What is the relation between the honest use of materials, and beauty in architecture?

Veerle van Westen - 0635573 - april 2012Philosophy in Architecture - 7X700 - Dr. Jacob Voorthuis

MATERIALS AND ARCHITECTURE

What is the relation between the honest use of materials, and beauty in architecture?

The honest use of materials in architecture, is very important for conceiving a beautiful building. In this essay will be explained why an honest way of using materials is important for beauty, so that more beautiful buildings can be designed. This explanation will be given by showing the link between the honest use of materials, and beauty, on a conceptual level. Followed by two specific examples, making the conceptual explanation more practical.

I.Architecture is, in my view, the translation of a story into a physical facilitation of that story, being the building. This story will then be read by its users. The story is about the actors (inhabitants, clients, users) and their usage of the building, the architect only writes the story down the way he perceives it, the architect is not the one making it up. An architect tries to research and formulate the story that is going to take place in the building as detailed as possible. The next step is to translate this detailed story into physical requirements. This is done by the architect, the structural designer, the physicist, etcetera. The translation makes the story into physical and technical aspects, which reveal themselves through the actual materials, the actual matter, of which the building is made. The revelation in materials and matter is what facilitates the happenings that take place in the building, and this is what the actors can see, feel, smell, hear and conceive. The materials shaping the

building are like the words an architect uses to tell the story, and the choice of these materials and their appearance, is crucial in the way the story will be read by its users. If the story is clear to read, and is understood and adopted by its users, the building is thought to be good, to be beautiful.

II.The writing of John Ruskin will help us understand why using a material honestly makes a building more beautiful, more clear to read and understand. In the text Ruskin uses the word truth, where I use honesty. I use honesty because it is a state of conduct, where truth is more a state of being. Honesty is more relevant when talking about making a design. Ruskin explains why truth is important in the beauty of buildings.

‘Truth is important not only for truths sake, but also for the delights over which she has influence. The beauty of the things untouched by lies, is so much greater than that of something that has the black mystery of untruth hung over it. (…) Best is not to lie at all, not in the smallest sense. Speaking truth comes only by practice, a matter of habit.(…) To speak truth with constancy is as difficult as speaking it under intimidation.’ – Ruskin, 1849, page 28

This way of thinking about truth, or honesty, says, that untruth in the small things diminishes beauty. Taking it back to the revelation of architecture through materials, dishonesty in materials would mean that the story being told is less clear, less fair, less beautiful. The building will not only be less

beautiful, more importantly it might miss its goal and tell something different in the eyes of the users. A dishonest material use can be misinterpreted by the people experiencing the building, and can cause misunderstanding of the architecture. The honest use of material is important for making the building beautiful, and for telling the story the architect wants to tell.

III.In this essay we see the honest use of materials as using materials in a way their nature is. The nature of material not seen as literally the natural way it is found (for wood as trees, for stone as mountains) but meaning the distinctive natural characteristics it has.

‘Tectonics is an art that takes nature as a model – not natures concrete phenomena, but the uniformity and the rules by which she exists and creates.’ – Semper as cited in Gottfried Semper and the problem of historicism

In architecture this would mean that wood should reveal itself as wood, in texture, in strength, in the way it has a grain. Which is for example very different from that of stone, which is more hard, more massive, stronger, stiffer, and has a very different texture. For man-made materials this is less easy to define. Steel, or glass, completely made by man, can be seen as a material with less natural characteristics. Not less distinctive though, steel is strong, hard, cool, bendable when heated; whilst glass is transparent, fragile, … Each material is created in a certain way in the industry, giving the material its distinctive

characteristics. Further on in this essay we will see how invention and true use of materials go together. Dishonest use of material would defy these distinctive and natural characteristics, like using wood but making it look like marble, as if it was never supposed to be wood. Or using bricks, but plastering it, and draw lines as if its stones.

The only true way to use materials dishonest is by not only defying its natural characteristics, but also letting the material imitate another materials characteristics.

There are three issues that can now be misunderstood as dishonesty, which they are not. Imitation, imagination, and innovation.

Dishonesty is, as mentioned before, imitating one material by using another material. This should not be confused with imitating the harmony and the concepts of nature. Like, the way branches split in a tree can be used for the way a steel column separates in a building. Nature is often used as an inspirational system, to create art. Semper says about imitating nature

‘To be in harmony with the laws of nature makes the adornment of an art object; where man adorns, all he does more or less consciously is to make the law of nature evident in the object he adorns.’ Semper does not see this as wrong imitation. ‘If nature is understood as an inner power rather than an external reality, and if imitation is seen as a creative principle, rather than mindless copying, than imitation may still be considered as the means and end of the art.’ Semper as cited in Gottfried Semper and the problem of historicismImitating nature might be seen as using the harmonious and beautiful principles from nature, which actually is art. Here there is no problem of being dishonest. ‘by imitating nature, art was born’ – Laugier as cited in Gottfried Semper and the problem of historicism

Imagination could be seen as dishonest, since it is not real.

‘Imagination is a conception of things absent or impossible, but with always knowing they are in fact absent or impossible. All the difference lies in the fact of confession, in there being no deception. It is necessary as spiritual creatures to be able to invent and behold what is not, and as moral creatures we should know and confess at the same time that it is not.’ - Ruskin, 1849, page 42

Imagination can be seen as representing, where non-imagination, reality, is presenting. Imagination in art can be seen as the play with presentation and representation. As René Magritte does in his famous painting of the pipe. In many art forms imagination is what makes the art. Everyone knows when seeing a painting, that the painting is not real, it’s a painting, it’s a representation. In architecture it seems difficult to keep separate representation and presentation, since everything is in fact present. An architectural piece can definitely also be a representation, but it will never cease to be a presentation as well, since it is a functional thing. The imagination therefore automatically becomes real. Is it then dishonest to, for example, represent a wooden column, when in reality the column is steel covered up with wood? In Ruskin’s way of describing imagination this would be wrong, since there is no confession. You would have to be able to see the column of steel in the wood, or know for sure this column can never really be wood, for the imagination to be justified. So, the viewer of the building has to be included in the imagination, has to know this is a representation and not a presentation, for the imagination to be honest.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe, Margritte

If honesty is the use of materials in a way that does not contradict with the materials distinctive natural characteristics, than innovation could easily be mistaken for dishonesty. This is also which happens in Ruskin’s book, Ruskin, being very conservative, does not like newly invented materials being used instead of natural materials. He specifies this in the case of the use of iron. ‘One of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical case, and that is dependent on consistency of style, it should be right to retain as far as possible the materials and principles of earlier ages. (…) Iron may be used as cement, but not as support’. Ruskin, 1849 I would like to take a distance from that point of view. Using iron as support does not contradict with its distinctive natural characteristics, so this is not a dishonest use of material. A completely different and innovative way of looking at a material, of using a material, can be very interesting in architecture. It can be able to tell a new story, which you might never be able to tell with natural materials only. Innovating is defining a new set of natural distinctive characteristics. The innovation of a new material is not dishonest.

There is one explicit case where imitating one material using another could be not wrong. This is an act that is somewhere in between imitating nature, and imitating a different material, it is cladding. In my opinion there might be reasons to clad one material with another, and that is protection, hygiene, durability and safety. Why use a complete wall of marble, when a concrete wall covered with marble slaps is functional as well, and uses less of the precious resource

marble. In this case, one should very carefully ask himself the question why there needs to be a marble wall, and if a ‘not marble’ wall is also possible to tell the story? And, if a steel column is needed to keep the building standing, but needs concrete covering for fire safety, that might be a reason to clad steel in concrete. But ask the same question, can the column be made of concrete only?

IV.As could be read above, the use of materials has an important influence on the way users experience architecture. The materials shaping the building are the words an architect uses to tell the story, and the choice of these materials and their appearance, is crucial in the way the story will be read by its users. If the story is less clear, less fair, it will be less beautiful and therefore a lesser building. If a materials distinctive characteristics are defied, and are changed in such a way it represents another material, the architecture will be less beautiful. Now let’s try and make the above explicit, using two very beautiful and respected, but in material use very different, buildings. The Bruder Klaus chapel by Peter Zumthor, and the Rietveld Schroder house designed by Gerrit Rietveld . A strange comparison, but in this case very useful.

The Bruder Klaus Chapel, designed by Peter Zumthor, is a building where materials are used as honest as can be. Concrete, actually a product of innovation, not a material found in nature but a material made by men, tells in this building about all that concrete can be. Concrete is massive, heavy, it has to be poured in a casting, it is mostly a structural material, it can also close a building to water and wind, it is made of aggregate, cement, sand. You see this in the way it is used in the very thick walls. In the color where the local sand can be recognized, in the texture, the elements of concrete not being perfectly mixed making the different sizes of aggregate show. In the structural and separating function it is given. Inside the chapel it can be seen that concrete has to be cast onto/into something. This casting is clearly tree stems, the building shows how the concrete is cast, in layers. This chapel actually tells you everything there is to know about the distinctive characteristics of concrete. You need no imagination, Zumthor did not try to imitate or make concrete a symbol of some other material, the use of concrete is as pure and honest as it can be.

In this building, materials are really the most important vocabulary the architect uses to tell his story. This is important to realize, because this is why materials here are so pure and so decisive in the architecture.

The next building that will be described uses a totally different vocabulary, one consisting of shape and color.

Maybe it is not fair to compare the Rietveld Schroder house the way it will be done, but it is a good way to point out the different ways of using materials. Rietveld wanted to construct the house using only concrete. This was too expensive, the house is constructed with brick walls, only the foundation and the balcony being of concrete. Looking at the building, you wouldn’t know whether it is concrete or brick. All materials are plastered and painted, becoming only shape and color, interior as well as exterior. The mass of the building sometimes seems to be floating, appearing as no mass or structure at all. All materialization of the building has disappeared. Is this wrong or dishonest, is the Rietveld Schroder house not beautiful because the use of materials is the way it is? If we analyze it bearing the essay written above in mind, Rietveld does not imitate a different material. It is not really covering one material with another, the materials do not represent any other material, the building is just not about materials, and does not pretend to be that either (which is the very important part!). No one is being deceived looking at the building, you are just not being told which material s are used because for this expressionist building it is not important at all.

This architect uses a totally different vocabulary to tell his story. And for the story to be clearly read by its users, the architect eliminates all vocabulary, except for shapes and colors. One could think the use of

materials is dishonest, but it would be a less beautiful building if it would have been, because the story told would have been less clear.

Designing a building is telling a story, in such a way that the story will be congruent with that of the user of the building. As seen in the examples, this can be done with different aspects, like materials or shape or color or light. If the story that is being told is clear, the building will be more beautiful. A dishonest material use, being the imitation of one material using another material, causes misinterpretation by the people experiencing the building, and causes misunderstanding of the architecture. This means that the dishonest use of material lessens the beauty of a building. The same thing would be true for a dishonest or wrong use of shape, or color, or light, which could be the subject of an essay on its own.

Your extensive vocabulary as architect is to be used carefully and integer, to be sure you are telling the story you are wanting to tell in all aspects and to all readers.

Literature:Gottfried Semper and the problem of historicism; Mari Hvattum,; Cambridge University Press, 2004The Seven Lamps of Architecture, the lamp of truth; John Ruskin; Smith, Elder, and Co., 1849