In the time when many architects such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier begun the work of designing modernist buildings during the 1910’s and 20’s, they also processed new ideas such as the repudiation of traditional praxis together with their values. Their works seemed in many aspects like a deliberate break with tradition. But was it so?
The great question is that, how can one break a tradition without standing from the discipline that one practices? And how can one set oneself aside from the tradition that one is embedded to and he or she still practice “architecture”? Does one or can one create an idea from a place free of references?
To start discussing or rather define the correlation between tradition versus modernity that occurs in the modern architecture, this is in particular as it took the presentation in the early works of Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, it will be enriching to look at the meaning of modern and tradition.
Modern is from the Latin word modo, meaning just now. From the different definitions of modern, in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1 the ones that are more relevant in relation to this topic are: 1- “Being at this time, now existing.” 2- “Of or pertaining to the present and recent times, as distinguished from the remote past; pertaining to or originating in the current age or period.” and 3- “Of a movement in art and architecture, or the works produce by such a movement: characterize by a departure from or a repudiation of accepted or traditional styles and values.”
The French critic Charles Baudelaire has an additional meaning that modern can take in this world “The Painter of Modern Life”. In his words, it is as follows: “Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and immovable.”3Hilde Heynen has a discussion of this meaning in her book “Architecture and Modernity”. In this book, modern is seen as being momentary and transient. The opposite understanding of this connotation is not that of haa past connections or activities but is instead of an indeterminate process of ending. She has almost same definition of the term modern with that of Baudelaire`s remarks and, furthermore, she acknowledges that the many possibilities of the modern as being a collection of the work of art that coexist with the traditional. This comes in conflict with the third, above-mentioned, definition: the modern as the “departure from or… repudiation of accepted or traditional styles and values”. This semantic conflict in the notion of modernity is going to be one of the common threads of this project.
It is essential to look at the term tradition, since it is in the dialectic between tradition and the modern that the conflict lies. Going back to the Oxford English Dictionary,4 the etymological origin of the word tradition is the “Latin traditio, onem:
Delivery, surrender, handing down, a saying handing down, instructionor doctrine delivered.”
1 Simpson and Weiner, 1989, VOL IX: 947 and 948
2 This is according to Hilde Heynen’s reading of H.U. Gumbrecht’s article “Modern, Modernität, Moderne”. See Heynen, 1999: 8 and 9.
3 Baudelaire, 1964: 1
After a long research, I came up with a variety of meanings and uses presented in the dictionary I found the following ones most interesting in relation to our subject matter: Tradition as 1- “That which is thus handed down; a statement, belief, or practice transmitted from generation to generation.” And 2- “A long established and generally accepted custom or method of procedure, having almost the force of a law; an immemorial usage; the body (or anyone) of the experiences and usages of any branch or school of art or literature, handed down by predecessors and generally followed.”
The reason for choosing modern architecture is due to the revolutionary, different or new nature of the concepts and ideas that modernist architects were dealing with. At this point of the analysis one could define modern architecture as an architecture which aim is to depart from, and repudiate the long established architectural customs, norms, methods and procedures handed down by predecessors and generally followed by the following generation.
The reason for choosing Le Corbusier is that he played a determinant role in the history and development of modern architecture. In this project I will attempt to analyze whether this definition is sound in the case of Le Corbusier`s architecture, by looking at his works and the way these creations arose in relation to architectural tradition.
Modernity in Technology
Modernity has also to do, in art and particularly in architecture, with the technologies and with the living conditions present in a particular time and culture.Technology brings change within traditions and therefore modernity, in our context, is not only related with the style and aesthetics present in each particular time and culture.
Le Corbusier opens his work Vers une architecture17with an important issue for the architectural tradition of his time. Architecture was not making full use of the new technology. Le Corbusier shows how the design and production of ocean liners, cars and airplanes completely surpasses the way architects are designing and constructing their buildings. For him an architect is a “creator of organisms” who, looking “seriously-minded” to an ocean liner will find “freedom from an age-long but contemptible enslavement to the past.” According to him the aesthetics of architecture –the architect’s designs– and so the architectural tradition as such were not responding to the technological advances of the time.
He mentions repeatedly that “Architecture is stifled by custom”19 and in this manner makes clear that he does not see the problem in tradition as a whole, but in custom, as if a bad habit had entered the tradition, the habit of ignoring the new technologies and industrial methods. An enslavement, that leads to “a lazy respect for tradition” and “the narrowness of commonplace conceptions.”18
4 Simpson and Weiner, 1989, VOL XVII: 353 and 354
5 See for example: Kvaale, Katja’s Tradition. Det oprindeliges modernisering in Hastrup, 2004 (b): 30
When tools become out-dated they are thrown away, they stop being used. 20 To make a superficial parallel, industry and the machine was probably seen then, as today are seen the advances in communication and digital technology. According to him every age develops certain tools and the products of that age respond to the level of development of those tools.
Walter Gropius had many of the same observations as Le Corbusier had in relation to the way architects were following the new technological advances of the time.
Overall in Gropius’ and Corbusier’s cases there is an acknowledgment that change within the tradition is needed in order to maintain the very function of the architectural praxis –that of bringing solutions to problems in housing, building and urbanism. According to Gropius architecture, to a great extent, has to bring solutions to problems in relation to housing and urbanization and in this respect he says that the study of an old, successful house type or an old, successful town structure would not necessarily equip one to construct a house or city fit for this century; he remarks that in fact, too much focus on what was successful in the past could hinder real and adequate solutions to modern problems.
This implies that if the tradition does not renew or modernize itself it will cease to exist –at least it will cease to comply with its original purpose– in other words, it seems as if the options were to modernize or die, and thus the need to change in order to continue. 26 However, Gropius didn`t see his project and aims as a break with tradition, he argued that.
Modernity in Aesthetics
One of them was the Adolf Loos, who saw ornament as a sign of cultural decadence. He states in his rather engaged, and sometimes emotional, article from 1908 “Ornament and Crime” that “the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornamentation from objects of everyday use” , and that “the greatness of our age resides in our very inability to create new ornament”. “Art for Art’s sake” was for many modern architects the traditional art academy’s goal, and the function of artistic expression in houses and buildings. They opposed this tradition using different arguments and points of view. 39 He continues in the same article:
“We have gone beyond ornament; we have achieved plain, undecorated simplicity. Behold, the time is at hand, fulfillment awaits us.
16 Le Corbusier, 1923: 7.
17 Apparently most of the chapters published in Vers une architecture, were already publish between 1920 and 1922 in Le Corbusier’s journal L’Esprit Nouveau.
18 Le Corbusier, 1923: 97.
19 Ibid. : 86.
22 26 – Gropius, 1968: 74
37 In this section, and throughout the project, I am using the term style in its most common
38 From The theory and Organization of the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius, published originally in 1923 as Idee und Aufbau de Staatlichen Bauhauses Weimar. English translation in Bayer, 1938: 21.
39 Loos, 1998: 167 and 168.
Soon the streets of the cities will shine like white walls! Like Zion, the Holy City, Heaven’s capital. Then fulfillment will be ours.”40
Modernity for Loos is not transient but evolutionary, that which leads towards an absolute inherent perfection and away from inherent decadence, at least a decadence in style. This could, to a certain extent, also be understood in some of Le Corbusier’s writings (although mostly in those referred to in relation to technology). I interpret Loos’ statements as if for him the modern was a complete departure from tradition. He writes:
“Civilizations advance. They pass through the age of the peasant, the soldier and the priest and attain what is rightly called culture. Culture is the flowering of the effort to select. Selection means rejection, pruning, cleansing; the clear and naked emergence of the essential.”41
Qualities that bring about order and harmony, which in turn make one experience a sense of beauty. What transcends time and development for Le Corbusier then? Aesthetical and practical qualities that an architect must make use of, such as arrangement, the sense of relationships, unity of intention, contour and profile, fixing of standards. Here we find cleansing and rejection, but within a process of selection, which certainly implies that something pervades through and transcends the selective process.
For Le Corbusier this is the ultimate aim of architecture, but this aim must be based on a primary part or condition, that is the responds to a need.43
“Architecture as practice provides no solution to the present-day problem of the dwelling-house… It does not fulfill the very first conditions and so it is not possible that the higher factors of harmony and beauty should enter in.”44
1) Form .
For him beauty has nothing to do with “styles” but with proportions. Beauty goes beyond style; it is about well-established proportions achieved by using primary forms, such as cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids. It is interesting to see that for him functionality is not an aesthetic aim in itself but instead works as a base or prerequisite for beauty.
It is for that reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms.”46In this way Le Corbusier clearly places the aesthetics of his architecture within tradition by arguing for universal aesthetical values and techniques that transcend time and cultures. The image of these forms is for Corbusier “distinct and tangible within us and without ambiguity. He does this in particular by discussing the importance of the use of regulating lines and its use throughout history.
40 Ibid. : 168.
41 Le Corbusier, 1923: 128.
42 Ibid. : 23.
43 Ibid. : 102-103.
44 Ibid. : 103.
In these pictures, from Vers uneArchitecture, Le Corbusier showsthe relevance of compositional techniques, such as the regulating lines, throughout history and in his works. First to the left is Michelangelo’s Capitol in Rome. Below is a house from 1923 designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret.
2)Plan .
Peripteros is main type of the Greek temple. The Peripteros is a rectangular building in plan, surrounded on four sides by a colonnade, which is very similar to what we see in plan of Villa Savoye where it`s perimeter made up of columns .
3)The circulation of the villa follows a route that can be seen at the Acropolis with a system of ramps leading to the Parthenon.
It is interesting to ask ourselves whether the aesthetics of modern architecture were just a pragmatic convention or had any symbolic function. Our architects certainly argued about the pragmatic function of the flat roof and other modernist features. Intentionally or not they created a style, a little ‘tradition,’ if one may call it, within the architectonic tradition.
In a certain sense one can say that there was an ideological justification and function behind those new forms, they were to express ‘the spirit of the new,’ and they were to do so not only by stating what the new was, but by showing what it was not, by taking a clear distance towards the then contemporary customs.
Conclusion
“We are living in a period of reconstruction and of adaptation to new social and economic conditions. In rounding this Cape Horn the new horizons before us will only recover the grand line of tradition by a complete revision of the methods in vogue and by the fixing of a new basis of construction established in logic.”61
Can one then talk about repudiation and departure within modernism –as exemplified here by Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius? I will say yes one can. As we have seen there was repudiation towards the practice of ornamentation, and there was certainly a departure from certain constructing techniques.
59 See above, pages 9-11.
60 This is questioned for example in relation to many of the buildings from the Weissenhof housing project, which became quickly deteriorated. See Schulze 1985: 132-13
One can also say that there was repudiation of certain styles. But these departures and repudiations were mainly done in order to secure the tradition of architecture as such –i.e. the practice and art of designing places where to dwell and perform activities. But was that a repudiation of, and a departure from tradition? One can say that there was a departure from a tradition within construction and the crafts, which made buildings in a certain way, with specific techniques and methods. To secure the continuity of the practice in the context in which it was situated.
In this sense to be modern is the best way to be traditional, since to modernize is the best means to preserve the tradition. Modernization seems to work for our architects as a contingent requirement, a circumstantial element that is nevertheless essential for the entire, continual practice. The process of modernization clearly arises within architecture out of a process of introspection and self-reflection –this could be one of the reasons why function takes such a predominant role– and an evaluation of the surrounding cultural and social conditions.
Tradition, as said before, has to do with continuity and thereby does not exclude change, on the opposite, continuity implies a progression, which in turn needs change.
Originally published 15.10.2019