“PlayTimes” international style vs. American Modernism + Expressionism architecture

The film “PlayTimes” by Jacques Tati delivered a strong image of how an ideal Modern world should be. People of the modern world have the same style of living; wearing same type of clothes, speaking in similar tones, doing the same gestures. In other word, the gab of distinction has become narrower. Everything has become mass-production, and so the human-being. The most obvious element that shows very strong atmosphere of modernism is the architecture. Identical buildings with rectangular steel structure and clear glass walls are line up on a street of uncharted Paris. The film really shows how extreme modernist could be. But in the real world this truly modernist image isn’t as harsh as in the film.

American modernist house were American ideal house has clean line, black/white/grey, honest materials, and a lot of glass. Plus fancy candy-colored domestic car (to add on a perfect look of American dream household). Meanwhile American architecture had differed from international style.

Here comes Expressionism…

Expressionism is very expressive (as it is named). More extension adding on the real usage, conflicting the old idea base on idealistic modernist principle, which focus only on functional elements of architecture. The use of form has become more exaggerating. Pure geometrical forms are still in use, but twisted. The architecture has dramatically differed from what Bauhaus or Mies or Le Corbusier had done. Expressionism is brutally expressing the extreme uses of geometrical forms. It has changed from using rigid clean line to more fictional style. These architectures are much soulful than international style.

Expressionism is more likely to be inspired by many different things comparing to international style that does not leave trace of the origin of the design. International style is based on functional use.  

Erich Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower is expressing the stage of mind of the architect, since it was designed inside a bunger at war time. It is emotional-based (emotional disturbing).

Eero Saarinen designed TWA terminal inspired by flying bird. Inspired from movement and drama. Bird is also a representative symbol to flying plane.

Dymaxion home by Buckminster Fuller represented very fictional idea to a modern home. The aluminum home gives the idea of a prefabricated and mass production like a true modernist. Because of its choice of material make it more futuristic. But it doesn’t seem to be very preferable by normal people.

Louis Kahn’s principle ‘ruins wrapped around buildings’ gave a new look to architecture. Kahn brought in a lot of ruins and old architecture into his designs. Kahn avoid using glass walls like typical iconic modernist building, instead he used voids as openings of his buildings. Kahn’s style is quite brutal; making the materials becomes more solid and heavy in sight.

Other architecture in Expressionism movement, Alvar Aalto and Richard Neutra, took the influence of International style and adapted it with surrounding, and localized it in Aalto’s case.

Expressionism somehow inspired more or less by international style. Some might look completely different from what ideal modernist architecture would be like, but it still has some trace of it; functionally or visually.  

PlayTime by Jacques Tati (1967)

 Apartments. 

 Personal spaces.

New Paris

Buildings with glass walls and steel structure, revealing outside and inside

Toward a New Architecture + PlayTime by Jacques Tati

Le Corbusier declares the aesthetic of functional objective over ‘style’. He claims that human eyes are mean to appreciate simplicity of basic form. Style of different periods was all plastic beauty. He claims that every human has the same necessity, but what about emotional desire? His revolution for ‘perfection’ is quite confusing. How can there be revolution when human does not have a desire to change or to be different?

Le Corbusier praise how automobile is suitable to be a paragon of architecture. Because automobile is standardized form when it is made. It is mass-produced, yet still be able to be refined.   

PlayTime reflects the ideal Le Corbu’s city, where everything is mass production, and so human is. In the movie PlayTime the director, Jacque Tati, excessively conveyed how the ideal innovated modernist world could be.

The city from the movie is surprisingly Paris, a whole new picture of Paris. Where there are no more prominent attractions that would identify Paris in the way we view Paris as. The city is filled with rows of same very modern looking buildings; buildings with glass walls and steel structure with same height and same facade. These buildings have the iconic principle of modernist; revealing inside and outside, unclear threshold (clear glass walls), only functional elements are used (no ornaments), honest materials are used, etc. The environment of the city is uniformed. Even other cities that appear on posters have the same type of building.

No significant style that will distinguish different type of people. They all wear the same thing or ‘international style’ to be said. Races cannot be easily differentiate, even when they speak, the languages sound the same (probably French, German, and English; the director might try to put it this way to confused the audience). Their gestures and movements are patterned. When they all look the same, people are confused. Someone would be mistaken to another person. Calm and orderly atmosphere in the movie actually gives very chaotic feeling for human emotions. Nobody could possibly feel at ease living this kind of lifestyle.

The image of the movie is ideal modernistic city and lifestyle; very uniformed, communistic. It is almost likely to me a Nazi style of living, where people are controlled to have the same needs and satisfied by same mass-produced products. Le Corbusier would have pictured this kind of city when he came up with Radiant City. Even though, the movie is a bit too extreme in a way that the city could actually be built. 

Korapin A.

Seagram Building: Mies Van der Rohe vs. Ornament and Crime

To begin with, Mies Van de Rohe has said this famous motto – “Less is more”.  It became the symbolic motto of Modernist Architecture. It is remarkably unornamented, practical, and functional.

Seagram Building is a steel structure, glass and concrete edifice with non-structural I-beams wrapped around it vertically. There are a few ‘betrayal’ mistakes of an ideal modernistic principle that Mies had made in this building:

 1.   Decoration in steel I-beams: Decoration = Ornament = Crime!

According to Loos’s “Ornament and Crime”, this is obviously count as a crime because it just stick there covering up the concrete columns that hid the spectacle structure (for a modernist…). The steel I-beams do not perform a functional matter. Instead it is an exaggerated portion of the hidden beams. Doubling the amount of steel beams are not exactly what “Less is more” is about. That would end up a great amount of money needed, and source too. Loos would drop his jaw over how modernist cost less in this case (the Seagram building were the world most expensive skyscraper at that time). These I-beams are just a new form of ornament for modernism style, which may look very non-bourgeois, very plain. In the other hand, Mies needed to respect Bauhaus principle of disclosure of structural basis. This expression of structure is quite important in Bauhaus style.

2.   Brass-colored glass walls:  Despite the Bauhaus style, the brass-colored glass walls were a representative symbol of a distiller company; whiskey-like color. As one of the importances of Bauhaus style is honest material, which artificial color and paint are not very appreciative, these glass walls absolutely failed this principle.

Mies could not restrain his design within the Bauhaus and modernist theory. There could have been factors that cannot make this building meeting the requirement of being truly modernistic constructed. Factors like regulation over fireproof material covering the structure could cause him to these mistakes. Anyhow, he had made a remarkable building that still has it timeless beauty in it. 


Korapin A.

      

Ornament vs. Anti-ornament

VS.

Ornamented Cookies

It is not a crime! (to me..)

Adolf Loos: Ornament and Crime (the book)