Page 23 - Studio International - September October 1975

Bibliography
For Goethe's view, modified later, see
Von Deutscher Baukunst (1772) in Works
(Zurich, 1965, vol XIII, pp 16 ff) modified
already in the article Baukunst (1788; ibid,
p 57). The best statement of the
Polytechnic view is J. N. L. Durand,
Précis des Lecons d'Architecture ... à
l'Ecole Royale Polytechnique (Paris, 1819;
vol I, pp 19 ff, 52 ff). The conventional view
of ornament is well expressed in Owen
Jones's Grammar of Ornament (London, 1856,
and many later editions) or the introduction
to Charles Blanc's Grammaire des Arts
Décoratifs (Paris, 1867). For the best known
writers who saw a return to a particular
place in history as a condition of progress
see literature on A. W. N. Pugin
(fifteenth-century England) and Gottfried
Semper (sixteenth-century Italy). Adolf
Loos's Ornament und Verbrechen is in
Trotzdem (Innsbruck, 1931, pp 79 ff) and
has been variously translated; Architektur
(ibid, pp 93 ff) has recently been reprinted.
with other pieces, in Form and Function by
Tim and Charlotte Benton with Dennis
Sharp (London, 1975, PP 41 ff; also pp 26,
40 ); Simmel's Excursus on Adornment in
The Sociology of George Simmel, ed. Kurt
H. Wolff (New York, 195o, pp. 338 ff). On
the history of the Théâtre des Champs
Elysées see Henri van de Velde, Theatres
1904-14 (London, 1974); also in his
Geschichte Meines Lebens (Munich, 5962,
pp 327 ff). Maurice Denis gave an account of
his part of the affair in the first volume of his
Journal. For Bourdelle's part see E.
Francois Julia, Antoine Bourdelle (Paris,
193o, pp 68 ff). For Perret's side of the
Hans Hollein story see M. Dormoy, Reponse d'Auguste
Focal Point in a City Perret a H. van de Velde in L'Amour de l'Art
(suspended centre) 1962-63 (July, 1925), and M. Mayer, A & G. Perret,
Paris, 1928. Van de Velde's later opinion is
did mean is that ornament must be way architects cannot take without the quoted from Le Style Moderne (Paris, 1925).
Herbert Gans' The Levittowners is
integrated with the way the building is help of the painters and sculptors. If only subtitled Anatomy of Suburbia: The Birth of
built, as well as the way it is used. The because we must all acknowledge that, Society and Politics in a new American Town
whole unity, as he conceived it, would in a negative way at any rate, Loos was (London, 1967). Essential publications by
then become a kind of social operation. right : ornament, as the nineteenth- Robert Venturi are Complexity and
This kind of building he set up against the century architects and critics understood Contradiction in Architecture (New York,
decorated sheds which his it, is wholly dead, beyond any hope of 1966) and A Significance for A & P Parking
contemporaries purveyed. For him resurrection. We cannot rely on any lots or Learning from Las Vegas ... . ...
then, as it is for me now, the problem of kind of convention : the world of tangible (Cambridge, Mass, and London, 1972) with
architectural form was not one of form has to be learnt anew. Architects Denise Scott-Brown and Steven Izenour.
packaging: nor could problems of never think of buildings as tangible For Pugin's view see his True Principles of
ornament be solved by 'sticking' objects, except at the one direct point of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London,
suitable labels on to neutral packaging. contact, the door-handle. And yet 1853). For Hollein's views and projects only
periodicals are available. He was for some
And yet, at the formal level, both the buildings are not only enclosure; they are years the editor of the Austrian magazine
Venturis and Hollein have something in also extensions of ourselves, like Bau.
common with an artist whose irony, clothing. But being more stable, more The passage by Tom Wolfe comes from
whose sense of scale, have made him permanent, more important in fact, they The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake
turn to constructions which are — more or are subject to the importuning demand Streamline Baby (New York, 1965). The
less — urban and monumental that we, and by that I mean everybody, Zurich exhibition was shown in the
complexes: Claes Oldenburg. His make of objects: that they should Kunstgewerbemuseum (August 1965) and in
technique has always been one of irony: enhance, enrich, improve with our the Prinz Carl-Palais in Munich (January
the edible hardened, the metallic made handling of them. This, it is increasingly 1966). The catalogue, by various hands, is
edited by Mark Buchmann.
floppy, the household or even the hand- clear, will not be done as long as there is a
held turned into a vast monument. But general social assumption that
always, as he himself has said, he is reasonable returns is all we require of
concerned with a reversal of products. On the contrary, they must
expectation in his reshaping of the engage our imagination. And they will not
tangible (tangible/untouchable is a most do so until architects and designers have
important pair of opposites for him) really begun to learn the lessons which
commonplace. the painters and sculptors have to teach;
This is where, perhaps, the Venturis' and, moreover, have learnt to work
design is nearest to being critical, in the together with them, make use of their
only sense which makes architecture work not only as analogue, but also as
worthwhile. Their buildings, unlike the adornment. But such a development will
creations of their more successful and only be valid if it is seen to be necessary,
more generalizing contemporaries, are not gratuitous : as long as it will be seen
at their best eminently touchable. not as a problem of ornament or not
Hollein, too, is concerned with this ornament, but as a problem of meaning.
bodily quality: almost obsessively. That is
perhaps the most important thing about a
way forward in architecture. And it is a
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