The Grounds of Typology - From Renaissance to Modern Architecture

The grounds of typology From Renaissance to Modern architecture A “continuous” change Student: LEC KAO Sandrine Class : ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURAL TYPOLOGY Essay texts : De Ledoux à Le Corbusier, Kenneth Frampton / Dieci Opinioni sul tipo, Casabella 509-510

Contrary to what the title “De Ledoux à Le Corbusier” suggests, this book published in 1993 doesn’t deal directly with modern architecture but aims to demonstrate the existence of continuity in between this architectural movement and classical architecture, with most of all a comment on the work of Claude Nicolas Ledoux and therefore a comment on the work of Le Corbusier which follows that lead. Architecture has been under many influences and sees a “renewal” in the way of thinking, the way of perceiving the “ensemble”, the way the volumes are related to each other, and how the matter of the beauty in the typology is seen.

The coexistence between Baroque and Renaissance is guided in the book by many examples given by Kaufmann, showing that the thinking basis was the research for proportions, equality of the volumes, the symmetry as there is a central axis, and thus, a central volumetric space.

For instance, the proportions of the churches show that Renaissance gave its preference to a centralized dome. Although, as San Pietro di Roma illustrates it, the Baroque system varies and has a central space in plan, but is not equal in volume (with a principal cupola and a secondary one).

The Baroque aims to emphasize the details, affirm the theatrality and the result is a loss of harmony.

The compact aspect of the architectural “body” disappears as for San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane with the tower in the corner of the church, which has no link with the principle mass of the building.

Kaufmann considers that the rupture with the traditions of the Renaissance is already th present in the revolutionary period of the 18 Century, with architects such as Etienne Louis Boullée or Claude Nicolas Ledoux. According to Kaufmann, it was after the 3 decades split apart by the French Revolution that two architectural systems became explicit: one came to an end (Ecole des Beaux Arts) and one just begun (Ecole Polytechnique). He acknowledges that classicism gave the beaux-arts plan and façades a prolonged life.

The author recalls the end of the Baroque sequence, which aims for aesthetics unity and hierarchy in the social plan, and states that architecture isn’t autonomous of the other arts. He underlines the link in between French revolution and the neoclassical principles before showing the importance of Ledoux as he introduces a new autonomous and “independent” architecture. Indeed, Ledoux follows the thoughts of Boullée of banishment of un-necessary ornaments, the ultimate importance of geometric forms, the importance of the ensemble over the details. He advocates cubic masses, flat roofs, his traditional elements are heavy bases, Kaufmann make us understand how architecture has changed from being heteronomous to autonomous, with several examples of buildings divided in independent parts and even independent buildings, by explaining the free internal positioning, the use of elementary geometry. Forms get rid of the orders of architecture. Kaufmann also tries to establish a relation The grounds of typology – LEC KAO Sandrine

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between the architectural forms and the social structures. Then, through the very formal projects of Ledoux, he discerns analogies with the structure of the new society. Formed by isolated and free entities, this new typology is also called “the blocks system”.

Kaufman argues that Ledoux was the first to break with the Baroque sense of unity and organic whole.

He changed it in a sense, from the Gesamtkunstwerk to a pavilion system, a more independent-ed one that, as a contrary, introduces the idea of autonomy in the different volumes. As a matter of fact, in Baroque, the order of the parts composing the building must be related as a complete whole, as a unique ensemble, and taking one volume apart would ruin the sense of unity.

The evidence of this shift is clear when comparing the designs of Ledoux (for the Barrière St Martin for example) with a castle designed by Blondel : the building of Ledoux is a radical superimposition of a barrel and a cube. The two volumes could work independently and be set apart : they are not just the parts of a whole but entities in a dynamic composition. It is different from the dynamic of Blondel’s design, for which each element is irreplaceable.

Ledoux doesn’t respect the order, symmetry, harmony, aesthetic principles set before by the architects of the classical, as Alberti or Vitruve.

Ledoux uses his new thinking in his project for an ideal city around the Royal Salines of Arc-etSenans. This part-to-part relationship presents spaces where functions become isolated units, independent parts: differentiated functional zones, as for the later modernist city, as we could compare his concept for Chaux to the ville radieuse of Le Corbusier.

This evolution from a compact to a more dissolved and “multi-volumetric” architecture is illustrated by many conceptions : the contrast of the forms with differences of heights, superpositions of volumes (with terraced buildings as Alexandre Gisors’), circular shapes, new surfaces patterns that link several entities to its main volume by being repeated over the surfaces…

The new concept here was that architecture doesn’t need beautification or an outer disciplinary justification as aesthetics or style, as it was previously during the Renaissance and the Antiquity. The plan is now to be as asymmetric as it wants with new settings and different interior sequences that are not to be an enfilade system.

After the “second revolution”, Le Corbusier appears to continue in the line of Ledoux, th exposing two new principles. First, the new aesthetic from the end of the 18 century is seen in his project of the Arts School of La Chaux-de-Fonds, for which the composition is similar to Ledoux with imposing masses, geometry, pyramids, cubes. Second, the new rational approach of architecture is seen in his Dom-Ino system which is composed of no-mass, no-façade, rational construction principles with a general pilasters structure and flexible façade. These principles remind us of the very independent and individualist compositioning post-Renaissance. Le Corbusier will strike by composing his architecture with a scale-effect, by juxtaposing small entities to the mass of the primary volume as Kaufmann said about the autonomy of several parts in the modern composition. An autonomy that nevertheless permits a linked architecture: indeed Le Corbusier says that “if the ends of architecture is to establish moving relations, they will never be hierarchic”.

According to Kaufmann, Chandigarh is the only occasion Le Corbusier really expressed his “individualist” composition, for the Capitol, in the sector 1 of the city. The plan expands the distances at the extremes in between the 4 buildings. This individualist concept is also present in the Tourette Church, where the church is made of raw concrete but still linked to its secondary wings by having the same height. th

As Louis Kahn said, architecture at the 20 century has to present that primitive character we only meet at the periods of grand historical beginnings : the divergence between the pre modern and modern period is the starting point of a new current and a new form, as Ledoux or Boullée were trying to reach.

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It is always quite traitorous to try to understand the way Baroque and Renaissance architecture got rid of the ornaments to become the Modern and “purist architecture”. If we were to understand this duality in the Italian architecture thinking, we could compare the theory of Algarotti who says that structure cannot establish beauty and ornaments must succeed in that duty; as in the opposite, Lodoli claims for a functional plan, a more humanist way of conception.

This revolution in the architectural typology and this way of seeing the volumes in architecture could simply be explained by the change from mass-ensemble or individual-versus-mass to mass of individuals. It has to better take in consideration the demands of the people for a better quality of life now, as Le Corbusier reacted to, one century later. As far as I am concerned, I understand now better the immense void that constitutes the “piazza” in the middle of the administrative sector of Chandigarh, which I visited a year ago. I felt an emptiness that I didn’t see as being a part of the program itself. I understand how the city itself with several sectors, all differentiated from each other, has been conceived.

I feel grateful for Kaufmann’s explanation as it makes us understand better the relationship between the architectural movements, typologies, and evolution of the different concepts relating the form, the aesthetics, the volumes and how the plans are composed.

In “Dieci opinioni sul tipo”, the comments of Matthias Ungers underlines the fact that th during the 20 century, architecture was a non-culture one, because after the Enlightenment, the typologies developed by either Palladio or Ledoux were buried. Typology “cannot be restricted to only several basic types or only one type”. One can understand that type is a matter of continuity as it changes and transforms in many states and meanings. There is no so-called “ideal-type” but it only works as a thought or a starting point, abstraction. For young architects nowadays, it is mandatory to understand that typo-morphological studies represent the main-vehicle of architecture (Aldo Rossi). It is indeed a collection of geometrical, technical and historical data, which forms the basis of every project. “Design logic in architecture cannot limit itself to formal or building logic, but it must use in operations of derivation or integration of a finite range of functions”: this statement of Guido Canella summarize well the situation these two readings have exposed to me. As a matter of fact, the first ends to architecture was the beauty, the aesthetics, the “looks” of one building. Then, a more centralized though was put on the form itself, its relationship inside itself, rejecting the aesthetics and trying to replace it by the incandescence of the volume. Although, this way of thinking is missing one last thing: the matter of the human being. Are the disproportionate buildings of Ledoux an appropriate architecture for the people penetrating it? My last thoughts are maybe more a matter of the Enlightenment architecture and the humanist current…

It feels like nowadays, the vibrant main typology gathers all these architectural currents, as we see that architecture as become way more various and is maybe seeking for a renewal or a new way of thinking its shape.

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