At 08:08 AM 1/12/98 -0000, Simon wrote:
>Schmarsow set himself specifically against the, as he saw it, restricted
>notion of architecture presented by Semper some years earlier as the
>'dressing' of buildings.
That would have put Schmarsow pretty far out in front of everyone else at
that time. Semper was IT. Owen Jones, Labrouste, Viollette le Duc (pardon
the spelling; I've been away from these names for a while!) all the great
theorists of the time stopped at ornament or the sense of decoration. Well,
maybe le Duc went a bit further into structure, but still not space.
Even as advanced as we consider Sullivan and Wright, they stopped short of
seeing architecture as spatial in nature for the most part. Wright only just
hinted at it in the early Prairie Houses, where he was investigating the
effects of structure and form on experience. Jospeh Siry argues that he
didn't begin to consider architectural space itself until the '20s. (Good
story there: He claimed Unity Temple (1904) is the first project in which he
discovered architectural space, but he didn't make this claim until---1923
or so!) Others have argued that after exploring this for a good while, he
began to focus on the "container" again---the earthen jar, perhaps taking
literally LaoTsu.
>I don't know about the gender of architecture, but Schmarsow presumably
>thought there was some relationship between the idea of architecture as
>creatress of space and that of woman as container of another human being
>(when pregnant of course). I don't know...
The female has historically and cross-culturally been considered a
container---of everything! The Earth-mother, holder of all Life, Mother
Nature, Gaia. Don't forget that many early civilizations were matriarchal.
Thanks, Simon,
Mark
>Schmarsow set himself specifically against the, as he saw it, restricted
>notion of architecture presented by Semper some years earlier as the
>'dressing' of buildings.
That would have put Schmarsow pretty far out in front of everyone else at
that time. Semper was IT. Owen Jones, Labrouste, Viollette le Duc (pardon
the spelling; I've been away from these names for a while!) all the great
theorists of the time stopped at ornament or the sense of decoration. Well,
maybe le Duc went a bit further into structure, but still not space.
Even as advanced as we consider Sullivan and Wright, they stopped short of
seeing architecture as spatial in nature for the most part. Wright only just
hinted at it in the early Prairie Houses, where he was investigating the
effects of structure and form on experience. Jospeh Siry argues that he
didn't begin to consider architectural space itself until the '20s. (Good
story there: He claimed Unity Temple (1904) is the first project in which he
discovered architectural space, but he didn't make this claim until---1923
or so!) Others have argued that after exploring this for a good while, he
began to focus on the "container" again---the earthen jar, perhaps taking
literally LaoTsu.
>I don't know about the gender of architecture, but Schmarsow presumably
>thought there was some relationship between the idea of architecture as
>creatress of space and that of woman as container of another human being
>(when pregnant of course). I don't know...
The female has historically and cross-culturally been considered a
container---of everything! The Earth-mother, holder of all Life, Mother
Nature, Gaia. Don't forget that many early civilizations were matriarchal.
Thanks, Simon,
Mark