It is the end of a busy week. I've been up late every night this week trying to stay on schedule with the thesis, so far so good. I still need to finish the second chapter, hopefully this afternoon.
This week also saw two job interviews. Both were really positive. The first was at a super small firm, and the other was at a mid to large (180) firm. There are advantages to both. It will be a hard decision, assuming the decision is mine to make.
So without further ado, for those of you who have been asking about my thesis, I am posting the intro. It is a bit long, and this is the first draft, so it wil go through several revision for clarity and pizzazz, and all that jazz. Hopefully it communicates the intent....
MORALITY AND ORNAMENT: INTRODUCTION
“It is not the form of this architecture against which I would plead…but it is the moral nature of it that is corrupt.” -John Ruskin
“The Papuan tattoos his skin, his boat, his paddles, in short everything he can lay hands on. He is not a criminal. The modern man who tattoos himself is either a criminal or a degenerate…the tattooed who are not in prison are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats.” -Adolf Loos
“We throw the out-of-date tool on the scrap-heap…this action is a manifestation of health, of moral health...” -LeCorbusier
“Las Vegas is analyzed here only as a phenomenon of architectural communication. Just as an analysis of a Gothic cathedral need not include a debate on the morality of medieval religion, so Las Vegas’ values are not questioned here.” -Robert Venturi
Since the nineteenth century morality has been enlisted to support and condemn a variety of architectural styles and forms. As the emerging debate over morality and aesthetics became a central issue, architects were obliged to choose between styles, each of which asserted a moral claim as the ‘one true style’. The reliance on moral critique continued into the modern period with architects of the modern movement employing moral claims in attempting to reject established styles. Nowhere was moral discourse more evident than in the debate over architectural ornamentation.
How can we continue to support architectural theories based on moral principles that may not be commonly shared in a pluralistic society? What is the legacy of moral discourse in architectural aesthetics? How as it shaped, and does it continue to shape, architectural theory today? Are figures such as Kohn Ruskin and Adolf Loos merely points in history, or are their theories valid today? Can their ideas be separated from the morality used to defend them? To understand these questions we must first understand the underlying moral principles and how they have evolved through history.
This thesis proposes that examining the rhetoric of morality in the debate over ethics and aesthetics, focusing on the writings of John Ruskin, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, reveals changes in the way architecture understands the role of ornament, where it locates the center of culture, and how the limited the application of ethics in architectural aesthetics represents a shift from normative, teleological ethics to descriptive ethics with a limited application of ethics as the representation of ethos as the “character, nature or disposition” of society, “the spirit which presides over its activities.”
ETHICS AND ARCHITECTURAL AESTHETICS
Responding to the symbolic emphasis of Romanticism and provoked by the scientific and formal emphasis of the industrial revolution, architecture in the late nineteenth century looked to moral critique to evaluate the proper style of building. These moral critiques of architectural aesthetics fell broadly under three categories; honesty and deceit, the moral superiority of a particular style, and historicist notions of a ‘spirit of the age’, commonly referred to as zeitgeist. Common to each category is the attempt to establish universal ethical imperatives as a means of rational critique. Also common is a move away from religious to social/ philosophical ethics; culture, rather than God and scripture, became the basis of ethics and morality.
Pugin and Ruskin, both of whom relied on ecclesiastic rationale to demand authentic representation of form and material, led the discourse on honesty and deceit in architecture. Both argued for Gothic as the ‘one true style’ also championed the moral superiority of one style over another. However this claim was soon distanced from religious principles and focused on materialistic factors, such as Heinrich Hübsch’s emphasis on materials, technique, climate, and functional needs as the determining factors of style. Architects and designers such as Hermann Muthesius and William Morris, who advocated for architecture as a means of social renewal, examined the social implications of architectural style.
While social reformers such as Muthesius and Morris advocated for architectural style that embodied the spirit of the age, the emphasis on zeitgeist by figures such as Adolf Loos was a reaction against architectural style as a means of social reform. Loos’ criticism of Muthesius and the Deutscher Werkbund focused on their attempts to create a new style reflective of the age, rather than allowing the spirit of the age to reveal itself organically. For Loos the spirit of the age was naturally manifested in craftsmanship uninfluenced by attempts to join art and craft. The ethical imperative was propriety; conforming to the purest manifestations of naturally evolving culture, as opposed to shaping and guiding culture.
THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF ORNAMENT
Fundamental to any examination of ethics and architectural aesthetics is an understanding of the evolution of views concerning the nature and function of ornament. Particularly important are the segregation of ornament within the design arts, ornament as an scientific element of geometry and proportion, ornament as an independent category of design, and ornament as a principle characteristic of style.
Groundwork for the distinction between ornament and art was prepared by Leon Battista Alberti, whose treatise On Painting indicates a “trend toward elitism within the design arts that would make ornament a matter for craftsmen rather than ‘creative artists’” Artists attempting to elevate their status separated themselves from artisans and craftsman, claiming the same intellectual qualifications Vitruvius had once made for architects. Collaborations between artists and architects in the late nineteen and early twentieth century, such as the Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus attempted to heal this rift not by reasserting ornament as a fine art, but by re-establishing connections between the artist and artisan.
Theoreticians such as Claude Perrault, a founding member of the Academie Royale des Sciences, represents attempts to place architecture within a framework of rational, scientific inquiry. Perrault’s examination of Vitruvius’ Ten Books, and his attempt to establish rules of proportion for the design of columns and orders, marks a shift away from architecture that embodied a teleological view of the world as purposive, divine creation. Perrault’s ideas would later find support in Jean Nicolas Louis Durand, whose structural rationalism in response to the industrial revolution represented a merging of architecture and engineering.
Perrault’s examination of classical orders also led to the establishment of ornament as an independent category of design, with its own rules of form and composition. Owen Jones derived his 37 propositions concerning the design of ornament from an analysis of ornaments and patterns in various cultures. Viollet-le-Duc, AWN Pugin, and John Ruskin sought to establish a ground for architectural aesthetics, particularly ornament, based on intellectual rather than subjective tastes. Their advocacy for universal principles of design established a connection between beauty and truth, placing ornament in the realm of morality. The understanding of beauty resulting from universal principles would later lead Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown to accuse Walter Gropius and the Functionalists of distorting Vitruvius’ definition of architecture. (Insert Venturi’s Vitruvius/Gropius Diagram)
Establishing intellectual principles for the design of ornament led to an understanding of ornament as a principle characteristic of architectural style. The suitability of architectural styles was the subject of heated debate beginning in the nineteenth century, as evidenced by the debate surrounding Hubsch’s In What Style Should We Build. The implications of style as a means of social reform meant that ornament took on particular significance, and was equally praised and vilified by proponents of social progress. (Insert Morris example) Adolf Loos in particular saw ornamentation as degenerate and the removal of ornament as synonymous with cultural evolution.
SPECTRUMS
The distinction between artists and artisans that led to a devaluation of ornament among the design arts was systemic of a larger debate concerning the relationship of art and architecture and the role of architecture in society. This thesis will examine how contrasting views about the nature and function of ornament reflect shifting understandings of architectures role in society, how notions about where the center of culture is located determined the morally appropriate forms of ornament, and how morality and ethics shifted from normative, teleological ethics focused on guiding society to descriptive ethics with a limited application as the representation of shared cultural values.
“In a highly productive nation ornament is no longer a natural product of its culture, and therefore represents backwardness or even a degenerative tendency.”
Beginning in the late nineteen century it is possible to trace what has been described as the banishment and return of ornament. Common to all authors I will discuss is the understanding of ornament as applied decoration, aesthetic adornment that is not necessary for the intended function of the object adorned. For some, like John Ruskin, the superfluous nature of ornament was responsible for its value. It was in the superfluous that architecture aspired towards the divine, only in that realm of architecture detached from necessity could architecture transcend shelter and guide the human spirit towards fulfillment. Architects such as Adolf Loos, however, suggested that ornament was detrimental; it had become an impediment to function and progress, and as such should be removed from architecture and design. This belief was embraced by architects of the Modern movement, such as Le Corbusier, who saw in ornament the over-reaching of the architectures limitations. Le Corbusier suggested that architectural ornamentation was attempting to supplant the role of art, now perceived as separate from architecture. The role of architecture was to mediate between the essential (the role of the engineers) and the superfluous (formerly architectural ornament, now the fine arts). This separation of art and architecture, according to Robert Venturi (VSBA), led to the estrangement of popular culture from the arts, leaving a void to be filled by the re-emergence of architectural ornamentation.
“But in that class of society in which the woman’s aristocratic blood is also taken into consideration… one can discern an emancipation from the prevailing ladies’ fashion in which homage is also paid to outward elegance. People thus never cease to wonder at the simplicity that prevails among the aristocracy.”
Along with embedded notions of necessary and superfluous, the debate over architectural ornament contains shifting views on the center of culture, from which architecture should derive forms and meaning. The value Ruskin placed on the superfluous as aspiring towards the divine reveals his position within a Judeo-Christian tradition that places God at the center of existence, man as fallen creation, and salvation as the purpose of life. The center of inspiration for Ruskin is God, and by extension all of nature as God’s creation. This is manifested in Ruskin’s advocacy of naturalistic motifs and his insistence on Gothic as the only appropriate ecclesiastic architecture. In contrast, Loos looks to humanity as the source of inspiration, particularly high society which directs a continual, historical, social evolution. The appropriateness of architecture for Loos entails embracing the best of society as the current manifestation of a continual process; this is similar to Ruskin’s notion of striving, only divorced from the divine. Le Corbusier was also concerned with high society; however, unlike Loos he found the inspiration of high society in its purest, distilled form, in objet type, the mass-produced products and machinery of the working class.
"Should architecture not continue to help us find our place and way in an ever more disorienting world? In this sense, I shall speak of the ethical function of architecture. "Ethical" derives from "ethos." By a persons ethos we mean his or her character, nature, or disposition. Similarly we speak of a community's ethos, referring to the spirit that presides over its activities. "Ethos" here means the way human beings exist in the world: their way of dwelling. By the ethical function of architecture I mean its task to help articulate a common ethos."
Karsten Harries begins his discussion of architecture's ethical role by limiting ethics to the articulation of a shared ethos. This limitation is the product of a continuing shift in the application of moral evaluation to architecture, and represents a broader shift in the field of ethical/philosophical theory. It signals a move away from moral imperatives; the ethical role of architecture is to reflect rather than guide society, and ethical criticism is no longer based on universal notions of right and wrong, good or bad. The Enlightenment project saw the elimination telos, from philosophical ethics. What remained was a notion of humanity as it once was, humanity as it is, and a set of moral precepts divorced from their rationale. There was no longer a reason for principles that guided behavior towards a positive end; ethics had rejected the question "to what end?" Harries notion of ethos is in direct contrast to the notion of telos, found in Aristotelian Virtue Ethics. This thesis will examine how the writings signal a shift from Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics as discussed by Alistair MacIntyre to Harries’ notion of ethics as the reflection of community ethos.
(insert intro conclusion)
