Miszellen: Architecture

Tuesday, 24 March 2009

Etienne-Louis Boullee

Étienne-Louis Boullée (February 12, 1728 — February 4, 1799) was a visionary French neoclassical architect whose work greatly influenced contemporary architects. Born in Paris, he studied under Jacques-François Blondel, Germain Boffrand and Jean-Laurent Le Geay, from whom he learned the mainstream French Classical architecture in the 17th and 18th century and the Neoclassicism that evolved after the mid century. He was elected to the Académie Royale d'Architecture in 1762 and became chief architect to Frederick II of Prussia, a largely honorary title. He designed a number of private houses from 1762 to 1778, though most of these no longer exist; notable survivors include the Hôtel Alexandre and Hôtel de Brunoy, both in Paris. Together with Claude Nicolas Ledoux he was one of the most influential figures of French neoclassical architecture. Boullée's biography can be read here.

Boullée, Cénotaphe de Newton

His style was most notably exemplified in his proposal for a cenotaph for the English scientist Isaac Newton, which would have taken the form of a sphere 150 m (500 ft) high embedded in a circular base topped with cypress trees. Though the structure was never built, its design was engraved and circulated widely in professional circles.

"O Newton ! Si par l’étendue de tes lumières et la sublimité de ton génie, tu as déterminé la figure de la terre, moi j’ai conçu le projet de t’envelopper de ta découverte." (Boullée, Essai sur l'art)

The Hôtel Alexandre or Hôtel Soult, rue de la Ville l'Évêque, Paris (1763-66), is the sole survivor of Boullée's residential work in Paris. It was built for the financier André-Claude-Nicolas Alexandre.

Boullée, Hôtel Alexandre

Boullée projected a Palais National to replace the ancient Couvent de Capucines between Place Vendôme and the boulevard. The construction was inspired by antique roman architecture. The cupola seems to be influenced by the Panthéon, inaugurated 27 BC.

Boullée, Palais nationale

"J’ai fait un devoir aux architectes d’introduire la poésie de l’architecture dans leurs productions, surtout lorsqu’ils se trouveraient chargés de traiter un monument public. Je leur recommande de faire en sorte qu’ils nous présentent en quelque façon des poèmes, etc., etc." (Boullée, Essai sur l'art)

Boullée, Entry of the National Library

Alte Nationalgallerie in Berlin by Karl Friedrich Schinkel with revolutionary flag. Photography by Ulay RMX.

Influencenced by Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau, Boullée created a "talking architecture" with educational virtues. Inspired by classical Greek and Roman architecture he proposed a renewed usage of the most elementary forms: cube, sphere and pyramide.

Boullée, Metropolitan Gateway

Boullée's project Palais pour un Souverain in Saint-Germain-en-Laye shows an utopian palace surrounded by residences and buildings for the education of the Prince.

Boullée, Project for a palais in Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Bartolomeo Del Bene, Civitas Veri, 1609

A link to more illustrated Utopias.

Boullée, Project for a palais in Saint-Germain-en-Laye

"Temples de la mort, votre aspect doit glacer nos cœurs ! Artiste, fuis la lumière des cieux ! Descends dans les tombeaux pour y tracer les idées à la lueur pâle et mourante des lampes sépulcrales !" (Boullée, Essai sur l'art)

Boullée, Cénotaphe in Egyptian style

Boullée, Fanal

"En un mot, le compas de la raison ne doit jamais abandonner le génie de l’architecture qui doit toujours prendre pour règle cette belle maxime : 'rien de beau si tout n’est sage'". (Boullée, Essai sur l'art)

The Tower of Babel, The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré (1865)

The centerpiece for Kazakhstan's new capital, Astana, will be a monumental center of "religious understanding", a pyramid designed by Norman Foster where representatives from all major world religions will meet every three years to foster religious understanding. With this rendering, Foster must be consciously evoking Etienne Boullee. Like Boullee's design, Foster's pyramid is formally and ideologically epic. It includes an opera house "to rival Glyndebourne or Covent Garden," a national museum of culture, a new center for Kazakhstan's ethnic and geographical groups - and in order to secure its status as a new wonder of the world - hanging gardens.

Norman Foster, Astana Pyramid

"Un théâtre est un monument consacré au plaisir ; avec quelle délicatesse, avec quel soin le goût ne doit-il pas présider à sa construction ! Les assemblées publiques de nos spectacles peuvent, ce me semble, être comparées aux fêtes des Gnidiens si agréablement décrites par le célèbre Montesquieu. Je vois le sexe le plus aimable se rendre dans nos salles de spectacle et ne paraître s’y rassembler que pour rivaliser d’attraits, charmer nos cœurs, manifester son empire et y recevoir aussi les hommages du génie qui, inspiré par l’amour et les grâces." (Boullée, Essai sur l'art)

Boulée, Project for an opéra

Piero della Francesca - Ideal City, Galleria Nazionale at Urbino.

Opera in Novosibirsk, completed 1945

Inspired by the Colosseum Boullée's "Circus" was designed for "patriotic meetings" of 300.000 people. He imagined this circus to be "filled with a brilliant youth rewarded by its virtues and achievements. Nobody can avoid the gaze of the multitude."

Boullée, project for a Circus

"Profondément frappé de la sublime conception de l’École d’Athènes par Raphaël, j’ai cherché à la réaliser ; et c’est sans doute à cette idée que je dois mes succès, si j’en ai obtenus." (Boullée, Essai sur l'art)

Boullée, Project for a Royal Library

Erik Demazières illustration (1997) was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges Library of Babel.

Erik Desmazières, The Library of Babel

Boullée, interior view of a museum

Raphael, The School of Athens, 1511

Some Influences

Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Gate of a hunting-ground.
Project, ca. 1800

Palace of Soviets - arguably the most famous Soviet neoclassical
building never to have been realized.

Yakov Chernikov

Principal Sources
Exposition virtuelle de la Bibliothèque nationale de France
Wikipedia, Étienne-Louis Boullée
Wikipedia, Cité idéale

Friday, 20 March 2009

Yakov Chernikhov

Yakov Georgievich Chernikhov (1889 - 1951) was a constructivist architect and graphic designer. His books on architectural design published in Leningrad between 1927 and 1933 are amongst the most innovatory texts (and illustrations) of their time. Chernikov was born to a poor family, one of 11 children. After studying at the college of art in Odessa, he moved in 1914 to Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and joined the Architecture faculty of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1916, where he later studied under Leon Benois.

In 1927 he organized in Leningrad his own Science and Research Pilot Laboratory for Architectural Shapes and Graphical Studies, where with a group of students and assistants he became actively involved, in experimental and design work.

Chernikhov with some of his students

Greatly interested in futurist movements, including constructivism, and the suprematism of Malevich (with whom he was acquainted), he set out his ideas in a series of books in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including:

The Art of Graphic Representation (1927)

Fundamentals of Contemporary Architecture (1930)

The Construction of Architectural and Machine Forms (1931)

Architectural Fantasies (1933)

The latter, a very fine example of colour printing, was perhaps the last avant-garde art book to be published in Russia during the Stalinist era. Its remarkable designs uncannily predict the architecture of the later 20th century. However his unusual ideas meant that Chernikhov was distrusted by the regime.

Although he continued work as a teacher and held a number of one-man shows, few of his designs were built and very few appear to have survived. Amongst the latter is the tower of the Red Carnation factory in St. Petersburg, here shown on the left (2006).

In various years he also executed a series of works in the area of architectural theory, proportions, architectural aesthetics, and the methodology of teaching the graphical disciplines. Chernikhov also produced a number of richly designed architectural fantasies of historic architecture, which were never exhibited in his lifetime.

1. "Fundamentals of Modern Architecture" (1925-30)

In 1930 Iakov Chernikhov published his first major book in the field of architecture, "Fundamentals of Modern Architecture", where he reinterpreted the fundamental concepts of architecture, such as space, harmony, statics, functionality, construction, and composition proceeding from an earlier proposed postulates concerning a basic shift of rhythms in favor of a rhythm of proportions and the predominance of asymmetry.

“By rejecting naked, ascetic, "boxed" architecture, which offers no architectural saturation of space and does not satisfy our eye from the aesthetic side or the side of emotional experience, I tried through consonance of basic masses to achieve a truly expressive architectural image in new forms.”

“The architect should not limit the sphere of his work with narrow frames and servile imitations, but, where necessary, should overcome obstacles by means of his powerful fantasy and bravely move forward. Those who think that the architect’s activity should embrace only current realistic requirements are thinking incorrectly and falsely."

2. "Architectural Fantasies" (1925-33)

Architectural Fantasies: 101 compositions in color and 101 in black-and-white—is the last and, probably, the best book published during Chernikhov’s life and summarizing his search for the forms and images of new architecture. In the second half of the 20th century this book, in which Chernikhov’s compositional talent appeared with greatest brilliance, became mandatory for architects in Japan, Europe, and the United States.

"An epoch of the greatest reconstructions of human relations must be reflected by its own unforgettable highly artistic monuments. It will create its own style not by rephrasing the old basics, but through creative quests for new forms with new content under the new requirements.”

3. "Construction of Architectural and Machine Forms" (1925-1931)

Having graduated in 1925 from the Academy of Arts, Iakov Chernikhov became fascinated with industrial architecture, which was the area of construction showing the most progress. In comparison with other areas, it possessed multifunctionality and a wider elite, and consequently promised a wider field of activity in terms of form creation.

The pathos of industrialization, with its sublime, heroic-romantic aura in those years, defined creative quests in various forms of art. 1927 witnessed the debut of Alexander Mosolov’s one-part symphonic piece, The Factory, in which the image of a working factory was reproduced by musical means. It immediately entered the repertoire of the leading orchestras, and for several years its performance opened concerts of symphonic music in Moscow and Leningrad. Also at that time Sergey Prokofiev wrote his famous Le Pas d'acier, and Dmitry Shostakovich composed the ballet Bolt. Alexander Mosolov : Steel - The Iron Foundry

Soviet Union 1920s: Concert of Factory Sirens and Steam Whistles. The conductor stands on the roof of the tallest house and conducts by means of flags. Source: katardat.org, The Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia 1920-1929.

"Black chimneys, buildings, crankshafts, cylinders. Ready to talk to you, I raise my hands, I sing of you, my iron friends. I go to the factory as to a festival, as to a feast." Thus wrote Alexander Gastayev in his Poetics of a Work Offensive, a distinctive manifesto of proletarian poetry in those years.

4. "Palaces of Communism" (1934-1941)

In the mid-1930s, after the establishment of Constructivism and the proclamation of a principally new approach to architectural ideology in Soviet Russia, Iakov Chernikhov, like many others, was subject to a vicious criticism. His books were withdrawn from libraries, and those already submitted to the printer were never published.

Nevertheless, Chernikhov preserved his ability to generate new ideas. By now already clearly in the Piranesi style, he created in 1934-1946 a cycle of works that included: The Architecture of Palaces, The Architectural Ensembles, The Architecture of the Future, The Architecture of Bridges, and The Palaces of Communism in which the author not only studies the image of the architecture of the new epoch, but also the issues of formation of the architectural ensemble.

5. "Pantheons of the Great Patriotic War" (1942 -1945)

In 1942, when the Union of Architects announced a competition for monuments to war heroes, Chernikhov created the design-graphic suite “Pantheons of the Great Patriotic War” that embodied the tragedy and greatness of Russia in the Second World War. For the competition Chernikhov prepared nine Pantheon project-perspectives, made in large format (900x1200 mm), which was unusual for the author. He has worked out the detailed program for the Pantheon conceived as a grandiose museum. After the War the total number exceeded 50.