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1. Nonstraightfoward Architecture: A Gentle Manifesto

I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contra- dictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience which is in- herent in art. Everywhere, except in architecture, complex- ity and contradiction have been acknowledged, from Godel's proof of ultimate inconsistency in mathematics to T. S. Eliot's analysis of "difficult" poetry and Joseph Albers' definition of the paradoxical quality of painting.

But architecture is necessarily complex and contradic- tory in its very inclusion of the traditional Vitruvian ele- ments of commodity, firmness, and delight. And today the wants of program, structure, mechanical equipment, and expression, even in single buildings in simple contexts, are diverse and conflicting in ways previously unimaginable. The increasing dimension and scale of architecture in urban and regional planning add to the difficulties. I welcome the problems and exploit the uncertainties. By embracing con- tradiction as well as complexity, I aim for vitality as well as validity.

Architects can no longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern archi- tecture. I like elements which are hybrid rather than ''pure," compromising rather than "clean," distorted rather than "straightforward," ambiguous rather than "articulated," per- verse as well as impersonal, boring as well as "interesting," conventional rather than "designed," accommodating rather than excluding, redundant rather than simple, vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear. I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim the duality.

I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning; for the implicit function as well as the explicit function. I prefer "both-and to "either-or," black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white. A valid architecture evokes many levels of meaning and combina- tions of focus: its space and its elements become readable and workable in several ways at once.

But an architecture of complexity and contradiction has a special obligation toward the whole: its truth must be in its totality or its implications of totality. It must embody the difficult unity of inclusion rather than the easy unity of exclusion. More is not less.

2. Complexity and Contradiction vs. Simplification or Picturesqueness

Orthodox Modern architects have tended to recognize complexity insufficiently or inconsistently. In their attempt to break with tradition and start all over again, they ideal- ized the primitive and elementary at the expense of the diverse and the sophisticated. As participants in a revolu- tionary movement, they acclaimed the newness of modern functions, ignoring their complications. In their role as reformers, they puritanically advocated the separation and exclusion of elements, rather than the inclusion of various requirements and their juxtapositions. As a forerunner of the Modern movement, Frank Lloyd Wright, who grew up with the motto "Truth against the World," wrote: "Visions of simplicity so broad and far-reaching would open to me and such building harmonies appear that . . . would change and deepen the thinking and culture of the modern world. So I believed." l1 And Le Corbusier, co-founder of Purism, spoke of the "great primary forms" which, he pro- claimed, were "distinct . . . .and without ambiguity." l2 Modern architects with few exceptions eschewed ambiguity.

But now our position is different: "At the same time that the problems increase in quantity, complexity, and dif- ficulty they also change faster than before," lS and require an attitude more like that described by August Heckscher: "The movement from a view of life as essentially simple and orderly to a view of life as complex and ironic is what every individual passes through in becoming mature. But certain epochs encourage this development; in them the paradoxical or dramatic outlook colors the whole intellectual scene. . . . Amid simplicity and order rationalism is born, but rationalism proves inadequate in any period of upheaval. Then equilibrium must be created out of opposites. Such inner peace as men gain must represent a tension among contradictions and uncertainties. . . . A feeling for para- dox allows seemingly dissimilar things to exist side by side, their very incongruity suggesting a kind of truth." l4

Rationalizations for simplification are still current, however, though subtler than the early arguments. They are expansions of Mies van der Rohe's magnificent paradox, "less is more." Paul Rudolph has clearly stated the implica- tions of Mies' point of view: "All problems can never be solved. . . . Indeed it is a characteristic of the twentieth century that architects are highly selective in determining which problems they want to solve. Mies, for instance, makes wonderful buildings only because he ignores many aspects of a building. If he solved more problems, his

buildings would be far less potent." l5 The doctrine "less is more" bemoans complexity and

justifies exclusion for expressive purposes. It does, indeed, permit the architect to be "highly selective in determining which problems [he wants) to solve." But if the architect must be "committed to his particular way of seeing the universe,"15 such a commitment surely means that the architect determines how problems should be solved, not that he can determine which of the problems he will solve. He can exclude important considerations only at the risk of separating architecture from the experience of life and the needs of society. If some problems prove insoluble, he can express this: in an inclusive rather than an exclusive kind of architecture there is room for the fragment, for contra- diction, for improvisation, and for the tensions these pro- duce. Mies' exquisite pavilions have had valuable implica- tions for architecture, but their selectiveness of content and language is their limitation as well as their strength.

I question the relevance of analogies between pavil- ions and houses, especially analogies between Japanese pa- vilions and recent domestic architecture. Thev ignore the real complexity and contradiction inherent in ;he-domestic program-the spatial and technological possibilities as well as the need for variety in visual experience. Forced simplic- ity results in oversimplification. In the Wiley House, for instance ( I ) , in contrast to his glass house ( 2 ) , Philip Johnson attempted to go beyond the simplicities of the elegant pavilion. He explicitly separated and articulated the enclosed "private functions" of living on a ground floor pedestal, thus separating them from the open social func- tions in the modular pavilion above. But even here the building becomes a diagram of an oversimplified program for living-an abstract theory of either-or. Where simplic- ity cannot work, simpleness results. Blatant simplification means bland architecture. Less is a bore.

The recognition of complexity in architecture does not negate what Louis Kahn has called "the desire for simplic- ity." But aesthetic simplicity which is a satisfaction to the mind derives, when valid and profound, from inner com- plexity. The Doric temple's simplicity to the eye is achieved through the famous subtleties and precision of its distorted geometry and the contradictions and tensions inherent in its order. The Doric temple could achieve apparent simplic- ity through real complexity. When complexity disappeared, as in the late temples, blandness replaced simplicity.

1. Johnson. Wiley House, New Canaan

2. Johnson Glass House, New Canaan

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Nor does complexity deny the valid simplification which is part of the process of analysis, and even a method of achieving complex architecture itself. "We oversimplify a given event when we characterize it from the standpoint of a given interest." la But this kind of simplification is a method in the analytical process of achieving a complex art. ~t should not be mistaken for a goal.

An architecture of complexity and contradiction, how- ever, does not mean picturesqueness or subjective expres- sionism. A false complexity has recently countered the false simplicity of an earlier Modern architecture. It promotes an

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ki\ ; architecture of symmetrical picturesqueness-which Min-

% ' \\ oru Yamasaki calls "serenev-but it represents a new for-

'\ malism as unconnected with experience as the former cult of simplicity. Its intricate forms do not reflect genuinely complex programs, and its intricate ornament, though de- P pendent on industrial techniques for execution, is dryly reminiscent of forms originally created by handicraft tech- niques. Gothic tracery and Rococo rocaille were not only expressively valid in relation to the whole, but came from a valid showing-off of hand skills and expressed a vitality derived from the immediacy and individuality of the method. This kind of complexity through exuberance, per- haps impossible today, is the antithesis of "serene" architec- ture, despite the superficial resemblance between them. But if exuberance is not characteristic of our art, it is tension, rather than "serenity" that would appear to be so.

The best twentieth-century architects have usually re- jected simplification-that is, simplicity through reduction -in order to promote complexity within the whole. The works of ~ l v a ; Aalto and i e or busier (who often disre- 3 Aalto Church, Vuoksennlska, near lrnatra gards his polemical writings) are examples. But the charac- teristics of complexity and contradiction in their work are often ignored or misunderstood. Critics of Aalto, for in- stance, have liked him mostly for his sensitivity to natural materials and his fine detailing, and have considered his whole composition willful picturesqueness. I do not con- sider Aalto's Imatra church picturesque. By repeating in the massing the genuine complexity of the triple-divided plan and the acoustical ceiling pattern (3), this church repre- sents a justifiable expressionism different from the willful picturesqueness of the haphazard structure and spaces of Giovanni Michelucci's recent church for the Autostrada (4).*Aalto's complexity is part of the program and struc- ture of the whole rather than a device justified only by the

desire for expression. Though we no longer argue over the primacy of form or function (which follows which?), we cannot ignore their interdependence.

The desire for a complex architecture, with its attend- ant contradictions, is not only a reaction to the banality or prettiness of current architecture. It is an attitude common . .. in the Mannerist periods: the sixteenth century in Italy or the Hellenistic period in Classical art, and is also a contin- uous strain seen in such diverse architects as Michelangelo, ~alladio, Borromini, Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor, Soane, Le-

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doux, Butterfield, some architects of the Shingle Style, Fur- 4 ness, Sullivan, Lutyens, and recently, Le Corbusier, Aalto, Kahn, and others.

Today this attitude is again relevant to both the me- dium of architecture and the program in architecture.

First, the medium of architecture must be re-examined if the increased scope of our architecture as well as the complexity of its goals is to be expressed. Simplified or 1 superficially complex forms will not work. Instead, the

- variety inherent in the ambiguity of visual perception must once more be acknowledged and exploited.

Second, the growing complexities of our functional problems must be acknowledged. I refer, of course, to those programs, unique in our time, which are complex because of their scope, such as research laboratories, hospitals, and particularly the enormous projects at the scale of city and . . , 1 .--- regional planning. But even the house, simple in scope, is complex in purpose if the ambiguities of contemporary experience are expressed. This contrast between the means and the goals of a program is significant. Although the means involved in the program of a rocket to get to the moon, for instance, are almost infinitely complex, the goal is simple and contains few contradictions; although the means involved in the program and structure of buildings Mlcheluccl Church of the Autostrada near Florence are far simpler and less sophisticated technologically than almost any engineering project, the purpose is more com- plex and often inherently ambiguous.

"I have visited Giovanni Michelucci's Church of the Auto- strada since writing these words. and I now realize it is an extremely beautiful and effective building. I am therefore sorry I made this unsympathetic comparison.

3. Ambiguity

While the second classification of complexity and con- tradiction in architecture relates to form and content as manifestations of program and structure, the first concerns the medium and refers to a paradox inherent in perception and the very process of meaning in art: the complexity and contradiction that results from the juxtaposition of what an image is and what it seems. Joseph Albers calls "the dis- crepancy between physical fact and psychic effect" a contra- diction which is "the origin of art." And, indeed, complex- ity of meaning, with its resultant ambiguity and tension, has been characteristic of painting and amply recognized in art criticism. Abstract Expressionism acknowledges percep- tual ambiguity, and the basis of Optical Art is shifting juxtapositions and ambiguous dualities relating to form and expression. Pop painters, too, have employed ambiguity to create paradoxical content as well as to exploit perceptual possibilities.

In literature, too, critics have been willing to accept complexity and contradiction in their medium. As in archi- tectural criticism, they refer to a Mannerist era, but unlike most architectural critics, they also acknowledge a "manner- ist" strain continuing through particular poets, and some, indeed, for a long time have emphasized the qualities of contradiction, paradox, and ambiguity as basic to the me- dium of poetry, just as Albers does with painting.

Eliot called the art of the Elizabethans "an impure art,"17 in which complexity and ambiguity are exploited: "in a play of Shakespeare," he said, "you get several levels of significance" l8 where, quoting Samuel Johnson, "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked together by violence." ln And elsewhere he wrote: "The case of John Webster . . . will provide an interesting example of a very great literary and dramatic genius directed towards chaos." 20 Other critics, for example, Kenneth Burke, who refers to "plural interpre- tation" and "planned incongruity," have analyzed elements of paradox and ambiguity in the structure and meaning of other poetry besides that of the seventeenth century meta- physical poets and those modern poets who have been in- fluenced by them.

Cleanth Brooks justifies the expression of complexity and contradiction by their necessity as the very essence of art: 'Yet there are better reasons than that of rhetorical vainglory that have induced poet after poet to choose ambi- guity and paradox rather than plain discursive simplicity. It is not enough for the poet to analyze his experience as the

scientist does, breaking it up into parts, distinguishing part :-------- from part, classifying the various parts. His task is finally to unify experience. He must return to us the unity of the ; experience itself as man knows it in his own experience. i . . . If the poet . . . must perforce dramatize the oneness ; of the experience, even though paying tribute to its diver- I ! sity, then his use of paradox and ambiguity is seen as I necessary. He is not simply trying to spice up, with a superficially exciting or mystifying rhetoric the old stale stockpot. . . . He is rather giving us an insight which

t preserves the unity of experience and which, at its higher and more serious levels, triumphs over the apparently con- I tradictory and conflicting elements of experience by unify- i ing them into a new pattern." I 0

And in Seven Ty9es of Ambigaity William Empson "dared to treat what [had] . . . been regarded as a defi- i ciency in poetry, imprecision of meaning, as poetry's chief ; virtue . . ." 22 Empson documents his theory by readings from Shakespeare, "the supreme ambiguist, not so much from the confusion of his ideas and the muddle of his text, I -----.----- - - - - - - -- as some scholars believe, as simply from the power and 5, L, Corbus ie~ Villa Savoye, Poissy. Plan complexity of his mind and art." 23

Ambiguity and tension are everywhere in an architec- ture of complexity and contradiction. Architecture is form and substance--abstract and concrete-and its meaning de- rives from its interior characteristics and its particular con- text. An architectural element is perceived as form and structure, texture and material. These oscillating relation- ships, complex and contradictory, are the source of the ambiguity and tension characteristic to the medium df architecture. The conjunction "or" with a question mark can usually describe ambiguous relationships. The Villa Savoye (5) : is it a square plan or not? The size of Van- brugh's fore-pavilions at Grimsthorpe (6) in relation to the back pavilions is ambiguous from a distance: are they near or far, big or small? Bernini's pilasters on the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide (7) : are they positive pilasters or nega- tive panel divisions? The ornamental cove in the Casino di Pio IV in the Vatican (8) is perverse: is it more wall or more vault? The central dip in Lutyens' facade at Nashdorn (9) facilitates skylighting: is the resultant duality resolved or not? Luigi Moretti's apartments on the Via Parioli in Rome (10): are they one building with a split or two buildings joined?

The calculated ambiguity of expression is based on the

6 Vanbrugh. Grimsthorpe. Lincolnshire 8. Ligorio. Cas~no di Pio IV. Vatican, Rome

7. Bernini. Facade, Palazzo di Propaganda F ~ d e . Rome. Elevat~on

9. Lutyens. Nashdom, Taplow

confusion of experience as reflected in the architectural program. This promotes richness of meaning over clarity of meaning. As Empson admits, there is good and bad ambi- guity: ". . . [ambiguity] may be used to convict a poet of holding muddled opinions rather than to praise the com- plexity of the order of his mind." 24 Nevertheless, according to Stanley Edgar Hyman, Empson sees ambiguity as "col- lecting precisely at the points of greatest poetic effective- ness, and finds it breeding a quality he calls 'tension' which we might phrase as the poetic impact itself." 25 These ideas apply equally well to architecture.

10. Moret t~. Apartment Bu l ld~ng . Via Parloll, Rome

4. Contradictory Levels: The Phenomenon of "Both-And" in Architecture

Contradictory levels of meaning and use in architec- ture involve the paradoxical contrast implied by the con- junctive "yet." They may be more or less ambiguous. Le Corbusier's Shodhan House ( 11 ) is closed yet open-a cube, precisely closed by its corners, yet randomly opened on its surfaces; his Villa Savoye (12) is simple outside yet com- plex inside. The Tudor plan of Barrington Court ( 13) is symmetrical yet asymmetrical; Guarini's Church of the Im- maculate Conception in Turin ( 14) is a duality in plan and yet a unity; Sir Edwin Lutyens' entrance gallery at Middle- ton Park (15, 16) is directional space, yet it terminates at a blank wall; Vignola's fasade for the pavilion at Bomarzo (17) contains a portal, yet it is a blank portico; Kahn's buildings contain crude concrete yet polished grantite; an urban street is directional as a route yet static as a place. This series of conjunctive "yets" describes an architecture of contradiction at varying levels of program and structure. None of these ordered contradictions represents a search for beauty, but neither as paradoxes, are they caprice.

Cleanth Brooks refers to Donne's art as "having it both ways" but, he says, "most of us in this latter day, cannot. W e are disciplined in the tradition either-or, and lack the mental agility-to say nothing of the maturity of attitude-which would allow us to indulge in the finer distinctions and the more subtle reservations permitted by the tradition of both-and." 26 The tradition "either-or" has characterized orthodox modern architecture: a sun screen is :' C probably nothing else; a support is seldom an enclosure; a wall is not violated by window penetrations but is totally :% interrupted by glass; program functions are exaggeratedly C: articulated into wings or segregated separate pavilions. Even "flowing space" has implied being outside when inside, and inside when outside, rather than both at the same time. Such manifestations of articulation and clarity are foreign @- to an architecture of complexity and contradiction, which tends to include "both-and" rather than exclude "either-or."

If the source of the both-and phenomenon is contra- diction, its basis is hierarchy, which yields several levels of meanings among elements with varying values. I t can in- clude elements that are both good and awkward, big and little, closed and open, continuous and articulated, round and square, structural and spatial. An architecture which includes varying levels of meaning breeds ambiguity and

. - - - . tension. 12 Le Corbus~er. VlHa Savoye, ~ o ~ s s y

13. Barrington Court, Somerset. Dl"" /

14. Guarini. Church of the Immaculate Conception, Turin. Plan

15. Lutyens. Middleton Park, Oxfordshire. Plan

17. Vignola. Pavilion, Bomarzo. Elevation

16. Lut~enS. Middleton Park, Oxfordshire

24

Most of the examples will be difficult to "read," but abstruse architecture is valid when it reflects the complexi- ties and contradictions of content and meaning. Simulta- neous perception of a multiplicity of levels involves struggles and hesitations for the observer, and makes his perception more vivid.

Examples which are both good and bad at the same time will perhaps in one way explain Kahn's enigmatic remark: "architecture must have bad spaces as well as good spaces." Apparent irrationality of a part will be justified by the resultant rationality of the whole, or characteristics of a part will be compromised for the sake of the whole. The decisions for such valid compromises are one of the chief tasks of the architect.

In Hawksmoor's St. George-in-the-East ( 18) the exag- gerated keystones over the aisle windows are wrong in relation to the part: when seen close-up they are too big in relation to'the opening they span. When seen farther back, however, in the context of the whole composition, they are expressively right in size and scale. ~ i c h e l a n ~ e l o ' s inor- mous rectangular openings in the attic story of the rear fagade of St. Peter's (19) are wider than' they are high, so that they must be spanned the long way. This is perverse in relation to the spanning limitations of masonry, which dictate in Classical architecture that big openings, such as these, be vertically proportioned. But because one usually expects vertical proportions, the longitudinal spanning ex- presses validly and vividly their relative smallness.

The main stair in Frank Furness' Pennsylvania Acad- emy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (20) is too big in relation to its immediate surroundings. I t lands on a space narrower than its width, and faces an opening narrower than its width. Furthermore, the opening is bisected by a post. But this stair is ceremonial and symbolic as well as functional, and it relates to the hall immediately beyond the opening, to the whole building, and to the great scale of Broad Street outside. The outer thirds of Michelangelo's stair in the Laurentian Library vestibule ( 2 1 ) are abruptly chopped off and lead virtually nowhere: it is similarly wrong in the relation of its size to its space, and yet right in rela- tion to the whole context of the spaces beyond.

Vanbrugh's end bays in the central pavilion of the entrance fagade of Blenheim Palace (22) are incorrect because they are bisected by a pilaster: this fragmentation produces a duality which decreases their unity. Their very

18. Hawksrnoor. St. George-~n-the-East, London

19. M~chelangelo. Rear Faqade. St. Peter's, Rome

20. Furness. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Ph~ladelphia

21. Miche langelo. Laurentian Library. Florence. Plan

incompleteness, however, reinforces by contrast the center bay and increases the overall unity of this complex compo- sition. The pavilions which flanked the chlteau at Marly ( 2 3 ) contained a similar paradox. The compositional dual- ity of their two-bay fasades lacks unity, but reinforces the unity of the whole complex. Their own incompleteness implied the dominance of the chlteau itself and the com- pleteness of the whole.

The basilica, which has mono-directional space, and the central-type church, which has omnidirectional space, represent alternating traditions in Western church plans. But another tradition has accommodated churches which are both-and, in answer to spatial, structural, programma- tic, and symbolic needs. The Mannerist elliptical plan of the sixteenth century is both central and directional. Its culrni- nation is Bernini's Sant' Andrea a1 Quirinale (24) , whose main directional axis contradictorily spans the short axis. Nikolaus Pevsner has shown how pilasters rather than open chapels bisect both ends crf the tiansverse axis of the iide walls, thereby reinforcing the short axis toward the altar. Borromini's chapel in the Propaganda Fide (25) is a direc- tional hall in plan, but its alternating bays counteract this effect: a large bay dominates the small end; a small bay bisects the center of the long wall. The rounded corners, as well, begin to imply a continuity of enclosure and a central- type plan. (These characteristics occur in the courtyard of San Carlo alle b a t t r o Fontane too.) And the diagonal gridlike ribs in the ceiling indicate a multidirectional struc- ture as much like a dome as a vault. Hagia Sophia in Istanbul is equivocal in a similar way. Its central dome on the square bay with pendentives implies a central type church, but its two apses with half-domes begin to set up a longitudinal axis in the tradition of the directional basilica. The horseshoe plan of the Baroque and neo-Baroque opera house focuses on the stage and the center of the auditorium. The central focus of the elliptical plan is usually reflected in the ornamental ceiling pattern and the enormous central chandelier; the focus toward the stage in the directional distortion of the ellipse and partitions between the sur- rounding boxes as well as in the interruption of the stage itself, of course, and the seating in the pit. This reflects the dual focus in the program of the gala theatre: the performance and the audience.

Borromini's San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (26) abounds in ambiguous manifestations of both-and. The

-, - 22 Vanbrugh Elenhelm Palace, Oxfordsh~re

23. Hardouin-Mansart. Pavilion. Marly. Elevation

24. Bernini. Sant' Andrea al Quirinale, Rome. Plan

25. B o r r o m ~ n ~ Church of the Re mag^, Palazzo dl Propaganda Fide, Rome 27. Borrorntn~. San Carlo alle Ouattro Fonlane. Rome

26. Borrornin~. San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Rome. Plan

almost equal treatment of the four wings implied in the plan suggests a Greek cross, but the wings are distorted toward a dominant east-west axis, thus suggesting a Latin cross, while the fluid continuity of the walls indicates a distorted circular plan. Rudolf Wittkower has analyzed similar contradictions in section. The pattern of the ceiling in the articulations of its complex mouldings suggests a dome on pendentives over the crossing of a Greek cross (27) . The shape of the ceiling in its overall continuity distorts these elements into parodies of themselves, and suggests rather a dome generated from an undulating wall. These distorted elements are both continuous and articu- lated. At another scale, shape and pattern play similarly contradictory roles. For example, the profile of the Byzantine capital (28) makes it seem continuous, but the texture and vestigial patterns of volutes and acanthus leaves articulate the parts.

The pedimented porch of Nicholas Hawksmoor's St. George, Bloomsbury (29), and the overall shape of its plan (30) imply a dominant axis north and south. The west entrance and tower, the interior configuration of balconies, and the east apse (which contained the altar) all suggest an equally dominant counter axis. By means of contrary ele- ments and distorted positions this church expresses both the contrasts between the back, front, and sides of the Latin cross plan and the duo-directional axes of a Greek cross plan. These contradictions, which resulted from particular site and orientation conditions, support a richness and ten- sion lacking in many purer compositions.

The domed basilica of Vierzehnheiligen (31) has a central altar under a major dome in the nave. Nikolaus Pevsner has vividly contrasted its series of domes, which are distorted and superimposed on the Latin cross plan, with the conventional placing of a single dome at the crossing. This is a Latin cross church, which is also a central-type church because of the unusual position of the altar and the central dome. Other late Baroque churches juxtapose the square and the circle. Bernardo Vittone's elements-ambig- uously pendentives or squinches-in the nave of S. Maria di Piazza in Turin (32) support what is both a dome and a square lantern. Hawksmoor juxtaposes mould- ings in rectangular and elliptical patterns on the ceilings of some of his churches. They create contradictory expressions of both central and directional-type churches. In some rooms of the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide ( 33) a straddling

28 Capital, Hagla Soph~a, Istanbul

30. Hawksrnoor St. George,

29. Hawksrnoor St. George, Bioornsbury Bloornsbufy. Plan

31. Neurnann. Pilgrimage Church. Vierzehnheiligen, near Banz. Plan ' 33. Borromln~. Palazzo d i Propaganda Fide. Rome

32. Vittone. S. Marla di Plazza. Turln 34. Wren. St. Stephen Walbrook. London. Interior perspective

arch in the corners allows the space to be rectangular below and continuous above. This is similar to Wren's ceiling configuration in St. Stephen Walbrook ( 34 ) .

In the ceilings of his secular chambers (35 ) Sir John Soane glories in spaces and structures both rectangular and curvilinear, and domed and vaulted. His methods include complex combinations of vestigial structural shapes resem- bling squinches and pendentives, oculi, and groins. Soane's Museum ( 36 ) employs a vestigial element in another di- mension: the partition in the form of suspended arches, meaningless structurally yet meaningful spatially, defines rooms at once open and closed.

The facade of the cathedral at Murcia ( 37 ) employs what has been called inflection to promote largeness yet smallness. The broken pediments above the shafts are in- flected toward each other to help suggest an enormous portal, appropriate spatially to the plaza below and symbol- ically to the region beyond. Storied orders within the shafts, however, accommodate the scale of the immediate conditions of the building itself and its setting. Bigness and smallness are expressed at once in a characteristic Shingle Style stair through distortion in width and direction. The risers and treads remain constant, of course, but the widen- ing of the run at the bottom accommodates the spacious living-room hall below, while the narrower run at the top relates to the narrower hall above.

Precast concrete construction can be continuous yet fragmentary, flowing in profile yet surfaced with joints. The contours of its profiles between columns and beams can 35 Soane. Court of Exchequer, Palace of Weslmnster , London designate the continuity of the structural system, but the Interlor perspective pattern of its grouted jbints can designate ;he fragmented method of its erection.

The tower of Christ Church, Spitalfields (38 ) , is a manifestation of both-and at the scale of the city. Hawks- moor's tower is both a wall and a tower. Toward the bottom the vista is terminated by the extension of its walls into kinds of buttresses ( 39 ) perpendicular to the ap- proaching street. They are seen from only one direction. The top evolves into a spire, which is seen from all sides, spatially and symbolicalIy dominating the skyline of the parish. In the Bruges Cloth Hall ( 40 ) the scale of the building relates to the immediate square, while the vio- lently disproportionate scale of the tower above relates to the whole town. For similar reasons the big sign sits on top of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building, and yet

36. Soane Soane House and Museuni. Lincoln's Inn F ~ c l d s , London Interlor perspective

it is invisible from below (41). The Arc de Triomphe also has contrasting functions. Seen diagonally from the radial approaches other than the Champs Elyskes, it is a sculptural termination. Seen perpendicularly from the axis of the Champs Elyskes, it is spatially and symbolically both a termination and a portal. Later I shall analyze some organ- ized contradictions between front and back. But here I shall mention the Karlskirche in Vienna (42), whose exterior contains elements both of the basilica in its fasade and of the central-type church in its body. A convex form in the back was required by the interior program; the urban space required a larger scale and a straight fagade in front. The disunity that exists from the point of view of the building itself is contradicted when the building is seen in relation to the scale and the space of the neighborhood.

The double meanings inherent in the phenomenon both-and can involve metamorphosis as well as contradic- tion. I have described how the omni-directional spire of the tower of Christ Church, Spitalfields, evolves into a direc- tional pavilion at its base, but a perceptual rather than a formal kind of change in meaning is possible. In equivocal relationships one contradictory meaning usually dominates another, but in complex compositions the relationship is not always constant. This is especially true as the observer moves through or around a building, and by extension through a city: at one moment one meaning can be per- ceived as dominant; at another moment a different meaning seems paramount. In St. George, Bloomsbury (30), for instance, the contradictory axes inside become alternatingly dominant or recessive as the observer moves within them, SO that the same space changes meaning. Here is another dimension of "space, time and architecture" which involves the multiple focus.

38. Hawksmoor. Christ Church. Spitalf~elds

39 Hawksrnoor Chr~s t Church, S p ~ t a l f ~ e l d s 41 Howe and Lescaze Ph~ lade lph~a Savings Fund Soclety B u ~ l d ~ n g

40. Cloth Hall and Belfry, Bruges

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42. Fischer von Erlach. Karlskirche. Vienna. Plan

5. Contradictory Levels Continued: The Double-Functioning Element

The "double-functioningm 27 element and "both-and" are related, but there is a distinction: the double-function- ing element pertains more to the particulars of use and structure, while both-and refers more to the relation of the part to the whole. Both-and emphasizes double meanings over double-functions. But before I talk about the double- functioning element, 1 want to mention the multifunction- ing building. By this term I mean the buil4ing which is complex in program and form, yet strong as a whole-the complex unity of Le Corbusier's La Tourette or the Palace of Justice at Chandigarh in contrast to the multiplicities and articulations of his Palace of the Soviets project or the ArmCe du Salut in Paris. The latter approach separates functions into interlocking wings or connected pavilions. It has been typical of orthodox Modern architecture. The incisive separations of the pavilions in Mies' design for the urban Illinois Institute of Technology can be understood as an extreme development of it.

Mies' and Johnson's Seagram Building excludes func- tions other than offices (except on the ground floor in back), and by using a similar wall pattern camouflages the fact that at the top there is a different kind of space for mechanical equipment. Yamasaki's proiect for The World Trade center New York even more exaggeratedly simplifies the form of an enormous complex. The typical office skyscrapers of the '20's differentiate, rather than cam- ouflage, their mechanical equipment space at the top through architecturally ornamental forms. While Lever House includes differently-functioning spaces at the bot- tom, it exaggeratedly separates them by a spatial shadow joint. In contrast, one exceptional Modern building, the P.S.F.S. (41), gives positive expression to the variety and complexity of its program. It integrates a shop on the first floor and a big bank on the second with offices above and special rooms at the top. These varieties of functions and scales (including the enormous advertising sign at the top) work within a compact whole. Its curving fa~ade, which contrasts with the rectangularity of the rest of the building, is not just a cliche! of the '30's, because it has an urban function. At the lower pedestrian level it directs space around the corner.

The multifunctioning building in its extreme form be- comes the Ponte Vecchio or Chenonceaux or the Futurist projects of Sant' Elia. Each contains within the whole

Le Corbusier's Algerian project, which is an apartment house and a highway, and Wright's late projects for Pittsburgh Point and Baghdad, correspond to Kahn's viaduct architec- ture and Fumihiko Maki's "collective form." All of these have complex and contradictory hierarchies of scale and movement, structure, and space within a whole. These buildings are buildings and bridges at once. At a larger scale: a dam is also a bridge, the loop in Chicago is a boundary as well as a circulation system, and Kahn's street "wants to be a building."

There are justifications for the multifunctioning room as well as the multifunctioning building. A room can have many functions at the same time or at different times. Kahn prefers the gallery because it is directional and nondirec- tional, a corridor and room at once. And he recognizes the changing complexities of specific functions by differentiat- ing rooms in a general way through a hierarchy of size and quality, calling them servant and major spaces, directional and nondirectional spaces, and other designations more generic than specific. As in his project for the Trenton Community Center, these spaces end by paralleling in a more complex way the pre-eighteenth century configura- tions of rooms en suite. The idea of corridors and rooms each with a single function for convenience originated in the eighteenth century. Is not Modern architecture's charac- teristic separation and specialization of program functions within the building through built-in furniture an extreme manifestation of this idea? Kahn by implication questions such rigid specialization and limited functionalism. In this context, "form evokes function."

The multifunctioning room is a possibly truer answer to the Modern architect's concern with flexibility. The room with a generic rather than a specific purpose, and with movable furniture rather than movable partitions, promotes a perceptual flexibility rather than a physical flexibility, and permits the toughness and permanence still necessary in our building. Valid ambiguity promotes useful flexibility.

The double-functioning element has been used infre- quently in Modern architecture. Instead, Modern architec- ture has encouraged separation and specialization at all scales-in materials and structure as well as program and space. "The nature of materials" has precluded the multi- functioning material, or, inversely, the same form or surface for different materials. Wright's divergence from his master

--

43 Rauschenberg Pi ig r~m 1960

- - contrasting scales of movement besides complex functions. began, according to his autobiography, with Louis Sulli- 44 Katsura V ~ l l a , yot to

34

van's indiscriminate application of his characteristic orna- ment to terra cotta, iron, wood, or brick. T o Wright, "appropriate designs for one material would not be appro- priate for another material."" But the faqade of Eero Saarinen's dormitory at the University of Pennsylvania in- cludes among its materials and structure vine-covered gade,,brick wall, and steel grille-yet the curving profile of its form is continuous. Saarinen overcame the current ob- session against using different materials in the same plane or the same material for two different things. In Robert Rauschenberg's painting, Pilgrim (43 ) , the surface pattern continues from the stretcher canvas to the actual chair in front of it, making ambiguous the distinction between the painting and the furniture, and on another level, the work of art in a room. A contradiction between levels of func- tion and meaning is recognized in these works, and the medium is strained.

But to the structural purist, as well as the organicist, the double-functioning structural form would be abhor- rent because of the nonexact, ambiguous correspondence between form and function, and form and structure. In contrast, in the Katsura Villa ( 4 4 ) the bamboo rod in tension and the wood post in compression are similar in form. To the Modern architect, I think, the two would seem sinisterly similar in section and size despite the current inclination toward traditional Japanese design. The Renais- sance pilaster (as well as other structural elements used in a nonstructural way) can involve the phenomenon both- and at several levels. It can be at the same time physically structural or not, symbolically structural through associa- tion, and compositionally ornamental by promoting rhythm and also complexity of scale in the giant order. 45 s Marla ~n Cosmed~n, Rome

Besides specializing forms in relation to materials and structure, Modern architecture separates and articulates ele- ments. Modern architecture is never implicit. In promoting the frame and the curtain wall, it has separated structure from shelter. Even the walls of the Johnson Wax Building are enclosing but not supporting. And in detailing, Modern architecture has tended to glory in separation. Even the flush joint is articulated, and the shadow joint predomi- nates. The versatile element which does several things at once is equally rare in Modern architecture. Significantly the column is favored over the pier. In S. Maria in Cosme- din's nave ( 4 5 ) the column form results from its domi- nant, precise function as a point support. It can direct space

only incidentally in relation to other columns or elements. But the alternating piers in the same nave are intrinsically double-functioning. They enclose and direct space as much as they support structure. The Baroque piers in the chapel at FrPsnes (46), residual as form and redundant as struc- ture, are extreme examples of double-functioning elements which are structural and spatial at once.

Le Corbusier's and Kahn's double-functioning ele- ments may be rare in our architecture. The brise-soleils in the Unite &Habitation in Marseilles are structure and porches as well as sunscreens. (Are they wall segments, piers, or columns?) Kahn's clusters of columns and his open piers "harbor" space for equipment, and can manipu- late natural light as well, like the rhythmically complex columns and pilasters of Baroque architecture. Like the open beams in the Richards Medical Center (47), these elements are neither structurally pure nor elegantly mini- mum in section. Instead, they are structural fragments in- separable from a greater spatial whole. It is valid to sense stresses in forms which are not purely structural, and a structural member can be more than incidentally spatial. (However, the columns and the stair towers in this build- ing are separated and articulated in an orthodox manner.)

Flat plate construction consists of concrete slabs of constant depth and varied reinforcement, with irregularly placed columns without beams or caps. To maintain a constant depth, the number of reinforcing bars changes to accommodate the more concentrated structural loads in the constant, beamless section. This permits, in apartment houses especially, a constant ceiling profile for the spaces below in order to accommodate partitions. Flat plates are structurally impure: their section is not minimum. The demands of structural forces are compromised because of the demands of architectural space. Form follows function here in a contradictory way; substance follows structural function; profile follows spatial function.

In some Mannerist and Baroaue masonrv construction I J

the pier, pilaster, and relieving arch about evenly make up a facade, and the resultant structure, like that of the Palazzo Valrnarana (48), is bearing wall and frame at once. The relieving arches in the Pantheon (49), in this case not

--- 46 Mansart Chapel. Frksnes. Plan 47. Kahn. Richards Medical Research Building, Unlvers~ty of Pennsylvania, Ph~ladelphla

originaliy part of the visual expression, similarly generate a wall structurally double-functioning. In this context the Roman basilica, Gaudi's Sagrada Familia (50), and Palla- dio's I1 Redentore (51) are totally different from the

48. Pal lad~o. Palazzo Valrnarana. V~cenza. Elevation 50. Gaudi. Church of the Sagrada Farnilia, Barcelona. Section 51. Palladia. I I Redentore. Venice

49. Pantheon. Rome. Perspective 52. St. Urban. Troyes

Gothic basilica (52). In contrast to the segregated flying buttress, the Roman countervault spans as well as but- tresses, and Gaudi's subtle invention of the tilted pier- buttress supports the weight of the vault as well as buttresses the thrust in one continuous form. Palladio's but- tresses are also broken pediments on the fagade. A flying buttress at S. Chiara in Assisi forms a portal for the piazza as well as a support for the building.

The double-functioning element can be a detail. Man- nerist and Baroque buildings abound in drip mouldings which become sills, windows which become niches, cornice ornaments which accommodate windows, quoin strips which are also pilasters, and architraves which make arches (53). The pilasters of Michelangelo's niches in the en- trance of the Laurentian Library (54) also look like brack- ets. Borromini's mouldings in the rear facades of the Propa- ganda Fide ( 55 ) are both window frames and pediments. Lutyens' chimneys at Grey Walls (56) are literally sculp- tural entrance markers as well, a dado at Gledstone Hall (57) is an extension of a stair riser in the same room, and the stair landing at Nashdom is also a room.

The balloon frame, which has been traced by Siegfried Giedion, becomes on all levels. Structurally and visually it evolves from a separate frame to a skin which is both structural and sheltering: to the extent that it is made up of 2 x 4's, it is frame; to the extent that the 2 x 4's are small, close together, and braced and meshed by diagonal siding, it becomes skin. These intricate characteristics are evident in the way penetrations are made in it and in the way it is terminated. The balloon frame is another element in archi- tecture which is several things at once. It represents a method between two pure extremes, which has evolved from each of them until it has characteristics of both.

Conventional elements in architecture represent one stage in an evolutionary development, and they contain in their changed use and expression some of their past meaning as well as their new meaning. What can be called the vestigial element parallels the double-functioning ele- ment. It is distinct from a superfluous element because it contains a double meaning. This is the result of a more or less ambiguous combination of the old meaning, called up by associations, with a new meaning created by the modi- fied or new function, structural or programmatic, and the new context. The vestigial element discourages clarity of meaning; it promotes richness of meaning instead. It is a

53. Borromlnl. S. Marla d e ~ Sette Dolori. Rome 54. M~chelangelo, Laurentian Library, Florence

a

58. Ledoux. Project for a Gateway. Bournev~lle

basis for change and growth in the city as manifest in remodeling which involves old buildings with new uses both programmatic and symbolic (like palazzi which be- come museums or embassies), and old street patterns with new uses and scales of movement. The paths of medieval fortification walls in European cities became boulevards in the nineteenth century; a section of Broadway is a piazza and a symbol rather than an artery to upper New York state. The ghost of Dock Street in Philadelphia's Society Hill, however, is a meaningless vestige rather than a work- ing element resulting from a valid transition between the old and the new. I shall later refer to the vestigial element as it appears in Michelangelo's architecture and in what might be called Pop architecture.

The rhetorical element, like the double-functioning element, is infrequent in recent architecture. If the latter offends through its inherent ambiguity, rhetoric offends orthodox Modern architecture's cult of the minimum. But the rhetorical element is justified as a valid if outmoded means of expression. An element can seem rhetorical from one point of view, but if it is valid, at another level it

59. Vanbrugh. Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire

enriches meaning by underscoring. In the project for a gateway at Bourneville by Ledoux (58), the columns in the arch are structurally rhetorical if not redundant. Expres- sively, however, they underscore the abstractness of the opening as a semicircle more than an arch, and they further define the opening as a gateway. As I have said, the stair- way at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts by Furness is too big in its immediate context, but appropriate as a gesture towards the outside scale and a sense of entry. The Classical portico is a rhetorical entrance. The stairs, columns, and pediment a e juxtaposed upon the other-scale, real entrance behind. Paul Rudolph's entrance in the Art and Architecture Building at Yale is at the scale of the city; most people use the little door at the side in the stair tower.

Much of the function of ornament is rhetorical-like the use of Baroque pilasters for rhythm, and Vanbrugh's disengaged pilasters at the entrance to the kitchen court at Blenheim (59) which are an architectural fanfare. The rhetorical element which is also structural is rare in Modern architecture, although Mies has used the rhetorical I-beam with an assurance that would make Bernini envious.

6. Accommodation and the Limitations of Order: The Conventional Element

In short, that contradictions must be accepted.*

A valid order accommodates the circumstantial contra- dictions of a complex reality. It accommodates as well as imposes. It thereby admits "control afid spontaneity," "cor- rectness and easew-improvisation within the whole. It tol- erates qualifications and compromise. There are no fixed laws in architecture, but not everything will work in a building or a city. The architect must decide, and these subtle evaluations are among his principal functions. He must determine what must be made to work and what it is possible to compromise with, what will give in, and where and how. He does not ignore or exclude inconsistencies of program and structure within the order.

I have emphasized that aspect of complexity and con- tradiction which grows out of the medium more than the program of the building. Now I shall emphasize the com- plexity and contradiction that develops from the program and reflects the inherent complexities and contradictions of living. It is obvious that in actual practice the two must be interrelated. Contradictions can represent the exceptional inconsistency that modifies the otherwise consistent order, or they can represent inconsistencies throughout the order as a whole. In the first case, the relationship between inconsistency and order accommodates circumstantial ex- ceptions to the order, or it juxtaposes particular with gen- eral elements of order. Here you build an order up and then break it down, but break it from strength rather than from weakness. I have described this relationship as "contradic- tion accommodated." The relationship of inconsistency within the whole I consider a manifestation of "the difficult whole," which is discussed in the last chapter.

Mies refers to a need to "create order out of the desperate confusion of our time." But Kahn has said "by order I do not mean orderliness." Should we not resist bemoaning confusion? Should we not look for meaning in the complexities and contradictions of our times and ac- knowledge the limitations of systems? These, I think, are the two justifications for breaking order: the recognition of variety and confusion inside and outside, in program and environment, indeed, at all levels of experience; and the

David Jones, Efioch and Artist, Chilmark Press, New York, 1959.

ultimate limitation of all orders com~osed bv man. When - I

circumstances defy order, order should bend or break: anomalies and uncertainties give validity to architecture.

Meaning can be enhanced by breaking the order; the exception points up the rule. A building with no "imper- fect" part can have no perfect part, because contrast sup- ports meaning. An artful discord gives vitality to architec- ture. You can allow for contingencies all over, but they cannot prevail all over. If order without expediency breeds formalism, expediency without order, of course, means chaos. Order must exist before it can be broken. No artist can belittle the role of order as a way of seeing a whole relevant to its own characteristics and context. "There is no work of art without a system" is Le Corbusier's dictum.

Indeed a propensity to break the order can justify exaggerating it. A valid formalism, or a kind of paper architecture in this context, compensates for distortions, expediencies, and exceptions in the circumstantial parts of the composition, or for violent superimpositions in juxta- posed contradictions. In recent architecture Le Corbusier in the Villa Savoye, for example, accommodates the excep- tional circumstantial inconsistencies in an otherwise rigid, dominant order. But Aalto, in contrast to Le Corbusier, seems almost to create the order out of the inconsistencies, as can be seen in the Cultural Center at Wolfsburg. An historical example will perhaps help to illustrate this rela- tion of order and exception. The applique of arches and pilasters on the Palazzo Tarugi (60) maintains itself against the sudden impositions of "whimsical" windows and asymmetrical voids. The exaggerated order, and there- fore exaggerated unity, along with certain characteristics of scale, are what make the monumentality in the Italian palazzo and some of the work of Le Corbusier. The cir- cumstantial oppositions in their compositions, however, are the secret of their kind of monumentality-that which is neirher dry nor pompous. Although Aalto's order is not quite so easily grasped at first glance, it involves similar relationships of order and the circumstantial.

In engineering it is the bridge (61) that vividly ex- presses the play of exaggeratedly pure order against cir- cumstantial inconsistencies. The direct, geometric order of the upper structure, derived from the sole, simple function of conveying vehicles on an even span, strongly contrasts with the exceptional accommodation of the structural order below, which through distortion-the expedient device of

60. Sangallo. Palazzo Tarugi. Montepulciano

9 . The Inside and the Outside

The external configuration is usually rather simple, but there is packed into the interior of an organism an amazing complexity of structures which have long been the delight of anatomists.

The specific form of a plant or animal is determined not only by the genes in the organism and the cytoplasmic activities that these direct but by the interaction between genetic constitution and environ- ment. A given gene does not control a specific trait, but a specific reaction to a specific environment.*

Contrast between the inside and the outside can be a major manifestation of contradiction in architecture. How- ever, one of the powerful twentieth century orthodoxies has been the necessity for continuity between them: the inside should be expressed on the outside. But this is not really new--only our means have been new. The Renaissance church interior, for instance (137), has a continuity with its exterior; the interior vocabulary of pilasters, cornices, and drip mouldings is almost identical in scale and some- times in material with its exterior vocabulary. The result is subtle modification but little contrast and no surprise.

Perhaps the boldest contribution of orthodox Modern architecture was its so-called flowing space, which was used to achieve the continuity of inside and outside. The idea has been emphasized by historians ranging from Vincent Scully's discovery of its early evolution in Shingle Style interiors to its flowering in the Prairie House and its culmination in De Stijl and the Barcelona Pavilion. Flowing space produced an architecture of related horizontal and vertical planes. The visual independence of these uninter- rupted planes was scored by connecting areas of plate glass: windows as holes in the wall disappeared and became, instead, interruptions of wall to be discounted by the eye as a positive element of the building. Such cornerless architec- ture implied an ultimate continuity of space. Its emphasis on the oneness of interior and exterior space was permitted by new inechanical equipment which for the first time made the inside thermally independent of the outside.

Edmund W. Sinnott, The Problem of Orgafiic Pwm, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1963.

But the old tradition of enclosed and contrasted inside space, which I want to analyze here, has been recognized by some Modern masters, even if it has not been much empha- sized by the historians. Although Wright did in fact "de- stroy the box" in the Prairie House, the rounded corners and solid walls of the Johnson Wax Administration Building are analogous to the diagonal and rounded corners of Bor- romini's interiors and those of his eighteenth century fol- lowers-and for the same purpose: to exaggerate a sense of horizontal enclosure and to promote the separateness and unity of the interior space by the continuity of the four walls. But Wright, unlike Borromini, did not puncture his continuous walls with windows. That would have weakened the bold contrast of horizontal enclosure and vertical open- ness. And it also would have been too traditional and structurally ambiguous for him.

The essential purpose of the interiors of buildings is to enclose rather than direct space, and to separate the inside from the outside. Kahn has said: "A building is a harboring thing." The function of the house to protect and provide privacy, psychological as well as physical, is an ancient one. Calcina~o, Cortona The Johnson Wax Building fosters a further tradition: the expressive differentiation of the inside and outside spaces. Besides enclosing the inside with walls, Wright differen- tiated the interior light, an idea with a rich evolution from Byzantine, Gothic, and Baroque architecture to that of Le Corbusier and Kahn today. The inside is different from the outside.

But there are other valid means of differentiating and relating inside and outside space which are foreign to our recent architecture. Eliel Saarinen said that just as a build-

138 Mar~tlrne Theatre, Hadr~an's V~l la, Tlvoll Plan ing is the "organization of space in space. So is the com- munity. So is the city." 35 I think this series could start with the idea of a room as a space in space. And I should like to apply Saarinen's definition of relationships not only to the spatial relationships of building and site, but to those of interior spaces within interior spaces. What I am talking about is the baldacchino above the altar and within the sanctuary. Another classic building of Modern architecture, again admittedly not typical, illustrates my point. The Villa Savoye ( 12 ) with its wall openings which are, significantly, holes rather than interruptions, restricts any flowing space rigidly to the vertical direction. But there is a spatial impli- cation beyond that of enclosure which contrasts it with the Johnson Wax Building. Its severe, almost square exterior 139 Wright Evans House, Ch~cago Plan

surrounds an intricate interior configuration glimpsed through openings and from protrusions above. In this con- text the tense image of the Villa Savoye from within and without displays a contrapuntal resolution of severe envelope partly broken and intricate interior partly revealed. Its in- side order accommodates the multiple functions of a house, domestic scale, and partial mystery inherent in a sense of privacy. Its outside order expresses the unity of the idea of house at an easy scale appropriate to the green field it dominated and possibly to the city it will one day be part of.

A building can include things within things as well as spaces within spaces. And its interior configurations can contrast with its container in other ways besides those of the Villa Savoye's. The circular perimeters of bearing wall and colonnade in Hadrian's Maritime Theatre at Tivoli (138) produce another version of the same spatial idea. Even Wright, although only by suggestion, cGntains the 140. Hardouin-Mansart. Chiteau, Marly. Elevataon interior intricacv of his Evans House ( 139) with a rectan-

I . - - , gular envelope implied by the sculptural corner posts. At the other extreme, the intbacies within the plan of the typical Tudor manor, Barrington Court ( 13 ) , for example, are hidden, maybe excessively and expressed only inci- dentally, if at all, on its rigid, symmetrical fagades. In another symmetrical Tudor plan the kitchen balances the chapel. The intricacies revealed in section in the chateau at Marly (140, 141) are a concession to light and convenience inside. Because they are not expressed on the outside, the interior light is surprising. Fuga's, walls wrap around S. Maria Maggiore ( 142), and Soane's walk enclose the dis- torted intricacies of courtyards and wings of the Bank of England (143) in the same way and for similar reasons: they unify outside, in relation to the scale of the city, the contradictory spatial intricacies of chapels or banking rooms which evolved in time. Crowded intricacies can be excluded as well as contained. The colonnades at St. Peter's ( 144) and at the Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples ( 145), respectively exclude the intricacies of the Vatican Palace complex and the city complex, in order to achieve unity for their piazzas.

Sometimes the contradiction is not between the inside and the outside but between the top and the bottom of the building. The curving dome and drum on pendentives in Baroque churches protrude beyond the parapets of their rectangular bases. I have already mentioned in the P.S.F.S.

141. Hardouln-Mansart. ChAteau, Marly. Sectton

skyscraper the curved base, rectangular shaft, and angled 143. Soane. Bank of England, London. Plan

" ! I.llii.-i.ijL ..... - 144. Bernini. Piazza, St. Peter's, Rome. Plan

145. P~azza del Plebisc~to. Naples 146. Plranesi. Castel Sant' Angelo, Rome. Vedute dl Rorna

top as manifestations of multiple functions contained within the building (41). In the Caste1 Sant' Angelo ( 146) the rectangular elements evolve from a circular base. The Romantic roof-scapes of Richardson's Watts-Sherman House ( 147) and the multidomed trulli of Puglia ( 148) contrast with the severe exterior perimeters of their lower walls. From the outside, the space within a space can become the thing behind a thing. The enormous clerestory of Wollaton Hall ( 149) reads as a big-scale thing behind a smaller-scale thing. In S. Maria della Pace (150) the super- imposition of enclosing elements, which are successively convex, perpendicular, and then concave, become contrast- ing things behind things to work transitions between the outside and the inside.

Essentially, Le Corbusier's plan of the Villa Savoye exemplifies crowded intricacies within a rigid frame. Some of the plans of his other houses of the '20's suggest starting with the frame and then working inward. Similar things happen in elevation in his High Court Building at Chandigarh ( 15 1). Like the rear of McKim, Mead and

White's Low House (72), but at another scale, it contains intricacies within a rigid faqade. The severe roof and wall envelope of the house contain complex spaces and floor levels which are expressed by varying window positions. Similarly, the single, sheltering gable of the Emmental-type house in Switzerland (152), and the constant shed of Aalto's Maison Carrke ( 15 3 ) , contradict the interior spaces below. And similar tensions in the rear faqade of Mt. Vernon (71) result from the contrast of the severe pedi- mented envelope and the irregular window positions. In the side fasade of Hawksmoor's Easton Neston (154), the windows are positioned by particular interior requirements in defiance of its horizontal order. Crowded intricacy within a rigid frame has been a pervasive idea. It exists in such diverse examples as a fantasy of Piranesi ( 155 ) and the composition of a Michelangelo niche ( 156). More purely expressive examples are the faqades of the parish church in Lampa, Peru ( 157), and the chapel entrance in Fontaine- bleau ( 158), which contain enormous pressures within their borders like a Mannerist painting.

147. Richardson. Watts-Sherman House, Newport

148. T ru l l~ , Pugl~a. Italy 150. Cortona. S. Maria della Pace. Rome 153. Aalto. Maison Carre, Bazoches. Section

/ II 149 Sm~thson Wollaton Hall. Nottlnghamshire

151. Le Corbusier. High Court Building. Chandigarh

154. Hawksmoor. Easton Neston, Northamptonshire 155. P~ranesi. Ancient Baths. Opere Vane

152. Emmental-type House. Switzerland

73

Containment and intricacy have been characteristic of the city as well. Fortified walls for military protection and the greenbelt for civic protection are examples of this phenomenon. Contained intricacy might be one of the viable methods for dealing with urban chaos and the end- lessness of roadtown; through the creative use of zoning and positive architectural features it is possible to concen- trate the intricacies of roadtowns and junkyards, actual and figurative. And like the sculpture which consists of com- pressed automobiles by John Chamberlain and the photo- graphs through telescopic lens in Blake's God's Own J m k - yard, they achieve an ironically compelling kind of unity.

Contradiction between the inside and the outside may manifest itself in an unattached lining which produces an additional space between the lining and the exterior wall. Plan diagrams ( 159) illustrate that such layers between the inside space and the outside space can be more or less contrasting in shape, position, pattern, and size. Diagram 159a illustrates the simplest kind which is analogous and attached. A different material inside, wainscoting in this case, provides the contrast. The Byzantine mosaics inside the chapel of Galla Placidia represent a lining attached but contrasting in richness of texture, pattern, and color with the drab brickwork of the exterior. The pilasters, archi- traves, and arches of Renaissance walls, such as Bramante's facade in the Belvedere Court in the Vatican, can imply layers while the colonnade of the loggia of the south fa~ade of the Louvre makes spatial layers. The colonnettes in the interior of the cathedra1 at Rouen (160) or the disengaged pilasters in the anteroom of Syon House (161) represent more detached kinds of layers also, but their subtle contrast to the outside depends more on scale than on form and texture. The lining becomes semidetached in Percier and Fontaine's curtained bedroom at Malmaison, which is derived from a Roman military tent. The graduated series of symbolic doors at Karnak (162) are multiple linings in relief similar in two dimensions to the generic idea of nests of toy eggs or wooden dolls. These doors within doors, like the multi-framed doors in Gothic porches, differ from mul- ti-pedimented Baroque openings, which juxtapose triangular and segmental shapes.

The graduated series of things in things or enclosures within enclosures which characterize the Egyptian temple carry out in space the motif of the multi-framed doors at Karnak. The series of walls at Edfu ( 163, 164) are de-

158. Rosso and Prirnaticc~o. Chapel Entrance, Fontainebleau

.*-. e 5 k 156. Michelangelo. Drawing for a Niche 159. Plan diagrams

157. Parish Church, Larnpa, Peru

.- fie- 4 161 Adam Syon House. Isleworth, M~ddlesex 163. Temple of Horus. Edfu. Egypt. Plan

164. Temple of Horus. Edfu, Egypt

160. Rouen Cathedral 162. Doors. Karnak. Egypt

75

165. Bernini. S. Maria dell ' Assunzione, Arricia 166. Alb i Cathedral 167. Asarn Brothers. Project. Elevation and section 168. Asarn Brothers. Abbey Church. Weltenburg

170. Rosat~ and Sor~a S Carlo a1 Cat~nar l . Rome 171. Soane. Soane House and Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London

169. S. Marla in Canepanova. Pavia. Section

172,173. Brazini.Church of the Cuore lmrnaculatadi Maria Santissirna, Rome

tached linings. The outer linings enhance the enclosed inner spaces by making them seem protected and mysteri- ous. They resemble the layers of fortifications in medieval castles, or the spatial nest in which Bernini contained his little Pantheon, S. Maria dell' Assunzione at Arricia ( 165 ) . The same tensions occur between the hovering layers of the enclosing sanctuary screens and the outer walls of the cathedral at Albi (166) and other cathedrals in Catalonia and the Languedoc. The multiple domes of the Baroque represent, in section, layers which are analogous but de- tached. Through their central oculi one can see spaces beyond spaces. In the project by the Asam Brothers (167), for instance, the inner dome with its oculus masks high windows, thus producing surprising effects of light and a more complex space. On the exterior the upper dome increases the effect of scale and height. In their Abbey church at Weltenburg (168) the clouds of the frescoed upper dome, which are viewed through the oculus of the lower dome, increase the sense of space. In S. Maria in Canepanova in Pavia (169) the effect of the layered dome is seen on the outside rather than the inside.

The multiple domes of the S. Cecilia Chapel in S. Carlo ai Catinari in Rome (170) are detached and con-

trasting in shape. Beyond the oval oculus of the lower dome is seen a rectangular space flooded with light, containing a sculptural quartet of musical angels. Beyond this zone, in turn, floats an even more brilliant oval lantern. Soane uses interior domes in square spaces even in small areas like the breakfast room at Lincoln's Inn Fields ( 171). His fantastic juxtapositions of domes and lanterns, squinches and pen- dentive~, and a variety of other ornamental and structural shapes elsewhere (35) work to enrich the sense of enclo- sure and light. These layered structural-ornamental ele- ments are sometimes vestigial (almost in a two dimen- sional pattern), but they give the complex effect of actually detached spatial layers. Armando Brazini's neo-Baroque church of the Cuore Immaculata di Maria Santissima in Rome ( 172, 173) has a quasi-circular plan containing a Greek cross plan. The Greek cross plan is reflected on the outside in four pedimented porches marking the ends of the cross. These porches, in turn, are made convex to accommodate to the circular plan. In Modern architecture Johnson has been almost unique in emphasizing multiple enclosure in plan and section. The canopy inside his guest house in New Canaan (174) and the Soanian canopy within the synagogue in Port Chester ( 175 ) are both inner

174. Johnson. Guest House, New Canaan. Section

175. Johnson. Kneses T~fereth Israel Synagogue. Port Chester, N.Y.

layers. Kahn employs detached layers on the outside: he "wraps ruins around buildings." In the project for the Meeting House for the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (107) he juxtaposes in plan circles within squares, and squares within circles. According to Kahn, inside glare will be counteracted by the juxtaposition of apertures, contrast- ing in size and shape, in the double-layered walls. Kahn has talked of the modification of light more than the spatial expression of enclosure as his reason for the contrasting layers. Lutyens' motif of the circle in the square appears in his stairs with round wells within square rooms.

In the vestibule of S. Croce in Gerusalemme ( 176) and in the interiors of SS. Sergius and Bacchus ( 177) and of St. Stephen Walbrook (34) it is the series of columns which define the inner, detached and contrasting layer of enclo- sure. These supports, along with the domes above them, make the intraspatial relationships of the interior. St. Ste- phen Walbrook is a square space containing an octagonal space at the lower level (178). Its squinch-like arches, at the intermediate level between the columns and the dome, make a transition to the dome above. Similarly, in Vierzehn- heiligen (31) the piers along with the domes define curv- ing spaces within the rectangular and hexagonal walls of the perimeter. But the inner layers are less independent than those in St. Stephen. In plan as well as section, the curve sometimes touches the outer wall and becomes com- mon with it (179). Both the plan and section of Neres- heim in Southern Germany ( 180) show that the complex curves of the inner circle sinuously inflect as they near the outer oval. These intraspatial relationships are at once more complex and more ambiguous than those of St. Stephen Walbrook's.

Layers are implied in Michelangelo's Sforza Chapel in S. Maria Maggiore (181, 182) in the violent penetrations of rectangular space and curved space in plan and of barrel vaults, domes and niche-vaulting in section. The ambigu- ous juxtapositions of these two kinds of shapes as well as the implied intense compression and enormous scale of the flatly curved spaces (which by implication extend beyond the actual enclosure) give this interior its peculiar power and tension (183).

Detached linings leave spaces in between. But the architectural recognition of the in-between varies. Edfu is almost all layers. The residual spaces are closed and domi- nate the small space at the center. St. Basel's (184) is like a 176. Gregorini and Passalacqua. S. Croce In Gerusalemme. Rome

177. SS. Sergius and Bacchus. Istanbul. Plan

178. Wren. St. Stephen Walbrook. London. Plan

zueg leeu 'ue6!l!aquqezle!~ '43.11143 e68w!JBl!d ' u u a w n e ~ '611

series of churches within a church. The intricate maze of residual spaces inside results from the proximity of the chapels to each other toward the center, and the closeness of the wrapping wall toward the outside. In Charles V's palace at Granada ( 185), the Villa Farnese at Caprarola ( 186), and the Villa Giulia (187), the courtyards dominate be- cause they are large and their shapes contrast with the shape of the perimeters. They make the primary space; the rooms of the palaces are leftover space. As in the prelimi- nary scheme of Kahn's Unitarian Church in Rochester (188), the residual spaces are closed. In contrast, the lin- ings of columns and piers in SS. Sergius and Bacchus, St. Stephen Walbrook, Vierzehnheiligen, and Neresheim define residual spaces which open on the dominant spaces, al- though they are separate from them in varying degrees. In the Stupinigi Palace ( 189) because the dominant space is so open, the distinction between dominant and residual spaces in the main hall is ambiguous. In fact, the inner lining is so open that there remains only a vestige of a central inner space, indicated by four piers and the very complex vaulting patterns of the ceiling. The complex oculus and other openings of the inner dome in S. Chiara, Brh (190, 191), define residual space, which is open in order to elaborate space and manipulate light. The detach- ment of the inner and outer window openings in Aalto's Imatra Church (192) similarly modifies light and space. The use of this method is unique in recent architecture.

The wooden vaulting of seventeenth century Polish synagogues (193), which imitates masonry, makes closed linings in the upper section. In contrast to the previous examples their residual space is closed. Closed poch6 deter- mined primarily by exterior spatial forces rather than the inherent structure of the form is almost unknown in Mod- ern architecture except for Aalto's unique Concert Podium (194) composed of a wood skin-frame structure, which directs sound as well as space. Residual space in between dominant spaces with varying degrees of openness can occur at the scale of the city and is a characteristic of the fora and other complexes of late Roman urban planning. Residual spaces are not unknown in our cities. I am think- ing of the open spaces under our highways and the buffer spaces around them. Instead of acknowledging and exploit- ing these characteristic kinds of space we make them into parking lots or feeble patches of grass-no-man's lands between the scale of the region and the locality.

185. Machuca. Palace of Charles V, Granada. Plan 186. Peruzzi. Villa Farnese. Caprarola. Plan

' , o ,a ..% 187. Vignola. Vil la Giulia, Rome. Plan

188. Kahn. First Unitarian Church. Rochester. Plan

189. Juvarra. Stupinigi Palace. near Turln 190. Vittone. S. Chiara. Bra. Elevation and plan 191. Vlttone. S. Chiara. BrB

192. Aalto. Church, Vuoksennlska, near lrnalra 194. Aalto. Concert Podlurn, Turku

Residual space that is open might be called "open pochC." Kahn's "servant space," which sometimes harbors mechanical equipment, and the pochC in the walls of Ro- man and Baroque architecture are alternative means of accommodating an inside different from the outside. Aldo van Eyck has said: "Architecture should be conceived of as a configuration of intermediary places clearly defined. This does not imply continual transition or endless postpone- ment with respect to place and occasion. On the contrary, it implies a break away from the contemporary concept (call it sickness) of spatial continuity and the tendency to erase every articulation between spaces, i.e., between outside and inside, between one space and another (between one reality and another). Instead the transition must be articulated by means of defined in-between places which induce simulta- neous awareness of what is significant on either side. An in- between space in this sense provides the common ground where conflicting polarities can again become twin phe- nomena." 36

Residual space is sometimes awkward. Like structural pochk it is seldom economic. It is always leftover, inflected toward something more important beyond itself. The quali- fications, contrasts, and tensions inherent in these spaces are perhaps cogent to Kahn's statement that "a building should have bad spaces as well as good spaces."

Redundant enclosure, like crowded intricacies, is rare in our architecture. With some significant exceptions in the work of Le Corbusier and Kahn, Modern architecture has tended to ignore such complex spatial ideas. The "utility core" of Mies or early Johnson is not relevant because it becomes a passive accent in a dominant open space, rather than an active parallel to another perimeter. Contradictory interior space does not admit Modern architecture's require- ment of a unity and continuity of all spaces. Nor do layers in depth, especially ,with contrapuntal juxtapositions, sat- isfy its requirements of economic and unequivocal relation- ships of forms and materials. And crowded intricacy within a rigid boundary (which is not a transparent framework) contradicts the modern tenet which says that a building grows from the inside out.

What are the justifications for multiple enclosure and for the inside's being different from the outside? When Wright expressed his dictum: "an organic form grows its structure out of conditions as a plant grows out of the soil, both unfold similarly from within," 37 he had a long prece-

dent behind him. Other Americans had advocated what was at the moment a healthy thing-a needed battle cry: -

Greenough: Instead of forcing the functions of every sort of building into one general form, adopting an out- ward shape for the sake of the eyes or association, without references to the inner distribution, let us begin from the heart as a nucleus and work Thoreau: What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has grown gradually from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the ind~eller .~ ' Sullivan: [The architect) must cause a building to grow naturally, logically, and poetically out of its condi- tion."O . . . Outward appearances resemble inner pur- p o s e ~ . ~ ~

Even Le Corbusier has written: "The plan proceeds from within to without; the exterior is the result of an interior." 4'

But Wright's biological analogy is self-limiting, be- cause the development of a plant is influenced into particu- lar distortions by the particular forces of its environment as well as by its genetic order of growth. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson saw form as a record of development in environ- ment. The inherently rectangular order of structure and space of Aalto's apartment house in Bremen (76, 195) yields to the inner needs for light and space toward the south, like the growth of a flower toward the sun. But generally speaking, for Wright the exterior and interior space of his invariably isolated buildings was continuous, and as he was an urbanophobe, the suburban environment of his buildings, when specifically regional, was not so particularly limiting spatially as an urban context. (The flowing plan of the Robie House, however, adapts to the constriction of the back sides of its corner lot.) Wright however, I believe, refused to recognize the setting that was not sympathetic to the direct expression of the interior. The Guggenheim Museum is an anomaly on Fifth Avenue. But the Johnson Wax Building perhaps makes a negative ges- ture toward its indifferent urban environment by dominating and excluding it.

Contrast and even conflict between exterior and inte- rior forces exist outside architecture as well. Kepes has said: "Every phenomenon-a physical object, an organic form, a feeling, a thought, our group life--owes its shape and character to the duel between opposing tendencies; a physical configuration is a product of the duel between

native constitution and outside environment." " This inter- play has always been vivid in the concentrations of the urban environment. Wtight's Morris Store (196, 197) is another one of the exceptions he was confident enough to make. Its strong contradictions between the inside and the outside-between the particular, private and the general, public functions, make it a traditional urban building rare in Modern architecture. As Aldo van Eyck says: "Planning on whatever scale level should provide a framework-to set the stage as it were-for the twin-phenomenon of the individual and the collective without resorting to arbitrary accentuation of either one at the expense of the other."

Contradiction, or at least a contrast, between the inside and the outside is an essential characteristic of urban archi- tecture, but it is not only an urban phenomenon. Besides the Villa Savoye and obvious examples like the domes- tic Greek temples of the Greek Revival which were crammed expediently with series of cells, the Renaissance villa such as Hawksrnoor's Easton Neston or Westover in Virginia (198) juxtaposed symmetrical facades on asym- metrical plans.

Contradictory interplays between inside and outside spatial needs can be seen in the following examples in which the front and the back contrast. The diagram (1%) illustrates six general cases. The concave facade in the Baroque church accommodates spatial needs that are spe- cifically different on the inside and the outside. The concave exterior, at odds with the church's essential concave spatial function inside, acknowledges a contrasting exterior need for a spatial pause in the street. At the front of the building outside space is more important. Behind the facade the church was designed from the inside out, but in front it was designed from the outside in. The space left over by this contradiction was taken care of with poch;. The plans of the two pavilions by Fischer von Erlach (200) illustrate through the concave curves in one the inside-dominant space and through the convex curves in the second the outside-dominant space. The concave facade of Lutyens' Grey Walls ( 5 6 ) accommodates an entrance court whose curve is determined by the turning radius of a car, and which concludes the vista of the approach. Grey Walls is a rural Piazza S. Ignazio (201). The concave exterior of Aalto's studio at Munkkiniemi (202) shapes an outdoor amphitheatre. These examples produce residual spaces inside.

Fischer von Erlach's Karlskirche (42 ) , mentioned ear-

196. Wright. Morris Store, San Francisco. Plan

. .- - . - ~ ~ - -

17. Wright. Mor r~s Store, San Francisco. Section

198. Westover, Charles City County. Va. Plan

199. Facade diagrams

201. Raguzz~nl. P~azza S. Ignaz~o, Rome

200. Fischer von Erlach. Two Pavilions. Plans 202. Aalto. Studio, Munkkiniemi. Plan

lier, combines a small oval church with a large rectangular fasade that accommodates to its particular urban setting by means of a false facade rather than by pochC The concave facade of the garden pavilion of the Arcadian Academy in Rome (203) is in even more contradictory contrast to the villa behind it. The facade has been given its particular size and shape in order to terminate the terraced garden. In the Sanctuary of Saronno (204) there is contradiction in style as well as in scale between the facade and the rest of the building.

1nthe Baroque church the inside is different from the outside, but the &ck is also different from the front. Amer- ican architecture, and especially Modern architecture with its antipathy to the "false front," has emphasized the free- standing, independent building even in the city-the build- ing which is an isolated pavilion rather than one which reinforces the street line has become the norm. Johnson has called this the American tradition of "plop architecture." Aalto's dormitory at M.I.T. (205) is exceptional. The curv- ing front along ;he river and its fenestra&on and materials contrast with the rectangularity and other characteristics of the rear: exterior as well as interior forces of use and space and structure vary back and front. And the P.S.F.S. building, which is a tower, has four different sides because it recog- nizes its specific urban setting: party walls, street facades- backs, fronts and corner. Here the freestanding building becomes a fragment of a greater exterior spatial whole, but the typical freestanding building of Modern architecture, except for some surface treatment and screens, which act to de-emphasize the spatial enclosure or to recognize orienta- tion differences, seldom changes front and back for exterior " spatial reasons. To the eighteenth century, also, this was a conventional idea. The ingenious double axis hotel in Paris (206), even in its originally more open setting, accom- modated outside spaces differently at the front and back. With similar justification, Hawksmoor's Easton Neston (154) yields a tense disunity between front and side. The discontihuous elevation on ;he intimate garden side away from the long axis, accommodates varieties of spaces and levels inside and necessities of scale outside. The side eleva- tion of the Strozti Palace (207) anticipates its hidden position on a side alley.

Designing from the outside in, as well as the inside out, creates necessary tensions, which help make architec- ture. Since the inside is different from the outside, the wall

203. Arcadian Academy. Rome. Plan

s f A

204. Sanctuary of S. Marla d e ~ M~raco l~ . Saronno

-the point of change--becomes an architectural event. Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space. These interior and environmental forces are both general and particular, generic and circum- stantial. Architecture as the wall between the inside and the outside becomes the spatial record of this resolution and its drama. And by recognizing the difference between the inside and the outside, architecture opens the door once again to an urbanistic point of view.

- ', 207. Maiano. Strozzi Palace, Florence. Perspective

206. Courtonne. Hbtel de Matignon, Rue de Varenne, Paris. Plan

' U 205. Aalto. Baker House Dormitory. M.I.T..

Cambridge. Plan

10. The Obligation Toward the Difficult Whole

. . . Toledo [Ohio] was very beautiful.*

An architecture of complexity and accommodation does not forsake the whole. In fact, I have referred to a special obligation toward the whole because the whole is difficult to achieve. And I have emphasized the goal of unity rather than of simplification in an art "whose . . . truth {is) in its totality." '' It is the difficult unity through inclusion rather than the easy unity through exclusion. Gestalt psychology considers a perceptual whole the result of, and yet more than, the sum of its parts. The whole is dependent on the position, number, and inherent char- acteristics of the parts. A complex system in Herbert A. Simon's definition includes "a large number of parts that interact in a non-simple way." 46 The difficult whole in an architecture of complexity and contradiction includes multi- plicity and diversity of elements in relationships that are inconsistent or among the weaker kinds perceptually.

Concerning the positions of the parts, for instance, such an architecture encourages complex and contrapuntal rhythms over simple and single ones. The "di6cult whole" can include a diversity of directions as well. Concerning the number of parts in a whole, the two extremes-a single part and a multiplicity of parts-read as wholes most easily: the single part is itself a unity; and extreme multi- plicity reads like a unity through a tendency of the parts to change scale, and to be perceived as an overall pattern or texture. The next easiest whole is the trinity: three is the commonest number of compositional parts making a monu- mental unity in architecture.

But an architecture of complexity and contradiction also embraces the "difficult" numbers of parts-the duality, and the medium degrees of multiplicity. If the program or structure dictates a combination of two elements within any of the varying scales of a building, this is an architecture which exploits the duality, and more or less resolves duali- ties into a whole. Our recent architecture has suppressed dualities. The loose composition of the whole used in the "binuclear plan" employed by some architects right after the Second World War, was only a partial exception to this rule. But our tendency to distort the program and to sub-

* Gertrude Stein, Gertrude stein'^ Amen'crr, Gilbert A. Harri- son, ed., Robert B. Luce lac., Washington, D. C., 1965.

vert the composition in order to disguise the duality is refuted by a tradition of accepted dualities, more or less resolved, at all scales of building and planning-from Gothic portals and Renaissance windows to the Mannerist fasades of the sixteenth century and Wren's complex of pavilions at Greenwich Hospital. In painting, duality has had a continuous tradition-for example, in compositions of the Madonna and Child and of the Annunciation; in enig- matic Mannerist compositions such as Piero della Fran- cesca's Flagellation (208); and in the recent work of Ellsworth Kelly (209), Morris Louis (210), and others.

Sullivan's Farmers' and Merchants' Union Bank in Columbus, Wisconsin (211), is exceptional in our recent architecture. The difficult dualitv is ~rominent. The ~ l a n

208. P~ero della Francesca. Flagellation of Christ. ca. 1455-60 , A

reflects the bisected inside space which accommodates the public and the clerks on different sides of the counter running perpendicular to the fasade. On the outside the door and the window at grade reflect this duality: they are themselves bisected by the shafts above. But the shafts, in turn, divide the lintel into a unity of three with a dominant central panel. The arch above the lintel tends to reinforce duality because it springs from the center of a panel below, yet by its oneness and its dominant size it also resolves the duality made by the window and the door. The fasade is composed of the play of diverse numbers of parts-single elements as well as those divided into two or three are almost equally prominent-but the fasade as a whole makes a unity.

Gestalt psychology also shows that the nature of the 209

parts, as well as their number and position, influences a perceptual whole and it also has made a further distinction: the degree of wholeness can vary. Parts can be more or less whole in themselves, or, to put it in another way, in greater or lesser degree they can be fragments of a greater whole. Properties of the part can be more or less articulated; properties of the whole can be more or less accented. In the complex compositions, a special obligation toward the whole encourages the fragmentary part or, as Trystan Ed- wards calls it, the term, "inflection." "

Inflection in architecture is the way in which the whole is implied by exploiting the nature of the individual parts, rather than their position or number. By inflecting 210 LOUIS Theta 1960

toward something outside themselves, the parts contain their own linkage: inflected parts are more integral with the whole than are aninflected parts. Inflection is a means

211. Sullivan. Farmers' and Merchants' Unlon Bank, Columbus. WIS.

of distinguishing diverse parts while implying continuity. It involves the art of the fragment. The valid fragment is economical because it implies richness and meaning beyond itself. Inflection can also be used to achieve suspense, an element possible in large sequential complexes. The in- flected element can be called a partial-functioning element in contrast to the double-functioning element. In terms of perception it is dependent on something outside itself, and in whose direction it inflects. It is a directional form corre- sponding to directional space.

The interior of the church of the Madonna del Calcin- aio in Cortona (137) is composed of a limited number of elements which are uninflected. Its windows and niches (212), pilasters and pediments, and the articulated ele- ments of its altar, are independent wholes, simple in them- selves and symmetrical in form and position. They add up to a greater whole. The interior of the pilgrimage church at Birnau in Bavaria (213), however, contains a diversity of inflections directed toward the altar. The com~lex curves of

I

the vaults and arches, even the distortions of the dlaster capitals, inflect toward this center. The statues and the multitude of fragmental elements of the side altars (214) are inflected parts, asymmetrical in form yet symmetrical in position, which integrate into a symmetrical whole. This subordination of parts corresponds to Wijlfflin's "unified unity': of the Baroquewhich he contrasts with the "mul- tiple unity" of the Renaissance.

A comparison of the entrance fronts of Blenheim Palace (215) and Holkham Hall (216) illustrates the use of inflection on the exterior. Holkham Hall achieves an extensive whole through the addition of similar wholes which are always independent: most of its bays are pedi- mented pavilions which could stand alone as single build- ings-Holkham Hall could almost be three buildings in a row. Blenheim achieves a complex whole through fragmen- tal parts, separate but inflected. The last two bays of the central block, when taken alone, are dualities incomplete in themselves. But in relation to the whole they become in- fiected terminations to the central pavilion, and a confirma- tion of the pedimented center of the whole composition. The piers at the corners of the porch and the broken pediments above them are also terminal inflections, simi- larly reinforcing the center. The bays at the far extremities of this enormous facade form pavilions which are not inflected. They are perhaps expressive of the relative inde-

212. Martini. Church of the Madonna del Calcinaio. Cortona

213 Thumb Church, B~rnau, Lake Constance Bavar~a 214. Thumb. Church, B~rnau, Lake Constance, Bavar~a

215. Vanbrugh. B lenhe~m Palace, Oxfordshlre. Elevat~on

216. Kent. Holkham Hall. Norfolk. Elevation

pendence of the kitchen and stable wings. Vanbrugh's method of creating a strong whole in such a large and diverse if symmetrical facade follows the traditional Jaco- bean method of the century before: at Aston Hall (217) the wings of the forecourt fasade and the towers, parapeted pediments, and windows inflect in position and/or shape toward its center.

The varying configurations of the wings and windows, roofs and ornaments of the orphanage of the Buon Pastore near Rome (218, 219, 220) are an orgy of inflections of enormous scope similar to the scale of Blenheim. This neo- Baroque complex by Armando Brazini, (bizarre in 1940 and admittedly questionable for an asylum for little girls) as- tonishingly composes a multitude of diverse parts into a difficult whole. At all levels of scale it is an example of inflections within inflections successively directed toward different centers-toward the short facade in the front, or the anticlimactically small dome near the center of the complex, with its unusually big cupola. When you stand close enough to see a smaller element of inflection, you sometimes need to turn almost 180 degrees to see its counterpart at a great distance. An element of suspense is introduced when you move around the enormous building. You are aware of elements related by inflection to elements already, seen or not yet seen, like the unraveling of a sym- phony. As a fragment in plan and elevation, the asymmetrical composition of each wing is wrought with tensions and implications concerning the symmetrical whole.

At the scale of the town, inflection can come from the position of elements which are in themselves uninflected. In the Piazza del Popolo (221) the domes of the twin churches confirm each building as a separate whole, but their single towers, symmetrical themselves, become inflec- tive because of their asymmetrical positions on each church. In the context of the piazza each building is a fragment of a greater whole and a part of a gateway to the Corso. At the smaller scale of Palladio's Villa Zeno ( 222 ) the asymmet- rical positions of the symmetrical arched openings cause the end pavilions to inflect toward the center, thus enforcing the symmetry of the whole composition. This kind of inflection of asymmetrical ornament within a symmetrical whole is a dominant motif in Rococo architecture. For example, on the side altars at Birnau (214), and on the characteristic pairs of sconces (223), or andirons, doors, or other elements, the inflection of the rocaille is part of an

217. Ha t f~e ld and B l~ck l ing . Aston Hall, B~rrningharn

218 B r a z ~ n ~ Orphanage of I I Buon Pastore, near Rome

219. B r a z ~ n ~ . Orphanage of I1 Buon Pastore, near Rome

..I -

lcll

4

- y A3 -,

$t - t' .- 221. Plazza del Popolo, Rome Sketch

222. Palladia. V ~ l l a Zeno. Cessalto. Elevation

220. B r a z ~ n ~ . Orptianage of I i Buon Pastore. near Rome 223. Rococo Sconce

asymmetry within a larger symmetry that exaggerates the unity yet creates a tension in the whole.

. . Direction is a means of inflection in the Villa Aldo-

brandini ( 2 2 4 ) . Its front is articulated into additive Darts . , 1 or bays, but the unique diagonals of the fragmentary pedi- ments on the end bays tend to direct the ends toward the center, and unify that dominating fasade. In the plan of Monticello ( 2 2 5 ) the enclosing diagonal walls inflect the extremities toward the center focus. In Siena the distortion of its fagade inflects the Palazzo Pubblico ( 2 2 6 ) toward its dominating piazza. Here distortion is a method of confirm- ing the whole rather than of breaking it, as in the case of contradiction accommodated. Baroque details. such as cou- pled pilasters in the end bays of a series of pilastered bays, become devices of inflection because they create variations in rhythm to terminate a sequence. Such methods of inflec- tion are largely used to confirm the whole-and since monumentality involves a strong expression of the whole, as well as a certain kind of scale, inflection becomes a device of monurnentalitv as well.

Inflection accommodates the difficult whole of a dual- ity as well as the easier complex whole. It is a way of resolving a duality. The inflecting towers on the twin churches on the Piazza del Popolo resolve the duality by implying that the center of the whole composition is lo- cated in the space of the bisecting Corso. In Wren's Royal Hospital at Greenwich ( 2 2 7 ) the inflection of the domes by their asymmetrical position similarly resolves the duality of the enormous masses flanking the Queen's House. Their inflection further enhances the centrality and importance of this diminutive building. The unresolved dualities of the end pavilions facing the river, on the other hand, reinforce the unifying quality of the central axis by their own con- trasting disunity.

f i e ~rench chevet contrasts with the blunt termina- tion of the English Gothic choir, because it inflects to terminate and enhance the whole. In the church of the Jacobins in Toulouse ( 2 2 8 ) the inflection of the chevet tends to resolve the duality of the nave, which is bisected by the row of columns. The apse in Furness' library at the University of Pennsylvania similarly resolves the duality formed by the arched interior wall opposite. One column bisects the nave at the end of the Late Gothic parish church at Dingolfing ( 2 2 9 ) , a hall-type church, but the juxtaposi- tion of the central bay and window behind, which evolve

224 Della Porta and Dornen~chlno Villa Aldobrand~nt Frascat~ Perspective

225. Jefferson. Monticello. Charlottesville. Plan

226. Palazzo Pubblico. Siena. Sketch

228. Church of the Jacobins, Toulouse. Plan

- . - - - 227 Wren and Jones Royal Hosp~tal . Greenw~ch Perspect~ve

from the complex vaulting above, resolve the original dual- ity. The directional inflecting of the side walls of the nave 1 ' \ \ oi the parish church in ~Yrnella (230) counteracts the disunifying effect of the two bays of the nave. Their inflec- tion toward the center increases enclosure and strengthens the whole. A minor intermediate bay also binds the major bays together.

Lutyens' work abounds in dualities. The duality of the entrance fasade of the castle at Lambay (231), for instance, is resolved by the inflecting shape of the opening in the juxtaposed garden wall. In contemporary architecture rare examples of inflection are found in the vestigial broken pediments of Moretti's apartment house on the Via Parioli (10). They partially resolve the duality of the pair of wings which distinguish sets of apartments. The subtly balanced duality of Wright's Unity Temple (232) is de- void of inflections unless the directional entrance pedestal is one.

Modern architecture tends to reject inflection at all levels of scale. In the Tugendhat House no inflecting capital compromises the purity of the column's form, although the shear forces in the supported roof plane must thus be ignored. Walls are inflected neither by bases nor cornices nor by structural reinforcements, such as quoins, at corners. Mies' pavilions are as independent as Greek temples; Wright's wings are interdependent but interlocked rather than independent and inflected. However, Wright, in ac- commodating his ~ r a l buildings to their particular sites, has recognized inflection at the scale of the whole building. For example, Fallingwater is incomplete without its con- text-it is a fragment of its natural setting which forms the greater whole. Away from its setting it would have no meaning.

If inflection can occur at many scales-from a detail of a building to a whole building-it can contain varying degrees of intensity as well. Moderate degrees of inflection have a kind of implied continuity that affirms the whole. Extreme inflection literally becomes continuity. Today we emphasize our opportunities to express the literal continui- ties of structure and materials-such as the welded joint, skin structures, and reinforced concrete. Except for the flush joint of early Modern architecture, implied continuity is rare. The shadow joint of Mies' vocabulary tends to exaggerate separation. And Wright, especially, articulates a joint by a change in profile when there is a change in

229 Par~sh C h u r c h . Dlngolfing. W. Germany 230. Parish Church. Rirnella. Plan

&r ., 232. Wright. Unity Temple. Oak Park. Plan and elevat~on

231. Lutyens Larnbay Castle, Ireland

material-an expressive manifestation of the nature of ma- terials in Organic architecture. But a contrast between ex- pressive continuity and real discontinuity of structure and materials is a characteristic of the faqade of Saarinen's dormitory at the University of Pennsylvania. In section its continuous curves defy the changes in materials, structure, and use. In the precise walls of Machu Picchu (233) the same profile continues between the built-up jointed ma- sonry and the rock in situ. The arched shape of the opening of Ledoux's entrance at Bourneville (58) spans two kinds of structure (corbeled and arched) and two kinds of mate- rial (rusticated masonry at the top and smooth masonry at the bottom). Similar contradictions occur in Rococo furni- ture. Cabriole legs (234) disguise the joint and express continuity in their shape and ornament. The continuous grooves common to the leg and the seat-frame imply a continuity beyond inflection which is somewhat contradic- tory to the material and the structural relationship of these separate frame elements. The ubiquitous rocaille is another ornamental device for expressive continuity common to the architecture and furniture of the Rococo.

Some of Wright's early interiors (235) parallel in the motif of the wood strip the rocaille-filled interiors of the Rococo (236). In Unity Temple and the Evans House (235) these strips are used on the furniture, walls, ceilings, light fixtures, and window mullions, and the pattern is repeated on the rugs. As in the Rococo, a continuous motif is used to achieve a strong whole expressive of what Wright called plasticity. He employed a method of implied continuity for valid expressive reasons, and in ironic con- tradiction to his dogma of the nature of materials and his expressed hatred of the Rococo.

On the other hand, an architecture of complexity and contradiction can acknowledge an expressive discontinuity, which belies a certain structural continuity. In the choir screen in the cathedral at Modena (237), where one unin- flected element precariously supports another in its visual expression, or in the abrupt abutments of the uninflected wings of All Saints Church, Margaret Street (93), a formal discontinuity is implied where there is a structural continu- ity. Soane's Gate at Langley Park (238) is made up of three architectural elements totally uninflected and inde- pendent; besides the dominance of the middle element, it is the sculptural elements which are inflected and which give unity to the three parts.

233. Walls. Machu Picchu. Peru 235. Wright. Evans House. Ch~cago

234. Studies for Cabriole Legs

236. Cuvillibs. Amalienburg P a v ~ l ~ o n , Nymphenburg Palace, near Munich 238. Soane. Gateway. Langley Park. Norfolk

d 237. Modena Cathedral

The Doric order (239) works a complex balance among extremes of both expressive and structural continui- ties and discontinuities. The architrave, the capital, and the shaft are noncontinuous structurally but only partially non- continuous expressively. That the architrave sits on the capital is expressed by the uninflected abacus. But the echinus in relation to the shaft expresses structural continu- ity consistent with expressive continuity. The horizontal and vertical elements of Saarinen's T.W.A. Terminal and Frederick Kiesler's Endless House are without structural contradiction: they are continuous everywhere. However, precast concrete that is assembled offers ambiguous combi- nations of continuity and discontinuity, both structural and expressive. The surfaces of the Police Administration Building in Philadelphia include patterns of shadow joints separating precast elements whose curving inflections, how- ever, evolve continuous profiles-a paradoxical play of con- tinuity and discontinuity inherent in the expression and the structure of the architecture.

A kind of implied continuity or inflection is inherent in Maki's "group form." This, the third category in the designation of complex architecture he calls "collective form," includes "generative" parts with their own "link- age," and wholes in which the system and unit are inte- gral. He has referred to other characteristics of group form which indicate some of the implications of inflection in architecture. A consistency of the basic parts and their sequential relationship permit a growth in time, a consist- ency of human scale, and a sensitivity to the particular topography of the complex.

The "group form" contrasts with Maki's other basic category, the "mega-form." The whole, which is dominated by hierarchical relationships of parts rather than by the inherent inflective nature of the parts, can also be a charac- teristic of complex architecture. Hierarchy is implicit in an architecture of many levels of meaning. It involves configu- rations of configurations-the interrelationships of several orders of varying strengths to achieve a complex whole. In the plan of Christ Church, Spitalfields (240), it is the sequence of orders of supports-higher, lower, and middle; large, small, and medium-that make the hierarchical whole. Or in a palace faqade of Palladio (48), it is the juxtapositions and adjacencies of parts (pilasters, windows, and mouldings) and the contrasts of large, small, and relatively important that conduct the eye to the whole.

The dominant binder is another manifestation of the hierarchical relationships of parts. It manifests itself in the consistent pattern (the theistic kind of order) as well as by being the dominant element. This is not a difficult whole to achieve. In the context of an architecture of contradic- tion it can be a doubtful panacea, like the fallen snow which unifies a chaotic landscape. At a scale of the town in the Medieval period it is the wall or castle which is the dominant element. In the Baroque it is the axis of the street against which minor diversities play. (In Paris the rigid axis is confirmed by cornice heights, while in Rome the axis tends to zigzag and is punctuated by connecting piazzas with obelisks.) The axial binder in Baroque planning sometimes reflects a program devised by an autocracy, which could easily exclude elements that today must be considered. Arterial circulation can be a dominant device in contemporary urban planning. In fact, in the program the consistent binder is most often represented by circulation, and in construction the consistent binder is usuallv the major order of structure. It is an important device of Kahn's viaduct architecture and Tange's collective forms - for Tokyo. The dominant binder is an expediency in reno- vations. James Ackerman has referred to Michelangelo's predilection for "symmetrical juxtaposition of diagonal ac- cents in plan and elevation" in his design for St. Peter's, which was essentially a renovation of earlier construction. "By using diagonal wall-masses to fuse together the arms of the cross, Michelangelo was able to give St. Peter's a unity that earlier designs lacked." '' "

The dominant binder, as a'third element connecting a duality, is a less difficult way of resolving a duality than inflection. For example, the big arch unambiguously re- solves the duality of the double window of the Florentine Renaissance palazzo. The faqade of the double church of S. Antonio and S. Brigid6 by Fuga (241) is resolved by inflected broken pediments-but also by a third ornamental element, which dominates the middle. similarly, the faqade of S. Maria della Spina, Pisa (242) is dominated by a third pediment. In plan the domed bays of Guarini's church of the Immaculate Conception in Turin (14) are inflected in shape, but they are also resolved by a minor intermediate bay. The ornamental pediment at the center of the eleva- tion of Charleval (243) is also a dominant third element, as are the gable and the stair at the front of the farmer's house near-chieti (244)-similar, in this context, to the

I

239. Doric order. Sketch

240. Hawksmoor. Christ Church. Spitalfields. Plan

. . ., , . d . . . -. i. 1-. . ... 241. Fuga. Church of S Antonto and S. Brigida. Elevation study

function of the stair to the entrance of Stratford Hall, Virginia (245). There is no inflection in the composition of the Villa Lante (246), but an axis between the two equal pavilions, which focuses on a sculpture placed at a cross-axis, dominates the twin pavilions as a third element, thus emphasizing a whole.

But a more ambiguously hierarchical relationship of uninflected parts creates a more difficult perceptual whole. Such a whole is composed of equal combinations of parts. While the idea of equal combinations is related to the phenomenon both-and, and many examples apply to both ideas, both-and refers more specifically to contradiction in architecture, while equal combinations refer more to unity. With equal combinations the whole does not depend on inflection, or the easier relationships of the dominant binder, or motival consistency. For example, in the Porta Pia ( 110, 11 1 ) the number of each kind of element in the composition of the door and the wall is almost equal-no one element dominates. The varieties of shapes (rectangu- lar, square, triangular, segmental, and round) being; almost

242. S. Maria della S p ~ n a , P ~ s a

243. Du Cerceau. Chateau. Charleval Elevation

- - - equal, the predominance of any one shape is also precluded, 244. Farmer's House, near Chieti

245. Stratford Hall. Westmoreland County. Va

246. Vignola. Vil la Lante, Bagnaia. Plan

101

and the equal varieties of directions (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and curving) have the same effect. There is simi- larly an equal diversity in the size of the elements. The equal combinations of parts achieve a whole through super- imposition and symmetry rather than through dominance and hierarchy.

The window above Sullivan's portal in the Merchants' National Bank in Grinnell, Iowa ( 112), is almost identical to the Porta Pia in its juxtaposition of an equal number of round, square and diamond-shaped frames of equal size. The diverse combinations of number analyzed in his Co- lumbia Bank facade (groups of elements involving one, two, and three parts) have almost equal value in the com- position. However, there the unity is based upon the rela- tion of horizontal layers rather than on superimposition. The Auditorium (104) exploits the complexity of direc- tions and rhythms that such a program can yield. The simple semicircles of the wall ornament, structure, and segmental ceiling coves counteract, in plan and section, the complex curves of the proscenium arches, rows of seats, balcony slopes, boxes, and column brackets. These, in turn, play against the rectangular relationships of ceilings, walls, and columns.

This sense of the equivocal in much of Sullivan's work (at least where the program is more complex than that of a skyscraper) points up another contrast between him and Wright. Wright would seldom express the contradiction inherent in equal combinations. Instead, he resolved all sizes and shapes into a motival order-a single predomi- nant order of circles or rectangles or diagonals. The Vigo Schmidt House project is a consistent pattern of triangles, the Ralph Jester House of circles, and the Paul Hanna House of hexagons.

Equal combinations are used to achieve a whole in Aalto's complex Cultural Center at Wolfsburg (78). He does not disperse the parts nor make them similar as Mies does at I.I.T. As I have pointed out before, he achieves a whole by combining an almost equal number of diagonal and rectangular elements. S. Maria delle Grazie in Milan (247) works equal combinations into an extreme form by contrasting opposite shapes in its exterior composition. The dominant triangle-rectangle composition in the front com- bines with the dominant circle-square composition in the back. Michelucci's church of the Autostrada (4) , like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (plan only

illustrated in 101 ), consists of almost equal combinations of contrasting directions and rhythms & columns, piers, walls, and roo-fs. A similar composition is that of the Berlin Philharmonic Hall (248). The plastic forms of indigenous Mediterranean architecture (249) are simple in texture, but rectangles, diagonals, and segments are blatantly com- bined. Gaudi's dressing table in the Casa Giiell (250) represents an orgy of contrasting dualities of form: extreme inflection and continuity are combined with violent adja- cencies and discontinuities, complex and simple curves, rectangles and diagonals, contrasting materials, symmetry and asymmetry, in order to accommodate a multiplicity of functions in one whole. At the scale of furniture, the prevalent sense of the equivocal is expressed in the chair illustrated in ( 103). Its back configuration is curving and its front is rectangular. It is not dissimilar in its difficult

247. Brarnante and solar^. S. Marla delle Grazie, M ~ l a n

composition to ~a i t o ' s bentwood chair illustrated in (251). Inherent in an architecture of o ~ ~ o s i t e s is the inclu-

I I

sive whole. The unity of the interior of the Imatra church or the complex at Wolfsburg is achieved not through suppression or exclusion but through the dramatic inclu- sion of contradictory or circumstantial parts. Aalto's archi- tecture acknowledges the difficult and subtle conditions of program, while "serene" architecture, on the other hand,

However. the obligation toward the whole in an archi- " tecture of complexitv and contradiction does not preclude the building dhich 'is unresolved. Poets and plahrights acknowledge dilemmas without solutions. The validity of the questions and vividness of the meaning are what make their works art more than philosophy. A goal of poetry can be unity of expression over resolution of content. Contem- porary sculpture is often fragmentary, and today we appre- ciate Michelangelo's unfinished Pieths more than his early work, because ;heir content is suggested, their expression more immediate. and their forms-are com~leted-bevond

I , themselves. A building can also be more or less incom~lete " in the expression of its program and its form.

The Gothic cathedral, like Beauvais, for instance, of which only the enormous choir was built, is frequently unfinished in relation to its program, yet it is complete in the effect of its form because of the motival consistency of its many parts. The complex program which is a process, continuilly changing and-grodin<in time yet at each stage at some level related to a- whole, should be recognized as

248. Scharoun. Philharmonic Hall, Berlin. Plan 249. Houses, Naples 250. Gaudi. Dressing Table, Casa Guell, Barcelona

essential at the scale of city planning. The incomplete program is valid for a complex single building as well.

Each of the fragmental twin churches on the Piazza del Popolo, however, is complete at the level of program but incomplete in the expression of form. The uniquely asymmetrically placed tower, as we have seen, inflects each building toward a greater whole outside itself. The very complex building, which in its open form is incomplete, in itself relates to Maki's "group form;" it is the antithesis of the "perfect single building" 49 or the closed pavilion. As a fragment of a greater whole in a greater context this kind of building relates again to the scope of city planning as a means of increasing the unity of the complex whole. An architecture that can simultaneously recognize contradictory levels should be able to admit the paradox of the whole fragment: the building which is a whole at one level and a fragment of a greater whole at another level.

251. Aaito. Bentwood and Metal Cha~r. 1929-33

252. Jefferson. University of V ~ r g ~ n ~ a , Charlottesv~lle

In God's Own lankyard Peter Blake has compared the chaos of commercial Main Street with the orderliness of the University of Virginia (252, 253). Besides the irrelevancy of the comparison, is not Main Street almost all right? Indeed, is not the commercial strip of a Route 66 almost all right? As I have said, our question is: what slight twist of context will make them all right? Perhaps more signs more contained. Illustrations in God's Own l a n k y ~ d of Times Square and roadtown are compared with illustrations of New England villages and arca- dian countrysides. But the pictures in this book that are supposed to be bad are often good. The seemingly chaotic juxtapositions of honky-tonk elements express an intri- guing kind of vitality and validity, and they produce an unexpected approach to unity as well.

It is true that an ironic interpretation such as this results partly from the change in scale of the subject matter in photographic form and the change in context within the frames of the photographs. But in some of these composi- tions there is an inherent sense of unity not far from the surface. It is not the obvious or easy unity derived from the

dominant binder or the motival order of simpler, less con- tradictory compositions, but that derived from a complex and illusive order of the difficult whole. It is the taut composition which contains contrapuntal relationships, equal combinations, inflected fragments, and acknowledged dualities. It is the unity which "maintains, but only just maintains, a control over the clashing elements which com- pose it. Chaos is very near; its nearness, but its avoidance, gives . . . force." 50 In the validly complex building or cityscape, the eye does not want to be too easily or too quickly satisfied in its search for unity within a whole.

Some of the vivid lessons of Pop Art, involving con- tradktions of scale and context, should have awakened architects from prim dreams of pure order, which, unfortu- nately, are imposed in the easy Gestalt unities of the urban renewal projects of establishment Modern architecture and yet, fortunately are really impossible to achieve at any great scope. And it is perhaps from the everyday landscape, vulgar and disdained, that we can draw the complex and contradictory order that is valid and vital for our architec- ture as an urbanistic whole.

253. T y p ~ c a l M a ~ n Street. U S.A