architectures 3 (part 2)

i watched the remaining three excerpts on the dvd, architectures 3 and wrote quotes i found useful/ interesting.

1. the garnier opera. architect charles garnier. 1875 inaugurated.

french imperial administration decided to hold a competition (1860), the very first of its kind. 171 architects competed, identified by numbers and slogans. number 38 (garnier), “i aspire to much, i expect but little,” won.

great disproportionate clashing volumes; the slightly flattened dome that supports encyclopedian gable, creates strong plastic effects that upset the classic taste. but contrary to appearance, garnier considered this to be a rationale approach. the outer shape of the edifice is intended to express the spaces inside and their functions. according to garnier, “one ought to be able to understand the building simply by following the line of the roofs.”

garnier knew his classics and didnt hesitate to take inspiration from them. the monumental colonnade of the principal facade that designates the main floor and dominates the composition, is a direct reference to the colonnade of the louvre.

at the same time, garnier tempered the monumentality by creating a secondary plan. the great columns are backed up by smaller columns and surmounted by a stone screen that the architect compared to a curtain closing the portico and giving the building a lived in look.

2. the casa mila. architect antonio gaudi. final civic work between 1906- 1912.

townspeople called it the quarry.

DIFFICULT: gaudi would not be held to time nor to budget but obstinately pursued eccentric artistic options. he angrily imposed his will. he passed his time in wielding civil and divine threats, invoking both lawsuits and the last judgement. he refused all discussion.

quote, “the artist should be a monk. not a brother.”

gaudi, breaking all the rules in force, set a wall on a soft slant instead of an angle. with this facade, he pushed the destructuration of an architecture based on line and right angle to its very limit. gaudi, with his passion for anatomy, thought of his building as a body covered with a skin. the columns were to be the buildings skeleton, the stone its flesh.

FORESHADOW: this was in 1910 and we can feel a premonition of abstract art in these shapes as well as a blend of archaism and modernism. gaudi maintained that he sought his inspiration in the observation of nature. “everything comes out of the great book of Nature. this tree beside my workroom is my master!”

“i have the knack of feeling, of seeing space, because i am the son of a boilermaker. a boilermaker is one who can turn a flat surface into a volume. he can see the space before he begins to work.”

by making these real interior facades, architecture is no longer exalted only on the side facing the city. it makes its presence felt in the very heart of the site and in the daily life of its inhabitants.

absence of load bearing walls, just as in the mila apt., gave gaudi complete freedom in the way he laid out the interior space. the partitions can be altered, rooms can be added or made smaller, each floor is different. the organization of the apartments is variable.

3. auditorium building in chicago. engineer, dankmar adler. architect, louis sullivan. 1889.

sullivan author of one of the most famous formula in the history of modern architecture, FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION.

sullivan was the first to assert that this revolution in technique should be accompanied by a revolution in form. that the time had come to abandon the old fashioned system of composition based on the predominance of the horizontal in favor of the vertical, which no line should be permitted to contradict. it was with this change in perspective that the break with the old continent was finally consummated.

4250 seats, twice as many as the paris opera.

featured edison’s incandescent lamp of 1890. 4000 bulbs light up the auditorium.

“organisms, structure, function, growth, form; all these terms imply the initial pressure of a living energy. we call this pressure the function, and its result, the form.”