PART 1 CONSTRUCTIVISM AS AN ANTIDOTE TO STIFLING MODERNISM
MODERNISM: A PARADIGM FOR NEW-FOUND MODERNITY
At the beginning of the 20th century, world culture began a period of rapid lifestyle change and growth fueled by the new technological innovations and fast-paced lifestyle created by the industrial revolution. For the first time, architects were presented with a new international culture of industry, technology, urbanism, congestion, production, connectivity, and complexity. Classical forms of architecture were unable to cope with the complexities of this new post-urban world- and the changes in lifestyle, technology, plumbing, mobility, and frequent location which would be the hallmarks of the new century. Architects began to wonder how we could incorporate modern ideas about technology and mass production into an architecture that could relate to the new state of the world.
These many aspects of worldwide change marked the advent of a new age- Modernity. A new ‘enlightened’ populace, combined with new ideas of mass production created the foundations for the new architectural paradigm of Modernity- Modernism. The Modernists created an architecture of simplicity: ‘form follows function’, ‘purity of form’, ‘less is more’ (The idioms of modernists embraced the theory of functionalism- the
creation of building to fulfill the programmatic requirements of the
building. This functionalist view created an disdain for ornamentation, and would come to affect the cultural relevance of the architecture.
Eventually, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s quote, ‘Less is More’ would be countered by Robert Venturi’s argument, ‘Less is a Bore’.) A call to establish an international architectural style created narrow spectrum of ‘acceptable’ architecture, and limited the creativity of contemporary architects. As society began to see built glimpses in the urban fabric of what it would be like to inhabit the ‘Corbusian’ garden city, the downsides to the modernist utopia soon became evident- most obviously in the coldness and alienation that people felt in these spaces- not only for the stark material choices, but for the bland anonymity created by cities filled with monotonous tower blocks. The pure, rational modernist box became outdated for a post-Corbusier world, after Corbusier’s modulor had shown that the rational modernist rectangle did not correspond to the physical ramifications of the human inhabitation of space.
Modernism became an appropriate architectural paradigm for the new age of industry and machines, incorporating new materials and technologies into its vocabulary and using them to further the concepts of the architecture. However, standardization and prefabrication would only serve to make the majority of modernist structures bland and unimaginative, and limited the potential for unique, cultural, site specific architectural discourse.
Modernism began to react to this new world with technologically innovative structures and “form follows function”. However- they created a staid, alienating anonymity in their architecture (with notable exceptions). Among these exceptions stand out the Russian Constructivists, who combined technological innovation with a stark, dynamic iconicism (symbolizing the power of communist system in the Soviet Union).
Le Corbusier, worldwide proponent of modernist ideas, spread the ‘International Style’ through his writings and conceptual proposals. However, towards the end of his career, Le Corbusier’s experiments in architecture became less about pure modernist form, and following self-imposed rules like the ‘five points of architecture’, but evidences a new awareness of the spacial and experiential effects of non-euclidean geometries and curvilinear forms, infecting the rectilinear efficiency of modernism as a paradigm (at Le Corbusier’s church at Ronchamp, one of his late works. The curvilinear concrete shell is morphed according to site and programmatic considerations).
FUTURISING MODERNISM IN THE SOVIET UNION
Although it developed in parallel to the modernist movement, the constructivist movement in the Soviet Union was more highly effected by ideas of mass production and Soviet communist ideals . Strong ties between art and architectural communities in Communist Russia led to the formation of a close-knit interdisciplinary group which would unite under the Constructivist movement. Early proponents included Alexander Rodchenko, Vladmir Tatlin, Kasimir Malevich, and Konstantin Melnikov
The future of architecture driven by technological development. Mass produced glass and steel were the post-industrial equivalents of stone and concrete, and the Constructivists used technology to their advantage in the creation of avant-garde projects.
Soviet futurism also had a very social agenda, the foremost among them social housing. The futurist housing developments were often described as “social condensers” based on Lenin’s statement that “the real emancipation of women and real communism begins with the mass struggle against these petty household chores and the true reforming of the mass into a vast socialist household”. (Lenin, Vladmir. 1919. The Russian Constructivists had an overtly socialist sociopolitical viewpoint which became evident in their works. Lenin’s words on collective living became inspirational for those
involved in the movement.)
In the end, constructivism was a small point in Modernist history, with few built works and a history of soviet oppression of free thought. However, the prolific drawing and writing of the Constructivist masters created an architectural discourse which would be extremely influential on the Deconstructivist paradigm.
PAST-MODERNISM
Architecture stagnating under the excruciating hegemony of Modernism, architects began to question the validity of Modernist thought, and the implications on built form and stylistic execution. The earliest and most obvious criticisms came form the Postmodernists, who began to formulate a new theory for architecture, one of cultural relevance and historic significance. This was the first movement contradictory to the overwhelming presence of Modernist thought in architecture.
A key figure in the development of Post-modernism, Robert Venturi in his seminal work, Complexity and Contraction in Architecture rationalizes Post-Modern thought by arguing that “the long abstinence of modernism from associative imagery had been a mistake” (Venturi, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Venturi’s writing has been subjecte to two readings: Postmodern & Deconstructivist. As postmodern, Complexity and Contradiction argues that ornament and historical allusion bring depth to architecture.
For the deconstructivists, rather than detatching form and ornament,
an abstract de- construction of into abstract geometries achieved the
same goals.) Instead, Venturi fought for a return to traditional imagery and forms as a way to inject life into the staid forms of Modernism.
However, the satiric nature of the Post-modernist argument (General,
non-architectural post-modernist thought is the tendency to reject
objective truth, global cultural narrative, and black-and-white
classifications. Jacques Derrida was a proponent of this philosophy.) and the cliché repetition of classical forms, motifs, and ideas made the post-modern paradigm irrelevant for architects who wanted to develop a new architectural paradigm, rather than re-implement elements from historical paradigms.
DE-CONSTRUCTIVISM
Deconstructivism formed in the wake of the complaints of postmodernists but without satirical undertones and references to former architectural styles. These undertones would be replaced with concerns for site, program, and more philosophical concerns. Among the first significant Deconstructivist projects was the competition for Parc de la Villette, in Paris. In his competition entry, Peter Eisenman collaborated with French philosopher Jaques Derrida, known for his theories on literary deconstruction. (In literature, deconstruction is an approach, developed by Derrida, in which the meaning of text is rigorously studied until the
underlying contradictions of the statement are exposed. By
questioning the very core of literary constructs, Derrida showed the
irrelevance of preconceived notions of the assemblage of language.)
Derrida/Eisenman’s entry, along with entries from Bernard Tschumi and OMA showed a simultaneous international focus on the deconstruction and re-assemblage of architectural forms. The winner of the competition, Bernard Tschumi said “To achieve architecture without resorting to design is an ambition often in the minds of those who go through the incredible effort of putting together buildings. Behind this objective is the desire to achieve the obvious clarity of the inevitable; a structure in which the concept becomes architecture itself. In this approach there is no need to design ‘new’ abstract shapes or historically grounded forms…according to ones ideological allegiance. Here the idea or concept would result in all the architectural, social, or urbanistic effects one could dream of without reliance on proportion, style, or aesthetics. Instead of designing seductive shapes or forms, one would posit an axiom or principle from which everything would derive.’” This statement epitomized the ‘Deconstruction’ of architecture to create a new flexible building framework.
One of the first formal investigations of Deconstructivism appearing in architecture was Phillip Johnson’s 1988 exhibition at MOMA in New York, entitled “Deconstructivist Architecture” (see the below Exhibition Poster design by Phillip Johnson). The exhibition focused on a number of architects who had independently developing deconstructivist concepts in architecture. The architects involved were Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and Bernard Tschumi. In reference to the exhibition he curated, Johnson wrote: “The projects in this exhibition mark a different sensibility, one in which the dream of pure form has been disturbed. It is the ability to disturb our thinking about form that makes these projects deconstructive. The show examines an episode, a point of intersection between several architects where each constructs an unsettling building by exploiting the hidden potential of modernism.” (Johnson, Phillip. Deconstructivist Architecture. Johnson is speaking of the 1988 MOMA exhibition on Deconstructivism.)
In sharp contrast to the logic and order of Modernism, one of the most significant architects in the development of deconstructivism, Peter Eisenman said “Architecture is made by architects for themselves. My best work is without purpose. I invent purpose afterwards.. Who cared about the function??” “Deconstructivism’s formal and verbal hyperbole- with its textual readings of ‘violations’ and ‘the pleasures of unease’, ‘form-infecting parasites’ and ‘torture from within’ are by turns sensationalistic and inscrutable.” (Kostov, Spiro. A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals.) This shift in architectural ideology would be indicative of the general change towards Deconstructivist thought.
Among the most prominent of the Deconstructivists, the work of Daniel Libeskind the deconstruction of traditional forms in order to evoke a sensationalistic sense of space. Along with Peter Eisenman, Libeskind developed a theory of “Metaphysics of Presence”, which would come to epitomize the dynamic, crystalline, fragmented forms that he creates.
HADID/KOOLHAAS: DECONSTRUCTIVIST PARADIGMS
The Monument to the Third International was an a significant Constructivist proposal, although it was never built as intended to celebrate a victorious revolution. Seen in above, this photo montage shows the intended effect of the monumental iconic tower, and projects high above the cathedral spires- traditionally the tallest building in many European cities. Although never built and considered technically infeasible, the tower would prove influential on later architects. Hadid’s artwork (The career of Frank Gehry epitomizes the paradigm shift between Modernism and Deconstructivism, with works which clearly show each step in-between. From Postmodern structures such as Santa Monica Place to his Deconstrcutivist home in California (or the equally deconstructivist Guggenheim Bilbao, by Gehry) In one architect, the repeated paradigm shift in architecture becomes evident.) shows a deconstruction of Tatlin’s tower and proposing a new context and use of the constructivist abstract geometries.
Similarly, many of Koolhaas’ projects show evidence of this kind of use of euclidean geometry, stark and asymmetric use of structural elements and the stark industrial material palette of glass and steel.
In the process of ‘deconstructing’ architecture to create an appropriate contemporary paradigm, HADID/KOOLHAAS have borrowed from the formal compositions and stark geometry of the Russian Constructivists, and mutated them to create ‘metaphysics of presence’. What are the common points between the constructivist & deconstructivist paradigms? Why was constructivism an ideal place for Hadid & Koolhaas to look for inspiration in the creation of a new paradigm in the post-industrial age?
THE OFFICE FOR METROPOLITAN ARCHITECTURE
The formation of OMA10 was a seminal turning point for the contemporary architectural paradigm. In conjunction with programmatic study, OMA experimented formally and investigated the invocation of constructivist geometric imbalances.
One key example is the McCormick Tribune Campus Center competition, Chicago. The scheme consisted of a series of existing circulation paths crossing the site and creating circulation for the building. The formal paths dissect the modernist box into atypical wedges, and dynamic shifts in the floor and roof plane create a dynamic composition- suggesting a geological event which might have created this deconstruction.
Throughout his career, Koolhaas has confronted traditional architectural forms rather than embracing them, and eschewed the use of ornament in favor of quirky materials and dynamic forms. His ideas about Deconstructivism, however, had begun to formalize even before his first built works.
Early in his career, before completing any significant works, Rem Koolhaas wrote ‘The Story of the Pool’, a metaphor for his thoughts on the end of the hegemony of modernism. The story, at the end of Koolhaas’s theoretical early work Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, describes the story of a metaphorical floating pool. Seen below, the pool is a rectilinear modernist structure that moves by the very essence of its function, the people swimming in the pool.
The story describes a group of Communist (Constructivist) architects in Moscow who built a Modernist rectilinear floating pool which they used as “a vehicle for their escape to freedom… the pool was a Manhattan block realized in Moscow, which would now reach its logical destination”, New York. Upon arrival, the people in the pool found that New Yorkers “were all against Modernism now; ignoring the spectacular decline of their profession, their own increasingly pathetic irrelevance, their desperate production of flaccid country mansions, the limp suspense of their trite complexities, the dry taste of their fabricated poetry, the agonies of their irrelevant sophistication, they complained that the pool was so bland, so rectilinear, so unadventurous, so boring; there were no historical allusions; there was no decoration; there was no… shear, no tension, no wit – only straight lines, right angles and the drab color of rust.” (Koolhaas,
Rem. Delirious New York. The Story of the Pool ends his book,
signifying the paradigm shift at the time in architecture.)
The story of the pool is a metaphor for the paradigm shift between Modernism and Deconstructivism. The Constructivist architects on board the ‘pool’ were abused for their attachment to Modernist thought, first in Moscow, and then in New York. This is indicative of the paradigm shift between the two styles and the repercussions on architectural thought.
Based in literature, the theories of Deconstructivism have been applied by Koolhaas to fields outside of architecture, including graphic design. Done by AMO (Architectuur Metropolitaanse Officie, the research based offshoot of OMA, led by Rem Koolhaas.) in 2001, ‘The Barcode’ (seen below) is a new flag for the European Union based on the linear aggregation of the national flags of member states. In 2004, 10 new member nations were added to the flag. The deconstruction of each individual member flag creates a unified graphic, while respecting the individual member nations of the EU. The framework has proved culturally sensitive and flexible, epitomizing the Deconstructivist goal.
Programmatic innovation has been a hallmark of Koolhaas’s career, epitomized in the stacked & deconstructed library he recently completed in Seattle. The standard programmatic arrangement of a library has been broken down into component parts, and pulled apart to achieve dynamic public spaces between.
ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS
By deconstructing the traditional or typical form, Zaha Hadid gives herself the freedom re-construct the building to focus on the integration into urban fabric, and creating an icon. Fragmented or stretched forms are brought back as formal experimentation and geometric imbalances (similar to those in constructivism) are used to create a dynamic sense of place and motion.
Zaha’s early works evince the direct influence of Malevich, Chernikov, and many other Russian Constructivists architects, artists, and philosophers. One significant early influence was Chernikov’s 101 Architectural Fantasies, a series of dream- images predicting future forms for architects and the technological methods for implementation.
Even Zaha’s thesis topic was inspired by Constructivism- called Malevich’s Tectonik, after Kasimir Malevich who wrote that “we can only perceive space when we break free from the earth, when the point of support disappears.” Hadid’s architecture follows this element of the Constructivist paradigm, creating a landscape which metaphorically , or at least visually, appears to break free from the ground. Her paintings for the project show a direct correlation to the drawing practice of the Constructivists.
Hadid reacted to Modernism in a way opposite of her peers and teachers at the AA- “They rejected kitsch post-modernism to become still more modernist. Like snakes shedding their skins, they discarded the failed utopian projects of “first” modernism to think up a new modernism with a more sophisticated idea of history and human identity, an architecture embodying modernity’s chaos and disjuncture in its very shape. 13”. Whereas Hadid eschewed the practice of Modernism for a new Deconstructivist practice that employed the techtonics of making an abstract assemblage and radical simplicity of geometric forms as the primary artistic content. This was expressed in graphics, structure, and architecture.
In writing about his “Deconstructivist Architecture” Exhibition, Phillip Johnson wrote that “The symbolic breakdown of the wall effected by introducing the Constructivist motifs of tilted and crossed bars sets up a subversion of the walls that define the bar itself. …This apparent chaos actually constructs the walls that define the bar; it is the structure. The internal disorder produces the bar while splitting it even as gashes open up along its length.”14
“Before coming to London I studied mathematics at the American University in Beirut, where I became interested in geometry. It’s the mathematics of the Arab world and I am fascinated by the mix of logic and the abstract. The Russian Avant Garde movement of the Twenties, the work of Malevich and Kandinsky, brings this together and injects the idea of motion and energy into architecture, giving a feeling of flow and movement in space.” 15
By using computer technology, Hadid is now able to execute the complexities of curvilinear and complex shapes to the completion of an abstract geometric concept, not unlike the technical and formal experiments of the Constructivists. By eschewing the traditional (Modernist and Classical) forms, Zaha Hadid Architects is able to focus on more interesting concerns- of urban fabric, continuity, fragmentation.
AN AGGLOMERATIVE PARADIGM
A new architectural paradigm comprises of a mix of elements from past paradigms. One compelling example in paradigm shifts in contemporary architecture is Frank Gehry, whose architecture has evolved from post-modernist historical references to a fragmented and chaotic evocation of movement and deconstruction of typical forms. 16 The current form of his work can be seen clearly in the fragmented, chaotic forms of the Guggenheim Bilbao, nothing like his Post-Modernist structures.
The Constructivist aesthetic proved an ample place to study the trajectory of the Post-Modern discourse of architecture. In the formulation of a new patchwork paradigm – incorporating ideas and graphic systems from other periods and disciplines- the Deconstructivist ideal emerged.
Continue reading part 2 of this article.
