03 Biology and Symmetry

Leon Batista Alberti, Santa Maria Novella. Firenze, Italy, 1456-1460

At the end of the 18th century, scientists sought empirical evidence and a unified theory to account for the common elements and processes that lay beyond the appearance of the natural world. Biologists and crystallographers were particularly interested in the potentially shared morphology of living and non-living things.1 Architects and architectural historians followed these scientific pursuits, often incorporating and translating their findings into their own ideas and work.2 For both scientists and architects, symmetry was integral to these pursuits.

Haeckel and Symmetry

Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist/morphologist and a devout disciple of Darwin, has often been accused of finding symmetry where it does not exist; doing so not only in the depiction of the thousands of species he studied, but also in the famous plates that illustrated his influential treatises General Morphology (1866) and Art Forms in Nature (1899).3 In these plates he arranged (and changed the scale of) specimens according to the reflective symmetry of the page—rather than deploying a more linear or numeric classification system. A close look at the plates shows that while the underlying structure is symmetrical, the actual organization only approximates this state. This condition of near or broken symmetry was a fundamental technique of Haeckel and an index of his understanding of natural forms.4

When drawing any one of the thousands of species of single-celled radiolarian he discovered while aboard the ship Challenger, Haeckel consciously chose to emphasize their shared translational, rotational, and reflective symmetries. While he was aware of the uniqueness of each specimen, these composite images were purposefully meant to show what they had in common. This was not an oversight. Haeckel was aware of contemporary crystallography’s classification of matter according to its underlying symmetrical structures.5 In other words, symmetry was not just an artistic or subjective decision to make things easier for the illustrator: it was the illustration of a scientific idea.

For Haeckel symmetry was not an ideal state, it was a generic one. It was the quality that was passed on from generation to generation; an invariance the persisted despite individual transformations that occurred in space and time. Symmetry was the law, and asymmetry was the rule. Symmetry is what linked the past with the present, and one species to another. Within this mindset, the underlying symmetry he observed in the silica skeletons of single-celled protozoa and the symmetry crystallographers found in minerals was evidence that evolution (and life itself) had emerged out of inorganic substances. In the larger context of evolutionary development, symmetry was neither essential nor obsolete. Although present at the beginning of the forming processes, it survived because it proved useful. The persistence of symmetry in diverse contexts and environments was a sign of its evolutionary fitness. If it were not useful, it would have disappeared. Symmetry was not superficial: it was pragmatic.

Art Nouveau and Symmetry

Generally speaking, buildings do not move. However, they exist in order for living and non-living entities (people, air, water, heat) to travel. In other words, the integrating of inorganic and organic elements with one another is an older problem for architecture than it is for science. If the symmetry of 19th century Beaux-Arts architecture emphasized the inert aspects of architecture, Art Nouveau architects sought to add the latter, or the image of the latter, into it. Many of them used Haeckel’s ideas and artwork for inspiration. The biologist’s influence on late 19th century avant-garde architecture is well known and documented.6 Architects such as Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Antoni Gaudí, and Louis Sullivan were quite familiar with his work. And, like him, their designs used symmetry as a backdrop for their asymmetrical elements.

However, the symmetries one finds in the plans and elevations of Horta, Guimard and Gaudí are different from those in 19th century neo-classical and 19th century Beaux-Arts architecture. Where in the latter they were compositional devices, symmetry is used by the Art Nouveau to accommodate pragmatic needs. The symmetrical elements one finds in Horta’s Tassel House, Gaudí’s Casa Batlló and Sagrada Familia are used to carry structural loads or contain conventional programs. In these examples, symmetry lingers because it efficiently handles generic architectural issues that had not gone away: structure and program. Where there is change—in the city, in the economy, in new materials, in sensibility— symmetry is broken, and asymmetric, vegetal, and crystalline forms, appear. This relationship between stasis and change is what Louis Sullivan was referring to when he famously wrote “form ever follows function,” that is, only new demands require new kinds of shapes, spaces, and surfaces.7

Sullivan and Symmetry

At the turn of the 19th century, biologist William Bateson noticed that certain body deformations in animals resulted in extra symmetries. For example, when an extra leg in a bug or a finger in a human hand appeared, their relationship to the normal configuration was symmetrical.8 Bateson concluded that these deformations were due to a lack of genetic information during the embryological process. If we take Bateson’s understanding of symmetry as axiomatic—i.e. that symmetry is an index of missing information—what is missing in a symmetrical building is information that comes from a building’s physical, social and historical context. Information from the site, the climate or the program was not to interfere with the symmetrical arrangement of forms and spaces it demanded. Thus, what is an initial or a simple state in biology was in Beaux-Arts architecture the highest form of organization.9

Louis Sullivan was the product of a partial Beaux Arts education. He was also a believer in epigenetic processes, and in adaptation and evolution. Sullivan was an avid reader of science and popular science literature, including Haeckel. He too sought to synthesize the geological with the biological, the scientific with the artistic, the romantic with the rational.10 For him, this meant that the hegemony of Beaux-Arts symmetry and style needed to be challenged—but not erased.

Sullivan’s interest in the transition from symmetrical figures to asymmetrical ones is clearly articulated in his System of Architectural Ornament. Yet, he consistently returned to symmetrical forms by reflecting, translating and rotating these asymmetrical forms. In the first instance, form is the result of a series of deformations of simple geometric figures. In the latter, symmetrical figures arise out of the aggregation of identical pieces. In both cases form is the result of a set of operations applied to standard elements. Both tactics are in evidence in the terracotta tiled facades of his tall buildings, where symmetrical figures made from asymmetrical elements abound. Form is the result of a limited set of operations on a given set of figures. And, as with Haeckel’s plates and species, symmetry is the law but does not govern the individual results.

In relation to Bateson’s definition of symmetry, Sullivan used the same ornamental motif until a new source of information or influence made him augment or abandon it. For example, he used the same sized tile and motif over and over again across a façade until the function of what he was cladding changed. Columns were treated one way, capitals another, door jambs another, and window frames yet another. The same was true for every floor level. Each motif was symmetrical, but each was unique to its specific location and function. This same logic was applied to differentiate the overall form of the building, which can be seen in his design of the Guarantee Building in Buffalo, New York.

From a distance, the Guarantee Building seems straightforward. It is a simple box on a corner site. Its two public facades display reflective symmetry, while its plan reveals a slight break from symmetry to allow for a light well on the western edge of the site. The overall shape and size are determined by what Sullivan recognized as the dominant “social conditions” of his day; conditions such as the economic value of the land, the invention of the steel frame structure, and the size of the standard office space. These are understood as the initial undifferentiated starting points: they are not things the architect can change. The architect’s task is to inform this generic condition and make it specific to its time and context. For Sullivan this meant manipulating the building

envelope to transform its inert mass into a “proud and soaring thing.”

Sullivan does this by articulating on the facade the way in which the different functions are distributed in the building. He follows his creed that “where function does not change, form does not change.” In other words, different functions demand different forms and surfaces. The entry portals that provide access from the street have unique shapes. The space and size of the windows on the first and second floors are different from one another because of the different types of commercial spaces they house. The office floors above the two-story base are treated identically—despite climatic differences—because their function is the same. The attic story and cornice serve unique functions and are given different forms and ornament. Social conditions—rather than urban or climatic ones—inform the overall texture of the project and make the building-as-organism change its form. The separate areas are then given their own ornamental treatment. Consistent areas are treated similarly and with symmetrical motifs. For example, the office floors are clad in repetitive bands of tiles with geometric motifs, while moments of transition, like the capitals and the cornice are wilder and more vegetal. Places of literal transition or movement, such as the stair balustrades and the elevator cab and grate, are given the most intricate treatment.

And yet, all differences are bound within reflectively symmetrical facades, which can themselves be described as being comprised of symmetrically translated pieces. Every surface is made up of reflections, translations and rotations. Within these rigid operations are motifs that are at once sinuous and faceted, vegetal and crystalline, symmetrical and asymmetrical. In Sullivan’s hands symmetry’s role is not an image or an idea to imitate, nor a superficial application. Rather, it is the starting point—and the structure—that links diverse things with one other: the past to the future, the organic with the inorganic, the generic and the specific. It is a different symmetry than Beaux-Arts’: not an ideal to conform to but a logic and a set of operations put to use.

This is the function that symmetry would continue to play throughout the 20th century in science. In contrast, modern architecture would abandon symmetry and instead seek out design devices that focused on the optimization and articulation of individual elements rather than on their integration. This was, at best, a shortsighted shift, given that the combination of unlike things—matter and culture, present and the past, structure and ornament—is an inevitable architectural task. Symmetry has proven itself as a technique for creating such connections, and a useful one at that.

1 Caroline Van Eck, Organicism in 19th Century Architecture (Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 1994). 2 Amy Kulper, “Of Stylized Species and Specious Styles,” The Journal of Architecture No. 11 (2006) 391-406; Barry Bergdoll, “Of Crystals, Cells, and Strata: Natural History and Debates on the Form of a New Architecture in the 19th Century,” Architectural History No. 50 (2007), 1-29. 3 Robert J. Richards, “Haeckel’s Embryos: Fraud Not Proven,” Biology and Philosophy No. 24 (2009), 147-154. 4 Robert J. Richards, The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle Over Evolutionary Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 5 Sypros Papapetros, “On the Biology of the Inorganic: Crystallography and Discourses of Latent Life in the Art and Architectural Historiography of the Early Twentieth Century,” in Oliver A. I. Botar and Isabel Wunshe, eds., Biocentrism and Modernism (Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), 77-106. 6 Kulper, “Of Stylized Species and Specious Styles” 391-406; Bergdoll, “Of Crystals, Cells, and Strata” 1-29; Robert Proctor, “Architecture from the Cell-Soul: Rene Binet and Ernst Haeckel,” The Journal of Architecture No. 11 (2006) 391-406; David Brody, “Ernst Haeckel and the Microbial Baroque,” Cabinet No. 7 (2002). 7 Louis Sullivan, “The Tall Building Artistically Considered,” Progressive Architecture No. 38 (June, 1957) [1896], 204-206. 8 William Bateson, Materials for the Study of Variation: Treated with Especial Regard to Discontinuity in the Origin of Species (London: Macmillan, 1894). 9 Greg Lynn, “The New Novelty of Symmetry,” Assemblage No. 26 (1995), 11-25. 10 Bergdoll, “Of Crystals, Cells, and Strata”, 1-29.