Creating language from geometry

CREATING LANGUAGE FROM GEOMETRY: a review of Alberti and Eisenman´s work.

Marina Carretero

THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

Leon Battista Alberti S. MARIA NOVELLA 1458-1470.

Leon Battista Alberti was a multifaceted ďŹ gure of the Renaissance. He was mathematician, musician, poet‌ But what especially call our interest is his theoretical and practical development of arts and architecture. He is known as the disciple of Vitruvius and following his steps, Alberti wrote the Ten books on Architecture in which he declared that the most important themes in architecture were Beauty and Ornament. These two concepts will be explained in this essay through one of his most highlighted works, S. Maria Novella.

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ALBERTI´S S. MARIA NOVELLA

This church is located in one of the most famous cities of Italy, Florence. Alberti was commissioned to finish the façade of this building, which had a gothic interior and the same style for the already constructed part of the façade. This façade seems to be something separate from the actual church. If we look to the picture, it really seems to be stuck apart from the church.

When Alberti started designing this façade, he had the obstacle of maintaining the existing part of it, such as the basement, the pointed arches above the side doors, the tombs, and the blind arches of the first tier. Despite of all these problems, he was capable to maintain the logic relationship between the entire body, and each of its pieces.

From the beginnings of this design Alberti had something clear, maintaining the rhythm of gothic and renaissance styles that would be mixed in the façade of the building. He did not destroy the preexisting façade, but he restored it and added the second tier following a clear harmony between the two epochs.

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THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

Alberti defended the position of not combining arches and columns, because it was unaesthetic and lacking logic. This theorized idea is materialized in almost all of his works, but also in S. Maria Novella. As we can see in the front entrance, the big arch denotes the main entrance, but instead of resting in columns it is supported by two pilasters. Next to each pilaster there is a column purely ornamental denoting the axis of the building and continued by the pilasters of the second tier.

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ALBERTI´S S. MARIA NOVELLA

This façade is also related with classical buildings, such as the Pantheon in Rome. So, Alberti is not only mixing the Renaissance and the gothic style, but as a disciple of Classic architecture he is denoting so in this building. This is said because of the entablature above the second tier, in which the name of the client -Romani Rucellai- and the date -1470- are written, and also because of the classical pediment that is “closing” this work in the upper side.

The first and second tiers have a big difference in width, being the second one, half of the first. We can appreciate in the façade, how Alberti was capable of solving this problem and maintaining the harmony of the work by using scrolls, helping to understand the building as a unique entity. This detail solving the width difference will be used by architects following Alberti.

Above all, and denoting the beauty concept that Alberti introduced in his Ten Books on Architecture, is the geometrical relationship in which the design has been thought. The entire façade can be circumscribed in a square, where the half of its length is forming three different squares in which different parts of the façade are circumscribed. This golden relationship is repeated creating the harmony and beauty of the façade.

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THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

Alberti was able to create this beautiful work despite all obstacles and mixing his characteristic style and the existing one. Creating an entity between the pilasters, scrolls, and pediment and the circular window, pointed arches and lateral doors already erected in the faรงade. He was able to create a harmony between the different parts and with those parts referring to the whole piece of art, the faรงade of S. Maria Novella.

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EISENMAN´S NUNOTANI HEADQUARTERS

Peter Eisenman NUNOTANI HEADQUARTERS 1989-1992.

We could easily compare in this essay the work of Alberti with the work of one of the best well known contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman.

On one hand, Alberti used his theories described in the Ten Books on architecture, based on Vitruvius, and according to that, following classicism. He studied the beauty in architecture, which from his point of view was related with proportion and geometry and supported by ornament. On the other hand, Eisenman introduces in his designs something that goes further, and that can be opposed to Alberti´s work. Eisenman works with social concerns and political views, and introduces it into his designs. As Alberti was taking into account to keep the harmony in the whole work, Eisenman tries to keep an order as well, but this time is not about the geometrical order, but about breaking geometries to achieve the order in different levels.

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THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

Alberti´s Golden Proportion of S. Maria Novella

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EISENMAN´S NUNOTANI HEADQUARTERS

Nunotani Headquarters building. Peter Eisenman.

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THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

Eisenman in his selected writings “Inside-out” declares that architecture has been repressed all along history, he argues that architecture has suffered of “unconscious repressions” from the very beginning of its existence. So we could define Eisenman as an “activist of architecture”. In all his projects he is fighting against this repression and trying to avoid it. He is no longer centered so much in the form or the function of his buildings.

He is making people, architects, users and citizens, analyze his works and to think about what he is declaring.

He always starts his designs with simple thoughts. While designing in two dimensions he starts with a simple grid, and tries to put it in a maximum level. A level where this repression is no longer present. While Alberti tried to optimize the square and compose his design with a golden relationship, Eisenman tries to do the opposite. When he works with cubes we can no longer read a cube itself, but the “deconstruction” of it. He just not break those grids or those cubes, he modifies them in such a way that everybody can read what he is doing. There is always time and space to “critic” and to discover the language of Eisenman, his interiority, what he tries to explain us in his “Inside Out”. Eisenman makes a new “dictionary” for architecture, a new way or reading architecture. It is a new language that has different meanings.

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EISENMAN´S NUNOTANI HEADQUARTERS

As the firm describes their work, Eisenman does not just focus on the “obvious contexts and programs of a building. Rather than pursuing a particular building type, Eisenman Architects specializes in a particular problem type: projects with difficult sitting, programmatic and /or budgetary constraints, and of strategic importance to their environment”.

Taking all this into account he tries to exteriorize his feelings and thoughts about architecture in his buildings, just as the artist does in his works.

All this theory about Eisenman work can be studied through one of his works, the Nunotani Headquarters Building, in Tokyo, Japan.

Eisenman tries to talk about several issues with this building. The most obvious from my point of view, is the fact of the location of the building and its implications. Japan is one of the countries with more Earthquakes risk in the word. From the formalist point of view of this “new language” this building is creating a metaphor of the movement of the tectonic plates. The building seems already devastated by an avent of these characteristics. It is a movement in history what Eisenman is doing in here. He is not waiting to that earthquake to destroy his building, but it is the building who is playing “playing” with it. Eisenman is declaring something obvious with this building, something that everybody understand and is conscious about, and that from now on can be also read in an architectural work.

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THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

Another different reading of this building is the difference between itself and the surrounding office buildings in the city of Tokyo. They are normally high dense and tall buildings, with strong structure, giving the obvious reading of power. In this case Eisenman is doing the opposite. He is creating a building that is no longer high or thing, but the opposite. This building is vertically compressed and giving an image “between erect and flaccid” (Eisenman).

So summing up, he is ending with the already exploted language of repressions, and starting a new one, with no social or historical restrictions, just designing inside out.

In both examples (Alberti and Eisenman´s) we have seen how language in architecture can be developed. In these two works, the language is a main tool to create and to express the meaning of architecture.

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THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN ARCHITECTURE

From my point of view, in architecture there is always implicit this language, in one or another way. Each architectural work should be thought not only as something that needs to be built but as something that needs to express something, that is this language. It is this “concept” from where we start designing should, at the end of the project, be expressed in the building.

Architecture should transmit something, that can be more or less obvious, but if we start to analyze it, it should mean something it should have a language. I see architecture as I see other kind of arts such as painting music.

A painter always expresses something in his works. As in architecture, it can be read by anyone easily, or maybe the only one with the answer is the painter himself, but we all know that there is something why he painted that image, and how he did it. Alberti expressed the meaning of geometry, and he created his own language trying to mix two different styles in one building. He resolved several problems that this implied and created something else that was taken by the architects following him. There are several ways to read S. Maria Novella´s façade, but is easy to recognize the presence of geometry, and how the author created a new language from it. Same thing happens in Eisenman´s work. He is again creating a language but, as we have seen, different from the language of Alberti.

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THE QUESTION OF LANGUAGE

There is not an already set language for architecture, but each designer is capable to create his own. Eisenman´s buildings can be recognized by anyone while looking at them. They express something that the rest of buildings do not express. Eisenman, as we have seen before is creating this language from himself. It is his own language. He has created his own architecture.

So in this essay we have seen how from the Renaissance to Deconstruction, architecture has a language implicit. It expresses an identity for each building. From my point of view every single piece of architecture should have a language, should express something to be a real architectural work. The role of language is one part of architecture, as it is drawing or the construction process. Language has to be there to create successful architecture.

Theory and Culture in Architecture V Ie School of Architecture & Design Fall 2011

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