Arts and Crafts Meets Industrialization

During the 19^th century more and more machines and factories arrived on the scene mass producing items that would normally be designed and put together by a craftsman. John Ruskin felt the diminishment of the importance and need of the everyday craftsman. To solve this social concern he believed and advocated that in order to save the occupation, need, and talent of the craftsman, society needed to do away with moving forward into industrialization. He viewed machines and factories as acting as the modern day craftsman and no longer would a craftsman and his individuality be needed to design and produce great products. Spreading his philosophy to others, Ruskin was known as the father of the arts and crafts movement. Many of the following architects and their movements, Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus, Geritt Reitveld and De Stijl, and Frank Lloyd Wright and Prairie Style home, agreed with his logics of the importance of craftsmanship and the individuality of an artist, but at the same time they agreed with Ville le Duc’s argument on adapting to their environment and using resources of the time to design and produce their architecture. Their integrated philosophy of both John Ruskin and Ville le Duc, helped transform the face of the arts and crafts movement; no longer would an artist or craftsman require a pen or pencil, a carving utensil, nor a paint brush but a machine to complete a project.

Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus

When Walter Gropius was commissioned to design and build a new school of Architecture and Applied Arts, not only did he design the building itself but he also used his own resources, his Bauhaus students to design and produce furniture that went into the building all the way down to the doorknob in their shop classrooms. He believed that the “artistic culture was threaded by the materialism of industrial capitalism and could only be saved by a spiritual revolution (Colquhoun, 2002, pg. 160).” In his case, the revolution would be to step back into the mentality of a craftsman in order to rebel against society’s custom of buying furniture with ornamentation of little importance just for decoration produced by a factory. He wanted the Bauhaus to display this following idea: “Let us conceive a new building of the future…architecture, painting, and sculpture rising to Heaven out of the hands of a million craftsmen, the crystal symbol of the new in the future (Colquhoun, 2002, pg. 160).” He basically wanted to create a notion that a work of art, like a simple piece of furniture, should be designed and mass produced by a factory of craftsman, people like his students, not by labored workers just trained to press a button to constantly replicate a product. Many of his design concepts were influenced by the De Stijl movement and Frank Lloyd Wright. 

Bauhaus School of Architecture and Art

An aerial view of the Bauhaus School

An interior view of the school and its student develope furniture

A Tea Pot designed by a Bauhaus student

Garrit Rietveld and De Stijl Movement

Before he became an architect, Garrit Rietveld started out as a furniture maker, which allowed him to design not only the exterior but also the interior of his buildings; his most prominent design project that really emphasized his design strategies and methods was the Schroder House (Emmons & Mindrup, 2008, pg. 45). This house was designed and built during the De Stijl movement, which many of the artists during this time believed that architecture and art should be expressed through “functionalism, with a severe and doctrinaire on the rectilinearity of the planes, which seem to slide across one another like sliding panels.” All surface decoration was to be eliminate except pure primary colors hues, black, and white(Jirousek, 1995). Rietveld design for the Schroder house stemmed from his red and blue chair and Piet Mondrian’s painting  Composition in red and blue. There is a really strong connection between the building and the painting as if the building and its furniture acted as a canvas for Rietveld to carry out his De Stijl ideas. Every use of color and simplicit geometric form added functional purpose to the design; he gained this influence and the inspiration to produce his own furniture from Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophies. 

A painting done by Piet Mondrian called Composition in Red and Blue

Furniture done by Rietveld

Schroder House

Frank Lloyd Wright and Prairie Style Homes

For many of his commissioned projects, Frank Lloyd Wright, like the architects mentioned above, designed the structure of a building all the way down to its door handle. As a prominent leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, he believed heavily in John Ruskin ideas of upholding the individuality and raw talent of an artist and craftsman but he also believed, “Art’ still dominates, but it is now produced by the machine, not by the craftsman, and is totally controlled by the architect working at his drawing board (Colquhoun, 2002, pg 53).” The finished product of everything that is produced by a machine depends on the person who is controlling or designed the machine. These machines cannot operate and advance on its own without somebody coming to fix it or tell it what to do. Therefore, a machine would be more on a scale as a pencil, paper, or exacto knife when it comes down to designing, and that is exactly what it was for Wright.

Robie House

Robie House interior view

Another Robie House interior view

All of the architects list above where successful with their designs and methods of designing the exterior and interior of a structure using some type of machine, or in Gropius case factory; however, why did John Ruskin not receive the same success in his methods and design? If these architects would have continued to strictly commit to his philosophies, they would have not been able to meet the demand of the consumer. The world has now reach the industrial and technology age, and no longer do consumers have to wait weeks, days, or even hours for the simplest necessities and luxuries to be produced by the manufacturer. Surely the idea of a craftsman would have vanished from this society, relying specifically on John Ruskin methods. Our world needed some balance between the craftsmen and industrialization, which could meet the demands of the people but also uphold the talent of the artist, and these architects truly found this equilibrium.

Colquhoun, A. (2002). Modern Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Emmons, P., & Mindrup, M. (2008). Material Models and Immaterial Paradigms in the Rietveld Schröder House. Journal of Architectural Education, 62(2), 44-52. doi: 10.1111/j.1531-314X.2008.00239.x

www.google.com/images 

Jirousek, C. (1995). De Stijl.   Retrieved 2/28/2013, 2013, from http://char.txa.cornell.edu/art/decart/destijl/decstijl.htm

Louis Sullivan and the refinement of the Chicago School

Chicago Illinois is top on the list of my favorite cities, not because it is in the vicinity of my hometown, nor for their delicious cuisines, but for its architecture and many skyscrapers thanks to a man named Louis Sullivan, one of the fathers of the Chicago School of tall buildings. He redefined the organization and hierarchy of the exterior and interior of tall office buildings through these three words “form follows function” or “form vs. function.” He gained this ideology about architecture by studying the concepts and philosophies of Ville le Duc and his beliefs on tectonic expression, Schelling and the Schlegel brothers and their view on works of art representing the product of an inner force, and the New England philosophical school of Transcendentalism and their organic principals, “all things in nature have shape…tell us what they are…distinguishes them from ourselves and from each other (Colquhoun, 2002pg. 111).” But was the refinement of skyscrapers really a necessity or was Sullivan nit picking and trying to define himself as an architect during career?

 
Standards for Tall Office Buildings

Architects of Sullivan’s time including himself in the beginning of his career, as seen in the Auditorium Building in Chicago, was designing skyscrapers using the following method. The 1^st story, which is below ground, will usually contain the mechanical equipment such as the boilers, heating, cooling, lighting and other various machines. The 2^nd story, the ground or main floor, is normally devoted to commercial and retail use, providing an ample amount of space, lighting, and a huge entrance access. The 3^rd story, which is the second story of the building, is accessible by stairs or elevator, is usually sectioned into large subdivisions, “with corresponding liberality in structural spacing and expanse of glass and breadth of external openings (Sullivan, 1988pg. 105).” The 4^th story, consist of a couple of floors that house offices, one floor of offices stack on another floor of offices, one office looks just like all the other offices in this building. The 5^th story, the attic, was located at the very top of the tall building, normally grand expressing the metaphor of ascending and descending. This space is also normally filled with pipes, tanks, valves, sheaves, and other mechanical equipment (Sullivan, 1988pg 105). 

Sullivan's Critiques

Two buildings which Sullivan criticized about its exterior and interior designs flaws as a result of following the above design method, was the Auditorium Building by Dankmar Adler and himself and the Tacoma Building by William Holabird and Martin Roche:

Sullivan felt that if the Auditorium Building had a weakness, it would be that the building failed to reflect its programs since every floor functioned the same (Colquhoun, 2002pg. 39). This building was a mixed use building (the first mixed use building), housing a theater, hotel, and offices under one roof (University). Base off the buildings appearance you would never guess that an auditorium was in this building or where it might be located, even though most might say its location would be near the front because of the detail on the entrance but it is actually located a couple of floors below the tower, according to this section cut of the building. When comparing the building to the section, by people who pass by this building would never had guest that the building consist of these different programs, shifts, and functions. This section cut definitely is more visually interesting and upholds more information about the building than its exterior.

Auditorium Building, Chicago, IL by Adler and Sullivan

Floor plan of the Auditorium Building

Section View of the Auditorium Building

Interior View of the Auditorium's Theater

According to Sullivan, Tacoma Building suffered a fault opposite of the one seen in the Auditorium Building, the similarity of functions was expressed but it lacked this expression on the exterior of the building making it seem like it is just a succession of floors found in the interior (Colquhoun, 2002pg. 39). I agree the building really does look like a succession of floors, it has some unique qualities but it seemed like whatever the unique quality was on the first floor was replicated on all of the other floors, leaving no hierarchy among the building. The only floors that seem to be different on the exterior were the main floor and the top floor or the attic. 

Tacoma Building by William Holabird and Martin Roche, Chicago, IL

The Critics View on His Concept

Many adored Sullivan’s theories and ideas on structural organization and hierarchy, form vs. function but was not found about the facade of the building displaying all of these elements, they thought it would cause confusion to the visual eye. “the tall office building should not, must not, be made a field for the display of architectural knowledge in the encyclopedic sense; that too much learning in this instance is fully as dangerous, as obnoxious, as too little learning; that miscellany is abhorrent to their sense; that the sixteen story building must not consist of sixteen separate, distinct and unrelated buildings piled one upon the other until the top of the pile is reached (Sullivan, 1988pg 110).” For those who knew little about architecture design, felt that they would not be able to understand the visual appearance of Sullivan’s buildings. After listening to their critiques on Sullivan’s concepts, readers would infer that his design would mostly be used to define himself as an architect and not the era or to solve the social problems of society.

The Perfect Skyscraper

Sullivan thought yes architects of tall office buildings have been given a organization principal to follow while designing buildings of these sort, but why can it not be a functional maybe even a structural reason behind these standards? In his Wainwright Building in St. Louis he really executed this idea of form vs. function within the typical organization of skyscrapers. He focused on emphasizing two main stories the base, which is the main floor, and the attic and piling floors in the middle. Instead of following the structural principals of the column spacing he reduced the spacing size of the pilaster to the width size of a single window. “In doing this, he produce a phalanx of verticals that could be read simultaneously as columns and as mullions, as structure and as ornament (Colquhoun, 2002pg 41-42).” His manipulation with the columns did away with expectation of classical mathematical proportions and meaningless ornamentation among tall office buildings. His design truly made this building seems like it was ascending and descending from the heavens. By allowing the interior influencing the shape of the exterior, the building looked more structurally sound and even the people outside his profession could understand structure, materiality, and ornamentation that develop this building. 

Wainwright Building by Adler and Sullivan

ornamentation as an extension of structure

floors stacked on top of these steel columns/mullions

Was it Necessary?

Toward the end of his career he ended his partnership with Adler, who consistently brought in new business and partnerships for their firm, and as a result building commissions began coming in slow. Many of his projects reduced to smaller scale designs like banks and small shopping malls, but his ideas on form vs. function continued to live, inspiring other architects and design movements like Frank Lloyd Wright, who work for Sullivan in his early career and Art Nouveau with the Wainwright Building (first modern skyscraper) and Carson Pirie Scott building. No longer do architects design according to an exterior organization that has nothing to do with the space, function, and activities of the interior of the building. No longer will a building seem like a waste, a lost canvas full off meaningless work of art, nor unpleasing to the eye since it does not match its inner organs, its natural system. Nature is the essences of beauty to us because its organic form matches its complex functions; it tells us what it is before we know its function or story. Based off those facts, the organization and hierarchy of these extremely tall buildings needed to be redefined to become a true essence of beauty in its presence and solution to social problems when placed in our world. Sullivan was truly trying to better the social conditions of urban life through natural beauty and function; not defining himself as an extraordinary architect of his time. 

Carson Pirie Scott store, Chicago, IL by Sullivan

Citations:

Colquhoun, A. (2002). Modern Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press.

www.google.com/images 

Sullivan, L. (1988). The Public Papers. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

University, R. The Auditorium Building.   Retrieved February 2, 2013, from http://www.roosevelt.edu/CampusCommunity/AuditoriumBuilding.aspx