Page 26 - Studio International - September October 1975

form. Nevertheless these various projects
of the twenties provide the clearest, most
consistent and most uncompromised
demonstrations of the development of the
metaphysical and aesthetic ideals of
De Stijl in three-dimensional form.
His first models were produced by
Bauhaus students in Weimar in 1922
when he was running his subversive
De Stijl course there. These 'architectonic
sculptures,' as he called them, were
obviously inspired by the work of
Vantongerloo, but Van Doesburg
intended that they should express
architectural as well as sculptural
qualities. For he described them, in the
Weimer speech quoted earlier, as
practical demonstrations of his
convictions that inner space should be
expressed through outer form; that no
preference should be shown to any single
facade; and that form should not be
absorbed by or express the landscape.
While only the anti-telluric
preoccupations are specifically De Stijl,
since the first two ideals are inherited
from Berlage, the resulting forms —
interpenetrating cubic blocks — marked a
radical departure both from Van t'Hoff's
Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired
preoccupation with extension and
horizontality, and from Gropius'
concern, at that time, with standardization
and repetition. Van Doesburg's
deceptively simple models imply a
revolution in the architects' conception
of internal space, and initiate that
concern for 'spatial contrasts, spatial
dissonances and spatial
supplementations'6 that was to preoccupy
him for the rest of his career.
Metaphysical considerations, therefore,
were to stimulate Van Doesburg to Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren
conceive of more dynamic structures Architectural Project 1923
which were intended to express the
triumph of the non-Euclidean wrote in Towards a Plastic Architecture Mondrian himself was expressing
interpretation of nature, challenge the (1924) 'is anti-cubic, which specifies that concern about the compromises that
forces of gravity, and demonstrate the it does not attempt to combine all might be involved in expressing abstract
idea of matter, as Van Doesburg put it, as functional space-cells into one closed concepts in material form. 'The absolute
a 'unit of Energy.' The opportunity to cube, but projects the functional space- is expressed in the straight,' he
investigate these ideas came in 1923 cells (as well as overhanging planes, the reiterated in 1922. 'Painting and
when, in collaboration with Cornelis van volumes of balconies and so on) architecture in the new aesthetic are
Eesteren and Rietveld, he produced centrifugally, or from the core of the cube consequent executions of the
three remarkable models for an outwards, thereby giving a completely composition of the straight in self-
exhibition of De Stijl architecture held at new plastic expression in open space to annihilating opposition : a multiple
Léonce Rosenberg's art gallery in Paris. the dimensions of height, width, depth relationship.'8 duality of the constant rectangular
The original commission which led to and time. In this manner architecture
these experiments was for a private house, takes on a more or less hovering aspect So that when Van Doesburg, after
which Rosenberg had asked Oud to (in so far as this is possible from the much cogitation, introduced the
design. Oud turned the job down structural point of view, which is a diagonal into both painting and
because a site had not been found, and problem for the engineer!); this aspect, architecture, Mondrian had no alternative
recommended that Van Doesburg be so to speak, challenges the forces of but to resign from the movement as well.
approached. Van Doesburg, naturally gravity in nature." The diagonal, however, as far as Van
enough, found the hypothetical nature of Such architecture, as well as taxing the Doesburg was concerned, symbolized
the brief a stimulus rather than a ingenuity of the engineer, made new both spiritual and material energy,
hindrance and the results demonstrated a demands on the painter: 'The equilibrium and the rejection of the static in favour
radical development in his conception of the architectural relationships of both movement and tension.
of architectural form; for these complex becomes a visible reality only through the `Elementarism,' he wrote, 'opposes to
structures were made up of use of colour. The task of the modern the balanced relationship composition of
interpenetrating, interlocking and painter is to integrate colour into a Neo-Plasticism : non-balanced counter-
overlapping cubes and planes which were harmonic whole (by placing it not on a composition as a phenomenon of a
defined by colour and hovered, seemingly plane surface of two dimensions, but time-space tension of colour, line or
weightless, in space. The nature and within the realm of space-time).' By this plane, always in opposition to the
implications of such an architecture, time, however, the De Stijl group was natural and architectural structure.'" And
which defied tradition and replaced the short of painters to share and demonstrate he demonstrated these ideas in practice
conventional box volumes with planes this vision. Two of the original members when, in redesigning the interiors of the
that explored rather than enclosed (Huszar as well as Van der Leck) had Aubette restaurant in Strasbourg, he
space, were duly described and resigned, mainly because of what they made colour, expressed in 'non-balanced
defined in various articles and felt was the increasingly subsidiary role counter-composition,' destroy and
manifestos. 'The new architecture,' he painters were expected to play, and recreate existing architectural space and

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