The structural frame as generator of architectural form
Vitruvius: the
origins of architectural form.
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The primitive house of the Colchians. From the French translation of Vitruvius made by Claude Perrault. |
The primitive house of the Phrygians. From the French translation of Vitruvius made by Claude Perrault. |
Vitruvius, in his De architectura libri decem , had considered the structural framework as a precondition of architectural form. Vitruvius described two primitive constructions. The first, the one of the Colchians in Pontus, was built in the following manner: "They lay down entire trees flat on the ground to the right and the left, leaving between them a space to suit the length of the trees, and then place above these another pair of trees, resting on the ends of the former and at right angles with them. These four trees enclose the space for the dwelling. Then upon these they place sticks of timber, one after the other on the four sides, crossing each other at the angles, and so, proceeding with their walls of trees laid perpendicularly above the lowest, they build up high towers. The interstices, which are left on account of the thickness of the building material, are stopped up with chips and mud. As for the roofs, by cutting away the ends of the crossbeams and making them converge gradually as they lay them across, they bring them up to the top from the four sides in the shape of a pyramid"(II,1,4). |
The second model of primitive house described by Vitruvius is the one of the Phrygians, who lived in an open country where timber was scarce. This was the reason why, according to Vitruvius, they came up with a sort of construction that required less wood. First, they made a trench on the ground and then they built a pyramidal roof of logs which they covered with reeds and brushwood. In both models of primitive construction, Vitruvius implies that the geometric forms are the consequence of direct operation with physical objects rather than abstractions that pre-existed in the mind of the builder. |
From these primitive structures, according to Vitruvius, the architectural orders developed later: "In accordance with these details, and starting from carpenter's work, artists in building temples of stone and marble imitated those arrangements in their sculptures, believing that they must follow those inventions"(IV,2,2). It can be contended that the skeletons of Vitruvius' primitive houses were a materialistic version of the Platonic Idea: they stood for the image-idea that guides the artist-architect in his creation.
Laugier's cabane: structure as perceived
form.
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| The structural form of the primitive
house was also a key issue in the theory proposed by Marc-Antoine
Laugier in the 17th-century. As Vitruvius, Laugier also places the
origins of architectural forms in nature: the first dwelling was
built in the forest, with branches and trees. In spite of these
materialistic connotations, Laugier's cabane differs from
the previous theories of Vitruvius in one important aspect: the cabane
is an abstract concept as much as it is a material
construction. For Laugier, the architect derived the idea
of the building from the primitive house: " Les pieces
de bois élevées perpendiculairement nous ont donné l'idée des
colonnes. Les pieces horisontales qui les surmontent, nous ont
donné l'idée des entablements. Enfin les pieces inclinées qui
forment le toit, nous ont donné l'idée des frontons: voilà ce
que tous les Maîtres de l'Art ont reconnu. "Thus, the
primitive house, that is, the basic structural skeleton,
represents the first architectural idea.
->Compare to VITRUVIUS. |
Laugier. La cabane primitive.
The primitive house of Viollet-le Duc:
the rationality of construction as generator of architectural form
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| In Histoire de l'habitation
humaine, Viollet-le-Duc offered his particular view of the
origins of the first house in the form of a legend. He argued,
that it was the necessity to get protection against rain, wind and
beasts, which prompted a man, Épergos, to build the first house.
He came up with the idea to tie up the upper part of two nearby
trees. Then, he asked other people to bring more trees and to tie
them together in a similar way. The trees were tied up with
branches and the whole structure was covered with mud. Finally,
the door was placed in the side protected from the action of wind
and rain.
This account of the origins of the first house formulated by Viollet-le-Duc cannot but remind us of the primitive dwellings described by Vitruvius. As a matter of fact, the conical form of the house described by Viollet-le-Duc corresponds to one of the two models described by the Roman author, the one built by the Phrygians. But apart from this coincidence, there are some significant differences between the descriptions of the primitive house provided by Vitruvius and Viollet-le-Duc; differences that reveal the different conception of architecture that both authors had. For Vitruvius, the primitive house was more a creation of nature than of man. Viollet-le-Duc, on the other hand, emphasizes the rationality of the men who built the first house. Furthermore, Viollet-le-Duc assumes that the construction system itself has its own logic, and that this logic determines the architectural forms. Hence, the conical form was the result of a technique consisting in fastening the trees in their upper part. The form of the hut, therefore, was not an idea first conceived in the mind, but the consequence of the logical construction technique. Furthermore, the idea of the first house is associated with the structural form, which for Viollet-le-Duc constitutes the essence of architectural form. |
Viollet-le-Duc. The first house. From Histoire de l'habitation
humaine.
It can be argued that one of the fundamental premises of architecture has been that the conceptual structure -i.e. the perceived form of the building- should coincide as much as possible with the physical structure of the building. This premise takes us back to the very origins of architecture, when a building was more than anything else a structure whose form derived from the laws of construction and the proper use of materials. As architecture evolved as an art form, the original unity of structural and architectural form was put many times into question. There have been periods in the history of architecture where such unity was consciously sought (i.e. Greek architecture), while in others was purposely neglected (i.e. Baroque). In neo-classicist thought, the separation between visual structure and physical structure was considered problematic. Laugier's theory of the primitive hut can be interpreted as a defense of the lost unity between two kinds of structure.->STRUCTURE
The novel forms of the nineteenth century constructions
In the 19th-century, markets, railway stations, warehouses and bridges offered architects and engineers an opportunity to create novel forms. One of the most original forms created in this period, the Eiffel tower, is a purely structural form. It is not simply a translation of the traditional 'tower' into iron, but an original new form. This gigantic building demanded from the viewer new forms of perception, distinct to the traditional notions of proportion and eurhytmia that had dominated classical aesthetics. The Eiffel tower is not a static composition, in the classical sense, but a dynamic form, whose force emanates from the base and continuous vertically along four asymptotic lines that meet at the apex.->Tatlin, Monument for the Third International
The significance of the tower does not stem
only from the originality of its form but also from the new spatial
conception that entailed->GIEDION.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the idea that space was the
abstract system of relations -as opposed to the cavity or void- was
widespread.
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From S.Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture. | |
Russian constructivism: the crossing boundaries between reality and representation
 View of the third OBMOKhu exhibition, Moscow, 1921. | The intersections between the world of abstraction and the world of physical reality was revealed by the objects created by constructivists. In Russian constructivism, a structure was both an abstract arrangement of lines in space and a physical construction*. As a matter of fact, the word construction could be applied indistinctively to both kinds of structures, abstract and physical. Lissitzky, for example, considered that "every organized piece of work -whether it be a house, a poem, a painting- was a practical object", i.e. a PROUN. |
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| STRUCTURE=LINES
CONNECTING POINTS IN SPACE LINE=A CONNECTION BETWEEN TWO POINTS |
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| The spatial constructions of Rodchenko are as much physical as they are meant to be abstract. They are objects floating in an abstract three-dimensional space. Their ultimate purpose is to escape from the constraints of the physical realm, to exist only in an abstract, non-gravitational space. It is the expression of the contemporary space-time concept: the object changes continuosly its position, there is no absolu te space where things stay fixed. The dynamic dimension is built in the object itself: the recursive repetition of one element (the circle) suggests the idea of time. |
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FORM-SPACE
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| Similar ideas are present in the work of Klutsis. His spatial construction floats in space, hanging from the ceiling, as if it would negate the force of gravity. The object is built through the recursive repetition of a basic element, in this case a three-dimensional figure, i.e. the prismatic frame. In the pictorial representation of the right, the axonometric projection allows for a diversity of readings, each one of them implies a different orientation of the object in space. However, the same effects are achieved either with the physical construction or with the pictorial representation: space is non-gravitational, the object is in continuous motion. |
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ABSTRACT-PHYSICAL
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Klutsis' Design for a Screen-kiosk is as much a physical artifact as it is an abstract construction: it seems as if the kiosk would have been built by assembling individual components in an abstract-pictorial space. |
Some of Lissitzky's Prouns also reflect the interweaving of abstract and physical realms. The prismatic solids remind us of wooden blocks, but the space that contains the objects is more abstract than real. |
TATLIN: MONUMENT TO THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL: The monument consists of three great rooms of glass erected with the help of a complicated system of vertical pillars and spirals. These rooms are placed on top of each other and have different, harmonically corresponding forms. They are to be able to move at different speeds by means of a special mechanism. The lower storey, which is in the form of a cube rotates on its axis at the speed of one revolution per year. This is intended for legislative assemblies. The next storey, which is in the form of a pyramid, rotates on its axis at the rate of one revolution per month. Here the executive bodies are to meet ( the International Executive Commitee, the Secretariat and other administrative bodies).Finally the uppermost cylinder, which rotates at the speed of one revolution per day, is reserved for information services: an information office, a newspaper, the issuing of proclamations, pamphlets and manifestos- in short all the means for informing the international proletariat; it will also have a telegraphic office and an apparatus that can project slogans onto a large screen. These can be fitted around the axis of the hemisphere. Radio masts will rise up over the monument. It should be emphasised that Tatlin's proposal provides for walls with a vacuum (thermos) which will help to keep the temperature in the various rooms constant. |
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