Architectural attitude to William Leiper’s Templeton carpet factory and Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow school of art,

The two elevations, William Leiper’s Templeton carpet factory and Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow school of art, achieve completely different emotions when one looks at them. Looking at Leiper’s carpet factory it is very unclear as to what the main function of the building is. It is just a mimic of Doge’s palace in Venice, as it has an abundance of arch shaped openings in it and is brightly coloured and elaborately decorated. Just because the facade works on the palace in Venice does not in turn mean that it is appropriate to imitate it on the carpet factory. The facade is too grand for what is inside it but during the nineteenth century there was quite a taste for building industrial premises with exotically styled exteriors which proclaimed the company’s pride and ambition while concealing the industrial processes within. This is not how a building should be designed as form ever follows function.

Mackintosh’s school of art on the other hand has a very different approach to its facade. The facade is well considered and functional, he did not borrow from history as Leiper did. The facade comprises a large rectangular masonry mass with industrial style north light windows which are very functional bring a lot of light into the studios which were situated behind the main facade. As Curtis says “Mackintosh dealt with these constraints by laying two tiers of studios along the north side facing Renfrew Street.” (2010). Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse also reiterate the rationality of the facade contemplation “The facade , expressing the library, is a bold design broken by three twenty-five-foot-high windows along the upper section of wall. The library interior is the most celebrated space.” (2003).This facade is also continued around to Scott Street. These triple heighted windows express the triple heighted volume of the library which is generously floods it with light. This provides the students with a pleasant, airy working environment.

Art Nouveau is decoration and architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, characterized particularly by the depiction of leaves and flowers in flowing, sinuous lines. Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow school of art is seen as an Art Nouveau building because it may not be extremely obvious but he has abstracted the form of nature throughout his building. “The best example can be seen in the projecting iron brackets bracing the studio windows. Their humble purpose was to support window cleaners’ planks; their intricately wrought finials, graphic abstractions of buds and seed heads, evoke the notion of growth, an appropriate symbol for an educational institution.” Willhide (1995).

It is seen as the pivotal because Mackintosh broke the existing pattern for building design. “His architecture tends to have bold massing deftly composed, with light and airy interiors accented by subtle attenuated curves or linear patterns.” Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse (2007). The spatial effects achieved inside, with the large open and light spaces, the tectonic expression of the joist and beam, are all central towards the idea of developing the modern movement. As Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse conclude for us “The verticality of the proportions recalls Art Nouveau, but the rectangular forms speak of a new direction.” (2007)

Schroder house inspiration

Gerrit Reitveld’s Schroder house is one of the only forms of architecture in the style of De Stijl movement. De Stijl proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting, by using only straight horizontal and vertical lines and rectangular forms. To create these pieces of art they would only use the three primary colours along with black, white and grey. The precedent for the Schroder house is the Robie house by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In 1893 there was the world Columbian exhibition in Chicago where for the first time people could see the Architecture of Japan in the form of Ho-o-Den pavilion. Frank Lloyd Wright went to see this exhibition and as Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse inform us “Lloyd Wright had been drawn to the disciplines of Japanese design when forming his own architectural language” (2007). The living space was completely open plan as Wright says “eliminating the room as a box and the house as another box”. In the building there is no cookie punched windows like there has been for decades. Instead there is a series of planes; the roof itself is one big plane and also a completely separate element. All of these elements were brought forward onto the Schroder house. “the building is formed from intersecting planar walls detailed in such a way that some of them appear to hover in space, while others extend horizontally, and still others join to define thin volumes” Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse (2007).

Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque created the cubist movement in the early 20th century. Picasso’s Le Guitariste 1910 is a complete abstraction of the form of a guitarist playing. The abstraction is much more inspirational than the literal as it gets a more emotive reaction out of a person. The cubic painting makes ones perception to be shifted as there is no single point perspective in the painting. This was utilised in the Schroder house as there is no single point in which ones eyes are set to focus on.

The Dutch De Stijl Painter, Pier Mondrian started life as a literal, landscape painter. He then “began a gradual process of abstraction that led him to produce frameless panels laid out in grids, with squares and rectangles painted in only the three primary colours.” Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse (2007). He was very inspired by the works of cubist artists like Picasso “with the help of cubism, he had managed to simplify the language of painting to the point where he used combinations of vertical and horizontal lines.” Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse (2007). Mondrian believed that abstraction was the only way to see objects in their purest form. It takes only one person to push the boundary which in turn causes a catalyst for change in the way we think, design and live. The Schroder house does this to, it abstracts the form of a normal house to create the long planar elements which hold the completely open plan within, and where the internal partition walls could be rearranged to create separated enclosed spaces. Reitveld, also being a member of the De Stijl movement, used the method of trying to get the purest method of Architecture and was the first person to create it in the 3d form. He also reiterates this idea of having an abstract building by using the De Stijl’s colour scheme throughout his building which was a completely revolutionary idea because up until now the buildings around Utrecht were all made from masonry. Fazio, Moffett and Wodehouse also explain to us that “There is no single axis or simple symmetry: rather one part is held in tenuous, dynamic and asymmetrical relationship to the other, as had been suggested in Mondrian’s painting.” (2007).

The three different sources influence Reitveld’s way of designing the Schroder house and whether a person likes it or not, it effectively creates an emotive response to it. Reitveld successfully expresses the beliefs of the De Stijl movement and creates Architecture in its purest form.

Le Corbusier's inspiration for Vila Savoye

After the devastation and bloodshed of the First World War, there was a need to rebuild fast and efficiently. They world had to ignore their volatile past, as it obviously wasn’t working, and strive towards a new future- a vision of a new architecture.

To solve this problem Le Corbusier created the Dom-ino house which was a structure independent of its enclosing envelope. The form comes from a simple post and beam structure that is used in timber construction. “It is simply a frame (the bases for low-cost housing) consisting of two concrete slabs kept apart by columns and linked only by an open stair.” Nuttgens (2001). It uses a reinforced concrete frame where the floating element of the floor is supported by the concrete columns. This repeating module could be easily reproduced and manufactured quickly, in any floor plan and any facade. This idea of having a facade that is completely independent and is not a structure element in itself, gave a lot of flexibility to ones design. In other words this concept could be dropped anywhere in the world, with a well structured floor plan, and the facade can be designed in any desired manner. The Villa Savoye depended on his five points of Architecture:

“Pilotis elevating the mass off the ground; the free plan, achieved through separation of the load bearing columns from the walls subdividing the space; the free facade, the corollary of the free plan in the vertical plane; the long horizontal sliding window; the roof garden, restoring the area of ground covered by the house.” Frampton (2007). The domino house uses two of his principal in Architecture which he brings forward to his design of Villa Savoye. Pilotis, elevating the mass off the ground, which can be seen by the arrangement of columns which support the first floor. This gives the building a floating effect. Free plan which is achieved through the separation of the load bearing columns from the walls.

“A great epoch has begun. There exists a new spirit. We must create the mass-production spirit. The spirit of constructing mass-production houses. The spirit of living in mass-production houses. The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses.” This module of the Dom-ino house could be repeated skywards in the form of skyscrapers. The CIAM, which Le Corbusier founded, wanted to “force” these ideas of structured living onto the public. Obviously the past didn’t work because otherwise the First World War wouldn’t have broken out. Aesthetics are not the most important thing anymore, functionality is. Down with chaos! Order! This is why Corbusier loved the Delage front wheel brake because of its machine like characteristics. It does exactly what it is supposed to and it isn’t over complicated or over decorated. In its own way it is beautiful. This was brought forward to Villa Savoye as the facade is not extremely ornate and the plan is very functional. It still has a roof garden though which is another one of his principals, because without areas of greenery one cannot be happy. The large horizontal windows in another principle which bring in vast quantities of light into all the building.

The Paestum’s symmetry and repeating placements of the columns were brought forward to the Villa Savoye. In the form of his much organised grid structure and placement of his columns. But he does break this organised approach and puts columns where they need to be put as well.

The difference in function of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s river surveyor’s house and Abraham Darby Coalbrookdale bridge

When Abraham Darby created the Coalbrookdale bridge over the river Severn the form clearly expresses the function of the bridge, just as had been for centuries before it had the typical structure of what a bridge should look like. “Traditional in its arch form, it was made of five half-arches on each side (ten pieces in all), with a total clear span of 100 feet (30.5 m).Each 50-foot (16.2 m) half-arch was cast as a single piece, a formidable job of iron casting.” (Roth 2007). These thin arches created the impression a rigid yet lightweight looking structure. These revolution iron members created a 100 feet bridge in a single arch whereas by using typical masonry methods needed thick load bearing elements, that could only span a certain distance. This meant that more arches were needed to create a bridge with an equal span which in turn meant that the construction time of the bridge was vastly longer. These iron half arches could be prefabricated and assembled on site very easily. This was considered to be very modern for its time because up until then no one had been able to create a bridge with so little material, in such a short time, that could span that distance. This new type of iron was revolutionary and key to the success of this bridge.

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s design, of his unrealised project for the river surveyor’s house on the river Loue, used an abstract form to express the function. “The house is a hollow cylinder lying on a cradling base; through the hollow of the cylinder the river flows, as dramatic an expression of control of the water as Ledoux was able to make.” (Roth 2007). His use of grandeur and expressing the heights of all his designs is again portrayed in this conceptual sketch. In the foreground you can see a previous water wheel, which is miniscule in size. He continues this geometric cylindrical shape in his design and uses symbolism to represent the function. The water rushing through the open void in the building suggests that the function of it must have something to do with the water.

Ledoux used grandeur to emphasise the importance of the inhabitants that occupied the building, just as when he was designing the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans. He designed the administrators house to be huge as he was the most important occupant in the well structured work city. “The stark geometry of the administrator’s house was emphasized by over scaled details, particularly the columns of the portico built up of alternated cylindrical and square blocks of stone.” (Roth 2007).

His design was ahead of its time, I think, because I don’t think people could picture a building of this scale being built, just as many of his other unrealised projects like his cenotaph for Isaac Newton. The open spaces were just to vast and daunting, the public could not conceive how a building so big and solid would look in its surroundings.

Crystal Palace. Architecture or Engineering?

In 1851 Britain was to hold the ‘Exhibition of the works of all nations’ as it was the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever known. To impose this sense of power, one would need to create a grand modern building in which to house all of these wonders from around the world. Prince Albert formed a committee to aid in the judging of the first real international Architectural competition. The committee had 245 entries but not a single one was suitable for these high class gentlemen. They set about creating their own vision of what was to be a modern, contemporary design. Instead they created a pic-n-mix style building which was cluttered and an eyesore. In turn the committee became the laughing stock of the whole country.

Joseph Paxton, a gardener who had studied and constructed very well thought out iron greenhouses, was to be their solution. He had come up with a concept design for the building during another meeting. With the opening date ever looming closer Paxton had to design and build quick, with only 42 weeks until the unveiling of this non-existing building. As Frampton emphasises “When commissioned at the eleventh hour to design the Crystal Palace, Paxton was able to produce, in just eight days, an enormous orthogonal three-tiered glasshouse” (2007). He took into consideration the site and the public’s interest in the preservation of the aged trees which were within the building. “Paxton was quick to realize that these troublesome items could easily be accommodated by a central transept with a high curved roof, and thus the double symmetry of the final form emerged.” (Frampton 2007) Pre fabrication of the iron members and the glass outer skin were the key to the success of this project. The fact of the matter is that because of Paxton’s use of iron, he had no need for thick load baring walls which created an open space that had never been seen before. One that looked light and also light in weight.

This enraged most Architects as there is an ongoing feud between Architects and Engineers, and they considered the building to be designed too quick and with a “lack of craft”. They were unimpressed by his use of unconventional materials. As Hearn says to us about Le-Duc’s views “New materials, especially those produced by industrial processes, should be welcomed and encouraged. Insofar as possible, materials should be prepared for use before being brought to the building site and new methods of preparation and construction should be readily accepted and even sought.” (1990) They did not like that fact that Paxton did not stick to any of the classical principles of architecture and did not go by the classical styles. They wanted a building which would express the delight of a building but how could this be realised by a gardener?

Viollet-le-duc

“For him, the art of designing was ultimately a rational activity in which beauty is largely a by-product” (Hearn 1990). Hearn shows that Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc believes that the first copper vessel has the most style because one can easily justify that it is the most rational choice for which the vessel should be shaped. The vessel has been designed to be fully functional in every way, the tapering of the copper at the top to insure that none of the liquid is spilt; the handles are formed to match the natural shape of a human hand and the flat bottom so that the vessel will not topple over when full with liquid. It may look simpler and not as ornate as the other two vessels Hearn reassures us that “While a rational design is not necessarily beautiful, a beautiful design is not necessarily rational.” (1990)


The third, most modern vessel has been altered so much that it is no longer a rational design and in doing so it does not possess style. In this case the vessel does not follow the first rule of designing “form ever follows function”, evidently this coppersmith has to compete with the other two and has to come up with something original so that the public will choose his design over the other two. But the elongation of the handles has caused this vessel to lose majority of its functionality because it cannot be stored upside down. Violet-le-Duc justifies that when altering a design of something it should not lose the original intention for which it was designed: “The portion of the structure that is traditionally most susceptible to aesthetic elaboration should be largely predetermined by the functional requirements” (Hearn 1990).


Viollet-le-Duc talks about Roman Architecture’s advancement from the Greek Doric temple. He is impressed by their alteration of the original Doric style which was rigid and very template like style of Architecture. “proceeded then to devise various structural solutions to the problems raised by the different sizes and shapes of spaces in a complex arrangement. Yet, while the structural schemes were ingenious the builders always ended by decorating them with a luxurious but irrelevant veneer of Greek forms.” (Hearn 1990) This reiterates the previous point that the Romans should have just stuck to the simple, beautiful structures they created instead of just throwing some Greek style decorations around the place which have nothing to do with the function.


I agree with his conclusion that one should not ever compromise the function of a design in order to make it more aesthetically pleasing. When designing or “improving” one should always keep in the back of one’s mind the intended function of the design and not stray away from this intention. This does not mean that one should be afraid to edit a previous design, just as long as it benefits the function of the design. It is very rational to choose a simpler design that works than to choose an elegant one that is useless.

Research Retreat

After finishing our Mediator project, we used Hospitalfield as our site for our next big design project. This was an individual project again and was a six week project. We were given the opportunity of designing a retreat for artists to go spend a week to a year in. Considering Hospitalfield had a colourful history with artist, this seemed a very suiting project.

The site we were given within the grounds were the old grass tennis courts situated south of the walled garden. The site itself was 145m by 65m, so it was a fairly substantial site. The retreat had to incorporate 6 bedrooms or sleeping areas, 6 studios, a community room, a 100m2 (minimum) gallery, kitchen areas, storage and public toilets.

Site Analysis

Precedents

Final Design