2.

The Search for New Forms and the

Problem of Ornament

. . . basis of the views of architecture prevailing today must be

the whole
displaced by the recognition that the only possible point of departure for our
artistic creation is modern life.

0. Wagner, 1895

Wfiile the beginnings of modern architecture cannot historicism. they could not altogether reject tradition,

be traced to a single time, place, or personality, it is for even the creator intent on producing new forms will

striking how many movements professing the value of rely, in some on old ones. Indeed, what is often
degree,

the 'new' came into being in the iSgos. FA'idently a meant when the claim is made that such and such a
reaction against tired social, philosophical, and movement was 'new', is that it switched its allegiances
aesthetic values was rumbling into life in centres as from recent and nearby traditions to ones more remote
diverse as Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, and Chicago. in space or time.
Even so possible to distinguish between
However, novelty had differing significance in each it is

milieu and. probably, in each architect's mind. innovations which extend the premisses of a pre-
At the same time it would be foolish to ignore areas existing tradition, and more drastic breaks. Art
Nouveau was of this second sort and embodied a
of overlap. Time and again we shall encounter the
theme of renewal after a period of supposed corruption strong reaction against the degraded Beaux-Arts
and decay: time and again we shall hear the rallying Classicism widely practised in the 1870s and 1880s.

cry that a new, modern man is emerging, whose As such it was a major step towards the intellectual
character an avant-garde is best able to intuit. Thus in and stylistic emancipation of modern architecture.
assembling the fragments of the pre-First World War However, the path from the curved abstractions of Art
architectural world into a larger picture, it is essential Nouveau to the stripped, white rectangular geometries

to balance up the local contexts and individual of the 920S was neither simple nor straightforward.
1

intentions of architects with their piecemeal con- In architecture the most creative phase of Art

tributions to a new tradition. We have to deal here not Nouveau was from 1893 to about 1905 -a little more
with a simple evolutionary path, but with the tentative than a decade. The beginnings of the style have been
groundwork towards a later consensus. variously dated. Arguably it first emerged in graphics
and the decorative arts. Pevsner claimed a start in the
Since the emphasis is on forms and not just ideas or
techniques, it seems reasonable to begin with Art early i88os in England.

Nouveau, and therefore to concur with Hitchcock's

assessments that "it offered the first international Ifthe long, sensitive curve, reminiscent of the lily's

programme for a basic renewal that the nineteenth stem, an insect's feeler, the filament of blossom, or

century actually set out to realise' and that 'Art occasionally a slender flame, the curve undulating,

Nouveau was actually the first stage of modern flowing and interplaying with the others, sprouting

architecture in Europe, if modern architecture be from the corners and covering asymmetrically all
understood as implying primarily the total rejection of available surfaces, can be regarded as a leitmotif oi
Art Nouveau, then the first work of Art Nouveau
historicism.' But if Art Nouveau artists rejected
22 The Formative Strands of Modem Architecture

which can be traced is Arthur H. Mackmurdo's 2. 1 Aubrey Beardsley.

Toilet of SalomeII. 1894.
cover of his book on Wren's city churches published
Drawing. 8J x 6|in.
in 1883. (22.2 X 1 6cm.). London.
British Museum.
Of course this is said with the knowledge of
hindsight: Mackmurdo's design would be written off as
a minor incident stemming from certain arabesques of
the Pre-Raphaelites. the linear patterns of William
Blake, and the fascination with natural forms of John
Ruskin, if there had not subsequently been a broader
indulgence in the formal qualities Pevsner outlines.
There is little evidence that Mackmurdo's design was
the start of a sequence. Rather it was an early
manifestation of a broad shift in sensibility in the

1880s. also sensed in such diverse examples as the

ornamental designs of Louis Sullivan. Antoni Gaudi,
and William Burges. the melancholic and erotic
drawings of Aubrey Beardsley (fig. 2.1). the symbolist
paintings of Paul Gauguin and Maurice Denis. A
consolidation did not occur until the early 1890s.
particularly in Brussels, in the work of Fernand
Khnopff. Jan Toorop. and a group of painters known as
"les Vingt'. and in the architecture of Victor Horta

which seemed a three-dimensional equivalent to the

painters' two-dimensional linear inventiveness.
So revolutionary does Horta's breakthrough appear
in retrospect that it is irritating that so little is known
about his preceding development. He was born in
2.2 Eugene V'iollet-le-
1 86 1 in Ghent, studied art at the local academy,
Duc. proposal for a
worked in the studio of an artist by the name of Jules wrouglit iron bracket,
Debuysson in Paris, entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from tMretiens sur
in Brussels, and then became a draughtsman for a rarchilerliire. 1872.

minor neo-classical architect by the name of Alphonse

Balat. In the mid-i88os he designed some uninter-
esting houses in Ghent. Next we have the Tassel House
of 1892-3. a work of complete assurance, outstanding
and the decorative arts
for its synthesis of architecture
and its declaration of new formal principles.
These were not evident in the somewhat bald fagade
with its bowing central volume, its restrained use of
stonework, and its discreet introduction of an exposed
iron beam, but in the ample space of the stairwell (tig.
2.3). The principal innovations lay in the frank
expression of metal structure and in the tendril-like
ornamentation which transformed gradually into the
vegetal shapes of bannisters, wallpaper, and floor
mosaics. The emphasis on the direct use of a modern
material, and even the inspiration of natural forms for
the metal ornament, recall Viollet-le-Duc's explora-
tions in iron (fig. 2.2). while the expression of the
effects growth and tension call to mind the
of
contemporary interests in 'empathy', and fa.scinations
with organic analogies. Evidently Horta knew of
Voysey's wallpaper designs and perhaps even of Owen
Jones's Grammar of Ornament (i 8 5 6 in either case he) ;
The Search for New Forms and the Problem of Ornament •
23

2. 3 Victor Horta. Tassel

House. Brussels.
i8y2-5. the stairwell.
. :

The Formative Strands of Modern Architecture

will have sensed a feeling for natural forms combined

with a deliberate freshness and exoticism. Thus the
first mature statement in the new style was a synthesis

of formal inspiration from the English Arts and Crafts,

of the structural emphasis of French Rationalism, and
of shapes and structures abstracted from nature.
Horta extended his style in a number of other town
house designs in Brussels in the iSyos. These subtly
evoked an inward-looking world by creating scenarios
for a well-to-do. urbane fin de siecle clientele which
could afford the indulgence of exotic tastes and delicate
aestheticism. The props for the mood were the spacious
stairwells, and long internal vistas through dining-
rooms and over winter gardens: the rich contrasts of
coloured glass, silk stuffs, gold, bronze, and exposed
metal, and the vegetal forms of vaguely decadent
character. Yet Horta's buildings never lapsed into mere
theatricality: there was always a tense, underlying
formal order: and the sequence of spaces from halls, up
stairs, over galleries was tightly orchestrated. In the

masterly Hotel Solvay of 1895. his newly found style

was successfully carried through in all aspects of the
design, including the linking of interior volumes and
the treatment of the facpade. where an appropriately
linear ornament was displayed.
While Horta clearly grasped the meaning of the way
of life of his luxurious clients, his social concerns and
range of expression were not restricted to this class.
This is clear from his design for the Maison du Pcuple of
1896-8. also in Brussels, built as the headquarters of
the Belgian Socialist party. The site was a difficult one
extending around a segment of a circular urban space
and part of the way along two radial streets. The fac^ade
combined convex and concave curves, and the main
entrance was placed on one of the shorter convex
points. The visible expression of the iron skeleton was
every bit as 'radical' as Sullivan's_ contemporary
skyscraper designs in Chicago (where the structure
was usually immersed in terracotta sheathing). In part
this treatment was no doubt inspired by earlier
nineteenth-century engineering structures like train-

sheds and exhibition buildings, but the choice of

materials and the emphasis on lighting the interiors
through infill panes of glass seem to have had moral
overtones related to the institution as well

... it was an interesting commission as I saw

straightaway - building a palace that wasn't to be a
palace but a 'house' whose luxury feature would be
the light and air that had been missing for so long
from the working-class slums. . .

The integration of material, structure, and expressive

intentions was even more successful on the interior,
especially in the main auditorium at the top of the
5 .

The Search for New Forms and the Problem of Ornament 25

building where the roof was formed from a sort of was specially created. His chair designs manifested an
hammer-beam system in steel (fig. 2.4 The 1. side walls interest in expressive, organic structure: dynamic
and fenestration were reduced to thin infill screens, forces were intended to heighten the functions of the
and the effect of the whole was an organic unity in various members, giving the chairs a consciously life-

which ornamentation and the visual accentuation of like oranthropomorphic character (fig. 2.5). Van de
actual structure worked tightly together. The ceilings Velde made a distinction between ornamentation and
were ingeniously corrugated to control reverberation, ornament, the former being attached, the latter being a
and a double gallery was hung from the roof trusses means for frankly revealing the inner structural forces

and used to contain heating pipes. Thus despite its or functional identity of a form. This interest in the
fantastic character, this 'attic' space was strongly frank expression of structure and function led him in
conditioned by practical demands. As the architect his Halsy's barber shop in Berlin I1901) to expose
himself exclaimed, paraphrasing an observer, water and electrical ducts. Van de
pipes, gas conduits,
Velde admired what the machine might do in mass
'What a fantasist this architect is - he must have production, so long as a strong control over quality
his alternating lines and curves - but he really is a was maintained by the craftsman who designed the
"master" at them.' . . fuming: - 'You
. but I am prototype; he felt that a subjective artistic element
idiot, don't you see that everything is thought out must always be present if banality was to be avoided.
in terms of architecture as construction, faithful to The French critic, Edmond de Goncourt, coined the
the brief to the point of sacrifice.'' phrase 'yachting style' in assessing van de Velde's
designs when they were first made known in Paris:
Horta 's experimentation with iron and steel was and the artist himself claimed that his means were:
continued in another large-scale scheme, also for
Brussels, the A L'lnnovation Department' Store of . . . the same
which were used in the very
as those
1901, in which these materials were felt appropriate and crafts. It is only
early stages of popular arts
for their large internal spans and their capacity for because I understand and marvel at how simply,
wide openings. Practical considerations were again coherently and beautifully a ship, weapon, car or
transcended in a facade composition in which delicate wheelbarrow is built that my work is able to please
screens and large plates of glass provided a forward- the few remaining rationalists . . . unconditionally
looking image to a relatively new building type. and an
resolutely following the functional logic of
Horta continued to work in Brussels for another article and being unreservedly honest about the
thirty years but rarely achieved the freshness of his materials employed. . .

earliest experiments. Another Belgian artist to con-

tinue the new-found mode well into the twentieth Van de Velde was and hoped that industrial
a Socialist
century was Henry van de Velde. who seems to have mass production might make visual
of his objects
2.4 [above) Victor Horta,
had a more theoretical turn of mind than Horta. and to quality available to the broad masses; yet his
Maison du Peuple.
Brussels. 1896-8, view have turned his hand to a broader range of activities. statements of architectural intent remained within a
of hall. The son of a chemist in Antwerp, van de Velde became fairly aloof circle of patronage. In the Cologne Theatre
a painter and was much influenced by the Impression- of 9 14, he attempted to create his version of a
1

2. {left) Henry van de ists, the social realist imagery of Millet and eventually communal building celebrating widely held social
Velde. furniture designs
the paintings of Gauguin. In the i 890s his interest in values. But this Gesamtkwislwerk still remained the
forBloemen werf House.
the crafts grew, under the impact of William Morris's property of a cultivated eUte.
1895. On the wall is an
embroidery. Angels Keep theoretical teachings, and he devoted himself to the Art Nouveau did not always remain the aloof
Watch. 1893. by the applied arts. If VioUet-le-Duc was important to one creation of an avant-garde. Indeed, the style was
artist (Zurich. branch of Art Nouveau for having encouraged the quickly popularized in graphic and industrial design, in
Kunstgewerbemuseum glassware, furniture, jewellery, and even clothing. The
notion of a new style based on the direct expression of
),

the constructional possibilities of new materials like rapid spread of ideas was encouraged by the emer-
iron, Morris was crucial as another forefather for gence of periodicals like the Studio which had a great

having expressed the ideal of aesthetic and moral impact on fashion; and by the pioneering commercial
quality in all the objects of daily use. In due course one attitudes of men Uke Samuel Bing, who opened a shop

of the aims of Art Nouveau designers (one senses it for modern art called L'Art Nouveau on the Rue de

already in Horta's houses) would be 'the total work of Provence in Paris in 1895. Bing. and the German art
art' in which every light fixture would bear the same critic Julius Meier-Graefe. had discovered van de
aesthetic character as the overall building. Velde's house at Uccle and invited the artist to design

In 1894-5. van de Velde designed a house for some rooms for the shop. The fashion caught on
himself at Uccle, near Brussels, for which the furniture quickly: and among those influenced were Emile Galle
:

26 •
The Formative Strands of Modern Architecture

the glass-maker, and Hector Guimard the architect. In

New York, meanwhile. L. C. Tiffany was designing
and rich stains of
glass with delicate vegetal forms
colour. In fact, he had come upon this manner
independently, which tended to lend weight to the
notion that here at last was a true expression of the
underlying spirit of the age.The full triumph of the new
style in the public taste was clearly evident at the Paris
exhibition of 1900 and the Turin exhibition of 1902, in
which 'Art Nouveau', 'Jugendstil', or the 'Style Liberty'
(such were its various names), was dominant. By the
turn of the century, then, Art Nouveau had taken on
an international character. It was perceived to be a

way out of the interminable jumbling of eclectic styles.

and a valid reflection of exotic, somewhat escapist,

somewhat progressivist. fin de siecle attitudes of mind.
This is the way the Italian critic Silvius Paoletti
responded to the Turin exhibition

To take the place of pitiless authoritarianism, rigid

and regal magnificence, burdensome and
undecorated display, we have delicate and intimate
refinement, fresh freedom of thought, the subtle
enthusiasm for new and continued sensations. All
man's activities are more complex, rapid, intense
smaller scale, in the nearby Villa Flore (fig. 2.7),
and capture new pleasures, new horizons, new
Guimard was able to infuse the whole design with the
heights. And art has new aspirations, new voices
bulbous and swelling character of a natural growth,
and shines with a very new light.
and to model brick surfaces and iron details so that
they seemed subservient to a single aesthetic impulse.
While one ideal of Art Nouveau was the perfectly The plan, with its suave links between oval forms and
crafted and unified interior, the style also revealed its dilTerent diagonal axes, suggests that Guimard may
possibilities for much broader public applications. Most have consulted the sophisticated solutions for tight
notable of these, perhaps, were Hector Guimard's urban sites of eighteenth-century Parisian hotels;
designs for the Paris Metro of 1900 (fig. 2.6), in which indeed, the playfulness and curvilinear tracery of the
naturally inspired forms were used to create arches Rococo may be counted among the possible sources of
and furnishings in iron which were then mass- Art Nouveau ornament.
produced from moulds. Like Horta. Guimard had However, in the hands of major talents. Art
passed through the academy, having been at the Paris Nouveau was far more than a change in architectural
Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1 SS to the early 8908. At
=; 1 dress, far more than a new system of decoration. In the
the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs from i8cS2 to i88s. he best works of Horta. Guimard. and van de Velde. the
had already become acquainted with VioUet-le-Duc's very anatomy and spatial character of architecture
Gothic rationalism, which he had then sought to were fundamentally transformed. Their forms were
reinterpret in a highly personal way. Another key usually tightly constrained by functional discipline
influence was the British Arts and Crafts, which he and by a Rationalist tendency to express structure and
studied while visiting England and Scotland in the material. Furthermore, each artist in his own way
1 890s. He also visited Horta. and this provided the attempted to embody a social vision and to enhance the
essential catalyst. institutions for which he built.
Guimard began experimenting with the new style in Similar points can be made about the Catalan
his design foran exclusive block of flats in the recently architect Antoni Gaudi. whose extreme originality and
developed i6eme arrondissement. known as the idiosyncrasies show him to have been only a loose
Castel-Beranger, in Rue la Fontaine. Here the entrance affiliate of Art Nouveau ideals. Indeed, one has to

details and ornamental flourishes were somewhat beware of pushing a historical abstraction too hard: a
isolated Art Nouveau incidents in an otherwise style phase in architecture is a sort of broad base of
inconsistent design. Working a decade later at a much shared motifs, modes of expression and themes, from
The Search for New Forms and the Problem of Ornament

2.6 (/(/() Hector

Guimard. Metro station.
Paris, I <)()().

2.7(Mim'l Hector
Guimard. Villa Flore.
Paris. 1404.

2.8 (riy/il) Antoni

Gaudi. Kxpiatory Church
of the Sagrada Familia.
Barcelona. 1884- 1926.
transept facade.
28 The Formative Strands of Modern Architecture

which a great variety of personal styles may emerge.

Gaudi was born in 1852 and died in 1926. His
earliest works date from the 1870s and indicate his
reaction against the prevalent Second Empire mode
towards the neo-Gothic. He was an avid reader of
Ruskin's works and the inspiration of his early designs
is clearly medieval, but there emerges early on that

sense of the bizarre which was to characterize his

highly personal style after the turn of the century. In
the Palau Giiell of 1885-9 the interiors were
transformed into spaces of an almost ecclesiastical
character, while the fagades were elaborately orna-
mented with wave-like ironwork preceding Horta's
experiments in Brussels by some years. Thus Gaudi's
style, like Guimard's. was in part an abstraction of

medieval forms. The imaginative transformation of

these prototypes was motivated by Gaudi's private
imagery and by his obsession with finding a truly
Catalan 'regional' style.

In 1884. Gaudi was commissioned to continue

Francisco del Villar's designs for the Expiatory Temple
of the Holy Family (the 'Sagrada Familia') on the
outskirts of Barcelona (fig. 2.8). The crypt followed
Villar's design based on thirteenth- and fourteenth-
century Gothic prototypes. The lowest visible levels
were completed to Gaudi's design by 1893 in a
transitional Gothic manner. To then move upwards
through the various stages of the termination of the
crossing is to be confronted bit by bit with the
The Search for New Forms and the Problem of Ornament •
29

architect's flowering into one of the most curious and

2.10 ilefn Antoni
Gaiidi. Casa Batllo, original architects of the past two hundred years.
Barcelona. 1905-7. Elements which suggest a vague afiinity with Art
/"^.^ Nouveau give way finally language of utter
to a
2. 1 1 (right) Antoni fantasy, evocative of vegetable stems and dream-like
Gaudi. Casa Mila.
anatomies. In fact, these surreal forms were not
Barcelona. 1905-7.
entirely without precedent, since it seems clear that
chimneys.
Gaudi (who had worked briefly in North Africa) knew
2.12 [below of the mud constructions of the Berbers, with their own
right)Antoni Gaudi. inspiration in natural forms, their curious hermetic
Casa Mila. Barcelona, imagery, and their manifestation of animist beliefs.
1905-7. detail of facade
The richness ofGaudi's art lies in the reconciliation
at ground level.
of the fantastic and the practical, the subjective and the
scientific, the spiritual and the material. His fortns were
never arbitrary, but rooted in structural principles and
in an elaborate private world of social and emblematic
meanings. The structure of the Sagrada Familia and
designs like that for the crypt of the Santa Coloma de
Cervello (begim in 1898). were based on the optimiz-
ation of structural forces which led the architect to
variations on parabolic forms. Gaudi was thus much
more of a 'Rationalist' than his work would lead one to
believe on superficial inspection. But this appellation
does not do him justice either, for he was deeply
religious and believed that the material qualities of
architecture must be the outer manifestation of a
spiritual order. He intuited the presence of this order in

the structures of nature which he felt to be a direct

reflection of the Divine Mind. The 'laws' of structure,
then, were not mere laws of materialist physics, but
were evidence of the Creator. The parabola, in
particular, with its beautiful economy, became an
emblem for the sacral (fig, 2.9).
Thus Gaudi's vocabulary was infused with an
elaborate symbolism for which the Gothic revival of his
youth had provided a useful, conventional starting-

point. His pantheism, like Ruskin's, extended to the

smallest mineralogical wonders and to the grandest of
natural forces. These features of nature were ab-
and expressed in a vocabulary loaded with
stracted
metaphor and association. It is little wonder that the
Surrealist generation of the twenties (particularly his
fellow Catalan Salvador Dali) should have felt such an
affinity for his work. For in Gaudimost bizarre
at his

there is the sensation of contact with deep psychic

forces and irrational patterns of imaginative thought.
Gaudi's completely personal late style first emerged
in the design for the Park Giiell, carried out between
AVVVV 1900 and 1911. Beast-like benches embedded with
fragments of coloured tile mark off the edges of the

yvvvVv' stepped terraces olTering views over the city. There are
2.9 [far Antoni
left] nightmarish underground grottoes suggestive of dark
Gaudi. wire model of the clearings in some subterranean forest, and steps which
structure of the Chapel
fiow like lava.
for the Colonia Giiell.
Gaudi's principal secular works were conceived in
1898-1900.
50 •
The Formative Strands of Modern Architecture

parallel with the park, beginning with the Casa BatUo

of 1905-7. a remodelling of a block of flats (fig. 2.10).
Here a virtual sport of spotting analogies can be (and
has been) played. Thus some critics have emphasized
the maritime references of waves, corals, fishbones,
and gaping jaws, while others have commented on the
dragon-like roof and the possible religious significance
of this as an allegory of good and evil. Whether such
analogies strike close to Gaudi's intentions may never
be known, but they suggest the powerful impact of the
architect's forms on the imagination.
Casa Mila of 1 905-7. the plastic conception of
In the
swirling curves was applied not just to the facade (fig.
2.12). but to the plan and interior spaces as well. The
elevation is in constant motion with its deep-cut.
overlapping ledges. Once again wave and cliff images
come to mind (the building was known locally as 'La
Pedrera' - the quarry), but it is a naturalism achieved
by the most sophisticated ornamentation and stone-
cutting. The contrived textures of the ledges give the
impression that these forms have come about over the
years through a process of gradual erosion.
Gaudi's buildings were so bizarre as to be inimitable
(fig. 2.11), which naturally inhibited the propagation
of his style in a local tradition. One of the complaints
lodged against Art Nouveau in the first decade of this
century was that its propositions relied too completely
on a subjective approach, and that they were not
geared sufficiently to the ideal of designing types for
standardized mass production. This criticism has to be
taken with some salt. for. as has been shown, both

Guimard and van de Velde were able to mass-produce

standardized profiles of some visual complexity.
Moreover. Art Nouveau proved itself well suited to
repeating print processes in such things as posters, and
became a sort of popular style related to consumerism.
By the turn of the century it had spread to many
provincial centres which contributed their own
regional accent. However, there was some resistance. 'tea-rooms' in Glasgow of 1 897-8. These designs were 2.13 Charles Rennie
In England, for example. Art Nouveau was regarded linear, abstract and heavily laden with Gaelic symbol- Mackintosh. Glasgow
School of Art.
with suspicion as a wily and decadent departure from ism and Celtic references; it comes as no surprise to
1 897-1909. facade.
the sober aims of the Arts and Crafts. But in Scotland a discover that the term 'Spook School' was invented to

style of enormous originality, related to Art Nouveau. characterize Mackintosh and his circle (including his
was created by another uncategorizable individual, the wife). In 1897 he won the competition to design the
Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. new School of Art in Glasgow. The building was to
Mackintosh is important at this juncture not only stand on an almost impossibly steep slope, which
because of the imaginative force of his own designs, seemed to suggest that the main facade should be set at
particularly the Glasgow School of Art. of 189 7-1 909. the highest part of the site (fig. 2.13). from which
but because his development encapsulated the path access could be had to the interiors. The programme
beyond Art Nouveau towards a more sober form of was also demanding the functions to be included were
:

expression in which broad dispositions of simple several studios, a lecture theatre, a library, a room and
masses and sequences of dynamic spaces were stressed. private studio for the director. Spaces to display work
His style emerged independently of Horta's but from and to house a permanent collection of casts were also
loosely similar sources and concerns, and appeared needed.
first in his decoration of Miss Kate Cranston's various Mackintosh dealt with these constraints by laying
,. 1

The Search for New Forms and the Problem of Ornament 3

W GLA5Ci°W Kh°°L op ART.

5ECTI9N A. A. iECTIPN D.D

4 birmswooD iouM"^
jiiii i i i i
ir Olasoow. Ncvcmreb 1910.

2.14 Charles Rennie out two tiers of studios along the north side facing asymmetry, which the grand upper windows of the
in
Mackintosh. Glasgow Renfrew Street (the high end of the site) and further main were set into massive, grim masonry
studios
School of Art, forms. The entrance way was emphasized by a cluster
studios, the anatomy school, life modelling, the
1 8^7-1909. sections.
architecture school, the design and composition of motifs and an arch, over which the director's study
rooms, facing east and west. The director's room and was set in a recess. To the sides, the building's flanking
studio were placed over the entrance, while the walls fell awaylower portion of the site as large
to the
museum was set to the rear of the scheme at an upper expanses of subtly articulated stone surface, recalling
level where it could be top lit. The richness of the (among other things) the architect's interest in
scheme arose from the juxtaposition and sequence of regional farmhouse prototypes and Scottish baronial
rooms of different sizes, and the orchestration of halls.The ironwork on the exterior, in the railings and
different qualities of light: from the clever overlapping in the cleaning brackets on the main windows, was
of the spaces in section (fig. 2.14): and from the way loosely analogous to Art Nouveau, in its abstraction of
museums were modelled as if
the stairs, corridors, and natural motifs, but like the building as a whole, these
from a continuous voluine of space. The interior details spoke less of effete curves and more of a taut,
movements and juxtapositions were partly expressed sculptural discipline (fig. 2.1 s).
in the dynamics of the exterior forms. Thus the north These qualities were brought to the fore without
elevation was a subtle fusion of symmetry and distracting fussiness, in the library wing of the school.
>Ji%lM^->f.

\i

fH

^
^Bf

/.
.

The Search for New Forms and the Problem of Ornament 33

2.1^ [left) Charles designed around 1908, in which chiselled abstract

Rennie Mackintosh. shapes and groups of vertical windows on the outside
Glasgow School of Art. (Plate 1) were supplemented by rectangidar wood
1897-1909. detail of
brackets in the reading-room interiors. The verticalily
ironwork.
of the proportions recalls Art Nouveau. but the
stripped, pristine quality of the forms, and their
2.ih{ric]ht} Otto
Wagner. Post Office rectangular character, speak of a new direction. It is
Savings Bank. Vienna. understandable that Pevsner should have singled out
1904 (1. interior. this interior as
effects
an early example of the sort of spatial
which were later to be central to the modern
movement.
r "iff ill'
It is therefore ironical that Mackintosh should have

been written off by English critics as dangerously

exotic, since it was precisely his geometrical control
and tendency to abstraction which appealed in
European artistic centres - partly as a support for their
own revulsion against the excesses of Art Nouveau.
Mackintosh was less appreciated in London than in
Vienna, where publications of his plans and drawings
made him known and influential, especially in

Secessionist circles around J.M. Olbrich. Olbrich and

the older Otto Wagner disliked both the pomposities of
Classical Academic design, and the 'new decadence' of
Art Nouveau. Indeed. Olbrich's Art Gallery designed
for the Friedrichstrasse in Vienna in 1898-9 was a
somewhat bizarre attempt at formulating an ex-
pressive language of pure geometries and massive In 1895. Otto Wagner published Moderne Architek-

pylon forms. Wagner's Majolica House, a block of flats tw: in which he spoke of the need for architecture to
built between 1898 and 1 900. also implied a return to orientate 'modern life', and recommended
itself to

fundamental architectonic values and to strict rec- and 'almost military uniformity'.
qualities of simplicity

tilinear proportions, despite the lingering feeling of Moreover, he argued that the new style should be a
vegetal motifs in soine of the detailing. In the late 'realist' one, which seems to have implied a direct

1 890s. in an article published in Dckomtiw Kunst

expression of the means of construction and an
(Munich). August Endell. another Viennese architect, admiration for modern techniques and materials.
wrote of a 'non-historical' style of pure forms capable of Finally, he seems to have felt that flat, slab-like cornices

moving the spirit in a manner similar to the rhythms of and horizontal lines should be employed.
music. If we follow Wagner from his late nineteenth-

century designs to the Vienna Post Office Savings Bank

They teach us that there can be no new form, that of 1904-6 (fig. 2.16). we enter an entirely different
have been exhausted in the styles of world from that of Art Nouveau. a world in which a
all possibilities

the past, and that all art lies in an individually nuts and bolts rationality and a stable and dignified
modified use of old forms. It even extends to .selling order have replaced the dynamic tendrils and
the pitiful eclecticism of the last decades as the new curvaceous effects. Indeed. Vienna, and a little later
style. Berlin and Paris, were to be amongthe strongholds of a
To those with understanding, this despondency reaction against Art Nouveau which acquired increas-

is simply laughable. For they can clearly see. that ing momentum in the first decade. This reaction was

we are not only at the beginning of a new stylistic fed in part by the Arts and Crafts ideals of simplicity and

phase, but at the same time at the threshold of a integrity: by an abstract conception of Classicism as
completely new Art. An Art with forms which something do with the use of the Orders, than
less to

and remind us of nothing, which with a feeling for the 'essential' Classical values of
signify nothing,
arouse our souls as deeply and as strongly as music symmetry and and by a sense
clarity of proportion:

has always been able to do . .

that the architect must strive to give expression to the
This is the power of form upon the mind, a direct, values of the modern world through frank and
immediate influence without any intermediary straightforward solutions to architectural problems in
stage .(me of direct empathy.
. .
which disciplines of function and structure must play
34 • The Formative Strands of Modern Architecture

1.1/ Ikj't} Josef

HofI'mann. Palais
Stoclet. Brussels. 1905.
detail of porch.

an increasing, and attached ornament a decreasing, dining-room and the music-room (with its little stage)
role. were expressed as protruding volumes in the fai;ades.
Apart from Wagner, who was already in his early The overall composition was ingeniously balanced, but
sixtiesat the turn of the century, the two chief asymmetrical, the main points of emphasis being the
exponents of a new architecture in Vienna were Josef fantastic stepped stair-tower with its attached
Hoffmann (1870-1954) and Adolf Loos statuary, the bow windows, and the porte-cochere. The
(1870-1935). Hoffmann founded the Wiener forms were coated in thin stone-slab veneers detailed
Werkstatte in 1 903 as a centre of activity in the field of with linear mouldings to accentuate the planarity. On
decoration. In his design for the Purkersdt)rf convalesc- the interiors materials were stern, rectilinear, and
ent home (1903), he reduced the walls to thin planar precise, and included polished marbles and rich wood
surfaces. His greatest opportunity came in 1905 with finishes. The influence of Mackintosh is felt in this
the commission of a luxurious mansion to be built house (a prototype for the design was clearly the Scot's
outside Brussels for a Belgian financier who had lived House for an Art Lover' of 1 902 ), but where he would
in Vienna. The Palais Stoclet was to be a sort of have stressed the rustic and the humble, Hoffmann
suburban palace of the arts in which Adolphe and emphasized the grandiose and the cosmopolitan. The
Suzanne Stoclet would assemble their treasures and disciplined elegance of the Stoclet house is enhanced
entertain the artistic elite of Europe, it had thus to by the furnishings and by Klimt's splendid mural
combine the moods of a museum, a luxury residence, decorations. As well as echoes from Mackintosh, there
and an exemplary setting of modern taste. are also memories of Olbrich, perhaps even of Schinkel.
Hoffmann was able to respond to the 'aura' of the But the Palais Stoclet is one of those designs where
programme in a house of immense sophistication, there is little point in listing the sources and influences,
combining devices of formality and informality. as these have been digested and restated in a
characteristics of an honorific and a more humble sort convincing personal style. In its imagery and mood it
{figs. 2.17, 2.18). The rooms were linked en suite in a portrayed an exclusive way of life of a kind which was
plan employing ingenious changes of direction and to be swept away by the devastation of the First World
axes, in which such major spaces as the hall, the War a sort of aristocratic bohemianism.
The Search for New Forms and the Problem of Ornament •
3 5

Adolf Loos's move towards a rectilinear and which he contrasted to the pretentious inventions of
2. i.S (;»i'/(m>l loscf
HolTmann, I'alais volumetric simplification was even more drastic than much Some of his most penetrating
self-conscious art.
Stodct. Brussels, lyos- Hoffmann's. Loos was little alTected by Art Nouvcau, in essays on such things as gentlemen's suits,
are
part because he spent the mid-i<S<-)()s in America (a sportswear, and Michael Thonet's mass-produced
country he praised highly for its plumbing and its wooden chairs. He seems to have felt that these were
bridges); in part because he seems to have sensed that the objects which gave evidence of. as it were, an
that movement's reaction against the 'dead forms' of unconscious style.
the academy was swinging too far towards the wilful, Up to 19 10 much of Loos's design effort went into
the personal and the decorative - all of which he felt to small-scale conversions. In his few house designs of

be inimical to lasting achievement in art. But Loos that period he reduced the external \focabulary to
brought the perspective too of someone who had rectangular stucco boxes punctured by simple open-
reflected on the form of many simple everyday objects. ings, without even the reminiscence of a cornice or a
36 The Formative Strands of Modern Architecture

2. 1 g Adolf Loos. Steiner

House. Vienna, 19 10,

rear view.

plinth. Usually his interiors were more elaborate, yet eats him. that doesn't make him a criminal. But if a
still distinguished by an overall rectangular control. modern man someone and eats him, he must
kills

and in the case of the Karntner Bar of 1907. clearly be either a criminal or a degenerate. The Papuans
influenced by a stripped Classical tendency. Perhaps tattoo themselves, decorate their boats, their oars,
the outstanding design of Loos's mature years was the everything they can get their hands on. But a
Steiner House Vienna of
in 1910 (fig. 2.19). where modern man who tattoos himself is either a
architectural effect relied on the adroit placement of criminal or a degenerate. Why, there are prisons
large plate-glass windows in stripped and undecorated where eighty percent of the convicts are tattooed,
planar surfaces. However, it is still a long way (in and tattooed men who are not in prison are either
meaning as well as form) from this villa, with its 'neo- latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. When a

classical' plan and its strict symmetry, to the inter- tattooed man dies at liberty, it simply means that he
penetrating planes and dynamic asymmetries of the hasn't had time to commit his crime. What is. . .

International Style of the 1920s. Even so. the natural to children and Papuan savages is a
achievement of such a drastic simplicity within a symptom of degeneration in modern man.
decade and a half of the beginnings of Art Nouveau, I have therefore evolved the following maxim,

and a full decade before Le Corbusier's white, cubic and pronounce it to the world: the evolution of
villa designs of the 1920s, is worthy of comment. culture marches with the elimination of ornament
In fact, it is by no means certain that Loos's pre-war from useful objects.
designs had much influence on the emergence of the
International Style after the First World War. His Translated into the situation in which Loos found
theories, on ornament, were far better
especially himself this meant that Art Nouveau. for all its
known, perhaps because they put into words a number emancipation from the Academy, had to be seen as yet
of concurrent, but not necessarily connected pre- another of the superficial and transitory 'styles'. The
judices, which the later generation was determined discovery of a true style for the times would be found
should be a unified doctrine. As a polemicist. Loos was when ornament was done away with, and essential

brilliant: in an 'Ornament and Crime',

article entitled underlying qualities of form, proportion, clarity, and
he inveighed against 'ornament', on the grounds that measure were allowed to emerge unadorned. At least,
it was evidence of a decadent culture. this is what Adolf Loos believed, and there was a
generation of later architects ready to follow this lead
Children are amoral, and - by our standards - so in its search for the supposed 'universal style' for

arc Papuans. If a Papuan slaughters an enemy and modern times.