The Evolution of Modern Architecture On the Origin of Styles

 

Chapter Four: The State of 19th century Architecture

 

1.0 Introduction

 

While styles are an ever-present unifying feature in the history of architecture, there are periods which seem to offer many stylistic answers to the same kind of design problems or, alternately provide only one preferred answer to many different problems. The roughly 150 year period from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the 20th provides examples of both conditions. It also offers a clear picture of the formation, development and dissolution of a single style – the Modern - and therefore of the processes which underlie such developments. The rise and demise of the Modern offers the possibility of studying a single, well defined historical and architectural event. This chapter explores confused state of architecture in the 19th century and the reasons for the stylistic diversity which prevailed then; a diversity which was a product of the final collapse of the language of Classicism as the primary means of representing social institutions in built form. It identifies the multiple forces which brought about this collapse of consensus in architecture – as a product of internal processes, in the sense of the stereotyping of Classical forms and of external factors, the impact of the Industrial Revolution and its demands on architecture. The interaction between these two events led to a period of unfettered pragmatism in the design of buildings and in the ensuing chaos, a search for a means of acceding to the demands of the new industrial society while maintaining the value of past experience in architecture. This can be understood as a search for the magic formula which can deliver both freedom and order in architecture. Freedom, in this sense was a freedom to pragmatically compose the form of new building types according to their functions and conversely a freedom to distort and stretch the prevailing rules of composition to allow the authentic representation of these new building types. Order simply meant establishing a coherent language of forms – a currency – which could be exchanged between architects based on the economics of design (the used of commonly accepted formulae for the design of many different kinds of buildings) and the value of learned experience. The rapid changes in both the system of patronage and the kinds of building types required placed impossible demands on the architecture of the time given the historically-defined and classically-inspired limits on what it was possible to express in terms of available form and compositional methods. In attempting to adapt existing, but now rigid formulae to radically new environmental conditions, architects unintentionally distort and ultimately destroy the last vestiges of authority claimed by Classical precedent. It has already been mentioned that systems of whatever kind can only adapt their behaviour up to a point defined by their past experience. Their form is a diagram of the environmental forces that have acted on them in the past. If and when the environment changes radically as it did during the Industrial Revolution and after, it may be that the system, architecture in this case, simply cannot cope. The result is the dissolution of the system, a resort to trial and error methods of composition and the re-constitution of architecture around a wide variety of pragmatically-defined sub styles; a shift in other words from one solution to many problems to many solutions to many problems. The primary aim of this chapter therefore is to explore this phase shift in organization ‘from one to many’ during the 19th century and its effects on architectural form.

 

2.0 From Many to One to Many

 

Before proceeding, and as a pointer to the direction taken in the following chapters, it is worth briefly noting the various historical stages that architecture passed through in moving from one state of architecture to another; from the 19th century to the 21st. This summary will also provide context for the current chapter. The Evolution, Development, Involution model of architectural history proposed in the preceding chapter forms the basis for this sequence. Each of these stages will be dealt with in detail later on. The Collapse of Classicism as the Uniform means of Architectural Expression In the first instance this is a product of the kind of long term Involutionary processes which affect all architectures. Its very success and continuity over a long period of time lead to a stereotyping of its forms and the production of superficial variations on its primary themes. Its final demise comes about when its environment changes dramatically and these stereotyped forms are incapable of representing new realities. They cannot incorporate new spatial and compositional demands without a major distortion of the Classical canons. A Period of Stylistic Diversity such as the Middle to late 19th century Without the consensus that Classicism provided, architects were forced into trial and error experiments in the attempt to authentically represent the architectural demands of the new industrial and urban economy. These would be new building types or scaled up or more complex versions of known types. Pragmatism and eclecticism become the primary design approach in these circumstances including the use of forms drawn from non-Classical sources (Gothic, Islamic, industrial, vernacular) that might provide coherent associations for unorthodox combinations of form. Whatever else it might be, the form of the building must appear to be appropriate to something. The Shift from the Stylistic Chaos of 19th century Architecture to the Pristine Uniformity of the Early Modern Movement This period between the 1880s and the 1940s represents without doubt one of the most revolutionary events in the history of architecture, at least on a par with the emergence of the Renaissance. The main reasons for this development were: the inadequacy and loss of integrity of the historical styles in the face of new compositional demands; pragmatism, eclecticism; the mutual exchange of now non-canonical elements between architects; the cumulative effect of selection processes which over time reduces these diverse elements to their most essential and geometric features eliminating their more expressionistic or contextual effects which referred to particular times and places. The result of this collective but unintentional activity was a combination of the Platonic cube of Classicism and the Free Plan derived from Gothic/vernacular sources. The Grid and Free Plan together with planar elements become the primary forms of the Modern typical set. The Development of Modern Architecture – the New Consensus From the 1920s till the 1970s Modern Architecture establishes itself as the new consensus. As with any dominant style its typical set of forms become the one solution used to solve all architectural problems. Although theoretically underpinned by a Functionalist ideology which seeks to give expression to the particular needs of particular building programs, Modern Architecture, again like any other dominant style undergoes increasing standardization of its forms. The expressionist or contextual element of the style implicit in the Free Plan aspect of the Modern synthesis is increasingly repressed in favour of the Grid which gives a superficial uniformity of expression to many different kinds of buildings. There is a loss of adaptive flexibility and the means of expressing the difference between different situations and the actual complexity of particular building programs. In order to alleviate the semantic problems caused by stereotyping, the Free Plan/expressionist aspect of the Modern takes on a decorative role by providing a superficial context to a fundamentally rigid compositional order.

 

3.0  The Involution of the Modern – Postmodern Architecture

 

Since the 1970s there has been a disintegration of the Modern into a plethora of styles, including Regionalist, Hi Tech, Deconstructivist and Historicist sub-styles. This can also be thought of as simply a development of the Modern, but the effect is the same – a shift from one preferred way of doing things to many. This so-called Postmodern period is strangely reminiscent of the plural state of things in the 19th century. The similarities between these two periods are, in many ways more significant than their formal differences and suggest a similarity of processes that produce the same kinds of historical event. These large scale events can be illuminated using evolutionary and system-based concepts which link theory and history. A New Class of Patrons It is impossible to understand developments in the architecture of the 19th century (and later) without noting the reorganization of society which took place as a result of forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. It is significant, for instance that the diversification of style which took place with the decline of Classicism as the dominant paradigm coincides with a simultaneous diversification of the sources of patronage. A whole new social class emerged which in its diversity and in particular its demands for new and unprecedented building types would lead to the dissolution of the architectural consensus which had existed since the Renaissance. The following section provides an outline description of the emergence of this new class of patrons. Up to the 19th century, wealth in most societies meant owning land. It was a wealth not principally derived from the sale of agricultural produce, but rather from the rents drawn from tenant farmers, village and town properties and various taxes and fees on the use of local resources and imposed on locally-produced goods and services. Most of these fees and taxes were feudal in origin having been established by the ruling classes during the Middle Ages. The church, which owned large amounts of property and land also benefited from these considerable financial sources. There was a clear class structure of landowning aristocracy, a small mercantile middle class, peasant farmers and a small urban working and trading class together with the religious hierarchies. Public taste was defined by the education and traditions of the aristocracy which were Classically-inspired. That is, based on Greek, Roman and Renaissance models of taste. For obvious financial reasons, it was the land-owning classes who were the chief patrons of art and architecture. However, by the early 19th century the social and economic effects of the Industrial Revolution had produced a new social class whose considerable wealth was based on owning factories, the production of mass-produced manufactured goods, coal mines, railway lines, shipping lines, oil and so on. Ownership or the control, transformation or distribution of raw materials for industry and manufacturing became the prime generator of wealth in the 19th century and, because of the upper class disdain for what they called ‘trade’, the newly wealthy industrialists came from well outside the traditional ruling classes. They had quite literally created wealth and were, in a true sense, ‘self-made men’ many of whom became much wealthier than the traditional aristocracy who scorned them. Their money allowed them to buy themselves power, influence and a lifestyle modeled on those who had in the past been their social superiors. This included the purchase of large country estates and the building of very large houses. In the case of Britain, money also allowed the industrialists in effect to buy their way into the aristocracy with hereditary peerages granted by governments grateful for philanthropic contributions to the arts or the universities or simply rewarding the terribly rich. A parallel but related development of the industrial and urbanized society saw the emergence or expansion of a professional or service sector in the form of lawyers, doctors, bankers, accountants, architects and so on who could also afford to commission buildings. While the inventive and dynamic policies pursued by the new mercantile class produced wealth on a vast scale, and provoked radical changes in society, their domestic and personal tastes imitated that of the prevailing aristocracy whose large country houses and lifestyle provided a model of ‘gracious living’ for the new class. It was the effects of their industrial and commercial activities which would have a major impact on the architecture of the time in the demands for previously unknown or specialized building types such as: railway stations, warehouses, office buildings, factories, hotels, and so on. In trying to cope with these building programs using the formulaic language of Classicism, architects would find it increasingly necessary to step outside the formulae in order to find adequate solutions to these problems. The diversification of patronage, the increase in new building types and numbers of buildings required by the new urban society all contributed to the disintegration of Classicism as the dominant style by the mid 19th century. It was a diversification taking place in many different areas which produced a cumulative disruption of the social and economic continuities which had maintained Classicism as the dominant paradigm in Western society.

 

4.0  The Confused State of Architecture in the 19th Century

 

In the mid to late 19th century architecture displayed a unique group of interconnected characteristics. 4.1The Collapse of Classicism as the single dominant architectural style Classicism, could never exactly define the composition of any particular building. What it offered was a familiar vocabulary of forms and a commonly-accepted grammar of combination distributed throughout the work of many architects. While each building statement was to some extent unique, based as it was on the unique set of circumstances it sought to represent: program, location, finance or whatever, the means of representing that uniqueness could be economically derived from the experience of many other architects. There was no need to invent one’s own (unintelligible) solution to the problem for, in many cases the problems or parts of it at least had already been dealt with in the shape of other buildings. Within limits therefore it was possible to design unique buildings without ‘reinventing the wheel’ each time. This is the nature of any language, that it is possible to make more or less unique statements using standard formulae. The language was, in other words a flexible instrument which would evolve as the character of many of these ‘unique statements’ became part of the collective experience and thus available for use as models for future use. The problem was that this style, whose typical elements had been combined and re-combined into many different kinds of buildings for over two thousand years had, by the middle of the 19th century become to some extent a decorative exercise. (See effects of long term continuity of environment in the previous chapter).The disintegration of Classicism as a coherent style can be considered in terms of the following factors:

 

5.0   The Stereotyping of Classical Forms

 

After nearly 400years of development since the Renaissance the possibilities for recombining its elements had by then been catalogued and indexed by numerous typological studies of compositional techniques, re-definition of the nature of the Orders and by pattern books offering standard solutions to the appropriate use of ornament. In order to prevent what might appear as an entropic slide towards diversity, there had been several ‘Classical revivals’ such as the Neo-Classical movement which sought re-normalize Classicism around a legitimate and commonly accepted set of well-defined elements. Inevitably, these exercises could not stop the drift towards diversity of expression since that was to a large extent built into the system. Indeed, by stereotyping Classical forms and defining their specific kinds of usage, these institutional processes merely reinforced its rigidity. It is worth noting the contradiction here: while the number of variations of the Classical theme increased naturally over time, the set of elements which formed the thematic core of the style became increasingly stereotyped. It was a kind of fictitious diversity to which we give the name: ‘Romantic Classicism’.

 

 6.0   The Order of Classicism

 

With Classicism, architects could get all the architectural ‘order’ they wanted. It provided a clear-cut and familiar meaning (set of associations) and a tried and tested set of compositional techniques. It provided ‘ready made’ answers to numerous design problems. The stereotyped state of late Classicism increasingly prevented the architect from truly improvising on its typical forms and compositional methods to represent unique or unusual building programs. To accede to the demands of these projects the architect would have to ‘break the rules’ of the Classical game which, in the context of the building projects of new industrial society, was increasingly inevitable.

 

7.0     Towards Diversity of Expression

 

Before its final dissolution at the end of the 19th century Classicism went through two different stages of development. In the first, from, say the Renaissance to the early 19th century, its environment (patronage, building types, technology) stays roughly the same but over that time the character of the style itself develops as architects, seeking to express the difference between different buildings increasingly resort to decoration that secondary and flexible vocabulary of forms to provide an admittedly fictitious and superficial difference. Decoration allows for some degree of improvisation in the design of individual buildings while the stereotyped character of the classical style remains fixed. In the second stage, from early to late 19th century, the environment changes radically, (industrial Revolution, patronage, building types) but the core of the style remains fixed (stereotyped forms and compositional methods). With the second stage, the natural shift towards diversity of expression is magnified many times over as architects collectively try to represent unprecedented building types thrown up as the full impact of the industrial revolution makes itself felt. It is in this latter stage that the fictitious diversity of development becomes the real diversity produced by evolution. In order to adapt to a new environment, it becomes necessary to break away from the standard elements and methods which held the whole style together: the characteristic Orders, classical compositional techniques, symmetry and proportional systems required by the selection of specific classical order which had acted as the gravitational center of Classicism and its various developments. These elements would continue to exist for a while but there would be no necessary grammatical relationship between them. They would be combined pragmatically and eclectically together with new forms into new and unusual arrangements. The necessary grammatical and canonical relationship between these forms effectively ceased to exist leaving only an aggregate of characteristic elements. In much the same way as languages change over time and through constant collective use so architecture changes. The important thing here is that styles not only adapt over time to changing social or technical circumstances –new experiences which must be represented with available forms - but also change due to the dynamics of communication and exchange within the architectural community itself. The interaction of these two tendencies – their historical overlap - leads to great complexity of expression in architecture. Given the continuous nature of change, perhaps the word, ‘collapse’ suggests too quick and dramatic an end to the Classical period when in fact the problems were cumulative. The struggle to maintain both the flexibility of Classicism AND its strong characteristic order – which were mutually exclusive demands at this point - was the underlying justification for the proliferation of numerous variations of Romantic Classicism available in the 19th century; an attempt to change and stay the same. Yet the reality is that by the end of the 19th century, Classicism as the dominant force in architecture had outlived its usefulness in the most pragmatic sense of that word, namely that the majority of architects would no longer select their forms from the canonical Classical repertoire.

 

8.0    A Remarkable Diversity of Architectural Styles.

 

The 19th century displayed a virtual catalogue of styles: Romantic Classicism and its variations, including: Neo-Renaissance; Neo-Baroque; Neo-Neo-Classical and so on. But so too Egyptian; Neo-Gothic; Venetian Gothic; Arts and Crafts; Art Nouveau; Japanese motifs, Romantic Regional; Vernacular; Industrial cast iron building. There were also a few exotic experiments which included Moorish, Moghul and Persian forms. Of course there would also be eclectic mixtures of forms within single buildings. Inevitably in this chaotic state, there were calls for a return to order. That could only mean reducing the range of available styles and ultimately coming up with one meta-style which could offer a single solution to a great many diverse problems. In other words a style which was both unified in form and flexible in use. It was the age-old demand for that perfect balance between order and freedom but written out in architectural terms. For this reason a great and ultimately futile debate raged about the relative merits of currently available styles such as Classical or Gothic as the representative architecture for 19th century Western societies. The assumption here that such a choice could actually be made and put into effect by architects was, of course wrong since such issues are not a matter of deliberate choice by individuals or motivated groups but of the unforeseen results of cumulative and collective actions. This multiplicity of styles was partly a result of a ‘natural’ process of fragmentation of the dominant style (discussed above) that inevitably occurs at the end of a long period of stylistic uniformity, but apart from these systemic factors, one can also note:

 

9.0   The search for alternative and more expressive architectural forms

 

This is based on the usual search for more flexible and expressive means of designing buildings in the context of a dominant style whose forms have become stereotyped. In the most pragmatic sense if one could not achieve the necessary flexibility within Classicism, the dominant style, then one would be forced to find it with other architectural options, even the most exotic. In fact the only architectural value that some of the more exotic styles had was that they were ‘different’. They were, by definition able to express the difference between one context and another. Compare this to the uniformity of Classical architecture where the remarkable similarity between buildings threatened to eliminate the identity and therefore the meaning of individual buildings. It was only the prolific use of decoration that prevented this by giving a semblance of individuality to each building. The use of other styles offered a means of avoiding that problem (even though they could be considered in a general sense to be decorative solutions in themselves). For instance, the 19th century saw a surge in the popularity of ‘medievalism’ in various forms. The social reason given for this fashion may have been a sentimentalist rejection of the industrial age and its brutalities in favour of a Gothic-styled mythical golden age (as in Morris and Arts and Crafts). However, part of its architectural success was undoubtedly the remarkable flexibility of Gothic-based vernacular planning and the fact that historically Gothic architecture had allowed a high degree of improvisation (or pragmatism) in the design of buildings. In architectural terms at least, God was in the details and not necessarily in the overall layout. Neo-Gothic and its vernacularist variations offered a 19th century version of the ‘free plan’ where the spaces could be distributed in a more pragmatic manner unhindered by strict compositional rules which inevitably produced very compact, integrated plans but which could not incorporate unusual building programs.

 

10.0    Sources of Diversity

 

Where did these alternative styles come from? The answer is that they already existed in one form or another because styles, as collective templates are never just fantasies or inventions. That is, they do not come from nothing but are always a development of some previous set of forms. We can summarize the emergence and use of alternatives to Classicism in the following way: There is always more than one style in existence at any given time. While one of these may be dominant and thus highly visible, the others still operate in some architectural environmental niche or other. The demise of a once dominant style does not automatically render it extinct. It may well continue to exist in some limited way or other. The term ‘dominance’ in this sense is merely a matter of numbers. That is, how many buildings are built using a particular set of typical forms and the range of building types in which it is used. For instance, the decline of Gothic from a universally used style in the Middle Ages to that of a specialist activity by the 18th century shows that several styles can continue to exist inside the same architectural ‘ecosystem’. These less ‘popular’ styles are usually specialized in their function so that there is a close and predictable relationship between a particular style and a particular building type. For instance, before its recovery in the late 19th Century as a general stylistic option for many building types, Gothic was usually limited to designing local parish churches or, in its vernacular version, for designing rural houses. Note that while a dominant style such as Classicism poses as one solution for many different kinds of problems, these other lesser styles offer only one (stylistic) solution for one kind of problem. From an evolutionary point of view these styles (such as Gothic) have at some point in their history become overspecialized and locked into very particular roles or niches. In design terms they became ‘vernacular’. So too with the more obscure styles such as Moorish or Japanese: forms are resuscitated or ‘liberated’ from their exotic role as a result of 19th century archaeological and historical exploration of the ‘Orient’. 19th century travel and expertise in classification, archeology, Western purchasing power and of course, imperial influence made a large number of foreign design styles available to Western Europe. Note for instance: Owen Jones' highly influential Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856 which provided a wealth of design motifs from many foreign sources. The fact that such exotic styles could be contemplated for major public buildings in 19th Century Europe, says something about the state of Classicism. The 19th century, the age of acquisition and classification, saw the establishment of the major museums and natural science collections. So too in the arts. What might in other times be regarded merely as artistic curiosities became instead source material for serious stylistic exercises. These exotic motifs provided a welcome and necessary infusion of pure stylistic difference into the jaded repertoire available at the time. The International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862 provided public display of these stylistic exotica. Both Gothic and other more obscure styles were, in a way ‘dredged up’ from the past and from other societies to serve the present. In one sense they may be regarded as the equivalent of decoration used on Classicist buildings, serving the same purpose. They were, in other words attempts to differentiate one building or context from another. Only in this way could architecture as a whole preserve its meaning in the face of a now crushing uniformity of style which offered the same design response to entirely different situations. The romantic and medievalist tendency which saw the emergence of the Arts and Crafts movement can be seen as a relatively short-lived attempt to provide more responsive design options. It is interesting that while it pursued obvious aesthetic goals, these were to be achieved through craftsmanship: simplicity, practicality and an attention to the nature of the materials at hand. This was an early, though muted functionalism. It is worth considering that 19th century reactions against both industrialization and against Classicism had the same underlying argument, namely that both these movements could be condemned for their ‘inhumanity’. This, so the argument goes, was a result of the drive towards standardization and the mechanical and repetitive processes used to produce their respective products. In Classicism for instance, once the architect had selected the appropriate columnar order based on its associations with certain functions, all the other aspects of the building, plan layout, proportional system, decoration and so on were theoretically derived from this initial choice by the rules of the Classical game. Even the initial choice of which order to select would be dictated by precedent. Thus, both industrialization (machine repetition) and Classicism could be seen by romantics as strict rule-driven systems which eliminate the creativity which comes from spontaneous human intervention. In the 19th century the choices seemed to be clearly established: Humanity or the dictates of System.

 

11.0     The Lack of a Distinctive 19th Century Architecture

 

The 19th Century did not have a ‘style of its own’; a fact noted with some gloom by contemporary architects. That is, a set of forms which were unique to the century and derived out of its own distinct social and cultural conditions. The Greeks had theirs, so the argument went. So too the Romans, Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and so on. Why not the 19th Century? What was so strange was that 19th century society was indeed socially, technologically and politically unique; in many ways radically different and more complex than any society that had gone before. Yet it had not as yet developed a new and particular architecture which could represent the technical and institutional realities of the time. As we now know this was simply a matter of a time lag between developing conditions and effect; a difference between the abstractions of calendar time and measurable changes of developmental time. A new architecture would finally arise out of these unique conditions in the form of Modernism. This lack of a style unique to the 19th century was a question which was continually debated by architects and critics of the time. It was a debate however which, for most architects simply revolved around the relative merits of the two existing styles: Classical or the Gothic. While 19th century architects might have thought that the unique historical content and characteristics of Classicism (The five orders and their association with the origins of western civilization) and Gothicism (gleaming spires and Christianity) were the most important issue, history would show otherwise by dissolving both of them. With hindsight, it can se suggested that this was, to a large extent a futile debate although by stating the advantages of each style, the proponents did by default identify the key features of an ideal architecture. As usual, the ideal always involves a balance of the kind of factors mentioned earlier on such as: flexibility and order; uniform yet diverse; responsive to particular and general design factors. But a description of these ideal characteristics is not enough to produce a new architecture – a new set of forms. Since nothing comes from nothing, this new set paradoxically had to come from a radical recombination of forms that already existed. In other words the desired ‘flexibility and order’ required in the design process was not an abstract consideration, but had to come about systemically through a collective selection and combination of forms - the vocabulary and syntax of what was currently available. Such a fundamentally new architecture had to come from some kind of profound integration of the most essential characteristics of prevailing styles. To that extent, one can imagine that (though there were other influences and factors) these two main styles displayed a set of complementary values which together would form the basis of a new architecture. These can be summarized as follows: a)Classicism A set of forms and methods which provided order, rule-based discipline, proportional systems, pure Euclidian geometry and ‘the orthogonal grid’. It also provided a level of formal coordination of the parts of each building which was analogous in some ways to the functional or logical clarity of the ‘machine’ and the rationality of the new mass-production technology. Above all, it was intellectually coherent. b)Gothicism A set of forms, which provided flexibility of composition, pragmatism and the possibility of directly expressing the function of a building and of the institution that it represents; a this while still retaining a strong characteristic image. The strong point here is that Neo-Gothic could ‘naturally’ incorporate the sometimes unusual spatial requirements of the new industrial economy. One should also note that originally Gothic was essentially vertebrate in organization and so formed the logical basis for the Structural Rationalism and cast iron structures which exemplified industrial buildings the early 19th century. Even in its invertebrate vernacular mode, however, Gothic planning allowed for a very loose configuration of forms.

 

12.0         The Integration of Classicism and Gothicism

 

One must also add to these sources, 19th century industrial power which would provide the technology and materials such as steel and reinforced concrete to allow the elegant fusion of these stylistic sources. Somewhere in this combination of Classical discipline, Gothic Revival Morality and the force of industrial power lay a powerful new synthesis called the Modern Movement. That is, of design no longer derived from historical precedent, but emerging out of the social and institutional circumstances of the time exemplified by new building types. Later, when stripped of their characteristic features and systematically reduced to their essential geometric possibilities, the systematic fusion of these two styles would give the discipline and flexibility that would resolve the cultural tensions of the 19th century. It was no longer a matter of either this style or that style, the merger of these two styles provided the necessary economy of means which allowed architects to use one set of typical elements to solve many different design problems. In a sense at this stage the whole issue of style recedes in importance since there is no longer any need to make a choice when a single integrated solution is already available. The developments outlined above suggested that the search for a new and appropriate style would be found not through a (horizontal) comparison or selection of currently available styles but rather through a (vertical) integration of the most essential aspects of different styles. It was this that would allow architecture to evolve a coherent and finite set of elements and spatial programs with which to shape the form of buildings with functional criteria acting as the basic template. This ‘use’ of functional considerations as a design tool was indeed a radical way out of prevailing problems. Once again architecture was to be grounded in a physical and social reality, or, to put it another way: architecture was to emerge from social and functional conditions rather than be arbitrarily superimposed on them.

 

13.0    The Necessity of Decoration

 

Looking at the history of architecture and design up to and beyond the Industrial Revolution, it is clear that decoration and ornament have played a major part in design. In fact most of the products designed during this time have involved decorating the basic form with added and essentially non-functional forms and details, a secondary language of forms. In Western design history, decoration at its simplest usually involved adding Classical or Gothic details to basically functional forms. Even steam engines and large span bridges had Classical details fitted to their utilitarian forms. From a Modern perspective, of course, the need for lavish decoration demonstrates some kind of semantic or aesthetic ‘lack’ at the centre of the available styles. For the Modernist, Adolf Loos for instance, decoration was ‘a crime’! Yet, for pre-Modern architects, decoration was regarded as an essential attribute of design. Indeed, before the 20th century it would have been unimaginable to design anything without the use of decoration. The pre-Modern function of decoration could be summarized as follows: Visually integrates the building with its interiors, furniture, fabrics, products (clocks, table sets) and so on with the same classical allegories, motifs and character derived in the main from well-known pattern books. This unifies the character of all the artifacts in an environment. It also integrates many of the design arts with literature, myth and painting by using characters and images drawn from the same allegorical collections. In a kind of Renaissance perfection decoration unites and harmonizes the whole environment. For 19th Century architects decoration was the usual way to increase the aesthetic value of the building; making it, in their terms, more beautiful by emphasizing and reinforcing the character of the primary elements of the building. Decoration made the building more articulate by clarifying the detail level of the building; increasing the complexity and visual interest of the whole event. It was seen as a way of maintaining or even establishing the semantic value of the building. In a paradoxical sense, decoration was used to clarify the logic of the building. As an integral part of the design, decoration, in Renaissance terms was regarded as the ‘corporeal’ aspect of a building as against its purely organizational framework. That is, to a large extent it provided the tactile, sensual and physical presence of architecture at all scales. In the face of a now stereotyped classical architecture, decoration provided the unique, improvised and spontaneous character of a building. In the post-Classical world it was the only thing that could respond to the particular circumstances of a building, its environment and its context. This decorative capacity to finely adapt the form of the building to very local circumstances was is not something that could be lightly discarded. Decoration in this sense is about the particular circumstances of the building - its context and its making, whereas the primary forms of the selected style could only speak about the general state of things, about tradition, language, history and (theoretically at least), the unchanging elements of architecture which they represented. If the typical elements of a style (the Orders, for instance), represent the general language available to architecture, decoration represents the particular, contextual and more fluid aspects of the language. Without decoration, the forms of the building would have seemed crude and lacking in refinement and detail and fundamentally unable to communicate the full meaning of the building and what it represented. Without it, architecture would only be able to offer a series of general statements about particular instances with all the ambiguity that this suggests. Decoration integrated the primary forms of the building, rendering them more articulate by providing determinative clues about the intended meaning of the building in this time and this place. So too it linked the forms of the building together, providing a kind of visual armature to a system that was increasingly an assembly of stereotyped forms. The prolific use of decoration in the 19th century can be seen as a pragmatic response to the threatened collapse of the whole architectural system of representation; to the ambiguities and uncertainties brought about by the dissolution of the Classical paradigm. Ultimately it is a response to an increasing and threatening diversity of things and in these circumstances decoration remained perhaps the last way to maintain the unity of architectural from.

 

14.0          The Social and Urban Impact of the Industrial Revolution

 

These arguments about different styles, design theories and practice were taking place in a truly revolutionary social and economic situation. In Western Europe and in the United States, society was changing rapidly not only in terms of new inventions (electricity, telegraph, automobile, camera, machine guns, steam ships, gramophone, and so on), but in the social and material reality of everyday life. 7.1Urbanization of Society The Industrial Revolution brought about a major increase in the population of cities centred around newly-created industries. Most of the increase, at least initially was from internal immigration as rural populations moved to the cities, in search of work and the possibility of a better life outside the semi-feudal and seasonal vagaries of rural life. What had been basically agricultural societies became increasingly urbanized. Societies at the time were institutionally incapable of organizing cities to cope with such a vast increase in population. Existing buildings and services created in the 17th and 18th centuries were completely inadequate to handle the rate of increase. The result was the unchecked and unplanned growth of the industrial city and, for the mass of the urban population, a brutal environment. With laissez faire economic policies and an extremely limited political franchise, the lack of interest in the conditions of the urban working class went unchallenged by existing political institutions until those conditions began to affect the lives of the middle and upper classes. Overcrowding and insanitary conditions brought diseases such as cholera and typhoid, both of which are extremely democratic in their choice of victims thus the middle and upper classes were forced to take an interest in the physical state of the city. Over the course of the 19th century it became necessary for the political institutions to try to get some control over the urban environment. This required legislation for new planning and building laws and practices intended to deal with the consequences of poor hygene and overpopulation in urban areas. These involved the regulation of minimum space standards, space between buildings, sewage and water provision, street lighting, and so on. Coupled with these came social legislation which dealt with child labour, limitation on working hours, minimum standards for educational and health care provision. So too with crime and political riots which were an effect of the overcrowding and political inequalities which plagued industrial cities and which required the establishment of an organized police force and, more fundamentally a widening of the political franchise to resolve the political tensions of the time. In effect a whole new political class emerged at the time: the industrial working class with its own political parties and self-help organizations. The extreme conditions to be found in the Victorian cities also brought intervention from religious and philanthropic groups who established educational, medical and social charities for the working class population. For those countries where it took place, the Industrial Revolution generated vast wealth which not only allowed the necessary large scale reconstruction of the city and its infrastructure, but, spurred on by imperial grandeur and pomp also allowed the establishment of numerous new national institutions such as museums, universities, government functions and the many buildings needed to house them. All in all the major social, technological and political changes that took place in the 19th century as a consequence of the industrial revolution brought about the almost complete re-building of Western cities with all that that would mean for the architecture of the time.

 

15.0         The Impact on Architectural Production

​

The 19th century industrial economy required a major increase in the number and type of buildings being built and a scaling up or complexification of previously-produced building types (consistent with the new scale of government and commercial institutions). While for architects this great building activity was obviously of considerable material benefit, for the design process it presented a serious problem given the conditions of a collapsing architecture. The problem was simple: Continuous pressure to come up with an increasing number of appropriate formal solutions for new buildings, but (given the state of architecture), decreasing expressive or stylistic means of doing so. The result of course was the stylistic chaos discussed above, but also a pragmatically-inspired tendency to try to integrate diverse solutions into a single all-encompassing meta-style – a new architecture. The, new, scaled up or more complex building types dealt with by 19th century architects included: railway stations, office buildings, industrial buildings, mass housing, libraries, museums, city halls, and large government buildings generally, theatres and concert halls, educational buildings, large banking halls, exchanges, power stations, and, of course a vast amount of urban housing. One can also add the contribution of religious and philanthropic organizations in the form of the very large number of churches and charitable educational and medical buildings. The evidence for this enormous building activity can be seen in the fabric of the major cities of the Western world, large parts of which were built in the 19th century.

 

16.0         Regulation of the Architectural Profession

 

Another effect of the rapid expansion of building activity was the need to regulate the profession to eliminate low standards of practice and unprofessional behaviour amongst the many who called themselves architects. The demand for this came from the profession itself in an attempt to maintain the reputations of its members by eliminating suspect or questionable practitioners who had flourished during the 19th century building boom. The result of this was the re-shaping architecture as a profession: The introduction of legal requirements for registration and practice as an architect and the establishment of government-backed professional institutions to oversee those standards and decide who had the right to practice. In some countries the very use of the name: ‘architect’ was legally restricted to those whom the institution decided had the right to register. Education was re-organized away from the apprenticeship tradition of learning in the office (essentially a Renaissance practice) towards full or part-time technical education at a recognized design institution. This requirement coincided with a more or less voluntary reorganization of design education where two traditions, fine art schools and craft schools, merged to form new schools of architecture and design. The importance of this development was that unlike the apprenticeship system, where design influences were, by definition highly individual, the new educational institutions tended to produce more uniformity of design approach and practice amongst a large number of architects. The overall result of these measures and the increasing intensity of practice and architectural activity was a gradual change in the character of the membership of architectural institutions. Formerly many of these had been ‘gentlemen-architects’ who practiced architecture in the loving manner of an art. They were, in real sense, ‘amateurs’. However, what one might call production pressures coming from increased building activity, rationalization of office procedures and management to handle this situation and also the legal and educational regulation of the profession brought about a new kind of architect: the professional, who, we might say ‘did it for money’. It is ironic that the swath of legislation produced in the 19th century to cope with the effects of the industrial revolution took place in a society where the state of architecture remained chaotic. While one can rationalize and to some extent design the state of institutions, one cannot do the same for architecture. What one can say is that the 19th century regulation of the architectural profession in terms of membership requirements and educational standards produced a degree of uniformity of approach to professional practice. This put architecture in a ‘state of readiness’ for the eventual integration of the language around a single set of typical forms. As usual, the 19th century prepared the way for the shape of things to come. Conclusion Not all parts of a society develop at the same rate, nor is their development coordinated with events taking place in other areas. Society is a constellation of different systems which are seldom, if ever fully synchronized with one another. We can see this quite clearly in the point noted above that while society became more organized in certain respects through legislative action, architecture and design during the same period became more disorganized spawning a range of different and sometimes exotic solutions to the same set of problems. Clearly architecture in the 19th century was following its own strange developmental path, no matter that the co-existing systems of social, technological and economic activity were being rationalized around it. Architecture had its own timescale to follow and one which required that before anything new could happen the prevailing historical styles and Classicism in particular be dissolved as they eventually were. There is seldom an opportunity where somewhat abstract issues such as these can be put on public display. However, one event in the middle of the 19th century offered such an opportunity: The Great Exhibition of 1851. On May 2nd 1851 the Times newspaper in London wrote: "There was yesterday witnessed a sight the like of which has never happened before and which in the nature of things can never be repeated. Around them, amidst them and over their heads was displayed all that is useful or beautiful in nature or in art" The Times was describing the opening of the Great Exhibition staged in London in 1851. There were 13,937 exhibitors and over 100,000 industrial, manufacturing, domestic and artistic exhibits. More than six million visitors toured the exhibition. According to its organizers, the Exhibition was there to demonstrate 'Progress' after almost a century of headlong industrialization. This exhibition was the first real moment for 'cultural stocktaking'. However, in spite of the enthusiasm generated by the exhibition, it was clear from informed comment that there was a crisis of confidence in design, the same kind of crisis that afflicted architecture. For although the industrial nations clearly had the MEANS of doing almost anything, they had lost the ability to conform to any accepted or unified standard of form or design. As one observer noted: "We have no principles, no unity; each (designer) struggles fruitlessly, each produces novelty without beauty or beauty without intelligence". The nature of the crisis which the Great Exhibition displayed lay in the obvious contradictions in attitude between 'high art' products such as architecture, sanctified by tradition and historical allusion and those of industry where pragmatism, economy and immediacy where the prime values. These contradictions – between Art and Trade were very obvious when they were placed side by side at the Exhibition. Here was a society which while performing miracles of technology, science and industry simultaneously created and surrounded itself with senseless bric-a-brac and over-ornamented designs which merely displayed the values of sentimentality, status and money. Generally 19th century society held these apparently contradictory design positions with ease. There was little else they could do. Although there were a few critical voices who pointed to the underlying beauty and economy of the machines on display at the exhibition as against the vulgarity of domestic items, this was not the general opinion. If we view this confused situation not as a fixed state but as an evolving process, we can point to the apparent pragmatism of architects and designers as an evolutionary force itself in the confrontation between the stereotyped forms of the historical styles and the demands of new design and building programs. From an evolutionary perspective, the architects and designers of the period did not need to be intellectuals or highly motivated for change as such. They only needed to do what they had always done, namely make continuous pragmatic adaptations to the forms and compositional methods of the historical styles to incorporate new spatial requirements. In doing so however in an environment flooded with new and unforeseen design problems architects as a whole unintentionally forced the pace of change. When multiplied many times over across the whole of architectural production and when exchanged within the architectural network, the contradictions between ancient formulae and modern demands would be resolved. The next chapter investigates in detail how 19th century architects dealt with the problems described above and in doing so triggered the emergence of the Modern.

​

**********************************