On the Edge of Modernity

Life in 18th Century Europe was a fairly structured - if bleak - affair for the common man. Under the ancien regime, a farmer on the continent could expect an existence of thankless agrarian toil and a life dominated by the double authority of the Church and the State. Architecture, for the most part, reinforced this dominance with dazzling Neoclassical palaces and Baroque churches that spoke of the grandeur of God-given power. Built forms were an expression of the establishment agenda.

The 19th Century burst onto the scene with guns blazing (literally - think the revolutions that swept the continent in the 1840s).  Radical political ideologies like Marxism upset the old order and turned the establishment on its head. The Industrial Revolution brought tremendous gains in material production while creating a new set of societal problems. New theories in science such as Darwinistic evolution further challenged the way the world was viewed. It was in these 19th Century growing pains that three architectural theorists were writing and establishing their own views on art, history, architecture, and human existence at large. They challenged the ways of the architectural establishment (namely, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris), and looked for a more reasoned approach to building. Their writings and theories would resonate for many years to come and eventually help give birth to modern architecture as we know it.

Gottfried Semper was the first of these architectural theoreticians. Living and working in Germany, Semper is most famous for his design for the Dresden Opera - a building that combines various styles from across time. One could claim that this building looks fairly conventional for its time, yet it embodies many of Semper's more novel ideas about architecture. Semper was an admirer of the classical architecture of Greece because it divulged the inherent societal values of the people through its form. Tying architecture to the social and political situation of its construction was thus one of Semper's chief goals.

Dresden Opera by Gottfried Semper (Dresden, Germany) 

This desire was further expounded in Semper's seminal work The Four Elements of Architecture which attempted to draw commonalities among all architectural styles on the basis of certain formal elements rather than distinct decorative patterns. He describes the hearth, the platform, the roof, and the enclosure as the elements present in all architecture. Successful integration of each of these elements results in a successful piece of architecture. Semper uses each of these formal elements in his design of the Dresden Opera: the hearth (the symbol of societal gathering) is the stage, with the rest of the building organized around it; the roof, enclosure, and platform are all clearly defined by difference of material or ornament.

Dividing architecture into discrete, rational, tectonic elements would have reverberations throughout the history of the modern movement. One need only glance at the Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to see the Semper-esque interplay of the four elements and the rational search for structural tectonic elements.

Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Second among our list of architectural giants of the 19th Century is the Frenchman Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. Like Semper, Viollet-le-Duc was interested in the underlying origin and meaning of all architecture. Taking the great gothic structures of his native France, Viollet-le-Duc posited that all architecture is a systematic transition of material into a logical structural system. The pointed arches and flying buttresses of Chartres were no more than an elegant structural system perfectly suited to the stone and glass materials used in its construction. Viollet-le-Duc saw great potential in using this same Medieval logic with modern materials such as steel. His theoretical drawings show a great interest in using a sort of hybrid Gothic style as a system of support for modern buildings. His struggle to adapt the Gothic to modern times mimics the work of his contemporary, Antoni Gaudí, who was active in Spain.

Viollet-le-Duc was active mainly in restoration work, rather than original building projects. One of his most famous - and controversial - restorations was that of the Medieval French walled village of Carcassonne. In the additions resulting from his intervention, we see Viollet-le-Duc's philosophy made manifest. Viollet-le-Duc believed in restoring structures to their ideal state of being, regardless of whether that state ever existed in history. So, we see Carcassonne restored to an ideal vision of Medieval fortification with conical slate roofs uncharacteristic to the contextual architecture of southern France.

Carcassonne, France - restored by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc

Viollet-le-Duc's structural philosophy was longer-lasting and further-reaching than his historic preservation (which would be criticized by later generations for obscuring the true course of history). The idea that rational structural systems drive architecture would echo down to our current time. Widespread use of steel in the 20th Century would lead to buildings' design being dominated by their internal structural organization - from the proto-skyscrapers of Louis Sullivan to the soaring glass boxes of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Indeed, the entire modern utilitarian mantra of "form follows function" could be traced back to ideas espoused by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc.

The restoration programs undertaken by Viollet-le-Duc would be heavily contested by another 19th Century artistic heavyweight, John Ruskin. Ruskin, hailing from Britain (which, we must recall, was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution), would attack Viollet-le-Duc's restoration efforts as contrived and inauthentic. Ruskin believed in preserving old buildings as they were, believing in the emotional power of ruins and their ability to convey the passing of time. Restoring buildings to an indefinite or imagined prior existence was dishonest to history according to Ruskin's view.

Ruskin would also find himself at odds with Viollet-le-Duc's treatment of the Gothic style. Where Viollet-le-Duc saw the Gothic as a primarily structural enterprise, Ruskin saw the Gothic style as the epitome of emotion, craft, and morality in architecture. Ruskin held the Gothic in high esteem for its ability to convey a moral message in its presence and its allowance for artistic freedom in its construction. He felt that the artist was freest when working in the Gothic style, since the ornament gave soul to the structure - a thought antithetical to the structural purism of Viollet-le-Duc and the elemental tectonics of Semper.

Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright (Bear Run, Pennsylvania)

Ruskin's residence in Britain would expose him to the might of industry and the magnificence of mechanization. To this trend Ruskin offered his total opposition. Mechanization and its attendant standardization were seen as opposite to true art and architecture from Ruskin's viewpoint. Ruskin valued the craftsman and his ability to shape a building with his unique talents. Cookie-cutter mass production fails to give a building a true soul. Ruskin's theorizing on handcraft would have a direct effect on the English Arts and Crafts Movement and the subsequent Craftsman era in the United States. His ideal of anti-industrial architecture would find fruition in such architects as Greene & Greene and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Though John Ruskin, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc and Gottfried Semper lived in disparate places and circumstances, each would develop architectural philosophies that would impact architectural history for the next century. Their influence on modern architecture cannot be underestimated, and really should be delineated more clearly by future historians, as modern architecture is often presented as simply occurring ex nihilo. In the works of Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, and Semper, we are offered a window into how art transitioned from the authoritarian order of the ancien regime to the free-spirited romanticism and rationalism of the modern era.