“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)

Adolf Loos: Ornament and Crime (1908)

Art appears to take part in every historical period. It is part of culture, and it is what culture has created. It even shows the development of every culture. Periods of art were (obviously) distinguished by their appearance. Ornamentation and decoration are what makes art appeared differently. It’s like an invention for senses.

Saying “ornament is a crime” is not completely right or wrong. It depends on what aspect does ornament involve in. Adolf Loos obviously against ornamentation in every aspect. Loos ‘aggressively’ depicted on why ornament is a crime, which some explanations are quite ridiculous. Ornament or anti-ornament is not a factor to evaluate how successful one can be. Richer or poorer. Cultivated or not. People from different culture and different acknowledgment, would have different appreciation and preference in everything.

But Loos did point out a good reason to not be overly-praise-all-the-ornament. He said that ornament is a crime against economy. Ornamentation does require exhaustive labour, more money, and materials are wasted. Decorated piece need to waste on something before it could pleasure the eyes. For our decade, it might be more useful to get an IKEA plain, recycled coffee table than a crafted whole trunk of teak coffee table that work functionally the same. It is better because of the crisis of resource reduction that we are facing now.  Moreover, mass production is way more suitable for the amount of population.            

It seems to be that our “Modern” generation is appreciating the “art of nothing” and mass-produced outcomes. Modernism cut out all the connection between art and culture. It mostly doesn’t (or doesn’t want to) show the trace of past or future. No sign of history and how the development begun nor how it would develop further. If our generation prefer to stop developing our own style of art. That would probably a discontinuance of the history of art. Everything from now on would be ‘nothing’. 

Korapin A.

Jacques Brel : Les Bourgeois

Tom Wolfe: From Bauhaus to Our House (the book)

Tom Wolfe: From Bauhaus to Our House

As the word “Bauhaus” was said. I would think of the attempt of making the best out of “Less is more” or “Minimalism”. The perfection that modern world is craving for. The art of ‘nothing’. 

Bourgeois, Bourgeois, Bourgeois!


Tom Wolfe is in favor of using this, "Bourgeois", word.

As well as the postwar modern architects, who despised the style of “Bourgeoisie” (ornamented style; with architrave, pediment, etc. … Somewhat quite unpopular for modern style.) According to Wolfe’s declaration, these American architects sure had their mind on avoidance of designing a bourgeois style. So they came up with so-called “International Style”, which might means the style that has no trace of cultural form or it could be said as the style that starting from zero. With no external ornamentation, of course.

Talking about anti-bourgeois style; Flat roof, flat everything, no curvy line, skeleton structure, purity of form, honest material, and earthy color, or some even expose ‘unpleasant’ structure of the building, it is the main contradiction between Wolfe’s preference and the famous architects, mainly Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and Gropius, on his manifesto. Wolfe was clearly disgusted of this lifeless style. He pointed out that it was barely appreciated by the users of these designed buildings (he was not the only one who hated it!, as he claimed). He even called them cheap. In fact, it could be said so, it is cheap in the aspect of construction costs. Most of the materials were prefabricated and mass-produced. These machine made items were surely cost less than heeded handcrafted stuffs. This probably the consequence of the after war era, when the recession affected on everything and everywhere.

It seems like Wolfe viewed International style and Modern architecture of America as a demoniac thing. It is a little too overreacted. The Modern architecture is, in fact, clean and simple. Modern architecture has its own personality and uniqueness (even though a lot of the designs are easy to predict; pure form with bare materials, i.e.). As this simply beautiful style serves user's needs, then it would be halfway a good design! These architectures are beautiful in their own ways or at least functional.

The good thing is aesthetic is not always fixed in one perspective and standard. Some thing could be ugly in one’s eye, but perfect for the other.

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The weird thing is Modern style (architecture) now is what I would call "Bourgeoisie". It turns out to be even more luxurious and ornamented. The more 'nothingness' in the design, even gives the feeling of 'Haute'-style (luxurious sense). Is it because of the different meaning of "modernism" that people perceive? or is it just the trend of modern people to set this standard of being high-fashion in architecture?  

Korapin A.