The antithesis of the new and the old, from the point of view of architectural history, is the antithesis of traditional and innovative architecture, classical and modern, avant-garde one. Classical architecture itself contains this juxtaposition of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The frame system of the Gothic cathedral is something radically new in comparison with the rack-and-beam system of the Greeks. "Classics" and "avant-garde" permeate the entire history of architecture.
In architectural creativity, this antithesis in its untamed form has given rise to two opposing approaches to design. In Soviet architecture, I. Zholtovsky was a prominent advocate of the growth of new forms based entirely on the experience of past architecture. Such architects as K. Melnikov, I. Leonidov stood for principal innovation. So, "Leonidov had a strongly negative attitude towards architects, for whom the creative process is the use and processing of some forms and details that have already been created by other architects. He did not even recognize them as genuine architects, because, in his opinion, they do not understand the meaning of the architect's work, they make architecture purely externally, and not from the inside, which is not real creativity. They take something ready-made and put things together from it. Leonidov considered I. Zholtovsky to be an architect of this type, therefore, he was highly critical of his talent and creative style. Leonidov was convinced that beauty cannot be composed of elements of ready-made beauty, but must be created anew. In this, he really radically disagreed with the creative concept of Zholtovsky, who saw in the legacy (that is, in the works created by others) an inexhaustible source of compositional ideas, forms and details.37"
Already in our time, Frank Gehry spoke vividly about the role of the past: "You can learn from the past, but not continue to be in the past. I can't look my children in the eye if I say I don't have any more ideas and have to copy the past. It's like giving up and saying they don't have a future anymore.38"
In order to keep in touch with the past and at the same time make a move into the future, in order to ensure the historical comprehensiveness and full value of the architectural form, it is necessary to combine both approaches in design. An example of such a synthesis is the work of St. Petersburg architect Igor Yavein. "A thoroughly erudite man, Yavein knew well and studied the history of world architecture throughout his life <…>. But when he started designing, he didn't use special literature: he kind of started everything from scratch, without any prototypes or sources.39"
The history of architecture knows attempts to synthesize the "old" and the "new" at the level of entire trends. One of them is "a unique and little-studied movement of the 1920s and 1930s – Art Deco. It was a phenomenon of architecture of the "integrating type". Based on the innovations of the pioneers of new architecture, Art Deco did not break with history." But "it was, to a certain extent, a continuation of eclecticism," 40according to Yu. I. Kurbatov, and therefore did not last long. Any eclectic combination is short-lived due to the external nature of the conjugation of different forms. Dialectics directs us towards combining the very principles of classical and avant-garde form creation into new synthetic principles.
It should be noted that "an analysis of the means and techniques of artistic expression of the new architecture shows that much of them not only has a continuity with the past, but also does not go beyond the established stereotypes.41" This suggests that despite the visual gap between the old and the new architectures, they have a lot in common at deeper levels, which gives additional reason to assert the possibility of their synthesis.
The concept of history is not identical to the concept of continuity. History is broader than continuity. History is an interweaving of evolutionism and leaps. In the sphere of historical space, we discover the same dialectic of continuity and discontinuity as in the field of physical and architectural spaces.
Examples of historical combinations in modern architecture are new buildings next to old ones. Due to their spatial proximity, these different structures effectively emphasize each other's uniqueness by contrast. "The true effect lies in the sharp opposition; beauty is never so bright and visible as in the contrast" 42(N. V. Gogol).
A striking example of the synthesis of traditional and new architecture is the work of the Japanese architect K. Tange. Le Corbusier's student transformed old Japanese traditions into ultra-new architectural solutions.
In this section, presented as experimental historical essays, the author suggests looking at the history of architecture from the separate perspectives, each of which is set by a specific and irreducible architectural opposition.
Sphericity relates to cubicity in the same way that identity relates to difference. Sphericity is the state of a form when all its parts are so identical that it is no longer possible to distinguish any parts on the surface of the form. From the absence of parts, it follows that a spherical form is a pure identity that has no internal boundaries. The ball is infinite for an ant crawling on it, although it is finite for the person holding it in his hand.
The geometrically modified boundary category is an edge. An edge is what divides a form into distinct parts and makes it differentiated. A form containing edges, and therefore faces, is a difference from the point of view of eidos. It's a cubic form.
Thus, a spherical form is a single surface in which we cannot distinguish parts (faces), since we have no edges (borders). The cubic form is quite clearly composed of several clearly distinguishable surfaces.
The synthesis of sphericity and cubicity (facetedness) is a form containing both sphericity and cubicity. This form, on the one hand, is spherical, streamlined, and has no edges, and on the other hand, it is divided into distinct faces. Dialectics strives to preserve the subject as a whole and therefore insistently reminds that any sides, aspects, predicates, etc. of any subject are both identical and different at the same time. An object is a synthesis of its sides, properties, etc. in one indecomposable unity.
The limiting expressions of sphericity and cubicity in the geometric domain are, respectively, a ball and a cube. The ball is a pure identity, since it has the same curvature at all its points, and is completely identical to itself in any spatial position, absolutely symmetrical with respect to any axis passing through its center. The cube perfectly expresses the principle of facetedness, since all its adjacent faces are perpendicular. Perpendicularity is the ultimate degree of difference between two or more straight lines and planes. Any other angle between straight lines or planes will be their convergence, which tends to complete coincidence of the elements (at an angle of 0 or 180 degrees).
Let's give examples of cube and sphere synthesis:
1) a cube made up of balls or a ball made up of cubes
2) a straight cylinder with a height equal to the diameter of the base (one of its orthogonal projections coincides with the projection of a ball (circle), and the other with the projection of a cube (square)
3) the eighth part of the ball is the most complete synthesis (from the one side, an exact cube, and from the other, an exact ball)
4) all the countless complex stereometric forms with rectilinear and curved surfaces
The antithesis of sphericity and cubicity becomes especially intense when we take it in its mythological aspect. Sphericity is a property directly visually and mythologically attributed to the sky, as evidenced by such a stable expression as "celestial dome". Both the physical and spiritual sky possess the property of "globularity". "… The world of bodiless powers, or the Heaven, is a sphere that has a straight line around it <…> We look at the Heaven so that the Sun is between it and us. Therefore, we look at the Heaven from God's side. It is quite understandable that it appears to us as an overturned Chalice. The Heaven is a Chalice not because it seems so to our subjective gaze, but it seems so to us because the Heaven, in its inner and most objective essence, is nothing but a Chalice.43"
If the heaven is a chalice, then what is the earth? According to the principle of a simple opposition, the earth is a cube. According to A. F. Losev, the ancient Greek thinkers associated the element of the earth exactly with the cube44. The body is an earthly, earthy principle in man (Adam was created from the earth), and therefore "the whole body, made up of individual members, is square.45" The body is square not in appearance, but in the sense of its relation to the spirit, expressed geometrically.
Thus, within the spherical nature itself, we find both sphericity (heaven) and cubicity (earth). According to this division, the antithesis of top and bottom appears in the building: the roof, which interacts with the sky, and the foundation with the walls, which determine the interaction with the earth. It is easy to notice that most roofs and ceilings in the "old" architecture of different styles and eras are often spherical (domes, arches, cones, etc.). Both the Pantheon and St. Sophia of Constantinople are covered by a spherical form. The lower part of buildings, on the contrary, is solved as faceted, cubic. This correspondence of the bottom of the building to the cubic form, and the top to the spherical form, is probably partly due to the round shape of the human head – the upper part of his body. In ancient Russian architecture, there was a direct associative correlation: the dome is the helmet of a warrior hero.
The antithesis of "ball-cube" has a deep philosophical significance. It geometrically expresses the semantic opposites "nature-technology", "heaven-earth", "spirit-body".
In this regard, it is possible to suggest a classification of architectural structures. An orthogonally parallel structural system – a rack-and-beam one – corresponds to the cube. Arched, vaulted, shell-shaped structural systems correspond to the ball.
The struggle between the cubic and the spherical permeates the history of architecture. In the history of classical architecture, these trends were most obviously crystallized in the rationality of Classicism and the emotionality of the Baroque, which became a ramification of Renaissance synthetism. An example of the synthesis of these styles is the Palace Square in St. Petersburg.
In modern architecture, this struggle is even more acute, on the basis of which A. V. Ikonnikov argued that "it was only in the architecture of the twentieth century that trends emerged that focused on one of the polarities that had always previously acted inseparably.46"
The cubic form is often correlated with the technical one, and the spherical form with the natural, bionic one, although this correlation is optional. The architecture of Antonio Gaudi may serve as an example of the second case. One of his most famous works, the Casa Milà in Barcelona (1902-1910), is characterized by its "naturalness", smoothness of lines, curves, and fluidity of form. This is an example of Art Nouveau architecture, tending towards natural, curved outlines.
In German architecture of the 1920s, the "struggle between cube and ball" was expressed in the confrontation between neoplasticism (Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondriaan, Gerrit Rietveld) and expressionism (Erich Mendelsohn, Hans Poelzig)47.
This antithesis can also be traced in Soviet architecture – in the difference between the design methods of constructivists and rationalists. "Constructivist buildings also reflect orthogonal drawings in their style, and there is little plasticity in them. The works of rationalists are more plastic, often there are no facades at all that could be drafted in orthogonal drawings.48"
Ivan Leonidov is a non-typical constructivist. "Back in the late 20s and early 30s, Leonidov used forms with a second-order generating curve, shell vaults in his projects along with rectangular prismatic volumes…"49.
Expressionism has become a relatively synthetic trend in modern architecture, one of the representatives of which is E. Mendelsohn. "Unlike the orthogonal, monochrome solutions of the modernists, Mendelsohn uses the contrast of orthogonal forms with curved ones.50"
In the history of architecture of the twenty-first century as a whole, there is a strong bias towards complicated curved forms, accompanied by criticism of modernism51.
Let's move on to the next point of the architectural form – let's consider it not only by itself, but also in relation to the otherness of space.
О проекте
О подписке
Другие проекты