Architecture Studies Reader for Making Architecture for Materialization and Design Development http://socratesarchitects.com

1. MADD
Materialisation And Design Development
further reading material
architecture,tectonics and materialisation

2. Blundell Jones_tectonic authenticity the architects journal 1991
A.Beim_tectonics in Architecture (defenition of terms)
Tectonics in Suburbia_Bernard Colenbrander
Willem Jan Neutelings_naakt geboren / born naked

3. Blundell Jones the architects journal 1991

17. TECTONICS IN SUBURBIA the stacked building components and the decoration of the coloured
coating, designed by Peter Struycken.
(illustrated with the life & times of Andres Jackson Downing) In the works of Carel Weeber the erosion of traditional tectonics is driven
Lecture on Tectonics-conference, Eindhoven, Dec 12 2007 to a climax. One may agree or disagree with the opinion that this climax
Bernard Colenbrander is negative, but whatever it is, positive or negative, a building as De
Struyck can be considered as a fine piece of consistent thinking and
Tectonics is about the art of joining the parts of a building in a system designing, even when the result seems quite banal or vulgar at first sight.
that is firm and unshakable. Of course it is inevitable to pay tribute to The reduced presence of traditional tectonics can be analyzed with
Gottfried Semper when one relies on a definition like this. It is also examples that illustrate exactly this reduction as a pragmatic conclusion
according to Semper when one stresses that this system is not only a of the progress of history. But more often, when the issue of tectonics is
system of the construction but also of the perception. In other words: raised, the approach is not so much from the pragmatic, but from the
tectonics define a layered complex of parameters of how to make a unity conservative side. The loss of tectonic coherence is thereby identified as
of a building on a conceptual level and also on a concrete level. It starts a loss of cultural quality, as inflation, as decay. The best example in this
with the making, it ends with the way we perceive a building. Not only a context is of course Hans Kollhoff, whose firm belief in the Semperian
building has to be composed as a continuity between construction and way of thinking is one of the underlying themes of his career.
coating, but we also have to experience this unified complex. The contradistinction Kollhoff tends to use to illustrate his point on the
It seems so very self evident, this Semperian approach of architecture’s tectonics of architecture starts with Peter Behrens’s AEG Factory in
composition, but it isn’t anymore. Probably that is one of the reasons why Berlin. The AEG is a building typical for the culture of the new industrial
a conference like this came up in this university as a relevant idea. era of a century ago, but the magic thing is that the building kept his
It is not so very long ago that we knew also in the Netherlands to make presence in the urban context in a masculine way. It is as classical of the
buildings that were sound in tectonic terms. Berlage’s Exchange in best results of Hellenic antiquity. This is what you call a clearly
Amsterdam was for decades the archetype of a convincing and truthful composed building, expressed in all the physical aspects, identifiable by
constructivism, a constructivism that was clearly expressed in the every passer-by.
appearance of the building. You get what you see here. The constructive After this Behrens building the course of history made place for another
use of the brick was the great messenger of the building. kind of buildings, a building like Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus in Dessau.
In contemporary reality, however, a building with comparable principles The physical sensibility of Behrens has evaporated and something else
would be considered an eccentricity. Berlage’s Exchange has become a has come in stead: the weightless abstractions of the Modern Movement,
weird building. Mainstream architecture tells us another story nowadays. that seem to deny their physical presence, and that considers it irrelevant
We are used to buildings in which brick is not of constructive meaning to express bearing and being borne.
anymore but is glued to the bearing walls. Brick used to be the essence The juxtaposition of these two buildings brings Kollhoff to a fundamental
of the building, it has become screen, finish and decoration, no more, no contrast, taken from Julius Posener, between buildings that behave like
less. Apparate and buildings that behave like Gegenstände (objects).
What has happened in between? This question asks for a profound To illustrate the difference, I would like to repeat a famous quote by
research into the evolution of architectonic grammar. Doing that one will Posener: ‘Apparate lösen Furcht aus, Gegenstände flößen Vertrauen
be able, perhaps, to discover the roots of a process of gradual erosion. ein.’
Apparently, the necessity of the unshakable system to connect the parts That the environment of the Apparate, of the machine, differed from the
into a whole has disappeared. It changed into an attitude in which it is no matter involved in buildings belonged very much to the field of interest of
problem at all when the inner reality of the building and the outer the Dutch inheritor of the thinking of H.P. Berlage: J.J.P. Oud. Much
appearance are of a fundamental different nature. It is even no problem more than Berlage, Oud was sensitive to the idea of the modern
when the grammar contains contradictions and fractions in itself. architecture that buildings at least should appear light weighted and be
The destination of this process may be called decomposition. Tectonic as light as possible.
decomposition can be a honourable theme on its own, as is illustrated for It brought him to plastering his housing blocks of the mid twenties,
example in one of Carel Weeber’s final buildings, ‘De Struyck’ in The making them as white as possible, even when the construction was in
Hague. In this building not only the connections are cut between the conventional brick walls. This plastering in white was due to the Dutch
building components and the historicizing grammar that seemed to be wet climate a stupid thing to do, of course, but Oud nevertheless did it,
the basis of the composition. But also the connection is lacking between longing for an architecture that escaped the physical presence of

18. Berlage’s buildings and also of his own earlier buildings. space.
Although he was sensitive to modernist aesthetics, he at the same time Contemporary tourists behave in a way that was, strangely enough,
kept connected with classical composition rules. For example his explored for the first time by the arts – as if it was a utopia to be
housing complex in Hook of Holland has nothing of the balance acts Le conquered. Constant’s magnificent studies into the aspects of what he
Corbusier and others indulged in. it is a stable, harmonious composition, called New Babylon have become very well known. New Babylon is the
only plastered white as a finish. expression of an environment that hardly has any formal and physical
Between the Bauhaus and Oud on the one side, and the life and times of substance. It is an environment that is completely flexible and that serves
Kollhoff on the other, the erosion of traditional tectonics has continued. I the needs of a population that has communication as main occupation,
don’t want to go deep into the many steps in between, however since the necessity of real, old fashioned work has disappeared with
interesting these may be. I only want to point at two probably quite mechanization at random.
destructive historical moments: In New Babylon real matter fades away and is replaced by virtuality. One
The first moment was caused by Robert Venturi’s idea of the decorated might argue that man himself is inclined to disappear and become
shed. The decorated shed drew the attention not so much to the building invisible. That is to say his existence has become more and more
in his physically unified character but to the building as a communicator, independent from real time and space: his existence is not tectonic at all.
as the spatial background for an image. It invited generations of The difficult thing is that this trend of growing invisibility is a fact from
architects to leave behind the traditional self-evidence of conceptual contemporary life, but man is not finally saved from his body. Many
unity, which started with construction and ended with coating. people in the West are only saved from being obliged to do physical work
The second moment applies to Rem Koolhaas’s epiphany of the Generic with their body. Physical work was a big thing in the industrial era, but
City, which seems to strip architecture of her last clothes and declares slowly faded away. Society in general has turned from industry to
the curtain wall the final essence of the old discipline. One could say: services and business. The real work has been exported and has
when this becomes reality, it is over and out with architecture as a become largely invisible for us, because it all takes place in sweat shops
discipline connected to tectonics: architecture then is finally reduced to a and other terrible places in Asia.
fashionable message, printed on a curtain wall. What remains for us to do is to lose our sweat in weird sport schools,
I think that it is very necessary to follow the historical lines of tectonic where many of us spend hours and hours. I propose to include this in the
value, expressed as they are in buildings between, let us say, 1850 and more absurd chapters in the history of mankind. And in accordance with
the present, and analyze them in terms of the architectonical grammar this absurdity it is understandable that Rem Koolhaas adopted the
involved and answer the basic question if this evolution really indicates a iconography of physical action and sports already in his first studies,
total erosion of meaning. This is very necessary to do, but it would need published in the seventies as Delirious New York.
a research that I have not, or not yet, done. That is why I want to do Returning to architecture: the history of modern architecture is a history
something else today – remain vaguer than I would have wished when I of erosion of traditional tectonics, as a side effect of a general trend in
had had more research time. society to make invisible and virtual what used to be very visible and
I will not so much concentrate on the evolution of architectonical physical. In building the notions of bearing and being borne have
grammar, but I will try to find an entrance in the matter of tectonics by gradually lost their meaning and relevance. The ultimate location to
bringing up a connected basic question. This question is: how would it be illustrate this erosion must be suburbia. What can be found there is an
if we identified the erosion of tectonics as a mirror of cultural and socio erosion not only of the building itself, but also, and even more, of the
economic trends in general society? general arrangement of the buildings in a spatial pattern. The basic idea
Well, to start the answer to this question: one could argue that the very of the suburb is the absence of the very need of integration. When
basic and existential reality of bearing and being borne – which is the Semper describes tectonics as the art of joining, in order to form an
core of traditional tectonics - is not a very big thing anymore in present unshakable system, this definition is completely lost here. The need to
day society, and this conclusion relates to all kinds of cultural trends that integrate functions is simply absent in suburbia, because the whole
can be identified. system that is brought to life there starts with disintegration.
Martin Parr’s famous image of tourists in Egypt (derived form his The structure of the suburb is basically horizontal, which implies the
magnificent series Small World) is quite expressive. His photo’s tell us of parataxis of functions, in stead of the combination. In principle all
a world in which citizens behave footloose and have hardly any functions are specific and private, without or almost without an
connection with their physical surroundings. The tourist is not into intermediary domain to keep the fragments together. If possible the
existential essentialities of life, he is into breaking out in floating time and public domain is domesticated in the suburb, preferably in a building.

19. This means that the connecting element between the individual parts is, vulnerable. After the Expo was over, a fire made an end to the physical
as it were, hiding. Therefore, suburbia is a place without tectonics in the remnants: a suitable ending, I would say.
sense of Gottfried Semper. When the eternal city of America has the substance of a stage scenery,
In essence the suburb represents a modern vernacular in which all the the places where people have their houses cannot be very different. In
shapes that can be come across are instable. One may recognize a this context I would like to shed light on a small case study into one of
specific quality in this vernacular, as for example the American author my personal heroes of American history, namely Andrew Jackson
J.B. Jackson has done brilliantly in his books. Jackson stretches his Downing, who used to be a footnote in several historical studies, but was
sympathy for the lifestyle of the suburb by even adopting the mobile honoured about ten or more years ago with a few monographs that
home as a believable category in spatial patterns. rightly portray him as a kind of founder of the modern environment.
Trends and interpretations like the one used by Jackson illustrate the Andrew Jackson Downing lived near New York along the Hudson
reverse of traditional tectonics: they implicate complete volatility of between 1815 and 1852. He had a very short life, this Downing.
structure. They also implicate stylistic anarchy. And they also implicate I would like to suggest that his case is relevant also when we talk about
informality in spatial behaviour from station to shopping centre to tectonics. If modernism means decay of traditional tectonics, because
bungalow. the organic order of construction and composition gradually was
Suburbia is hardly organized by taste. The things in space are there abstracted until nothing was left, Downing may be considered as one of
because they are popular or fashionable. To quote the English author the starting points of this abstraction. That is: his life and works illustrate
J.M. Richards in his famous book The Castles on the Ground dating from how suburbia developed as a spatial category where cultural adaptation
1946: ‘The world the suburb created … is an ad hoc world, conjured out took place in a process that suffers from erosion of traditional qualities,
of nothing …. It is a world peculiar to itself and – as with a theatre’s drop while at the same time the cultural vitality was impressive enough to
scene – before and behind it there is nothing.’ compensate for what was lost.
So, the milieu of the suburb seems to contain a clue for understanding Starting to summarize what the life and times of Downing were about,
the erosion of traditional tectonics. Maybe suburbia is the main battlefield there was no professional education in architecture to start with. He had
where the process can be followed. It seems relevant not only to mourn no fundamental acquaintance with the traditions of the profession. He
the loss, but also to track down if there may be any kind of heroism was a self taught man, starting his career on the nursery of his parents.
involved in this apparently destructive episode of architectural history. This nursery appeared to be a suitable place to get in touch with aspects
Luckily there is. What happened in suburbia may perhaps look like a lost of modern life as they entered the American scene just before 1850.
battle, but J.B. Jackson was in my view completely right in his sympathy Business went alright on the nursery, because gardening became quite
for the flimsiness of this new, typical modern environment. popular in the decades before 1850.
He backed this sympathy by analyzing the aspects of modern behaviour A new life style came up, with the start of industrial and commercial
that lead to a certain spatial vernacular with positive qualities in their own America. People were interested in leaving the city, to live in the
right. countryside, commuting to the city everyday to earn their money - and so
I agree with him and would like to accentuate how rich the American they did. They left the city, became prototype commuters and started to
history of the 19th century is in drama and colour, as far as the spatial be interested in everything that had to do with creating their own place:
organization of their habitat was concerned. For an old fashioned their own house and garden, that rooted in a kind of borderland, being
European it is simply amazing to see how far the American habitat is different from the spatial concept of the farmers because the fresh
inspired not so much by heavy tectonics, but by spatial arrangements suburbanites were existentially unattached from the land and were
with the substance of stage scenery. A good example is the Columbian oriented on city culture, but living and enjoying outside.
World Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago: an event that can be considered as Downing and his fellows on the nursery offered a helping hand, by selling
the unofficial starting point of the City Beautiful Movement, so, one of the trees, plant and flowers, also assisting with the lay out of house and
main urban operations of the century. That is to say, the environment of garden. It was a new task, not covered by any of the traditional creative
the Expo introduced Americans into a spatial setting of clean streets and professions. What Downing did was extending his task at the nursery
monumental architecture with European predecessors. But the amazing and developing a kind of all round package for how to start a new life on
thing is not so much the quality of the monumental effects as such, it is your own plot in suburbia’s borderland.
the fact that this was reached not with real architecture but with light He did that by presenting his knowledge in books and an own magazine
screens connected to a light structure. The exterior impression was of an dedicated to ‘rural art and rural taste’. What came first was a book,
eternal architecture, but what was really there was very thin and published in 1841, so before Downing was even 30 years old. The book

20. was about the adaptation of the European principles of landscape The movements in this landscape did not seek a centre, but commanded
architecture in an American context. Americans were a people to essentially centrifugal trends.
‘descended from the English stock’ and that was why their environment What we see in the way Downing is mounting a new landscape for
could be based on the knowledge of the old world. Taking archetypes as America is a fine case of cultural adaptation, in which aspects of
the French or the Dutch geometrical garden, or the English landscape European rooted civilization are made fit for another continent and other
garden, as a starting point, Downing presented a programme for a times – other times, that do not ask for a centralized city concept, but for
naturalistic design of the landscape, developing from unpolished nature a decentralized pattern dominated by the qualities of what would develop
to the middle zone of the garden to the ordered zone of the private as the modern suburb.
house. Downing’s theory completely ignored the qualities of space that remain
The revolutionary impact of Downing’s thinking was not caused by his outside the focus of ordered landscape: he had no eye for the
summary of European culture history in landscape and his translation of wilderness. He started to focus when the landscape changed into the
it for an American context. What made Downing an important figure broader rural landscape of villages and towns. On a smaller scale he
came from what he did afterwards. Learning from the needs of his took in account the area of the gardens, consciously designed to fulfil the
customers at the nursery, Downing widened his scope and started to needs of the citizen. And in the end it was the private house that was the
address the need of the new American middle class, trying to find its core of the moral and spatial geography of Downing. In the house
place on new territory not accustomed to have a garden or furnish a everything he aimed at came together. And what happens there is
modest house. Downing started a magazine to address the daily needs interesting also in perspective of the issue of tectonics, because the
of the commuters in the suburbs struggling with their gardens and construction, the composition and the materialization of Downing’s
houses and he used his own designs as examples that could be used or houses were approached very consciously.
imitated by the readers. To start with, the design of the house was supposed to be more or less
The books and the magazine became a success. Downing became a derived from the landscape. ‘It must nestle in, or grow out of, the soil’, he
kind of a role model. He reached that status also by using his own house wrote, ‘It must not look all new and sunny, but show secluded corners’. In
near the nursery as an exemplary reference for how to survive the extension of this sensitive approach of the landscape, the style is
suburb. This house was an innocent imitation in stucco of a Neo Gothic considered likewise. Some landscapes, the more ordered compositions,
palace, reduced in scale compared with historical examples, reduced asked for a house belonging to the aesthetic category of the Beautiful.
also in the amount of decoration and ornament, although it had a porch What was suitable in these cases was a classicist house. But quite more
with turrets and a few other picturesque details. It also had a veranda, often the order of the landscape asked for something else: for aesthetics
which was not taken from the European example, but was added as a belonging to the Picturesque. Downing excelled mainly in this category,
necessary feature to fit the American climate. preferring romantic architecture styles like the Neo Gothic, but also
What is important to note is that Downing used the European example, referring to the style of traditional Italian or Swiss villas.
but reduced it in scale and features and made it fit for American In the fine combination of ordered landscape and connected styles an
circumstances. These American circumstances were linked to the local ideal of civilization was expressed: ‘when smiling lawns and tasteful
place in so far as that he paid tribute to the climate, but in a cultural cottages begin to embellish a country, we know that order and culture
sense they seem at first sight rather more inspired by European are established.’
conventions than that they have to do with what was essentially The houses of Downing were not so much realized on the building site
American. For Downing America started after the natives, after the ‘wild by the star architect himself, they were collected in books and presented
yell of the savage’ as he described it. Culture started when church bells to a middle class audience as an example. They were used by this
could be heard and ‘a thousand cheerful homes [were] gleaming in the public when the opportunity was there to fill an own plot with a house.
sunshine’. The books of Downing were taken to the carpenter and client and
But it did not remain with this free and ultra friendly interpretation of carpenter took the decisions together. The model was modified and
European heritage. Downing was aware of a fundamental difference. adapted just as seemed reasonable to do, because of the context,
While the English village was predominated by church and nobility, this because of the budget, or because of taste.
could not be the case in America, driven by republican principles. The One of the model books of Downing is The Architecture of Country
American landscape had not one, but numerous places of worship, he Houses, published for the first time in 1850. I would say that there are
wrote, it had no single man’s house but many houses, marked by a not many houses in this book that I would call a real country house,
general diffusion of comfort, independence and growing taste. European style and scale, but the book contains a lot of smaller houses

21. and cottages in stead. Most houses are small houses, that could be built
for a relatively small amount of money, by people working in the new
industries and able to afford a modest plot in a suburb somewhere. That
is why Downing accentuates the character of simplicity, fitting to a house
to be built for a budget of somewhere between 400 and 1000 dollars in
historical value.
‘There are tens of thousands of working-men in this country’, wrote
Downing, ‘who now wish to give something of beauty and interest to the
simple forms of cottage life’. A house like this must not attempt to look as
a villa. It has a quality of its own, states Downing.
Because of the climate it may be best to build the house in stone, but in
many cases it must done in wood. A special section of the book
considers the issue of building a house in wood, in which Downing
proposes to cover a wooden frame on both sides with boards, nailed
preferably in vertical strips: vertical, not horizontal, because vertical
boarding gives an expression of strength and truthfulness.
Simple materials: that was one of the concessions that had to be made.
‘We have … avoided unsuitable ornaments, chosen cheap materials,
and, for the most part, have taken simple and symmetrical forms, so that,
in some cases, not a dollar more would be expendend in the execution of
our designs than the same accommodation would cost in the usual plain
modes of building’.
So, offers had to be made. With Downing it was not per se, in all cases,
necessary to be truthful in materials: when money was lacking for stone,
and wood was no realistic possibility, stone might be imitated by stucco,
no problem at all. But in the references made to aspects of the beauty
and the picturesque, images of the aristocratic past were still penetrating
through the cheapness of the exterior material.
One could say that Downing was following an opportunistic path in which
he combined present day realism with slightly eroded images of a far
away past. The same mixture could be found in his interiors. Modern was
the way in which the new social patterns of the industrial era influenced