Architecture and Philosophy

When I was in college I wrote a paper for a history class I was in called "Modernism", which I think I called "Frank Lloyd Wright vs. the Bauhaus". I don't remember how I got the paper to turn out, because I remember struggling with the arguments, but I do remember that I really wanted the Bauhaus to win.

From what I understood from doing the research for the paper, Bauhaus architecture was all about being true to the essence of the materials. The nature of steel and glass, new architectural materials at the time, was that they suited a rectangular box with windows flush to the outside. So, to be true to them, and to design according to their purest essence, this is the kind of building you should build. And they have the advantage of staying up, being sturdy, withstanding earthquakes, maximizing interior space, etc etc.

What I remember about Frank Lloyd Wright was that in his desire to integrate buildings into their surrounding landscape, he bent the materials to his will so inefficiently that the buildings were basically not very structurally sound. At the start of a chapter of a big coffee table book about his house Fallingwater, there was a copy of an engineer's report that went on with item after item of dubious features that would have to be rethought, resized, structurally reinforced, bodged up or worked around. I think Floyd persisted with his vision and got the house built with the design and dimensions that he wanted, but I believe today noone is allowed to walk on the grand, cantilevered concrete patio because it's already got cracks and is at risk of breaking off and falling into the river. I might be wrong about this, I will look it up. But that's what I remember.

So, now, 25 years on, what do I think? The style that Frank Lloyd Wright pioneered is very prominent in this part of the country, and it has captured my imagination. He lived and worked in Chicago so you see lots of it there, and here there are many houses in the Bungalow style, many commercial interiors with Mission style furniture and light fixtures, they even decorated that way in a brand new bar and pizza place I went to for work that's just part of a strip mall at the side of a major road. I've bought Mission style furniture for my living room and bedroom. And just today I wondered if by doing that I have been betraying myself, and abandoning the intellectual purity of the Modernist (aka Bauhaus) style that I allied myself to back in college.

Maybe not really - when I went on Wikipedia and looked up Mission Style, Arts and Crafts, and Gustav Stickley, I found this statement of the basic principle of Mission Style:

"a severely plain and rectilinear style which was visually enriched only by expressed structural features"*

And I thought, well, duh! That's why I like it! It expresses only the structural essence of the object (the chair, the doorway), the bit that juts out is actually a joist that holds it all together, there is no unnecessary decoration, there is no hiding of the workings of the structure. So that's perfectly consistent with the other stuff I like, and in fact the stuff that any philosopher would like.

So, how does all this fit with what I do for a living? I am a Relationship Manager, and I work in Marketing, which is the discipline dedicated to finding out what consumers want and delivering it to them. I was just musing on that today, and had this thought:

• Bauhaus accords with the essential features of the materials.
• Frank Lloyd Wright style harmonizes with the features of the environment
• But both of them are really uncomfortable!

My sister and I had direct acquaintance with this experience in the basement of the Milwaukee Art Museum just last weekend, where we played in the Chair Park that's just outside the restrooms on the lower floor. The Frank Lloyd Wright designed chair was really stiff and a bit too small. The Bauhaus style chair was so uncomfortable that it felt like it was actively trying to hurt you. Neither of them is designed to accord with the essential features of human people.

So, architecture, you have a little ways still to go. Give me design that accords with the materials, the environment, and the human form. And I'll be working on a philosophy that does the same, in return.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stickley