Journeys of Discovery

JOURNEYS

OF DISCOVERY

15 years of the ADAM Architecture travel scholarship

Dedicated to the memory of Sam Little (1991 – 2022)

JOURNEYS OF DISCOVERY

15 years of the ADAM Architecture travel scholarship

EDITED BY NICOLA JACKSON

OUR THANKS TO THE EXTERNAL JUDGES

DAVID BIRCH

NOTED BRITISH CERAMICIST AND MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE LONDON POTTERY CO LTD

ELEANOR DOUGHTY

FREELANCE JOURNALIST AND REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR TO COUNTRY LIFE, THE TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE I PAPER

PROFESSOR LORRAINE FARRELLY

HEAD OF ARCHITECTURE, UNIVERSITY OF READING

KATHRYN FINDLAY

PRINCIPAL DIRECTOR AT USHIDA FINDLAY ARCHITECTS

CHRIS FOGES

EDITOR OF ARCHITECTURE TODAY

MATT GASKIN

HEAD OF THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AT OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

SIR PETER HALL

BARTLETT PROFESSOR OF PLANNING AND REGENERATION, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

MICHAEL HAMMOND

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO AT BUILT ENVIRONMENT MEDIA. EDITOR IN CHIEF AT WORLDARCHITECTURENEWS.COM UNTIL 2018

TIMOTHY SMITH

COURSE LEADER AT KINGSTON UNIVERSITY AND CO-PARTNER OF ARCHITECTS SMITH & TAYLOR

JONATHAN TAYLOR

UNDERGRADUATE DESIGN STUDIO TUTOR AT KINGSTON UNIVERSITY AND CO-PARTNER OF ARCHITECTS SMITH & TAYLOR

DR MARCEL VELLINGA

PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE AND DIRECTOR OF THE PLACE, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY RESEARCH GROUP IN THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

PROFESSOR GEORGIA BUTINA WATSON

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING AND RESEARCH TUTOR IN THE JOINT CENTRE FOR URBAN DESIGN AT OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

DRAWING BY CHIARA HALL

FOREWORD

Architects seek inspiration for their work from a wide range of sources, but for many the greatest inspiration will always come from travel.

I was fortunate on leaving school in 1991 to be awarded a scholarship with a friend to travel in Tuscany for two months. We proposed to travel the length of the River Arno, taking us from Pisa to Florence, then southwards towards Arezzo and finally north towards the source of the river on Mount Falterona. We set ourselves the task of drawing and painting the bridges over the river; the skills developed on that trip provided the foundations of my architectural career.

On becoming a director of ADAM Architecture in 2004, I suggested that we might set up a travel scholarship with the aim of inspiring students and encouraging architectural exploration. We launched the scholarship in 2005, and from the start we were impressed by the variety and high standards of applications that we received. As we are a practice specialising in traditional architecture and urbanism, it was always our intention that the scholarship would illustrate the breadth and depth of this field. We have never been disappointed; the applications each year have always included surprising and unexpected areas of study which still address our core interest in the continuity of tradition.

In recent years, it has become an annual routine to launch the travel scholarship at the beginning of the year, with most applicants choosing to travel during the summer holidays. We receive submissions from all over the world and aim to get these down to a shortlist of five or six candidates; generally we are looking for specific areas of study with a carefully considered itinerary and clear objectives. Interviews are held in our office and each year we have been joined by external judges whose insights have been invaluable.

In 2020, and having run our Travel Scholarship for 15 years, we looked back at the quality and quantity of amazing work which had been carried out by the scholars and thought that these deserved to be gathered together in a book. In this endeavour we have been helped immeasurably by Nicola Jackson who carried out the huge task of contacting our scholars, assembling and editing the material for publication and working with Sue Beaumont, Evelina Dee-Shapland and Jenn Holmes in our office to bring everything together.

We very much hope that this book will inspire those who read it, and that it will continue to promote the careers of our numerous scholars. Our final thanks go to our scholars for showing, in a wide variety of ways, the value of travel to us all.

George Saumarez Smith

World

EDITED

DRAWINGS BY AMANDA IGLESIAS

INTRODUCTION

These pages document so much more than travelogues from enthusiastic young architects. Of course, there are plenty of references to meals shared and enjoyed, train journeys taken, and friendships made along the way, but at the heart of each chapter is an architectural insight as fresh and revealing as anything you might read in a more conventional book on architecture.

From Italy to Israel and Cuba to China via numerous other countries across the globe, the travel scholars document their journeys with remarkable insight, offering us something new even when – in the case of the evolution of Italian villas or the romantic decay of Cuba, for example –the subject was apparently well known to us.

Rather like the subjects they chose to interrogate, the way in which the scholars went about documenting their findings varied enormously. Some were the length of a university thesis, with the erudition to match. Others consisted primarily of drawings and photographs, with extended captions alongside them. Collating them, and ensuring that they formed a coherent whole, seemed a daunting task, until we decided to celebrate their very different approaches, linking them only by the design of the page layouts.

The enthusiasm with which these scholars approached their subjects, and the beauty of the measured drawings, watercolour sketches and photographs they used to illustrate their findings, meant that as I edited each one, they became my favourite; that is until I moved onto the next, and they began to jostle for my attention and affection. I am now as eager to visit the remarkable rockhewn churches of Ethiopia and the monumental stone masonry of ancient Japanese castles as I am to spend a long weekend exploring the streets of Valletta or seeking out an art deco garden. Chiara Hall’s research on the human figure in Sicily’s Baroque architecture revealed how much I had missed in one of the destinations already familiar to me. The poetry of her prose drew me in as much as the luminosity of her illustrations:

‘Some of the buildings host the most original and bizarre grotesques I had yet seen: startling bespectacled and blindfolded faces hold scorpions and rats between missing teeth; knowing faces tease and mock; seductive sirens (with scaly fish tails) distract; sweet cherubs embrace; imaginary musical notes emanate from musicians with flutes and guitars; and a lonely dark figure, with a wrinkled forehead and outstretched hands, supports a balcony.’

Chiara has gone on to work in the Heritage and Culture Team for Building Design Partnership (BDP). James Hills also travelled to Italy, to research ‘The Villa Suburbana and Dense Suburbs’. In 2020 he set up his own practice, Drawnwork, and is currently working on the design and construction of a garden building within the grounds of a Grade II listed 16th century country house, building upon his research.

It is a measure of the success of the travel scholarship programme that some of the research visits resulted in design projects, and others have gone on to influence scholars’ careers. Evan Oxland has continued to pursue his fascination with stone, following his investigation of the Japanese castles, and now works as an architectural conservator and stonemason in Ontario, Canada. Nick Thompson’s visit to Valletta has had a strong impact on his practice both as a town planner and stone carver. Jingwen Zhao’s travels in China exposed the cultural differences between the public nature of Western towns and their public spaces, and the more introverted spaces of the Chinese water towns with their internal courtyards. She drew on what she had learned from her travels in a project for a museum that formed a part of her university thesis. Abigail Benouaich’s study of the Jewish ghetto in Rome resulted in an as-yet-unrealised design project for a new Jewish Cultural Centre. It was designed after extensive research, and discussions with the centre’s head. Tarn Philipp has returned to Ethiopia every year since 2014 to conduct significant research on new rock-hewn churches.

Perhaps the most surprising and glamorous consequence of any of the research projects was the invitation issued to Paige Johnson by Baz Luhrmann, to consult on his 2013

film The Great Gatsby. Her research on the search for the art deco landscape was also published in Apollo magazine. Most recently, Amanda Iglesias has thrown new light on the ecclesiastical work of Inger and Johannes Exner, which is almost unknown outside Denmark. She is now working for Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York where she applies her ‘[sharpened]… design instincts, historical knowledge, and fluency with mid-century architectural forms’, which she says is a consequence of her research.

Of course, the most direct result of a travel scholarship affecting the trajectory of a career must be Robbie Kerr’s visit to Cuba. He was awarded the scholarship while working for the practice during his degree course at Edinburgh University. He joined the practice in 2010, before going on to become ADAM Architecture’s youngest director in 2016. He is still drawing on his research today, currently developing plans for new Cuban work, in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Old Havana.

Nicola Jackson

LEFT: AMANDA IGLESIAS WITH INGER EXNER; ABOVE: ABIGAIL BENOUAICH; OPPOSITE TOP LEFT: EVAN OXLAND; OPPOSITE TOP RIGHT: TARN PHILIPP; BOTTOM LEFT: SAM LITTLE; BOTTOM RIGHT: ROBBIE KERR

ARCHITECTURE OF EMANCIPATION: GHETTO OF ROME

ROME

ABIGAIL BENOUAICH

Abigail Benouaich was awarded the 2014 ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship. A British Israeli, born in Jerusalem, Abigail had studied the Ghetto of Rome for some years and was keen to continue her field research in Jerusalem and Rome, to explore the history connecting the two communities and their architecture.

Abigail’s love for architectural history, coupled with an eye for artistic abstraction, inspired her concept to explore the architectural transformation of the Modern Jewish Quarter of Rome, where she examined in detail the critical period of architectural transformation that operated on the urban landscape of the former Jewish Ghetto as part of a revolutionary and contemporary vision of Jewish regeneration in Rome.

This research project contains a selection of Abigail’s limitededition artwork and photography and concludes with her design project for the Jewish Centre of Culture which dramatises the achievements of the surviving Roman Jewish Culture.

Abigail has worked as an architect in Glasgow, London and Tel Aviv, and now lives in Sweden, where she has been studying for a Masters in Architectural Lighting Design at KTH in Stockholm.

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

The Ghetto of Rome offers an extraordinary vivacity, abundance of stratification, and layering of history that has influenced numerous relationships between the daily life of its Jewish inhabitants, its architecture and connection to the city of Rome, further distinguished by apparent contradictions and difficulties occurring over a 2,000-year history of conflict between the Jewish and Roman communities. In this context, the Jewish Ghetto presents a highly relevant case study of the topographical and architectural transformation that has occurred during the 19th century era of emancipation and its relative impact on the modern-day community of the Jewish Quarter.

For three centuries under Papal Rome (1555-1870), a walled ghetto was constructed in the Rione Sant’Angelo to separate the city’s Jews from the rest of the population. The intention of ghettoisation was to ‘expedite conversion and cultural dissolution’ but the outcome of the ghetto in fact had the opposite effect; the population established a ‘sub-culture’ or ‘micro-culture’ that ensured continuity.1

This study examines the conditions of the Jewish Ghetto prior to the Risorgimento regime in 1870, and the patterns of inhabitation and Jewish worship that evolved during the three centuries of confinement within the ghetto enclosure. Following the introduction of Architectural Emancipation in the mid-19th century, and the construction of the Great Synagogue as the ‘speaking symbol’ of emancipated Jewry, my research delineates the dichotomy between the role of the monumental Synagogue as a symbol of liberation under the Roman Republic and its fragility as the “new temple” during a period of Jewish decline.

To undertake my research, I travelled from Jerusalem to Rome to explore the origins of Rome’s ghettoized Jewish Colony. I document the rise and fall of the ghetto in the early 19th century and conversion of the centuries-old space of Jewish life into a topographical tabula rasa upon which the modern quarter and Great Synagogue appear as a ‘visible sign’ of Jewish Emancipation.

My research culminates with a critical analysis of the Great Synagogue, constructed in 1910, during a critical period of architectural transformation for the Third Rome, where a bold effect of erasure and re-inscription operated on the urban landscape of the Ghetto as part of a revolutionary and contemporary vision of Jewish regeneration.

OPENING SPREAD: ABIGAIL’S LIMITED EDITION MIXED-MEDIA PRINT, ‘WALL TO WALL’ PORTRAYS THE ROMAN GHETTO BETWEEN 1550-1870, CAPTURING THE SUNKEN BUILDINGS THAT ONCE ASCENDED THE RIVER TIBER’S EDGE

1 GHETTO OF ROME

4

STONE ON STONE

Origins in Jerusalem

I was born in Jerusalem and lived there as a child in the 1980s. We left in the early 1990s, moving first to northern England and then to Scotland. Fifteen years passed before I returned to the city to conduct this research, and yet I still think of Jerusalem as home. Not home in the sense of a place where I conduct my daily life or constantly return to, but home because it defines who I truly am, whether I like it or not.

The diversity and richness of Jerusalem, both in terms of its emotional and spiritual energy, make it a fascinating experience to an outsider. Four thousand years of intense political and religious wrangling are impossible to hide; traditions that overlap and interact in unpredictable ways, creating an urban context and patterns of living that belong to specific groups but also belong to everybody else. 2

The complexity and vibrancy of Jerusalem stems both from its location as a meeting point between Europe, Asia and Africa and the incredible depth of its history. It has been conquered, destroyed and rebuilt time and time again, with every layer of its earth revealing a different piece of the past. At its core is the Old City, a maze of narrow alleyways and historic architecture that characterise its four quarters – Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian. While it has often been the focus of stories of division and conflict among people of different religions, they are united in their reverence for this holy ground. Indeed, there are few places in the world to match its significance.

2 OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM AT SUNSET, LOOKING OUT TOWARDS THE TOWER OF DAVID

3 JERUSALEM’S WESTERN WALL – THE ONLY REMAINING REMNANT OF HEROD’S SECOND TEMPLE AND THE CLOSEST JEWS CAN PRAY TO THE HOLY OF HOLIES

A SKETCHING EXCURSION TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, A 3000-YEAR-OLD JEWISH CEMETERY IN EAST JERUSALEM, NAMED AFTER THE OLIVE GROVES THAT ONCE COVERED ITS SLOPES

5 PENCIL SKETCH OF JERUSALEM SHOWING THE STRATIFICATION OF THE OLD CITY

Yet Jerusalem has never been a great metropolis. It has never had temples that can parallel those of Luxor, or grandiose public buildings as magnificent as those in Rome. It has always been a rather small and crowded city, built from the stone of its surrounding hills.

The energy of Jerusalem is introspective. It is born out of an interplay between the peoples that have been coming and going for millennia. It is not through anything material but through faith, learning and devotion that Jerusalem has gained its importance throughout history.3

When King David founded it as his capital in around 1,000 BC, it was, as it is now, a collection of rugged hills with little vegetation or water. The first of two temples was built on the Temple Mount, signifying the core of Jewish prayer and piety, until the Romans first appeared in Jerusalem in 63 BC, to instigate the most significant event in Jewish history, which is where our story begins.

BREAKS TO PIECES

Rome and Jerusalem

The Romans – following hot on the heels of the Hellenistic influence – first appeared in Jerusalem in 63BC, and then gradually asserted their authority against Jewish resistance, which culminated in a failed revolt in 70AD, when the second, and last, Temple was destroyed. This event is painfully etched in Jewish history as the onset of a slow process of decline that would not end until the advent of Zionism. The Oxford historian Professor Simon Schama described the war with the Romans in these terms:

[T]he Jewish Roman war anticipated with such poetic excitement in the war scroll became grim, bloody reality in 70AD. An immense rebellion against Roman rule broke out in Galilee and Judea. A maelstrom of violence that required the weight of three legions under the command of General Vespasian and his son Titus to crush it, before moving on to Jerusalem where fanatic Zealots instigated a reign of terror to deter any talk of surrender...The spirit of the surrenders finally crumbled. The city walls were breached. The temple established as the exclusive focus of Jewish prayer and piety went up in smoke and flames. The Roman legions prized the massive masonry blocks from the top of the Temple Mount and sent them crashing onto the fine limestone pavement below.4

Alongside the slow development of the nascent religion, the Roman-Jewish conflict continued to simmer, and came to a head in another revolt in 132AD, after which Jews were banned from the city, bar one day a year, for many centuries. The city was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and with the Christianisation of the Byzantine Empire it was adorned with Christian churches, and became a veritable Christian city, devoid of any Jewish presence.

Back in Rome, a triumphant procession lead by Vespasian exhibited the spoils of Jerusalem in promiscuous heaps; but conspicuous of all stood out those captured in the Temple of Jerusalem. The destruction of Jerusalem was the making of the Vespasian family, The Flavians. Vespasian was declared Emperor of Rome, and Jewish loot and slaves provided the cash and the muscle for the building of the Colosseum.

For the following 14 centuries, a Roman Jewish colony was established in the Trastevere region of Rome.

6 ‘ STONE ON STONE’. THE EXPERIMENTAL COLLAGE CAPTURES THE STRATIFICATION OF THE OLD CITY, WITH EVERY LAYER OF THE EARTH REVEALING A DIFFERENT PIECE OF THE PAST

7 THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM BY ROMAN LEGIONS LEAD BY VESPASIAN ENDED WITH THE SACKING OF THE CITY AND THE DESTRUCTION OF HEROD’S SECOND TEMPLE

8 THE STONES FROM THE WESTERN WALL OF THE TEMPLE MOUNT WERE THROWN ONTO THE STREET BY ROMAN SOLDIERS

9 ON THE ARCH OF TITUS, THE SCULPTED FRIEZE DESCRIBES THE ROMANS MAKING OFF WITH THE LOOT FROM HEROD’S TEMPLE INCLUDING THE GIANT MENORAH

10 THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM WAS THE MAKING OF THE VESPASIAN FAMILY, THE FLAVIANS. JEWISH LOOT AND SLAVES PROVIDED THE CASH AND THE MUSCLE FOR THE BUILDING OF THE COLOSSEUM

11 DESCENT FROM THE ANCIENT FORTRESS OF MASADA LOCATED ON A PLATEAU IN THE JUDEAN DESERT OVERLOOKING THE DEAD SEA

12 THE SIEGE OF MASADA BY THE ROMAN TROOPS TOWARDS THE END OF THE JEWISH–ROMAN WAR ENDED IN THE MASS SUICIDE OF THE 960 JEWISH REBELS AND THEIR FAMILIES HIDING THERE

Under imperial policy, the Jews were forbidden from all legal employment. It became illegal to open any synagogues and they were ultimately forbidden from assembling in public at all. The Christian Empire was pushing the Jews into the shadows.

That was until 1555, when the Empire found a new way to isolate the Jews. The colony was forced to live in a small district of just a few residential blocks on the opposite side of the River Tiber. The gates were locked at night and a new word was born – the ghetto. Today, the word ‘ghetto’ is synonymous with poverty, racism and families in distress – all of which were true of Rome; the world’s first ghetto.

WALL TO WALL

The Jewish Ghetto 1555 – 1870

For three centuries under Papal Rome, a walled ghetto was constructed in the rione (neighbourhood) Sant’Angelo to separate the city’s Jews from the rest of the population. In the form of a rectangular trapezoid, the ghetto contained two main streets running parallel to the Tiber and several small streets and alleys that together occupied a seven-acre enclosure. The site, as the most insalubrious of the city thanks in part to the ravages of the river, was designated as the Jewish Ghetto. The space was densely populated, and extraordinary measures had followed population growth: additional storeys perched atop row houses with annex constructions protruding from negative rooftop spaces, blocking the light from reaching the already dank and narrow streets.5

During the ghetto period, space limitations, combined with the expanding needs of the growing population, had forced the Jews of Rome to construct a greater number of more concentrated storeys above the existing dwellings. The ghetto buildings could be easily distinguished by their smaller, more numerous rows of windows. In Rome’s ghetto, this difference was only visible in the upper storeys. Such buildings gave the impression of having been crushed by a great weight from above. The story of the ghetto was clear: ‘the Jews were collapsing under the weight of oppression’. The visiting historian Ferdinand Gregorovius described the ghetto area in these terms:

[D]irectly ahead are the ghetto houses in a row, tower-like masses of bizarre design...The rows ascend from the river’s edge, and its dismal billows wash against the walls...When

I first visited, the Tiber had overflowed its banks and its yellow flood streamed through the Fiumara, the lowest of the ghetto streets, the foundations of whose houses serve as a quay to hold the river in its course. The flood reached as far up as the Porticus of Octavia, and water covered the lower rooms of the houses at the bottom. What a melancholy spectacle to see the wretched Jews’ quarter sunk in the dreary inundation of the Tiber! Each year Israel in Rome has to undergo a new Deluge, and like Noah’s Ark the ghetto is tossed on the waves with man and beast. When the Tiber goes into flood the misery is multiplied. Those who live beneath take refuge in the upper floors which are intolerably crowded and tainted by pestilential atmosphere. 6

Shops lined the streets of the ghetto, together with a religious school, a rabbinical college, and five small synagogues in a single edifice called the Piazza delle Cinque Scole. During the three centuries of confinement, the heart of Jewish life centred around the Cinque Scole, where buildings tended to be small, introspective places of worship and study in which the Jews gathered to pray, but also to meet socially and to conduct the business of the community.7 By papal law, the Jews were forbidden to have more than one synagogue, but despite this the Cinque Scole building housed five shuls (synagogues) each established according to varying origins and traditions.

The Cinque Scole building was considered the ‘heart’ of the ghetto as it stood in front of the boundary walls that divided the Jews from the outside world, in the Monte de Cenci area. The only visible decorative element was a semi-circular fountain, which interrupted the overhanging presence of the wall.8 Despite the dreary

conditions of the ghetto, members of the community enriched the building’s undecorated interior with gifts and contributions from their European origins. Professor Simon Schama describes the Cinque Scole shuls:

[I]n the midst of the ghetto, there were some places where you could feel the sigh of relief that was Jewish Rome. The place, where for all the condescension, one could actually make a Jewish life. The shuls speak of the deep pathos of longing for Jewish beauty... Jews never considered it an obligation to construct rich buildings or ornamentation, because they always knew they would have to pick up the suitcase and leave them behind. And yet, you want to believe that

13 HIST ORIC MAP OF THE JEWISH GHETTO (1555) INDICATING THE WALLED ENCLOSURE AND FIVE ENTRANCE GATES

14 THE SITE OF THE FORMER JEWISH GHETTO IS LOCATED ON THE BANKS OF THE TIBER IN THE RIONE SANT’ANGELO DISTRICT. THE TIBERINA ISLAND SEPARATES THE DISTRICT ON THE EAST BANK FROM THE TRASTEVERE REGION ON THE WEST BANK

15 THE LIMITED EDITION MIXED-MEDIA PRINT, ‘URBAN DECAY’ CAPTURES THE STRATIFICATION OF THE URBAN FABRIC WHICH HAS INFLUENCED COMPLEX THRESHOLDS OF EXTERNAL INHABITATION

in the place you have just come to where you have been allowed to prosper or perhaps for a few generations at least be safe, honour your religion by making something beautiful. The whole place reconciles the idea of refuge with beauty.9

Under the Papal regime, the ghettoisation of the Jews was intended to ‘expedite conversion and cultural dissolution’. The outcome of the ghetto in fact had the opposite effect. The Jewish community developed a subculture, or ‘micro culture’, that ensured continuity. The Cinque Scole’s back-of-house places of worship and remarkably effective legal network of rabbinic notaries, together gave the Jews

the illusion that they, rather than the papal vicar, were running their own affairs.

The ghetto operated under papal control until the unification of Rome with Italy in 1870. Then 315 years after Pope Paul IV ordered the locals Jew into the ghetto, the city of Rome ordered them out.

LAST STONE TO FALL

The Risorgimento 1870 – 1910

Rome was declared the capital of the Third Italy in 1870, and city officials began to worry about the appearance of the Jewish Ghetto. Major public works were announced after centuries of neglect, as part of an urban strategy known as the Risorgimento, connoting an urban renewal and ‘return to health’. The Risorgimento of the ghetto was deemed indispensable before any other urban initiative with the objective ‘to demolish thoroughly… erasing a source of epidemics and a disgrace to the Capital’.10

Following a disastrous flood in December 1870, which brought the King of Italy for the first time to this new capital, the provisional city administration named an 11-member commission of architects and engineers, to formulate proposals for the ‘expansion and embellishment of the city’ with particular reference to the disposition of the River Tiber banks where the ghetto was to be demolished, the land elevated and embankments built to accommodate the modern Jewish Quarter.11 The regime was considered to be one of the most ambitious urban projects of the Third Rome.

In relation to the ghetto, the risorgimento served a shared cause. Alongside urban renewal, the term also evoked a

16 SKET CHED PERSPECTIVE OF THE CINQUE SCOLE SHULS SHOWING THE DIVISION OF FIVE SYNAGOGUES, EACH ESTABLISHED ACCORDING TO VARYING ORIGINS AND TRADITIONS

17 LE PIAZZE DELLA CINQUE SCOLE, WHERE JEWS GATHERED TO PRAY BUT ALSO TO CONDUCT THE BUSINESS OF THE COMMUNITY

moral and cultural renewal consistent with the ideology of Emancipation, where it served to justify liberation and equal rights on the grounds that Jews would naturally regenerate themselves once they achieved parity with other citizens.

Several architectural works in the Jewish Quarter, including the construction of the Great Synagogue of Rome, sought to make this meaning explicit and strengthen the initiative of Jewish Emancipation as a pioneer of the movement ‘out of the ghetto’.

In the eyes of the city’s new leaders, the Jewish Ghetto bore witness to the temporal power of popes. The Third Rome could hardly allow such a telling vestige of the old order to remain as it contradicted the image of a regenerated Italy. The risorgimento of the ghetto, in contrast, offered a symbolic as well as a practical cure not only for the Jewish Quarter but also for the city and the nation. A correspondent for the Corriere Israelitico would describe the moment, in the 2,000-year history of Jewish Rome, as a ‘critical period of transformation’.12

Demolition of the Jewish neighbourhood began in 1888 and continued until the first years of the 20th Century. During this time, the displaced population of the ghetto –refugees of the Risorgimento Policy – did not have priority over their relocation. The 4,000 inhabitants who were being evicted were referred to new residential developments on the boards, between Porta Pinciana and Porta Salaria.

Two official efforts supported by the Roman council were, in the end, only of symbolic value. Neither were specifically geared towards the victims of the ghetto’s

18 HIST ORIC MAP OF ROME’S RISORGIMENTO TOWNPLANNING BY SAINT JUST OF 1908-1909

19 THE HISTORIC GRID OF THE FORMER GHETTO PRIOR TO DEMOLITION IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY

20 THE MODERN JEWISH QUARTER AS IT EXISTS TODAY, WHERE THE CLEARANCE OF LAND MADE WAY FOR GRANDIOSE URBAN PROJECTS INCLUDING TREE-LINED EMBANKMENTS ALONG THE TIBER RIVER KNOWN TODAY AS TRASTEVERE

pick. Since 1867, a Relocation Committee dedicated to the providing of ‘houses for the poor class’ developed some very limited low-rent housing. The council, perhaps bearing a guilty conscience, supported its work through the cession of free land, some 25,050 square metres on the Esquiline sold to Senator Rossi, who built upon it, at his own cost and over a period of three years, a number of low-cost houses, mostly for single Jewish families.13

Meanwhile, the clearance of the ghetto land made way for the grandiose urban projects of the Third Rome –building tree-lined embankments along the River Tiber and ample streets lined with decorative Umbertine

buildings. The last of the ghetto buildings to fall was the Cinque Scole Shuls to fund the construction of the Great Synagogue of Rome. Laudiadio Fano’s Modernist Chronicle describes this phase of transformation:

[T]he operation was performed quickly in an attempt to alleviate the community’s suffering. The demolition of the Ghetto and the decentralization of its inhabitants may have constituted a necessary transition, but the community was fragmenting...The last small shuls, in whose place the Synagogue is to be built, has finally been demolished...That old prison that always swarmed with noisy people is now a pile of rubble. How many events, how many memories are concealed beneath those stones?

The displacement of Jewish space was treated as one of the most significant events of the day. The Great Synagogue had risen ‘above the ruins of the ancient ghetto’ to refashion Jewish identity in Rome. The razing of the cinque scole shuls had converted the centuries-old space of Jewish life into a topographical tabula rasa upon which the Great Synagogue appeared as a visible sign of liberation. As contemporaries were well aware, a bold effect of erasure and re-inscription had operated on the urban landscape of the ancient ghetto.14

RISE FROM RUINS

The Great Synagogue c.1910

[T]he Great Synagogue of Rome stands majestically on the banks of the Tiber near the Marcellus Theatre and across from the Tiberina Island. Inaugurated in 1910, it is a centralplan domed building with massive and compact forms. Its eclectic style combines Roman, Greek, Babylonian, and

THE LIMITED EDITION MIXED-MEDIA PRINT, ‘LAST STONE TO FALL’ DESCRIBES THE CINQUE SCOLE BUILDING CONSIDERED TO BE ‘THE HEART’ OF GHETTO LIFE BEING DISPLACED BY THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE OF ROME

Egyptian elements, the latter two appearing in the decorative details, mouldings, and column capitals. A square-shouldered structure crowned by a brilliant aluminium cupola, the building communicates stability, permanence, and strength. With a lateral facade facing the river and the principal facade rising above the small square, it cuts the figure of a modern fortress and its fiefdom.14

a ‘memory vessel’ between monuments it evokes and the one they built. The entry stood out amongst the 26 in that is eschewed the “Eastern” styles dominating Italian Synagogue architecture at the time.

Costa and Armanni assumed that ‘the synagogue should recall the place and architecture of Palestine at the time of the Temple. Because no monument of the period had survived, it was deemed favourable to adopt the style of the historical period in which the religious system had originated’.14 Finally, they argued that the building should harmonise with the rest of the city and thus required a more classical style.

A design competition for the Great Synagogue was announced in 1889, welcoming 26 design entries. The second prize design went to Attilio Muggia for a twin-towered, four-storey building with striped masonry that distinguished it from the other church styles. It would echo the temple of Jerusalem, and thus be indissolubly associated with the many locations in which the Jews has resided following the destruction of the second Temple.

The winning entry however, designed by Costa and Armanni Architects, evoked a different meaning. Reflecting the Temple era, the design intended to create

Along with the synagogue of Florence (c.1882), the principal reference for Costa and Armanni’s design was the main synagogue of Paris on the Rue de la Victoire (c.1874). The latter in many respects is more impressive than the Great Synagogue of Rome. Yet to an onlooker moving about either capital, the Parisian synagogue, whose facade is largely obscured on a narrow street, hardly makes a greater statement about the new and equal space of the modern Jew than its very visible 150foot counterpart on the River Tiber.14

Nor could an onlooker easily ascertain that the new building stood in the place – indeed in the emptied space –of the ancient ghetto.

Emancipated Jewry in Rome dating from the mid-19th century sought to substitute the role of the ghetto’s Cinque Scole shuls for the Great Synagogue of Rome –a bold architectural statement of liberation. The Piazza della Cinque Scole however, was a Jewish space like many in Western Europe that developed as a survival

22 PL AN SHOWING THE SITE OF THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE

23 THE WINNING ENTRY FOR THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE DESIGN COMPETITION, DESIGNED BY COSTA AND ARMANNI ARCHITECTS

mechanism during ghettoisation to retain Jewish tradition and collective memory following the dispersion of the community.

In contrast to the hidden world of the Cinque Scole, where the ‘back-of-house’ places of worship were modest and often so discreet as to be unrecognisable from the outside, the Great Synagogue of Rome was an imposing structure of a grandeur deemed to be exotic by the standards of the day. As bearer of the movement ‘out of the ghetto’ the Great Synagogue transformed real and symbolic space, rising from the ghetto’s ruins to signify the new place of worship for the emancipated Jew. The architecture of emancipation boldly announced that Jews were equal members of society, enjoying the same rights and freedoms as the majority whilst maintaining a distinctive religious faith.14

The Great Synagogue of Rome was perceived as a turning point in solidifying the history and identity of its community. As the new symbolic place of worship, however, did the Great Synagogue fall victim to its own success? In contrast to the modest shuls of the Cinque Scole, one could assert that the synagogue’s very monumentality created an inner void, a poor substitute for the communal and religious life it replaced. You could argue that the original intent of the synagogue was not accomplished but did in fact neglect Jewish life and further distance the Roman Jews from their ghetto origins.

The risorgimento of the ghetto was not referred to as ‘new times’ for the Jews of Rome but ‘new temples’. The destruction of the Cinque Scole placed significance on

the substitution of the Great Synagogue as the ‘new place of worship’ appearing as the ‘visible sign of the ready and the complete forgetting of past offences’.14

All monumental synagogues of this era shared this historical and ethical cause, but the role of the Great Synagogue of Rome as a ‘vessel of memory’ for the Jewish people was of more significance in the city of Rome than any other. As the seat of both the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, the city had played a unique role in Jewish history.

The construction of the Great Synagogue of Rome further coincided with a sharp decline in Jewish religious life and intellectual culture specific to this late 19th century period. Combatants for Jewish renewal seized the opportunity to emphasise the decline that accompanied liberation and the poor direction provided by Jewish leaders responsible for the synagogue and for the Judaism it represented. In the context of the Jewish Ghetto, and in the shadow of the Catholic Church, the ghetto produced a rival narrative to a foundation-story of the Church and this constituted one of the highest priorities of emancipated Jewry in Rome and the agenda of the Great Synagogue.14

The contradiction between the Great Synagogue boldly symbolising liberation under the Roman Republic against its fragility as the ‘new temple’ during a period of Jewish decline, may imply that the Synagogue’s role as a ‘vessel of memory’ was in fact responsible for further severing the traditional process of worship that had evolved over many centuries in the former ghetto.

As such, does the Roman-Jewish Quarter still require a community space that reaffirms this diminished connection? What would be a suitable transformation of Jewish space in Rome as a means of reconciling the community with their long, recorded past and recent journey out of the ghetto?

Jewish Centre of Culture

Rione Sant‘Angelo, Rome

The construction of the Great Synagogue was perceived as a turning point in the history and identity of the community.15 And yet, there was a strong argument to promote a more authentic form of Jewish identity in the Modern Quarter through insertion of a new community Jewish space.

The very issue of reviving Jewish collective memory in the Modern Quarter first came to the forefront in the 1970s, following World War Two, Fascism and liquidation of the ghetto in October 1943, when a new urban and cultural initiative was established by the Community of Rome. 16

A programme was established in 1975 by Bice Migliau, founder of the Jewish Community of Rome, to promote religious, educational and cultural initiatives in the Modern Quarter through the construction of a Rabbinical Court, nursery, primary and secondary schools, and a Jewish Library adjacent to the Great Synagogue. Over the course of the last 40 years, the Modern Jewish Quarter has developed a thriving Jewish/Roman community, and has fast become an epicentre for religious, cultural and community activity.

However, despite the Modern Quarter’s steep social and economic growth, a conceptual design opportunity for a new Jewish Centre of Culture was identified as part of an urban initiative established in 2014 by Micol Temin, head of the current cultural centre, with the objective ‘to

26 PL AN SHOWING THE SITE OF THE JEWISH CENTRE OF CULTURE

27 THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ROME URBAN INITIATIVE AND KEY PUBLIC BUILDINGS

28 THE PROJECT SITE AS IT STANDS TODAY, ADJACENT TO THE SANTA MARIA DEL PIANTO CHURCH

relocate the Jewish Centre of Culture to an alternative and more adequate location in the Modern Quarter’ on the basis of high accommodation costs and increasing spatial demands.

Allocation of an appropriate site for the Jewish Centre of Culture relocation strategy called for a thorough understanding of the ‘remains of ghetto life’ in the modern-day quarter, based on the assumption that the new building would exhibit a meaningful reflection on the Jewish Roman history of the former ghetto.

At the end of the 1980s, Rome’s Municipality began urban restoration of the Ghetto of Rome, with both unfinished demolitions and archaeological areas yet to reveal different pieces of the ghetto’s history. Excavations of the Piazza Delle Cinque Scole revealed that the Scole building was not anchored to the ground, but loosely founded over Roman ruins of various manufacture and importance. The last stratigraphy revealed that the shuls once rested on very well-conserved building constructions, most likely of the Trajan period.17

Today, the only remaining feature of the Cinque Scole is the historic fountain which was relocated to the new square following reconstruction of the Modern Jewish Quarter. All the surrounding buildings of the square were demolished apart from one semi-deconstructed building located on the border between Piazza delle Cinque Scole and Via del Portico d’Ottavia.

Research revealed that the building once lay adjacent to the boundary walls that separated the ghetto from the outside world. As one of the few ghetto buildings to remain, it was originally used as residential premises facing onto the former site of the Cinque Scole fountain. Then after the period of active construction in the early 20th century with the demolition of the ghetto, construction work stopped for ten years and the building adjacent to the Maria del Pianto church was left half demolished. Full demolition of the building was never completed and it is now under council ownership, functioning as a Jewish Information Point to serve the community.

The Jewish Centre of Culture project site is favourably situated at the heart of the remaining Ghetto heritage in the Modern Quarter. The site can form a gateway to the commercial activity along Via del Portico d’Ottavia, and also provide an alternative use for the Piazza delle Cinque Scole to raise the profile of the square, in sensitive recognition of its historic significance as the centre of Jewish life in the ancient ghetto.

In a dramatic texture of vertical elements, my proposed design for the Jewish Centre of Culture articulates a strong dialogue between historical authenticity and modernity by freely borrowing ancient Roman Jewish motifs and contemporising them in a way that is not blindly imitative. The triple-banded entrance arch is an allusion to the brickwork of the Marcellus Theatre, with each building forming the primary gateways to the Modern Quarter, and thus engages the entirety of the ghetto site in a continuous dialogue while each asserting a character all their own. The brickwork is precise, rhythmic, and beautifully scaled to evoke a sense of refinement only conceivable in a modern project.

Yet, there is something fundamentally timeless about the simplicity of the structure and its clear invocation of the Roman precedent. Form and material belong neither to the present nor to history, allowing the design to straddle the gap between the two in a manner uniquely befitting the modern-day Jewish Quarter.

The central library space appeals to history in another way still, appropriating the enduring power of architectural ruin. Heavy structural columns that seem capable of supporting a weighty roof are capped instead by a light, glassy covering, creating an interior condition that feels entirely connected to the outside world, and exposes the hovering clock tower of the Santa Maria del Pianto church. As a result, the space is unburdened by the oppressive weightiness of a traditional roof and the immersive experience within the former ghetto site feels all the more authentic.

Following an era in which the architectural commissions of the Modern Jewish Quarter represented opportunities for government officials to pursue political agendas with

little sensitivity for the ghetto life the new buildings intended to displace, this proposal is refreshingly selfaware of its purpose as a new Jewish space connecting to the city’s ancient past. The architecture serves not to promote itself, but to dramatise the achievements of the surviving Roman Jewish culture without overshadowing them. It is a negotiation of the ancient and the modern, the inventive and the referential, and a sensitive rethinking of the library typology through thoughtful contextualisation.

The project was designed after extensive research, and discussions with the centre’s head. It was received very favourably but didn’t move beyond the initial concept phase. As far as I am aware, the development of a new Jewish Cultural Centre has not yet come to fruition.

WEST ELEVATION SOUTH ELEVATION NORTH ELEVATION

References:

1. Stow, Kenneth. Theatre of Acculturation – The Roman Ghetto in the sixteenth century. University of Washington Press, 2010.

2. Tamimi, Sami. Jerusalem. Random House, 2012.

3. I bid.

4. Schama, Simon. The Story of the Jews. Vintage, 2014.

5. L erner, Scott L. “Narrating over the ghetto of Rome”; article is a revised lecture given at the Center for European Studies on Visual Representation and Cultural Critique, Harvard University, 2005.

6. Gregorovius, Ferdinand. “The Ghetto and the Jews of Rome”. Schocken Books Inc, U.S, 1996.

7. L erner, Scott L. Op. cit.

8. Luca, Fiorentino. The Ghetto Reveals Rome. Gangemi; Bilingual edition, 2005.

9. Schama, Simon. Op. cit.

10. L erner, Scott L. Op. cit.

11. Kostof, Spiro. The Third Rome 1870 – 1950: Traffic and Glory. Exhibition Catalogue, March 28 1973 – March 8 1974, USA Berkley, University Art Museum, 1973.

12. L erner, Scott L. Op. cit.

13. Kostof, Spiro. Op. cit.

14. L erner, Scott L. Op. cit.

15. L erner, Scott L. “The Narrating Architecture of Emancipation”; article based on research for the Frederick Sheldon Fellowship, a visiting scholarship at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University, 2006.

16. Inter view by Bice Migliau: Salvatore Fornari on the development of Jewish culture in Rome during the 1970s to the 1980s. Our mission was to recover within the Roman Jewish Community a different reality; to promote a process of Jewish identification – to reach a level of visibility, knowledge and interaction worthy of a large community in the Capital City. This was by no means an easy challenge.

Silvia Haia Antonucci. Un amore Capitale. Salvatore Fornari e Roma, Esedra editrice, Padova, 2014.

17. Luca, Fiorentino. Op. cit.

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF

CUBAN ARCHITECTURE: DEVELOPMENT, DECAY AND OPPORTUNITY

CUBA

Robbie Kerr

ROBBIE KERR

Robbie Kerr worked with ADAM Architecture during his degree course at Edinburgh University, winning a place on our Travel Scholarship before joining the practice in 2010 and becoming the company’s youngest director in 2016 at the age of 29.

The idea for this project was conceived during a trip to Cuba in August 2007. The scholarship made it possible for him to return the following year, travelling from the western isthmus to the eastern extreme, from the gritty suburbs of Marianao to the crumbling masterpieces of Central Havana.

The intention of the report was to unpick the perceived notion of ‘romantic decay’ in Cuba, identifying the political, economic and cultural factors that have helped shape the island’s architecture.

Robbie has experience leading designs for major private residences and public buildings as well as conservation and restoration projects. More than a decade later he is still drawing on his research, currently developing plans for new Cuban work, in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Old Havana.

What is published here are Robbie’s observations from his travels in 2008. Of course, much has changed in Cuba since, including the death of Castro, the restoration of ties with the EU, Russia, China and the US, and the devastating hurricanes of 2008 and 2012.

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

Cuba’s architecture has decayed idiosyncratically for over half a century. Isolationist politics and shortage of funds, while negative in many ways, have had the positive effect of protecting the island from urban developments that have disfigured much of Latin America, while also protecting the fascinating balance of Spanish, French and American influences which have helped to shape the urban landscape. Its geographical location exposes the island to severe environmental conditions. Hurricanes and lashing rain are not uncommon and have engendered self-reliance and adaptability.

Romantic decay

The popular romantic view of the current architectural decay is the result of changes in economic, political and environmental conditions sustained over 500 years.

Sun and salsa, communism and Castro have dominated travellers’ perceptions of Cuba. The unintentional marketing of Cuba’s brand of ‘romantic decay’, the opulent decaying remnants of the past intermingled with tarnished present glory, combine successfully with the mystique that surrounds Fidel Castro. The positive effect is that it has preserved so many of the styles that have accumulated across the island creating today’s paradox of a capitalist veneer in a socialist country. The 18th century palaces and soaring Art Deco edifices peel within an otherwise socialist backdrop.

Physical deterioration can be seen in the solares (tenement blocks occupied by Afro-Cuban workers) or cuartería (dilapidated rooming houses) that now exist in large

OPENING SPREAD AND ABOVE: THE DEGRADATION OF CENTRAL HAVANA’S BUILDING STOCK - PERCEIVED AS ‘ROMANTIC DECAY’

1 MAP SHOWING THE AUTHOR'S TRAVELS THROUGH CUBA

parts of Old or Central Havana. Poor standards of living, hunger and improvised lives are far from what might be perceived as ‘romantic’. Despite financial difficulties, Cubans have developed a sense of pride in their dwellings and made alterations with incredible ingenuity. Ruthless subdivision to accommodate the shortage of shelter has seen porticoes altered to form new bedrooms. Four storey solares were once colonial mansions; patios and zaguán (halls) now open onto a multitude of different dwellings and a new architecture has been formed from these historical developments.

The present restoration of parts of Old Havana by the City of Historians office led by Eusebio Leal, has seen fantastic work completed and yet the contrast with the larger stock of dilapidated buildings can be jarring, and result in the new buildings having a Disney-like quality.

Tourism has radically altered the island’s appearance since the 1930s. The capitalist lens through which most visitors

witness the country has heightened their attention to the aesthetic degradation. This has resulted in a misconstrued perception about the extent and explanation for Cuba’s decay. Politics and economics shape a country; even so there are other more subtle influences at work, including the changing cultural currents and the steady environmental battering of the island.

The development of a Cuban style and colonial Cuba

The years of Spanish colonial rule between 1492 and 1898 produced an architectural and stylistic metamorphosis that has formed the basis of subsequent styles in Cuba.

Columbus arrived in Cuba in 1492. The earliest buildings, the airy rectangular bohíos, were palm roofed structures with openings to allow ventilation. These early settlements were made up of circular caney with the bohío arranged around a batey (piazza), the central cacique being the focus of communal activity. Many of these bohíos

can still be found in rural settings as basic abodes, some reinvented as beach houses.

The Spaniard Diego Velázquez was sent to colonise the island arriving at Baracoa in 1511. The settlers established what became known as the seven original settlements. The sporadic attacks by aborigines held back development of these cities and forced Velázquez to move his capital to the more fertile and geographically strategic deep bay of Santiago de Cuba.

Slaves from Andalusia were imported to work in the mines and to help build fortifications for the seven settlements. The expansion in the number of slaves changed Cuba forever and put increasing pressure on housing within the city walls, forcing vertical expansion. Early developments were seen in the cuarto esquinero (corner room), and the casa almacén (warehouse/store) began its final stages of metamorphosis by the end of the 18th century. A mezzanine level was introduced within the ground floor for slave quarters and offices, allowing merchants to sell their goods from below their own living quarters on the first and second floors.

The wars in Europe led to ransacking by French corsairs of Baracoa, Cuba’s oldest city, in 1546, and Havana, which was burnt to the ground in 1555. In the second half of the 16th century Philip II of Spain left a lasting mark on Havana. The Castillo de la Real Fuerza was commissioned

SOLARES

2

TENEMENT BLOCK

3 EXAMPLE OF THE MASSING HOUSING CARRIED OUT BY 'MICROBRIGADES' IN THE 1970S

4 A RURAL BOHIO NEAR BARACOA

5 16TH CENTURY HOUSE IN VIEJA. THE CUARTO ESQUINERO WAS THE FIRST UPWARD DEVELOPMENT OF COLONIAL HOUSES

in 1561, projecting the Spanish power in the New World and beginning the defences for Havana Bay. Havana became the island’s capital in 1607, with dramatic results for the once prosperous Santiago de Cuba.

The island’s economy improved with the introduction of larger scale production of sugar cane and tobacco. This gave rise to the architecture that dominated the rural landscape for the next three centuries.

The British continued to harass the ports and harbours of Cuba into the 18th century. Their presence was short lived, but the changes made during Britain’s short occupancy had lasting impact; trade was officially opened up for the first time and foreign commerce poured in. The basis for American economic ties were laid.

The brief sojourn by the British stirred Spain, once again, into reforms, developing Plaza de Armas into the first civil square in 1773. The porticoes, which later became commonplace across the country, were introduced for the first time, offering respite from the glaring sun. The first roads outside Havana’s city walls were laid out, including Paseo del Prado. Buildings that defined the Cuban Baroque style were commissioned: the Palacio del Segundo Cabo and the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales are the finest examples of Cuban Baroque, characterised by sober linear designs and simple façades with NeoClassical cubic proportions that are also evident in the equally splendid Havana Cathedral.

In 1791 the impact of the slaves’ rebellion in Saint Domingue, Haiti, heralded a major cultural moment in Cuban history. The influx of French landowners and workers brought with them the culture, architecture, 6

agricultural expertise and experience of foreign trade to drive Cuba forward, transforming Cuba from a country of small towns to one of large, semi-industrial sugar and coffee plantations, using huge numbers of slaves.

The French ideology manifested itself in the agriculture of the cafetales (coffee plantations) around Santiago de Cuba and in the architecture of Cienfuegos. The NeoClassical style, subsequently developed and distorted over the ensuing years, was introduced by Etienne Sulpice. Plans were made for the expansion of the capital beyond its city walls. New calzadas were planned and built in the Neo-Classical style following existing routes such as the Zanja Real. The stylistic developments of colonnades offered protection for merchants selling their wares from below their casa almacén creating a distinct streetscape.

The 19th century was the most prosperous in Cuba’s history. The decentralisation between Spain and Cuba began and some of the most important urban and architectural changes occurred, with the building of new jails and courts, social improvements such as a sewage system, as well as new markets, theatres, promenades and gardens. The Cuban Count of Villanueva carried out a set of parallel plans of public works that included the introduction of the railroad in 1837. In ordering the construction of the Fountain of Nobel Havana he put his own stamp on the vistas of Havana.

6 HAVANA'S PASEO DEL PRADO

7 PALAZIO DEL SEGUNDO CABO AND 8 HAVANA CATHEDRAL ARE FINE EXAMPLES OF CUBAN BAROQUE

The metamorphosis of Colonial architecture

The early colonial houses were mainly earth and mud constructions overlaid with plaster, but stone was used more widely in the 17th century. Insecurity during the first 300 years led to houses focusing inwards on the patio space allowing greater ventilation and light to penetrate the houses. The traditions of the mudéjar (the Moorish style of architecture which was prevalent due to significant immigration from Andalusia) began to be adapted for the local conditions. Roofs developed externally with the characteristic tejaroz, a terracotta cornice with Moorish traditions and internally with the timber techos de alfarjes, ornately carved timber roof beams. Some of the finest mudéjar examples can be found at Casa de Diego Velázquez in Santiago de Cuba. Its influence also spread with the development of the balcony that began to appear on façades as these insecurities faded – well illustrated in the Casa de Francisco de Basaba in Vieja (1728 / 1841).

Ornamentation was limited to doors and windows which became progressively larger and by the 19th century often extended from floor to ceiling. This was in turn reflected in the increasing height of rooms, adapting further to climatic necessities. The zaguán had been evolving from the late 17th century, getting wider to allow for the developments in transport. It was first seen in Casa Obra Pía. The barrotes and persiennes, the grills and louvres on windows and doors developed to adapt to current stylistic trends and the increased need for security. With this came further developments of the deep, rich chiaroscuro decoration around doors and windows, the contrast of the simple flat walls further emphasising this decoration. The mediopuntos began as timber fanlights above doors and

windows to aid ventilation. As the centuries progressed these were adapted to incorporate coloured glass.

Ideas of independence grew throughout the 19th century resulting in the Wars of Independence and large-scale destruction to provincial cities. The destruction of the ingenios (sugar mills), haciendas and any property that aided the Spanish economy left Cuba at one of its lowest economic ebbs. In Bayamo, patriotic citizens chose to burn their city to the ground rather than let it be retaken by the Spanish.

Despite America’s view of Cuba as generally unruly and lazy, the island was still viewed as desirable by its powerful neighbour. American presence had been slowly growing, with increasingly American characteristics in town planning. In 1898 the USS Maine exploded and sank while anchored in Havana harbour, with the loss of 258 American soldiers giving the US an excuse to declare war on Spain. Within a few weeks American intervention

had achieved the decoupling from Spain for which the Cubans had been fighting for 30 years. The countryside lay in ruins, the economy in tatters. The Spanish Colony had become an American Neo-colony.

American intervention and the birth of the Cuban Republic

Cuba was tied to its near neighbours for the next 56 years. The US ‘liberation’ of the island only strengthened social divisions, reflected in the architecture which included sprawling suburbanisation. The Americans developed urban real estate, but at a cost to the rural communities, which became the workshops and warehouses for the foreign power.

9 DETAIL OF THE CASA DE DIEGO VELAZQUEZ, BUILT IN 1522. A GOOD EXAMPLE OF MUDEJAR ARCHITECTURE

10 ENTRANCE TO CASA OBRAPIA, IMPORTED FROM CADIZ

11 AND 12 MEDIOPUNTOS BEGAN AS TIMBER FANLIGHTS TO AID VENTILATION AND WERE GRADUALLY ADAPTED TO INCORPORATE COLOURED GLASS

Work on the famous Malecón in Havana began in 1901, now a monument to ‘romantic decay’ but so nearly wrecked in the 1950s plans.

In the first two decades of the 20th century, Cuba saw the rise of Art Nouveau, and later Art Deco. The geometric designs were often simplified from their European counterparts. In the 1940s those Spaniards that remained tried to reassert their presence, building refined and elegant buildings that harked back to their former glories in the areas of the old city walls, as seen in the Asociación de Dependientes del Comercio. However, following the collapse of the economy at the end of World War I their influence finally waned. The government also used this interlude of prosperity to construct monuments within the existing built fabric; the impressive Neo-Classical

Capitolio – inspired by its counterpart in Washington and adapted by Cuban architects – adorns the Parque Central in Havana. The new Presidential Palace was constructed in an Eclectic style and decorated by Tiffany’s of New York.

The 20th century witnessed the highest volume of building in Cuba’s history, and with it the remains of the Spanish colony were left behind and forgotten. Old Havana fell into disrepair. The Vedado district (now the city’s central business district) began to develop; a 100-square-metre grid of 400 blocks to the area west of Central Havana fitting into the older urban fabric of calzadas (avenues). With 16-metre wide roads and parterres this is seen as some of the best colonial planning. The broad grid allowed the random insertion of single

13 THE MALECON IS A BROAD ESPLANADE, ROADWAY AND SEAWALL THAT STRETCHES FOR 8 KM ALONG HAVANA'S COAST

houses in an eclectic variety of styles, as land was bought and developed thus avoiding the destructive process that was happening in parts of the historic centre.

Little was done to help the housing stock of the poor. The solares inhabited by the poor received only minimal aid to repair the decaying structures around them.

During the American occupation (1898-1902) much needed improvements were made to the built environment. Railways and roads were extended and companies like the Hershey Company did much to improve the infrastructure around its investments. Tiles and cement were introduced and had a detrimental effect on the stylistic consistency achieved by the Spanish.

A ‘true’ Cuban Republic

The economic crisis of 1920 saw sugar prices slump, however by World War II Cuba was once again enjoying a construction boom. Grand state projects were used to occupy large quantities of unemployed; the Capitolio and the construction of the Carraterra Central (Central Highway) were two such examples. In November 1939, elections were held for the Assembly and the Constitution of 1940 was subsequently introduced. Its progressive social-democratic content contained for the first time articles on urban planning and construction on a local and regional scale and gave provision for low cost housing and industry.

However, as in 1910, public commissions once again missed the neediest. The quantity and quality of the low-income housing progressively got worse. Vedado’s boom began to slow and speculation developed on land

west of the Almendares River in the area that is now Miramar. Much like Vista Alegre in Santiago de Cuba, Miramar developed a Neo-Classical style interspersed with some modern additions. These areas were set back further from the roads than in Vedado allowing more green space. However, these developments encouraged the sprawl of single-family residents, straining the city’s transport routes and diluting the polycentric nature of both cities. These houses often lacked the quality of those constructed 100 years before and many were stylistically transplanted from Europe or America, built mainly by American contractors. Vedado was developing a more complex social structure as the poor moved into low quality buildings hidden behind mass-produced concrete capitals and ornamentation.

14 THE CAPITOLIO IS SIMILAR IN FORM TO ITS COUNTERPART IN WASHINGTON DC

American architects bullied fashion and by the 1930s the influence of a ‘universal style’ such as the Hotel National by McKim, Mead & White was replacing more sensitive American developments. These included the regional classicism of Bertram Goodhue’s Santísima Trinidad Episcopal church, and sensitively designed Art Deco buildings such as the Bacardi Building, which exemplified the high quality of construction that was being achieved in many buildings at the time.

The homogeneity of the streetscape continued to decline and the demand for private property overtook communal developments. The architectural language of distinct areas began to change; the colonial houses that had slowly evolved were left to rot whilst, infilling around them, the government commissioned Modern and Art Deco buildings in the historic core. The insertion of an American-style financial centre within the confines of the old city further damaged this fabric.

Insensitive developments continued through the 1950s.

The Santo Domingo Convent was replaced by a banal office development and a car park was built below the formerly splendid Plaza Vieja. Cubans increasingly believed that the American city was the paradigm of progress. Little regard was being given to the surrounding environment. There were efforts to improve the conditions in the city; under French landscape architect Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier the Havana Extension and Embellishment project (1926-1928) was proposed, including connecting the city with a series of ‘diagonals and rounds’ using tree lined avenues and parks to improve the ecology, but land speculation made development difficult and little was realised.

A dictator: Fulgencio Batista

The final years of the Republic brought new levels of corruption and decadence, under the influence of dictator Fulgencio Batista and the American mafia. Monumentality in planning and construction reflected International Modernist influences.

Batista was at the forefront of Cuban politics for 25 years before his eventual downfall during Fidel Castro’s revolution. Batista’s ongoing suppression saw the closure of those bodies that challenged him. Arquitectos Unidos, a Cuban architectural practice and forum for debate, was closed in 1955.

The mob leader Meyer Lansky lived by the motto ‘too much is never enough’. The Hotel Havana Riviera with its staircase leading to nowhere and its opulent decoration is but one example of the decadence that the mafia encouraged. Tourism increased leaving an indelible print on Cuba’s architecture. New modernist cinemas, hotels and offices along La Rampa exemplify the range in quality of designs and construction. The intrusion of nondescript hotels along the white sands of Varadero destroyed the tranquillity of the timber and local stone summer residences. Large decadent casinos were introduced. By the 1950s corruption was entrenched amongst developers, often bypassing architects who merely signed the necessary documents.

During the 1950s the International style and the efforts to simplify the ideas of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright began to develop. Modernism took over and the new graduates of the University of Havana, including

Ricardo Porro, were encouraged to reject links to history, infamously burning Vignola’s books.

Leading world figures visited, built and advised across the country. Walter Gropius visited in 1945; Richard Neutra built amongst other projects Casa Schulthess and Mies van der Rohe had drawings on the board for the Bacardi Headquarters in Santiago de Cuba when the revolution swept Cuba and altered the architectural language once again. A property act was passed which allowed developers to ignore the laws that had given Vedado much of its coherence and allowed a series of high-rises to spring up indiscriminately. The 35 storeys of La Focsa, the Havana Hilton and the Retiro Odontológico towered high above the Havana skyline, but with little coherence.

The progression of modern styles had increasingly ignored the essential ‘three P’ details of patios, porticos and persiennes that so successfully adapted buildings to the adverse climate. The architectural image of Colonial Cuba was developing into a complex mix of styles, often losing Cuban identity.

During this time there was a movement to rediscover Cubanidad – the essence of Cuba. The Creole culture, first introduced with slave imports, had had little influence on the built environment. However, the concept of ‘Creolisation’ was beginning to be explored in the early 20th century. The three P’s exemplified adaptation to the individual nature of the island but machismo and guajiro (sensuality) were also important factors.

Ricardo Porro, although a supporter of modernism, viewed much of Vedado’s developments as ‘cocacolonialismo’

and sought a more regionalist architectural legacy, an ‘Arquitectura Criolla’ as a way of halting the aesthetic deterioration which resulted from the confusion of styles. At the same time there were experimental projects which considered the nature of Cubanidad alongside Modernist ideology and created much of the richness of 1950s architecture. Eugenio Batista at Casa Falla Bonet made reference to colonial precedents, rendering them in a modern context. Frank Martinéz at Casa Pérez Farfante referenced Le Corbusier, incorporating louvres and glass into the reinforced concrete structure on pilotis, to create a soaring central space encouraging cross ventilation. The organic influence of Frank Lloyd Wright was seen in Porro’s Casa Villegas; a more personal expression was developed later in his work on the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Schools of Art).

15 THE REGIONAL CLASSICISM OF SANTISIMA TRINIDAD EPISCOPAL CHURCH BY US ARCHITECT BERTRAM GOODHUE

16 THE INSERTION OF AN AMERICAN-STYLE FINANCIAL CENTRE WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE OLD CITY FURTHER DAMAGED THE CITY'S FABRIC. THE LONJA DEL COMERCIO (1909) IS ONE OF THE MORE SENSITIVE EXAMPLES

In the 1950s masterplans were proposed to develop and update Havana. The construction of the tunnel linking El Morro to Vieja in 1958 opened up access to undeveloped land to the east. Land speculation increased and with it uncertainty. The so-called Pilot plan put forward by José Luis Sert, President of The International Congress of Modern Architecture, only increased the detrimental effects of this speculation. Proposals included creating an artificial island across the Malecón housing casinos and hotels which would have only fuelled further land speculation and driven elevated rents higher. Sert’s design was a prosaic distortion of Le Corbusier’s Cité des Affaires in Buenos Aires proposing that the only way to stave off decay in the area was to return focus to the riverfront with an artificial island and five skyscrapers. Other proposals were to transform the historic core of Vieja that would

have clashed with the traditional framework. Once again it was the energy injected by the arrival of the revolution that halted Sert’s plans.

By the end of the Republic, Cuba, and Havana in particular, displayed huge disparity and contradictions. The older building stock had lapsed into a poor state of repair which contributed as much to the present notion of decay as the following 50 years of socialism. Suburbanisation and sprawl continued without the mandate of a masterplan. Peri-urban standards declined and shanties that sprung up were prone to flooding, had poor access and were near to noxious facilities. Meanwhile the Malecón and Quinta Avenida in Miramar became wealthy attractive enclaves leaving Vieja and Centro to deteriorate. The urban/rural divide between centre and

17 HAVANA SKYLINE INCLUDING THE HOTEL HABANA LIBRE BUILDING. ADOBE STOCK IMAGE

periphery had steadily widened during the Republic and was one of the first tasks for the socialist government to address. The economic ties to the Americans had reached disproportionate levels. The dependence on a single crop had long since passed a sustainable level and would continue to cripple the economy for another 40 years. The American presence had had a greater effect on the island’s architecture than anything else in the previous 400 years. Nonetheless, there was evidence of successful integration of new International Modernist ideas with Cuban nuances.

Revolutionary Cuba

The arrival of the revolution halted the uncontrolled American developments and injected new enthusiasm and a utopian vision. One of the architects for the National

Schools of Arts (the Schools), Ricardo Porro, described the situation saying, ‘I was in love with the revolution and it was this emotional response that prompted a new direction in my architecture.’

The architecture of the Schools represents the best of Cuba’s revolutionary architecture. The search for Cubanidad that had started during the Republic was given new validity. Porro was able to realise his two architectural ideals; that it should have social merit and embody Cuban tradition.

The architects of the Schools design, a collaboration between Roberto Gottardi, Vittorio Garatti and Porro, shared a common aim to reflect the history, politics and reformation of architecture – the essence Cuban architects strove for when seeking Cubanidad. Education

18 SCHOOL OF PLASTIC ARTS BY RICARDO PORRO

was at the heart of socialist revolutionary fervour and the surviving young generation of architects rose to the challenge. The revolution forced the emigration of a generation of prospering architects that was to have farreaching implications.

From 1961, the architects had to find alternative materials owing to the lack of reinforced concrete that had driven the architecture of the Republic; brick and tiles were chosen. The choice of bóveda catalana (Catalan vault construction) meant that the versatility of form so important to these architects could be realised. The architects explored the ideas of Cubanidad in a rich diversity of forms abandoning the strict rigours of history yet retaining the essential lessons learnt in design adaptation.

Porro’s Modern Dance School, conceived in the ‘romantic’ stage of the revolution in the early 1960s realises the emotional expression of national identity. His Plastic Arts School explored the multicultural heritage of a hybrid Cuban baroque and the more matriarchal African culture, thus a village type plan uses the sensual forms of domes and fountains, developing the idea of patio spaces and cross ventilation. The School of Ballet, by Vittorio Garatti, addressed more obvious historical precedents in a modern setting; the brick persiennes and high mediopuntos characteristic of Colonial construction in Trinidad allowed the flow of air and dappled light to filter in.

country. Without a clear programme, or directors for certain buildings, progress was slow. They have remained in the same unfinished state since their inauguration in July 1965. The ensuing decay, a result of its abandonment and underuse, encapsulates further the ‘romantic decay’ of Cuba. The ‘Tikal of Cuba’, ruins of past glories, memorials to the passions invoked by the revolution, stands in the wilds of the once opulent Country Club. The Music School and School of Modern Dance are still functional, and children walk across the long grass between them, but the remaining three Schools are hidden among the vegetation that now covers these exciting designs.

The revolution ended land speculation and with it the damaging profiteering and disruptive developments; rents were reduced and more concrete prefabricated housing was proposed for the working classes. The results have blighted outskirts of major cities and rural settlements created after the revolution. The strengthening of relations with the USSR saw a domination of techniques and ideas similar to that which the US had had only 10 years earlier. Nikita Khrushchev encouraged Cuba to develop mass production and standardisation in the second half of the 1960s and into the 1970s. The prefabrication movement in Cuba received its major kick-start in the wake of the destructive Hurricane Flora in 1963 when the USSR gave Santiago de Cuba a ‘Gran Panel’ prefabrication plant.

The Schools conception was far from smooth; the October Crisis in 1962 and the ensuing embargo made construction harder as labour was diverted to defend the

The government undertook many of these new housing projects using the existing labour force which was organised into microbrigades of 33 people. These people would come from the same workplace, would be supplied with materials from the government and be supervised

by a project leader from the Ministry of Construction who dictated locations for developments. Lack of skills, due to the exodus of trained architects, and poor craft construction meant that the final quality often fell far below expected levels. After completion the houses were distributed by and to the worker collective based on labour, social merits and needs.

130,000 of these houses were completed in Alamar as part of The Development of Social and Agricultural Buildings (DESA). Other such examples include the developments of José Martí district in Santiago de Cuba, San Agustín in Havana and the houses of rural settlements such as Arroyo Blanco in Sancti Spíritus province. The projects exemplify the functional decay expressed by Alvaro Siza. All are symptomatic of bad planning; units are arranged without reference to the landscape or the wider built environment. There is no firm architectural concept and a lack of correct detailing; as a result there are areas of high humidity, thermal bridging and material deterioration. The individual blocks have no relation to those around them, are badly proportioned, insulated and sealed to the corrosive elements. Many have taken on Colonial house elements, but a lack of understanding of the original principles has seen unsuitable distortions. The intended green spaces have deteriorated into a ‘no-man’s land’. Services have been located in isolated buildings with few social spaces. These settlements have become ‘bedroom communities’ due to the lack of industry that could have transformed these conceptually good ideas into civic centres. The final results are far removed from the potential of what effective socialism could have produced.

The Schools and the Alamar housing show the ability of the revolution to produce some of the best and worst developments of Cuban architecture. Whilst both strengthen the notion of ‘romantic decay’ in different ways - the Schools adds to the romance of a lost past and Alamar strengthens the notions of perceived hardships -the resulting decay was the result of, in the case of the Schools, unstable developments within a complex socialist environment particular to the time and, in the case of the housing, of the poor realisation of a foreign induced scheme.

The distinctions between each period of Cuba’s architectural history can be directly linked to the energy that was injected into the island at the intersection between each era. By 1868, before the Wars of Independence, Cuba was prosperously placed with a rich and homogeneous development of Cuban Baroque and locally adapted Neo-Classicism. During the Republic, distancing from historical precedents saw the introduction of a variety of new types and styles of building that have strongly contributed to the ‘romantic decay’ seen today. As the Republic developed and Cuba became increasingly tied to the US, the island’s development began to lose the sense of Cubanidad; a tendency mirrored in other Modernist developments around the world. The political struggles of the revolution gave Cuba a pride in its independence and the early developments of The Schools saw the resulting exuberance displayed.

What would Havana have looked like today had it not been for the intervention of the revolution? There would have been an influx of international architectural work. The balance engendered by the search for Cubanidad would have languished. It is possible that much of the cultural heritage would have been lost, and that continued development would have led to ‘Miamization’ creating yet another American-influenced shoreline development such as San Juan in Puerto Rico.

Sert’s ‘Pilot Plan’ would have had huge implications. Without the revolution the scale of Havana would have been almost double the present size as development bypassed provincial towns. There would have been strips

of modernist glass-wrapped structures, high rise luxury hotels and steel towers. The suburban sprawl that had begun at the start of the century would have continued. Polarisation between the rich developments of malls, large supermarkets and private schools on the one hand and the poor shanties along the side of highways would have been exacerbated. Sert’s plans for Vieja would have radically altered its shape and function; the Malecón would have lost its unity and distinct identity.

Cuba stands on a new threshold. Its institutions will have to be prepared for the new consumer society that will surely emerge as the tension of the last 50 years is released. A vital part of the transition will be the degree to which the essence of Cubanidad that has enchanted the tourist and architect alike for the last 100 years is retained. Efforts are being made to establish zoning laws and to realise the value of the built heritage which must be retained despite the need for more accommodation.

The Office of the City Historian has been working hard with UNESCO. Universities in America and workshops and charrettes in Cuba have all been seeking methods to avoid the potential pitfalls of the 1950s ‘Pilot Plan’ and those errors realised by Eastern European socialist states after 1989. The transition to a socialist variant of capitalism has begun and already the dangers have become apparent. However, there is an opportunity for developers to use the negative dilapidation and material shortages that have arrested past constructions to positive effects; the development of the bicycle culture and the shortage of cars and the highly educated workforce developed by the Socialist government could set Havana on the path towards becoming a major green city.

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HUMAN FIGURE IN SICILY’S BAROQUE ARCHITECTURE

SICILY

Chiara Hall

CHIARA HALL

Chiara heard about the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship when working at Ushida Findlay Architects in 2013. The theme for that year, ‘Interpretations of Classicism’, prompted her to think about Greek antiquity and the importance of the human figure in creating balance, proportion and symmetry in architecture.

The dramatic Baroque stone carvings in human form that she’d seen during a previous trip to Sicily, a significant location in the ancient Greek world, were an important aspect of the island’s distinctive Baroque architecture that she wanted to investigate.

Chiara studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. She has worked for various architectural practices in London and currently works on the Heritage and Culture Team for Building Design Partnership (BDP).

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

Armed with my camera and numerous sketch pads I travelled across Greek-influenced Sicily in search of the human figure in the island’s architecture. I focused my attention firstly on the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, to visit the earliest surviving examples of atlantes (structural columns in the form of the male body). I then travelled to the ancient settlements at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Val di Noto in the south east of the island which experienced an intense period of reconstruction following a devastating earthquake in 1693, and led to the birth of the Sicilian Baroque.

freedom and fantasy in its carved decorations but was often provincial and naïve. As an island, Sicily was cut off from major architectural movements until after the Renaissance so, unlike the rest of Europe, ideas were not directly transferred.

Sicily’s architectural evolution

Sicily (Sikelia) was colonised by Corinthians from the Greek mainland, who brought their dialects and religious traditions to its shore in the late 8th century BC. Greek culture became absorbed into the Roman culture following colonisation and later by the Byzantines, Ostrogoths, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufen, Angevins, Aragonese and Spanish. The architectural style evolved from this native, hybrid architecture, which exhibited

Following the 1693 earthquake, which destroyed much of south-eastern Sicily, there was a great opportunity for regeneration. Architects, engineers, builders and stonemasons set to work rebuilding the towns, many on new sites with rational urban plans, in a particular style known as the Sicilian Baroque. This was introduced by Sicilian architects who had been trained on the mainland and influenced by Roman architects. Those who had not been to the mainland picked up ideas from the works of those who were Roman-trained and by studying books of engravings, though the Roman Baroque style remained alien to some extent. A unique architecture thus developed in Sicily, which is highly decorative, and flamboyant, and includes dramatic effects of light and shadow. The architecture, which features the human form front and centre, reflects local culture, superstitions, everyday life and the island’s links to ancient Greece, and contrasts with the grandiose Baroque architecture of mainland Italy.

Sicilian Baroque dates from the end of the 17th century up to the last quarter of the 18th century. It was then gradually replaced by neoclassicism.

Agrigento – in search of the earliest surviving examples of atlantes in the Valley of the Temples

The use of the figure in architecture can be traced back to classical antiquity where caryatids, supports sculpted in the form of women, were used in place of columns as early as 550-530 BC on the Siphnian Treasury of Delphi, and on the Erechtheion of the Acropolis in Athens. The use of atlantes, supports taking the place of a column, pier or pilaster sculpted in the form of men, originated at the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, Sicily.

The Greek term ‘karyatides’ means ‘maidens of Karyae’ (an ancient town of the Peloponnese region of Greece). This is believed to originate from the treatise De Architectura, written in the first century BC by the Roman architect Vitruvius, who described the figures as representations of women condemned to slavery after betraying Athens in the Greco-Persian wars. His descriptions of caryatids and atlantes led to their inclusion in Renaissance architecture. Vitruvius also described the ideal proportions and

symmetry of the human body, which later became central to Renaissance ideas and were applied not only in art but also in the design of buildings.

Although caryatids had actually been used as supports earlier than this, in Greece and Phoenicia, the association with slavery persists. Caryatids were embodiments of ideal feminine beauty; the male counterpart (the atlas or Roman ‘telamon’) came later. In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan forced to carry the world on his shoulders for eternity.

I arrived in Agrigento, a hilltop city on Sicily’s southwest shore, by coach, driving through wild, ochre hills in the shadow of Mount Etna. The landscape was studded with olive and almond trees, eucalyptus, palm, pine and prickly pears with little pink flowers. A warm evening soon developed into a huge thunderstorm, lightning flashes illuminating the night sky.

3 AND 4 FALLEN FIGURE OF A TELEMON, VALLEY OF THE TEMPLES, AGRIGENTO

THREE TELAMON HEADS, AGRIGENTO ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM

The next day the local bus dropped me off right in front of the Valley of the Temples, amongst the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the largest Doric temple in existence, the size of a football pitch. Here I saw the earliest surviving examples of atlantes. Colossal sevenand-a-half-metre stone giants, with bent heads and necks designed to support the weight of the structure above, lay on the ground. The huge size of the figures is said to demonstrate triumph in battle, and prefigures the Sicilian Baroque tendency towards extravagance.

I spent a full day wandering around the archaeological landscape walking up the hill in the searing heat and progressing from one Doric temple to another, ending with the Temple of Juno in a dominant position overlooking the sea; sturdy and supportive Doric columns, reddened by fire from Carthaginian invasion.

I spent the next day in the local archaeological museum and library, collecting historical information, and visiting the reconstructed upright figure of a telamon (7.61 metres) from the Temple of Zeus and three large telamon heads.

Returning to the Valley of the Temples, as the sun set over the sea and the ruins glowed a warm, orange-golden colour, the recumbent statues surrounded by cacti and tall spindly agave plants took on a surreal quality as the light changed and the site resembled a stage set.

I saw much more than I had expected in Agrigento, visiting Baroque palaces, as well as the Valley of the Temples. Cutting through narrow steep alleyways I chanced upon golden limestone churches from the 17th century and palazzi with carved ornate balconies, temptingly tactile and fragile; a few were so eroded they looked more like sponge.

After the 1693 earthquake architects, engineers, builders, and stonemasons set to work rebuilding towns in the Val di Noto, many on new sites, with rational urban plans. The replacement buildings were modest. However, the carved decorative relief on external balconies and portals had an impact on the façades and brought them to life.

The theatrical language of the architecture is most pronounced in the numerous sculpted forms supporting balcony brackets and the early surviving examples of atlantes. The carvings which support the balconies include depictions of mythological figures, caricatures and grotesques shaped from limestone and volcanic rock. Made by anonymous local stonemasons, who drew their inspiration from Greek theatre resulting in expressive, flamboyant architectural forms, these unusual sculptures emphasised the power of the local aristocracy who had grown wealthy from the agricultural economy. Traditionally such sculptures were intended to ward off evil spirits and would have impressed the superstitious population.

Of the many cultures that have historically impacted Sicily, Greek has remained the strongest especially its theatre. This is best seen in Sicily’s grand palazzi, the large residences or public buildings, where rich Baroque balconies resemble stage sets, providing a privileged elevated position from which to view the street and piazza.

The balconies were often designed with wrought iron ‘goose-breasted’ railings to accommodate voluminous skirts worn by the ladies. The sculpted human figures supporting them were frequently combined with mascheroni or masks, some bespectacled or blindfolded and sometimes with tongues sticking out, like the masks seen in Greek theatre. These are further animated by the chiaroscuro effects on the façades.

The ‘grotesque’ (very ugly or comically distorted figure or image) element in Sicilian Baroque architecture, incorporating monsters on the façades of buildings, can also be traced to ancient Greece where representations of Gorgons, mythical female creatures, were used as devices to avert evil. The various human forms portrayed in Sicilian Baroque carvings were made to surprise, mock, or even frighten the passer-by. It’s possible they were sometimes designed to compete for attention with neighbouring examples.

7 DET AIL FROM THE BALCONY OF THE ‘HANDSOME KNIGHT’ OF PALAZZO LA ROCCA, RAGUSA

8 THE BALCONY OF THE ‘HANDSOME KNIGHT’ OF PALAZZO LA ROCCA, RAGUSA

9 VARIOUS MASKS WITH DIFFERENT EXPRESSIONS ON THE PALAZZO CARUSO IN THE TOWN OF PALAZZOLO ACREIDE

Catania

It was a quick but wet journey from the Central Railway Station in Catania to my accommodation but it was enough to get a flavour of the place. I passed grand but dirty palazzi on one side and a stormy sea on the other; Mount Etna looms large over this dark city.

Catania was built out of lava following a volcanic eruption in 1669 and the earthquake in 1693. Local architects used pale limestone to contrast with the dark lava, generating a play of light and dark; walls are shades of grey and some are painted pink, green, burgundy, or blue.

The original structure of Catania’s 16th century Benedictine Monastery was modified after the 1669

volcanic eruption but remained protected by the flow of lava although the topography of the surrounding land changed completely. Some parts of the monastery were destroyed but rebuilt in 1702 by craftsmen from several local towns, including Palermo, Messina, and Siracusa, to designs by Sicilian architects.

10 DETAIL FAÇADE OF THE MONASTERO DEI BENEDETTINI SAN NICOLÓ L’ARENA, CATANIA

11 GROTESQUE BALCONY SUPPORTS OF THE MONASTERO DEI BENEDETTINI

12 PALAZZO MODÓ (PREVIOUSLY ELDORADO THEATRE), ACIREALE. IT HAS TWO BALCONIES SUPPORTED BY CORBELS IN THE SHAPE OF MONSTROUS FIGURES

13 PUTTI AND MASKS SUPPORT THE BALCONIES OF PALAZZO ZACCO, INCLUDING THIS REPRESENTATION OF THE SIREN

Acireale

It was another very wet day when I visited Acireale, which was deserted. I stopped intermittently to shelter beneath trees, church portals and in cafés. Some very strange and unusual carved sculptures, similar to cartoon characters, supported the balconies here. On my return, the train went past the ‘Riviera of the Cyclops’ – an area associated with an episode from Homer’s Odyssey. Located in Acireale, at the beginning of Via Davi and slightly set back, is the Palazzo Modó, which has preserved the name of the old Eldorado Theatre located here from 1909 until 1914. It has two balconies, supported by corbels in the shape of monstrous figures.

Ragusa

I first saw Ragusa at night, clustered like a jewel on a hilltop, with its baroque cathedral (Duomo di San Giorgio) illuminated and surrounded by dark deep

valleys and limestone hills. When the town was rebuilt following the earthquake two socially distinct areas evolved; Ragusa Superiore (Upper Town) elevated above the original town, built by wealthier aristocratic citizens, and Ragusa Ibla – the lower, older town situated on a ridge at the bottom of a deep ravine, built by the rest of the population.

Palm trees line the steep scenographic main square of Ragusa, evoking a taste of Africa. A long flight of steps leads up to the town’s sublime, and seemingly levitating, cathedral. Some of the buildings host the most original and bizarre grotesques I had yet seen: startling bespectacled and blindfolded faces hold scorpions and rats between missing teeth; knowing faces tease and mock; seductive sirens (with scaly fish tails) distract; sweet cherubs embrace; imaginary musical notes emanate from musicians with flutes and guitars; and a lonely dark figure, with a wrinkled forehead and outstretched hands, supports a balcony.

Each palazzo is adorned with an elaborately sculpted family emblem.

Palazzo Zacco (c.1750) was constructed as the townhouse for Baron Melfi di San Antonio; it was later bought by the Zacco family who renamed it after themselves, as was the tradition of the time. Today the palazzo is an Italian national monument. It is located in Ragusa Superiore, and is most notable for its Sicilian Baroque carvings which decorate the façades. Putti and masks support the external balconies on two of its symmetrical elevations and include the representation of a mermaid with two twisted tails holding a fish in each hand.

On either side of the portal are sculpted corbels of musicians, grotesque faces, and anthropomorphic figures. One musician plays the maracas and a disturbing mask beneath sneers at passers-by. The flamboyant and exaggerated architecture has a theatrical quality, especially when illuminated at night.

Palazzo Bertini was built in the late 18th century by don Salvatore Floridia along one of the axes of the urban plan of the new town of Ragusa, and later bought by the Bertini family. Originally the balconies on the first floor were entrances at street level. The building is well known for its keystones in the form of three disturbing masks known as the ‘Three Powerful Ones’. The first is the head of a deformed, ragged beggar with a big nose and his tongue hanging out, symbolising the power of having

14 P ALAZZO ZACCO, RAGUSA: THE BALCONY OF THE MUSICIANS

15 P ALAZZO BERTINI, RAGUSA

nothing to lose. The central head is of an aristocratic Sicilian with a feathered hat, representing a feudal ruler and the third head is of an Oriental merchant depicted with a turban, large moustache and a pearl earring, representing the power of commerce.

Palazzo Cosentini, located in the old district of Ragusa, was built by Baron Raffaele Cosentini and his son Giuseppe, and is an elegant, three-storey building with four balconies situated along one of the axes of the urban plan of the new town of Ragusa.

The side balcony has five corbels with grotesque masks holding in their mouths creatures including a snake, scorpion, and gecko which surely have symbolic significance. The faces are surmounted with many allegorical figures that attract the attention of passers-by. The sculptures were made by anonymous stonemasons who had a deep understanding of the plasticity of the stone and who drew inspiration from the everyday life around them.

16 THREE MASKS ON PALAZZO BERTINI, RAGUSA, KNOWN AS THE ‘THREE POWERFUL ONES’.

L-R THE BEGGAR, THE ARISTOCRAT AND THE MERCHANT

17 P ALAZZO COSENTINI, RAGUSA: THE BALCONY OF THE BACKBITERS

The main façade has three balconies. The first, the balcony of the storytellers, has a group of street artists holding musical instruments including flutes, mandolin and drum. The second, the balcony of wellbeing, has figures holding cornucopias, alluding to abundance and wealth. The third, the balcony of the gentlemen, shows a series of everyday characters; a man with a flask on his shoulder, a flute player, a man of power, a street performer and a female figure offering her nude breasts.

Palazzo La Rocca was built by Baron la Rocca who lived there between 1760 and 1780. The façade has seven balconies held up by anthropomorphic figures which show scenes of life. A ‘telamon’ figure frowns as if indicating the effort required to support the balcony above and recalls the atlantes at the Temple of Zeus in Agrigento.

Scicli

As the sun beat down in Scicli it illuminated the church of San Bartolomeo, which, from a distance, rose like a flame in front of a rocky backdrop. Warm, white painted buildings exposed elaborate yellow limestone cornices around doors and windows, and balconies of winged horses and griffins leapt out from the facade.

18 THE BALCONY OF THE ‘TELAMON’, PALAZZO LA ROCCA THE SCULPTED FORMS OF PALAZZO BENEVENTANO HAVE UNUSUAL OPEN-MOUTHED HUMAN CARICATURES TWISTING WITH AN ALMOST SAVAGE AGGRESSION

The Palazzo Spadaro belonged to the Spadaro family who moved from Modica to Scicli. The rich interior contains stuccoed ceilings and frescoes with mythological and allegorical themes and the exterior includes grotesque figures holding fruit and a balcony where two female corbels are crowned with flowers and acanthus leaves. Its rear façade is not as grand as the front and may have been used as the servants’ entrance. It has two balconies with convex and concave grilles. Corbels have grotesque masks. Figures with flowing hair hold fruit to their mouths beside a rooster. An old man holds an animal, possibly a dog, between his knees.

19 PALAZZO SPADARO, SCICLI

In Noto the first thing that struck me was the golden colour of the local limestone which seemed to absorb the sun’s rays and provide a striking contrast with the bright blue sky. Following the earthquake, Noto was rebuilt at some distance from the ruins of the original town. Constructed on a grid, the main road runs eastwest providing long vistas with a scenographic quality. At various points off the road are piazzas, wide sets of steps to churches, radial landscaping and curved hedges.

The opulent building of the Palazzo Nicolaci di Villadorata, probably designed by architect Paolo Labisi, was begun in 1737 for the aristocrat Giacomo Nicolaci. Six richly carved corbelled balconies are decorated with fantastical cherubs, horses, mermaids, lions and grotesque figures, all exchanging glances with the passers-by.

The Nicolaci were an affluent family whose wealth originated in the tuna processing industry in nearby Marazemi. They ascended to the local aristocracy following the earthquake, which was survived by only nine of the nineteen aristocratic families, and exercised much influence over political affairs. The richly carved and imaginative Balcony of the Mermaids symbolises the role of the sea in the family’s fortune. Each of the figures is slightly different as they would have been worked on by a team of sculptors.

Among a series of grotesque twisted figures, a character with distinctly Middle Eastern features holds a flute. The glances of the characters are directed towards different orientations in the street, surveying the surrounding land and representing the power of the family.

Siracusa – that beautiful city on the sea! You smell the salt in the air as you look down streets spilling over with Mediterranean plant life and vistas of bright blue depths. Myth is entrenched in its history. Here I saw all sorts of creatures carved in stone – fish, eels, sirens, birds, lions and monkeys. Here the limestone is whiter and cooler than other towns of the southeast and the paved main square shines like marble at night.

Siracusa

22 AND 23 PALAZZO BLANCO, SIRACUSA

24 PALAZZO CARUSO (PREVIOUSLY PALAZZO IUDICA-CAFICI), IN PALAZZOLO ACREIDE

Designed by local architect Giovanni Vermexio, the elegant Palazzo Blanco has one bizarre balcony. Its central corbel has a nymph-siren, the lower part of her body carved decoratively with a family crest, sitting above demonic masks with curved fangs and devilish eyes. The white limestone is exposed due to restoration work on the building.

Palazzo Caruso, in the town of Palazzolo Acreide, has the longest balcony in Europe, designed by local architect Giuseppe Ferrara in the early 18th century. Twentyseven supports adorned with acanthus leaves overhang masks, their wild expressions seemingly poking fun at passers-by. The story goes that the aristocrat who built the palace wanted to make clear his disregard towards his countrymen with whom he was in conflict. The expression on each face is unique and recall the ancient masks from Greek theatre.

Palazzolo Acreide

Reflections on my journey

For many buildings I visited on my journey it was difficult to identify the stories behind the figures depicted on them. It is surprising to me that so little is known about the sculptors or their vital, fantastical and original work, despite its invaluable contribution to the life of the street in these towns and cities. Today the viewer is likely to regard the sculptures with a mixture of amusement and astonishment at the inventiveness of the stonemasons, but beyond the humour they still possess an emotional authenticity even in the modern world. Many of the buildings in Sicily will remain mysterious, but enough is known to stimulate the curiosity and provoke the imagination of the viewer.

When I set out on this journey, I wondered how it might inspire and inform a future architecture. The Athenian caryatids are graceful, elegant and strong. They are light, and effortlessly support their weight, and their role was an honourable and sacred one. Each of the six caryatids of the Erechtheion are slightly different. They seem to be in motion; walking, almost dancing. Caryatids, maidens of the ancient town of Karyai, every year performed a dance at a festival in honour of Caryatis Artemis, goddess of the nut-tree.

I imagine this idea of the dance or ritual applied in the form of the building, with female figures acting as supports. It is a building that conveys freedom of movement, suggested by twists in the shape of the bodies, animated in a magical play of light and shadow and transforming during the day and at night. The caryatids have a function in transmitting light and creating illusion. It might be interesting to design an extension to an existing theatre or arts centre, perhaps as a space for theatre groups, band or dance rehearsals where the public could perform. The public would become part of the architecture, blurring the distinction between performer and spectator.

THE VILLA SUBURBANA

AND DENSE SUBURBS

James Hills

JAMES HILLS

James Hills studied architecture at London Metropolitan University, completing his training with Adam Khan Architects in London in 2018. In 2017 he was awarded the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship to explore the connections between the villa suburbana, the landscape and the city.

Having spent a year of his Diploma exploring British housing and its densification, James asks why the optimistic post-war housing schemes, integrating dwelling and landscape, have given way to the predictable typologies of terraced house, perimeter block and tower. The potential of apartment buildings in a landscape setting, such a key part of Swiss, Italian and Scandinavian urbanism, is rarely explored in the UK today.

In a quest to discover how suburban architecture has developed and changed over the years in Italy, James travelled to Florence, Siena and Rome, to visit and draw villas and gardens by –among others – Leon Battista Alberti, Baldassarre Peruzzi and Giulio Romano.

He has long been drawn to the expressive power and spirit of Renaissance villas, and chose to look in particular detail at six relatively little-known villas by Peruzzi in rural Siena. Using the architect’s work as an example, he traces the remarkable evolution of the villa suburbana.

In 2020 James set up his own practice, Drawnwork, and is currently working on the design and construction of a garden building within the grounds of a Grade II listed 16th century country house, that builds upon his research into ‘The Villa Suburbana and Dense Suburbs’.

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

As the New London Plan looks to give London’s outskirts a greater role over the next 25 years, I too, believe that greater attention should be paid to the suburbs. For it is in the suburbs, and at their edges, that there lies an opportunity to develop at a greater density. Except I would leave the predictable typologies of terraces, semidetached, perimeter blocks and towers, and I would look again at the potential of the apartment building in a landscape setting. Specifically, I would look towards the ideas of the villa suburbana.

The villa suburbana has continually held a role in the history of western architecture. Built away from the city, in a natural setting, it has continued to capture the imagination of patrons and architects, from antiquity, into the Renaissance and through to modern architecture. While the changing architectural form can be traced from the Villa Oplontis near Pompeii to the Villa Medici in Fiesole and on to the Villa Müller in Prague, the idea of a domestic retreat, built in a natural setting away from the city, has remained throughout.

Travelling to Italy, through the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship, I had the opportunity to visit numerous villas and their gardens and began with arguably the first villa of the Italian Renaissance, the Villa Medici in Fiesole. With its gardens and terraced views over Florence, it embodies Leon Battista Alberti’s ideals for rendering a country dwelling a villa suburbana. From such villas it is possible to live in harmony with nature and dedicate as much to leisure pastimes as to the arts and knowledge.

Travelling on, I recorded six relatively unknown villas by Baldassarre Peruzzi, in and beyond the contrade (district) of Siena. From there I travelled down to Rome, to compare these to the more well-known villas by Giulio Romano, Raphael, Pirro Ligorio and Annibale Lippi.

OPENING SPREAD AND ABOVE: VILLA MEDICI IN FIESOLE, FLORENCE

I discovered that the idea of the villa suburbana had become a paradox. The original intention was for it to be beyond the city, but as a result of urban sprawl there is now, I believe, a territory of being between the city and the countryside. A territory of ‘between-ity’. Many of Peruzzi’s villas are located in this territory. Or, in the case of the villas of Rome, they are now very much situated within the city fabric. So, villas appear to belong to the urban realm as well as their rural ideals. It is a condition that on an architectural and cultural level results in the villas negotiating between their position in the landscape and their ties to city life, and it is from this contradictory condition, that the villa suburbana draws strength and vitality for today.

I’m not advocating for stately suburban homes. Nor am I interested in looking at these villas in just an historical way. Instead, I see them as individual creative achievements, which can act as catalysts for contemporary discourse on the densification of the suburbs. Reimagining the villa suburbana in London’s suburbs would introduce a typology that could not only lead to denser suburbs, but suburbs of large villas containing generous homes, shared gardens and the advantages of rural life.

In 1525 Peruzzi was charged with the reconstruction of the Castello di Belcaro, redefining the plan, the courtyards and restoring the main house to establish a gracious way of living within the castle-like villa. A series of outbuildings make a supportive collection in what is a tight plan. Acting together, as ingredients, they show a

CASTELLO DI BELCARO

way of living in, and with, a range of spaces of different size, character and productivity. These are just some of the qualities of the villa suburbana as a domestic retreat that need to be retained and reinterpreted within our suburbs.

Imagine the scale of a villa suburbana, planted across our suburbs. One villa could be a villa of studios, the next a villa of two or three maisonettes. Then a villa of individual apartments and a villa undivided but with a family of generations living together. For in a new context, the villa can provoke and test ideas of greater density, a space of collective ownership, gardens with softer boundaries and even gardens as small public parks.

To relate to this imagined scale, one can look upon the ‘villa colonies’ of Dresden, from Blasewitz and Striesen. Built during the Grunderzeit period and in the architectural era of historicism, the ‘villa colonies’ arose from the growing industrialisation of Dresden and a chequerboard like development plan to extend the city’s peripheral villages. Forming terraces along the sloped landscape, the villas were built as multi-family accommodation and show the potential of a dense suburb and gardens. These are the buildings that we can look to, the villa suburbana and their ideals, as we develop the designs of our suburbs today.

More examination of the individual villas is given in the detailed captions on the following pages, alongside photographs and drawings taken during my trip.

IMAGE SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

THE ‘VILLA COLONIES’ OF DRESDEN AROSE FROM THE CITY’S INDUSTRIALISATION

1 A typical image of suburban housing today.

2 It is in the suburbs, and at their edges, that an opportunity lies to develop at greater density.

3 The term ‘villa’ describes several types of structure that share a natural setting or agrarian purpose. There may be working structures devoted to farming, referred to as villa rustica, as well as living quarters, referred to as villa urbana. The attributes of a villa are sometimes interrelated or interdependent, and in other cases set apart from a larger architectural complex. Rather than embodying a set identity, the term ‘villa’ is flexible and

embodies an ideal about how to live, or villeggiatura (a prolonged holiday in a single place).

4 The Villa Medici in Fiesole was built by the Medici family between the 15th and 17th centuries as one of 12 villas around Florence.

5 It has been suggested that the Villa Medici owes its design to Leon Battista Alberti, rather than Michelozzo. It remains to be seen how widely this hypothesis will be accepted, but there’s no doubt that it is through Alberti that we can understand the term ‘villa suburbana’. Built in a natural setting away from the city, with garden and

terraced views over Florence, the Villa Medici embodies an idea of a domestic retreat where it is possible to live in harmony with nature, dedicating as much time to leisure pursuits as to the arts and knowledge. From these Albertian ideals, it became a precedent for the villa suburbanas of the Renaissance.

6 The beauty of the Villa Medici comes from the simplicity of the structure which results in economy, necessity, beauty and harmony in proportions.

IMAGE SOURCE 1-3; SUSSEX SUBURBIA, MARK POWER, 2001; ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; THE MUNICIPALITY OF FAUVILLERS

Castello di Belcaro

Baldassarre Peruzzi is renowned for his work in Rome, from the Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne to the Villa Farnesina. His work as city architect of Siena, and particularly the surrounding villas, is less well known but equally as interesting and arguably even more joyful. Castello di Belcaro was originally built as a castle in 1190, with its raised walkway and views back to Siena.

Following a revolt of the people against the family in 1525, Peruzzi was charged with the reconstruction of the Castello di Belcaro. He restructured the plan, redefining the internal courtyards and restoring the main house to establish a gracious way of living within the castle-like villa.

The frescoes within the windows of the facade combine Italian Renaissance with Mannerism.

Castello di Belcaro, with its series of outbuildings along with a garden of lemon trees and two courtyards, illustrates a way of living in a range of spaces of different size, character and productivity which need to be retained and reinterpreted in our suburbs.

This drawing attempts to capture the atmosphere of the Castello di Belcaro, while accurately recording its architecture. You can see the reinterpretation of classical architecture, with its heavy rusticated base and then the fine proportions and crafted elements, the off-centre alignment, the small balcony that breaks the symmetry and the painted frescoes that help to establish the building’s rhythm and presence.

Villa Chigi di Vicobello

The Villa Chigi di Vicobello, sits in close proximity to the outer walls and train station of Siena.

The rectangular building was designed and built by Peruzzi. It is characterised by a facade with a slightly protruding central section on its principal elevation, marked by pilasters which – together with the string courses – complete a unified geometry. The remaining elevations are similar in design to the front of the building, but with enough difference to acknowledge the different conditions and spaces around the villa.

Supportive buildings define the edge of the site to the north, to form a yard between the main house. These buildings are currently used as ancillary accommodation, whilst the main house and its garden is divided between two generations of the family.

The other supportive building, originally a farm annex, is today used for events and brings a source of income from within the suburbs. This building has been designed and built with equal care and attention by Peruzzi.

The garden is laid out over various terraced areas connected by steps along two separate axes. From the garden one can look back to the city with both a sense of proximity and distance.

Another castle-like villa, the Villa La Suvera is located in the outer territories of Siena, beyond the contrade and was also owned by the Chigi family at one point, as well as by Pope Julius II in the 16th century.

It has been said that Peruzzi was entrusted to mitigate the medieval severity of the ancient fortress with a Renaissance style and taste, and to surround it with a large park. The two original towers are joined with a transept. A double porch and loggias complete the transformation into the Renaissance villa of today.

The gardens consist of a large courtyard to the north, an Italian style garden adorned with potted lemon trees and another garden to the south with a lily pond. In addition to a wood of holm-oaks crossed by winding paths.

Today, the villa has become the heart of a small village or suburb, a borgo. This growth and densification, around a villa which was originally deep within the countryside, has developed over the centuries.

7 The Villa Santa Colomba, which Peruzzi transformed into a gracious country house, displays a wonderful tectonic layering of stonework, rising above a heavy base, visible to the left of the image.

8 The Villa San Lorenzo a Linari, once an ancient monastery, was converted by Peruzzi. Its principal facade is a patchwork arrangement of window openings of different sizes and shapes.

A light loggia creates a two-storey base of arched openings and deep brick piers. The interior of the loggia with its terracotta tiles of Siena.

9 The Villa Castello di Celsa was constructed as one of the Republic of Siena’s defence bastions. It was restored by Peruzzi in the 16th Century. His intervention can be seen in the circular chapel. The chapel is finely layered; smooth on one side and with delicate projecting pilasters on the other, to give the circle a front.

The terraced wall, adorned with niches, and parallel to the entrance pathway, creates a triangular courtyard. It has a weight appropriate to the villa, contrasting to the chapel’s fine pilasters.

10 View over Florence. The original Albertian ideal had been for the villa suburbana to be beyond the city. However, as a result of urban sprawl there is now a territory of being between the city and the countryside; a territory of ‘betweenity’.

11 Many of Peruzzi’s villas are located in the territory between the city and countryside or – as in the case of the villas of Rome and as seen here with the Villa Farnesina –they are now very much situated within the city fabric. The villas appear to belong equally to the urban realm and to their rural ideals. It is a condition that I think on an architectural and cultural level results in the villas negotiating between their position in the landscape and their ties to city life. And it is from this contradictory condition, that I believe the villa suburbana draws strength and vitality today.

The ‘villa colonies’ of Dresden, from suburbs such as Blasewitz and Striesen, provide a reference of a greater scale. These villa colonies were built during the Grunderzeit period and the architectural era of historicism in the early 1900s. They arose from the growing industrialisation of Dresden and a chequerboard like development plan to extend the city’s peripheral villages. Forming terraces along the sloped landscape, the villas were built as multi-family accommodation and show the true potential of a dense suburb of villas and gardens.

IMAGE SOURCE 12: ADOBE

VILLA SAN LORENZO A LINARI VILLA SANTA COLOMBA VILLA VICOBELLO

VILLA MEDICI A FIESOLE VILLA CASTELLO DI BELCARO

These drawings show an eclectic range of villa suburbanas, from those that were built in their entirety for wealthy families, to those that were remodelled, restructured or added to, during the 16th Century. Through visiting, taking photographs and drawing these villas, I’ve considered them as individual creative achievements, which can stimulate contemporary discourse on the densification of our suburbs.

VILLA TENUTA LA FRATTA VILLA LA SUVERA

ARCHITECTURE AS SCULPTURE: A STUDY OF ETHIOPIAN ROCK-HEWN CHURCHES

TARN PHILIPP

Tarn Philipp is a South African, London-based architect and independent researcher. He first visited Ethiopia in 2014 and was captivated by the country, from the rich culture and exotic food to the dramatic landscape and innovative architecture. Tarn was fascinated by the age, scale, construction method, highly refined masonry and location of many surviving buildings, notably the rock-hewn churches of Tigray.

Ethiopian Christian Architecture formed the topic of his dissertation and in 2015 he was awarded the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship, which enabled a return visit to Ethiopia to study the rock-hewn churches in detail. Over a six-week period he was able to visit some 20 churches, conducting measured survey of eight churches in Tigray Region and a complex of four churches in Amhara Region.

The tradition of carving a church out of solid rock has undergone a revival in recent years. He was fortunate to visit recently carved churches, meet and interview a craftsman responsible and witness the remarkable process of excavation first-hand.

The ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship enabled Tarn to put into practice the knowledge gleaned in architectural school through a self-directed research project. He has returned to Ethiopia every year since 2014 to conduct significant research on new rock-hewn churches.

Tarn has worked at David Kohn Architects since 2016 and pursued his interest in Ethiopia through an Arcadia Fund research project (2016-2020). He is also a recipient of the Venice Biennale Research Fellowship (2018) and AJ Small Projects: Sustainable Project Award (2020).

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

I am intrigued by the intensity with which Christianity is practised in Ethiopia, and the great influence the church has over Ethiopian society. A combination of religious, topographic, historic and political factors has given birth to an inspiring and unique architecture that is little known outside the region. Having visited the country in 2014 I was excited to return in 2015 to study the aweinspiring rock-hewn churches of northern Ethiopia.

Stepping off a plane in Addis Ababa takes you back in time – literally. Ethiopia maintains a calendar derived from the Coptic Egyptians, roughly seven and a half years behind the Gregorian calendar. Time too is measured differently, from sunrise to sunset, making my 7am arrival in 2015, 1 o’clock in 2008 to an Ethiopian.

However, it is while travelling through the countryside that one is truly transported to another era. Life in rural Ethiopia has continued almost unchanged for millennia. Stone and mud dwellings punctuate the surprisingly fertile landscape. Ox-pulled ploughs cultivate fields as farmers armed with sickles harvest crops and shepherds drive livestock over mountains and through valleys. Donkeys and mules transport goods to weekly markets where people gather from surrounding villages to trade with little monetary currency. In Tigray, camel caravans deliver large blocks of salt from the neighbouring Afar Region. Ethiopian tradition is of course under increasing threat, spurred by globalisation and preference for a Western lifestyle.

The possibility of a better life in the city has drawn the youth of rural Ethiopia. Many that migrate to Addis are ‘uneducated’ and unable to apply their skills to the

urban context. Overpopulation and unemployment has led to poor living conditions, poverty and a higher level of crime than elsewhere in the country. That said, I experienced overwhelming kindness during my visit and felt extremely safe and welcome. Prior to the outbreak of the Tigray War (4 November 2020), Ethiopia was considered among the most stable countries in Africa.

My first few days in Ethiopia proved frustrating. Onward flights to Lalibela were full, forcing me to spend more time in Addis than anticipated. Torrential rain and power cuts inspired a candlelit dinner where I sampled the traditional dish, gored gored, diced raw beef marinated in awazi, a spicy paste-like sauce and served on injera, a fermented pancake-like rubbery bread made from the local grain tef.

OPENING SPREAD: PILGRIMS GATHER FOR MASS AROUND THE DOWNWARD CUT ROCK CHURCHES OF LALIBELA 1

At the airport, I deduced that my domestic flight to Lalibela was in fact via Gondar, a city west of Lalibela. As luck would have it, the plane had a propeller failure and I spent the entire day in Gondar airport until the flight was eventually rescheduled for the following morning. I do admire Ethiopians for their patience - we waited eight hours with no instruction or update as to what was going on, yet everyone remained calm.

In Lalibela I checked into a budget hotel before heading to the guide office to acquire information on visiting surrounding churches. I befriended a guide by the name of Jimmy who told me what he knew of recently carved churches, informing me of an impressive church carved from granite near Debre Berhan. He added that the site had become a place of pilgrimage and was said to cure HIV and other diseases. We relocated to a tej bet, a bar that serves tej (Ethiopian honey wine), and arranged for his brother to accompany me on a treacherous five-hour hike to the church of Yemrihane Kristos. I later cancelled this arrangement when I met three Ethiopian tourists, Kalki, Kiri and Kiuds, who had hired a minibus to visit the same church.

We set off at dawn the following day with Abba, our guide, in the passenger seat. Abba (priest or father) is the administrative priest of two churches, Asheton Maryam and Na’akuto La’ab, which we also visited. Judging by the number of people who approached Abba throughout the day to receive his blessing, he is a greatly respected man. Abba beamed with kindness and it was largely due to his presence that this day was so memorable. On learning that I had intended to walk to Yemrihane Kristos, Abba gave

me a look of deep admiration and every time he turned to talk to us, greeted me with a smile that stretched across his leathery face. I hadn’t yet reached into my pocket to pay the entrance fee to Yemrihane Kristos when Kiuds handed me a ticket, refusing that I repay him. I had only just met him, yet he insisted I was a guest in his country and that he wanted to treat me. The generosity and hospitality of the Ethiopian people is phenomenal. On countless occasions, I have shared meals with local strangers who adamantly refused I pay anything.

The church of Yemrihane Kristos is situated within a large, enchanting cave. The church is important architecturally as it is one of the few surviving examples of early-built Ethiopian Churches. The church is of timber and stone construction, reflecting the Aksumite tradition, although it omits the protruding timber cross members known as ‘monkey heads’. The church is almost square and has a tower at each corner. The plan and the raised corners closely resemble those of an Aksumite palace, from which its form may derive. The church includes intricate carved timber ceiling panels, the inspiration for decorative carvings found in so many rock-hewn churches. As at Lalibela, services are held outside the church but in the shelter of the cave rather than an open courtyard. To the rear of the cave is an open mass grave where semimummified bodies lie among human skulls and bones. Yemrihane Kristos dates to around the 12th century, predating the sophisticated rock-hewn churches at Lalibela and providing an architectural link between the ancient building tradition of Aksum and Lalibela.

2 AND 3 YEMRIHANE KRISTOS, A 12TH CENTURY CHURCH OF AKSUMITE CONSTRUCTION

A short drive brought us to the remains of a stone tabot (tablet), said to mark the place where Yemrihane Kristos lived prior to establishing the cave church. A new church under construction, like most newly built churches in Ethiopia, was circular rather than basilica in form and the traditional adobe and thatch substituted for concrete and a corrugated metal roof. Three minstrels appeared and entertained us for some time before we suggested they accompany us to the next village. Thus, we pulled off with a three-piece band wailing away in Amharic so distorted my Ethiopian friends struggled to understand it.

At Asheton monastery, Abba proudly showed us his tukul, which was undergoing ‘refurbishment’ in the humblest sense – fresh mud was being applied to the walls. The tukul is the traditional circular dwelling of Central and Southern Ethiopia. Grass, earth and water are mixed to form mud which is applied to timber framework; upright poles bound by green branches to form circular walls. A conical roof made from thatch completes the structure. The floor is usually earth and may include a bed or seating fashioned from mud. In rural areas it is common for families to sleep with their livestock in a tukul. A fire may be made in the centre, the smoke of which fumigates the thatched roof, eradicating insects.

We ended the day at Na’akuto La’ab, a rebuilt cave church of little interest architecturally. The church includes a primitive bell formed by stones hung from wire between two timber posts. The rock is struck with a small round stone to produce a metallic sound, calling the faithful to prayer. Most fascinating was the presence of water sprung from the rear of the cave within the church. The priest blesses the faithful by flicking water in their face

three times and muttering a prayer. He did this to my Ethiopian companions one by one before blessing me in the same manner. The Holy water is believed to drive out evil spirits. The use of the cave as a place of worship and symbolic connotations of water are likely to stem from pre-Christian pagan traditions. On leaving the church we were invited to feast on injera and awazi. We sat on stools against the inner wall of a tukul, forming a circle. I balanced the injera on my lap from which we all ate, using our right hands, as is customary. The enthusiasm with which I ate seemed to further endear me to Abba and the clergy. He disappeared momentarily, re-emerging with a gift, a small book on the Lalibela churches. He later gifted me a second book on Yemirhane Kristos.

My time in Lalibela corresponded with an important Christian ceremony, Meskel or the Finding of the True Cross. Thousands gathered the evening before to sing and pray. They congregated again before dawn and continued to sing while a huge bonfire was prepared. The celebration culminated in the fire being lit. As the flames waned, people braved the heat to bless themselves with the Holy ash. In addition to several other religious holidays, Wednesdays and Fridays are fasting days in Ethiopia. On these days, no food or drink may be consumed before noon and thereafter no meat or animal by-product. This self-induced absence of food emphasizes the devotion of faithful Ethiopian Christians.

A full day’s travel brought me to Mekelle, the capital of Tigray, the northernmost region of Ethiopia. Tigray is home to some 120 rock-hewn churches carved

horizontally into the rock face rather than downward as the monolithic churches of Lalibela. The less documented Tigrayan churches are of great personal interest and formed the focus of my scholarship.

I met with Ato Kebede Amare, Minister of Culture and Tourism in Tigray, to obtain the relevant paper work. I was given an official letter written in Tigrinya, the native language of Tigray, which outlined my research project. From Mekelle I travelled north to the small town of Hawzien, which formed my base for close to four weeks. I stayed at a new family run ‘hotel’ consisting of a few rooms arranged around a courtyard, with the family living on one side. There was no hot water or wi-fi and almost daily power cuts throughout my stay. I encountered no other faranji (foreigners) and suspect I was the first to stay there.

The family soon grew fond of me and I was invited to join for coffee ceremonies, to drink swa (local home-brewed beer) and share home-cooked meals. An Ethiopian coffee ceremony is a tradition whereby fresh beans are roasted, ground and brewed. It is customary to drink three cups of coffee along with endless sweetened popcorn. A particularly memorable day was that of Medhane Alem (Saviour of the World). I had returned ‘home’ two days earlier to discover a cow, purchased at the weekly market, tied up in the courtyard. The following evening, I returned to find the cow being slaughtered. On the eve of Medhane Alem, we feasted on kai wat, a spicy beef stew with whole boiled egg served on injera. Some twenty family and friends attended, including local priests.

4 MESKEL CEREMONY (FINDING OF THE TRUE CROSS), LALIBELA

Typically, I rose before dawn and returned in the late afternoon. I used local transport where possible and then continued on foot, sometimes for hours, to reach a church, often in near inaccessible and isolated locations. Travelling on local transport daily exposed me to aspects of Ethiopian culture faranji travelling in private vehicles are unlikely to encounter. For instance, on bus journeys money is collected in a plastic bag and distributed among the churches along the way and whenever Ethiopian Orthodox Christians pass a church, they cross themselves, usually three times.

5 THE GHERALTA MOUNTAIN RANGE, HOME TO OVER 30 ROCK-HEWN CHURCHES, TIGRAY

6 THE NARROW LEDGE LEADING TO THE CHURCH OF DANIEL KORKOR, TIGRAY

I was accompanied by local guides although I ventured to some churches alone, using previous work and sign language to navigate. On one occasion, I walked some 15 kilometres along a dirt road not served by public transport. I had hoped to hitch a ride but in the four hours it took to reach the church not a single vehicle passed. At a rural school, children pointed in disbelief as I emerged from the mirage. Most of them had never encountered a foreigner and kept their distance, daring one another to approach curiously before running off.

I travelled with plenty of bottled water and often fashioned a dula (walking stick) from eucalyptus to fend off territorial dogs. Walking along the roadside or through fields, children would offer me wheat husks, corn and fruit, and I was invited into rural homes for coffee or a meal. At many churches, I was invited to join the priests for swa. Sitting among the clergy, drinking the home-brewed beer and sharing injera went a long way towards gaining trust.

7 DRAWING UP THE CHURCH OF MIKA’EL MELEHAYZENGHI, TIGRAY

8 CARVED COLUMN, STEPPED CAPITAL AND AKSUMITE FRIEZE, MIKA’EL IMBA. TIGRAY

Having presented my letter from Tigray Culture and Tourism and with the consent of the priest, I began my work. I surveyed the churches using measuring tape, hand drawing and photography. I verified the accuracy of any existing plans and noted the appropriate changes. I also completed a spread sheet at each site, which later proved useful in highlighting similarities and differences between the churches. Time and movement within a church was usually restricted and spaces such as the maqdas (sanctuary) were rarely observed. An exception was the church of Maryam Bahera where I worked alongside two British experts who were carrying out wall painting conservation. As this church was under restoration and temporarily out of use, I was able to move around freely and spend consecutive days studying the church.

Most of the churches I visited were poorly lit and the use of a headtorch was necessary to measure some churches. As the structures are carved from the mother rock, surfaces seldom meet at right angles, are uneven and of different lengths. The upper and lower walls usually curve to join the ceiling or floor and the columns are wider at the top and base with shafts of varying widths. The irregularity of the structures proved most challenging in accurately drawing up the churches on return from Ethiopia. Having documented some 20 churches in Tigray, I made my way south to the crossroad town of Gashena in Amhara Region for the final leg of my journey.

Unknown to most, the tradition of carving a church from rock continues in present day Ethiopia. It is uncertain whether this represents continued practice or a recent revival. I spent five days studying a church complex being carved near Gashena, at an altitude of nearly 3000 metres. I left Gashena every morning at around 7am, walking over a ridge to descend on the site at around 8am. I spent the whole day measuring the complex and returned to Gashena in the late afternoon when the temperature dropped drastically.

I was fortunate to interview Gebremeskel Tesema, the principal craftsman responsible for the new churches. Gebremeskel had been carving the churches for the past four years, working alone for an entire year before being joined by two deacons. They all live on site in the mountains in splendid isolation. The two men sleep in a rectangular mud structure south-east of the complex and three nuns sleep in a small cave to the southwest. The craftsmen are attempting to carve a church complex comparable to the

QESHO, TIGRAY

UNESCO-recognised churches of Lalibela. Gebremeskel envisions the complete complex to consist of ten churches, cut downward out of the rock as at Lalibela.

The ongoing excavation offers invaluable insight into the creation of earlier rock-hewn churches. The craftsmanship draws on age-old ingenuity, indicating the possible time frame, method and sequence of excavation associated with such structures. Primitive metal tools are sharpened over a fire using bellows in a nearby cave church attributed to King Lalibela. The excavation of rock and intricate relief carving is done without artificial light and no drawings are used.

On entering Beta Giyorgis, a church with a height of 2.5 metres, I was told that the small opening through which I had entered, was to become an upper window. The rock on which I stood was to be excavated a further three metres to create a space some five metres high. What appeared to be integrated seating at the base of arched walls was in fact the top of bracket capitals, the columns of which were yet to be carved. Observing the immense effort, determination and craftsmanship involved in carving seemingly inconceivable spaces from solid rock, was truly remarkable.

From Gashena I took a bus to Lalibela and an onward flight to Addis. As fate would have it, the person sitting beside me was none other than Abba, the beaming priest who had guided me with such affection at the beginning of my journey. As we soared over the Ethiopian Highlands, I reflected on the incredible six weeks I had spent immersing myself in local culture, exploring and absorbing the ever-inspiring rock-hewn churches. This invaluable experience provided an essential bridge between my academic training and professional practice, and I look forward to future projects this scholarship will inspire. Ethiopian rock-hewn churches, old and new, deserve further study, recognition and protection.

13 EXCAVATION OF BETA GIYORGIS AT AMBAGER COMPLEX, AMHARA. ADAM ARCHITECTURE TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP 2015

14 BETA GIYORGIS AT AMBAGER COMPLEX, AMHARA. ARCADIA RESEARCH TRIP 2016 (EIGHT MONTHS LATER)

PERSIAN BRICK MAGIC: AN INTERPRETATION OF SELJUQ BUILDING IN ISFAHAN

TURKEY

IRAN

SAM LITTLE

In the summer of 2017 Sam Little set out to explore Seljuq brick building around Isfahan in central Iran.

Due to visa restrictions on British Citizens travelling in Iran, he was unable to travel for more than 20 days within the country itself. In addition, he spent time visiting the wealth of stone Seljuq-era buildings in Turkey, spending two weeks travelling across the Anatolian plain between the great medieval trade centres including Konya, Sivas and Kayseri.

Sam studied Architecture and Drawing at London Metropolitan University, The Royal Drawing School and The Architectural Association. In 2020, he set up 'Channel' with architect Ryan Cook.

The practice is interested in the design and construction process. They work with industry, institutions and individuals to develop innovative architectural projects that seek to overcome traditional constraints, and focus on a concern for planetary resources.

Sam died suddenly and unexpectedly on 15th February 2022. We are enormously grateful to his fiancé, Charlotte Bright, for helping us so diligently with the final presentation of his project. All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

Persian Brick Magic

In a 1933 edition of Country Life magazine English architect Sir Edward Lutyens wrote a piece entitled ‘Persian Brickwork’ in which he instructs the reader to speak ‘[not] of Persian brickwork but rather of Persian brick magic’.1

A number of years later, in 1960, in a description of his design for the St. Marks Church, Swedish Architect Sigurd Lewerentz concludes with the remarks: ‘In various ways of producing ceramic masonry, the old architecture of Persia offers a lot to learn – it is the pioneering country when it comes to this art of construction.’ 2

Lewerentz and Lutyens find universal lessons from a specific culture of brick construction originating in Persia. To better understand the origins of these references I wanted to study the forms, materials and structures first hand. The central focus of my trip was therefore Seljuqera masonry construction in Iran and Turkey.

The Seljuqs were a Turkic dynasty of nomadic origin who ruled over a significant part of central Asia throughout the 11th to the 14th century AD. Due to visa restrictions,

I travelled to Isfahan in modern day Iran via Turkey’s Anatolian plain. This route went along ancient and contemporary trade routes in Turkey, and I stopped at many of Anatolia’s great medieval trade centres along the way including Konya, Sivas and Kayseri to name a few.

Finally reaching Isfahan in Iran, I located the three known examples of Seljuq brick minarets still standing within the contemporary limits of the city. I focused specifically upon Manar-Ali, Chehel Dokhtaran and Manar Saraban exploring and analysing them through notes, sketches and drawings.

After visiting these extraordinary monuments, I also travelled eastwards to an extensive network of medieval towers that stretch away from the city. These were structures that had an infrastructural role in facilitating trade and communication and in defining areas of settlement along these sparse 11th century trade routes. The extraordinary and imaginative use of the simplest kiln-fired brick on towers at Barsian, Gar, Gaz, Jar, Rahrawan, Sin and Ziar, justified this fragmented journey, and the notes made on this journey follows. For ease of communication any dates refer to the western Gregorian calendar.

OPENING SPREAD: WATERCOLOUR DETAIL OF CHEHEL DOKHTARAN

1 SELJUQ EMPIRE 1037-1194

2 TRAVEL LOCATIONS

3 A MAP OF THE 11TH C SELJUQ MINARETS STILL STANDING WITHIN ISFAHAN PROVINCE

The Naqsh-e Jahan square is a large formally arranged public space 560 metres long and 160 metres wide. On entering you are surrounded on all sides by two storeys of pointed arches beneath which shops, cafés, trade and artisanal units operate on a day-to-day basis. What is now one of the most important spaces in the public life of the city originated as the Shah’s private polo field. Architecturally, there is a strict rhythm and axis that follows a strong south-west and north-west orientation. This rigid structure only seems to amplify and express the informal, animated nature of life on the square.

4 VIEW SHOWING THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE MOSQUE TO THE LARGE MAIN SQUARE OF ISFAHAN. I WAS GIVEN ACCESS TO CLIMB THE STAIRS OF THE MINARETS AFTER OFFERING MONEY TO ONE OF THE CLEANERS

5 PLAN SHOWING MOSQUE'S RELATIONSHIP TO THE NAQSH-E JAHAN SQUARE (EXEMPLAR OF THE WORLD). DRAWING BY KLAUS HERDEG

6 IN SITU SKETCH LOOKING AT THE AXIALITY OF THE SQUARE

7 ONE OF MY VISITS TO THE MASJED-E IMAM WAS JUST AFTER A FESTIVAL HAD TEMPORARILY ENGULFED THE MAIN COURTYARD OF THE MOSQUE

8 FOUR IWAN COURTYARD OF THE MASJED-E IMAM

Masjed-e Imam. Shah Mosque, built 1611 – 1629 AD

One of the first buildings I visited in Isfahan was the Shah Mosque (Masjed-e Imam) in the heart of the city. This is part of a modern urban plan laid out in the early 16th century. The Masjed-e Imam’s direct and confident relationship to the Naqsh-e Jahan (Exemplar of the World) Square is critical in defining its relationship to the city.

Each flank is broken by a different monumental building, for example the lofty balcony of Ali Qapu Palace or a portal leading to a market or mosque. Although symmetrical there is a clear hierarchy. The entrance portal to the Masjed-e Imam is monumental and provides a clear focus, utilising a vivid surface of ceramic tiles, a muqaranas half-dome and two twin minarets above. The large Qiblah dome of the Masjed-e Imam creates a strong figure that overlooks the square.

On entering through the portal, the stark connection between mosque and square incorporates a substantial 45-degree geometric reorientation of the axis of the building. This confidently deals with the fact that the square is laid out on secular grounds and not canonically orientated towards Mecca, unlike the mosque which is, in accordance with ritual. This intriguing 45-degree shift in plan between the dome and the square is said to originate from a need for people to have an unobstructed view of the dome from all points within the square.3 It was also said

to have been purposefully constructed as the largest dome in the city, as a demonstration of political and religious power by the then Savafid ruler Shah Abbas the Great.

On further entering into the mosque from the square you are funnelled through a series of spaces and into the Iwan. An Iwan is a three-walled rectangular courtyard-type space that is a historic element in Persian construction. Upon entering you sense the breadth of the building, and despite the overwhelming complexity of the articulation on the wall and niche surfaces, there is nevertheless a sublime feeling of lightness. Demonstrating an overarching vision of 17th century Safavid construction, highly-charged outer surfaces celebrate a pure separation between structure and surface.

10

12

9 QIBL A WALL OF THE MASJED-E IMAM

AND 11 ON SITE SKETCHES OF MASJED-E IMAM SHOWING THE EMPHASIS ON RIGOROUS SYMMETRY AND ORDER

ONE OF THE BEAUTIFUL 17TH CENTURY BRIDGES. THE OLD CITY IS TIED TOWARDS THE RIVER

Masjed-e Jom’eh. Friday Mosque, built 771 to around 1475–6

On the other side of the city, Isfahan’s Masjed-e Jom’eh (Friday Mosque) exemplifies another form of tectonic expression. Rather than the product of a single vision by a singular person at a moment in time, it evolved over a longer period. In contrast to the fast, light and energetic surfaces of the Masjed-e Imam, the Friday Mosque’s primary material is the exposed kiln-fired brick. This material approach makes legible individual craftsmanship and construction as well as celebrating the solid, heavy mass of the building’s walls.

As you approach the Friday Mosque it appears to creep up on you. The lack of a distinct perimeter means there is no strong emphasis towards a single point of access. The centre of the Iwan courtyard forms the locus of the building, spreading from the inside out. Oleg Grabar alludes to this building as being ‘aesthetically a sort of inverted Parthenon whose fixed modular anchor is in the middle of the building rather than on the outside’.4 The architecture has been designed from the inside outwards, giving emphasis to the integrity of the whole, not just to a spectacular outer crust.5

The building is said to represent one of the earliest examples of a mosque with a four-iwan plan. Yet the building does not feel like an imposed typology but an essential response to the rituals of the city. Its capacity to powerfully incorporate numerous additions and reconfigurations over time is in part due to its lack of a rigid two-dimensional ‘plan’, a tool not thought to have been used before the 15th century in this part of the world.6

The two primary domes of the Friday Mosque have different characters. The south is spectacular due to its scale, whereas the north is remarkable due to its aesthetic complexity and decoration. There is a tension that exists between the soaring spatial qualities of each and the mass articulated by the heavy Seljuq brickwork. Designed to engage with ideas of structural force, the ceiling patterns communicate the highly sophisticated medieval Seljuq pursuits of astrology, mathematics and geometry.

In a lecture at the RIBA in 1931, the influential Western expert on Persian art, Arthur Upham Pope, proposed the roots of European Gothic Architecture could be found in Persian brickwork, stating: ‘the East not only gave to Europe the idea of the pointed arch, but possibly also valuable structural information. This enabled the European builders to carry it to such a glorious development’.7

The feeling is of a not entirely ‘rational’ building, dense geometric ceilings celebrating the known and imagined qualities of the cosmic night sky.

14 FL OOR PLAN. THE SPACES AROUND THE CENTRAL COURTYARD MELT INTO THE SURROUNDING CITY. THE COLLAGE QUALITY IS A RESULT OF IT BEING CONSTRUCTED ACCUMULATIVELY

15

13 THE CEILING OF ONE OF THE DOMES SHOWING THE STRUCTURAL LOGIC OF THE DESIGN WITH AN EMPHASIS ON MASS AND DARKNESS, PUNCTUATED BY A FEW MOMENTS OF INTENSE DAYLIGHT

THE TWO DOMES REVEAL THIS INCREDIBLE UNDERSTANDING OF MATHEMATICS AND GEOMETRY IN THE 11TH CENTURY

16 NOR TH DOME MEETING THE GROUND IN MASJED-E JOM'EH

The Seljuq Minaret in Isfahan: 11th century towers

The Seljuq minaret is one of the clearest manifestations of Seljuq masonry skills and around 40 examples of these towers still stand in modern-day Iran. A large number stand in and around Isfahan, as it was the capital of the Seljuq empire from the mid-11th to the end of the 12th century. With its wealth of Seljuq-era towers, Myron Bement Smith speculated that in the 11th century CE Isfahan ‘must have presented an appearance not unlike old Siena and San Gimignano’.8 In this earthquakeprone region the fact this number still survive is testament to the quality of the building techniques used in their construction. They are remarkably sophisticated examples of bonded (in-situ) and revetment (pre-cast) brickwork that contain a rich tapestry of ideas relating to the expansive, lasting capacity of construction.

The minaret as light and infrastructure

The architecture of the Seljuq minaret is about exteriority and presence. The Arabic term manara is the historic root of minaret, meaning an ‘object that gives light, or a place of light’. These towers were not just a place in which the call to prayer could take place. They could also be seen symbolically as a source of religious guidance, ‘light’ for the communities around them. It has also been argued that tall towers of this nature became an important marker of the presence of Islam, especially when Muslim armies were battling pagan and Christian forces on various frontiers.9 Over three days I explored the network of minarets that ran into the desert from Isfahan. They were a combination of isolated towers and others which mark settlements, a mosque, caravanserai

(inn) or safe resting place at their base. Moving through the landscape I became aware of the effectiveness of their role as vertical markers, communicating a site of importance at their base or the presence of something ahead, the flat topography of the Persian desert making this particularly explicit.

When these minarets were in use, much of the caravan travel would have happened during the night due to the ferocity of the sun in daylight hours. The tower at Ziar marked a stage in the route out of Isfahan where it would only have been a short distance in time before the lights of the city became visible on the horizon. Through its height, balconies and top lantern, it maintained a fire that would have been visible from a significant distance, demonstrating its role as part of an innovative network of guide towers leading out through the desert.

A light burning in a high place to guide travellers has a long tradition in Arabia, and fires are often burnt on a mountain top for this purpose.10 The precedent for these structures was the ribat towers which usually served vast stretches of water rather than land. 17

SELJUQ MINARETS VISITED IN ISFAHAN PROVINCE (TOP-BOTTOM L-R): CHEHEL DOKHTARAN, SARABAN, KASHAN, SIN, RAHRAWAN, GAR, ZIAR, BARSIAN, GAZ

Taking from history and moving it forward

To build these towers, the Seljuq rulers pushed the skills, knowledge and abilities of the Persian builders to use the new technology of the structurally superior kiln-fired brick. The form and role of these structures has been said to originate from many different places in the vast yet short-lived Seljuq Empire. Their builders were unafraid to adopt historic building precedent, traditions and ideas into a unique language for building a tower in 11th- and 12th-century Persia.

References can be traced from the Pillars of Ashoka in India to the Hellenistic memorial column of the western world. This was combined with Asian fire towers and Persian precedents, such as the Zoroastrian Fire Tower and Sassanian brickwork. The conical shape of the 11th and 12th century Seljuq minaret is said to have created a new form to the Islamic world and Persia.11

divided interior space. A one-person passage that serves solely as a means of ascent, means that they carry all their spatial power and expression on their exterior face.

’Infinite’ and detailed articulation

Raw, unadorned brick-fret patterns are liberated from a covering layer of stucco. The vivid sunlight of the region lends even the plainest rhythms of stretcher bond brickwork a depth and flare far beyond the sum of its parts.

The large expanse of these patterns on the tower at Sin animates its slender volume, drawing the eye upwards to emphasise the tower’s form. The use of simple fret patterns evokes an infinite system which moves in all directions. Simple flush brick bonds of single or double stretchers use wide rising joints to create a mottled shadow at the end of each brick. Basket bonded brickwork creates geometric groups of vertical soldier bonds and horizontal stretcher bonds.

Becoming more complex, these brick patterns further express the connection between outer decoration and internal core that was a keen pursuit of Seljuq builders.

The light and shade of Seljuq brickwork feels like a precursor to the faience mosaic surface decoration that was to follow and dominate much of Persian building in the 17th century, and even today.

Prior to the 11th century minarets had a square base and occupiable rooms. One of the exciting and unique ideas of the Seljuq minaret is that they have no concept of

Guard bands respond to the infinite nature of these brick patterns. These are a unique detail usually one or two layers of brick thick; an architectural device to appropriately finish a section of dense infinite, patterned surface.

PERSIAN COLUMNS AT PERSEPOLIS BUILT IN 6TH-3RD CENTURY BCE 21 PRE-SELJUQ, SASSANIAN BRICK PATTERNS I VISITED AT NARIN QAL'EH IN MEYBOD. NOTE THE PRE-MUD BRICKS COVERED IN AN OUTER LAYER OF MUD

22 MINARET GAR SHOWING THE BANNA'I SCRIPTURE WRAPPING AROUND THE MAIN SHAFT 23 AND 24 MINARET RAHRAWAN

A Banna’i scripture wraps the fabric of the minaret at Gar. This architectural decorative art of Banna’i uses geometric brick pattern to spell out sacred names or pious phrases on the surface of a wall. The main shaft of the minaret at Gar has a repeated, rhythmic pattern which roughly translates as ‘everything belongs to god’ running diagonally around the external surface of the tower. The base contains the ending to this exclamation, with what translates as ‘(everything belongs to god) and the messenger of Allah’.

This is Square Kufic script developed as a constructive language of square angles, an architectural adaptation of Arabic calligraphy. With little knowledge of Arabic, Kufic or Persian scripture, it is hard to interpret these details beyond the aesthetic complexities of embedding appropriate scripture into structural form; the creation of a unified whole through embedding text and meaning into disparate elements of a structure.

25 AND 26 MINARET GAZ. AN ASSEMBLY OF COMMEMORATIVE COLUMNS, ZOROASTRIAN FIRE TOWER AND SASSIAN OR PERSIAN BRICKWORK

27 ALTHOUGH NOT STRICTLY A MINARET, THE SELJUQ TOGHRUL TOWER DEMONSTRATES THE 3-DIMENSIONALLY INVENTIVE APPROACH

28 THIS SKETCH DEMONSTRATES THE 24-POINTED PLAN OF THE SELJUQ TOGHRUL TOWER JUST SOUTH OF TEHRAN, WHICH SOMEHOW ACTED AS A SUN DIAL, REGISTERING THE TIME OF DAY ACCORDING TO HOW MANY FINS WERE IN SUNLIGHT

29 DIFFERENT BRICK PATTERNS AND GUARD BANDS ON THE CHEHEL DOKHTARAN MINARET CONSTRUCTED BETWEEN 1107-1108

30 WATERCOLOUR OF CHEHEL DOKHTARAN

Seljuq Influence on Western Architects

The Seljuqs as builders have had some, yet not necessarily widespread, direct influence on 20th century western culture. In the 1930s at a moment when Iran was opening up to the west, a level of Western admiration for them as proponents of profound architectural and structural experiment can be demonstrated by certain references from scholars and architects of significant stature.

Much of this interest can be traced back to renowned expert on Persian Art Arthur Upham Pope, who when collaborating with Robert Byron produced a series of evocative images of Seljuk monuments that struck a chord with practitioners of his time. In January 1931, in his RIBA lecture, he proposed that the roots of Western Gothic could be found within Isfahan and specifically Seljuq buildings: ‘it is quite possible that the East not only gave to Europe the idea of the pointed arch, but possibly also valuable structural information. This enabled the European builders to carry it to such a glorious development’.12

However much the credibility of this idea can be debated,13 it did however gain traction. In the February 1933 edition of Country Life architect Sir Edward Lutyens wrote a piece entitled Persian Brickwork where he instructs the reader ‘do not speak of Persian brickwork but rather of Persian brick magic’.14

In a brief description of his design for St. Marks Church, influential Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz concludes with some remarks regarding a process of learning from this very specific Seljuq way of building; ‘In various ways of producing ceramic masonry, the old architecture of Persia offers a lot to learn – it is the pioneering country when it comes to this art of construction'.15

For a man of very choice words, this is a very specific reference. Rather that seeing segregating factors in work from disparate cultural origins, Lewerentz finds universality and a tangibility in the language of the brick, and one can see this in many of his late buildings such as the experimental brick bonds of his St Peter’s Church in Klippan. It is easy to see the Seljuqs as masters in using the brick not just to build a wall, but in the rich and cultured elaboration of form, mass and structure. With their headstrong persistence in the use of one material, it seems the Seljuqs were stating that it is not ‘if’ but ‘how’ one uses a material that proves crucial in the definition of spatial character and integrity.

References:

1. Lutyens, Edward. "Persian Brickwork" in Country Life February 1933. pp. 118-23.

2. Mårtelius, Johan. "Persian Wall" in Sigurd Lewerentz Drawing Collection 1+2, A+U Publishing, April 2016.

31 SIGURD LEWERENTZ ST MARKS IN BJORKHAGEN COMPLETED IN 1960, IS LACED WITH REFERENCES TO SELJUQ BRICKWORK. FOR EXAMPLE NOTE THE 'BASKET WOVEN' PATTERNS ADJACENT TO THE DOORWAY AND THE EARLY DESIGN DRAWING FOR A FACADE WITH DIAPER PATTERN

32 ZENDAN RUINS, PASARGADAE, PARS, IRAN, UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE

3. W ilber, Donald. Aspects of the Safavid Ensemble at Isfahan, in Iranian Studies VII: Studies on Isfahan Part II. pp. 407–408.

4. Grabar, Oleg. Isfahan as a Mirror of Persian Architecture in Constructing the Study of Islamic Art. Routledge; 1 edition, 26 April 2006. Page 282.

5. Grabar, Oleg. The Great Mosque of Isfahan. London: Tauris, 1990. Page 16.

6. Necipoglu-Kafadar, Gulru. “Plans and Models in Fifteenth and Sixteenth-century Ottoman Architectural Practice” Journal of the Society of Architectural historians vol. 65, 1986. Page 224.

7. Kadoi, Yuka. “The Myth making of the Masjid-I Jami’ of Isfahan” in The Historiography of Persian Architecture. Routledge, 2015. Page 92.

8. Bement Smith, Myron. The Manars of Isfahan. 1936. pp. 314316.

9. Bloom, Jonathan. Minaret: Symbol of Islam. Oxford University Press, 1989. Page 243.

10. Hutt, Anthony M. The development of the minaret in Iran under the Saljuqs PHD Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1974. Page 20.

11. Hutt, Anthony M. Op.cit. pp. 74-80.

Bement Smith, Myron. Op.cit. pp. 313-358.

12. Kadoi, Yuka. “The Myth making of the Masjid-I Jami’ of Isfahan” in The Historiography of Persian Architecture. Routledge, 2015. Page 92.

13. Oleg Grabar is especially dubious about the credibility of this idea.

14. Lutyens, Edward. Op.cit.

15. Mårtelius, Johan. Op.cit.

CHINESE WATER TOWNS

CHINA

JINGWEN ZHAO

Jingwen Zhao is from Xi’an in China. She has always been drawn to the beauty of traditional architecture and urban space, studying Chinese Traditional Architecture at Peking University, graduating in 2012, and then at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana for a three year Master of Architecture, focusing on Classical Architecture and Traditional Urban Study. She applied for the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship when she was in Rome for a semester during her Masters. Her visit to the water towns inspired the eventual subject for her university thesis.

Since graduating, Jingwen has worked as a junior architect at Robert Stern Architects in New York, as a landscape architect in Shenzhen and as an architect at BC&D in Hong Kong. Since April 2019 she has been at P&T Architects and Engineers in Hong Kong.

Of the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship she says:

‘The process of making the trip, completing the study and then giving a presentation in London has expanded my knowledge and experience of traditional urban study and helped me to develop. It was the first time that I had run a study project independently through to completion, and I relished the challenge. The process proved to be challenging, but very rewarding, giving me the confidence to embrace future independent projects. Though the trip itself only lasted one month, the experience and benefits it gave me, from travelling to Winchester and London and on to the water towns, will live with me forever.’

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

In the summer of 2014 I undertook a month-long trip to six Chinese historic water towns in the Yangtze River Delta area of China, near Shanghai. At the time of applying for the travel scholarship I was a postgraduate student studying classical architecture and traditional urbanism at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, in Indiana. My study of many European cities while I was there was enhanced by a semester in Rome, from where I explored and analysed the architecture and unique cultural history of the Italian capital as well as Naples, Malta, Sienna, Turin, Florence, Venice, Bruges and Antwerp.

During that same semester I attended a presentation by Professor Ruan Yisan, Professor of Architecture at Tongji University and a historic conservationist. Professor Ruan talked about his work in preserving Chinese traditional towns, the most renowned of which is the Yangtze River Water Towns Project (which received an Asia-Pacific Heritage Award from UNESCO). I was immediately struck by the similarities between the Chinese water towns and the European city which most enchanted me, Venice, with its overlapping canal and road system. However, a key difference, other than the fact that Venice is an island, is the extent to which the Italian city has been the subject of myriad academic urban studies, in stark contrast to the Chinese water towns which have not been subject to the same academic scrutiny. It occurred to me that it would be an interesting and meaningful exercise to apply the same urban study method I practiced when studying European cities to these Chinese water towns.

In the Notre Dame School of Architecture where BeauxArts, Parti and Nolli Plan are frequently mentioned, we

are taught to experience urban space not only visually, but also through on-site measuring and sketching. This enables us to acknowledge and understand the impact that geometry and parameters have on the creation of the atmosphere of a space. It enhances our awareness of a space while helping translate a complex visual experience into rational data. It was this method that I intended to apply to my analysis of the Chinese water towns.

I selected six of the most well-preserved water towns to visit – Luzhi (甪直), Tongli(同里), Zhouzhuang(周庄), Xitang(西塘), Nanxun(南浔) and Wuzhen(乌镇),

all located in the Yangtze River Delta area, near Shanghai. These water towns emerged soon after the establishment of the Grand Canal in 609 which connected the north and south of the country for easy transportation of goods. They were fully developed in the 10th-11th century (Song Dynasty).

OPENING SPREAD: HAND-DRAWN MASTER PLAN OF LUZHI (TRACED FROM SATELLITE MAP)

1 WATER TOWNS LOCATOR MAP

2 PR OSPEROUS SUZHOU ( 姑苏繁华图 ), ORIGINALLY ENTITLED BURGEONING LIFE IN A RESPLENDENT AGE ( 盛世滋生图 ), IS AN EXCEPTIONALLY LONG 18TH-CENTURY SCROLL PAINTING CREATED IN 1759 DEPICTING THE BUSTLING URBAN LIFE OF SUZHOU

3 L OCATION OF SIX WATER TOWNS AND THE TRAVEL ROUTE (CYAN LINE REPRESENTS THE GRAND CANAL AND THE RED DOTS ARE THE SIX WATER TOWNS)

The water towns used to be extremely prosperous as a result of trading activities on and around the water. The man-made Grand Canal, the Yangtze River and countless local rivers made up an intricate water system

in the Yangtze River Delta area, making water transport faster and easier than ever. As a result, the water towns, as important junctions, or knots, in the water system, started to flourish. Along with the trade of various goods came the exchange of ideas and knowledge. These water towns, small as they are, have all taken as much pride in their cultural prosperity as in their thriving trade.

I travelled by bus from north to south through these six water towns, spending between three and five days in each. However, once I was in the towns it was only possible to travel by foot or boat, vehicles having been prohibited in order to preserve the original townscape.

The water towns are closely related to each other, sharing a vocabulary of quietly flowing canals, simple yet elegant stone bridges, serene white walls, ink-like dark tiles and decorations of delicate wood carvings. The pristine palette and tranquil atmosphere it creates evokes traditional Chinese paintings.

4 WATER TOWN IMPRESSIONS.

LEFT TO RIGHT: WUZHEN, NANXUN, ZHOUZHUANG, XITANG

5 WATER TOWN CANAL SYSTEM DIAGRAM (WATER IS HIGHLIGHTED IN BLUE. YELLOW DOT LINES REPRESENT DOMESTIC CANALS). THE INTERWEAVING NETWORK OF CANALS AND STREETS FORMS THE BASIC LAYOUT OF EACH TOWN, WITH ARCHITECTURE CREATING EACH TOWN’S UNIQUE URBAN FABRIC

ABOVE: NANXUN; MIDDLE TOP: TONGLI; MIDDLE

BOTTOM: LUZHI; TOP RIGHT: WUZHEN; BOTTOM RIGHT: ZHOUZHUANG

The urban fabric of all these water towns radiates out from one or two major canals which connect to the bigger water system beyond. These major canals serve as the main arteries of each town and are usually accompanied

by bustling commercial streets on both sides. Branching out from the major canals are secondary canals, with streets on only one side, and ancillary canals (serving as alleys) running along the back of the buildings.

6 STREET SYSTEM DIAGRAM (YELLOW LINES REPRESENT HISTORIC MAJOR STREETS IN WATER TOWNS. GREEN LINES REPRESENT ALLEYS. ORANGE LINES REPRESENT MAJOR MODERN ROADS). THE STREET PATTERN DERIVES FROM THE CANAL SYSTEM, WITH MAJOR STREETS HUGGING BOTH SIDES OF THE CANALS, AND MINOR STREETS AND ALLEYS MAKING FURTHER CONNECTIONS ON LAND

FAR LEFT TOP: WUZHEN; FAR LEFT BOTTOM: ZHOUZHUANG; MIDDLE: NANXUN; TOP RIGHT: LUZHI; BOTTOM RIGHT: TONGLI

As a result of the mercantile nature of the water towns shops and residences make up the bulk of the urban architecture, with shop fronts lining the commercial streets along the canals. Courtyard houses behind these shop fronts stretch from front to the back, perpendicular to the canals.

The type of courtyard house in these water towns is similar to typical Chinese courtyard houses in Beijing, although they tend to be longer and narrower than those

in the capital due to their water frontage. These courtyard houses serve as both residences and warehouses for the merchants, resembling the modern idea of London’s SoHo where people live and work in the same place.

However, the lifestyle of the richest merchants in town can be very different. Their luxurious residences are not only bigger, with more courtyard components, but also include sophisticated private gardens of their own. The art of designing and cultivating private gardens has always been an important part of the culture of the Yangtze River Delta, demonstrating wealth and taste.

8 PRIVATE GARDENS IN WATER TOWN COURTYARD RESIDENCES

Besides shops and courtyard houses, these water towns also share the same set of essential civic buildings –a temple, outdoor theatre and teahouse.

Buddhist temples have stood in these historic water towns for centuries, each town having its own. Like western churches, they have always been an important part of community life, standing in a prominent, central location.

The outdoor theatres are constructed from raised outdoor stages set within a highly decorated pavilion. They are usually set at the back of a large open space, where members of the public gather to watch performances.

The teahouse is probably the liveliest civic space in these water towns, functioning as informal meeting places much like cafés in western cities. They are usually sited right by the canal at the busiest location in the town. Timber window and door panels are always open so that people can enjoy watching the flowing water and activity on the canals from within the teahouse.

9 CIVIC BUILDINGS IN WATER TOWNS. (FROM TOP ROW TO BOTTOM ROW: TEMPLES, OUTDOOR THEATRES, TEAHOUSES)

Linking the intricate system of waterways, roads, shops, courtyard houses and civic buildings are bridges and boats, just as in Venice. There are countless bridges in each town, linking the disparate parts of the urban fabric. The wooden boats idle along the water, passing under bridge after bridge. Both boats and bridges are the most popular locations for people to gather, chat and take in the views.

10 BRIDGES AND BOATS IN WATER TOWNS

11

socialise. This has to do with the differences between western and eastern culture – western culture is more outgoing and democratic while eastern culture is more introverted and secluded. I began to realise that if I were to draw a Nolli Plan for these water towns, the white voids would appear in every single courtyard house. It would have been impossible to go into each courtyard house to measure the courtyards.

Therefore, I adjusted my plan simply to capture the typical character of water town urban spaces instead of trying to record everything formally. In order to do this, I picked representative areas of each town to document.

12

TOP LEFT: LUZHI; MIDDLE LEFT: TONGLI; BOTTOM LEFT: ZHOUZHUANG. TOP RIGHT: NANXUN; BOTTOM RIGHT: WUZHEN

The study I undertook was very different from the one I had originally proposed. I had intended to draw Nolli Plans for these water towns, and even build 3D models of them. Firstly, that was too ambitious and unrealistic. Without complex surveying devices or a detailed base map provided by the planning bureau, it’s almost impossible to draw an accurate map, especially when the plans of these water towns are completely organic. Secondly, Chinese urban space is very different to that of the west. There are very few European-style piazzas in these traditional towns. Instead, courtyards set within individual courtyard houses are used as a place for people to congregate and

The on-site documentation equipments I used was a camera, laser distance measurer and sketchbook. The laser distance measurer was essential since the width of the canal is impossible to pace out. I would usually take pictures of the area surrounding the canal after firstly drawing some draft plans and sections in my sketchbook. I then used the laser distance measurer to measure spaces and label drawings. Once I’d returned from my travels accurate drawings were made from the on-site sketches and measurements. These drawings illustrate the typical water town urban space scale and layout. They translate the abstract spatial experience into concrete statistics and documentations.

WATER TOWN SPACE STUDY DRAWINGS. (THESE ARE TO-SCALE DRAWINGS PRODUCED FROM ON-SITE SKETCHES AND MEASUREMENTS)

WATER TOWN NATURAL SETTLEMENT STUDY DIAGRAMS.

Besides the study on specific urban spaces, I did some work on the macro urban pattern as well. This study was directed by Professor Douglas Duany in our school. He is very interested in natural human settlement patterns and had been doing a lot of analysis of traditional European cities. After learning about my trip to Chinese water towns, he suggested that I analyse the urban settlement pattern of these water towns using the method he used for the European settlements.

Two kinds of circles are used in this analysis: a furlong circle and a half-mile circle. A furlong equals 200m/660ft or 2.5 min walk. A furlong was originally the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting, the length of a furrow in a standard 10 acre field. And it’s said to be the distance that we felt comfortable to move around in pyjamas without embarrassment. A furlong circle therefore represents the extent of a natural settlement group.

Half a mile equals 800m/2640ft or a 10 minute walk and is the distance that’s considered comfortable for most people to walk without stopping. The half-mile circle therefore represents the extent of a natural “walkable” neighbourhood. I centred the furlong circles on highdensity spots like bridges and crossroads, and then put the 10 minute-walk circle on top in order to identify how critical elements of the urban design fit within it.

This exercise demonstrated to me that in all the towns except for Nanxun the half-mile circle encapsulates the extent of the natural neighbourhood. Nanxun used to be the richest town of the six water towns I studied. It is also the largest, containing three distinct neighbourhoods. 12

Later during my final semester in Notre Dame, I chose Nanxun as the site for my thesis and designed a water town culture museum there. The concept behind the museum was to showcase Chinese water town culture by comparing and contrasting it to western water town culture. In order to further illustrate the comparisons,

I combined the architecture of a Venetian palazzo and that of Chinese traditional courtyard houses in the museum’s design. My design for the museum benefited enormously from the study trip to the Chinese water towns, during which time I was able to assimilate the indigenous building language.

13 THESIS DESIGN SKETCHES FOR A CULTURAL MUSEUM IN NANXUN

A TYPOLOGY OF JAPANESE

DRY STONE MASONRY

JAPAN

Evan Oxland

EVAN OXLAND

Evan Oxland is an architectural conservator and stonemason. His work with heritage conservation often intersects with the creation of new buildings. His earlier experience, as a gardener at official residences in Canada, led to a career as a dry-stone waller and stone mason, graduating on the ‘Dean’s List’ with a Bachelor of Humanities from Carleton University, Canada, in 2007 and a Master of Arts in the History of Designed Landscapes with distinction from the University of Bristol in 2010.

For the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship in 2010 Evan visited Japan to conduct a survey of historic stone-masonry patterns and technology, visiting castles throughout three of Japan’s four main islands. Since then he has furthered his professional experience as a conservation mason at the Canadian West Block Parliament Buildings; as an historic plaster conservator on a

rehabilitation project within the Canadian Parliamentary Precinct; as a Conservation Project Manager, and as a Conservator/Project Manager for the Government of Alberta. He has also studied for an MSc in Building Conservation from the University of Pennsylvania.

He is currently Senior Architectural Conservator at DFS Inc. architecture & design in Montreal/Ottawa as a conservation architect on the rehabilitation of the Centre Block Parliament Buildings in Ottawa and the rehabilitation of the Rossdale Power Plant in Edmonton, Alberta.

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

I was first introduced to the Awata family through Tomas Lipps, editor of Stonexus Magazine (a periodical of The Stone Foundation). Lipps had organised a workshop in California in early 2010 on their Anohzumi stonework. A year later, with the support of the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship, I was able to visit Japan for two months with my business partner, sculptor Akira Inman. We integrated a programme of visiting castles and craftsmen on three of Japan’s four main islands (Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu) with a work opportunity with the Awatas that included wall restoration at Sumotojo, a 16th-century castle from which pirates plundered merchant boats heading for Osaka. As will become clear, -jo is the Japanese suffix for castle.

I lived in Japan when I was 16, made possible through a Rotary International high-school exchange programme, during which time I learned the language and become familiar with its culture. In preparation for my visit in 2011 I spent a lot of time studying the historical and cultural conditions of stone masonry during the

Momoyama period (c.1573 to 1600), but it was the practical experience of visiting Japan and working with the Awatas that really helped me to appreciate the process and understand the techniques.

What I could not prepare for was the tragedy that unfolded on 11 March 2011 at Fukushima when a devastating tsunami followed in the wake of the Tōhoku earthquake. We were very fortunate not to have been directly affected.

OPENING SPREAD: VIEW OF TAKEDA-JO, HONSHU

1 MAP OF JAPAN

2 MAP OF PLACES VISITED IN JAPAN

CASTLES VISITED

KOCHI-JO

IMABARA-JO

SUMOTO-JO

EDO-JO

OSAKA-JO

NIJO-JO

AZUCHI-JO

HIKONE-JO

IGA UENO-JO

MATSUE-JO

KUMAMOTO-JO

HIMEJI-JO

OKAYAMA-JO

NAGOYA-JO

TAKEDA-JO

MARUGAME-JO

TAKAMATSU-JO

The frequency and magnitude of natural disasters in Japan certainly reveals the strength, resilience, and durability of good stonework.

From Tokyo, we set out to meet Ida-san, a professor of art and a stone sculptor, who introduced us to traditional Japanese stone sculpting tools. He suggested that on our way to Osaka we visit the palace (then undergoing reconstruction) at Nagoya-jo. In Osaka, we met Nishikawa-san, owner of Nakamura Stone Masonry,

who generously offered a two-day tour of his firm’s work. Our first day began at Osaka-jo, one of the largest and most famous castles in Japan. The company has worked extensively on 400-year-old stonework and was still working on it during our visit. Notably, the masons replace stones over 20 tonnes in weight.

3 OSAKA-JO, HONSHU

4 STONE REPLACEMENT AT OSAKA-JO, HONSHU

5 WORKING WITH STONE AT OSAKA-JO, HONSHU

From Osaka-jo we visited the Shizutani School, famed for its tight fitting, polygonally bonded, and rounded shoulder walls.

We travelled on to Inu-jima to visit an historic quarry which had supplied Osaka-jo, and many other castles, with material; it is still in operation and currently owned by Nishikawa-san. The next day, our visits included Marugame-jo and Takamatsu-jo in Shikoku.

7 AUTHOR AND NISHIKAWA-SAN DISCUSSING THE EFFECTS OF SEISMIC MOVEMENT AND DETERIORATION AT SHIZUTANI SCHOOL, HONSHU

8 SHIZUTANI SCHOOL, HONSHU

6 MARUGAME-JO, SHIKOKU

Marugame-jo is noted as having some of the tallest and most dramatic walls in Japan, and Takamatsu-jo is one of just a few seaside castles. The entire stone foundation of Takamatsu-jo was dismantled in the mid-2000s and we were fortunate to be able to see it being rebuilt by Nakamura.

On our return to Osaka we took a trip with Tanabe-san to Matsue, Honshu, on the northwest side of Japan. Tanabesan is noted for winning the world skills competition in

stone carving when he was only 17 years old. He greeted us having just attended a conference in Osaka about monument workers concerned with the predominance of imported stone use over the native material. Tanabesan gave us a tour of Matsue-jo, which is undergoing constant restoration, and showed us his stone workshop and traditional Japanese stone splitting wedges, known as mameya, with accompanying wooden hammers.

We travelled on to Kumamoto in Kyushu, visiting Okayama-jo and its famous garden on the way. We were very fortunate to have seen them, as much of the castle wall was destroyed in the 2016 earthquake.

Just outside Kumamoto, at Tsujunkyo, we saw a wellknown dry-stone aqueduct built in 1830, and on our return we were given a tour of other dry stone bridges in the countryside. These were built by Taneyama masons of western Kyushu in the early 19th century.

11 TSUJUNKYO AQUEDUCT, KYUSHU (1830)

12 OKAYAMA-JO, HONSHU

After enjoying some Kyushu ramen (Japanese noodle soup) we went to see the complete extant castle of Himeji with its deeply curved stone walls and rooflines. Much of its wooden structure surmounting the walls had been burnt in fires as a result of earthquakes and lightning strikes. Himeji-jo is engrained in the national culture with its deeply curved walls and rooflines; the former are largely built of stones the size of refrigerators, laid dry, and placed with inward curve for structural reasons.

China and Korea, the most important cultural influences on Japan during the 16th century, never exploited the use of dry-stone construction preferring instead to

apply mortar to their masonry structures. Unlike Japan, continental Asia does not endure the combination of frequent environmental stresses from intense earthquakes, tsunami, high rainfall, and monsoons. Dry-stone structures are capable of draining faster to mitigate hydrostatic pressures and their flexibility enables them to fall back into position after earthquakes.

With our tour of Japan’s most famous and idiomatic castle at Himeji behind us, we travelled on to the location where the story of Japanese castles and the Awata’s family of stonemasons coalesce.

The Awatas live in Sakamoto, Honshu, east of Kyoto on the shores of Lake Biwa and at the base of Mount Hieisan. The centre of this temple town (monzenmachi) grew to support the temples of the warrior-monks atop Mount Hiei-san. Sakamoto was built with dry stone foundations, still apparent today. It is thought that Oda Nobunaga’s castle (1576-1582) at Azuchi, built using unworked rubble – nozurazumi – employed the same stoneworkers used to build Sakamoto, having first razed its temple complex. Fittingly, Jyunji Awata gave us a two-day stonework tour that began at Azuchi-jo, Japan’s proto-typical castle and first to function as both fortress and central venue for

economic and cultural life. Today it remains a stabilised archaeological ruin, a site reworked by the Awatas. Jyunji, a 14th generation castle mason, was considered rebellious in his youth because he chose to study civil engineering before entering the family business. Ironically, by the time he joined, he entered on the same footing as his son, Suminori. A highlight of the tour he gave us included Takeda-jo, where three generations of Awatas, including Suminori, Jyunji, and Jyunji’s father, conserved the walls with the use of traditional bi-pods.

In the 1980s Takeda-jo was chosen as a location for a film. Its directors wanted to reconstruct the castle which

the local people agreed to, but only on the condition that its reconstructed towers be removed when filming finished. Takeda-jo was an important mountain-top castle before Azuchi-jo, demonstrating the type of form and location most fortresses employed. The Awata family has a deep sense of affection for it having invested many summers on its restoration. The remoteness of its location involved the use of traditional bi-pods to move the stone by leaning them forwards and backwards with ropes.

13 JYUNJI AWATA AT TAKEDA-JO, HONSHU 14 T AKEDA-JO, HONSHU, AND ITS SURROUNDING LANDSCAPE

Jyunji took us to see the Shin-Meishin expressway in Kyoto, where the Awatas have built a 500-foot retaining stone wall section; the material was taken directly from the nearby river. The stone wall abuts a conventional concrete wall which supports the vast majority of the expressway. In collaboration with a Kyoto university, structural engineers applied immense amounts of force behind both walls simultaneously to test their strength. Whilst the concrete wall cracked, only one stone marginally dislodged from the Awatas’ wall and

was knocked back into place with an excavator knuckle; the fractured concrete was a more difficult issue to fix.

In the evenings, we ate delicious food, drank sake, laughed, and talked ‘stone’ with Suminori and his father Jyunji. They showed us local stonework that included the three bridges of Ninomiya in Sakamoto, where the art of carpentry is applied in collaboration with the art of stonemasonry.

15 TWO OF THE THREE BRIDGES OF NINOMIYA, SAKAMOTO.

16 STONE BASE TO A TIMBER GATE POST, HONEN-IN, KYOTO, HONSHU

17 IMABARI CASTLE: EARTHEN WALL (DOBEI) REINFORCED BY STONE & WOOD JOINERY BUTTRESSING

The Awatas offered us work on Sumoto-jo on Awaji Island, but as it was to begin two weeks later than expected, Akira and I travelled to Mie Prefecture to visit Ise Shrine and Nara. We saw many examples of the use of dry stone. In Nara we noticed dobe, earthen-plastered walls supported on dry stone foundations, and at Ise a ‘tumbling down’ style of dry-stone patterning called Kuzurezumi where large rounded material was used to create deep pockets for ferns and moss. The stone-pitched riverbed at Ise demonstrates a most impressive use of stone – immensely wide and continuing for hundreds

of feet. Stone-pitching is where stones are laid vertically into the groundbed to act as a path or consolidate soil.

When we next visited the Awatas we were surprised to find a film crew on site from Japanese national broadcaster NHK. They were there to run a feature on traditional Japanese stone-masonry techniques, and the Awatas were important to the story. A small build was set up to demonstrate traditional techniques. We were filmed building and being taught the anatomy of nozurazumi (a rubble wall) by Suminori-san.

After this excitement, we travelled to Sumoto-jo which the Awatas had been working on for many years. One of the difficulties was dealing with biological colonisation; trees over 200-years-old taking hold of the stone. It is not acceptable to simply cut down such intruding vegetation. Trees have to be transplanted and stones carefully extracted from the clutches of their roots.

We spent a week working on a relatively small section 10-foot-high. Typical stone conservation techniques were employed and dismantled stones numbered and carefully put back at the same elevations, maintaining previous patterns.

After our work was completed at Sumoto-jo, Suminorisan took us to Tokushima-jo, Kochi-jo, and Imabari-jo. Tokushima-jo, was particularly interesting given that it had been the Awatas’ ancestral home before they moved to Sakamoto in the 16th century.

Three days before we were due to leave Japan a major tsunami struck Fukushima. It was a frightening time with international airlines, such as Air France, cancelling passenger services. Tokyo was empty. I could see the sidewalk which was normally covered with people. Despite the inevitable disruption I was fortunate to be able to travel home. The Japanese are a tenacious people and, much like their stone walls, are very resilient, which brings us full circle to the original purpose of this research project. The techniques of Japanese dry-stone masonry are highly attuned to the environments they were designed for. Instead of trying to resist movement and hold back water, as in mortar masonry, they remained dry and flexible. The structural benefits are obvious in

a country that is regularly subjected to earthquakes, tsunami, mudslides, and high rainfall. Japan’s unique set of techniques applied during the Momoyama period merged the expedient necessities of fast construction during wartime with an unprecedented marshalling of resources and labour to create an aesthetically distinctive and efficacious typology of monumental proportions.

On my return, I delivered lectures on the subject of my research trip to: the Dry Stone Walling Association of Canada, in Caledon, Ontario; the Stone Foundation’s annual Stone Symposium in Asheville, North Carolina; and to ADAM Architecture in Bloomsbury, London

at the Art Workers’ Guild. I published two articles in StoneChat, on dry-stone walling, which included a typology of Japanese dry-stone masonry walls, both visible aesthetic patterns and invisible structural types.

My trip to Japan provided rich insights to the complexity and variety of historic building systems, looking closely at the technology and particular patterns of dry-stone masonry in the social and cultural context of Japan. The experience has enabled me to define a professional career path and vocation.

GATSBY’S GARDEN: IN SEARCH OF THE ART DECO LANDSCAPE

Paige Johnson

PAIGE JOHNSON

Paige Johnson is a scientist and garden historian and describes herself as ‘a determined interdisciplinarian with wide-ranging interests in art, design, and history’. She is the founder of a research laboratory in the United States of America. In 2007-2008 she took a year away from the lab to obtain an MA in Garden History from the University of Bristol.

The ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship provided Paige with a perfect opportunity to pursue her interest in the Art Deco movement in the landscape. She was determined to contradict established 20th-century scholars who had told her that there was no such thing as an Art Deco garden. Her research uncovers lost connections between garden forms and the semiotics of light, sound, and electricity that were arising in the early 20th century.

Paige undertook archival research and site visits within the UK as well as excursions to private gardens and public parks in France and Belgium. She presented her work and an accompanying book of contemporary photos and archival illustrations entitled Gatsby’s Garden: In Search of the Art Deco Landscape at the London Art Workers’ Guild in March 2008, and in 2010 published an article of the same title in Apollo magazine. It was the first published work to demonstrate the existence of an Art Deco landscape style and is reproduced here.

In 2012, Paige provided garden consultation to the producers of The Great Gatsby film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. A publication linking the garden descriptions in Gatsby to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda is in development.

Text first published as a feature in Apollo magazine

July/August 2010

The elegant lawn of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional hero serves as a symbol for the forgotten history of Art Deco gardens, long overshadowed by the spectre of Modernism.

‘Every period of architecture has its gardens with a character proper to the period. We must have ours.’ 1 The gardens Jean-Jacques Haffner designed in 1931 to animate his declaration are in a style he simply termed ‘modern’, but which nearly 40 years later would be called ‘Art Deco’. Unfortunately, none of these gardens can be visited, or traced upon the ground by archaeological investigation, either in Haffner’s native France or his adopted America. By his own acknowledgement, they were published simply as canvases to inspire students, designers, landscape architects and garden owners to build ‘a new era garden for a new era architecture’. 2 They were entirely imaginary.

The same has been said about the very idea of an Art Deco garden: that the movement was too short and stylistically diffuse to be translated into the more difficult medium of landscape – the old maxim that ‘men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely’ 3 comes to mind, and no more real than the fictional setting of the legendary Jazz Age hero Jay Gatsby, in whose ‘blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars’. 4

Modern retrospectives on the art and architecture of the era would seem to concur; most do not even mention

OPENING SPREAD: AU REVOIR, BY GEORGE BARBIER, 1924. METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

1 GRECIAN KEY PATTERN IN HEDGING AT LE JARDIN DES GOBELINS BY JEAN-CHARLES MOREUX, PARIS C.1936

the landscape.5 A quick survey of famed Art Deco houses shows that few were provided with grounds as innovative as their architecture. Many significant Deco buildings were in urban settings without surrounding green space –another missed opportunity for Haffner’s new era gardens. And yet it seems improbable that an aesthetic powerful enough to affect even the shape of toasters left the garden entirely untouched.

In fact, Gatsby’s blue gardens were no mere fictional construct. Monochromatic gardens based on the rarest of floral colours can be found in old glass slides and faded plans from the estates of America’s East Coast elite, sites at which Fitzgerald had been a guest – dancing, perhaps, to the strains of Gershwin’s rhapsody in the same colour which appeared in 1924. The fashion for blue was evident a year later at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which would provide historians with the name ‘Art Deco’ and whose gardens featured blues in plantings, accessories and even polychrome hardscape materials.

From photographs and plans, descriptions and extant sites, the Art Deco garden emerges in slow focus: here there is a streamlined curve of a courtyard, there an acutely angled parterre appears. No quintessential example arises, and the image remains ghostly and scarred by World War II, especially in the near total loss of innovative German gardens. But in landscapes public and private, across Europe, in Great Britain and in America, sometimes accompanying ambitious architecture and sometimes in a suburban backyard, the iconic elements of the Art Deco aesthetic appear. Naming these gardens for what they are –examples, often rare, of the unique aesthetic of the Art

Deco period realised in the fragile forms of landscape –is important to the preservation of surviving sites, the reenvisioning of gardens appropriate to 1920s and 1930s locations, and the history of 20th-century design.

That history has largely been viewed as Modernism’s long march with Art Deco a detour and distraction along the way perhaps the reason why no single work on the Art Deco garden co-exists with the numerous volumes on the modernist approach to landscape. Jean-Jacques Haffner – Ecole des Beaux-Arts alumnus, 1919 Prix de Rome winner, watercolourist, landscape designer and professor of architecture at Harvard from 1922 to 1937 –encouraged his students to experiment with new forms, designing in a diverse set of building types and beginning the reformation of the school’s confined, Beaux Arts teaching style.6 But it is his successor Walter Gropius –whose prolific writings give only scant attention to landscape – who attracts the devotion of scholars.

Art Deco and Modernism grew up at the same time, like non-identical twins who despite shared genetics don’t look, think or act the same. That such different aesthetic responses grew out of war, social upheaval and the frenzied speed of the machine age is worthy of more study than it has received. Their trajectories overlap and intersect – more due to the broad embrace of Art Deco than to Modernism’s intense but ultimately narrow vision –and definitions are particularly problematic in the garden, where almost any landscape intervention defies a purely functionalist approach. Whether a garden is Art Deco or modernist may seem to be semantic dithering. But the lack of recognition of Art Deco as a distinct landscape style, and the designation of innovative early

20th-century gardens as largely belonging to its twin movement, belie an artistic environment that was much more diverse and volatile, and ultimately exciting, than some modernist-centric histories have made it out to be.

Gabriel Guevrekian’s innovative garden at the 1925 Paris Exposition is often cited as the first modernist garden, and yet it was both symmetrical and highly ornamental, with a strong central axis. It continues the long landscape tradition of the formal bedded parterre, but re-interprets it in cubistic triangles accompanied by futuristic ornamentation worthy of a Deco cinema. In doing so

2 THE BLUE GARDEN AT BEACON HILL, RHODE ISLAND, PHOTOGRAPHED IN 1930. PHOTO: SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN GARDENS, GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA COLLECTION

3 STEPP ED ZIGGURAT ARCHES AS GARDEN ENTRANCES. PLAN BY ALBERT LAPRADE FOR THE EXPOSITION DES ARTS DECORATIFS, 1925

it displays one of the defining features of Art Deco –the synthesis of past traditions in a modern spirit, rather than the rejection of historicity and ornament demanded by Modernism. This garden had nothing in common with Le Corbusier’s nearby Pavilion L’Esprit Nouveau, which was awkwardly sited in a lawn scattered with a few poorly tended shrubs. Translated into architecture, Guevrekian’s composition would have earned the scorn of zealots making fun of noughts and crosses, curves and colour,7 for whom architecture was revolution and ornament was a crime.

While Modernism was engaging in deadly serious debates, Art Deco was having a party. And it had already spilled out into the garden - the ‘glowing garden’ of Jay Gatsby, luminous not just from the moonlight, but under the revolutionary glow of coloured lights that made ‘a Christmas tree of [his] enormous garden’. 8

It is difficult now to imagine the enchantment of a world of steady, abundant light after centuries of flickering candles and smoky gasoliers. Although Thomas Edison’s lightbulb appeared in 1879, it was some time before supply and distribution systems for electricity were in place, and in 1920 only 12 per cent of British households were wired for electricity. By 1930 that proportion had nearly tripled.9 Cities, especially, seemed like permanent fireworks displays. It is no coincidence that Art Deco structures frequently utilised metallic and reflective finishes, that surfaces both inside and out swooped with curves and refracted into facets that would glow with dramatic shadows when illuminated. The Daily Express Building in London, for example, became a photographic negative at night, its black Vitrolite façade disappearing against blazing ribbon windows. Guidebooks to the Paris Exposition highlighted the event’s ‘illuminations’, and a nightly spectacle of light was staged on the Pont Alexandre III.10

Photographs documenting the effet du nuit at the Exposition prominently featured the gardens, where innovative materials – glass of varying transparencies, metallic surfaces, mirrors, even fine water sprays in tall fountains – seemed purposefully designed for a background that faded to black. Art Deco’s near obsession with the motif of an arching fountain is likely

4 RENE LALIQUE DESIGNED A FOUNTAIN AT THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1925

5 ONE OF JEAN-JACQUES HAFFNER’S NEW ERA GARDEN DESIGNS, FEATURING TRIANGULAR FORMS, RADIATING LINES, AND STREAMLINED CORNERS. (JEAN-JACQUES HAFFNER, COMPOSITIONS DE JARDINS, VINCENT-FREAL EDITEURS, PARIS, PLATE 4. AVAILABLE AT THE V&A NATIONAL ART LIBRARY, LONDON)

to have begun with the landscape installations of the Paris Exposition, where its form appeared etched in stained glass; in literal form as the glass garden fountain of Lalique; and in frozen, figurative form as glass finials for neon lights. All were linked to illumination; they were fountains of light as well as of water.

The central feature of Guevrekian’s Jardin d’eau et de lumière was a mirrored sphere, faceted to reflect light in much the same way as a modern disco ball (it even revolved). The connection to electricity in this garden was explicitly stated in a contemporaneous review, where it was described as ‘the happy use of a new element, the electric light’, now being ‘added to the other new elements [of] cement, ceramic, mosaic, coloured glass, and new horticultural varieties’ to make the new garden.11

Guevrekian’s garden did more than just utilise the power that was bringing light and radios, washing machines and refrigerators to the masses. It also translated the concept of electricity into form and decoration. The central mirrored sphere reflected electric light, but the triangular, zig-zagging forms of the flower beds extending from the sphere personified the emanating light rays in ways that strongly resemble a scientific optical ray diagram.

Similarly, the triangular shapes of the Hotel de Noailles parterres, designed by André and Paul Vera and famously photographed by Man Ray, burst from the mirrors that lined the garden’s back wall; a reflection simultaneously virtual and actual. The distinct converging angles of the garden were aligned with the north-south axis of the sun (which the brothers marked on their plan), but the optical effect was probably designed to be most striking at night,

when it was illuminated by artificial light from the hotel’s terraces. Mere incorporation of new technology into the design and materials of the Art Deco garden was perhaps inevitable – electricity was a far too powerful force to be ignored by any of the arts. But the overlooked genius of the Art Deco movement is that it expressed the nature of light, speed and sound in artistic motifs as well.

It is Modernism that is usually thought of as having an affinity for science and technology. So it did, but largely as a tool that could be used to enact its social reforms and achieve its revisionist utopia. Le Corbusier invested the

6 GARDEN WITH SUNDIAL FEATURE DESIGNED BY GEORGE PNIOWER, 1923

PHOTO: RHS LINDLEY LIBRARY

6

machine with a mysticism that seems disturbing today, asserting that it was ‘producing a spiritual reformation in the world’, even ‘wisdom’, due to ‘the pure relationship between cause and effect it contains’. 12 It was perhaps appropriate that his chosen ideology enshrined it in an austere, sepulchral box. Art Deco, on the other hand, hugged science to its bosom and danced with it.

Its embrace was celebratory, and ultimately more powerful. Deco’s acceptance of ornament and synthesis of classical

forms gave it a ‘broad emotional range’, 13 and an accessible public face from which it could mediate and interpret the new and disquieting dynamics of a suddenly modern life. At the 1925 Paris Exposition, even utilitarian electrical transformers became a unique form of landscape art, accented with sculptures depicting a peaceful smiling face juxtaposed with a grimacing death’s head, expressing an ambivalence toward these new technologies, able as they were to both please and oppress, to create new ways of living while also threatening the old and familiar.

By responding rather than rejecting, by bridging the past and the future, the known and the unknown, Art Deco was able to address the ‘What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’ questions of art in a hopeful, optimistic fashion that stood in stark contrast to the nihilist tendencies and apocalyptic predictions prevailing in early 20th-century modernist circles.

The iconic elements of Art Deco, by now familiar, can be difficult to connect in any cohesive way. What does a jagged zigzag have to do with a streamlined corner? This diversity is usually accounted for by a long list of varied design influences ranging from Mayan temples to Tutankhamen’s treasure tomb. But Art Deco’s motifs have a basic unity underlying their exotic overtones. Uniquely for an artistic movement, they speak the language of science and technology: of the flow of currents and the propagation of waveforms, of the speed of light and sound and of the thrust of powerful engines. Many of Art Deco’s forms and decorations are strikingly similar to the developing symbology for electrical engineering as seen in technical manuals of the 1920s, some of which are still used by engineers and scientists today. They are modern

7 CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF THE PARTERRE IN FRONT OF THE HOOVER BUILDING, PERIVALE, WEST LONDON.

PHOTO: AUTHOR

8 THE BLUE STEPS BY FLETCHER STEELE AT THE NAUMKEAG GARDEN, STOCKBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES @ RICH POMERANTZ/BOTANICA

pictographs, abstracted representations of the startling new technologies of their times.

Radiating forms, to give one example, are a classic symbol of the propagation of all types of energy. Expressed in the garden, the symbolism is visible in the diverging lines that still mark the remains of a parterre at the entrance of London’s Hoover Building, and in the concentric semicircles topping Fletcher Steele’s Blue Steps at Naumkeag in Massachusetts. The Blue Steps, being a re-interpretation of the Renaissance Italian idiom of stair and water cascade, also demonstrate Art Deco’s synthesis of classical forms. The degree of intention behind the use of such symbols –whether an individual artist, designer or home gardener was explicitly referencing scientific and technological advance – remains an open question. Guevrekian’s choices, at least, seem carefully considered. Others must simply have unconsciously taken up the prevailing imagery of an era suffused with technology; the architect Erich Mendelsohn, for example, built an observatory to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity and even its garden was referred to as a machine. To neglect these scientific underpinnings in an interpretation of the period would be as naïve as marvelling at the prevalence of the doublehelix in late 20th-century art and design without connecting it to the genetic revolution.

The Art Deco movement has largely been defined by example. It is the presence of certain recognisable motifs and forms that has allowed a tea service, a motor car or a building to be classified nearly a century later as Art Deco. The approach to landscape need be no different than that toward other arts: features that are recognised

as Art Deco in the pottery of Clarice Cliff, for example, ought to be so named in a garden from the same decade.14 Lack of such identification has led to a paucity of landscape vocabulary appropriate to 1920s and 1930s settings, which this limited overview can only begin to expand.

Perhaps the most obvious of the technical icons of the style is the lightning bolt – a symbol of electricity known to cavemen and every schoolchild. It can be found streaking down the east façade of Eltham Palace, London, one of the few Art Deco elements in a largely traditional garden poorly suited to the home’s ambitiously Deco interiors. The lightning bolt was also a favoured motif of the Vera brothers in France, but appeared most prominently in the ‘avant-gardens’ of Weimar Germany, where it was used repeatedly in the shapes of parterres and rose gardens, border hedging, garden steps and terraces. None of the innovative gardens created there survive.

Adding another line to close a section of the zig-zagging bolt forms a triangle, as does the aforementioned angular intersection of light rays. Narrowing the triangle into acute angles gives it a pinched intensity, a compressed acuity that seemed especially modern. A 1925 article entitled ‘The Age of the Lozenge’ in L’Art et la Mode was devoted to the charms of the shape in fashion, earrings, hairstyles and even the stylised peaks in which screen sirens and women of fashion applied their lipstick. It explicitly connected the shape to optical technology: ‘The lozenge! Evocative symbol of the age of cinema…Its sharp points are a synthesis of our visual acuity...’ 15 Acutely angled chevrons are one of the elements of the Art Deco landscape style that can be documented in gardens of both upper and

lower economic classes, seen in the sophisticated 1924 rose garden of the Van Buuren house in Brussels, a gem-like Art Deco home built by a wealthy art collector.

The harsh glare of electric lighting at night makes a mess of a complex surface, but a beauty of a simple one. The strong, streamlined shapes of Art Deco, boldly treated, were ideal for the new artificial illumination and its dramatic nocturnal shadows. But streamlining, perhaps one of the most recognisable components of Art Deco, was more a personification of speed than of light. The world in which Napoleon had travelled at the same speed as Julius Caesar lurched suddenly forward with the advent of the automobile, the airplane and the highspeed train. In much the same manner as electricity, though high-speed forms of transportation were largely birthed in earlier decades, it was in the inter-war period that they were disseminated widely to the masses, and haste – streamlined corners are just corners in a hurry –became a popular aesthetic.

‘The speed factor is now decisive,’ wrote the French cultural critic Guillaume Janneau in 1925. ‘It is to obey its laws that the arts of the street – posters and monuments, window displays and shops have become simpler, barer, seeking for easily legible forms and ways of instantly capturing the eye of the passer-by.’ To the arts of the streets could have been added the high arts of sculpture and architecture, in which streamlined forms froze an image as if it were

9 LOZENGE-SHAPED BORDERS AND LIGHTING-SHAPED PATHS IN THE GARDEN OF THE VAN BUUREN HOUSE, BRUSSELS, CREATED IN 1924.

PHOTO: AUTHOR

10 LIGHTNING BOLTS IN THE PRESENT-DAY LANDSCAPE AT ELTHAM PALACE, LONDON. PHOTO: AUTHOR

glimpsed in such a rush that only the strongest features could be registered. Gardens, at least, were generally not being travelled through at high speed. But the streamline aesthetic reached them nonetheless, finding its way into the landscape largely in ‘hardscaping’, both as a decorative element and in spatial organisation reminiscent of a ship’s prows, which imparted a feeling of restlessness to even the most restful of settings.

The Art Deco movement itself rushed by and was gone in a New York minute, doomed by World War II and eventually losing the rancorous debate with Modernism that had become a bloodletting.16 Perhaps its inherent playfulness shrank from such diatribes, content to leave behind a legacy of art and fashion, buildings and motorcars, paintings and, yes, gardens, that as they approach centenarian status inspire affection rather than controversy. People still want to inhabit and enjoy Art Deco’s unique spaces. In a new century once again suffused with technology and beset by rumours of the apocalypse, we would do well to leave such a mark.

The Great Gatsby is required reading in American high schools. When I returned to it years later, I had forgotten what a devil-may-care rake Gatsby was, remembering only the beauty and romance of his Jazz Age existence, and his garden:

‘A wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house, making the night fine as before and surviving the laughter and the sound of his still glowing garden. A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.’17 11

References:

1. Haffner, Jean-Jacques. Compositions de Jardins, Paris. 1931.

2. lbid.

3. From Sir Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Gardens”. 1625.

4. Scott Fitzgerald, F. The Great Gatsby. New York, 1995. Page 43. Originally published in 1925.

5. This is true of most books and exhibitions on Art Deco. There are a few mentions in works devoted specifically to 20th-century landscapes, largely limited to discussions of French gardens. The most complete of these is Dorothée Imbert’s The Modernist Garden in France. New Haven, 1993.

6. Alofsin, Anthony. The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard. New York, 2002. Page 55.

7. Reference to a poem satirising the ‘jazz-modern’ style, by Michael Dugdale, a Tecton group colleague of Berthold Lubetkin, published in Architectural Review, vol. 72, July 1932. Page 40.

8. F itzgerald, op.cit. Page 44.

9. W illiams, Trevor. A Short History of Twentieth Century Technology, c. 1900-1950. 0xford, 1982. Page 65.

10. Gronberg, Tag. Designs on Modernity: Exhibiting the City in 1920s Paris. Manchester, 1998. Page l.

11. Forestier, J. C. N. “Les jardins de l’exposition des arts decoratifs”, La Gazette Illustrée des Amateurs de Jardins Jardins, 1925. Page 21.

12. Brunhammer, Yvonne. The Nineteen Twenties Style. London, 1969. Page 57.

13. Striner, Richard. “Art Deco: Polemics and Synthesis.” Winterthur Portfolio, 25, no. 1, Spring 1990. Page 21.

14. The Studio, Gardens and Gardening. London, 1937. Page 130.

15. Gronberg, op.cit. Page 151.

16. An excellent account of the debate is found in Striner, op. cit.

17. F itzgerald, op. cit. Page 60.

11 STREAMLINING AS BOTH GARDEN FEATURE AND ORGANISATIONAL DEVICE AT SQUARE DE LA BUTTE DU CHAPEAU ROUGE, PARIS, C. 1939.

PHOTO: AUTHOR

12 STREAMLINED FORMS, VILLA NOIALLES, HYERS BY GABRIEL GUEVREKIAN.

PHOTO: AUTHOR

13 POSTER FOR THE BAZ LUHRMANN FILM OF THE GREAT GATSBY FOR WHICH PAIGE JOHNSON WAS A CONSULTANT

THE ART OF CITIES: RENAISSANCE TOWN

PLANNING IN VALLETTA

MALTA

Nicholas Thompson

NICHOLAS THOMPSON

Nicholas Thompson is an architectural stone carver from Canada and currently the assistant to the Dominion Sculptor in Ottawa, Canada. He studied the History of Architecture and Town Planning before working in historic building conservation.

A graduate in architectural stone carving from the City & Guilds Art School, London, (2010) he has completed stone restoration work in the UK and Canada, including on the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa (2015). In 2016 he won a competition to design and carve a large sculpture on the east tower of Guildford Cathedral in Surrey.

While at the City & Guilds Art School he heard about the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship and proposed a research project on Valletta, Malta, a city renowned for both its carved limestone and its unique town planning. Valletta, a UNESCO world heritage site, is the capital of this small island nation and much of its building stock dates back to the Renaissance.

He spent two weeks in 2012 exploring the town, sketching, taking photographs, and making notes on its architecture and built form. As well as visiting various archives, he spoke to several local architectural historians and stonemasons and visited a stone quarry, making drawings of architectural details and carved ornaments on the buildings.

The visit has had a strong impact on his practice both as a town planner and stone carver, enriching his understanding and appreciation for sound planning and design principles and opening his eyes to new possibilities for elaborate sculptural programmes in soft limestone. On his return he produced a hand-carved stone scallop as a symbolic souvenir of Valletta. All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

As a town-planning graduate I was interested in researching the historic evolution of Valletta, a Renaissance city that was created using a grid masterplan with regulated design guidelines.

At the time, I was a student of architectural stone carving at the City & Guilds Art School in London. I was drawn to Malta for its notable limestone which lends itself to carving and has a lovely golden colour. This was my first visit to Malta and I was excited to see its historic buildings and stonework.

I spent almost a fortnight in Valletta, the Maltese capital and southernmost capital city of Europe. It was bright and sunny, with the temperature remaining around 30 degrees Celsius for most of my stay; I cannot recall seeing a cloud in the sky throughout my visit.

OPENING SPREAD (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS IMAGE) AND ABOVE: VALLETTA SKYLINE

1 MAP OF MALTA WITH VALLETTA MARKED. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS IMAGE

2 STREET PLAN (C.1600) OF VALLETTA SHOWING HISTORIC GRID. UNIVERSITY OF BASEL LIBRARY. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS IMAGE

Much of the building stock in Valetta’s historic heart dates to the 16th and 17th centuries and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Before my trip I looked at pictures of the city on the Internet, but they paled in comparison to the experience of being there. The city is laid out on a grid of narrow streets lined with grand Baroque stone buildings which dazzle in the bright sun; its steep topography gives all the streets vistas of the sea. When Sir Walter Scott visited Valetta in 1831 he described it as ‘a city like no other in the world’, and I found myself agreeing with him.

Valletta’s startling unity of design impressed me immediately. Harmony emanates from its great architectural composition - the consistent scale and rhythm of the street grid, the ubiquity of the dressed yellow stone, the shared stylistic vocabulary of the buildings, the urban liveliness generated by mixed use and well-placed piazzas, and the remarkable density of original buildings. The blazing Mediterranean sun and azure blue sea creates a stunning context. Disraeli described Valletta as ‘a place which equals in its noble architecture, if it does not excel, any capital in Europe’.

I wanted to understand how Valletta evolved, and the design principles that shaped the city with a strong sense of place. I spent several days exploring its streets, getting the lay of the land; for a relatively small place it is incredibly rich in history and culture. Central to this history are the Knights of the Order of St. John, a religious order that controlled Malta for centuries leaving an astonishing architectural legacy that included St. John’s Co-Cathedral, the city’s centrepiece.

I rented a small apartment in a 17th century building in the heart of the old town. By a stroke of luck, the landlord was an architect who worked on restoration projects in

Valletta. He provided me with books and materials on the city’s history and recommended places I should visit.

My initial fears that Valletta may have been a UNESCO theme park, devoid of inhabitants and catering only for tourists, proved entirely unfounded. I soon discovered it was a vibrant city. Most foreign tourists to Malta tend to stay in beach resorts and pay Valletta only cursory attention. I looked at churches, sketched buildings, took many photographs, and sampled the local fare, which included the delicious pastizzi, a kind of pasty typically filled with ricotta cheese or mushy peas, sold by street vendors. On the recommendation of my landlord I also visited a seafood restaurant and sampled octopusa local delicacy.

While I noted quite a few vacant buildings in Valletta, the streets still buzzed with activity at the local shops (bakeries, greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers, ironmongers, among many others). This heightened my interest in what appeared to be a strangely wonderful yet anachronistic city. Valletta has an impressive number of churches with the Catholic Church maintaining an important role in local life. I witnessed a large religious procession, possibly a feast day for a saint, with hundreds of people in colourful costume slowly moving down the street carrying crosses and religious regalia. Central to the procession, six robed men carried a large canopy in heavy red damask and brocade to shelter a dignitary.

6

5

3 VALLETTA’S STREETSCAPE WITH VIEWS TO THE SEA

4 ST. JOHN’S CO-CATHEDRAL, MUSEUM ENTRANCE, VALLETTA

ST. JOHN’S CO-CATHEDRAL FAÇADE, VALLETTA

STREET DETAIL, VALLETTA

Wherever possible I struck up conversations with locals and found most were friendly and happy to talk about their city. They took great pride in its history and architecture. My research highlighted the devastation of the city by the Luftwaffe raids in the 1940s; ruined quarters were rebuilt as close to the original as possible. I had some knowledge of the Renaissance impact on Valletta but I was surprised to find a strong legacy of British rule in the cityscape. This included Edwardian storefronts with hand-painted English signage; statues of Queen Victoria; red telephone boxes and post boxes. Many locals can speak a little English too.

As part of my research on the history of the city, I spent a day at the Bibliotheca - the National Library of Maltaan imposing 18th century building overlooking Republic Square in the centre of Valletta.

7 RELIGIOUS SCULPTURE IS COMMON ON STREET CORNERS IN VALLETTA

8 MALTESE CROSS; METALWORK DETAIL, VALLETTA

9 R OYAL MAIL POST BOX; MALTA WAS PART OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE BETWEEN 1800 AND 1964

10 BIBLIO THECA, VALLETTA. THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MALTA. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS IMAGE

11 AR CADE OF THE BIBLIOTHECA, VALLETTA. THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MALTA

The library has a significant history and boasts a collection of manuscripts dating back to the Knights of the Order of St. John in the 1550s. I consulted historic maps, archival material, and architectural histories on Valletta that were difficult to find elsewhere. This research, alongside my explorations of the city on foot, was central to my understanding of Valletta’s evolution. I was especially interested in exploring two topics at the library: Valletta’s urban-grid pattern designed by the military architect Francesco Laparelli in 1565; and the set of town-planning regulations drawn up by the Officium Commissariorum Domorum of the Knights in the 16th century.

Along with the mighty and seemingly impregnable bastions and fortifications that Laparelli designed, his legacy is the orthogonal grid on which he laid out the city. It had the strategic advantage of providing the

military with easy access to various posts that encircled the city. Valletta’s uniform grid and varying block sizes shape much of its current character and make it appealing to the pedestrian; it offers a pleasing urban rhythm, clear sightlines to the Mediterranean, and unexpected vistas around every corner. The narrowness of the city’s streets, coupled with standard building heights of four to six storeys, creates a strong sense of enclosure. Its steep topography, found throughout the peninsula, has resulted in the construction of enormous external staircases for many of its streets where no cars can travel; time seems locked to the period when they were built.

I was keen to learn more about the planning regulations that governed construction in Valletta and how this shaped the city. A key decision taken by the Knights was the creation of a building commission -

the Officium Commissariorum Domorum - formed with the Knights’ architectural retinue, local periti (consultant to a council of the Roman Catholic Church), and Maltese architectural engineers. In 1569 the commission created 11 regulations as guidance to various aspects of building, which together ensured a high standard of construction and an overall unity of design.

The regulations can be clustered into three groups:

• Matters of civil engineering, such as the provision of adequate sewers and rainwater storage

• The distribution and regulation of building plots

• Aesthetic matters

The commission also had the power of veto if a proposed design for a building was not in keeping with the desired aesthetic. Several of these regulations explicitly determined the appearance of streets and in many ways are responsible for the shape and aesthetic of Valletta today.

Adding to the visual coherence of the town plan was a regulation about building materials, that all building stone had to be cut from a designated quarry on the peninsula. In addition, buildings had to use a soft gold-coloured limestone called Globigerina, which was in abundance not only in Valletta but throughout Malta. This legacy remains evident throughout Valletta today resulting in an architecture of remarkably consistent style and high quality.

The unifying effect of the architecture in Valletta is heightened by its stone-built (Coralline limestone) fortifications which are of a similar colour, giving the impression the city was extruded from the bedrock. Globigerina limestone is highly porous and has a finegrained texture. It is an excellent stone for carving and over time it develops a mellow rosy patina. However, when exposed to the elements, and in particular the wind and salt from the sea, it steadily deteriorates, and blocks become pitted and rounded.

Midway through my visit to Valletta I went to the University of Malta to meet Professor Jo Ann Cassar who specialises in masonry conservation on historic buildings. Professor Cassar is recognised as an authority on Globigerina limestone. We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the limestone and some of the challenges it presents for historic building conservators today.

Whilst the soft qualities of the stone can succumb to the local climatic conditions, it is still extracted from hundreds of small open-pit quarries surrounding Valletta and its abundance generates a readily accessible source material for the conservation of historic buildings.

To further my understanding of this limestone I travelled to the Limestone Heritage Park, an educational centre devoted to stone, based in a former quarry outside Valletta. It was in an out-of-the-way location and involved walking some distance along a barren stretch of road after being dropped off by a bus, but it was well

worth the visit. The Park offers educational programmes and exhibits celebrating Maltese limestone (its geological properties, traditional quarrying, and stonecutting techniques), and a tour could be taken of the redundant quarry. Local stone carvers were in attendance and visitors could try their hand at working the stone. Different grades of stone were explained – the best quality stone being reserved for ornamental carving and the lowest grade used for foundation work. An array of traditional and modern tools was also displayed. I was fortunate to be able to speak to a quarryman whose family accounted for several generations of stone masons. He proffered informed insights on working the stone. The visit helped me to appreciate the stone industry’s historic importance within the local economy.

I spent the remainder of my visit exploring Valletta’s enchanting streets, attempting to piece together its history and constantly discovering little details. It was difficult to say goodbye to the magic of Valletta, the Mediterranean sun, and the blue waters surrounding it. When my visit came to an end, I felt the city had offered many important lessons for the local town planner. They are lessons that can be found in many modern urban design guidelines produced during the last 20 years - the importance of consistent scale, proportions, materials, street design features, amongst others. Arguably, these were largely the result of good design principles set out by the Knights of the Order in their 16th century town planning regulations. They encouraged a high standard of building which, combined with the city’s unique natural setting, dramatic topography and orthogonal grid, make Valletta so aesthetically enjoyable and memorable.

Thankfully, the city is little changed, and in such a good state of preservation, that we are afforded a rare glimpse of Renaissance town planning.

‘Sense of place’, that most elusive of design qualities which many town planners strive to achieve, is in Valletta’s case very much influenced by the consistent use of local stone. The golden Globigerina limestone is one of the town’s defining characteristics, for its overall visual effect and its expression in the carved Baroque ornament found throughout. The city’s appeal owes much to the romantic patina that has resulted over time as lines have softened and stone mellowed. My trip to Valletta reminded me that there is an art to building cities, and when it is done well it is a joy to experience first-hand. 12 ONE OF VALLETTA’S STAIRCASED

Amanda Iglesias

THE EXTRA-ORDINARY ARCHITECTURE OF INGER & JOHANNES EXNER

DENMARK

AMANDA IGLESIAS

Amanda Iglesias came across the work of Inger and Johannes Exner, which is almost unknown outside Denmark, while studying architecture as a graduate at the University of Cambridge. She became fascinated by the work of this husbandand-wife team, particularly the 13 churches.

In 2019, Amanda was awarded the ADAM Architecture Travel Scholarship, which allowed her to travel throughout Denmark for a full month to study, document and learn from these special churches, and even meet Inger herself. The experience has been formative in sharpening her design instincts, historical knowledge, and fluency with mid-century architectural forms.

Amanda is currently working for Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York City, where she now applies these skills in both design and research.

All images, unless otherwise credited, are by the author.

Ecclesiastical architecture is today relegated to the sidelines of contemporary architectural discourse. The church, once a defining architectural type, is rarely deemed critical to today’s pressing concerns. And yet, historically, the ecclesiastical has served as a catalyst for emboldened architectural thought and experimentation. Accordingly, the very contours of architectural history can be traced through church architecture. Within contemporary architecture, however, the sacred is marginal at best. More broadly, the sacred (and its attendant forms) within architectural discourse is thus reduced to stereotype or ignored altogether as irrelevant.

The work of such ‘invisible’ architects offers a unique corrective to such oversights. Any easy answer to the question of what constitutes sacred space is necessarily suspect, as it will likely default, knowingly or unknowingly, to trope. The Judeo-Christian lineage has a wide architectural legacy, which is ubiquitous at the global scale, yet uniquely local in character. In this way, the paradox of the sacred presents itself: what is held as universal must take local form. Further, given Christianity’s deep roots in antiquity, architects must negotiate the burden of historical precedent using contemporary means. This tension runs through the very core of the architectural discipline. Few architects operate easily within the crux of this paradox. An exception to this is the renowned Danish partnership of Inger and Johannes Exner, who are most celebrated for their work in ecclesiastical architecture and historical restoration. The husband and wife ran an atelier-sized practice based in Aarhus, and oversaw all manner of projects, from schools, homes and museums, to textiles, lighting and furniture. Most significantly, over the span of about 40 years, the Exners designed and built 13 churches across Denmark. It is these churches, in particular, that offer a unique and coherent case study on contemporary sacred space.

I regard the church as one of the longest ongoing architectural experiments, designed to forge the individual identity in relation to the collective. Increasingly, this has been compromised by the disenfranchisement of communities and isolation of individuals, begging an urgent reconsideration of how architecture has served its communities in the past. I propose the church typology as a place to start: liturgical space, beyond its overtly

OPENING SPREAD: THE EXNERS CONSIDERED SÆDDEN CHURCH THEIR ‘MOST REFORMED, MOST LUTHERAN’ CHURCH

1 MAP SHOWING THE LOCATIONS OF THE EXNER CHURCHES ACROSS DENMARK

2 POR TRAITS OF INGER EXNER WITH JOHANNES (ABOVE) AND AMANDA IGLESIAS (BELOW)

religious role, is specifically able to forge individual/ collective relationships through its organisational and material form. Thus, the architect becomes the arbiter who must risk offering their vision of sacred space.

This research places the churches of Inger and Johannes Exner in dialogue with both postwar and contemporary thinkers who wrestle with the sacred and its attendant forms in the civic sphere. This conversation is timely, given our contemporary moment badly in need of alternatives to ‘us/them’ polarization. The Exner churches are fundamentally collective sites of engagement, of communitas ‒ defined by anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner as an acute point of community predicated on values of equality. The aim of this research pivots around three key themes that emerge from the Exners’ ecclesiastical body of work, which will be explored alongside travel sketches and photography.

Inger (born in 1926) and Johannes (1926-2015), though widely known and respected within the Danish discipline, nonetheless sit outside of the broader canon of 20th century architecture. This is due to their uneasy fit within the more marketable outputs of Scandinavian design and, more broadly, because of their disjunction within the narrative of post-war architecture. Furthermore, their relative obscurity in other contexts is perhaps owing to the fact that they built almost exclusively within Denmark.

In 1992, they were jointly awarded a prestigious Honorary Fellowship of the American Institute of Architects (Hon. FAIA) which undoubtedly introduced their work to a wider audience, and most especially their decadeslong work restoring and renovating Koldinghus Castle. This extract from 1992 emphasises the inextricably joint-nature of their practice: ‘Inger and Johannes Exner practice together: hence this joint nomination....That

1958 - 1963: SCT. CLEMENS, RANDERS 1961 - 1969: NØRRELAND CHURCH, HOLSTEBRO 1966 - 1972: GUG CHURCH, AALBORG1966 - 1977: N Ø RRE UTTRUP CHURCH, NORRESUNDBY

1963 - 1971: HALD EGE CHURCH, VIBORG

1962 - 1969: PR Æ STEBRO CHURCH, HERLEV

1962 - 1970: ISLEV CHURCH, RODOVRE 1971 - 1978: SÆDDEN KIRKE, ESBJERG1967 - 1984: CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION, ALBERTSLUND 1986 - 1994: SK Æ RING CHURCH, EG Â

1991 - 1994: VIRKLUND CHURCH, SILKEBORG

1991 - 1994: LYNG CHURCH, FREDERICIA

their collective process produces extraordinary work is easily visible’.1 Other recipients of this award, intended for architects who are not US citizens and thus practice outside of the United States, have included Ricardo Bofill (awarded 1985), Ralph Erskine (1966), Norman Foster (1980), Frei Otto (1963), Arata Isozaki (1983), and Aldo Rossi (1989), demonstrating that the Exners are in the league of an impressive cast of figures.

Important strides have been made to introduce the Exners’ work to a wider audience. Thomas Bo Jensen’s monumental 2012 monograph, Exner, intertwines both biographical accounts with extensive architectural records. Though it is published in Danish, it will likely be reprinted in English. One of the Exner’s four children, Karen Exner,

CHURCH FLOOR PLANS.

THE EXNERS’ CHURCHES DO NOT ADHERE TO A SINGULAR, OVERRIDING FORM, LAYOUT OR ORIENTATION

3 K OLDINGHUS CASTLE RESTORATION, UNDERTAKEN BY THE EXNERS 1972-1992, COMPLETED IN THE SAME YEAR THAT THEY WERE JOINTLY AWARDED A PRESTIGIOUS HON. FAIA

1992 - 1997: ØLBY CHURCH, KØGE

4 THE EXNERS WERE TAKEN WITH NOT ONLY THE MATERIAL SENSITIVITY OF RUDOLF SCHWARZ’S CHURCH OF SANTA ANNA (1951-56), BUT WITH ITS BROADER CIVIC ATTITUDE IN THE HEART OF DUREN AND ITS SENSITIVE ARRANGEMENT AND COMBINATION OF SPACES

5 THE EXNERS WERE CRITICAL OF JENSEN-KLINT’S GRUDTVIG’S CHURCH (1927-40) DESPITE ITS BRICK CRAFTSMANSHIP. IT OFFERS AN IMPORTANT COUNTERPOINT TO THE EXNER CHURCHES

6 THEIR EARLIEST CHURCH, ST CLEMENS, RANDERS (195863)REFERS TO BOTH MEDIEVAL CATHEDRALS AND GRUDTVIG’S CHURCH, WITH ITS FLOOR-TO-CEILING SOUTH-FACING WINDOWS

has compiled a comprehensive website project (www. ingerogjohannesexner.dk) as an online collection of the architects’ many drawings, photographs, and writings. Throughout his long career, Johannes (who taught at the Aarhus University School of Architecture) wrote extensively; some of his more significant articles have been translated into English. Line Marschner’s 2018 doctoral dissertation at Aarhus University is the first to extensively examine the Exner churches, and posit them within broader theoretical and aesthetic questions of architecture’s ability to bring about spiritual recognition. However, among the 13 churches built over the course of their career, only a select few have garnered broad attention. It is the aim of my research to examine the collective body of Exner churches and reflect upon key themes that emerge within the work that might connect it to a broader conversation.

The Exners must be examined within a specific grain of Modernism (being the functionalist and progressive pedagogy at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts), and yet their work yields radical departures. The Exners’ ecclesiastical work merits renewed inspection and appreciation, not least because their churches resonate with the concerns of their era (1960s-1990s) as well as today. They were deeply influenced by Steen Eiler Rasmussen, with whom Johannes studied during his time at the Danish Royal Academy. Their work reveals a special care given to the sensorial dimensions of architecture, paying particular attention to the textures of material and effects of light and shadow. In this manner, their work draws many parallels with that of Sigurd Lewerentz, Heikke and Kaija Siren, and Alvar Aalto.

The Exners were also deeply influenced by the work of Rudolf Schwarz, whose German postwar churches made a strong impression in their early practice.

The Church as Critique

The German architect and thinker Rudolf Schwarz, whose post-war churches particularly in the North Rhine-Westphalia region made a dramatic impression on Mies van der Rohe, was concerned with the question: ‘What is a church for our times?’ His question reveals the implicit foreignness or discomfort widely felt towards older churches, most of which were destroyed or damaged by WWII. In their 1958 Grand Tour of Europe, initiated as a result of growing insecurity towards their first ecclesiastical commission, the Exners recollect:

[The Grand Tour] was an extremely enlightening experience as it gave us an understanding of architectural quality, the difference between falseness and honesty, of form forcefully imposed for the sake of the architect or for architecture itself. We saw innumerable twisted and crooked churches that revealed a disappointing search for effects, which also revealed the lack of culture that can arise if one forgets one’s past. But we also saw the opposite. Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp, and an unpretentious Catholic church at Düren made a great impression on us. Saint Anna Church, designed by architect Rudolf Schwarz was quite modest, built out of stone blocks, from the old bombed church. Perhaps ugly to some - it might have resembled a factory. The interior was incredibly simple and beautiful with great unbroken surfaces, which could have been boringly dismal, yet were not, because the material, texture, light and colors gave them life. 2

While Schwarz built for Catholic parishes, the Exners were very taken with not only the material sensitivity demonstrated in Santa Anna, but the church’s broader civic attitude in the heart of D üren. The roughly hewn exterior belies what is an evocative interior, a ‘little city’ in its sensitive arrangement and combination of spaces. Accordingly, Santa Anna managed to maintain its integrity as a reinterpreted historic pilgrimage church, without having to be literally rebuilt. The Exners’ aversion to the ‘disappointing search for effects’ found in contemporary ecclesiastical spaces served to reinforce their yearnings for an architecture that reinterpreted, rather than neglected or copied, tradition.

The Exner churches operate in the spirit of the era’s broader reticence towards revivalist architecture, and subsequently were interested in offering new architectural forms. They viewed classical ecclesiastical forms suspiciously, especially the longitudinal basilica typology that emerged as a norm after Emperor Constantine’s 313 Edict of Milan. Johannes wrote critically of this form:

One can see today that architect and client are primarily interested in the exterior appearance of the church. It is built up unconsciously according to the traditional, two-poled, elongated, heathen pattern; its exterior is given some unusual, exciting form, to which exaggerated and functionally superfluous architectural refinements are added… The exterior should rather be allowed to be of demonstratively simple, un-ostentatious form, which many will perhaps think boring or ugly, but which in its essence tries to clarify the Protestant church-building.3

For this reason, they were critical of Jensen-Klint’s famed Grundtvig’s Kirke despite it being an obvious tour de

force in brick craftsmanship. Grundtvig’s Church was felt to be too copyist and by extension, complicit in a long and problematic history of churches dominated what they felt to be an exaggeration of architectural effects that overshadowed and obscured the service at hand.

Grundtvig’s Church offers an important counterpoint to the Exner churches. Its scale and enormity create a vertiginous monument in brick. Aside from their first church in Randers, St. Clemens, which operated in the Jensen-Klint lineage of architecture out of which emerged today’s fixation on neat, well-crafted Danish design, most Exner churches are inscrutable. A typical Exner church embraces a simple and non-ostentatious exterior (to the point of even appearing boring), which complicates the traditional image of the church. Simply put, most Exner churches don’t look like churches. The often nondescript, unadorned exteriors conceal their internal function. This external muteness occurs throughout the Exner churches, irrespective of budget. The modest Hald Ege church, designed to be lowtech, built by parishioners from re-purposed or readily available materials, is just as reserved as the larger, more well-constructed cube churches, NØrrelands, Islev, and Præstebro, from the 1960s. Rather, it can be said that no church (with the exception of their first, St Clemens in Randers) attempts to look like a church. It is also significant to note that most Exner churches are located within nondescript, suburban environments, surrounded by parking lots, shopping centres, gas stations and fastfood joints. The intentional genericism of these churches can be read as a form of resiliency against fads, brands, and trends. Rather, these churches are built to last. The Exners’ experience in restoring 1,000-year-old

medieval parish churches trained them in the art of building for longevity. These are churches which are designed to age.

The resultant forms can perhaps be classified as nonchurches, an idea formulated by the American architect and theologian Edward Sovik in the 1960s, whose Midwestern churches took unabashed concern for ‘the finite, the ordinary, the secular, the everyday, the contemporary, the particular.’4 Sovik’s non-church ideal was conscripted as an antidote to the exclusivity and anachronism felt about traditional church forms in the post-war era, being generally defined by their cruciform plans, axial organization, central crossing, and overtly religious ornamentation. However, the Exners adhere to no singular, overriding form, layout or orientation. Their long work in renovation provided cautionary measures against the urge towards literally recreating past forms, as they felt it dishonest and sentimental. Rather, they took careful cue from the ideas articulated by Schwarz that ‘a church should be a place chiefly for liturgical action, and that the spareness of design and of ornament forces awareness that everything important happening in the church comes not from objects but from actions,’ enabling the architects to ‘cultivate a symbolic minimalism with assurance that those in the community will bring a richness of associations to the liturgy independent of the liturgical environment’.5 Further, the generic exteriors subvert one’s approach to the church, obscuring a sequence of intensely thoughtful and surprising interior environments. In this manner, the Exner churches are implicit critiques of ecclesiastical history’s more overt, external displays of power.

In 2018, Inger wrote: ‘Our architecture is not mainstream. It’s special. We have no style, we do not emulate any fashion.’6 The modest sizes of the Exner churches operate as a corrective to what is seen as the excesses of ecclesiastical monumentality. In examining this post-war reaction, Kieckhefer cites Bishop Robert J.Dwyer’s call to dispense with the mass and height associated with cathedral buildings. The massiveness was never a function of its actual use, but more a symbol of wealth and power. Dwyer urged architects to think of the

buildings as the house of God and the gate of heaven, more reminiscent of domestic architecture and ‘free of monumental overtones’. The Exners’ churches might not look like churches, but they are nonetheless intriguing. Upon closer examination, each exterior contains a curious, if not aberrant, bell-tower. When asked about the bell-towers, Inger remarked that these are first of all instruments, rather than signifiers. As such, they are free to take any visual form, granted they work acoustically.

7 THE MODEST HALD EGE CHURCH, DESIGNED TO BE LOW-TECH AND BUILT FROM RE-PURPOSED OR READILY AVAILABLE MATERIALS

8 P R Æ STEBRO CHURCH, HERLEV (1962-69). THE EXNER CHURCHES ARE IMPLICIT CRITIQUES OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY’S MORE OVERT, EXTERNAL DISPLAYS OF POWER

9 ØLBY CHURCH, KOGE, 1997. THE MODEST SIZES OF THE EXNER CHURCHES OPERATE A CORRECTIVE TO WHAT IS SEEN AS THE EXCESSES OF ECCLESIASTICAL MONUMENTALITY

10 EA CH EXTERIOR, EVEN IF IT DOESN’T IMMEDIATELY LOOK LIKE A CHURCH, CONTAINS A CURIOUS BELL-TOWER, SUCH AS THOSE AT N Ø RRE UTTRUP CHURCH AND AT THE CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION, ALBERTSLUND (1967-84)

11 CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION, ALBERTSLUND (1967-84)

12 SÆDDEN KIRKE, ESBJERG (1971-78)

The Church as Community

As a counterpoint to the monumental, hierarchical structures exemplified by Grundtvig’s Church, the Exners were in pursuit of a non-hierarchical community dynamic. This is primarily manifested in the layout and arrangement of their church interiors. The Exners were intent on designing all scales of a church building, including the design and arrangement of lighting, furnishings and organs. They followed the circumstantes principle, theorised by Axel Rappe, a Swedish parish priest whose 1961 Domus ecclesiae was influential in bringing the reforms from Vatican II to Scandinavian church architecture. Circumstantes means ‘surrounding’, emphasising the liturgy as an ideally non-hierarchical service. Accordingly, in most Exner churches, the congregation and clergy physically encircle the altar, which is located in the centre of the church. Such internal configurations are designed to rectify the powerimbalance implicit to longitudinal plans, which makes a spectator of the layperson.

The longitudinal church typology dates to the time of Emperor Constantine and the gradual coalescence between Church and State, traced through the adoption of the linear basilica form. The Exners were invested in the pre-Constantinian church, as postulated by Peter Hammond:

…for nearly three centuries ‘the church’ referred exclusively to a community, not a building; the liturgy was celebrated in a domestic setting, in the houses of those who were themselves the ecclesia of God. In more recent times countless Christians have learned to enter afresh into the meaning of what it is to be the Church through worshipping together in prison camps,

in the kitchens of worker-priests’ lodgings, and in the house churches of dormitory suburbs.7

Prior to its legal recognition as a tolerated religion, the Christian church was necessarily embedded in domestic environments, as a hidden or illicit practice. It was this period of early church history that the Exners were most interested in reclaiming.

This discovery was a revelation to the Exners: ‘[w]hen one discovers that the architecture and hierarchical character of the Catholic church were so strongly influenced by

THE EXNERS DESIGNED ALL SCALES OF A CHURCH BUILDING, INCLUDING THE DESIGN AND ARRANGEMENT OF LIGHTING, FURNISHINGS AND ORGANS

the Roman emperor cult, one becomes both critical and inquiring’.8 From this revelation springs the democratic basis for their ecclesiastical work:

We discovered that in the furor to build new churches after the war, the recognition and understanding of the actual basis for the Lutheran Church had been forgotten, also in Denmark. Perhaps that could be considered somewhat wild, but the philosophy of the Lutheran church calls for the service to take place in the center of the congregation and not with the

priest in raised majesty at the end of the processional aisle... Thus a Lutheran church should not be a processional church, and especially not in the homeland of Grundtvig, where the living word, the dialogue is the basis for the people’s democracy.9

The church later experienced dramatic, even violent, restructuring during the Protestant Reformation, through which the legitimacy of centralised papal power was challenged. During the reforms, the church building was viewed as complicit with the Catholic church’s excesses of power and wealth. Luther’s reconfiguration of Torgau Chapel, with its emphasis on visibility and audibility, clarifies his ‘Sola Scriptura’ approach to Christian worship, the precedent of which was important to the Exners. Luther’s vision of a ‘priesthood of all believers’ sought to revive the Early Church ecclesia, or body of congregants, investing responsibility within the individual congregant as a necessary component to the church’s health and wellbeing. The term ecclesia, though used today regarding the church building and its congregation, recalls the Ancient Greek ekklesia, the principle political model of public assembly. In the last century, European ecclesiastical architecture experienced another upheaval. Leading up to and stemming from the Council of Vatican II (1962-65), the church renewal movement sought to offer new modes of collectivity. This wave of church building had much at stake: Nazism had recently confronted the world with the most harrowing consequences of a homogeneous collective mass valued above the distinct individual. After the war, the church became significantly more circumspect in its rhetoric invoking the collective spirit.

13 LYNG CHURCH, FREDERICIA (1991-94)

14 VIRKLUND CHURCH, SILKEBORG (1991-94)

Accordingly, ‘much of the history of modern church architecture, then, has been a series of experiments designed to enhance congregational participation.’10 Kieckhefer names this subsequent branch of reactive architecture the ‘modern communal church’. Though the Second Vatican Council emphasised community participation, it must be stated that ‘participation’ doesn’t merely qualify as outward (visible and vocal) action in a liturgical setting but must also include the contemplative dimension:

The crucial term in conciliar documents is not activa participatio, which... might imply external acts of participation only, but actuosa participatio, which allows more fully for a contemplative form of engagement… But this is to suggest an expanded range of participatory modes. The congregation may at certain junctures be engaged in singing and in speaking, but to define these as the moments of participation is to betray a restricted notion of what participation can be. 11

The Exner churches accommodate a broad range of participatory action, from the overt to the contemplative.

The transition between the outside to the inside of an Exner church is dramatic and surprising. In his influential 1959 The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade notes: ‘Every sacred space implies… detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu and making it qualitatively different.’12 Nothing about the mute, often forgettable exterior of each church is sufficient to prepare a visitor for what’s inside. The entry sequence into the church room is sudden, a decisive and total rupture from

15 AUTHOR’S FLOOR PLAN OF N Ø RRELAND CHURCH, HOLSTEBRO (1961-69). THE CHURCHES ARE DIMENSIONALLY MODEST AND OFTEN ORGANISED AROUND THE CENTRALISING GEOMETRY OF THE SQUARE

16 THE PLAN OF S Æ DDEN CHURCH SHOWS SMALLER, PRIVATISED SPACES AS INTEGRAL COMPONENTS OF THE LARGER ASSEMBLY

17 AND 18 EXTERIOR OF S Æ DDEN CHURCH

19 BRICKWORK DETAIL INSIDE S Æ DDEN CHURCH

the ordinary world outside. An Exner church displays heightened sensitivity to light and shadow, tone and texture. Light washes inside the church from hidden breaks in the wall planes, highlighting and animating the rough surfaces of brickwork. The layout of each interior is simple, calling into focus the action of the assembly. There is power in this simplicity. The Exners were interested in the essentialising of liturgical practice, stripping away the unnecessary and reconfiguring what remains. Their work echoes Schwarz’s approach to ecclesiastical interiors:

That is all. Table, space and walls make up the simplest church… The little congregation sits or stands about the table… There have been greater forms of church building than this one but this is not the right time for them. We cannot continue on from where the last cathedrals left off. Instead we must enter into the simple things at the source of the Christian life. We must begin anew and our new beginning must be genuine.13

Secondly, the scale of an Exner interior church room is highly calibrated and rigorously disciplined. Through the configuration of each plan, the Exner churches promote a deeply egalitarian approach to the collective space of the church room. Their churches are all dimensionally modest, and often organised around the centralising geometry of the square. The positioning and design of the pews appears erratic; however, such configuration enables congregants to choose their desired proximity, viewpoint and posturing. The highly designed, and more importantly, rather comfortable chairs or pews do not assume a homogeneous laity. They reveal a deeply intuitive understanding of the many minute social dynamics at work in a collective space. This is not a fixed reality, but rather an ongoing, living dynamic.

The various layouts of each church interior contain a unique and carefully calibrated social condition, one that holds the individual and the collective as codependent. The plan of Sædden Church, considered by the architects as their most reformed Lutheran church, reveals a care for smaller, privatised spaces that exist as integral components of the larger assembly. Smaller nooks dignify the individual congregant in relation to, rather than in isolation from, the congregation. Herein lies the ‘democracy’ of the Protestant tradition: the congregation, as an assemblage of distinct individuals, is integral to and responsible for realising the church body. The Exner churches are an architectural declaration of social equality. Their architecture directly correlates to their convictions about social relationships in light of man’s relationship with divinity. The most important condition unique to an Exner church is the changing interplay of these many dynamics, allowing for surprise and delight: two conditions rarely ascribed to more traditional ecclesiastical environments.

The Church as Experiment

The Exner churches are fundamentally experimental. While the churches can be categorised by certain themes (moving from cubic spaces to more geometrical assemblages), each space is a veritable mélange of materials, furnishings, lighting and plan layouts. After all, Inger and Johannes were raised in the functionalist tradition under Kay Fiskers and Steen Eiler Rasmussen; intrinsic to their education is the belief that there is a specific and enduring function to be solved for every design task. As articulated in 1959 by Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s canonical Experiencing Architecture:

…details tell nothing essential about architecture, simply because the object of all good architecture is to create integrated wholes. Understanding architecture, therefore, is not the same as being able to determine the style of a building by certain external features. It is not enough to see architecture; you must experience it. You must observe how it was designed for a special purpose and how it was attuned to the entire concept and rhythm of a specific era.14

Their holistic approach to architecture was nourished by a uniquely Nordic sensibility towards the inherent expressivity and quality of materials. And yet, the Exners’ approach complicates and intermingles the narratives of restoration philosophy, liturgical design, and historical architecture in a period primarily preoccupied with function and rationalism. However, despite such overtures of pragmatism, the Exners’ approach never compromises the basic premise: architecture is the art of building.

Each church counteracts the idea that the sacred is somehow fixed, immutable or frozen. Each church presents a new, and often highly experimental approach to sacred forms, operating within and recalling multiple traditions: ‘No building can avoid being influenced. They all exist somewhere between genesis and annihilation.’15 The church, in this approximation, thus stands as the longest ongoing architectural opportunity for experimentation. Every Exner church presents a fresh opportunity to claim a material basis for the immaterial. This mentality was articulated by PV Jensen-Klint in 1919, who Rasmussen quotes: Cultivate brick, the red or the yellowish white. Utilize all of its many possibilities. Use few or no shaped bricks. Do not

copy details, whether Greek or Gothic. Make them yourself from the material. Do not believe that stucco is a building material, and smile when your professor says that “paint is also a material”. If you ever get a chance to build a house of granite, remember that it is a precious stone, and if ferroconcrete becomes a building material do not rest until a new style is found for it… For the style is created by the material, the subject, the time, and the man.16

Klint’s sensitive and experimental approach to the inherent properties of materials encompasses a uniquely Nordic school of thought through which exquisite attention was paid to the forms and details of everyday life. Within the ecclesiastical setting this sacramental approach to ordinary objects differs from the Catholic idea of mass as a performance, one which requires otherworldly pomp and grandeur. Thus, every aspect of the church building was deserving of the Exners’ attention. Every component of the church interior was examined, redefined, and designed; however, restraint emerges as the guiding principle rather than expressiveness.

Their deeply experimental approach to form and material is not free-handed nor bombastic, but rather one that exults in the rigorous reality of constraints conferred by time, place and culture. Thomas Bo Jensen’s monograph supplies the term ‘Architecture parlante’, referring to ‘a speaking architecture’ that tells of a building’s constructional history through the uniqueness of its materials. Jensen emphasises that this uniqueness isn’t equivalent to license or freedom, but still is tethered to the ties of time. In overviewing the Exner churches, he categorises the 1960s as a starting point, tied to German architecture. In the 1970s and 80s, the work

20 SK Æ RING CHURCH, EGA (1986-94). EVERY ASPECT OF A CHURCH BUILDING WAS DESERVING OF THE EXNERS’ ATTENTION, HOWEVER RESTRAINT EMERGES AS THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE RATHER THAN EXPRESSIVENESS

sought to break free of the tight confines of Modernist ideology. This is legible in the increasingly expressive interiors and addition of malleable materials such as cast iron, and glulam beams. In this shift from the early, monolithic brick architecture, the Exners’ later work becomes increasingly more complex and ornamental. More liberated and decorative forms supplant the earlier, more spare and reduced forms of the 1960s. However, the inclusion of colour and ornament within later work is not merely applied, but exists to illustrate or clarify the building’s structural logic.

In sum, the Exners experimented with all scales of architecture, as articulated by Johannes:

A building is a whole made up of details. You could make a rhyme based on this: the whitewash is a detail of the plaster -the plaster is a detail of the façade -the façade of the building -the building of the street -the street of the block -the block of the city -the city of the landscape-the landscape of the country. That is to say, the same element is both whole and detail, depending on whether you look at it top-down or bottom-up.17

Through their experience in restoration, they came to understand and uphold the inherent narrative capacity of buildings. Accordingly, their churches are legible in their own accord; the subsequent photos and sketches from my travels illustrate the key themes of this research. After all, the Exner churches are storytellers, each expressing a multitude of latent or overt historical references. These churches were built to withstand the temperament of time. They exist within the ongoing continuum of history, which welcomes the patina of wear and weather. Nothing is accidental within these churches; every detail can be

justified through the Exners’ intense appreciation for the inheritances of history: ‘the material, the craftsmanship, the construction technique, the air, the light, and the rain.’18

Conclusion

Despite significant scholastic strides in instigating a renewed understanding of the sacred, without falling into trope or sentimentality, sacred architecture remains niche. Despite enormous attention and energy generated in the post-War liturgical renewal movement, little of the same verve exists. Accordingly, within Danish design, the Exners are often overlooked in favour of the late 20th and early 21st century’s fixation on minimalist design. Their unapologetic and overt grappling with historical forms rendered them old-fashioned or perhaps too heavyhanded. Rather, the spare, highly controlled, ascetic interiors and product lines of Danish design brands found eager markets in the global arena. The contemporary regime of Scandinavian design is, at present, too narrow for the Exners’ work, precisely because their architecture is difficult to qualify, much less export.

Today, there exist traces of previous generations’ desire to re-examine ecclesiastical form. The challenges the Exners faced have given way to an entirely new set of challenges today. We live in a world of increasing ephemerality. Architecture however holds the unique capacity to render collective values visible, firm, and intractable. The Exners assert that the modern and the traditional do indeed relate, and that the immaterial must find a material basis. Kenneth Frampton articulates the challenge as a ‘crisis that lies at the heart of a great deal of contemporary culture.’

How can architecture, or any cultural production, be unequivocally modern, yet in the face of the very relentlessness of modernization also be informed by modes of beholding that are more primordial and historically layered? To attempt to construct a sacred space today stands apart as a provocative ‒ some would say anachronistic ‒ assertion of meaning. Yet the distinctive narrative that sacred building has historically provided within modern architecture suggests that even in environments that are predominantly determined economically and technologically, sacred building can take a critical yet precarious stance that says more, even, than the architect may first intend.19

Furthermore, space for contemplation and reverence within the public realm is increasingly rarified in our commercial and highly privatised world. Collectivity is today determined primarily through the architecture of malls, sports arenas, movie theatres, concert halls, restaurants, and art museums. The internet and the disruptive forces of social media have already, and will continue to, undermine political efficacy. The architecture of Inger and Johannes Exner resists commodification and disrupts the ubiquitous forces of endless online connectivity. Through the architecture’s inscrutable exteriors, the Exner’s architecture subverts the venerated forms of overtly recognisable ecclesiastical form. Rather, this is a relational architecture: one that defines and is defined by the identity of their respective communities. Today, the democratic project must rely upon these institutions and spaces which foster real-time relationships.

21 VIRKLUND CHURCH, SILKEBORG (1991-94)

22 Ø LBY CHURCH, K Ø GE (1997).

THE INCLUSION OF COLOUR AND ORNAMENT WITHIN LATER WORK IS NOT MERELY APPLIED, BUT EXISTS TO ILLUSTRATE OR CLARIFY THE BUILDING’S STRUCTURAL LOGIC

References:

1. Stubbs, Stephanie. “The Excellent Exners.” In The Journal of the American Institute of Architects, 1992. pp. 8-9.

2. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Kim. “Interview: Rodfæstet arkitektur.” Arkitektur DK, 2004. pp. 3-4.

3. Exner, Inger and Johannes. “Fundamental Reflections on Churches.” Arkitecktur 1, 1971. Page 3.

4. Buggeln, Gretchen. The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

5. Kiekhefer, Richard. Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Page 273.

6. www.ingerogjohannesexner.dk

7. Hammond, Peter. Liturgy and Architecture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Page 29.

8. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Kim. “Interview: Rodfæstet arkitektur.” Arkitektur DK, 2004.

9. I bid.

10. Kiekhefer, Richard. Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Page 280.

11. Kiekhefer, Richard. Op.cit. Page 282.

12. Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959. Page 25.

13. Schwarz, Rudolf. The Church Incarnate; The Sacred Function of Christian Architecture. University of Michigan: H. Regenery Co, 1958. Page 240.

14. Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing Architecture. Boston: MIT Press, 1959. Page 33.

15. Exner, Johannes. “The Historical Buildings Being in Life and Death.” (Translation: “Den historiske bygnings væren på liv og død.”) Braae, Ellen and Maria Fabricius Hansen, ed. Fortiden for tiden : Genbrugskultur og kulturgenbrug i dag. Århus: Arkitektskolens Forlag, 2007.

16. Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Op.cit. Page 169.

17. Exner, Johannes. Op.cit.

18. Jensen, Thomas Bo. Exner. Copenhagen: Ikaros Press, 2012.

19. Britton, Karla, ed. Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Bibliography:

Aureli, Pier Vittorio and Maria Shéhérazade Giudici, eds. Rituals and Walls: The Architecture of Sacred Space. London: AA Press, 2016.

Britton, Karla, ed. Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

Buggeln, Gretchen. The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Kim. “Interview: Rodfæstet arkitektur.” Arkitektur DK, 2004.

Harries, Karsten. “Untimely Meditation on the Need for Sacred Architecture” in Constructing the Ineffable: Contemporary Sacred Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010. pp 48-59.

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959.

Exner, Inger and Johannes. “Fundamental Reflections on Churches.” Arkitecktur 1, 1971.

Exner, Johannes. “The Historical Buildings Being in Life and Death.” (Translation: “Den historiske bygnings væren på liv og død.”) Braae, Ellen and Maria Fabricius Hansen, ed. Fortiden for tiden : Genbrugskultur og kulturgenbrug i dag. Århus: Arkitektskolens Forlag, 2007.

Frampton, Kenneth. “Prospects for a Critical Regionalism.” Perspecta, vol. 20. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. pp. 147–162.

Hammond, Peter. Liturgy and Architecture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.

Jensen, Thomas Bo. Exner. Copenhagen: Ikaros Press, 2012.

Kiekhefer, Richard. Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Lundin, Roger. The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993.

Kilby, Clyde. Dyrness, William and Keith Call, eds. The Arts and the Christian Imagination: Essays on Art, Literature, and Aesthetics. Brewster: Paraclete Press, 2016.

Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing Architecture. Boston: MIT Press, 1959.

Sayers, Dorothy. “The Religions Behind the Nation,” The Church Looks Ahead. London: Faber and Faber, 1942.

Schwarz, Rudolf. The Church Incarnate; The Sacred Function of Christian Architecture. University of Michigan: H. Regenery Co, 1958.

Stubbs, Stephanie. “The Excellent Exners.” In The American Institute of Architects Magazine. 1992 pp. 8-9.

23 AN ENORMOUS, SUSPENDED SKYLIGHT DOME IN PR Æ STEBRO CHURCH (1962-69) BRINGS LIGHT DIRECTLY ONTO THE CENTRAL ALTAR

24 DAYLIGHT IS CONCENTRATED OVER THE ALTAR OF S Æ DDEN CHURCH AND SHAFTS OF LIGHT ARE ALSO EMITTED VIA SIX WAVY ‘APSES’

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