16
Robinson variously translate Semper’s writing using the terms ‘type’, ‘element’ and ‘component’
in relation to pieces of buildings—although the word ‘element’ predominates, and ‘type’ is also
used to refer to something that has become standard or typical. ‘For nature in its infinite
abundance … constantly repeats its basic forms, modifying them a thousand times … It
shortens elements and lengthens others, develops some elements fully, then merely alludes to
them elsewhere’, states Semper,
continuing that, ‘In just the same way, art is based on a few
standard forms and types that derive from the most ancient traditions;
they reappear constantly
yet offer infinite variety, and like nature’s types they have their own history’.
16
Peter Collins uses
the term ‘element’ extensively in
Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750–1950—to refer
to aesthetic pieces of buildings, whether decorative or tectonic.
17
Where Collins discusses the
desire of modernists to reject established or historical building elements, Bernard Tschumi uses
the term ‘element’ to refer to fragments, pieces or components in order to describe the nature of
disjunctions in his own work.
18
The ‘elements’ and ‘components’ of my own design work are described as arranged in
‘compositions’ that are characterised as ‘sculptural’ or in the realm of ‘art’. The term
‘composition’ is similarly perhaps most illuminated by reference to Semper. In Mallgrave and
Robinson’s translations, Semper repeatedly uses the term to similarly refer to collections of
parts, rather the way something is made, and the manner in which something is visually
conceived rather than physically assembled.
19
Colin Rowe notes in the essay ‘Character and
Compositions’ that, ‘The shelves of any representative architectural library in the United States
or Great Britain might suggest that between 1900 and 1930 the major critical interest of the
architectural profession throughout the English-speaking world lay in the elucidation of the
principles of architectural composition’.
20
Rowe notes the large number of publications on the
subject during this period—by comparison to very few before or after—and the stark contrast to
the contemporaneous modernist manifestoes, which denied any role for composition and were
partisan where the composition books were detached in tone. Rowe cites Frank Lloyd Wright’s
pronouncement of the death of composition and Ruskin’s reservations on the use of the term,
but notes that if decoupled from the notion of ‘correct composition’, any building could be
understood as a compositional.
21
The broader meaning of the term ‘composition’, as used in this
research, is connected to Semper’s notion of the importance of merging his four ‘types’ into an
expressive whole in order for a building to constitute architecture.
22
16
Harry Francis Mallgrave, Michael Robinson,
Gottfried Semper: Style (Los Angeles: Getty
Publications, 2004), 72.
17
Peter Collins,
Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750–1950 (London: Faber and
Faber, 1965).
18
Bernard Tschumi,
Architecture and Disjunction (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).
19
Mallgrave,
Gottfried Semper: Style.
20
Colin Rowe,
The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1976), 60.
21
Rowe,
The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, 61–62.
22
Forty,
Words and Buildings, 306.
16
17
In the sense that it is used in this dissertation, the term ‘composition’ could be understood as an
alternative to the terms ‘order’ and ‘form’. If ‘order’ is defined as ‘the attainment of beauty,
through a relationship of parts to the whole’,
23
then my use of ‘composition’ differs only in that
beauty may not always be the objective. This distinction is derived from the conception of
architectural ‘composition’ as ‘art’, consequently also encompassing the capacity to unsettle or
intellectually challenge—although it could be argued that this amounts to a form of beauty.
Aspects of the broader usage of the term ‘form’ provide a useful connection between the
meaning of the terms ‘composition’ and ‘sculpture’ and ‘art’ as set out below. Michel Foucault
and Henri Lefebvre conceive of ‘order’ as ‘the process by which experience is filtered,
transformed and fed back to us in reduced form’,
24
but it is through its operation as ‘art’ that it is
conversely proposed here that architecture need not be reductive in this process.
Confusion with regard to the use of the term ‘form’ stems from its distinct meanings as either
referring simply to shape, or to the embodiment of an idea. It is this latter meaning that
resonates with my own use of the terms ‘art’ and ‘sculptural’, which are used interchangeably in
this research to refer to aspects of my own design work—to describe components of a building
that form part of the aesthetic composition that elicits an emotional or intellectual response in
those viewing or inhabiting it. Conversely, the term ‘furnishing’ is used to describe building
elements that are present predominantly to perform a functional role. The term assigns them a
status equivalent to unfixed furnishings such as chairs and tables—recognising that despite the
fact that they are not part of the aesthetic composition of the building, these elements inevitably
have an aesthetic appearance and so the term ‘functional’ is inadequate. Loos conversely only
uses the word ‘art’, and not ‘sculpture’ when referring to architecture. My own usage reflects a
belief that the while the art qualities of architecture are unique and specific, the other branch of
art practice to which they bear most relation is sculpture. While sculpture and architecture vary
in the manner in which they are perceived, it is through the aesthetic perception of form that
both communicate ideas. I use the term ‘composition’ to refer to the assembly of building
‘elements’ but these arrangements are ‘art’ or ‘sculptural’ because they are a sign of something
else, and this meaning derives from the perception of them rather than from the objects
themselves.
25
Vitruvius describes ‘the art of building’ as one of the ‘three departments of architecture’,
26
and
Leon Battista Alberti discusses architecture as a form of art practice—‘I think you could not omit
architecture from that category’
27
. However, their usage of the term differs from that outlined
above in that they are referring to the buildings as objects, rather than an abstract meaning that
23
Forty,
Words and Buildings, 240.
24
Forty,
Words and Buildings, 248.
25
Forty,
Words and Buildings, 154. Forty discusses the development of the term ‘form’ in
relation to Kant, Goethe and the Romantics.
26
Vitruvius,
The Ten Books of Architecture, trans. Morris Hickey Morgan (Cambridge:
Harvard
University Press, 1914), 16.
27
Leon Battista Alberti,
On the Art of Building in Ten Books,
trans. Joseph Rykwert,
Neil Leach,
Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), 2.
17