Reading Comp_6

[[1] A common theme of the early twentieth century found in Roth, Harwood, and Massey set the tone for an understanding of styles in architecture and design influenced by fine art. Selecting either Arts + Crafts or Art Nouveau, TRACE the influences of the selected style in more than two nations. In your answer, you should include evidence from the readings and at least two annotated images as support for your analysis of influences.

            Art Nouveau is a stylistic expression in design that seeks to discard all historic precedents in order to define a new visual language never before seen.  This style is heavily influenced by post-impressionist artists like Van Gogh through the fleeting urgency and molded abstraction present in his works.  Due to the new technologies in glass and iron this dynamic disintegration could be materialized into the organic whip lash structures that characterize Art Nouveau.

This movement began in Europe and was made fashionable through France and Belgium by the works of engineers like Victor Horta who designed the iconic Hotel Eetvelde in Brussels.  The fleeting whiplash metalwork permeates the interior winter garden that dwindles throughout the hotel creating a vein-like, cohesive whole.  As Herni van de Velde so brilliantly explains it, “Nature proceeds continuity, connecting and linking together the different organs that make up a body or tree; she draws one out of the other without violence or shock.  In this way, the metalwork itself is exposed and becomes the structure and ornament, creating an indistinct, continuous flow of seamless, organic elements. 
After witnessing the winding tendrils displayed in the railings and support systems of Victor Horta's hotel, the French designer Hector Guimard emulated this feature in the entry gates of the Castel Beranger in Paris.  His work becomes even more surreal than Horta's in the way that vines engulf supporting columns and the abstracted wiring creates rhythmic lines.  This manipulation of lines became a hallmark for Art Nouveau as it turned the static geometry of lines into dynamic, contorted curves. 

            Art Nouveau also travels to Spain under the alias Art Moderno and is most iconically present in the cryptic, ‘skin and bones’ work of Antonio Gaudi.   His work features an extensive exploration of the line and the potential connections that a line has in common with the human body.  This can be clearly seen in his Casa Battlo where the interior feels like it belongs in a Tim Burton film.  The dining room is littered with creative utilization of lines in the form of undulating curves in the ceiling, biomorphic furniture, and dynamically curved windows.  Also, the specific placement of two adjacent columns closely resembles the bone structure in the legs or forearms., creating this eerie, psychedelic undertone. 

            While Art Nouveau was a short lived style soon to be replaced by the further decadence of Art Deco, it was the first style that rejected historical precedent and focused heavily on the interior.  This was in part due to the heavy influence that artists were having on designers as a new emergence of mixing art with design created a blur between structure and ornament.   

Hotel Eetvelde / Brussels, Belgium / Victor Horta (Massey, pg 35).

Castel Beranger Apartment Entry / Hector Guimard / Paris , France (Massey, pg 38).

Casa Battlo / Barcelona, Spain / Antonio Gaudi (Masey, pg 47).

[2] Originating at the Bauhaus and in the work of LeCorbusier, the so-called Modern movement deeply influenced design and architecture of the twentieth century. The great debate raised by this new approach to design involved the presence of the machine in the design process and final products. SPECULATE about the implications of “machines for living” and the famous dictum “less is more” on design today. Use at least one ARTIFACT, SPACE, or BUILDING in your answer, providing a salient image (cited) and annotation to help bolster your argument.

            The modern movement, more commonly known as the International Style came about as a reaction to the clutter of eclectic, hand-crafted homes and the inefficient molding of space through barricading walls and cramped interiors.  The new fashion became one of volume over mass, implicated by the technology of the machine in its fast inexpensive production of flexible materials.  The concept of ‘less is more’ is derived from the implication that flexible, weightless material generates an ‘opening up’ of space while that material itself becomes reduced only to it functional necessity; hence less material equals more space.  Furthermore, the functionality inherent in the machine became a tool for modeling as structures and homes were adapting to fully meet the intrinsic utilitarian needs for this efficient, modern generation.  As Walter Gropius so delicately claims,

“The nature of an object is determined by what is does.  Before a container, a chair, or a house can function properly its nature must first be studied, for it must perfectly serve its purpose; in other words, it must fulfill its function practically, must be cheap, durable, and beautiful”.  (Roth, pg 524).

The machine itself became a concept for modeling seen most readily in the works of Le Corbusier and his Villa Savoye that is, in part, based off of a 1947 automobile.  The home features elements that were made possible only by the exploitations of the machine as the lower level contains no traditional supporting walls but rather sits on illusionary stilts.  Also, the home features ribbon windows for illumination, an open floor plan with meandering ramps, and a flat roof utilized as a garden terrace that maximizes the use of space.  In every aspect, Le Corbusier strived to maximize the potential of space and the functional use of that space, making his structures a machine for a functional lifestyle whose beauty came from the joinery of an adaptable environment with that of the comfortable ease brought about from the machine.

Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier, (Roth, pg 531).

[3] From the assigned pages in Roth, Harwood, and Massey, SELECT an image that you believe explodes the notion that Modern interiors and objects were black and white. Fully RENDER your own design exploration of that image through color, material, and light and appropriately annotate and cite the image to prove this point.

Tugendhat House Dining Room, (Massey, pg 78).