​The Evolution of Modern Architecture 

On the Origin of Styles 

 

Chapter Six: Towards the Modern  

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 Adapting towards the Modern 

 

Change in architecture is obviously not an abstract issue. It is a matter of a highly visible difference over time in the appearance and characteristics of buildings. 

 

In a period of roughly 50 years from the late 19th century, the general forms of Western architecture changed from being an architecture essentially composed of pediment, columns, Greek and Roman-inspired capitals, symmetry, arches, vaults and domes or Gothic spires, tracery and historically-derived compositional techniques to one where the dominant motifs were white planes, flat roofs, cubic forms and linear windows.  

 

It has already been suggested that new styles arise from modifications of previous styles and that these modifications can be seen as adaptations to changing environmental circumstances. We can therefore look at the differences between architecture in the late 19th century and that of the early 20th century as the cumulative result of a series of very radical adaptations which took place within architecture. These adaptations – changes of form and organization - were provoked by the impact of the industrial revolution on the number and type of buildings required by the new social and economic conditions.  This was the new environment which architecture had to represent. The result of this was threefold: 

 

The demise of the historical style as a template or precedent for new buildings. 

 

The emergence of a new and unique set of typical forms called the Modern. The characteristics of this new style, (also known as the White Architecture or the Heroic Period) included amongst other things its white colour, cubic forms, linear windows, free façade, flat roofs and so on.  

 

More generally it involved an articulation of the major elements of buildings, in effect a specialization of their functions. This involved a functional separation and independence of structure and external and internal walls which allowed for the ‘free’ design of the façade of the building and the pragmatic location of internal partitions; the ‘free façade’ and the ‘free plan’.  

 

The final convergence of architecture around a single dominant style after the diversity of ‘neo’ architectural possibilities which prevailed during the 19th century.  Here for the first time in perhaps four hundred years, buildings were produced by selecting and combining forms from a single set of typical forms.  

 

Compared with the characteristics of the historical styles which had prevailed only a generation earlier we are clearly faced with the emergence of something radically new not only in its formal characteristics but in the relatively short timescale of its development.   

 

2.0    The Pragmatics of Change 

 

It was noted in previously that the number and type of buildings generated by the Industrial Revolution had multiplied well beyond the formal capacities of the available historical styles. In the face of such typological pressures, the whole issue of precedence and appropriate form that had been the operative principle in architecture through centuries had become meaningless. The formal rules which had governed the use of these styles had been exploded in the attempt to represent and adapt existing historically-inspired architectural forms to the wholly unprecedented building types thrown up by the new industrial and social reality. By the beginning of the 20th century architecture had, in effect collectively adapted itself out of its ‘historical phase’ and in the process had produced something very, very new, namely the Modern. The processes involved here can be summarized as follows: 

 

     The Style as a Snapshot of a Continuous Process 

 

To understand this event, one can usefully compare it with one of the evolutionary definitions of species which reads: species are simply ‘snapshots’ of a continuous evolutionary process. With this in mind one can propose that architectural styles are simply snapshots in architectural time since the reality of architecture is one of continuous change. In other words, in an environment of continuous change, architectural styles (recognizable unities of form) can only be temporary events which, of course history shows them to be. Their effective lifespans as design templates for the architects of each period were to a large extent determined by the stability or otherwise of the environment which they sought to represent in built form. While they would inevitably change in detail over time due to continuous interaction between architects (their mutual exchange of experience) and programmatic differences between buildings, this can be seen as a matter of development rather than fundamental change. Since the environment that architecture ‘inhabited’ – the kind of buildings it was required to represent and the available building technology - remained very much the same over the pre-Industrial Revolution period, the historical styles, while developing in their characteristics remained intact as recognizable unities of form. 

 

 Adapting to a New Environment     

 

Styles continually evolve into other styles by a continuous adaptation of architectural form. In this way, Modernism emerged out of the collection of historical styles of the 19th century. Adaptation in architecture occurs when buildings are required to fit particular new and different environments and involves a visible change in their characteristics. These environments are defined to a large extent by the kind of building types projected out of the social and economic base of the society. In this case the new environment was the set of new building types projected out of the needs of the Industrial Revolution and a rate of building not dealt with before. 

 

2.3    The Pragmatic Disposal of Forms 

 

The pragmatic need to adapt the pre-ordained formulae of Classicism (and Gothicism) to cope with the organizational and scale requirements of new building types, gradually brings about an equally pragmatic disposal of forms to match the spatial and organizational programs of the new building types. There was a gradual loosening of the authority of historical styles in the face of an overwhelming functional-formal necessity. While that necessity – the requirement to design functionally adequate yet formally coherent buildings had always been the prime factor in the design process, it had been carried out adequately within the framework of existing historical styles. In this sense the capacity of the historical styles had never been challenged as vehicles for expressing the organizational program of the building. Since the Renaissance these styles had conveniently absorbed the exigencies of the design requirements produced by pre-industrial society.  

 

2.4    The Fading Away of Classical Order 

 

Up till the 19th century the consensus-driven rules which governed the disposal of forms in buildings derived not primarily from the activities defined in the program of the building but rather from ‘outside’ the design process itself – from the history of architecture. The experiences of the past – a precious resource of learning – were recycled for use in a present which remained somewhat similar to the past in terms of the kind of problems that architects where likely to deal with. When, as in the 19th century, radically new problems emerged, the same rules could no longer be applied to solve them. The result was that architects were increasingly forced to bend or break formal rules in order to produce workable designs. Classical compositional techniques, proportional systems, symmetry & characteristic details increasingly became optional rather than mandatory techniques in the attempt to match built form to unprecedented building types. It is not that these formal techniques were jettisoned for ideological reasons (as the polemicists would have it), but that their role as major constraints on the emerging form of the building were diminished by the overwhelming necessity for new design solutions. Once this happened the characteristic forms of the historical styles took on a decorative rather than compositional role while the structural system and the pragmatics of planning for particular functions increasingly determined the overall form of the building. Yet in the transitional period between 1900 to around 1920 as architecture moved steadily towards Modernism even avant-garde buildings still expressed residual elements of classicism such as axes, symmetry or massive wall elements. So too the supposedly pragmatic distribution of volumes in such buildings could still be seen as a reference to the picturesque or the English Free Style. More generally the continued use of the pediment, stripped columns and other elements showed the not-quite-repressed influence of Classicism as a means to get formal control over the emerging form of the building. It is in this transitional era with its eclectic mix of past and present that one can almost see the evolution of one architecture into another. 

 

2.5    The Response to Unprecedented Design Problems 

 

For architects at the beginning of the 20th century or at any other time for that matter, it could never be a question of throwing away all the valuable experiences of the past, but of adapting them to current problems. Yet in adapting them in the radically new environment of the 19th century architects produced a fundamental change in the character of the historical styles and, in effect diminished their integrity as full-blown templates or reliable patterns for the solution of future design problems. One must be quite clear, therefore that the primary consideration for architects at the end of the 19th century was, as in any other period, to save the accumulated knowledge of the past. There was nothing new in this approach to things. Adapting past experience to new events is the normal way of doing things. What was different in the late 19th century was that the ‘new events’ were radically different from anything that had gone before. While architects sought to maintain the semantic value of historical forms and their public meaning, they were, at the same time required by force of circumstances to distort the design templates upon which they were based. One must recognize however that apart from the ideological tendencies of a few individual architects who sought to discard all remnants of past styles, for the vast majority of architects this de facto iconoclasm was pragmatic and carried out on a case-by-case basis. The fundamental changes to architectural form which arose during this period and which ultimately led to Modern Architecture did not involve any teleological principle or a collective ‘will’ on the part of architects. The future as usual was entirely unpredictable and uncontrollable. However, in the face of new environmental conditions the collective result of this activity, derived from the interaction between many individual architects was a fundamental change in architectural characteristics of the period and the production of a new architectural paradigm. 

 

Towards Functionalism 

 

It has already been pointed out that the radical changes brought about in architecture by the beginning of the 20th century were a collective result of normal processes of design. What had changed was the environment within which these processes took place; an environment which emphasised the contradictions between the formal possibilities available in the historically-derived forms and the flexibility required to materialize new functional requirements. There was at least a recognition amongst architects that the solution to this problem could no longer be carried out on an ad hoc basis but required an all-embracing design strategy which would provide both flexibility and formal coherence at the same time. Note that architects were not ‘willing’ the production of a new architecture, but searching for a new, more flexible design approach for solving their immediate problems and conserving the accumulated knowledge of the past. The name for this new and more pragmatic approach to the arrangement of forms has been called ‘functionalism’ which arose as a radical and to some extent, unforeseen result of the struggle to maintain the symbolic values of architecture in the face of new and unprecedented spatial and structural problems which were threatening to explode the very idea of order in architecture.  

 

3.1    The Limitations of Functionalism 

 

However, the term ‘functionalism’ itself must be regarded as a misnomer since the name itself seems to suggest that a purely pragmatic approach to the solution of design problems such as the free and convenient distribution of volumes would automatically provide an answer to the problems faced by architects. This happens because the word itself emphasises the purely planning, programmatic or organizational aspects of the design process at the expense of the formalizing processes involved. Given the somewhat restrictive nature of the historical styles in terms of compositional rules one can perhaps understand this emphasis on the pragmatics of things at the time. However, one can say at once that the environmentally-driven push towards ‘free planning’ and the functionally convenient arrangement of forms was, in fact the central problem facing the architectural community at the turn of the century since it produced the continuous production of non-canonical versions of the historical styles to fit these unprecedented programs. In other words the enforced ‘freedom’ to plan pragmatically was, in effect destroying the templates and types which architects had used to organize the form of buildings. In that sense it was destroying the accumulated knowledge of centuries of learning in architecture. Freedom was thus the problem, not the solution.  

 

If the term ‘Functionalist’ gives a one sided or distorted view of the issues at stake during the Early Modern period, giving as it does undue prominence to the pragmatics of design, one might well note the use of the term ‘New Objectivity’ by the early proponents of Modern Architecture. This, more modestly suggested that any new design approach should be based on an unsentimental view of the new social and industrial reality which had arisen since the beginning of the century. A reality which demanded a new attitude to the production of form and the production of a set of objective architectural facts based directly on the given conditions. 

 

3.2    Functionalism versus Architectural Order 

 

Functionalism as a design principle arose out of the apparent contradiction between two necessary design requirements that arose out of the new industrial and economic environment. These were: 

 

The free and convenient distribution of spaces and forms in accordance with the functional requirements of buildings.  

 

In effect this was simply a recognition of what was already happening in the architecture of the time as architects were under increasing pressure to more directly match the spatial arrangement of their buildings with strictly programmatic requirements. The pressure arose at the time because it was increasingly obvious that historical templates simply could not do the job.    

 

The containment and organization of the manifold elements and volumes of a building within a coherent and essentially Platonic envelope.  

 

Giving way to the full force of functional planning could only result in architects losing control of the form of buildings and of the whole built environment which would collapse into a chaotic assemblage of discrete forms. Architecture by definition requires that built form express a coherent order. 

 

Any new and useful design approach would need to integrate these two aspects of the design problem.  

 

3.3    The Need for the Similarity between Different Buildings 

 

One must emphasis that unfettered pragmatism on the part of architects could not offer an acceptable solution to these emerging design problems. It was not enough that architects continue to deal with the new spatial requirements in an ad hoc manner by allowing them to take up any form dictated by the program of the building. This would simply produce endless differences and local adjustments to circumstance without being able to provide an overall symbolic order, a major requirement of architecture. Pragmatism inevitably produces differences, but architecture also requires a set of formal rules which can identify both the integrity of the building as a whole as against the form of its individual parts, but must also identify the similarities between different buildings and places and link them together at a collective level. Indeed the recognition of similarity between different buildings is one definition of architecture which differentiates it from building as such. In other words, both freedom and order are required simultaneously. There are always these two sides to the semantic coin in architecture. It is in the struggle to maintain and integrate the legitimacy of both these semantic dimensions within a single form (providing the capacity to represent both similarity and differences) that Functionalism gradually emerges as a design principle.   

 

The solution labelled ‘Functionalism’ was therefore an attempt to bring architectural coherence to the proliferating differences of size and spatial relationship that the new architecture had to contend with. Thus while Functionalism as a design principle demanded that the building directly represent the volumes and relationships required by the program, and indeed saw the liberation of architecture in that direction, its primary goal was to bring a visible designed order to the masses and volumes which emerged out of that design process. Functionalism in that sense is as much about architectural ‘order’ and constraining the form of the building as any of the historical styles were. As with all previous architectures, the principles on which they are based are that they can integrate the pragmatic and formal levels of the whole design process. Up to the end of the 19th century, the historical styles had provided a ready-made framework for doing just this; for containing and organizing the diverse volumes generated by the programs of buildings. Functionalism was intended to do the same for the multitude of differences released by the new industrial environment.  

 

3.4    Functionalism and the Dissolution of Form 

 

Functionalism was not imposed on the architectural community by a group of like-minded architects, nor was it a readily available solution just waiting to be discovered by embattled architects. It evolved out of innumerable trial-and-error experiments to solve spatial, volumetric, structural, programmatic and ultimately, formal/semantic problems under very severe constraints. Forced to cope with new design problems, many individual architects stretched the available composition rules well beyond their canonical limits to the point where they had effectively and collectively become something else. This included eclectic solutions to design problems where the solution could not be found within a single historical style but could be constructed by merging the forms of different styles. What connects these many individual events and experiments into a large scale pattern later to be called Functionalism is the continuous communication and exchange of information which takes place between many architects either through seeing each others work or through discussing the problems they face on a project by project basis. Through this there is a mutual selection and combination of available elements and solutions which is resolved over time into a new commonly-accepted design process. Functionalism, as it came to be known did not therefore cause the dissolution of the canonical forms derived from the past, (‘rejecting history’ as the ideologist would have it). It should be seen, rather as the name given to the process of dissolution of such forms or the casual eclecticism by collective adaptation to meet radically new circumstances. In its early manifestations it was not a thing in itself nor a principle but simply the cumulative and unforeseen result of collective experiment. Since it was based on the experience of architects designing many different kinds of buildings, this gave the new design method its universalist basis. Only later were the pragmatic tendencies implicit in these experiments and the collective results abstracted and formalized into a generally-applicable design principle called Functionalism. Functionalism is, in a sense the name for something which had already happened, or to be exact, which had been forced by circumstances to happen. 

 

3.5    Functionalism as Ideology 

 

These aspects of an emerging new consensus and the architecture which would be its result point to it as a truly evolutionary process whereby a mass of individual adaptations to new circumstances are filtered by mutual selection into a new set of viable forms of behaviour available for solving other design problems Through this process, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, architectural roles had in a sense been reversed. Historically-determined templates no longer fully dictated the form and composition of the functional spaces, but rather the necessary functional composition of the spaces determined to a large extent the form of the building. While the composition of the volumes of these buildings were derived from a series of individual attempts to solve the problems of convenient functional arrangements, so too, the attempts to formalize these compositions – to give them some strictly architectural coherence - provided a new but as yet undeveloped set of typical forms for the establishment of a new architecture.  

 

The Modern conceptions of Functionalism should therefore be seen as the ideological equivalent of normal design processes (where architectural form is manipulated to fit a functional program) carried out in extreme circumstances. It became ideological when the formal constraints on effective design (historical precedent) had become impossible to deal with as they did by the end of the 19th century. At that point historically-accepted constraints on composition had already been forced to give way to new conceptions of design in order to allow architects to function at all. Functionalism as a principle rather than as an ad hoc method arose when architects gradually and quite pragmatically gave up the futile struggle to maintain and use strict historical precedents for the design of functionally adequate and formally coherent buildings. This sequence of events may be regarded as equivalent to a learning process whereby (and as usual) the accumulated experience of many architects over time provided a design method which broke through the restrictions imposed by historical precedent. In previous times these normal processes would not have resulted in the overthrow of existing canons since the problems faced then would have fallen well within their capacities to provide compositional and formal solutions to all problems. The evolutionary principle exemplified here is that the same design processes in the very different times of the late 19th century triggered the overthrow of that previous consensus. In other words, the processes remained the same but the environment within which they took place produced a very different result.  

 

Based on the above interpretation of events, one must conclude that Functionalism as a design philosophy was not, as commonly understood, an abstract product of avant-garde thought. What one can suggest is that by the 1920s the avant-garde had - to great effect - articulated functionalist and following from this - formalist tendencies already apparent in the great mass of architectural work produced over the previous 30 years or so. 

 

4.0    Functionalism as History 

 

The emergence of Functionalism as a design method is usually treated as something unique to the Modern Movement in architecture. In most histories of architecture it is considered to be a phenomenon which arose once and once only in the history of architecture due to some special set of circumstances surrounding the architecture of the late 19th and early 20th century. The implication being that since Modern Architecture is so different from previous architectures then the architectural processes which produced it must be equally different in character. In other words, because one thing is unique everything associated with it must be equally unique. This is not the case. The principle expressed here is that the same (architectural) processes acting in different circumstances can produce quite different results. The history of architecture is a series of remarkably different architectural expressions but one need not therefore assume that architectural processes and practices were therefore very different although the circumstances in which they took place throughout history certainly were. For this reason it is worth distinguishing processes which are ‘internal’ to architectural practice and those which are a matter of the changing environment in which they take place. The fundamental process in architecture is now and always has been the selection and combination of architectural elements to represent and materialize a given social institution in built form. The continuity of that process itself produces change in architecture; not necessarily fundamental or evolutionary changes but as previously discussed, developmental changes which by definition stay within the boundaries of existing styles. In other words, the styles would retain their recognizable features and overall uniformity perhaps over long periods of time. If architecture responds to its social and industrial environment then a period of stasis in that environment where no real social or technological changes take place would ensure that the same stylistic formulae would remain in place. But the overall uniformity of architecture in these situations does not mean that nothing is happening. It is, but it is happening within the bounds of the existing architectural consensus. Continuity of the socioeconomic environment – the same systems of patronage and the same technology - still produces change in architecture but of a different kind. However, over very long periods of stasis in the environment, these gradual internal changes can become quite extreme in character so that while there is no evolutionary change leading to the formation of new styles there is what one might call Involutionary change where the characteristics of the prevailing architecture are exaggerated to the point of destruction. It is within this Involutionary stage of development that one finds the emergence of Functionalism as a design method. 

 

One can summarize this and the Involutionary state of things in the following way: 

 

The long term continuity of a given set of environmental conditions produces an effect where the same or ‘normal’ architectural processes produce different and apparently contradictory end results, namely the fragmentation of the prevailing style itself.  It is not that a new style emerges so much that an existing style fragments into variations on itself. 

 

During an Involutionary period the quite natural tendency of architecture to produce uniformity of style (driven by communication and exchange between its agents) is reinforced by the very continuity of its socio-economic environment. That uniformity, built up over a long period time and fully coordinated in its characteristics is subject to the equivalent of positive feedback where its distinctive features are exaggerated.  

 

In the involutionary state architectural processes, trapped within a highly-integrated and seemingly 'immortal' socio-economic environment where there is little or no change subject the prevailing style itself and its uniformity to selective re-combination. Since it no longer needs to adapt its forms to new external circumstances, (for theoretically there are none), architecture turns in on itself and seeks to impose uniformity on what is already uniform. The result is the production of an overly-precise definition of existing compositional rules and permissible combinations of elements. This can also be termed an ‘allegorical’ phase where in effect fictitious differences are introduced into architecture in order to give it some semblance of responsiveness to circumstances while, in fact maintaining the canonical status quo; a reflection of the same socio-economic status quo. For the 19th century this meant that one had an apparent diversity of styles but all based on the same fundamental Classical canons. In these conditions, the more things changed the more they stayed the same. 

 

4.1    Characteristics of the Involutionary Phase in Architecture 

 

The architectural consequences of such Involutionary conditions represented by the architecture of the 19th century can be outlined as follows: 

 

The result is to stereotype the elements of the classical set by identifying and fixing their most probable and precise characteristics. In effect the set is bureaucratized and made inflexible. Classical forms and compositions are catalogued and pattern books are filled with ready-made solutions to specific design problems. Yet with this demand for precision, there is an increasing disarticulation of architectural form as each element is precisely identified and its function specifically defined. Through this process the typical set of the style is turned into an aggregate of precisely engineered elements. The rigidity of these classical elements means that architects are unable to represent the full complexity of experience. What architects gain in terms of design certainty and precision, they lose on flexibility and responsiveness to circumstances.  

 

The classical set itself becomes fragmented into a number of variations on its own theme in a fictitious attempt to represent actual differences in its environment. 

 

In the late-classical phase of a style, this unconstrained drive towards uniformity produces buildings which are increasingly similar to one another to the point where they can be termed identical, leading to serious semantic problems. Architecture is unable to represent the differences between different contexts and can only speak of what is similar.  

 

During this period architectural canons, compositional rules, standards and practices are precisely formulated by finally eliminating contextual or circumstantial characteristics. All are fixed and categorized.  

 

Decoration becomes the predominant visual feature of the involutionary architecture. It is used as a remedial device to resolve current semantic problems by introducing an apparent diversity of form to the primary (but inflexible) elements of the typical set. While the primary forms of architecture become more stereotyped, fluid decoration allows the architect to indicate the context and the particular character of the building. 

 

So too during this period, proportional systems are also introduced as a remedial device to ensure the visual coherence of increasingly disarticulated forms.  

 

One can see the visual effects of this stereotyping process by noting that in architectural history: 

 

The later forms of a style are more articulate, rhetorical and exaggerated than those of the earlier phases. (The circle becomes the ellipse in Baroque terms and in Modern architecture a new formalism of texture and shape replaces classical restraint. Even so-called ‘Functionalism’ requires the exaggerated emphasis of particular forms at the expense of others for spurious ideological reasons. The syntactic results are the same). 

 

Details are emphasised at the expense of wholes as the character of particular elements are ever more precisely defined to the point where the whole becomes an assemblage of parts. (In communicational terms the flexibility and complexity of the original elements is split or punctuated into several  discrete and precise elements). 

 

There is a tendency towards decomposition of the whole building into distinct volumes or assemblies as each part of the building becomes a self-referencing identity. This is the so-called ‘functionalist’ stage. 

 

From the above one can see that Functionalism, defined here as the over-articulation of a given set of forms for particular formal reasons emerges quite ‘naturally’ in the later stages of a style’s development. It reflects an attempt by architects to open up an overly-uniform style and represent the actual diversity of experience that they must represent in built form. The numerous variations on the Classical theme which one can see in 19th century architecture – the functionalist disarticulation of its central values – reflects a kind of collective self-regulation on the part of architects as they try to find ways of expressing the differences between different circumstances within the now limited repertoire of the prevailing style. This happens even when the environment is relatively stable and becomes extreme when the environment radically changes as it did in the 19th century. At this historical point, what one might call developmental or systemic Functionalism coincides with the pragmatic need to find ways of expressing the new programmatic realities thrown up by the Industrial Revolution. Those new realities simply exaggerated the Functionalism that was already at work in the style to the point where a new architecture could emerge. The overall result is the same: the disarticulation of existing formal categories. Functionalism in this description is a systemic product of an architecture’s history and is not therefore a process unique to Modern Architecture. 

 

5.0    Resolving Ambiguity 

 

For over four hundred years the development of the historical styles had ensured a fully-integrated approach to the design of buildings by providing a set of coherent rules both for the organization of the internal volume and the external appearance of buildings. Both were interrelated. Once an initial selection of arrangements and forms had been made from available patterns, a change in one aspect of the design (internal organization) could produce a corresponding change in the other (external appearance). After such a long period of development, the historical styles had produced a state where each building could be seen as a single integrated organism with each part harmoniously and specifically designed to fit the whole form. Traditionally, once a particular style had been selected, its inbuilt rules determined the general arrangement of spaces in a building and its external form in accordance with precedent. This requirement to maintain the coherence of all parts of the building both internal and external remained a fundamental aspect of architectural practice even with the rise of Functionalism which gradually led to the dissolution of historically-derived compositional methods. The use of the axis, symmetry and tri-partite division as means of organizing buildings gradually gave way to the pragmatics of asymmetrical organization and a diversity of functionally-defined and related spaces. This new functionalist compositional approach inevitably also invalidated the rules which equally governed the design of the exterior appearance of buildings since these were inextricably linked to the overall organization of the building. Architects therefore were required not only to bring a perceptible order to the more dispersed and articulated forms of buildings produced by these more pragmatic design methods, but also to find new means for the external expression of the new compositional methods. Whatever new forms arose out of the exigencies of the program, the fundamental requirement remained – to integrate all parts of the building into a single organism.  

 

The last set of forms generated by the new design methods continuously becomes the first set of the new architecture. There are no gaps in the process and no one (the avant garde for instance) stands outside of the collective attempts to adapt existing material to new circumstances. No doubt viewed from a strictly Classical perspective, some of the emerging forms which arose between say, 1914 and 1925 may have seemed ambiguous, neutralized of character and ultimately ‘failed’ versions of past techniques. However, in the context of the early 20th century they were what they were, feasible, if embryonic solutions to the given problem of how to formalize the multitude of differences thrown up by a new industrial and social environment. It is only through time and the exchange of characteristics between many such, admittedly ambiguous works that the differences of form produced during this period were essentialized into a set of new and legitimate forms.  

 

Yet these evolving forms were still inevitably based on past experience since architectures do not arise spontaneously in history. They evolve out of the accumulated knowledge of previous architectures: their forms and their compositional techniques adapted to suit new circumstances. No matter how severe the programmatic pressures on architecture to express new social institutions in built form, the means of expression could only be drawn from some kind of transformation of available forms, namely by extensions or re-combinations of historically-derived material. The architecture of Modernism and its Functionalist principle could therefore only emerge out of a reorganization of the architectural material already available to late 19th, early 20th century architects no matter how ‘historical’ its origins. There was nothing else architects could use to solve the problem of unprecedented form. One can only adapt a language to serve new expressive ends. One cannot simply invent a whole new language of form. The solution - which allowed both flexibility in design and its complement, a clear formal order had to be found somewhere in the varieties of the Classical style and Free Style architecture available at the time. But which parts of which variants? Both the question and its answer were inconceivable at the time. It is only with hindsight that one can propose that the answer lay in some combination of both the Classical and Gothic traditions of Western architecture and that the scale of the problem meant that it could not be solved by conscious decisions on the part of the thousands of individual architects at work at the time. No one could know what the solution would look like. It would only arise therefore with time and through the normal processes of design and exchange on the part of many architects, including works that seem on hindsight to be ambiguous or even clumsy in expression.  

 

The scale and nature of the problem points to its evolutionary implications whereby the solution would emerge from the interactions of the many agents in the field combining their experience over time into a single new design template: the Modern.  

 

6.0    Eclecticism - Between Historicism and Modernism 

 

The realization that no single available style could by itself solve all aspects of the current design problems led inevitably, but gradually to a form of eclecticism, namely the idea of combining selected characteristics from several different sources to effect a single all-purpose solution to a complex and unprecedented problems. At the end of the 19th century the stylistic choices available to architects were essentially variants of either Classical ‘order’ or English Free Style flexibility together with their decorative characteristics. If solutions to architecture’s problems were to be found at all, they had be found in some judicious use of elements derived from these styles. Yet individually each of these movements still reflected only a single pole of the formal problem; in extreme terms: either order or chaos, either formalism or pragmatism and while some form of eclecticism had always been used in architecture as a legitimate means of solving design problems, it still remained an ad hoc and essentially individual approach.  

 

To some extent eclecticism as a design method is built into normal architectural design processes which involve selecting from the typical set of forms of a particular style and combining them to suit the needs of a particular building. The architect has to make a choice from a set of available typical elements which might (or might not) be suitable for use in the design of a given building. Theoretically an architect could select forms from several styles and use them in a single building but the major constraint on doing this was that it might produce ambiguity in the final form of the building as observers tried to decode the different meanings and associations on display. So, while the eclectic process might work from a pragmatic point of view by providing useful ad hoc solutions to the building’s composition by selecting from different stylistic sources, it might fail as a work of architecture since it would lack that essential quality of coherence and integration that comes from using elements of the same stylistic set that are specifically designed over long periods of time to be combined together. One can suggest that while the historical styles still retained their integrity as fully-fledged and characteristic systems with their full range of associations, as they did in the 19th century, eclecticism was not a viable (or safe) design option. Drawing from these recognizably different sources could produce an obvious clash of expectations between the character of different parts of the same building. In an obvious sense therefore, it was always safer for architects to attempt to find design solutions within the limits of a single style. By the turn of the century, however, pragmatically-driven eclecticism could be carried out more easily since the integrity of each of the historical styles had, by this time been compromised by their forced adaptation to cope with the new building types and the vast numbers of new buildings required by the new industrial economy. The more characteristic or identifiable elements of each style, their compositional rules and decorative features were already being distorted and therefore rendered ambiguous to allow their use in diverse circumstances. Stretched to breaking point to meet new programmatic conditions, the unique character of the historical styles had become increasingly neutralized. This made it possible for architects to combine the compositional and expressive aspects of different styles into a single building to achieve an all-purpose solution since the styles had been reduced to a simple assembly or aggregate of available elements and techniques. While eclecticism would never be fully formalized into a general method having a distinct aesthetics, it did function by necessity as a means of widening the range of options available to architects to cope with the increasing diversity of new building programs. Given the progressive dissolution of the integrity of the historical styles already mentioned, and new programmatic necessities, eclecticism could gradually become a more general means of generating design solutions at the turn of the century. Solutions, that is which combined functional flexibility and a distinctive external order derived from the most essential characteristics of the former historical styles. When utilized by a mass of architects facing similar types of formal problems and gradually assumed to be a normal, if ad hoc design process, the collective result of the pragmatic combination of elements from Classicism and the Free Style would gradually produce the forms of Modern Architecture.   

 

Based on the above interpretation, one can summarise the necessary conditions which gave rise to the forms of Modern Architecture as follows: 

 

  Architects could only adapt the forms that are already available to them at the time. 

 

Functionalism as a design principle evolved to allow the pragmatic distribution of spaces as needed by the requirements of new building programs. When generally applied to traditional methods of composition, the only ones then available, it led to an erosion of their integrity, by exploding their compositional rules. 

 

Eclecticism as a method arose with a gradual realization on the part of architects that none of the available styles provided both the flexibility to freely disperse the form of the building  while, at the same time potentially providing a clear visual order which would be integral to the overall form of the building. Combining the characteristics of different styles became a design option when the specific identity of those styles had been neutralized by Functionalist design methods. 

 

Linked with the Functionalist demand to let the building be ‘what it wanted to be’ in spatial terms, eclecticism, continuously and pragmatically applied, succeeded in abstracting the fundamental compositional principles which underlay the existing general styles of both Classicism and Free style architectures. This happened through a continuous selection and therefore articulation of their most useful compositional features. Other characteristic features of the historical styles including their decorative features became increasingly irrelevant and vestigial.  

 

The problems of the pragmatic distribution of forms required by the new industrial environment and its building types already had an available architectural model in the essential formal principles and flexibility implied by the Free Style though, theoretically at least devoid of its picturesque intentions. 

 

The problems of giving compositional coherence – a clear order - to the overall form of a building already had an available essential model in the formal principles and planning techniques provided by Classicism.  

 

6.1    Adapting towards the New     

 

The evolutionary implications of these events are worth noting at this point. They are all in one way or another an attempt by architecture to adapt its forms to respond to the new environmental conditions which developed in the 19th century. This did not involve the invention of new and previously unforeseen forms, but an increasingly rigorous adaptation of existing historical styles. It has already been mentioned here that new biological species are transformations of existing species and so too with architectural styles. We should also note another parallel that, adaptation can only take place within the range of behavioural possibilities available to a particular species each of which has an economic limit to the kinds of changes it can make to its behaviour given its biological make-up. Each species, whether architectural or biological, therefore has a finite repertoire of possible acts in response to new environmental circumstances. Indeed it is the finite nature of their responses that gives them a specific identity and uniformity of character derived from the continuity of their past experience. Some species simply do not have the behavioural or physiological repertoire to adapt to new and radical changes which push organisms to the limit of their capacity to adapt. This would be the case for each of the historical styles available to 19th century architects. New social and economic conditions had pushed each of them to the limits of their expressive capacity. Unlike biological species however, cultural evolution in the form of architecture allows for the merging a different genealogies. Through eclecticism and in conducive environmental conditions the characteristics of different styles can be integrated into a single set of forms applicable to a very wide range of problems.  

 

One can also suggest that adaptations, to be completely successful should be economic in their organization. There should be a limited number of forms required to achieve a maximum expressive return. This requires the integration of many different individual experiments into a finite set of elements that – as a style – can deal with a large number of different problems. The collective exchange of experience between architects which underlies architecture provides the mechanism of integration which could synthesize the pragmatic and eclectic tendencies of late 19th century architecture.  

 

6.2    The Uses of Pragmatism 

 

Functionalism was a direct response to changing circumstances by allowing architecture to pragmatically adapt existing stylistic material to the range of new building programs which act as its environment. To a large extent this was a successful adaptive manoeuvre when applied to individual styles. At least it prolonged their effective life by allowing them, up to a point, to adapt to challenging circumstances. However, since each particular style had its formal limits – compositional possibilities beyond which it simply ceased to have a recognizable identity as a definite style. So, while Functionalism – the stretching and adaptation of what had been precisely-defined and coordinated forms - allowed styles to cope with the new social and industrial environment, it did so at a cost to the integrity of the style itself. It changed their nature, their ‘species characteristics’ and turned them into something else – something new and, at least initially, ambiguous. The danger here lay in the potential loss of accumulated knowledge which is what a style as a design template represents; knowledge about how to organize buildings around diverse building programs. This is the core value of the stylistic template – its organizational capacity which over historical time is submerged by secondary, contextual or decorative material. Though the formation of styles in architecture is a fundamental process representing the learned experience of a constituency of architects, particular styles were historically expendable provided the key information they carried could in some way be transferred to the next generation of architects. In extreme environmental conditions where no one stylistic set offers a way of solving all architectural problems, eclecticism emerges as a way of integrating the most useful bits of different styles by stripping elements and techniques from each, combining them as buildings and thus transmitting them to future generations of architects. In doing so, it performs a clear evolutionary function by widening the range of options available to architects in their struggle to find relevant adaptive solutions to questions posed by a new environment. So, while styles may come and go, both Functionalism and eclecticism ensured that in a radically new environment architecture continued to function effectively as a means of giving meaningful form to social institutions. Functionalism opened up the tightly-knit forms of historical styles and, by default discarded their secondary or contextual characteristics. This reductive behaviour allowed eclecticism to freely link disparate material and significant information from several previously autonomous styles. In this process history and past experience had not been rejected or discarded as some ideologists describe the formation of Modern Architecture. Modern Architecture is a transformation of historical experience. In that sense it is clearly an evolutionary process. 

 

7.0    Towards Elementary Forms 

 

Compared with previous changes in the history of architecture the shift from historically-inspired to Modern forms happened relatively quickly. Yet as suggested before, architectural change is a process involving a series of steps or a continuous gradation from one set of forms to another. The question is: how did we get from one set of forms to the other? What do the intervening stages – their changing architectural characteristics - tell us about the architectural process involved in this evolution? What was it in the continuing process of adaptation of existing forms to radically new environments which produced the radical forms of the Modern Movement with its flat surfaces, cubic forms & free distribution of spaces? If we reasonably assume that these characteristics were not a matter of choice amongst architects but rather the unpredictable result of their collective activities, then we must assume that something in the nature of this collective process itself produced the typical forms of Modernism. In other words, can it be that given the start point of the historical styles (and the social and economic conditions which existed in the 19th century), the processes of continuous adaptation described previously would inevitably dissolve the forms of the historical styles and supplant them with the forms of the ‘white architecture’? The word ‘inevitably’ in the previous sentence does not suggest any foresight on the part of architects, simply that what they do and how they do it in certain circumstances will result in the production of specific kinds of forms. What was it about such consensus-driven processes that would produce cubic essentialist forms out of a collection of the highly decorated and specific forms of the historical styles? One can certainly point to a gradualist process in this development whereby the complex forms of 19th century historical styles resolve themselves into the stripped-down but still vaguely historicist forms of the early part of the 20th century, shifting finally to the fundamentally cubic, planar and multidirectional elements of the Heroic Period.  The increasingly elemental characteristics of architecture in the early part of the 20th century suggest that this process of change was essentially reductive in nature since it dissolved the tightly knit compositions of classicism (held together by a strict hierarchy of axes) into their component parts, namely the elementary forms of column, wall, and volume; forms which underlie the composition of any architecture. One can note, for instance the reduction of the textural qualities of the wall mass (derived in part from the character of natural materials) from the highly articulated forms of the historical styles to the smooth pseudo-metallic surfaces of the Modern Movement. The normal tendencies of the past which had led to the gradual articulation of the forms of architecture over time – the increasing complexity of styles over their lifespan - were here taking place in the extreme social and economic conditions of the industrial era. Design processes remained the same but their tendency to articulate form was magnified well beyond anything that had gone before, leading to the reduction of forms to their elementary characteristics.  

 

7.1    Articulation as the Motive force in the History of Architecture 

 

No more than functionalism, articulation as described here is not something additional to the normal processes in architecture. It can be seen an effect of the mutual exchange of forms which takes place continuously between architects – the selection and combination of forms drawn from other architects work; from the available repertoire in other words. In a stable environment and over long periods of time, a great mass of individual experiments are filtered by collective exchange (akin to ‘natural selection’) to provide a typical set of elements – a style. Each of these experiments is an attempt by an architect to adapt (articulate) built form to a unique context. Collectively however, there is a convergence of characteristics which reflect the common practices of many architects. A finite group of forms is articulated out of the great mass of work available at any time. Here we have what seems like another paradox, that articulation – distinguishing the unique character of forms and their difference from others - produces a convergence and finally a uniformity of behaviour in architecture. The answer to this is that articulation tends to eliminate the ambiguous and the in-between by emphasising the unique aspects of any form. In this, it is essentially reductive – focussing on and identifying only the essential characteristics of forms; those in other words which can be derived from the common characteristics of great mass of work produced at the time. It is the formation of a Type of production. At the collective level of architecture being discussed here this is not a conscious process on the part of architects but simply a direct effect of their attempt to solve their own unique design problems and the communication and exchange of this experience to other architects. The formation of categories, classes, genres, types of forms or styles is what happens when architects exchange experience over time. It is the operational result of the interaction of the many active agents within the architectural system but it is also worth noting that this collective effect – the formation of the type - is essentially economic in that it tends to combine similar ways of doing the same thing into clear cut sets of forms for future use. Architects in this case do not need to invent new sets of forms for each new project, but rather, permutate a given set of forms to match the criteria required for many different projects. This is the whole basis of the formation of styles of whatever period  

 

7.2     Back to the Future 

 

It may seem counter-intuitive to suggest – as we do here - that the same processes, for instance which led to the shift from the Platonic forms of the Renaissance to the complexities of the Baroque could possibly be the same as that which produced the increasingly elemental forms of the Modern. After all, in one case things seem to get more complex – the formation of the Baroque - while in the other they apparently get simpler – the formation of the Modern. However, this is simply a matter of the same processes being played out in two different environmental conditions leading to different end results. These same processes are based, in the first instance on what architects actually do and have always done, namely the translation of a given set activities – a map of what an institution (client) does in a particular place – into the form of a building. This is the same in any period of history. Since each building is unique in some respects, adapted to a very particular context, the collective effect of many such buildings is to produce a stylistic shift in the architecture of the time. In other words, things change quite naturally. However the rate of change and the degree of articulation produced over time depend on the capacity of the architectural language to represent the same or new institutions (building types in architectural terms) produced by a changing society. If society changes rapidly as it does at certain points in history, producing a whole new set of institutions, then the language of architecture – the set of forms at its disposal and an independent cultural system - will be required to produced more extreme adaptations of those forms to map the new developments. In all cases changes in architecture are irreversible. The evolution of forms works on what already exists in a continuous process of adaptation.  

 

The end state of one period becomes the start point of the next therefore one can also note the historical continuity between the Renaissance-Baroque period and the Modern which arises with the further development of Classicism.  

 

The following is a brief outline of these systemic and historical links between one period and another: 

 

The Baroque was an extreme articulation of all the elements of Renaissance architecture. 

 

This involved an emphasis and identification of the expressive powers of each of the original Renaissance elements. Walls become more plastic and take on a semi-independent existence, which in turn plays against the columns which are multiplied and used as an independent structuring device for the whole form.  

 

The drama of the Baroque comes from the complex interaction of these now semi-independent sets of elements which had previously been fully integrated into a single whole form. By the extreme emphasis on their individual functions and characteristics brought about by articulation, these forms have been ‘freed’ from the strict Platonic formulae of Renaissance buildings; a formula which tended to integrate the different elements into an overall harmony (or cosmos). The observer is no longer looking at a single harmonic form, but is engaged with several sets of forms interacting with one another in a polyphonic form. 

 

This tendency towards increasing expressiveness by articulation continues on into the 18th and 19th century with forms and volumes becoming increasing emphatic in expressing their individual characteristics and thus consistent with the continuity of architectural processes throughout different stylistic periods. 

 

Together with applied decoration, it is this feature of 19th century architecture which gives it its overwrought appearance, namely as examples of the steady fragmentation of architectural form into assemblies of elements. 

 

Up to the middle of the 19th century this elaboration of form took place within a social and economic environment which did not fundamentally challenge the expressive powers of architecture to represent social institutions in built form. The social environment remained pretty much the same and the articulation (and decoration) that took place in order to produce difference in buildings could still be seen as a development of previous formulae.  

 

That continuity of environment ended with the Industrial era and its demands for a new architecture.  

 

At this point, articulation – adapting existing forms to new circumstances - becomes extreme because the circumstances themselves have become extreme, in terms of the new problems generated by the environment. The available language of Classicism has reached the limits of its expressive capacity. 

 

With the emergence of the Modern out of a Functionalist analysis (by example) of the forms of 19th century architecture there is the same continuous articulation and loosening up (a reductive analysis) of the elements of a previous architecture and these continuously articulated elements are gradually reduced to their most essential (geometric) features. 

 

This explanation recognizes the continuity of architecture over long periods of time. In other words, there is no convulsive change from one period to another but rather a transformation of one architecture into another. While the rate of transformation may change depending on the varying demands made upon architecture by its social environment, the articulating effect of collective exchange remains the driving force behind change in the system. Modern architecture is, therefore like all previous architectures, simply a modification of the forms of what had gone before. Fundamental ruptures in the continuity of architecture require the complete disintegration of its social, economic and technical environment, a situation which did occur with the collapse of Roman civilization in the 5th century and the corresponding emergence of a whole new architectural tradition – the Gothic. 

 

8.0    Articulating the Modern 

 

Modern architecture is an extreme articulation of the forms of 19th century architecture triggered by the spatial and structural impact of new functions and building types and the adaptations required to deal with them. 

 

That is, it is a product of a gradual identification and reduction of the different parts of the 19th century architectural organism into its component parts - distinct functional, formal and compositional categories which are then re-combined to produce the new. But this drive within architecture (theoretically) towards the elemental – the articulation of structure and form – can only be fully realized if the appropriate technical conditions are available. That is, the technical means to achieve, for instance the actual functional separation of structure and wall and the pragmatic disposition of plan elements. Only this could allow the full development of the reductive tendencies within the architecture of the period and its materialization as a very distinct style. Without this technical capability a very different kind of ‘Modern’ architecture would have emerged. That is, one which, like the Baroque, would achieve its reductive or analytical goals through the use of fictive or decorative architectural elements. These would appear to separate structure and wall or allow seemingly pragmatic compositional layouts while in fact retaining the homogeneity of the overall form where its different elements are inextricably locked together. The ‘stripped classicism’ or the Moderne of the 1930s gives an admittedly superficial idea of what such an architecture might look like but so too in a way does the White Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. The pseudo-metallic exteriors of, say the Weissenhof Exhibition buildings belie the brick and plaster technology which was used to build them. The inevitable gap between intentions and the means to realize them are resolved in effect by decorative means which is, of course, one of the functions of decoration in architecture. 

 

It is at this historical point that we recognize the coincidences of development which bring about the actual state of an architecture at any given time – the element of chance in history. The apparently timely intersection of a post-Classical architecture in a state of disintegration with a technology which allows those developments to be fully realized; a technology of reinforced concrete or steel which provides architecture with the means to realize its reductive and analytical tendencies. Tendencies which, it must be emphasised, were purely formal in nature requiring as they did a means of freely (and pragmatically) disposing precise elements within a 3 dimensional space. In other words, these formal demands did not come about because of the availability of new engineering possibilities. They arose purely from within the dynamics and history of architecture itself and its attempts to continually adapt itself to new environmental circumstances. The concrete and steel technology which gave rise to the frame structure allowed architects the means of achieving these formal ends. Amaong other things, it did so by changing the function of the (loadbearing) external wall from its former role as both structural and symbolic element to that of simply providing an external membrane. Its structural role was now carried out by the single-function concrete frame or building skeleton. In doing so it allowed the independent functioning of the structural and space distribution roles within the building. In line with all the reductive developments that had taken place in architecture up to this point, these became specialized elements that could be arranged independently of one another. It is worth remembering the pragmatic pressures on the historical styles in the 19th century to absorb unprecedented spatial arrangements within predetermined compositions. This meant that everything was dependent on everything else. With the incorporation of the frame structure into architecture and the specialization of functions which it brought, the difficulties associated with this strict inter-dependence of forms was eliminated.  Architects could separate out (articulate) the various parts of the design problem and solve them independently of one another. The free distribution of spaces according to the most pragmatic requirements could now take place without simultaneously destroying the overall coherence of the building.    

 

By the 1920s one can speak of the grid and free plan organization of Modern architecture not simply as a technical solution to pragmatic problems but as a logical solution to the formal problems that had beset 19th century architecture. The articulation of architecture and the specialization of its different elements had evolved to a critical point where both the pragmatic and formal demands on architecture could be resolved with a single set of forms – the style of the Modern. Without being able to foresee such developments in architecture this is, in fact what architects in the 19th century had sought; a formula which would provide both flexibility and a clear formal order and thus integrate the most valued qualities of the Free Style and Classicism.  

In line with their role of identifying evolving tendencies within architecture, the avant garde of the early Modern architecture including Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, the De Stijl Movement, the Russian Constructivists and others, through manifestos and built examples defined the essential characteristics of the new style (or the ‘New Objectivity’) in architecture. Contrary to the impression given by many popular histories, the avant garde did not ‘invent’ Modern architecture, but rather extracted its typical elements from the vast amount of work evolving around them and categorized them into a definite set of elements for combination in future buildings. In their buildings and pronouncements, the avant garde provided imitative models of what had now become possible in architecture.  

 

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