Utopian Architecture
“It is good to remember that utopia is nothing but the reality of tomorrow and that today’s reality is yesterday’s utopia.”—La Corbusier, Modulor
As I was growing up in the Soviet Union I was constantly reminded of the juxtapositions between the socialist and the capitalist worlds and the benefits of the first and the downfalls of the other. When I moved to America and began to learn American history these juxtapositions reappeared again, only viewed from the “other side”. Parallel investigation of interrelated ideas in both societies in art and architecture at the turn of the 20th century offers an insight into the artistic developments that shaped the geometry of these contemporary cultures. I would like to suggest the influences the soviet architects had on the architects in America, and how the utopian explorations of architecture transforming society were realized in a capitalist society with a wealth of materials and resources and in turn had an effect on the individual. El Lissitzky’s ideas of horizontal and vertical movement, infinity, structure dictating form and a feeling of austerity are most evident in the architecture of Mies van der Rohe and his Lake Shore Apartments skyscrapers which became a prototype for glass and steel skyscrapers in America. And while Konstantin Melnikov translates the mood of the new society in circular forms, exploring man’s relationship to nature through the cylinder and the materials of wood, Frank Lloyd Wright integrates the circular geometry into architecture of a corporation in his Johnson Wax Buildings, creating a new standard for a working environment in America.
Architecture of the New Society
The October Revolution of 1917 envisioned not only the transformation of political and economic structures of the old Russia; it also became a “cultural revolution” affecting all aspects of daily life. The new socialist policy called for the complete “reconstruction of society”. Art and architecture became vital to the social changes and artists set off to find new forms and a new language of the time. Ambitious innovations in architecture became a vehicle for promoting a transformation of the way of life. Artist, the “builder of space and volume forms” became also the “organizer of mass productions”, a constructivist, arming and moving the masses. “The architect will no longer think of himself as the decorator of life but as its organizer.”1 Architecture was termed a “social condenser” reflecting its quality to mold and transform social behavior and presupposing that by the very act of living in a new environment man would shake off all associations with the old. Russia at the turn of the 20th century was primarily (80%) an agricultural society, peasants living in wood log cabins. The new Russia was leading toward the “reign of labor and liberty.”2 The factory, not the field, became the organizing center, encouraging the growth of cities; the new place of worship became the Palace of Labor. The structure of home, family life was transformed into “kommunalkas”, housing with communal kitchens to alleviate women of domestic labor. The individual, private client has been replaced for the architects by the “social commission”. Emphasis shifted from the intimate and individual to the public and universal.
1 Ginzburg, Moscow Architectural Society, from Kopp, p.22
2 A. Kopp , Town and Revolution, p.62
Architects explored the relationships between interior and exterior space, opening up to the West, aspiring to create an International Society. Relationships between outside and inside, industry and nature, communal and individualistic guided the exploration for the new language in art and new methods in architecture.
Geometry of Suprematism – El Lissitzky
To create unique ways of constructing 3-dimensional space, artists were taking fresh looks at the Euclidean geometry and perspective. The abstraction occurred in flat space on canvas, in the paintings of Kazimir Malevich. In 1925 El Lissitzky writes: “the “Suprematism has swept away from the plane the illusions of three dimensional perspective space, and has created the ultimate illusion of irrational space, with its infinite extensibility into the background and foreground”. El Lissitsky applies three -dimensional design of the Suprematism to architectonic design and applies it to space and architecture. “Prounen paintings become the links between the tabular forms and the scale requirements of architecture and city”.(1) Lissitzky compares perspective space to a geometric series of numerical relationships 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… And the space is the “sum total” of these relationships. Kazimir Malevich established the square as the “sum total” of Art. Just like in the sixteenth century a 0 changes from “nothing” to being regarded as a real number, so does Malevich’s square became recognized as the “sum total” of Art. This began a new conception of space. “Suprematism has extended the apex of the finite visual cone of perspective into infinity, … creating the ultimate illusion of irrational space.” (2)
1.Henk Putz, The Lissitzky Collection at the Van Abbemuseum, from El Lissitzky 1890-1941,p.43
2.El Lissitzky, Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution, p.145)
Lissitsky develops spatial relationships of objects in his planimetric Prounen paintings and expands the possibilities of construction to “negative infinity” and “positive infinity”. The idea of motion in the architectural building offers Lissitzky a way to bring infinity and change to a solid physical form. In the “Sky Hook” a design for the horizontal skyscraper, which takes the horizontal movement of the building and raises it above ground, the building suggests geometric infinity in both vertical and horizontal directions. There is a desire to defy the laws of gravity to overcome the limitations of the “substructure, the earthbound”. While the philosophical and scientific explorations of 3-dimensional construction occurred in plans, the practical requirements of a factory forced the constructivist architects to dismiss all irrelevant decoration. This paired with the unavailability of costly materials and labor had a “refining and simplifying” impact on their work. The constructivists began to use deliberately austere, industrial forms, flat roofs and windows arranged in bands, resembling a Suprematist painting and disregarding the character of surrounding neighborhood, which “too would soon be reconstructed” .(1)
Order and Reorganization – Mies van der Rohe
“The concept of modern architecture implies a link between architecture and the economy in general. The most efficient production derives from rationalization and standardization which directly affect working methods both in modern architecture and in the building industry.” (2) Mies van der Rohe takes the ideas of El Lissitzky and the Constructivists to America and realizes them first in a new kind of a skyscraper.
1.A.Kopp, Constructivist Architecture in the USSR, p.31
2.International Congress of Modern Architecture, 1928
The 860 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago become a “prototype” for many skyscrapers built since. Mies believes in complete industrialization of architecture, the function of which is to “define a specific quality of life”(1). Architecture for him is “the will of the epoch translated into space”. In the Soviet Union, El Lissitzky designs buildings with open structures and glass allowing for open communication for the new International society. In Chicago, Mies uses his resources and creates a visible reinforced steel skeleton covered with glass, thus making the structure the primary form and creating a new esthetic. The steel frame is based on a 21-foot grid. Even though each apartment is partitioned off, it represents a unit, a part of a uniform structure. From the outside the two skyscrapers inspire a feeling of standardization and high order. In a culture where individualism, private ownership, and personal space are so highly esteemed, the residents of the apartments might seem just occupying a square cell, a number in the “sum total” of the whole skyscraper, making apparent the hand of the architect as the “super-organizer of the masses”. The language of austerity and simplicity, aimed at the working classes in the Soviet Union, becomes the language of the upper-middle class residents of the Lake Shore Apartments. Within “the mechanical principle of order” (2) Mies attempts to transcend the bare industrial reality of the building and create a “place for the mind and body”, creating the “idealistic order”. Lissitzky’s idea of “infinity” becomes Mies’s space in which “the spirit is given the right to exist.” In the two towers, Mies manages to create the “imaginary space” of Lissitzky’s philosophy of “nonmaterial materialism”. “Looking out through the glass walls of ‘860’, one feels suspended half
1.Fritz Neumeyer, Mies as Self-Educator, from Mies Van der Rohe: Architect as Educator, p.33
2.Fritz Newmeyer, p.35
way between the shimmering lake and the sky, floating in a calm and dreamlike world far removed from the chaos of the city” (1)
Individual and Industrialization – Konstantin Melnikov
Taking the mood of austerity to perfection, but using very personal forms and materials, Melnikov designs his private home, the Architect’s House, in the center of Moscow, a “housing laboratory”, shaped as a cylinder, without internal walls, with self-reinforcing floor construction and built-in furniture. The champions of Stalin’s “cultural revolution” called the house an “original variant of the bourgeois type of particularized housing cell”. Melnikov uses the cylinder as “practical and symbolic alternative to the super-organizing urban form of the cube”(2). His influence was American grain elevator (3) and later Melnikov applies these forms to other types of structures: he creates cylindrical housing project, cylindrical workers’ club, and proposes a cylindrical military academy. His cylinders “face outward rather than inward, and stress the glass perimeter rather than the closed center”. (4) To allow for the communication between inside and outside as well as reflecting Melnikov’s fanatical worship of sunlight, 60 hexagonal windows are imbedded through the outer walls of the Architect’s House; inspiration for which came from the seventeenth-century fortification tower, surrounding Moscow’s ancient Belgorod district. Unlike the constructivists, Melnikov takes forms and materials from the past and reinvents them, finding new and unique uses. Structurally, the house is mostly built of wood, reflecting the shortage of more durable materials as well as the domination of the
1. Peter Blake, Mies Van der Rohe, p.101
2. Starr, Melnikov Solo Architect in a Mass Society , p.125
3. Starr, p.119
4. Starr, p.130
construction industry by a peasant labor force practiced in traditional techniques only. Adapting the techniques of the peasant carpenter, Melnikov designs a highly innovative system of flooring; and the brickwork covered with plaster that he uses for walls which has been used on Russian churches since before the Mongol conquest. Melnikov challenges the driving force of function inspiring architecture of the constructivists. He makes function timeless by pointing to the “nature of man” instead of a “particular person’s taste”, reflecting temporary circumstances. Melnikov finds universal within the individual, he reinstates the importance of individuated family as the basic social unit and disengages himself from the entire political polemic. “Suppose, for example, that I am designing a house for you. You are a certain age now, but in twenty years you will be that much older. Your life will have changed and the ‘functional’ needs will have changed with it, yet you will still want to live in the same house. No, function cannot provide all the answers.” (1) “Melnikov accepted architectural challenges that life put before him without imposing some a priory hierarchy of tasks that he deemed appropriate for a Revolutionary architect. Because of this, he surpassed most of his contemporaries in the actual impact of his architecture upon society, even while yielding to them in the impact of his theoretical formulations” (2)
American Corporate Architecture – Frank Lloyd Wright
While Melnikov uses the cylindrical forms in his private dwelling, Writght creates a new ideal for the American workplace – radical, inspiring building compound in which he integrates the circular geometry of the mushroom-shaped columns with the orthogonal
1. Konstantin. Melnikov. from S. Frederick Starr. Melnikov: Solo Architect in a Mass Society. p241.
2. Starr, p. 115
geometry of the grid. The Johnson Wax Buildings in Racine, Wisconsin gave Wright an opportunity to bring to life his ideas of the Broadacre City, his vision of an ideal America and the architect as the shaper of a complete environment for work and leisure. Wright designs his first curving, streamlined building, which at this time (1930s) represented a symbol of the future. The buildings also become an example of Wright”s idea of the “destruction of the box”. “If in a building you feel not only protection from above, but liberation of interior to outside space…then you have one important secret of letting the interior space come through”. (1) Similarly to the constructivists, Wright chooses to disregard the mediocrity of architecture on the Johnson Buildings’ site and decides to turn everything inward. Wright recreates nature within –the mushroom columns and the light from above bring nature within the walls of a windowless corporation. Wright designs all the original furniture for the building, including the three-legged secretary chairs, which tip over if one does not sit with correct posture. Promoting awareness of individual physical bodies, Wright heightens the awareness of the surrounding physical space. The inner walls in this building are replaced by the columns and open up to allow the light in. Such architecture might inspire less alienation between the employees of the Johnson company, than the neighbors in Mies’ ‘860’ grid apartments. While the ‘860’ towers open communication between its inhabitants and the outside world through the glass skin, the Johnson Buildings inspire communication within the space of the corporation, without an outlet.
1. Wright, from J. Lipman, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings
The glass tubing, which fills the space between the columns admits light, but allows no view. The Research Tower for experimentation is totally enclosed and does not allow for horizontal expansion of work space. The work space becomes a “paradise”, within its functions there are limitless possibilities. “Interior space comes free, you are not aware of any boxing in at all. Restricted space simply is not there. Right there where you’ve always experienced this interior constriction you take a look at the sky!” (1) Wright creates alienation of this working “paradise” from its surrounding reality, similar to the ignorance of the outside world of the imperialistic society.
Post-Utopian Utopia in Japan
“Architecture is that great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man, and his circumstances as they change. That is really architecture.” (2) The rate of changes in modern society has been consistently increasing and the rapid transformation of life demands rapid changes and developments in architecture. Standardization as such does not satisfy the demands of the constantly evolving society, creating alienation and social segregation. And the fervor of the Constructivists to invent structures that most efficiently satisfy the new order has found its way in the ideas of Metabolists, in Japan, and their attempt to create architecture that has organic quality and ability to change with the society. The Metabolists proposed a new metropolis: “an organism that would be able to remodel itself in continuation, making its boundaries elastic and molding itself to
1. J. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, p.31
2. Frank Lloyd Wright. from Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer and Gerald Nordland, ed. Frank Lloyd Wright: In the Realm of Ideas. p15
the needs of the individuals”, creating the “megastructure”. (1) Taking the constructivist geometry a step further, into the interactive 3-mensions, the Metabolists propose the Capsule Tower Building, in which the capsule becomes the hyper-intimate space, which is also a mobile place. Architecture comes ever closer to the physical bodies whose demands it attempts to satisfy, architecture becomes like skin, we, its inhabitants can communicate through the geometry it represents. The city becomes an organism, “which admits various degrees of freedom and evolves over time without losing in coherence and recognition”. (2) The individuals express themselves freely, using the “capsules”. Archigram goes even further to suggest that the contemporary world inhabitant would carry an “inflatable suit” on his back which could take form of a transparent plastic igloo, thus creating a concept of “auto-environment, of hybrid with immaterial, invisible architecture”.(3) In its ever changing pursuits to satisfy the efficiency and social and economic reconfigurations of human relations, architecture continues to reinvent our inhabitable space and thus it reinvents our social structures and habits. As the bio-genomic industry develops, I wander if the architects will cross the boundary of our skin and the mobile architecture will become “implantable” architecture? “The name of architecture is given only to the thing that expresses the soul in the age. Clarifying the soul of the age and having the philosophy are synonyms. Architecture without the philosophy is only a cast-off shell of a cicada.”(4)
1. Fumihiko Maki, Investigations in Collective Forms, Label magazine, p.50;
2. Label Magazine, p. 51;
3. Michela Comba, Archigram, Label magazine, p.54
4. Kisho Kurokawa, from Label Magazine
Bibliography
El Lissitzky. Russia: An Architecture for World. Revolution. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1970
S. Frederick Starr. Melnikov. Solo Architect in a Mass Society. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1978
Mies van der Rohe: Architect as Educator. Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, 1986
Anatole Kopp. Constructivist Architecture in the USSR. Academy Editions, London/ St. Martins Press, New York, 1985
Anatole Kopp. Town and Revolution. George Braziller, NY 1970
Frank Lloyd Wright. In the Cause of Architecture. Architectural Record Books, NY, 1975