Estilos particulares de las Áreas Visuales

THE ROLE OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARCHITECT IN SOCIETY

Theorists from Vitruvius on have exalted the role of archi- tecture and the architect in human society. Vitruvius did not dwell at length on the matter, but in the context of hypoth- esizing an origin for architecture he offered the art of build- ing perhaps the highest encomium it has ever received. After attributing to the discovery of fire the origin of society and language, he accorded to the invention of architecture the status of generator of civilization. From architecture, he asserted, all the other arts and fields of knowledge were descended. By implication, then, the architect is one of the prime contributors to the shaping of civilization. By defin- ing the importance of the art of building in this way, Vi- truvius raised the writing of architectural theory above the level of technical manuals to that of intellectual discourse bordering on philosophy. Subsequent theorists had to sub- scribe to similar characterizations in order to maintain the same lofty status for their treatises, but their different cir- cumstances prompted them to employ somewhat different formulations.

Because Alberti’s mission in writing his treatise was to revive the antique tradition, it was necessary for him to

make classical architecture important to others as well. Hence for him the role of theory had to be one of advo- cacy—as it has remained to this day. For that reason Alberti felt impelled to cite the benefits to society of beautiful, well- planned buildings: they give pleasure; they enhance civic pride; they confer dignity and honor on the community; if sacred, they can encourage piety; and they may even move an enemy to refrain from damaging them. By the same to- ken the architect through his work bestows benefits: he is useful both to individual clients and to the public. Through the design of military machines and fortifications he may be more useful to the defense of society than the generals; and as an artist and theorist he is an ornament to his culture.

For as long as the classical tradition reigned as the sole desirable mode for architecture, these assertions did not need to be restated or defended. But near the end of the eighteenth century, when a theorist such as Quatremère de Quincy could assert that the orders need not necessarily be the basis of design, a new way of defining the role of archi- tecture became appropriate. Quatremère saw architecture as a mode of expression, parallel to language and similar in nature. Like language, it is not only a means whereby hu- man society is formed but is also a cause of its formation. Like language, architecture evolves and with that evolution comes to serve a progressive social purpose. Hence ar- chitects and architecture can be the instrument of social improvement.

That outlook got a new spin when Gothic became the conceptual ideal. Pugin, for instance, cited this one partic- ular style of building, the medieval architecture of the pointed arch, as not only evocative but also supportive of a virtuous society. The medieval architect, by implication, had been the instrument of that virtue. Ruskin, imputing similar virtue to Italian Gothic, maintained that good ar- chitecture inspires the citizens who have incorporated it

into their daily lives, because it expresses and at the same time reinforces the highest values of their society. It con- tains the most palpable evidence of their historical ex- perience, endowing the surrounding landscape with the cultural meaning that makes nature poetic. Moreover, it manifests the inner spirit of a people, witnessing to their distinctive identity. The architect assumes the burden of re- alizing all these important missions. When he is successful, he has contributed to and improved his society.

For Viollet-le-Duc, who preferred to involve himself in architecture without benefit of metaphysics, the architect provides rational designs to meet practical needs. Archi- tecture, for him, is the product of logical analysis, provid- ing for a functional need with a suitable structure while employing appropriate materials. His views are akin to Ruskin’s but without the romantic sentiment. Together the two theorists provided the basis for a magnified esteem, current during the early decades of the twentieth century, of the social value of good design and the architect’s role in creating it.

Paul Scheerbart, envisioning in 1914 a virtually trans- parent architecture with curtain walls of glass set in mini- mal ferroconcrete frames, offered one of the most radical assessments. He recognized that while living and working in transparent buildings a person would have to shed the sense of being cocooned that traditional architecture pro- vides. That person would also have to be willing to function with the environment in full view, and in full view of those on the outside. Such an alteration of circumstances would require nothing less than a fundamental change of behav- ior and a modification of prevailing notions of privacy. It would radically redefine the way people had related to architecture for more than two thousand years. For Scheer- bart, then, architecture is capable of playing a role in so- ciety that would profoundly change how people live and

relate to each other. He had, on the other hand, no particu- lar notion of the architect’s place in all this other than to as- sume that the designer can and will recognize and take advantage of all the new opportunities presented by mod- ern technology.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier shared an exaggerated notion of the profound effect that good architectural design and the architect who created it could have on society. For Le Corbusier it was largely a case of solving problems to create a more healthful and efficient built environment. To a considerable extent he subscribed to the same notion as Scheerbart, namely that through spare, lean domestic design one could correct the in- dolent, materialistic inclinations he deplored in nineteenth- century society and perceived in its architecture. He was fully aware of the implications for lifestyle that are inherent in his architectural design, and he tended to idealize the im- pact that an architect of such inclinations could exert upon his society. His urban design schemes, centered on widely dispersed glass and concrete towers and surrounded by long ribbon buildings of similar construction, were ab- stractions based on generalized concerns for physical health and circulation and little else. They were environ- ments to be shaped by a single intelligence, granted total control over a large area.

Gropius’s notions were nearly the same; indeed, he and Le Corbusier both trusted in modern industrial technology to sweep away the ills of the past, especially the horrors of the nineteenth-century industrial city. More than the other two leaders of modernism, however, Gropius put his faith in the creation of material environments in which all arti- facts, not just the architecture, would be well designed. They would not only be tasteful and efficient; they would also be industrially produced, and in a manner that would make them economically available to most of the popula-

tion. He regarded the function of an architect as that of a social benefactor.

Wright, having early imbibed from Japan the Zen Buddhist concept of the oneness of humankind with nature, was always more concerned than the other two pioneers of modernism with using architecture to help people establish a philosophically healthier relationship to nature. Toward this end he devoted special concern to the siting of his rural buildings in nature and also to designing the natural envi- ronment surrounding his urban buildings. He regarded his architecture as capable of helping people adopt a saner lifestyle, and as an architect he thought of himself as the one who would show the way. His Broadacre City project— made with the Taliesin Fellows in the mid-1930s— integrated the amenities of both city and country in a thinly populated regional plan. The architect of such a commu- nity would implicitly both design and control the environ- ment. Consequently, just as Plato’s republic was to be headed by a philosopher-king, Wright’s Broadacre City would have to be governed by a philosopher-architect.

Of the three, it was Le Corbusier whose ideas about the role of the architect enjoyed the greatest influence, es- pecially in the area of city design. Conceived with altruistic motives for housing the many, his urban schemes were dominated by a concern for providing healthful environ- ments, light and airy, in which circulation by modern modes of transportation would be maximally efficient. Through such improved design he thought it would be pos- sible to transform urban life for the better.

As it turned out, Le Corbusier’s exalted aspiration for the role of the architect signaled the high-water mark of the modernist movement’s professional ambitions. The apart- ment tower schemes constructed according to his model ended up exerting upon the occupants an impact exactly opposite from the one he had imagined. Not only did the

structures not revitalize their alienated and dehumanized occupants, but they even atomized the very communities they were meant to unify. In acknowledgment of their fail- ure, the dramatic intentional demolition of such a complex in St. Louis in the 1960s did more than any other one event to deflate the exalted regard for the architect and the social role of architecture that modernism had fostered. Since then, statements on those twin themes have been little more than asides interpolated into the explanations of designs in monographs and professional journals.

Nowadays the professional is more likely to present him- or herself as a nonintrusive interpreter of the client’s needs, functioning principally as a facilitator for their real- ization. If the reality of performance is more active than that, it is one in which the designer’s creative freedom is ex- ercised more with the way the structure is formulated than with the way the building is to be used, that is, with the means rather than the ends. If the present-day architect does not still claim to improve society through good design, he or she may nevertheless produce an unanticipated new cultural icon in the course of developing a radical structural solution to the practical needs of the client. Be that as it may, the diminution of the role of the architect in archi- tectural theory is real, and it has been accompanied by a parallel diminution in both the advocacy and the compre- hensiveness of architectural theory itself.

THE EDUCATION OF THE ARCHITECT

Vitruvius regarded the architect’s ability as so central to the enterprise of building that he made the architect’s edu- cation the point of departure for his entire treatise. He cer- tainly expected that the training would be practical as well as intellectual, each of those aspects being equally necessary

as well as indispensable to the other. The practical he felt no need to describe, whereas the intellectual he discussed in considerable detail. At another point in his text he ex- pressed pride in his education and gratitude to his parents for having provided it. So the curriculum he delineated in the opening book may have been pretty much what he had received and found useful in his own career.

The subjects he prescribed are not far removed from a liberal arts curriculum in present-day institutions. They in- clude eleven disciplines. Drawing is needed in order to make sketches. Geometry helps one to employ a rule and compass in making a design and also to figure proportions. Optics is useful to determine the quality of light in build- ings. Arithmetic is needed to calculate costs and dimen- sions. History helps one to explain features of famous buildings to clients. Philosophy provides the basis for cul- tivating personal virtues. Physics is needed to understand the laws of nature. Music, as an intellectual rather than a practical pursuit, helps one to acquire mathematical the- ory (related to acoustics) and to tune weapons. Medicine is useful in judging the health conditions of building sites. Law informs one about regulations related to building. And astronomy helps one to understand the harmony of the universe. Although each of those subjects is individu- ally important, he recognized that each informs the others as well. He was quick to admit that he was no scholar and that one need not be an expert in any of the subjects. Rather, he felt it important to grasp the principles involved in the various disciplines so that they can be employed in a pragmatic way.

It is hard to fault such a curriculum and general out- look for the education of an architect. The difference in concept between this and what is prescribed today is not great, even if the particular subjects are not the same, but ironically the similarity probably has little or nothing to do

with the fact that Vitruvius articulated its scope. It has more to do with the gradual return to a cultural situation in which a holistic view of the needs of society combined with the technological demands of construction is roughly par- allel to that of ancient Rome.

From Alberti’s standpoint, such a curriculum could not be provided in one institution or cultural circumstance. Functioning in a context in which the medieval curriculum of the seven liberal arts still survived virtually intact, Alberti posited a prospective architect closer to the realm of the scholar than to that of the builder. Indeed, in writing his treatise he was carrying on a campaign to gain acceptance of the visual arts as pursuits belonging to the intellectual realm. For him it was important to gain recognition for the archi- tect as a scholar and gentleman rather than merely the craftsman he had long been in Italian society. Thus did Al- berti get cornered into asserting a greater importance for theory than practice in the architect’s education and regard- ing his profession as more that of an artist than a builder.

Alberti’s outlook prevailed, with two telling conse- quences. The most direct is that for as long as the classical tradition dominated in European architecture, the educa- tion of the architect was more artistic and theoretical than practical. Official academies were eventually founded in the seventeenth century to propagate exactly this regimen, and they dominated the preparation of young architects for at least two more centuries to come. The less direct con- sequence was that, lacking a venturesome technological training, European architects did not develop any impor- tant structural innovations during the era when this phi- losophy of training prevailed. Although rich in formal invention within the rubric of classicism, their practice re- mained largely static in matters related to technology.

Viollet-le-Duc is the theorist who wanted to bring the education of the architect into the modern age. The

chronology of his writings on the subject does not corre- spond with the order of their applicability to the develop- ment of an architect, so it is the latter sequence that will be followed here. The education of a child who shows interest or capability in matters visual should, he thought, be cen- tered on drawing. Discussed in his last work, Histoire d’un

dessinateur, comment on apprend à dessiner (Paris, 1879),

drawing is to be pursued not for the sake of developing an artistic talent but to help a child learn to see what he looks at and to analyze what he sees. The point is that through the exercise of independent analysis of things not encountered before one develops an active rather than a passive intellect, fostering in turn a problem-solving outlook. While pursu- ing a higher education, Viollet-le-Duc explained in Histoire

d’une maison (Paris, 1873), the prospective architect

should work in a professional office—much like today’s in- tern—and even on a construction site, if possible, in alter- nation with academic activities. Moreover, he explained in the same treatise, design should be developed step by step in accordance with a definite rational method. Fundamen- tally, as he argued in the two volumes of Entretiens sur l’ar-

chitecture (Paris, 1863, 1872), academic training should

cease to be addressed wholly to the artistic side of architec- ture but should be balanced with the technological con- cerns of engineers.

Viollet-le-Duc’s negative view of an art-centered archi- tectural education was directed toward the official acad- emy, the École des Beaux-Arts, where, ironically, he had been teaching just before the Entretiens were published. His opinion was that the only original works in building in France at the time were the undertakings of engineers. By the early twentieth century his position had been adopted by numerous universities, especially in America, and their curricula began to resemble more and more a combination of the formulas of Vitruvius and Viollet-le-Duc.

In the 1920s the Bauhaus, under the direction of Wal- ter Gropius, emphasized even more strongly the practical aspects of training. Before proceeding to a professional level of architectural education, students were required to master all sorts of practical skills related to building, both in institutional workshops and in formal apprenticeships. The requirements stipulated in Gropius’s booklet The New

Architecture and the Bauhaus (Cambridge, MA, 1965) cer-

tainly exceeded the level of practicality that elitists like Gropius would themselves have tolerated as students, but they served to advance a strong case for the inclusion of practical training in architectural education. A certain amount of this carried over into the curriculum he imposed upon the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, which spread from there to architecture schools throughout the United States.

Architectural training today increasingly tends to em- phasize technological training, largely in response to the de- mands of senior partners in firms hiring new graduates. Many employers take for granted a familiarity with CAD— computer-aided design. What they do not take into con- sideration is that education is not the same thing as job preparedness, and that the more beginners are educated in analytical thinking, the more readily they acquire practical skills and become effective in office procedure.

THE SCOPE OF THE ARCHITECT’S ACTIVITY

The range of activities considered the proper work of the architect has varied considerably over time, generally de- veloping in the direction of greater specialization. For Vi- truvius’s architect, the creation of all types of buildings was to be accompanied by the making of timepieces and the construction of machinery. In other words, his architect

was fully the equivalent of both the civil and mechanical en- gineer of our time as well as the architect; he was expected