UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

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1 U UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date: I,, hereby submit this original work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in It is entitled: Student Signature: This work and its defense approved by: Committee Chair: Approval of the electronic document: I have reviewed the Thesis/Dissertation in its final electronic format and certify that it is an accurate copy of the document reviewed and approved by the committee. Committee Chair signature:

2 Beyond Modernism A reassessment of modern architectural metaphysics in light of Martin Heidegger s The Age of the World View A Thesis submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER of SCIENCE in ARCHITECTURE In the School of Architecture and Interior Design of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning 2009 by Viorica Anamaria Popescu Bachelor of Architecture, Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning, Bucharest, Romania, 2001 Committee Members: John E. Hancock (Chair) James Bradford

3 Abstract The problem of Modernity and Modern architecture has been a constant focus for the scholars of architectural theory in the last fifty years and yet, despite the critical reactions it generated, we are neither fully aware of the philosophical ground that sustained it nor its subversive influences on contemporary architecture. Although architectural theorists like Alberto Perez- Gomez (1989) and Colin Rowe (1992) have had very important contributions through revealing the connections between modern architecture and modern science from the 17 th century on, their investigation did not further acknowledged the metaphysical foundations of both these areas. Exemplifying with significant architectural writings, I will trace the philosophical origin of twentieth century themes of concern, such as the moral task of the architect (the desire to solve the problems of society through architecture), or value and the criteria for value in architecture, to a tradition, started with Plato and refined by Descartes, that has a particular take on the question of the nature of the existent (Being) and on the nature of truth. This analysis will be guided by Martin Heidegger s essay, The Age of the World View (1976), a critical exploration of the nature of modern times, which concludes that modernity distinguishes itself by the change of the essence of man in that man becomes a subject ( man becomes the center to which the existent as such is related ) and the transformation of the world into a world view (the existent is understood as existent when and to the degree to which it is held at bay by the person that represents it and establishes it ). This investigation will demonstrate that in spite of revealing the scientific approach of architecture, that the modern movement practiced, as problematic, its authority is still acting Abstract iii

4 upon contemporary architecture through the philosophical concepts that originated it. As a result of providing a more appropriate account for the origins of modern architecture, this study will raise consciousness and a critical attitude concerning the presuppositions and implications of ideas that pertain to the contemporary theoretical discourse and practice in architecture. Keywords Modern Architecture, Martin Heidegger, science, aesthetics, Colin Rowe, Alberto Perez- Gomez Abstract iv

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6 Dedication To the memory of my father Dedication vi

7 Acknowledgement I would like to thank my thesis committee chair, Professor John E. Hancock, for his invaluable contribution to my intellectual development, his unlimited patience and especially for his help and support, in countless ways, during my graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati. I am greatly indebted to James Bradford for an irreplaceable learning experience, which made this thesis possible, and for his constant friendship. To Aarati Kanekar, David Saile, Patrick Snadon, and Nnamdi Elleh, for their special contribution to shaping my architectural horizon, To Ellen Guerrettaz Buelow for all the care she put into solving the administrative problems I encountered along the way. Special thanks to Florentina Popescu for her help as my sister and as my colleague, To Tudor Rebengiuc, my husband, for embarking with me onto the American journey, To Kanchana Ganesan, Leticia Guimaraes, Elizabeth Pincus, Sanjit Roy, and Edson Cabalfin, my other fellow colleagues, for making my graduate studies interesting and fun. I would like to thank the three authors of the book The Craft of Research, Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. Their work has been tremendously helpful at introducing me to the basics of research, at providing a helping hand at key moments during the development of my thesis, and generally, by always providing sound advice in the pages of their book, at overcoming the anxiety of it all. To Mircea Maxim, my son, for just being there, Acknowledgement vii

8 And last, but not least, I would like to thank my mother and my extended family members for providing help whenever they could in order for me to see this thesis finished. Acknowledgement viii

9 Preface This research does not, by any means, offer something entirely new. Martin Heidegger s interpretation of western metaphysics has long been considered to have a bearing on architecture. Some believe that his influence has begun to wane, that the Heidegger fashion in architecture is already old-fashioned. Nevertheless, this study claims that his thoughts are indeed revolutionary, and that they haven t been fully exploited to the bottom of what they really mean for architecture. This research is aimed at those who have found the information on modern architecture overwhelming and confusing. To those that, on striving for an overall coherent understanding of modern architecture, had to content themselves with contradictory claims and principles. All these being said, I do not wish to go to the other extreme either and claim that you will find here the answer to it all. That would go against the spirit of the little I might have learned reading Heidegger, that the nature of the existent is such that something will always remain concealed. Preface ix

10 Table of Contents Abstract iii Keywords iv Dedication Acknowledgement vi vii Preface ix Table of Contents x Table of Figures xi 1 Introduction 1 Background 2 Research objectives 4 Research strategy and methodology 5 Relevance and significance scope and limitations 6 Thematic Structuring 7 2 Modern Architecture 8 General Ideas Central Unifying Themes Aesthetics Ethics Science and Technology Modern Architecture: Death or Metamorphosis? 39 3 The Crisis of Architecture Modern Architecture in the Light of Heidegger s Work Architecture as Science-as-Research versus Architecture as Art-as-Aesthetics The Architect as a Pure Thinking Subject 52 Conclusion 56 Bibliography 57 Table of Contents x

11 Table of Figures Figure 1 - Adolf Loos, Michaelerplatz Building, House for the gentlemen s outfitter Goldmann and Salatsch Vienna, Austria, , In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Figure 2 - Otto Wagner, Postal Savings Bank, Vienna, Austria, (image between 1945 and 1959), In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Figure 3 - Josef Hoffmann, Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Purkersdorf, Austria, Sanatorium Purkersdorf Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 07April 2007 (accessed 07 August 2009) Figure 4 - Adolf Loos, Tristan Tzara House, Paris, France, (image between 1945 and 1980), In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Figure 5 - Josef Hoffmann, Winarskyhof Municipal Apartment Building, rear façade, Vienna, Austria, , In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Table of Figures xi

12 Figure 6 - Josef Hoffmann, Palais Stoclet, overall view from the street, Brussels, Belgium, , In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Figure 7 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House interior (living room windows), Chicago, IL, 1909, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Figure 8 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Aline Barnsdall House (Hollyhock House), Los Angeles, CA, (image from 1954, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Figure 9 - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, (image between 1945 and 1980), In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Figure 10 - Le Corbusier, Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1916, as published in L Esprit Nouveau 6, after Beatrix Colomina, Privacy and Publicity (Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: MIT Press, 1994), 109 Figure 11 - Le Corbusier, Wash basin in the Villa Savoye, , Poissy, France, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York Table of Figures xii

13 Figure 12 Contrasted residences for the poor, drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasts. 2nd edition reprint (1st edition 1836). New York: Leicester University Press, Figure 13 Contrasted public conduits, drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasts. 2nd edition reprint (1st edition 1836). New York: Leicester University Press, Figure 14 Walter Gropius Entrance of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, (image between 1945 and 1980), In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York. Figure 15 - South front of the Wittgenstein House, Vienna, with the garden. Original condition (Photo 1971), from Bernhard Leitner, The Wittgenstein House ( New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), 183. Figure 16 - Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser House, columns framing glassed Winter garden, Vienna, In ARTstor [database online]. [cited 07 August 2009]. Available from ARTstor, Inc., New York, New York. Figure 17 - Miss Jenkins, would you please bring a round object into my office? from Mertins, Detlef (ed.). The Presence of Mies. Princeton Architectural Press, 1994 Table of Figures xiii

14 1 Introduction Metaphysics lays the foundation of an age by giving it the basis of its essential form through a particular analysis of the existent and a particular conception of truth. This basis dominates all the phenomena which distinguish the age. Conversely, it should be possible to recognize the metaphysical basis in these phenomena trough reflection. 1 Martin Heidegger The Age of the World View Criticizing Modern Architecture is not a new enterprise. Ever since time has proved the insolvency of the Modern Movement s project, and the inadequacy of the path it put architecture on during the first half of the 20th century, scholars have persisted in analyzing the causes of its failures and have tried to envision new directions. But rather than attacking the issue at its ontological foundation, they contented themselves merely with arguments on issues like rationalization, standardization, efficiency, morality, typology, and aesthetics all of which are only the ultimate manifestations of more profound assessments about the nature of existence and the nature of truth. Key late-twentieth century authors in this process, such as 1 Martin Heidegger, The Age of the World View, translated by Marjorie Grene, in William V. Spanos (ed.) Martin Heidegger and the Question of Literature- Toward a Postmodern Literary Hermeneutics, (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, London, 1979), 1. Introduction 1

15 Alberto Perez-Gomez and Colin Rowe, have for the most part not gone beyond pointing to the problematic connections with modern science. The first objective of my investigation is to make visible the connections between modern architecture and the western metaphysical tradition (upon which modern science is also founded). In this undertaking I will be guided by Martin Heidegger s essay, The Age of the World View ( or The Age of the World Picture as translated by William Lovitt) 2, in which he reconstructs the metaphysical basis of the modern age through reflecting on modern science, seen as one of the phenomena that distinguish it. These connections will be revealed through an examination of primary ideas that permeated significant twentieth century architectural writings, in particular: solving social problems through architecture (the good intentions as Rowe expresses it) and the problem of architectural value and its criteria as part of the everpresent dilemma between architecture as science versus architecture as art. Background The period of Modern Architecture has traditionally been presented by historians of architecture as the natural result of a reaction to late 19 th century cultural, political and especially social circumstances, and also as one of the most pervasive and self-evident accomplishments of the Industrial Revolution which started in the 18 th century (Françoise Choay, The modern city; planning in the 19th century, 1970; Manfredo Tafuri, Modern architecture, 1979; among others). Although these claims are relevant to understanding the topic, the picture 2 Martin Heidegger, The Age of the World Picture, translated by William Lovitt in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, Harper & Row: New York, Introduction 2

16 remains distorted if we do not also question the metaphysical foundations of those events and the ideas that accompanied them. The current prominence and authority of Martin Heidegger s thinking in architecture, especially connected with the ideas of deconstruction and deconstructive architecture (part of a more inclusive group of tendencies in architectural thinking and design, related to postmodern thought), have raised awareness of the more complex background of the modernist period. Even though many contemporary thinkers are not always willing to agree with such a radical critique of the tradition of western metaphysics, as the one Heidegger presents, his great and still-growing importance and influence for twentieth century studies cannot be denied. Alberto Perez-Gomez s Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science orients us in the direction of Heidegger s ideas, through a discussion of the work of architects like Claude- Nicolas Ledoux, Etienne-Louis Boullee, and Claude Perrault, in the 18 th century, and Nicolas- Louis Durand (Boullee s disciple), in the 19 th century. Perez-Gomez emphasizes how their work is tied to the 17 th century rise of modern science and related modes of thought. Although he does not deepen his study by discussing the link with the metaphysical concepts, and although the book and the terms he uses are still embedded in the traditional thinking, the last phrase of his book is significant in that respect: While construction as a technological process is prosaic deriving directly from a mathematical equation, a functional diagram, or a rule of formal combinations architecture is poetic, necessarily an abstract order but in itself a metaphor emerging from a vision of the world and Being. Thus Perez-Gomez ends on the note where new studies have to begin: how architectural conceptions root themselves in these deeper questions of the world, and of Being. Introduction 3

17 Colin Rowe s book, The Architecture of Good Intentions, is a complex mixture of criticism and the high regard of the author for modern architecture, manifested in spite of that architecture s obvious inadequacy and its unavoidable extinction. The chapters of his book (Epistemology, Eschatology, Iconography, Mechanism, and Organism) correspond to Rowe s theoretical consideration of the most important themes of modern architecture: its self-assigned moral imperative, its aesthetical consideration, and its scientific determination. Research objectives My overall thesis goal is to demonstrate that the critics of modern architecture, in spite of revealing that the scientific approach, which motivated the work of modern architects, is highly problematic, have so far missed the deeper fact that its authority is still acting upon contemporary architecture through the philosophical concepts that originated it. While the critical discourse of architecture is often thought to be rooted exclusively within itself, as other disciplines are, I will show its strong reliance on a philosophical ground that influences it, even to the point of establishing its means of expression and determining its outcomes. It will become clear that there is no architectural practice or decision outside a prior assessment, or assumption, either deliberate or uncritical, on the nature of being and the nature of truth. My more particular goal is aimed specifically at testing the power of Heidegger s conclusions about the underlying themes of modernity within the particular case of modern architecture. By unfolding the ramifications of these themes (the change of the essence of man in that man becomes a subject and the transformation of the world into a world view), this Introduction 4

18 project will illustrate the profound, but also immediate link between an ontological stand and the products of architectural practice. Thus, I specifically wish to address issues like: 1. The transparent manifestation of the issue of subject and object within architectural practice, as, for example, in assumptions about the scientific or artistic nature of architecture; and 2. The implied emergence of the issue into the complex discussion on the individual and the collective in modern architecture, as, for example, in the architect s understanding of his role in society. Research strategy and methodology The study will involve a critical reading and thematic synthesis of key architectural writings within the critique of Modernity, including, in particular, analyses and references to specific architectural products (buildings). Three central unifying themes of modern architecture will be discussed, themes that have been, openly or implicitly, at the forefront on the modernists agenda and that are helpful in revealing its particular genealogy of thought; these are: Aesthetics Ethics Science (and Technology) Heidegger s essay, The Age of the World View, will be relevant as the methodological guide and will provide the theoretical framework and broad themes for interpreting the texts. The research methodology adopted is a theoretical one. The enquiry focuses on the three themes that form the core of the modern architecture s principles: aesthetics; ethics; Introduction 5

19 science and technology. The structure of the thesis, rather than pursuing a linear pattern, attempts to follow a hermeneutical circle. It revolves around the three themes, discussing them from different perspectives in the course of the thesis: 1. As they appear and develop on the modernists agenda; and 2. As they can be discussed in the light of Martin Heidegger s critique of modernity. Relevance and significance scope and limitations Modern architecture covers a vast area and, based on the focus here, exhausting all of its aspects is beyond the scope of this thesis. My approach to this subject attempts to continue the work of architectural theorists, like the previously mentioned Alberto Perez-Gomez and Colin Rowe, who perceived the power of ideas underlining the apparently stylistic considerations of the modernist project. The approach adopted in this thesis, when talking about modern architecture as a homogenous phenomenon, in spite of its obvious wide range of manifestations and outcomes, is not reductionist. Rather, this approach arises out of the belief that modern architecture is, in its essence, and consequently in all its manifestations, based on the ontological decisions that from Descartes onwards lay at the foundation of the modern age. I believe that this is an exploration with possibly deep consequences for architectural understanding, criticism, and teaching methodology. Introduction 6

20 Thematic Structuring The first chapter of this thesis (Introduction) is a preamble to the claims, aims and significance of the present research. It establishes the main guidelines that channel its development and tries to anticipate its conclusions. The second chapter (Defining Modern Architecture) aims to establish where we stand today on the subject of modern architecture. Introducing modern architecture as it is generally presented is accompanied by a look at how it was envisioned by its most prominent exponents. This literature review will follow three major themes that seem to hover over the critical appraisal of modern architecture: aesthetics, ethics, and science. The third chapter (The Crisis of Architecture) begins with the discussion of Martin Heidegger s essay The Age of the World View and, taking Heidegger s understanding of the metaphysical basis of modernity as a starting point, goes on to deconstruct, hermeneutically speaking, the body of principles voiced by the modernist architects. Introduction 7

21 2 Modern Architecture Modern architecture may be half extinct but it still remains insidiously potent indeed, far more potent than its recently assembled detractors. 3 Colin Rowe The Architecture of Good Intentions General Ideas For many decades, dealing with modern architecture has been, more or less, every architect s duty and challenge. One shouldn t find this uncommon as, clearly, some of its ideas (and ideals) continue to charm us even today. Ever since my architectural education was at its beginning, I have myself been looking with great interest upon the simplicity exhibited by minimalist designs of the late 1990 s. Highly influenced by Japanese traditional design and architecture, they also owe a great deal to the work of early twentieth-century De Stijl artists and later modernist architects like Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn, to name only a few. And having set this as a model for my potential architectural career, I found myself compelled to put effort into bringing some light, for myself and hopefully for others, onto modern architecture. But despite this easy-to-spot motivation, the basis of this compulsive interest is to be understood on a much more profound level. 3 Colin Rowe, The Architecture of Good Intentions, Academy Editions, Modern Architecture 8

22 But what is modern architecture? Any inquiry into it will unavoidably start from here. And all studies to consider the subject, or any aspect of it, have either asked this question from the very beginning or assumed an answer to it. Many times the answer came in a formalistic package. What is generally recognized as modern architecture? Flat roofs, pillars, open floor plan and, thus, a question about the nature of things took a descriptive turn. This is not unusual though, for, according to Martin Heidegger, this has been a common approach throughout the history of thought. The ontological questions about the nature of Being or the nature of things (the What question) have been persistently mistaken for the How question. But let us, for now, go beyond this initial difficulty and continue by considering the term modern architecture. In an era of intense artistic, economic and social turmoil, at the onset of the twentieth century, the terms Modernism and Modern Architecture were widely used to convey the idea that times were changing dramatically. And a long series of well-respected commentators have since used them and raced into pointing out each aspect of this change. But whether they have captured its nature remains to this day highly debatable. And there is no wonder, for the transformation has been dramatic and complex. Nevertheless, there seems to be a wide consensus today regarding the ambiguity that surrounds the term modern architecture. No doubt, also, because as Colin Rowe suggests, the words modern architecture may have acquired a certain neutrality through usage. They frame a fairly specific landscape of the mind; they are generally accepted as designating an unquestionable revision of architectural physique with some corresponding revision of architectural morale; and even though they have lately Modern Architecture 9

23 acquired ill fame, their approximate reference is not in question. 4 The way in which this ambiguity is dealt with can differ greatly among commentators. Some define modern architecture by circumscribing it within certain temporal boundaries and others see it to refer to the buildings with a certain ideological basis. It is to this latter possibility that most of the critics adhere, and it is this direction that, as a starting point, my thesis pursues as well. Today, critics generally agree that architecture cannot be separated from the ideological context in which it was produced (Bernard Tschumi). 5 With regard to modern architecture this context is lately thought of most often, explicitly or implicitly, in terms of the Hegelian Zeitgeist. According to Alan Colquhoun, One of the main ideas motivating the protagonists of the Modern Movement was the Hegelian notion that the study of history made it possible to predict its future course. But it is scarcely possible any longer to believe as the Modernists architects appear to have believed that the architect is a kind of seer, uniquely gifted with the power of discerning the spirit of the age and its symbolic forms. 6 Inquiring into the term modern architecture Colin Rowe reaches similar conclusions. He, too, believes that the driving force behind modernists statements and actions was their desire to express the spirit of the age. 7 But is the idea of a Zeitgeist an adequate ideological context for understanding modern architecture? 4 Rowe, Joan Ockman (Ed.), Architecture Culture A Documentary Anthology, Columbia University/ Rizzoli, New York, 1993, Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture, Oxford University Press, 2002, Rowe, Modern Architecture 10

24 2.1 Central Unifying Themes Modern architecture is by no means a homogenous movement. A few common themes can be identified, however, among those architects that claimed an association with the modernist movement. All modern architects worked within the aesthetic paradigm in architecture, a paradigm already well established in the nineteenth century. Within this paradigm, a separation is introduced between the structure and ornament of a building, paving the way for the disposal of ornament as a superfluous addition to a structural core. Most of the modern architects have accordingly shunned ornamentation from their buildings, opting instead for a functional aesthetics, anchored in the technological condition of their age. Also continuing a nineteenth century tradition, modernist architects envisaged a messianic role for architecture, depending on architecture as a cure to all social evils, this time with the aid of the latest scientific developments Aesthetics The aesthetic approach 8 to architecture is perhaps most directly asserted in Nikolaus Pevsner s (1943) Introduction to An Outline of European Architecture. In his very opening statement, Pevsner proclaims: A bicycle shed is a building. Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture. ( ) the term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view to aesthetic (italics added) appeal. 9 Pevsner goes on to explain in his book the kind of sensations that European 8 The expression belongs to Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture (MIT Press, 1997), 4. 9 Nikolaus Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (Penguin Books, 1943), 15, quoted by Harries, 48. Modern Architecture 11

25 architecture generated throughout the centuries. For our purposes, however, it is enough to retain the logic behind the aesthetic conception of architecture. In this view, a piece of architecture is a functional building to which something is added, in order to constitute it as an object of art. The added component is usually understood to be decoration, or ornament, but it is not necessarily so. According to Karsten Harries (1997), who offers this quote from Pevsner, even when the addition is a specific proportion, we reside within the aesthetic paradigm of architecture. 10 Dalibor Vesely (2004) situates the aesthetic paradigm in architecture within the larger split between science and the real world that characterizes modernity. After it became obvious that art cannot bear truth in the scientific sense of the term, art was relegated to pleasing the senses, that is, to aesthetics. As a result, architecture became twice inferior. On one side, it was no longer the bearer of any transcendental truth, which was the case before the divorce of art and science, 11 and on the other side, it ended up at the bottom of the art echelon, for being an impure, utilitarian art, far from the art for art s sake aesthetic ideal. 12 Ornament, meanwhile, took on a life of its own as an independent aesthetic object, this time devoid of any social function or cultural connection. The emancipation of ornament from the bounds of utility paved the way for the modern abstract art. 13 Vesely (2004) points out that the aesthetic approach to art became so ubiquitous that it is sometimes considered synonymous with art itself, instead of being thought as the modern 10 Harries, Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation (Cambridge, MA; London, England: MIT Press, 2004), Harries, Harries, 45. Modern Architecture 12

26 conception about art. Also, art as aesthetics is often thought of in opposition to science. This way of thinking is not just erroneous, according to Vesely, but almost contradictory, since aesthetics and modern science are just two sides of the same transformation in the way the world is experienced in the modern age, and as such they belong together Ornament The rejection of ornament is programmatic in modernist architecture. Earlier on in the modernist movement, the shunning of ornamental façades and preference for geometrical sobriety became the main identifier of the new architecture. The lack of ornamentation was generalized to all building types, from public buildings (Fig.1& 2) to private residences (Fig.4), apartment complexes (Fig.5) and palaces (Fig.5), or places dedicated to (medical) science (Fig.3). The most vocal of the early modernist architects advocating a rejecting of ornament, was probably Adolf Loos. His 1908 manifesto, Ornament and Crime, remains to this day the hallmark of the anti-ornament movement. Loos was part of the Viennese avant-garde, and was disputing the right to lead the modernist movement with an elderly Otto Wagner, then a Professor of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Josef Hoffmann, a student of the latter, and Josef Maria Olbrich. These three were all members of the Viennese Secession, a group of avant garde artists which also included Gustave Klimt and Koloman Moser. Loos often conflicted with the Secession group. 15 The rebuff of ornament was so complete that even architects on opposite sides of the new architecture movement, like Loos and the architects of the Secession 14 Vesely, Leslie Topp, Architecture and Truth in Fin-de-siècle Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 136. Modern Architecture 13

27 group, came to pride themselves on rejecting the historicist adornment that had been the rule for Viennese architecture at the turn-of-the-century. 16 Figure 1 - Adolf Loos, Michaelerplatz Building, House for the gentlemen s outfitter Goldmann and Salatsch Vienna, Austria, Loos s Michaelerplatz building design (Fig.1) was hailed as a beacon of truth by its admirers, for the simplicity of its upper stories window design and the absence of traditional window 16 Topp, 2. Modern Architecture 14

28 moldings, which was probably shocking to some of his more traditionally minded contemporaries. Otto Wagner wrote about his own Postal Savings Bank design (Fig.2): Nowhere is even the smallest sacrifice made to any sort of traditional form [The design is] flowing naturally out the nature and purpose of the building. Figure 2 Otto Wagner, Postal Savings Bank, Vienna, Austria, (image between 1945 and 1959) Modern Architecture 15

29 BEYOND MODERNISM Finally, Hermann Bohr, literary critic and supporter of the Viennese Secession described Josef Hoffmann s Purkersdorf Sanatorium (Fig.3) as a logical organism, unencumbered by false ornament and completely suited to its scientific purpose. 17 Figure 3 - Josef Hoffmann, Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Purkersdorf, Austria, In Ornament and Crime, Loos (1971) draws a parallel between the practice of ornamenting a building and that of tattooing one s body. According to Loos, body tattoos are not a crime or 17 Topp, 3. Modern Architecture 16

30 sign of degeneration when used by primitive people; the same way smears on the wall are permissible among small children. Body tattoos, however, and smears on the wall, are the mark of criminals and social degenerates in our modern society. Analogously, building ornamentation is acceptable among primitive people, but not acceptable in a society that prides itself on its progressive attitude. 18 Figure 4 - Adolf Loos, Tristan Tzara House, Paris, France, (image between 1945 and 1980) 18 Adolf Loos, "Ornament and Crime," in Programs and manifestoes in 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MITT Press, 1971), Modern Architecture 17

31 The persistence of ornament is not only a crime against the cultural evolution of a society, but also against the national economy: if two men live side by side with the same needs, same demands on life and the same income but belonging to different cultures, economically speaking the following process can be observed: the twentieth-century man will get richer and richer and the eighteenth-century man will get poorer and poorer. Figure 5 - Josef Hoffmann, Winarskyhof Municipal Apartment Building, rear façade, Vienna, Austria, The producer of ornament is also affected. Ornament, not being a natural product of [a] culture, has its demand for it subsiding and with it the earnings of those who manufacture it. According to Loos (1971), lower quality ornaments are to be preferred to higher quality ones, Modern Architecture 18

32 since, while equally meaningless, the lower quality ornaments do not take painful work to create them. 19 Figure 6 - Josef Hoffmann, Palais Stoclet, overall view from the street, Brussels, Belgium, Harries (1997) notes that Loos s crusade against ornament is motivated by beauty, and not by utility, or even by economics. If moderns do not need ornament, it is not because they 19 Loos, 23. Modern Architecture 19

33 reject any source of enjoyment, but because they have something better. 20 Indeed, Loos pleads for simplicity as a finer and more subtle source of enjoyment. Ornament can be a source of enjoyment to people who have not attained the spiritual strength that freedom from ornament produces, but not to the modern man. 21 Recent commentators challenged the idea that modernist architects were completely disengaged with ornament, pointing out that modernist ornament does exist, and it is based on materials and colors, rather than sculptural forms. Loos himself, according to James Trilling, loved to juxtapose the simplest forms with the most luxurious materials, especially rare woods and colored marble. 22 Thus, modernism did not part with ornament entirely, but only transformed ornament into something suited to the new social and technological conditions. The disappearance of crafts and democratization of society made traditional ornament unsustainable, if not redundant. 23 What modernists cast off, Trilling claims, was not ornament, but artifice, artifice being something contrived and possibly deceptive. A fear of artifice, affirms Trilling, runs deep into the Western culture, both on the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman filiations. Although artifice is a broader term than ornament, it is to be expected that a mistrust of artifice should reflect upon ornament as well Harries, Loos, James Trilling, Ornament. A Modern Perspective (University of Washington Press, 2003), Trilling, Trilling, 148. Modern Architecture 20

34 Figure 7 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House interior (living room windows), Chicago, IL, 1909 Trilling s natural-artificial dichotomy is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright s organic architecture. Wright emphasizes moderation in the use of ornament, and describes the proper relationship between ornament and structure as an organic, or emphasizing relationship, as opposed to a prettifying one (Fig. 7). 25 In his 1943 Autobiography, he mentions integral ornament as one of five resources of modern architecture. Integral ornament, according to Wright, confers a natural pattern to a structure, much like what rhythm does for music (Fig.8). Integral ornament belongs to the domain of poetry. Poetry is not within everybody s 25 Frank Lloyd Wright, Truth Against the World (John Wiley & Sons, 1987), 67. Modern Architecture 21

35 reach, however. Very many write good prose who cannot write poetry at all, warns Wright. Poetry is dangerous, and we would better err on the side of Ornaphobia, according to Wright, than take part in the suicidal attempts of building any more merely ornamented buildings. 26 Figure 8 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Aline Barnsdall House (Hollyhock House), Los Angeles, CA, (image from 1954) 26 Frank Lloyd Wright, In the Nature of Materials: A Philosophy, in Architecture Culture , ed. Joan Ockman (New York: Rizzoli International Publications Inc., 1993), 39. Modern Architecture 22

36 Functional Aesthetics The English term functional serves as a translation of three German language terms: sachlich, zweckmässig, and funktionell. These three terms, while interchangeable, carry slightly different meanings which are, of course, impossible to convey in the translation. 27 According to Adrian Forty (2000), Sachlichkeit means literally thingness, and has no equivalent in English. The term was first used in architecture in the context of a debate about realism. Forty cites Otto Wagner debating in the Preface to his Sketches, Projects and Executed Buildings, 1890, on the degree of realism that was appropriate for the Viennese architecture of the day, compared to what Wagner considered to be the extreme realism of the Eiffel Tower in Paris or Kursaal Palace in Ostend. Other connotations of Sacklichkeit are anti-ornamental, nonaristocratic, pertaining to everyday objects, rational, scientific, sober, practical, genuine, and modern. 28 Zweckmässigkeit is related to Zweck, or purpose. It is used both to signify the fulfillment of immediate material needs, as utility, but also to signify organic purpose or destiny. Its first occurrence in the context of architecture was in Paul Frankl s Principles of Architectural History, 1914, as Zweckgessinung, or purposive intention. Here it refers to the aspect of a building that escapes historical research, the use for which the space was intended. 29 Zweckmässigkeit is the term that Mies van der Rohe used when he distanced himself from his previous endorsement of function as the source of meaning for a building. Adrian Forty points out that it is easy to 27 Adrian Forty, Words and Buildings. A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000). 28 Forty, Forty, 181. Modern Architecture 23

37 misunderstand Mies s renunciation if we don t grasp the distinction between Zweckmässigkeit, as purpose, and Sachlichkeit, as rational construction. The different nuances concentrated in the term function become important not only in order to appreciate the heterogeneity of the modernist attitudes towards function, but also to evaluate attempts by historians of architecture to stretch functionalism back into the nineteenth century, and even earlier into seventeenth and eighteenth century rationalism. Nikolaus Pevsner (1975) quotes A.W.N. Pugin s (1841) opening paragraphs of the True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, as an example of a pre-functionalist mindset. Pevsner begins: Where lie the sources of the twentieth century? ( ) The first of our sources is functionalism. Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, born in 1812, the English son of a French father, wrote on the first page of his most important book: There should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety The smallest detail should serve a purpose, and construction itself should vary with the material employed. That was written in 1841, but it was not new then. It is the direct continuation of the principle of French seventeenth and eighteenth century rationalism ( ). 30 The absence of the term function from Pugin s vocabulary is readily noticeable, as is the presence of such terms as purpose, convenience, or propriety, which can be easily found in any classical vocabulary. Forty(2000) reckons not only that historical narratives tracing functionalism back into nineteenth century and further are inaccurate, but that there is no doctrine of functionalism that can be identified at all among modernist architects. It is only in the 1960s that such a theory emerged, according to Forty, and it was then authored by architects and critics who were reacting against modernism Nikolaus Pevsner, The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design, Penguin Books, Forty, 192. Modern Architecture 24

38 Form While form follows function is perhaps the most famous dictum associated with modernist architecture, it might not be the most accurate representation of the relationship between function and form that the modernists themselves entertained. Walter Gropius (1965), director of the Bauhaus between 1919 and 1927, denounced catch phrases like functionalism and fitness for purpose = beauty as misconceptions meant to relegate architecture to one side of the design process, ignoring its mission as a bridge uniting opposite poles of thought. 32 While modernist architects might not have simplistically believed in a strictly utilitarian aesthetics, they did entertain the idea that things have an exact, logical form that we ought to learn to recognize, by practicing rational thinking and cultivating artistic sensibility. This is the idea that Henri van de Velde, from whom Walter Gropius took over as the director of the Bauhaus, had expressed in his 1903 Programme 33 and that he reiterated in his 1907 Credo: 34 Thou shalt comprehend the form and construction of all objects only in the sense of their strictest, elementary logic and justification for their existence. Thou shalt adapt and subordinate these forms and constructions to the essential use of the material which thou employest. And if you wish to beautify those forms and constructions ( ) [do it] only so far as thou canst respect and retain the rights and the essential appearance of these forms and constructions. Van de Velde defends himself in yet another excerpt in Forms, from 1949, against those who accused him of embracing the unsophisticated view that utilitarian forms are necessary beautiful. Van de Velde explains that the products of the generative intelligence (that is, 32 Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (Cambridge, MA: MITT Press, 1965), Henri Van de Velde, Programme, in Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), Henri Van de Velde, Credo, in Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), 18. Modern Architecture 25

39 products spontaneously created by the primitive tool makers, as well as by contemporary engineers and machine builders) are just initial data (author s italics). This initial data create the possibility for purity of form when the right social and moral conditions are met. Beauty cannot be the result of following function in a slave like manner, but the result of achieving pure forms, by the use of creative reason, and combining them with perfection of execution and quality of material. 35 The struggle to reconcile a striving for formal purity with utilitarian aesthetics has also shaped Le Corbusier s architecture. Le Corbusier s fascination with pure geometrical forms, sometimes verging on Neo-Platonism, is well documented, especially in the so-called Purist period of his career: Pure forms are beautiful, he glosses in 1924, because they can be clearly appreciated. Working by calculation, engineers employ geometrical forms, satisfying our eyes by their geometry and our understanding by their mathematics; their work is on the direct line of good art. 36 Charles Jenks remarks, with reference to two of Le Corbusier s villas, The Villa at Garches and Villa Savoye, that they are composed of freely disposed geometrical elements, following a rectangular grid, a Cartesian coordinate system which functions as an ideal order throughout the building(fig.9) Henri Van de Velde, Forms, in Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture (New York: Dover Publications, 1986), Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 85. Modern Architecture 26

40 Figure 9 - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, (image between 1945 and 1980) Not only has Le Corbusier been striving for formal simplicity and perfection in his later work, but, according to Beatrix Colomina (1994), he went as far as to airbrush pictures of his earlier work, in order to adapt them to a more purist aesthetics. 38 Colomina documents such a process in a photograph of Villa Schwob published in L Esprit Nouveau 6 (Fig.10). 38 Beatrix Colomina, Privacy and Publicity (Cambridge, MA; London, England: MITT Press, 1994), 107. Modern Architecture 27

41 Figure 10 - Le Corbusier, Villa Schwob, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1916, as published in L Esprit Nouveau 6, after Beatrix Colomina, Privacy and Publicity, 109. The photograph has been noticeably purged of every trace of organic growth or objects that could distract the view. But what is even more striking, notices Colomina, is the absence of any reference to the actual site, which involved a steep terrain, making architecture an object independent of place. 39 While his buildings were emphatically geometrical in shape, Le Corbusier made allowance for other forms, especially for objects of everyday use. He considered the forms of 39 Colomina, 109. Modern Architecture 28

42 these objects to be the result of a long process of evolution attesting to their viability. He incorporated some of these objects of everyday use in his paintings, as well as in his interior architecture (Fig.11). 40 Figure 11 - Le Corbusier, Wash basin in the Villa Savoye, , Poissy, France In the Introduction to Le Corbusier s Towards a New Architecture, Frederick Etchells recognizes that the forms produced by modern mechanical engineering might sometimes be strange and disagreeable, at least in the short run. Some of these forms will disappear, he reckons, while others might become good in the long run and part of our general equipment. The 40 Charles Jeanneret and Amedee Ozenfant, Après le Cubisme (Paris, 1918), 24, from Jencks, 52. Modern Architecture 29

43 guarantee that the forms produced by utility, without any preoccupation for external appearance might be good forms, is a sense for order (italics added) that people are entrusted with, which makes them able to unconsciously generate forms that are well planned and cleanly disposed Ethics Ethics has been a part of the modernist architecture philosophy on two different levels. On one level, architecture was held as a moralizing factor in society and a panacea for social evil; on the other hand architecture itself was subjected to ethical requirements, most notably a demand for structural honesty and truth of materials, but also for expressive and historical truth, that is, the demand that the building must be an expression of its creator and an expression of the spirit of the age in which it was built (Zeitgeist). The idea that architects can improve the living conditions in the cities started to gain ground in the nineteenth century, when the cities began to accommodate an influx of people from the rural areas, attracted by the industrial revolution. 42 The crowding of European cities in the nineteenth century was certainly helped by the fact that the cities were still confined within the medieval walls and expansion was difficult to achieve. The consequent plunge in the living conditions started to be an object of concern for local authorities, in the midst of the cholera 41 Frederick Etchells, Introduction to Towards a New Architecture, by Le Corbusier (New York: Dover Publications, 1986), vi. 42 Jurgen Habermas, "Modern and Postmodern Architecture," in Architecture Theory Since 1968, ed. K. Michael Hays (MIT Press, 1989), 420. Modern Architecture 30

44 epidemics that plagued Europe around the middle of the nineteenth century. 43 According to Habermas (1998), nineteenth century architecture was ill-equipped to deal with these new conditions and this constituted the impulse out of which the modernist movement was born. 44 The modernist prescription for improving the living conditions of the poor was most of the time the clearing of the slums and the building of social housing for the former slum dwellers. Two slum clearance acts were passed in Britain, in 1868 and In 1890, the Housing of the Working Classes Act gave local authorities in Britain the power to initiate building of social housing, while reinforcing existing powers for clearing slum housing. The practice of the government of building subsidized housing, and corresponding slum clearing, gained even more momentum with the housing shortage which followed the first and second world wars. 45 Fig. 12, from A.W.N. Pugin s Contrasts, conveys how it was believed that architecture could make a difference in the well being of the poorest members of the society. Pugin ( ), besides being an early promoter of the idea of architecture as an instrument of social reform, was also an early proponent of Gothic revival architecture. He famously considered that the return to Gothic design in Britain could bring about a return to faith, and especially to the Catholic faith, of the corrupt British society. 46 In Fig. 13, also from Contrasts, architecture is shown as making a positive impact on public morality. 43 Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (Thames & Hudson, 1992), Habermas, Frampton, A.W.N. Pugin, An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (London: J.Weale, 1843). Modern Architecture 31

45 Figure 12 Drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasted residences for the poor, in Contrasts, Modern Architecture 32

46 Figure 13 Drawing and etching by A.W.N. Pugin, Contrasted public conduits, in Contrasts, 1969 Confidence in the healing power of architecture only increased in the twentieth century. Architecture could now offer an exact prescription for the ills of the society or, as Le Corbusier put it, it is only (italics added) architecture that can offer an exact prescription: On the day that contemporary society, at present so sick, has become properly aware that only architecture can provide the exact prescription for its ills, then the time will have come for the great machine to be put in motion Topp, 64. Modern Architecture 33

47 Leslie Topp, who offers this excerpt from Le Corbusier s The Radiant City: Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be used as the Basis of our Machine Age, 1933, notes that the role of architecture as a healer is associated here with the role of architecture as a machine, pointing out that the intended healing of the society was to be accomplished with the scientific precision of machine technology. 48 The other level on which ethics and architecture intersect is that of honesty in construction. Architecture that is intended as a moralizing factor in society needs to be honest about itself and its own making. Nothing can be more execrable than making a church appear rich and beautiful in the eyes of men, proclaims A.W.N. Pugin, but full of trick and falsehood, which cannot escape the all-searching eye of God. 49 John Ruskin, another great architectural theorist of the nineteenth century, added his voice to the crusade against architectural deception: We might not be able to command good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture, but we can command an honest architecture. The meagerness of the poverty may be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected, but what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception ( ). 50 Ruskin identifies three types of falsehoods that are practiced by architects: architects can deceive with regard to the structure of the construction, as when a vaulted structured is disguised as a Greek temple, with regard to the nature of the materials, as when a brick wall is covered with marble-like painting, or with regard to the amount of work that was put into the 48 Topp, A.W.N. Pugin, The True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture (Reprint of the 1st edition, John Weale, London: Academy Editions, 1973), John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture (J.M. Dent & Sons; E.P. Dutton & Co., 1956), 34. Modern Architecture 34

48 construction, as when use is made of mass produced ornaments. Ornamentation can also be deceptive, when it is used to obscure the structure, instead of enriching the structure. Earlier criticisms of the modernist engagement with structural honesty pleaded for an unmediated experience of architecture, instead of experiencing or explaining architecture as a consequence of something else: religion, politics, sociology, philosophy, rationalism, technology, or the spirit of the age. 51 In his Morality and Architecture, David Watkin (1984) has been particularly critical of the Zeitgeist mindset of modern architects and historians of architecture, who considered modern architecture as best representing the needs of the society, and thus being truthful and moral, and condemned traditional architecture as immoral or antisocial Science and Technology The fate of the modernist movement in architecture is closely intertwined with the fate of the logical positivism movement in philosophy. Adolf Loos, the precursor of modernist architecture, lived and created in turn-of-the-century Vienna along Ludwig Wittgenstein, the precursor of logical positivism. Herbert Fiegl, Philip Frank, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolf Carnap, and Otto Neurath, all prominent members of The Vienna Circle, the logical positivist association founded by Moritz Schlick in 1922, paid visits and lectured at the Bauhaus in 51 David Watkin, Morality and Architecture, (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), Watkin, Modern Architecture 35

49 Dessau. 53 Indeed, according to Peter Galison, the logical positivists frequented the Bauhaus more than any other group outside of art and architecture. 54 Figure 14 Walter Gropius Entrance of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, (image between 1945 and 1980) In a 1929 lecture at the Bauhaus, entitled Science and Life, Rudolf Carnap mentions a technically grounded "modern form of life" that logical positivism and the Bauhaus share. Finally, the old Vienna Circle and the old Bauhaus reassembled as a joint enterprise at the 53 Peter Galison, "Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism." Critical Inquiry (1990): Galison, 749. Modern Architecture 36

50 University of Chicago, with some of their members that immigrated to America when the political situation in Germany took a turn for the worse. 55 Logical positivism was the proponent of a scientific world conception, in which all knowledge is based on experience and the only recognized methodology is logical analysis. 56 Logical positivism was markedly anti-metaphysical, going as far as to declare meaningless any propositions that are not rooted in experience 57, which paradoxically includes many of the philosophical propositions as well. Positivism was also committed to building out of elementary forms basic observational propositions, much like modernist architecture was committed to building out of elemental geometrical shapes and colors, following a logical process that guarantees that the more complex propositions would retain the authority granted by the empirical foundation. All this was to be done to the exclusion of the decorative, mystical or metaphysical. 58 The reduction to basic experiential propositions would also guarantee the unity of science, and presumably that of science and art. In the 1937 Prospectus for the New Bauhaus, Charles Morris, a philosopher at the University of Chicago, recalls a remark of László Moholy-Nagy, an instructor at the Bauhaus, who declared himself interested in the unity of life, the same way Morris and Carnap were interested in the unity of science. 59 Some of the logical positivists, like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Otto Neurath, had been directly pursuing architectural concerns. The house that Wittgenstein built for his sister, Hermine, in 55 Galison, H. Hahn, R. Carnap, O. Neurath, The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle 57 Carnap, Rudolph. "The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language." In Logical empiricism at its peak : Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath, by Sahotra Sarkar ed., New York: Garland Publications, Galison, Galison, 747. Modern Architecture 37

51 Vienna (Fig.15), was famously characterized by the latter as hausgewordene Logik (logic becomes house), testifying to the connection between Wittgenstein s philosophical pursuits and his architectural vision. 60 Figure 15 South front of the Wittgenstein House, Vienna, with the garden. Original condition (Photo 1971), from Bernhard Leitner, The Wittgenstein House, 183 The simple geometrical shapes of the house echo the logical atomism that Wittgenstein proposed in his Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus: Mechanics determines one form of description of the world by saying that all propositions used in the description of the world must be obtained in a given 60 Galison, 727. Modern Architecture 38

52 way from a given set of propositions the axioms of mechanics. It thus supplies the bricks for building the edifice of science, and it says, Any building that you want to erect, whatever it may be, must somehow be constructed with these bricks, and with these alone. 61 Logical positivism started to lose ground in philosophy at about the same time that modernist architecture came under attack from various postmodern strands of thought. Positivism was criticized for its reliance on observational statements, by philosophers like Thomas Kuhn, Norwood Hanson, and Paul Feyerabend, who were among the first to point out that observational statements, the building blocks of the positivistic edifice, are not completely independent of theory, i.e. they are theory-laden. 62 The implication of the theory-ladenness of observations, in its most extreme form, is the impossibility to decide among alternative theories (or paradigms in the case of Kuhn) by reference to empirical observation, or experiment. More recently, science came to be considered a set of social practices, without a privileged empirical or theoretical foundation Modern Architecture: Death or Metamorphosis? Karsten Harries (1997) points out that modernism started with the dream to heal the breach that had opened between beauty and reason, art and technology, freedom and necessity, but that the (humanist) dream soon turned into an (anti-humanist) nightmare. 64 The modernist ambition to put the problem of habitation on a scientific basis failed at the same time that the 61 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, quoted in Galison, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor Charles Alan. Defining Science. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996). 64 Harries, 53. Modern Architecture 39

53 ambition of science itself to provide an authoritative interpretation of human life dwindled. Modernist housing was compared with alien, box-like constructions that people were confined in, much like domestic animals are kept in cages that they have no say or control over. 65 In his 1958 Mould Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture, the Viennese painter and architect Hundertwasser (1971) turns to vernacular, aka slum architecture, when looking for architecture that is usable, functional, and habitable, and denounces modernist architecture as the opposite of this: The material uninhabitability of the slums is preferable to the moral uninhabitability of functional, utilitarian architecture. In the so-called slums, only man s body can perish, but in the architecture ostensibly built for man, his soul perishes ( ). Functional architecture has proved to be a wrong road, just like painting with a ruler. With giant strides we are approaching impractical, unusable, and finally uninhabitable architecture. 66 Hundertwasser also rebels against the existing separation between the architect and the occupant of a building and the denial of the individual s desire to build and of the right of the tenant to modify his or her surroundings in a way that suits his or her human needs. Finally, he denounces the abuse of straight lines and the destructive desire to raze traditional architecture and replace it with rectilinear monster constructions. 67 What Hundertwasser proposes, in order to save functional architecture from ruin, is the production of creative mould and critical weathering. Only after everything has been covered in mould, says Hundertwasser, will a new and wonderful architecture come into being Hundertwasser, "Mould Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture," in Programs and manifestoes on 20th century architecture, ed. Ulrich Conrads (MITT Press, 1971), Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser, 160. Modern Architecture 40

54 Figure 16 - Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser House (apartment building), columns framing glassed Winter garden, Vienna Modern Architecture 41