Taxonomies, Gaudi & Gehry

Chapter Two: Styles & Movements (excerpt)

Styles emerge from a rich palette of influence: socio-economic conditions, materials and technology, and philosophical currents usually religious and sometimes secular. We must examine these conditions if we are to understand architectural style. The building’s design, the philosophical underpinnings of the choices implicit in the design, the use of technologies and specific materials – the gestalt of these diverse elements forms the distinctive look and feel of a building’s style.

Western architecture has two overarching meta-styles or traditions: the Classical and the Gothic. The two differ fundamentally in their basic engineering structure. The older Classical tradition was based upon the post-and-lintel system, a product of the great Mediterranean cultures of antiquity. The Gothic style, a medieval invention, was based upon the structural tension of the pointed arch and buttress, and its origins are in Northern France.

Professional critics of architecture, aided and abetted by academics, have theorized a multiplicity of schools and styles and neologized a huge nomenclature. I believe that this mania for classification, however beneficial it may be to academic careers, has obscured rather than clarified our ability to look at and appreciate buildings. A look at Gothic style finds an unnecessary proliferation of nomenclature. In English the style is divided as Norman, Early English, and Perpendicular; in French the style is divided into Romanesque-Gothique, Rayonnant, and Flamboyant; in German, into Urgotik, Sondergotik, Reduktionsgotik. While these countries share a tendency to divide the style into the three, they do not share common definitions: sadly, each sub-division refers to a slightly different period and characteristics than its counterpart in another country. (For the sake of brevity and sanity I will not even begin with the Eastern European definitions, which seem to quadrificate rather than trifurcate – but have a separate category for brick gothic, gotikceglany, which is somewhat like the German Backsteingotik – but not exactly the same.)

Canadians are used to the meaning of the same word being slightly different in French than in English. We have grown up with linguistic ambiguity, indeed the political unity of the country was often dependant on the same political slogan in French having a different connotation in English. The most obvious example of this is Quebec a nation/nation, or does the Francophone fact in Canada comprise a nation. The term nation has very different connotations in French than in English. Canadian politicians with any experience know to stay clear of usages like nation – unless they wish to release the semantic serpent of atavistic misunderstanding.

Someone who is only becoming acquainted with the language of architecture should avoid giving too much credence to its many sub-classifications and micro-taxonomies. It is far better to understand the major traditions and metastyles, and look at individual buildings. Many buildings are the product of a number of architects or master artist-masons, such as St. Peter’s in Rome; generally associated with Michelangelo, it had a succession of great artists creating it, among them Fra Giocondo, Raphael, Giuliano da Sangallo, Bal-dassarre Peruzzi, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, and, finally, Michelangelo, who interpreted Bramante's plan. Michelangelo was succeeded by Vignola, Pirro Ligorio, Giacomo Della Porta, Domenico Fontana, Carlo Maderno… and that is just a list of the most prominent of the creators. In the Gothic period many constructions were built over generations and hence necessitated a similar multiplicity of creators.

In the end a great building should be looked at as an individual: just as in a person, the nationality and era have a pronounced effect, yet each one is different. Taxonomies are only helpful if they give you the tools that you need to navigate your way through your own experience of the building.

While many architects are multi-styled in their approach over the duration of their career, others have a singularly defined personal style which is totally misrepresented if it is lumped within a conventionally recognized style. Two great sui generis architects come to mind: Antonio Gaudi and Frank Gehry.

Antoni Gaudi I Cornet (1852 – 1926), is usually classified, (or in my opinion, misclassified), as an Art Nouveau architect. Gaudi’s work appears overwhelmingly organic - an aim of Art Nouveau - and he employs some Art-Nouveau-style conventions in a few of his interiors. But his work shares few other commonalities with the work of other architects who are considered to be of the same school. Victor Horta, Henry Van de Veld, Gustave Surrurier–Bovy, Joseph Olbrich, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh all share a strong commonality in their work and can properly be called Art Nouveau, but not Gaudi. Charles Jencks, the architectural historian who popularized the category of Post-Modernism, states –“I still regard Gaudi as the touchstone for Post Modernism, a model with which to compare any recent buildings to see if they are really metaphorical.”

For his part, Gaudi saw himself as being part of the “Renaixenca” school. But once a marketing machine gets a hold of a style, who cares what the artist thinks? Gaudi’s work is organic to the point of being ominous. He has been called monster-sacré-organique, and his forms appear as if some seething conscious mold entity had assumed a skeletal form and encrusted itself onto reality, They are very overwhelming. His forms are surreal and one assumes that the aesthetic was drug-induced. Looking at his work it is difficult to envision a team of builders working on it; the forms are so expressive that is seems impossible that there were any intermediaries between Gaudi and the building. Needless to say work of such great originality was not open to the usual conventions of imitation. The architectural establishment has not responded to it, and the direction of his work has not been furthered. His work remains, like many works of genius, an exception that is misclassified and marginalized.

Gaudi’s architecture is truly individual style, much like the original sense of the word style, meaning handwriting. If we are to put his work within the confines of a style I would opt for Expressionism. Expressionism posited that architecture could convey an idea or feeling without being conditioned and mediated by architectural conventions, traditions and styles. Expressionism is a style that is essentially anti-style: it asserts that technological advances enable architects to design dramatic forms which can express inner emotions and ideas free of the constraints of traditional style. Expressionism is the architectural iteration of art for art’s sake, and because of its intrinsic freedom form boundaries it necessitates architects that employ it to exhibit great imagination and discipline.

Gaudi was hit by a tram in June 1926, at the age of 73. Because of his unconventional appearance - some complained that he looked like an artist - several cab drivers refused to pick him up, fearing he might bleed on their car and not have the fare. Confused from the impact, he was taken to a pauper’s hospital where no one recognized him. He died a few days later, having not received the kind of medical attention that would have saved his life.

The neglect Gaudi received in his hour of injury was unfortunately a sign of worse things to come: the neglect of his stylistic legacy. In 1998 he became the only modern architect whose name was submitted to the Pope for canonization. The Catholic Church is waiting for proof of two miracles having occurred as a result of his intercession. I would submit the projects of Sagrada Famillia and Casa Batllo as an attestation of the miraculous, however, I believe that religions employ different values and standards than do I.

Frank Gehry (born in Toronto, 1929) is another innovative architect that, like Gaudi, has been mis-classified. Gehry is trendily classified as a “deconstructivist post-modernist”. At the time of writing, he is one of a kind. His work is asymmetrical, with apparent perspective fields shifting as in a cubist painting, more monumental metal sculpture than postmodern pastiche. The lesson in these examples is to see how arbitrary formal architectural taxonomy often is, and how unnatural a linear narrative of architectural traditions can be. Forget the labels, be mindful of the mega-styles, and look at the building.

[Next post: The East Van Cross]