones would then be passed down to the lower paid.

Who makes these recommendations?

Are they voiced by the hundreds and thousands of homeless who lead a wretched existence in attics and cellars or lodge with friends and relations? No, these are the recommendations of complacent householders who cannot begin to understand the problems of the homeless.  So we do not take their recommendations seriously.  If the host of rejected workers who hope and strive for adequate shelter were asked to choose whether a small minority of them should have large flats whilst the majority continued to live in misery for years and decades, [203] or alternatively that the evil of homelessness should be quickly removed by their taking smaller flats (which in spite of being compact provide adequate facilities for modern life) we know that the unanimous response would be: Build us flats which although small, are still healthy and comfortable to live in.  Above all, offer them at reasonable rents.

Before the war hundreds of thousands of city flats were built well below the standards laid down by the building regulations.  The poor quality of this housing was one of the main causes of deterioration in the health of city dwellers.  Flats built since the war are generally of a higher standard but are usually let a rent that lower paid workers cannot afford.  So we need enough flats of sufficient quality to meet the needs of the poor and homeless.  We need flats for subsistence living.

Who should build flats for subsistence living?

The state of the building index in relation to the average interest rate on loans is one of the major factors which can hinder any adequate building program in different countries.  In Germany at present companion is unfavorable.  For with the building index at 192.8 in the interest on loans has risen from a level of 4.51%, to 11.15% in 1929.  This means that a worker’s flat of 50 square meters living area which would have cost him 30 reichsmark before the war, has risen to a level 118 reichsmark.  So even if we make use of all available resources we shall not be in a position to lower the rents of newly built flats to a reasonable level without a simultaneous reduction interest rates on loans.  That is why the public authority must organize the building of flats for the lower paid workers.  Otherwise there is no guarantee that the financial assistance provided by the State reaches those for whom it is intended intact.  For the monies which have been set aside to subsidize lower rents are for the use of the general public and should only be employed to aid the building of non-profitmaking flats for the people or to help prospective owner-occupiers.  On no account should they be used to stimulate speculative flat building.

How shall these flats for the lower paid be built?

It is impossible to give a positive answer to this question: a negative response is easier.  They should be designed to avoid all the past misery that flats for lower paid workers have inflicted on their inhabitants.  Whilst the far-reaching field of engineering technology has been developed through exact scientific methods, until now, building has usually developed along intuitive lines.

Even today many architects find it extraordinarily difficult to realize that the core of the problem in designing a block of flats is not its shape and the design of the façade, but the integral structure of each living cell based on the principles inherent in modern living.  He must also think as a town planner and integrate the sum of these living cells into the town plan in such a way that suitable amenities are provided for each new community.  If this general requirement is only met slowly, then the technical isolation of each flat is more deeply felt.  Even if a large number of rooms in a normal building are ranged above each other in rows, correct insight into the numerous individual problems is of immense significance to the community as a whole.  In the case of flats for the lower paid workers, a more or less successful solution to each technical problem will help decide whether, and to what extent, the living space can be further reduced.  The architect alone cannot be solely responsible for solving the hundreds of issues relevant to this problem.  Especially, as so frequently occurs, if he abuses the umbrella of science and resorts to more subjective aesthetic judgments, and tries to utilize every available opportunity to impose his own lifestyle and priorities on the numerous families of lower paid workers who are his clients.

So much unnecessary paperwork and so many failures would be avoided if every architect involved in building small flats were obliged to spend a few weeks in a working class family before he began to plan and build.  If flats for lower paid workers are going to be realized we will not be able to do without the help of hygiene experts, engineers, and physicians.

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In this case man himself is the measure of the importance of this issue.  Otherwise the difficulties ahead would seem almost insurmountable.  Only respect for the biological and social status of the man which is threatened by the problem of flats for the lower paid workers keeps in from fruitless theorization and draws us nearer to our goal.  We shall build flats which, although let at reasonable rents, will satisfy the material and spiritual needs of their inhabitants.

The exhibition mounted together by the International Congress of Modern Architecture [CIAM] and the Architect in Chief of the city of Frankfurt am Main could contribute.  It offers the possibility of furthering the cause of this eminently important task of peacefully uniting the people of the world, encouraging them to aim for the desired goal.

– Originally published in Die Wohnung für Existenzminimum, 1930.  Pgs. 10-16.

From Programs and Manifestoes on 20^th-Century Architecture.

(The MIT Press.  Cambridge, MA: 1971).

The undersigned architects, representing the national groups of modern architects, affirm their unity of viewpoint regarding the fundamental conceptions of architecture and their professional obligations towards society.

They insist particularly on the fact that “building” is an elementary activity of man intimately linked with evolution and the development of human life.  The destiny of architecture is to express the orientation of the age.  Works of architecture can spring only from the present time.

They therefore refuse categorically to apply in their working methods means that may have been able to illustrate past societies; they affirm today the need for a new conception of architecture that satisfies the spiritual, intellectual, and material demands of present-day life.  Conscious of the deep disturbances of the social structure brought about by machines, they recognize that the transformation of the economic order and of social life inescapably brings with it a corresponding transformation of the architectural phenomenon.

The intention that brings them together here is to attain the indispensable and urgent harmonization of the elements involved by replacing architecture on its true plane, the economic, and sociological plane.  Thus architecture must be set free from the sterilizing grip of the academies that are concerned with preserving the formulas of the past.

Animated by this conviction, they declare themselves members of an association and will give each other mutual support on the international plane with a view to realizing their aspirations morally and materially.

I. General Economic System

1. The idea of modern architecture includes the link between the phenomenon of architecture and that of the general economic system.

2. The idea of “economic efficiency” does not imply production furnishing maximum commercial profit, but production demanding a minimum working effort.

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3. The need for maximum economic efficiency is the inevitable result of the impoverished state of the general economy.

4. The most efficient method of production is that which arises from rationalization and standardization.  Rationalization and standardization act directly on working methods both in modern architecture (conception) and in the building industry (realization).

5. Rationalization and standardization react in a threefold manner:

(a) they demand of architecture conceptions leading to simplification of working methods on the site and in the factory;

(b) they mean for building firms a reduction in the skilled labor force; they lead to the employment of less specialized labor working under the direction of highly skilled technicians;

(c) they expect from the consumer (that is to say the customer who orders the house in which he will live) a revision of his demands in the direction of a readjustment to the new conditions of social life.  Such a revision will be manifested in the reduction of certain individual needs henceforth devoid of real justification; the benefits of this reduction will foster the maximum satisfaction of the needs of the greatest number, which are at present restricted.

6. Following the dissolution of the guilds, the collapse of the class of skilled craftsmen is an accomplished fact.  The inescapable consequence of the development of the machine has led to industrial methods of production different from and often opposed to those of the craftsmen.  Until recently, thanks to the teaching of the academies, the architectural conception has been inspired chiefly by the methods of craftsmen and not by the new industrial methods.  This contradiction explains the profound disorganization of the art of building.

7. It is urgently necessary for architecture, abandoning the outmoded conceptions connected with the class of craftsmen, henceforth to rely upon the present realities of industrial technology, even though such an attitude must perforce lead to products fundamentally different from those of past epochs.

II. Town Planning

1. Town planning is the organization of the functions of collective life; it extends both the urban agglomerations and the countryside.  Town planning is the organization of life in all regions.

Urbanization cannot be conditioned by the claims of pre-existent aestheticism: its essence is of a functional order.

2. This order includes three functions: (a) dwelling, (b) producing, (c) relaxation (the maintenance of the species).

Its essential objects are: (a) division of the soil, (b) organization of traffic, (c) legislation.

3. The relationships between the inhabited areas, the cultivated areas (including sports) and the traffic areas are dictated by the economic and social environment.  The fixing of population densities establishes the indispensable classification.

The chaotic division of land, resulting from sales, speculations, inheritances, must be abolished by a collective and methodical land policy.

The redistribution of the land, the indispensable preliminary basis for any town planning, must include the just division between the owners and the community of the unearned increment resulting from works of joint interest.

4. Traffic control must take in all the functions of collective life.  The growing intensity of these vital functions, always checked against a reading of statistics, demonstrates the supreme importance of the traffic phenomenon.

5. Present-day technical facilities, which are constantly growing, are the very key to town planning.  They imply and offer a total transformation of existing legislation; this transformation must run parallel with technical progress.

III. Architecture and Public Opinion

1. It is essential today for architects to exercise an influence on public opinion by informing the public of the fundamentals of the new architecture.  Through the baneful effects of academic teaching, opinion has strayed into an erroneous conception of the dwelling.  The true problems of the dwelling have been pushed back behind entirely artificial sentimental conceptions.  The problem of the house is not posed.

Clients, whose demands are motivated by numerous factors that have nothing to do with the real problem of housing, are generally very bad at formulating their wishes.  Opinion has gone astray.  Thus the architect satisfies the normal prerequisites of housing only poorly.  This inefficiency involves the country in an immense expense that is a total loss.  The tradition is created of the expensive house, the building of which deprives a large part of the population of healthy living quarters.

Through educational work carried out in schools, a body of fundamental truths could be established forming the basis for a domestic science (for example: the general economy of the dwelling, the principles of property and its moral significance, the effects of sunlight, the ill effects of darkness, essential hygiene, rationalization of household economics, the use of mechanical devices in domestic life, etc.).

3. The effect of such an education would be to bring up generations with a healthy and rational conception of the house.  These generations (the [112] architect’s future clients) would be capable of correctly stating the problem of housing.

IV. Architecture and Its Relations with the State

1. Modern architects having the firm intention of working according to the new principles can only regard the official academies and their methods tending towards aestheticism and formalism as institutions standing in the way of progress.

2. These academies, by definition and by function, are the guardians of the past.  They have established dogmas of architecture based on the practical and aesthetic methods of historical periods.  Academies vitiate the architect’s vocation at its very origin.

3. In order to guarantee the country’s prosperity, therefore, States must tear the teaching of architecture out of the grip of the academies.  The past teaches us precisely that nothing remains, that everything evolves, and that progress constantly advances.

4. States, henceforth withdrawing their confidence from the academies, must revise the methods of teaching architecture and concern themselves with all those questions whose object is to endow the country with the most productive and most advanced system of organization.

5. Academicism causes States to spend considerable sums on the erection of monumental buildings, contrary to the efficient utilization of resources, making a display of outmoded luxury at the expense of the most urgent tasks of town planning and housing.

6. Within the same order of ideas, all the prescriptions of the State which, in one form or another, tend to influence architecture by giving it a purely aesthetic direction are an obstacle to its development and must be vigorously combated.

7. Architecture’s new attitude, according to which it aims of its own volition to re-situate itself within economic reality, renders all claims to official patronage superfluous.

8. If States were to adopt an attitude opposite to their present one they would bring about a veritable architectural renaissance that would take place quite naturally within the general orientation of the country’s economic and social development.

June 28^th, 1928

The Declaration was signed by the following architects:

H.P. Berlage

Victor Bourgeois

Pierre Chareau

Josef Frank

Gabriel Guévrékian

Max Ernst Haefeli

Hugo Häring

Arnold Höchel

Huib Hoste

Pierre Jeanneret

Le Corbusier

André Lurçat

Sven Markelius

Ernst May

Fernando García Mercadal

Hannes Meyer

Werner Max Moser

Carlo Enrico Rava

Gerrit Rietveld

Alberto Sartoris

Hans Schmidt

Mart Stam

Rudolf Steiger

Szymon Syrkus

Henri-Robert von der Mühll

Juan de Zavala

ARCHITECTURE

free : evocative

Great art is art which ministers to our moral, affectional, and intellectual needs: the “useful” arts minister to needs that are purely practical.  They must not be confounded.  Despite their different modes of expression, Poetry, Painting, Music, Architecture have identical aims: to inspire us with lofty emotions.

Architecture has been wrongfully called “The Mistress Art.”  Bombast! Masterpieces in every art are all first, and as good as each other.  The lion is first among beasts.  Which is saying what? That a fine lion is better than a fine tiger? Why, a splendid cock is better than a moth-eaten lion.  Mozart, Phidias, Montaigne salute each other as equals in the Elysian fields.  There was an antiquated notion that paintings were to serve to decorate walls, so nowadays people still say that Painting is subservient to Architecture.  Do you think Shakespeare or Mozart bothered about the architecture of the place they would be played in? Certainly they had to obey the spirit of architecture, but their work was not limited by architecture.  All the arts are equal, given perfection as the standard.

More exactly: nowadays everything is confounded.  A building that serves its purpose, a monument worthy of the name, a rabbit hutch, and Notre-Dame.  Result: no one knows where he is.  This confusion is aggravated by those to whose interest it is to encourage it.  It must be delicious for the specialist to believe himself the equal of Phidias; he thinks Phidias was an artificer like him.  Alas! one word should have never defined both the artist and the specialist who designs the boxes we live in; for the latter is functioning as an engineer and not as artist, or at any rate his function should have been that of engineer, and not of artist.

“But still, the turning of a utilitarian building into something pleasant is surely an art?”

“Yes indeed, there is an art in making buildings attractive.  But it is a lesser art, and should be considered so.”

It is better to be a first-class engineer than a second-class artist.  Engineers [137] can be, after all, important personages.  Ettore Bugatti is greater than his brother, the late sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti.  But his motor-cars, though perfection today, will be old junk in twenty years, whereas the shattered Parthenon will serenely throne over the ages.

Let us call Architects, such as conceive edifices in the essential aim to create beauty: votive movements, temples, triumphal arches, tombs, etc.  For here they are as free as the poet, the musician, or the painter: and their chief function, too, is to evoke emotion in us.  Every means is good and lawful if it succeeds in stimulating us to lofty sentiments.

ARCHITECTURE FREE IS SCULPTURE

Phidias, was he sculptor or architect? Both at once.  Chalgrin, creator of the Arc de Triomphe, is a sculptor like Rude or, if your prefer, Rude is an architect like Chalgrin.  What a great art true architecture is!

Had it only been an object of utility, the sumptuous Parthenon would have been a sort of hall for the faithful: a strong box for treasure would have taken the place of the exquisite cella.  But what was wanted was a work of art that would move men, so fabulous sums were expended.  The Greeks knew that beauty is beyond price, and that a building is not a temple.

The house, the box for living in, must before everything be serviceable: it is a machine that functions, a tool.

Between the two poles of an architecture purely lyrical and one which is utilitarian, all types of hybrids can be found: architectures in which the lyricism dominates, yet where utility plays a certain part (such as palaces and luxurious residences).  And according as the useful is more present or more absent, so these constructions relate to one or other type.

Lean kind of architecture.  Lyric architecture slumbers, not because our epoch lacks great “plasticians,” but because the demand is, so to speak, nil.  All that is needed to be a Rembrandt or Stravinskii is genius, a bit of pencil and some paper: but no one can be an Ictinos at such small cost.  Our age is first and foremost utilitarian: it has reduced its architects to the role of specialists.  These wretches, lacking the demand for art, succeed in finding some pasture for their art by introducing it into their houses, factories, utilitarian edifices.  Somewhat as a sardine-vending poet might publish his verses on his tins.

Much better would it be for them to be content with being entirely useful, doing honest work, and allowing natural grace to blossom from objects adequate to their function, all the more perfect.

But what am I saying? What an error I am falling into! From the day we “won the war” thousands of splendid opportunities have arisen: [138] votive monuments to the fallen, Verdun.  And what has been made of them? Lyric creations, yes: but what sort of lyricism? Poverty-stricken! In exoneration of the “moderns,” they were not given a chance.

For the first time, doubtless, two eminent architects of the younger school dared “enter” for an official contest, the Palace of the League of Nations.  The firm of Le Corbusier-Jeanneret had that courage.

A lofty program was submitted to them: the construction of a monument which would symbolize to humanity the immense idea of organized Peace, war against war.  Magnificent program! Versailles was raised to the glory of one man, one sovereign, one nation: and at Geneva there was to be one great conception, universal, modern.

Official architects sent in their projects for ready-made palaces, ill-conceived, stupid, ugly.  Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret put forward a highly ingenious solution, sincere and striking.  In rejecting their suggestions the jury covered itself with ridicule.

Nevertheless, was Le Corbusier’s conception sufficiently lyrical for the Palace of Peace? His solution was a group of office buildings, harmoniously conceived and formal, rational administration units.  But it was not yet Architecture!

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ADDENDUM

THE ENGINEER’S AESTHETIC (?)

ARCHITECTURE

domestic and industrial: service!

“What fine houses are being built all over the place! Architecture really is the mistress art.”

“We are grateful to the architects for having given us airy houses.  They have conquered light for us: large windows, glittering eyes.  Bravo, and thanks again.”

For reasons whereof the understanding knoweth not nature causes us to be born, as it were, like hermit crabs, naked as worms.

Man, however, is differentiated from them by just a touch of fantasy in what affects his dwelling.  The hermit crab seeks for a shell left vacant by the death of its proprietor (which it sometimes provokes: the housing crisis, in fact).  Preferably it chooses some comfortable shell, and since there is nothing that better suits its needs, it generally takes up a temporary residence in elaborate whelk-shells, which must be terribly uncomfortable.  Mankind chooses its houses as women do their motor-cars, for the sake of the fitting.  The architect’s client, when he dreams of his future house, has a whole poem in his bosom.  He rocks himself with dreams of the perfect symphony he will dwell in.  He unburdens himself to some architect.  And the ordinary architect is all fire to be a second Michelangelo.  Under pressure, he puts up an ode in concrete and plaster that generally turns out very different from what the client brooded over: whence arise conflicts: for poems, particularly those engendered by others, are uninhabitable.  Oh, those fugues in the form of bathrooms, those sonnets of bed-chambers, the melody of boudoirs and dramas of water-closets!

A private house (everything is in these words).  Its cardinal virtues: as being impervious to cold and water, warm in winter, cool in summer, open to light, easy to keep clean and convenient to live in, are in no wise poetic unless common sense and utility be such.

(A few rare factories have merited the interest taken in them, for they are good factories, whereas most of the utilitarian structures of this age which claim to be remarkable are hideous: and there are quantities of them).

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Confusing “art” with artistic, too many architects design charming façades and leave to “ghosts” the problem of working out the rest of a house, with difficulty inhabitable.  The façade, architecture’s spoiled child, should never be a mask.  The architect’s genius is in relating all the internal organs of the house, with a view to their most efficient functioning: and in conceiving the structure as an organism to which every part of it is both necessary and subservient.  Is that some particular trend of our minds? Certainly we have a very special satisfaction in observing, that in all respects a minimum of effort, has produced a maximum result.  In fact, I believe that therein lies the whole secret of power, for power that is not controlled is merely brutality.  No trimmings! Does a hard, strong hand tolerate jewels?

An antipathy to cosmetics would make the architect’s problem, if he desires to attain the ease of power, and the grace which emanates from what is true, infinitely more difficult.  What an arduous inventor’s task! Each square centimeter must yield its maximum, and the rooms must be exactly related if they are to be pleasant to live in: a perfect harmony which though much to be desired, is rarely attained.

In such an architecture it would be impossible to say that the plan had determined the elevation or vice versa: their interrelation is harmonious and organic.  To be true, I said: (and a habitation can be true, be it humble or sumptuous: for instance, the Petit Trianon).

In that definition all fine utilitarian architecture lies; in the breathing unity of masses entirely adequate to their function.  Decoration can be revolting, but a naked body moves us by the harmony of its form.  Thanks to certain of our architects, we have some houses that are splendidly naked.

THE LIBERATION OF TECHNIC

The rational application of iron to the construction of utilitarian buildings enabled them more and more to develop according to the function for which they were intended (Crystal Palace, Labrouste’s Gare du Nord, Eiffel’s Viaduct at Garabit, La Galerie des Machines at the Exhibition of 1889, and Tower).

Then reinforced concrete, invented by Hennebique, came into being somewhere round 1886, and immediately gave proofs of its admirable faculty as a medium.

The extreme adaptiveness of this new material at once tempted the architects.  Right up to today, stone has been very much of an obstacle to the builder: (Roman cupolas took revenge on experiments too daring by [141] falling to earth).  But concrete, which could be run into molds, and made to overcome every obstacle, at first inspired the most disarming cement fantasias.

The annals of reinforced concrete demonstrate clearly the misunderstanding between the aesthetic of the material and the technic of handling it.  The engineer’s office, which, with its large windows, absence of ornaments, filing cabinets, etc. has become so sympathetic to us since 1900, gives birth to the most dreadful things the moment it goes outside its job to dabble in art.  The torpedo station at Hyères reveals one of the earliest aspects of true specialist architecture in reinforced concrete: there is something moving in this prototype of contemporary houses, completed in 1908.

Architects like Loos soon realized that after the debauches of the “modernity” in 1900 the most elementary good taste demanded more restraint.

The Perret brothers, before the war, professed similar ideas, and in certain of their constructions they used the new medium with great ingenuity, elegance, and intelligence.  (Witness the garage in the rue de Ponthieu, the skeleton of the Theatre des Champs Élysées, the Casablanca wharfs, etc.)  The Perrets were originators, and from their work has issued that school of architecture which has solved certain problems of efficiency, lighting, and heating.  Among the precursors must, for various reasons, be counted also Sauvage, Sarrazin, Tony Garnier, Lloyd Wright, [142] Berlage, Van de Velde, Gropius, Mallet-Stevens, and Le Corbusier, who, seconded by Pierre Jeanneret, vastly extended, familiarized, and purified the movement.

Many others could be named, for the architects of the modern school are by now innumerable.  Let us praise them all, for to them we owe our [143-144] pleasant houses: houses more than pleasant, significant, because of their impulse towards more conveniences, and so more elegance.

Seven years ago L’Esprit Nouveau started a campaign to rationalize the dwelling, the problem being how to strip off all that was unnecessary.  The majority of modern architects have rallied to the ideas then expressed.  Their praiseworthy desire is to create what is useful only, and yet the sensational tempts them.  Many, and not the least, invent feigned utilities for the pleasure of rationally solving the problems thus raised, as witness those balconies for urban haranguings.  Have they forgotten everything that is not organic is ornament, and notably that an affected severity is more false than frank decoration, and that pure form is not the same as the absence of any form?

The great undertakings of the Department of Roads and Bridges, utilitarian constructions, appear as impressive technical achievements.  The airplane hangars at Orly (Freysinnet), the immense dams of the Panama Canal, the automobile track at Montlhéry, are the latest masterpieces of this specialized art which is in no wise inferior to the great achievements of the Romans.  In some ways it is purer, more sensitive, more intellectual also: for it fulfills our ideals of efficiency and thereby provides a gratification that answers to the new intellectual needs of our epoch.  The magnificent Pont du Gard, Coliseum, and other utilitarian structures of antiquity had power, but not this majestic elegance.  We have our own Romans and our Negroes too.  What we are waiting for are our Greeks!

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ADDENDUM

THE ENGINEER’S AESTHETIC (?)

MACHINERY

the object in relation to function

Natural forms are mechanistic, for they are the product of universal forces.  And these very forces are in their turn transformed by mechanism.  The honey-bee is a relay that nature uses: mankind, too, is really like the bee: machines are relays created by man, and the collaboration of men and machines creates natural objects which artificially we call artificial.  Doubtless the bee itself considers its honey artificial.  But does anything exist that can be called unnatural?

A machine that turns out good work is a healthy machine: its organs rigorously satisfy mechanical, therefore natural, laws.  Its products by degrees have become stereotyped because the play of forces is unchanging and their effect is to compel such products into certain shapes, their optimum.  But all this does not happen at once.  Mechanical evolution is comparable with natural evolution, the law of mechanical selection is comparable with the law of natural selection.  I went into these questions in L’Esprit Nouveau, and formulated this principle under the name of “mechanical selection.”

THE GENESIS OF THE MACHINE-MADE PRODUCT IS NOT AESTHETIC

The powers of imagination and the intuition of great engineers cannot truly be called aesthetic.

Their products are predetermined, for the natural laws to which, with ever-increasing efficiency, we respond, by degrees bring about their definitive form.

Ten years ago every electric-bulb had a point, through which the air was drawn to make the vacuum: a point which interrupted light.  Someone thought of evacuating the air through the base, and so the point [152] vanished and the bulb became spherical.  Thus we like it better and it serves us better: but was there any aesthetic impulse behind all this? No! it was solely due to the automatic functioning of evolution!

Every substance is subject to laws that determine the form of its product.  As an instance, the connecting-rod of steel, having to transmit a given quantity of energy, must have its shape and size determined by mathematical calculation, based on the known resistances of the metal: a connecting-rod of bronze cannot possibly be identical with one of wood, steel, cast-iron, or any other substance.  Mechanical shapes thus illustrate the properties of certain bodies under given conditions.  The engineer cannot give free rein to his imagination, otherwise his connecting-rod will break.  This does not disprove the fact that artists do sometimes intuit what the form should be, though personally I prefer a good ready reckoner.  Think of the crazy coachwork invented by aesthetic body-builders when engineers were content merely to construct chassis! Even nowadays coachwork is not free from the same reproach, when the engineer has been aping the artist, and designing bodies.

Aesthetics, introduced into the sphere of mechanics, is always an indication of inadequacy somewhere.  Old-fashioned telescopes are aesthetic, but up-to-date ones whose capacity is infinitely vaster are in no wise so: and, what is even better, there is practically nothing to be seen.  A modern telescope is frequently a well, the bottom of which there is a mirror, neither more nor less exciting to look at than water in a puddle, while in the air somewhere, you have an insignificant eyepiece.

Motors, as in the Bugatti or the Voisin, bear witness to incontestable artistic taste, but the engineer’s freedom in this respect will become more and more respected.  The motor, starting from a certain principle, inevitably gets stereotyped, and the most efficient unit is the one that will inevitably be adopted everywhere.  When the time comes there will be a place for aesthetic invention, which serves to hide the absence of knowledge.

HOW THE MACHINE AFFECTS US

A mechanical object can in certain cases affect us, because manufactured forms are geometric, and we respond to geometry.  No doubt that is so, because intuitively geometry communicates to us a feeling that some higher dispensation is being subserved, which thus becomes a pleasure of the mind, and a feeling that we are satisfying the laws that govern our being.  All the same, its capacity for stimulating emotion is pretty limited.

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But first of all we must be clear.  Mechanisms often have a certain obvious beauty, because the substances employed by us happen to be governed by relatively simple laws, and, much in the manner of graphs, they exemplify those laws.

The tendency towards electrification is creating machines that are practically formless, “castings” containing insignificant spools.  By the time we have got to disintegrating the atom, it may be that there will be nothing at all worth looking at.  Our mechanism is primitive, and that is why it still looks gratifyingly geometric.

Besides, certain substances like rubber, whose use is being widely [155] extended, are difficult to apply with precision: thus their forms are hardly “interesting,” for they bear objective witness to the imprecision of the calculations that dictated them.

There are beautiful objects (not to be too difficult over the significance of the word “beauty”).  But there is no object, or factory, or mechanism, or piece of furniture, capable of inspiring in us emotions comparable with those evoked by Art.  Has the most beautiful motor-car or the finest house an effect upon us equal to, parallel with, or equivalent to, some masterpiece of Art? When the Beethoven centenary was celebrated at Vienna, during the performance of Fidelio there was hardly a dry eye in the audience.  The Parthenon takes even the most insensitive man by the throat.  Has anyone ever seen a factory or piece of machinery that could move men to tears? The most elegant bicycle would be quite incapable of it,

And besides, it is really very striking how lovers of machinery by preference collect ancient implements long out of date.  Imagining they worship mechanism, in reality they offer sacrifice to a taste for antiques…and the aesthetic imperfections resulting from the primitive technic employed.

All that can be said is that a really efficient machine is more intriguing than one that is a failure, and a polished pebble more than a mere scrap of stone.  For certain forms are pleasant to us, others painful, and everything the intellect produces must be of interest to us.  But starting from this point, to place the machine on the pedestal of great sculpture, seems to me blindness, silly snobbishness, and ridiculous also.