Some Cosmological Roots of Modern Architecture

Rudolf Klein

doi:10.2478/jbe-2014-0001

Abstract

This paper investigates the links between some oriental cosmologies and modern architecture, stemming from major non-Western religions, such as Buddhism, Islam and Judaism as well as from Einstein’s theories. It analyses both the direct impact of these concepts, influencing modernism at a theoretical level, and their indirect impact through historic non-Western architecture, mainly Buddhist and Islamic. While modernist theoreticians and architects frequently emphasised functional and technical priorities of modernism, I argue that modernism was far less rational than it is commonly thought, and that it was substantially influenced by non-Western thought, particularly in its early period.

This paper considers two main innovations of modernism resulting from oriental concepts of void: (1) the flat and undecorated façade, the avoidance of traditional ‘façade-discourse’, (2) the promotion of space as the main objective of architecture. The impact of Buddhist, Islamic, Judaic and the Einstenian cosmologies on modernism are considered

References

[1] In his Metaphysics, Aristotle writes that “the primary features of beauty are taxis, symmetria and horismmenon, and that they can be expressed mathematically”. Taxis meant order, which also implied hierarchy. Symmetria derives from syn, meaning common, and metreo, meaning measurement; symmetria refers to systematic division of a piece of art into equal measures or quantities and symmetry. Horismmenon, meaning limit, was an element that mostly determined architectural space, and was only conceivable as limited. All these elements are in fact geometrical, describing cosmology.
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[2] Semper in his Bekleidungstheorie was the first to usher non-Western ideas which can be related to Islamic tradition.
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[3] The text of the Second Commandment made Judaism reluctant to tackle the issue of the visual element, as it is less strict than Islam, but also less willing to address the problem of representation, actually non-representation.
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[4] for instance wall painting with some empty patches, faint lines, which can be interpreted in several ways.
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[5] There have been earlier ‘cultural borrowings,’ like Johann Fischer von Erlach’s use of the minaret in his Karlskirche in Vienna, or John Nash’s Royal Pavilion in Brighton that used Indian architectural elements, but they did not create a new paradigm.
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[6] Some Orthodox churches in the Habsburg Empire, built in a Catholic environment, also used oriental elements in order to differentiate them from the mainstream western architecture.
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[7] I use the term de-materialisation to denote the gradual process of the reduction of building material in the evolution of historic styles. This process can be extrapolated to the history of architecture as a whole, Western and Far Eastern alike. Not only did the quantity of material diminish from the era of the Egyptian pyramids down to the time of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Friedrichstrasse project in Berlin in the 1920s, but also its prominence and expressive power. I suggest that this is not only the result of technical, but also of spiritual progress, the shift from the touchable sacred entity to the abstract, in accordance with the evolution of civilisations. This could be related to the development of religious thought from animism and polytheism to monotheism and atheism (in its Western or Zen Buddhist version, for instance).
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[8] Parallel with the process of de-materialisation evolves de-signification, whereby architecture gradually loses its power to represent external and internal contents, which produces more simulacra with more and more remote references, until the extreme concept of non-referentiality is reached. The joint effect of de-materialisation and de-signification can be described as the de-idolisation of architecture, a process, which distances architecture from the idol, or the material manifestation of the sacred.
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[9] Contemporary critics stressed the ‘restless spirit’ of oriental style, as opposed to solid Western tectonics and the concept of eidos which lies behind it. See: Rosenthal, „In welchem Style sollen wir bauen?“ In: Zeitschrift für praktische Baukunst, (4/1844): 23-27. The author of the paper adds that this style lacks any Christian element and architectural character, being merely decoration and play.
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[10] Gottfried Semper (1803, Hamburg - 1879, Rome), the most prominent German architect of the second half of the 19th century, created the Dresden synagogue (1838-40), a turning-point in this genre. His Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten, 1860-63 (“Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts”) is the most profound theoretical treatise of the century. It advocates a rational interpretation of techniques as a source of style, and recommends the use of colour in decorative arts and architecture, which with his Bekleidungstheorie (theory of cladding), served as the theoretical justification for the Oriental style.
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[11] In 1834 Semper published Vorläufigen Bemerkungen über bemalte Architektur und Plastik bei den Alten“ in which he analysed the question of polychromy in antiquity with some references to medieval and Renaissance architecture. Following many other scholars, Hanno-Walter Kruft concludes that polychromy led Semper to the idea of the ’theory of cladding’. („Die Polychromie wird fur ihn zum Ausgangspunkt seiner spater entwickelten Bekleidungstheorie.“) See: Hanno-Walter Kruft, Geschichte der Architekturtheorie, (Munich, 1985) 356.
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[12] The proof of this is the interior of his synagogue in Dresden, where oriental style was only used in the interior. Later, mainly after the 1848 revolutions, codification in architecture slackened and opened the way to new languages in Central Europe. The first large-scale ‘Oriental style’ synagogues first appeared in the 1850s.
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[13] This split was far from the original intention of Islamic sacred architecture.
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[14] See: Nasr, Islamic Art and Spirituality, 190.
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[15] Oleg Grabar: The Mediation of Ornament, (Boston, 1992), 63.10.2307/25557837
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[16] Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament, 151.
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[17] Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament, 152.
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[18] Albert Einstein originated from a German Jewish family and he was familiar with Judaic thought and interpreted it similarly to Baruch Spinoza. Einstein was sympathetic towards Buddhism, but his insistence on God is explicitly Jewish. See: Rudolf Klein: Judaism, Einstein and Modern Architecture, in Prostor, 2[44] 20[2012] 220-235.
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[19] Loos, a gentile surrounded by Jewish intellectuals, explicitly mentions the ’white walls of Zion’.
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[20] Hermann Minkovski (1864-1909), mathematician, born into a Lithuanian Jewish family, but he was not involved spiritually in Judaism.
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[21] Einstein’s quantum theory for which he obtained the Nobel Prize is often related to Jewish mysticism. The Kabbalah sees the universe as little bits of dark matter which are surrounded and held together by a light called ein sof. Quantum theory sees the universe as little particles with positive and negative and neutral charge which are surrounded by and held together by 4 forces: gravity, electromagnetism, strong, and weak.
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[22] See for Judaic roots of Einstein: Steven Gimbel, Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2012
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[23] As a matter of fact, space has always played an important role in architecture, particularly in explicitly spiritual periods such as the Gothic and the Baroque. Even then, space was an integral part of planning, with structural elements carefully drawn and designed. However, space was treated as something between objects and structures and not as an independent entity.
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[24] Mendelssohn’s wife’s friend, Erwin Finlay-Freundlich was one of the first to learn about and support Einstein’s endeavours. He planned to measure the bending of light during a solar eclipse, and published the first book on relativity in 1916.
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[25] In the 1920s and 1930s, architectural theoreticians considered Mendelssohn’s early opus to be expressionistic, which may be true, but his ideological impact was undeniable and necessary for the further course of architectural modernism.
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[26] Siegfried Gidion (Prague, 14 April 1888 - 10 April 1968 in Zurich, sometimes misspelt Siegfried Giedion) was a pupil of Heinrich Wolfflin, but soon adopted modern thinking in cosmology and the physics of Einstein. As the first secretary-general of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne he was extremely influential in modernism’s evolution and spread.
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[27] Although influential, this connection between the Bauhaus’ corner and cubist paintings of Braque and Picasso is a bit problematic, and it reflects Gidion’s view of architecture from an art historian’s perspective.
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Some Cosmological Roots of Modern Architecture

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