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The Factory-Made House

A Critique of Factory-Made Houses from the Early Twentieth Century with

Reference to the Philosophy of Technology

Thesis submitæd for Master of Architecture

by

Samuel Ridgway

The Department of Architecture

The University of Adelaide

March 1995

@ S. Ridgway, L995

Table of Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Introduction

Chapter Two

Destination t tHouse-Machine"

Introduction

Origins and ExemPlars of ModemitY

Time Perception

Descartes

Durand

The Bauhaus and the Logical Positivists

Chapter Three

Use-MeaningNineteenth Century Prefabrication 49

Prefabrication in the Early Twentieth Century 53

Systems Building 57

Walter Segal: An Open System 64

Konrad'Wachsmann and Walær Gropius: A Closed System 76

Im

1

9

24

26

34

36

43

Chapter Four

The Essence of TechnologYSymbolic Value and Cultural Meaning

The Human-Technolo gy Relation

Technology as a Measure of Modernity

Being Technological

Assembly

The Destining of Revealing

The Danger and the Saving Power

Conclusion

90

92

97

100

105

r07

108

tt4

Bibliography IT7

IAbstractThis thesis is a critique of the factory-made buildings, mainly houses, which

appeared in Europe, England and America during the first half of the twentieth

century. Its aim is to look beyond conventional, technical reviews of these

buildings, to investigate underlying causes for their development and to place the

phenomenon in a cultural and historical context. Additionally, a theoretical and

philosophical interpretation of these technologised buildings is proposed which

questions the conventional conception of technology as instrumental and neutral.

The central aim of chapter one, Destination House-Machine, is to situaæ the

appearance of the factory-made house within the context of the Modern

technologically textured world of the early twentieth century. Several exemplars

throughout the development of the Modern era which indicaæ imporønt

paradigmatic shifts are highlighted. For example, the development of a Modern

conception of time and consequent appearance of the mechanical clock a¡e shown

to indicate the shift towards a technologically mediated view of the natural world.

This may be seen as a manifestation of the deeper fascination with quantification

and measurement responsible in part for the emergence of early modern science.

Chapter two, Use-Meaning, describes several early twenúeth-century building

systems, and locaæs the material setting of the work. Conceptual and practical

differences between nineteenth and twentieth-century prefabrication are

highlighted. V/hile hundreds of European, American and English factory-made,

industrialised building systems were developed, only a very limited number are

discussed here but their social, historical and to a lesser degree their political

contexts are highlighæd.

Chapter three, The Essence of Technology, contains the major theoretical and

philosophical elements of the thesis. It proposes two interpretations of Modern

technology and therefore of technologised, factory-made architecture. The first,

by referring to the work of philosopher Don Ihde and anthropologist Marshall

Sahlins, argues that technology is culturally embedded and cannot be properly

understood outside its cultural setting. The second, with reference to Martin

Heidegger's essay "The Quesúon Concerning Technology," reveals Modern

technology to be the manifestation of technologically enframed thinking.

The conclusion drawn from this study of technologised architecture is that while

making dwellings is a defining quality of human-kind, some Modern modes of

making actually diminish our humanity. Factory-made houses represented such a

threat by obscuring other more meaningful ways of making buildings.

II

This work contains no material which was been accepted

for the award of any other degree or diploma in any

university or other tertiary institution and to the best of my

knowledge and belief, contains no material previously

published or written by another person, except where due

reference has been made in the text.

I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in

the University Library, being available for loan and

photocopying.

Roger Samuel Ridgway

m

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all those people who have helped and encouraged me

throughout the wriúng of this thesis. Special thanks go to my supervisors

Professor Antony Radford from the University of Adelaide and Dr. Adrian

Snodgrass from the University of Sydney. Throughout my candidature Professor

Radford has been generous with his time, providing enthusiastic encouragement

and constructive criticism. Dr Snodgrass provided guidance on difficult

theoretical issues and helped with encouraging rema¡ks at critical times. Thanks

go also to Susan Coldicutt from Adelaide who supervised the thesis for a year

while Professor Radford was on study leave.

1

Chapter One

lntroduction

Modern architecture of the twentieth century has been dominaæd by

concerns. The factory-made buildings, in particular houses, which appeared

during the first half of the century, are an obvious and pronounced example of this.

They represent a pinnacle in an already highly æchnologised landscape.

Factory-made buildings were designed to be manufactured wholly or partially on

the factory floor and subsequentþ transported to site and erected or assembled.

Unlike ninereenth-century prefabricating enterprises, which relied on stylistically

traceable precedents, twentieth-century prefabricators embraced the machine a.s the

central metaphor of their architecture, and discarded the "styles." Their buildings

were models of efficiency, celebrating the precision joining of standa¡dised

elements with elaborate and painstakingly designed joints. Traditional building

techniques were rejected and buildings were reconceived as manufactured products.

It was argued that the same straight-line production methods developed for

manufacturing motor cars should be embraced by architects. The resulting

buildings should visibly embody efhcient, machine-age thinking.

The origins of this kind of thinking in architecture may be located in Wesærn

Europe during the laæ sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a period

commonly idenúhed as the birth place of early modern science.l Architecture was

inevitably drawn into the scientific and æchnological modes of thought which

developed from that point. Architects began to think of buildings as technological

assemblies, rather than as the revelation of meaning through built form. The

influential French architect J.N.L. Durand (1760 - 1834) epitomises this transition.

His itemisation of classical building elements and the development of rules for their

lliane Lefaivre ancl Alexander Tzonis, "The Machine in Architectural Thinking," Dai^dalos

l8(December 1985): 16-26. This article outlines what the authors call the "me¡hanisation ofa¡chiæcrural thinking."

2

¿urangement, without any explanation of their antique meanings, validated and

encouraged this mode of architectural production.

Once the meanings of the classical orders had been lost and design became simply a

matter of their arrangement according to the prevailing canons of good taste, it was

only a matrer of time before the validity of using them at all would be questioned.

The same could be said of Medieval or Gothic Revival architecture, and in

particular of the use of carved ornament from that period. Arguments between

nineteenth-cenrury Gothic and Classical revivalists provided a backdrop against

which the archiæcts of the early twentieth century could attack stylistic archiæcture

as tired and out of sæp with the modern age. The architecture which appeared

during this period can be seen in many ways as the culmination of three hundred

years of scientific and technological thinking.

In an article pubtished in t934 in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British

Architects titled "Appraisal of the Development of Modem Architecture," Walær

Gropius wrote:

Today we are in a position to prove conclusively that the outwa¡d forms of

modern architecture are not the whim of a few archiæcts hungry for

innovation, but the inevitable consequenúal product of the intellectual, social

and technical conditions of our age . . . I think the present situation can be

summed up as follows: a breach has been made with the past which enables

us to envisage a new aspect of architecture conesponding to the æchnical

civilisation of the age we live in; the mo¡phology of dead styles has been

destroyed and we afe returning to the honesty of thought and feeling. 2

Gropius and the Bauhaus provided an institutional validation of Modern

archiæcture. In relation to the factory-made house the contribution of the Bauhaus

can be noted in two important ways. First, direct links between industry and

designers were encouraged, thereby instilling into students the need to take account

of industrial production methods. And second, philosophers of science from the

Vienna Circle, who ofæn visiæd and lectured at the Bauhaus, identifred Modern

Zwalter Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956),69

3

architecture as the form of artistic expression with which they most identifred.

Both the Bauhäusler and the Vienna Circle logical positivists were concerned with

installing a Modemism based on the building of complex edifices (buildings and

scientific "antþhilosophical" philosophy) from simple building blocks. The

development of prefabricated, industrialised building systems based on the

assembly of a set number of elements was thus given a methodological and

philosophical basis. The General Panel house building system developed by

Gropius and Konrad'Wachsmann in America during the late 1940's is exemplary.

The primary elements of the system were three timber panel types, one each for the

floor, walls and ceiling, which could be clipped together using a complicated

universal joint to form various house configurations.

The development of factory-made buildings can be clearly related to the concerns of

both the Bauhaus and the Vienna Circle through the notion of "logical construction"

with its aim of banishing from architecture and philosophy the "decorative, mystical

and metaphysical."3 These degenerate and bourgeois concepts were to be replaced

by structures built up from "irreducible entities connected to each other by means of

elementary relations."4 The architecfi¡ral consequences of this kind of thinking

were buildings designed according to the supposed universal a:rioms of science, the

meanings of which would consequently be self-evident. This was thought to stand

in conrrast ro traditional (stylistic) buildings which relied on the meanings and

values conveyed by cultural convention. Buildings were to become unadorned

technological objects, a series of "atomic" rooms, spaces and elements arranged or

constructed according to a logical process.

3Peter Galison, "AufbaulBauhaus: Logical Positivism and A¡chitectural Modemism," CriticalInquiry 16(Summer 1990): 710.aÑan Colquhoun, "Rationalism: A Philosophical Concept in Arcliæcture," in Modernity and thß

Classical iradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987 Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,

1989), 73.

4

The urge to become "technological" was, it seems, "overwhelming us like a flood

which rolls on toward its destined ends."5 Early Modern architects like I-e

Corbusier saw this as a good thing, and worked towards developing prototypical

universal (machineJike) building designs for use anywhere in the world. This

formed part of their vision for a global technological utopia.

If we eliminate from our hea¡ß and minds all dead concepts in regard to the

house, . . . we shall arrive at the "House-Machine," the mass production

house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in the s¿Lme way that the

working tools and instruments that accompany our existence are beautiful.6

The obvious inhumanity of many of the industrialised building systems which

resulted from this kind of thinking motivates this study to look for underlying

forces or causes- Almost without exception, systems building literature ignores

these concerns. Such literature is characterised by Barry Russell, whose work

Buitdin g Sy s tems, I ndus trialis afiott, and Archite c tu.r e does offer limited

sociological insights, as "either. . . a polemic in favour of industrializatron,

unmitigaæd hymns of praise to the possibilities of modern technology, or it

consists of a series of catalogues of available or once available systems."T While

Le Corbusier, in view of his total output, should be considered in a class of his

own, Konrad Wachsmann, a contemporary and associate of Gropius, and Jean

prouvé, a Frenchman who incessantly reinterpreted the "House-Machine" concept,

contributed wholeheartedly to Russell's "polemic in favour of industrializationl'and

"unmitigated hymns of praise to the possibiliúes of modern technology."

Buckminsær Fuller may be similarly caægorised, whereas the work of laær

advocates such as Ca¡lo Testa, Thomas Schmids andBzraEhrenkra¡tz9 falls into

5Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture. Tffinslaterl from the thirteenth edition by Frederick

Etchells (London: A¡chiæctural kess, 1946)' 12.

6 Le Corbusier, from Vers une Architecture, quoted in Anthony Vidler, The Architectural

Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhotnely,63.7gaffy Russell, Buitding Systems, Inlustrialization, and Architecture (London: John Wiley &

Sons, 1981), 3. Russetiin-cludes a very comprehensive bibliography of systems building

literature.SThoma-* Schmid and Carlo Testa, Sysrem s Builling: An Intemational Survey of Methads

(-ondon: Pall Mall Press, 1969).ÒEzra Ehrenkran tz, Architectural Systems A Needs, Resources, anì Design Approach (New York:

McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1989).

5

the other main caægory of a "series of catalogues of available or once available

Systems." These catalogues are generally introduced with a helping of "polemic"

and "hymns of praise."

Central to this mode of architectural production is a deeply instrumental view of

both completed buildings and their constituent materials and elements. In other

words, technology was considered to be only a means to and end without cultural

signif,rcance. The meanings carried by maærials and elements were thought to be

related only to the "function" they performed in the building. The buildings

themselves were considered merely tools for a particular function, housing

workers, for example. This thesis, in its final chapter, challenges such a Modern

"technological" conception of architecture by referring to current philosophy of

technology debaæ. In particular, the chapter considers technology in a cultural and

ontological context.

In his workTechnology and the Lifeworld,lo Don Ihde, an eminent contemporafy

philosopher of technology, challenges the instrumental view by conænding that

technologies are culturally embedded and therefore non-neutral, meaningful,

material cultural. Ihde develops the idea of technology as a cultural instn¡ment

primarily by comparing'Western and tradiúonal cultures, and by examining the

exchange of technology between the them. He illustrates, by example, the different

meanings and values technology from Westem culture has when transferred to a

traditional culture. The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins similarly draws our

attenúon to the symbolic and meaningful nature of all material culture (including

technology), making the point that material forces alone do not deærmine cultural

form. For example, the need for shelter in two similar climates in different parts of

the world will almost certainly result in quiæ different types of dwellings.

lbon Ihde, Techrnlogy and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1990).

6

Technology as a cultural form embodying symbolic value can only result from

cultural forces: 'It is culture which constiiltes utility."ll

The conventional definitions of Modem technology are also challenged by the

ontological interpretations of philosopher Martin Heidegger. In his essay The

Question Concerning Technology written ín 1954, he observes that technology is

commonly thought of as either an instrument (a means to an end) or simply in

anthropological terms as a normal human activity.

The two definitions of technology belong together. For to posit ends and

procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity. The manufacture

and utililization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufactured and

used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve, all belong to

what technology is. The whole complex of these contrivances is technology

Technology itself is a contrivance, or, in Latin, an instrumentumL2

Such a sweeping and "uncannily correct" definition, Heidegger claims, does

nothing to bring us into "the right" relation to technology, to see æchnology in its

"essence." The "merely conect is not yet the true."l3

Implicit within an instrumental view of technology is the notion of control. If

æchnolOgy is a mere "means" then we should be able to "manipulate" or "mastet''

it. '"The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens

to slip from human control."la The instrumental and utopian view of technology

and its implicit notion of control are deeply embedded within the phenomena of

facrory-made buildings, systems building, prefabrication and industrialisation. If

we are to believe Heidegger, however, to regard æchnology as an instrument (a

mere means to an end) and therefore neutral, "conditions every attempt to bring

man into the right relation to technology."l5 The consideration of building

technologies by archiæcts to be merely instrumental may, for example, have led to

rlMarshall Sahlins, Culture anl Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976),

viii.l2H"idegger, "The Question Concerning Technology ," in The Question Concerning Techrwlogy

and Othõl Ess4ys, rrans. Wiltiam Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977),4.13ni¿,o.14lui¿,5.

15tio.

7

the production of industrialised mass housing schemes which were despised and

vandalised by their occupanß.16 According to Heidegger, to see technology's

truth, in this case perhaps to understand why mass housing is generally despised,

we must look beyond the obvious and consider technology in its essence.lT

There is, Heidegger claims, a vast difference be¡veen the essences of Modern and

premodem technology. The essence of Modern æchnology is Enframing(Gestell),

a mode of being which "challenges" all "real' things to stand ready for use: to be

useful. The true cause of technology, therefore, is a particular way of thinking.

Technology is an extension of our nature, not a neutral instrument. This claim runs

contrary to conventional thinking which posits that Modem æchnology may be

disúnguished from Ancient or Medieval technology because of its foundation in

Modern science. Heidegger claims the opposiæ is true, that Modem science is the

"herald of Enframing."l8 In other words, it is technologically Enframed thinking

which has produced Modern science. Physics, in particular, he claims allows us to

conceive of nature as "identifiable through calculation and. . . orderable as a system

of information."le This in turn enables us to see the natural world as exploitable in

those terms, as orderable and waiting to be called forth to serve our needs. The

view of nature, indeed of all things, as standing and waiting to be challenged forth

by us, he calls the "standing reserve" Bestand.2o

It is possible to see the Factory-made house in these terms. While its advocates

thought of it merely as a neutral tool or instrument, in Heideggerian terms they

l6some ma.ss housing works better than others but generally it has become a symbol of where

modem archiæcture went wrong. I refer, in particular, to such memorable events as the blowingup of the Pruitt-Igoe housing estate in America, and the progressive collapse of Ronan Point inLondon.17I do not necessarily dismiss conventional sociological inærpretations of why mass housingseems to be so problematic (low incomes, overcrowding, lack of education, nothing for young

people to do and so on), I merely intend to look at the problem from a philosophy of technologypoiñt of view, rather than a sociological one. In addition, of course, my interests are primarilyarchitectural and as such focus on the æchnological embodiment of architecture.1SHeidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," 22.retai¿., zz.2obi¿.,t2.

8

were doing little more than responding to the'bhallenge of Enframing."2t 1'¡tt

mode of thinking, Heidegger claims, is a great danger. The danger of Enframed

thinking lies in the fact that it covers over other modes of Being and thinking. It

"threatens to sweep man away into ordering as the supposed single way of

revealing."22 The principal programmatic concem of the factory-made or

industrialised house was the assembly (ordering) of standa¡dised, manufactured

elements, which had been stockpiled ready for use. The resulting buildings were

meaningless assemblies of technological elements, to which the great majority of

people could not relate. Such buildings are a manifestation of the danger of

Enframed thinking to which Heidegger refers. They represent a mode of

technological making which diminishes our humanity-

Heidegger offers no easy solutions to the danger of Enframing, pointing out only

that its antidote, "the saving power," lies within Enframing itself. The path to

salvation lies neither in action nor directly in thinking, but in "reflection" upon the

technological nature of our being, in "holding always before our eyes the extreme

danger."23 Technologised buildings provide a reminder of the danger of Enframed

thinking.

2llbid., zo-zt.22rbi¿., zz.23rcio., zz.

9

Chapter Two

Destination "House-Machine"

Introduction

Fig. 1. Buckrninster Fuller's prefabricated Dymaxion Bathroom developed in1930, "avertical cross section through approximaæly the center of the lavatory and water closet "(Fuller, 42).

Mass-Production Houses

A great epoch has begun

There exists a new spirit

Industry, overwhelming us like a flood which rolls on toward its destined

ends, has furnished us with new tools adapæd to this new epoch, animated

by the new spirit.

Economic law inevitably governs our acts and our thoughts.

The problem of the house is the problem of the epoch. The equilibrium of

society today depends upon it. Architecture has for its first duty, in this

10

period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of

the constituent elements of the house.

Mass-production is based on analysis and experimentation.

Industry on the grand scale must occupy itself with building and establish the

elements of the house on a mass-production basis.

We must create the mass-production spirit

The spirit of constructing mass-production houses.

The spirit of living in mass-production houses.

The spirit of conceiving mass-production houses.

If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regard to the

house, and look at the question from a critical and objective point of view,

we shall arrive at the "House-Machine," the mass-production house, healthy

and (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools

and instruments which accompany our existence are beautiful.

Beautiful also with all the animation that the artist's sensibility can add to

severe and pure functioning elements.24

This notorious diatribe of Le Corbusier's employs both parts of the modern

movement's bifurcated straægy to change the mode of architectural production.

Architecture of the previous several centuries was denigrated and the machine and

machine production glorified. Le Corbusier claimed the moral high ground in his

attacks on t¡aditional architecture. The state of mind required to produce machines,

he wrote, "demonstrated purposefulness and truth,"ã something clearly missing

from the "stylistic" architecture of previous centuries. The styles, Le Corbusier

claimed, where a lie. That moralising as a tacúc had been used before, in particular

by Pugin and Ruskin who used it to attack Renaissance and Baroque architecture,

did not seem to wony him.26 lnTowa.rds a New Arch.itectu.r¿ he mounts an attack

24Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Eanslated from the thirteenth edition by Frederick

Etchells (London: John Rodker, 193D, 2n .

25Manouchehr Eslami, "Architecture as Discourse: The Modern ldea of Method; Theory and

Practice in Le Corbusier's Purist Period," (Ph.D. diss., Universiry of Pennsylvania, 1985), 84.

26For acomprehensive discussion of the use of moral arguments to promote one style ofarchitectu¡e õver another see David Watkin, Moratity and Architectnre (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1977).

11

on ornamented architecture from ancient Greece onward. In the "'great periods'

facades were smooth, pierced at regular intervals and of good human

proportions ."n l-eCorbusier loved the Doric order (he called it Doric morality)

and hated the Corinthian. '"The Doric st¿æ of mind and the Corinthian state of mind

afe two things. A moral fact creates a gulf befween them."28 Under a photo of

guttae from the Parthenon ( fig. 2), he writes: "All this plastic machinery is realized

in marble with the rigour that we have learned to apply in the machine. The

impression is of naked steel."2e This seems a strange machine metaphor given that

a more leamed interpretation of gu.tta¿ shows them to represent drops of sacred

fluid draining onto an alter from the cut up leg bones (triglyphs) of a sacrificial

ox.3o

Fig.2. Illustration in Towards a New Architecture, showing Guttae from the

Parthenon which Le Corbusier claims to be "plastic machinery" giving the impression of"polishecl steel," (Le Corbusier, 217).

27Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture,93.28rbid., zr4.zerbid, zn.30George Hersey, The Lost Meaning qf Classicat Archiîecture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988),

31.

12

In relation to housing, tæ Corbusier's venomous attacks on architectural styles can

be explained partially by his perception that other types of architecture, factories,

warehouses, banks and so on were beginning to respond to "modern" design ideals

based on function and efficiency. House design, however, was seen to be lagging

behind. He lamented that the "modern state of mind" created not only by modern

architecture but all the other objects of a modern life (motor cars, ocean liners,

bridges and so on), was not evident in the approach to house design (figs. 3'4).

Tlf E " Ë\'I?r{Ess oF FR:\NCE " (c,lN.tnrAN p,¡.crttlc)

¿ln aril;iie¡lu'c þt/rc, Møi:, ltraãrþéi-t) cu-cl;ion.;, cattoþit.rt ûr" a¡'!.J " colotrs : !h¡' ¿i::/r

Fig. 3. Illust¡ation in Towards a New Architecture, (Le Corbusier, 100)

He was disgusted that people stilt lived in old buildings, referring to them as "the

old and rotten buildings that form our snail-shell, our habitation, which crush us in

our daily contact with them-putrid useless and unproductive. Everywhere can be

seen the machines which serve to produce something and produce it admirably, in a

clean sort of way. The machine that we live in is an old coach full of

tuberculosis."3l New housing built in a traditional style was similarly attacked:

'"Tail pieces and garlands, exquisite ovals where triangular doves preen themselves

3ll-e Corbusier, Towards a New Architeclure,2TT.

13

or one another, boudoirs embellished with 'poufs' in gold and black velvet, ate

now witnesses to a dead spirit. These sanctuaries stifling with elegancies, or on the

other hand with the follies of 'Peasa¡t art' ate an offence. We have acquired a

taste for fresh air and clear daylight."3z

À " BtiG,{'rrr " }':NG.ÍNf:

ClTIC"ifìO. C{ìNS1'1(r CTIC)^* Oli -A lvI:\ÞO1fi ì ¡NDUSTRI'{L:ZATlO\;

Fig. 4. Illustration in Towards a New Architecture. Le Corbusier equates the

Bugatti engine, a model of eff,rciency and function, with the industrially produced aluminiumwindow, (Le Corbusier, 282).

32rvi¡.,9t.

T4

Towa¡ds the end of the book he pronounces that "we can no longer close our minds

to the true and profound laws of archiæcture which are established on mass,

rhythm and proportion: the 'styles' no longer exist, they are outside our ken; if

they still trouble us, it is as parasites."33 Traditional housing thus became a target,

not only for I-e Corbusier but for many leading figures of the Modern Movement.

They atracked it as a symbol of diseased lgth century squalor, in particular of the

squalid mind, to be swept away by an "alliance between the hygienists and the

a¡chitects."34

Walter Gropius must count as an equal if not greater force than Læ Corbusier in the

campaign to industrialise the production of houses. His association with the

Bauhaus subsequently accorded him God-like st¿tus and his writing, teaching and

designing in Germany and laær in America made his influence truly inæmational.

In one important way Gropius was far more influential than [,e Corbusier and this

was in his vision of how industrialised architecture might actually be produced. Le

Corbusier may have been evangelical about industrialisation, especially in relation

to mass-produced houses, but he was more inæresæd in dabbling with the

semiotics of industrialisation, and with trying to emulate the state of mind that he

imagined was responsible for creating machines, than he was with developing

architecture which was the result of a truly industrialised process. Gropius, on the

other hand, both during the Bauhaus yea.rs and later in America, worked at

developing industrialised building systems which he hoped would revolutionise the

production of domestic a¡chitecture (fig. 5). Konrad Wachsmann, who joined him

in America, provided much of the technological zealfor the projects, his love of

machines and production lines never dimming. In his "Minor Manifesto," a slide

and audio tape set he produced towards the end of his caleer, he says:

The tool of our time is the machine, and its precision in repetition is its

fundamental characteristic, or virtue. And what men can do with such a

33ni¿ z8o.34Antlrony Vidler, "Nostalgi4" in Th.e Architectural (Jncanny: Essays in the Modcrn Unhomely

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992),63-

15

formidable method of industrialisation may consequently make disappear the

classical craft concept of building. 3s

Fig.5. For several post-Bauhaus years, Gropius worked with the German

company Hirsch CopÞ and Brass(Ifirsch Kupfer-und Messingwer,te) developing th9{ Copper

Uouie. -This

*as thèir entry for the Growing House exhibition held in Berlin in 1932. The

completed panels were transported to the siæ and then erected (Herbert, 145).

Wachsmann's vision included the physical, industrialised production process and a

hyper-rational design process. Design, contrary to the way he and Gropius actually

worked, was to be carried out by large interdisciplinary tea¡ns, a concept that can be

traced directly to the Bauhaus and the pronouncements of Hannes Meyer mentioned

below. Wachsmann in many ways epitomises the modern architect. He was

concerned wittr the search for universal truths, a concept borrowed directly from

35 Konrad Wachsmann, The Arr of Joining. Transcribe<l from the audio tape which accompanies

the slide set. London: Pigeon Audio Visual, 5 St Anne's Close, n'd'

16

modem science, believing that their discovery would lead to an architectural utopia-

Like Le Corbusier he believed he was witnessing the unfolding of a modern age

which would solve all the problems of building.

. . . one could speak about emerging new philosophies, influenced by

political, social, economical, scientific or technological and consequently

design principles, att of them triggered by the mass market, automation, time

and motion phenomena's, universal communication and information media

and certainly not to forget the all controlling computer sciences as well as soft

and hardware.

This reminds me that more than fifty years ago I built with my hands, and my

tools of course, no more than a product of the primitive crafts, a desk, and

the space for it, the room, and the house, and the garden, and all of it for

Alberr Einstein (fig. 6). This desk was specially designed for him to work on

his unified electrical field theory. Around this time he once said, "the reason

why this world is not entirely perfect maybe that God as creator spent too

much time of the six days available on geometry and the like and this made

nature indeed a system of perfect ordering systems but left considerable room

for improvement of the behaviour patterns of the human species." I still

remember how I laughed aloud visualising this supreme geometer. But later,

I began to realise that a certain mysterious, basic formula may also help us,

the builders, to better understand organise and control the artificial, man-

made environment which we intend to create. I myself do not have the

necessary scientific and interdisciplinary universal knowledge to cope with

such "big bang" problems as to structure a fundamental equation revealing the

true nature of building, but not only restricted to the gravitational law, also

realising that in any way one individual person may not be able to approach

that task. I can therefore only suggest or hope in this little manifest that

teams, in super teams, may join to search for such abstract formulae.36

The structures which resulted from Wachsmann's search for these "abstract

formulae" and "fundamental equations" are, among other things, metaphors for the

universalisation of space. They generally involve the design of a mass producible

element which can be joined together a^d infinitu.m to create structures of any size.

The best known example of this is the space frame which, in its domed form, also

intrigued Buckminster Fuller (figs. 7-10). IllustratedinTh.e Turning Point of

3ó Konrad Wachsmann, The An of .loining.

t7

Buildhg is another curious proposal Wachsmann describes as "a single universal

structural element which, industrially produced from a material to be deærmined in

the course of the investigations from loading conditions and production

requirements, could be used in building construction for every conceivable

purpose."37 Wachsmann introduces the scheme with a defence of industrialised

a¡chitecture (f,rg. 1 1).

Only a superficial appraisal could support the opinion that the technical-

scientifrc approach, the consisænt application of automatically controlled,

industrial production processes and the systematic modular coordination of

all building elements, parts and products, leads invariably to monotony or, as

I am continually hearing with astonishment" the total dest¡uction of every

spiritual and emotional impulse. A glimpse of the future such methods may

really make possible is afforded by the fotlowing study, one among many.38

IlItiliåffillll

Fig.6. Top: Christoph and Unmack, standa¡d classroom, c. 1930. Bottom:Konrad Wachsmann, house for Albert Einstein, Potsdam, using the Christoph and Unmackprefabricated timber system, 1929. V/achsmann worked for Christoph and Ur¡mack from 1926 to

1929 (Herbert,95).

3TKonrad Wachsmann, The Turning Point of Building: Structure an"d Design (New York:

Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 196l), 194.38Ibicl.

18

\

Fig. 7. Konracl Wachsmann, space frame designs and prototypes for a "verylarge hanger" develo¡red in 1959 for the U.S. Air Force. Such a project suited'Wachsmann because

it involved the design of a few ma^ss producible elemens with the focus on a universal jointing

system (Wachsmann, 779, 187).

19

Fig. 8. Konra<l lWachsmann, space frame joint and the "five precision-made

standârd elements which together with two different pipe sections constitute the entire sfuctuldsystem of the space frame," (Wachsmann,l7l,177).

20

Fig. 9. Buclsninster Fuller, Geodesic Dome (1954). Fuller wrote of his"architeÆture" thaü "at no time in my last 56 years have I paid any attenúon to conventional

a¡chitectu¡e's 'orders' about the su¡ærfrrcial appearance of my structües. I never try to anticipatewhat my structures are 'going to look like.' I am concemed only with providing comprehensive,

logical, pleasingly adequate, ancl the most economicat solutions to all design problems. I rrtust be

reðponsilte for the method of production, assembly, installation, servicing, and transporøbtl-ty ofall

-the parts and the behavior of the whole under all anticipatable conditions," (Fuller 129,138).

2I

,,,,),,,,:

t/)

,.d;.,

46

--2426

2323

)

5/.n 3l

136)Fig. 10. Buckminster Fuller, Geodesic Dome universal joints (Fuller, 133,

22

Fig. 11. Konracl Wachsmann, study for a single, universal, industrially

p ent showing the "spiral paths taken by the structural elements," and a

p structure built with a single structural element; the skeleton of a tive-story

b 198,200).

23

Attempts like this to fulty industrialise the production of architecture represent one

of the Modem Movement's central themes, namely that traditional methods of

architectural production, (building techniques, use of materials, and design), had

served us poorly and that the adoption of new "modern" methods based on

"rational" and "scientifîC' modes of operating would ensure far reaching social

change, a kind of technological utopia. Industrialising the production of housing in

particular represented one of the most concerted and persistent attempts to overturn

traditional modes of building. For many of those involved it became, among other

things, symbolic of a new egalitarianism, of social salvation and hygiene both

moral and personal.

It becomes clear, upon realising how many prominent architects were involved, that

this project was regarded as fundamental to the revoluúonary platform of

Modemism. In his bookThe Dream of the Factory-Made House: Walter Gropius

and KonradWachsm^arzn, Gilbert Herbert mentions some of them:

This is the period when the great masters, Le Corbusier, Gropius, Frank

Lloyd Wright, found it necessary to deal with the æchnological imperatives

and social ideology of mass housing, when each in his own manner-Wright

romantically, [,e Corbusier ideologically, Gropius totallY and with deep

commirment-explored the poæntials of industrialised building. This is the

period when European architects of standing in the modern movement

(Martin'Wagner and Ernst May, Hans Poelzig and Hans Scharoun, Josef

Hoffman, Max and Bruno Taut, Otto Bartning) engaged with enthusiasm in

designing prototypes for industrial production or even total systems of

prefabrication, developing them in the greatest of detail. In this crusade they

were joined by Richard Neutra, Lawrence Kocher, Albert Frey, Barry Byrne,

Buckminsær Fuller, and many other notable architects in the United States.39

Konrad Wachsmann, one of the subjects of his book, is inexplicably absent from

this list. Later, Herbert says: "it is difficult to understand what generated this

enthusiasm for the concept of the factory-made house, what kept the dream

39 Gilbert Herbert" Th¿ Dream of thz Factory-Made House: Walter Gropius and KonradWachsm.ann (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), 5.

24

alive."40 This question is not debated in the book but Herbert has nevertheless put

his finger on the driven nature of the individuals involved, which is central to any

meaningful analysis of factory-made buildings and goes far beyond a simple

obsession with technology. Industrialising domestic architecn¡re was a relentlessly

pursued agenda of the Modern Movement. Its perennialism, even today, identifies

it as worthy of further investigation.

Questioning this perennialism inevitably leads to issues concerning the status of

machines in the modem movement in a¡chiæcn¡re. \ühy was it that the

"technological" imperative became so dominant? Lookirig back from laæ in the

twentieth century, a time of considerable (although by no means total) æchnological

disillusionment, it is hard to imagine the evangelical fervour with which the virtues

of the machine were embraced and expounded. Insights, perhaps a certain

fascination and even wonder, can still be had at the awesome scale and the tangible

dynamism of early industrial technology when looking at surviving examples in

museums or even simply in books. From our viewpoint, however, the complex

linkages, both physical and metaphorical, that the Modems saw between machines

and archiæcture seem distant and somehow alien. To begin to understand, we need

to look beyond the Modern Movement in architecture, to the historical trajectory of

modernism itself.

Origins and Exemplars of Modernity

In intellectual circles it has become almost a cliché to discuss the divisive structural

basis of modernity, the most notable and often quoted example being the division

between art and science. While it may be a convenient oversimplification to

imagine the pre-modern world as socially cohesive and spiritually complete, and the

modern world as division ridden, some comparisons between the two a¡e valuable.

The profound anthropocentricism of medieval Europe, for example, may be

contrasted with the modern institutionalisaúon of a "disconnected critical distance,

40 lui¿., 5

25

as if we observe life from the balcony."4l A discussion of some aspects of modern

epistemological structures, however, in particular their philosophical and

methodological origins, provides an important historical framework for an

investigation of industrialised architecture.

The modern world is often characterised by referring to its impressive æchnologies.

It is sometimes claimed that these technologies result from, or are an extension of,

the Western world's huge investment in scientific reseatch, that is that they are

applied science. Debate about whether science generates æchnology or

æchnological challenges stimulate scientific responses seem unimportant to their

combined role as mainstays of our modem identity and way of life. Science and

technology are bound together, seemingly indistinguishable from each other in the

pact of modernity. But of course this was not always the case. Our technological

mastery has a way of blinding us to the origins of these achievements. Medieval

Europe, for example, is often writæn off as a technological (and sometimes a

cultural) wasteland, devoid of any significance to the modern world, apart from a

kind of quaint reference to its mythologies. Late antiquity and the medieval period,

in particular, however, were far from technologicalty arid.a2 It would be

reasonable to suggest that medieval technological achievements provided the basis

of agricultural abundance and social stability which allowed for the appearance of

early modern science and the associaæd cultural and religious debates. In addition,

technological instrumentation developed during this period and refined during the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provided a means of measuring and observing the

natural world which had not previously been available. The adaptation of existing

technologies and the invention of new ones for the purpose of empirical

observation is one of the characæristics which distinguishes early modern science

4lsteueo Moore, review of Davicl Kolb's Postmodern Sophistications: Philosophy, Architecture,

and Tradition, Jourrul of Architectural Education 4514 (Iluly 1992): 241 -42Ror an extensive and detailed account of Medieval technologies, their invention and in particular

the adaptation of technologies imported from other cultures see, Lynn Whlte y., Medlrlo!Retigion An"d Technology: Collected Essays (Berkley and Los Angeles: Universiry of CaliforniaPress, 1978).

26

from the science of Greek and Roman antiquity. An often quoted example is

Galileo's adaptation of existing optical technologies to produce the first telescope.

Another example, which had wide influence, was the development of the

mechanical clock.

Time Perception

Even though the actual changes in time perception and measurement occurred

slowly over several centuries and did not therefore constitute a violent revoluúon,

in millennial ærms they were dramatic. Many historians and social commentators

have seen the desire to precisely measure time, and the consequent development of

the mechanical clock, as an indicator of a paradigmatic shift which in turn led to the

development of the modem age. For example, inTechnics and Civilisationl-ewis

Mumford wrote:

The clock not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modem industrial

age. For every phase of its development, the clock is both the outstanding

fact and the typical symbol of the machine age: even today no other machine

is so ubiquitous. Here at the very beginning of the modern technics,

appeared prophetically the accurate automatic machine which afær only

centuries of further effort, was also to prove the final consummation of this

technics in every depar"tment of industrial production.a3

Mumford is referring to the development of clocks in the monasteries of Europe

during the late medieval period and he clearly sees it as symbolic or paradigmatic of

the burgeoning machine age.

The ticking-off of time by mechanical means has often been seen as symbolic of the

increased quantif,rcation and measurement which developed during the early modern

scientific period. The development of the mechanical clock, from a device which

was quite inaccurate and only sounded the hours (fig. 12), to one which was more

precise and had a face from which the time could be read, indicates a shift from an

intuitive or perceptual knowledge of the time of day, by looking at the length of

shadows and the position of the sun, to one which was removed from the natural

43lewis Mumforcl, Technics and Civilisation (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1962)' 14.

27

world and which required the conceptual adjustment of reading time through a

mechanical device. The ability to understand an abstract notion like time by reading

a technical instrument like a clock can easily be interpreted as a turning point in our

æchnological evolution. Not only was the ability to accurately measure time

important to many early scientific experiments, but it provided a model and a

metaphor for the development of other æchnical measuring and recording devices.

Early scientists relied heavily on such technical instruments to prove their theories

and further their research. The development of the technical expertise required to

manufacture these instruments can also be sourced to those trades which were

ordinarily devoted to the production of time pieces.

Since the fust mechanical clocks began to appear in the early fouræenth century

(fig. 13), the skills of the clockmakers and the complexity and accuracy of the clock

had been sæadily increasing. Collaboration between clockrnakers and scientists

tike Galiteo, Huygens and Hooke had forged a powerful and mutually dependent

relationship between science and technology. It is possible to get a feeling for the

persistent technological development of the clock from a passage in Daniel

Boorstin's The Discoverers ,4 which describes the proliferation of trades devoted

to the manufacture of clock parts in Geneva. For several reasons, Switzerland had

become the centre of clock making in Europe and by the end of the seventeenth

century was producing five thousand clocks per year.

By the seventeenth century clockmakers had advanced spectacularly ahead of

the other technology of the age, and had begun to apply the principle of

division of labour. ln 1736 Ferdinand Berthoud could list sixæen different

sorts of workman involved in producing clocks, and twenty-one making

watches. Among these were the makers of the movement, finishers, borers,

makers of springs, engravers of brass needles, pendulum makers, engravers

of dials, polishers of brass parts, enamellers of dials, silverers of brass dials,

44Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1984),26. In part 2 of this

work, "From Sun Time to Clock Time," Boorstin gives an extremely detailed account of the

invention of time. Part 1 "The Heavenly Empire," traces the development of the calendar, giving

valuable insights into the lifeworld of ancients and medieval people.

28

engravers of cases, bronze gilders, painters to imitate guilding in colors,

founders of wheels, turners and polishers of bells.as

From accounrs like this it is possible to glimpse the lifeworld of those people who

lived during and were involved in the so-called "Galilean scientific revolution."

This was a world in which everyday perceptions were increasingly æchnologically

mediaæd. The numerous technologies developed during the late medieval period

and the f,rfteenth, sixæenth and seventeenth centuries were absorbed or embedded

into a Western European culture having a "Baconian" desire for power and an

increased ability to question Medieval religious dogma which saw natural order as

God's creation. The resulting sense of control and the ability to exploit the maærial

resources of the natural world has continued to grow until today we take it almost

completely for granted.

While the technological texture of the seventeenth century was ma¡ked, it did not

occur spontaneously. The clockmakers' skills allowed scientists to invent

instruments and devise experiments which were to significantly alær perceptions of

the narural world (frgs. 14-16). The relationship between science and technology

here should be noted, since during laær centuries, and still today, it is claimed that

science is prior to technology. The clockmaker and scientist example raises doubts

about which comes first, science or technology. In his book Architecture and the

Crisis o.f Modem Science, Pérez-Gómez points out that:

Galileo simultaneously desecrated the heavens and humanized science. . . By

connecting mathematics to experience, Galileo founded modern quantitative

science. His overall achievement was much more than a sum of isolated

scientific discoveries. He presented to the world a new ideal of inælligibility,

one that would eventually encompass the totality of human knowledge. . . . It

would be difhcult to overestimate Galileo's contribution- The

epistemological revolution he ushered in would one day wear the mantle of

positivism and, later, scientism.a6

45ruid., 66-6i.46Alberto Pérez-G6mez, Architecture ani the Crisß of Modern Science (Cambridge: MIT Press,

1983), 166.

29

Pérez-Gómez reinforces the importance of æchnical instruments to the process of

proving the "mathematical structure of reality," by pointing out that such an abstract

notion is impossible to "justify ontologically. In order to impose itself, it

necessarily had to be proved through experimentation."4T

The shift away from the essentially medieval contemplation and experimentation

which sought only to read the "book of nature," in terms of its divinely ordered

mathematical and geometrical numbers and figures, to the idea of dominating the

natural world was gradual. During the seventeenth century, however, the idea took

hold, fuelled partly by the emerging "objecúvity" with which scientists began to

view the natural world. A distance developed between the mind and the objects

which were becoming the focus of scientific and æchnical experimentation. Pérez-

Gfimezstates, in relation to the equal emphasis placed on scientihc contemplation

and technical experimentation at both France's Royal Academy of Science and

England's Royal Society, "that this was indicative of the role assigned to the new

episæmology, that is, the joining of the practical and theoreúcal dimensions of

knowledge, t¡ansforming the previously contemplative orbis doctrinae into an

instrument of power."48 The intimate relationship between the aggressive and

power-seeking culture of Western Europe and its æchnological development should

not be underestimated. Within such a cultural and technological sening it is not

diffrcult to imagine the development of the attitudes which created the "modern"

age. It is in fact the so-called Galilean scientific revolution which is commonly

nominated as the birth place of modernity.

aTIbi¿.48ruio, to8.

30

d

Fig. 12. Verge ancl balance-wheel alarm clock. c1450. Originally developedto wake the bell ringers in meclieval mona.steries, whose job it was to regulate the life of prayer

and work of the monks, they represent a transition from a mechanical timer to the mechanicalclock (Lande s, 23 6-237 ).

\fu,

m

Fig. 13. Components of the drive mechanism of a spring-driven mechanicalclock. Top row: detail of the chain linking spring barrel and fusee wheel. Middle row, left torighu spring barrel and fusee linked by chain; fusee wheel assembly, including winding square and

toothed drive wbeel; mainspring, witl¡ slot at end for attachment to inside of barrel housing.

Bottom row: schematic representation of calculation of fusee profile so as to equalize the action ofthe mainspring on the wheel rain a-s the f'orce of the unwinding spring diminishes (Landes, 236-

23'7).

3t

--j+'t-*Ð

ltt/ o

r'{¿..,1

./.1,t ,'

,i

v

Fig. 14. Diagrammatic representation of Pierre Le Roy's ma¡ine chronometerof 1768, a device critical to finding precise longitucle at sea. The first such device, a 33kg monster

which still runs in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, was invented in England byJohn Harrison in 1735 and sea trialed in 1736. By 1759 Harrison had developed a much smallerversion, about 150mm in diameter which could be easily hand held. This model won him the

f20,000 prize esøblished by parliament in l7l4 for frnding longitude at sea within one deglee(Landes 23G237).

=zL4

32

Hodometer Probahly,{ugsburg, c. 1580

fnterior view-

Fig. 15. Hodometer, probably by Thomas Rückert, Augsberg, c. 1580. Agilt-brass instrument (diameter 83mm, depth 38mm), used in the making of maps, which records

on paper tape the compa.ss bearing at which it is set at equal intervals of distance as a journeyprogresses QVard, plaæ X)O(VI[).

5J

Fig. 16. Top: German survey quadrant from the mid-16th century; gilt-copper plates mounted on a built-up wooden disc, 395mm diameter (incomplete). A device used to

measurè the sun's altitude directly. Bottom: Italian circumferentor from the late 16th century;

brass, 174mm diameter. An instrument used for measuring angles in the field.

34

Descartes

Locatable within early modern science are the origins of rationalism, instrumental

reason and the conceptual rationaVromantic duality which have formed a substantial

part of the epistemological basis of Western culture from that time on. The power

of these ideas, demonstrated by their colonisation of most a¡eas of human

endeavour during the subsequent centuries, is due in no small part to the carefully

conceived philosophical and methodological basis they were given by the French

philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650). The scientific and technological texture

of societies and their cultures had reached an advanced stage by the time Descartes

published his Discourse on. the Methods of Propeþ Condacting One's Reason and

of Seeking the Truth in the Sciences. Almost a century earlier, for example, the

Polish astronomer Copernicus had proved, through the use of abstract intellectual

models, that the sun and not the earth was at the centre of the cosmos. This

dramatic revelation was still contentious enough nearly a century later to get Galileo

th¡own into prison for its reiteration and conhrmation.

Despite the now obvious flaws in Cartesian method, it became entrenched as the

corner-stone of scientific and technological achievement. Marc Angelil, in his

article enútled "Technique and the Metaphysics of Science: The Rational-Inational

Element of Science-Technology within the Making of Archiæcture," cites

Descartes' four rules of method:

The first was never to accept any thing as true that I did not know to be evidently

so: that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to include in

my judgement nothing more than what presented itself so clearly and so

distinctly to my mind that I might have no occasion to place it in doubr

The second, to divide each of the difficulties that I was examining into as many

parts as might be possible and necessary in order best to solve it.

The third, to conduct my thoughts in an orderly way, beginning with the

simplest objects and the easiest to know, in order to climb gradually, as by

dcgrees, as far as the knowledge of the most complex, and even supposing

some order among those objects which do not precede each other naturally.

35

And the last, everywhere to make such complete enumerations and such general

reviews that I would be sure to have omitted nothing-ag

Angelil also paraphrases the four rules: first, "in the study of any problem, one

shall start by approaching intuitively the fundamental truths of which there can be

no doubt"; second, "often known as the ruIe of analysis . . . the decomposition of

complex problems into identifiable parts"; third, "the rule of synthesis . . . is

applied to the truths reached by the two preceding methodological steps . . . going

from the simple to the more complex"; fourth, this rule "takes account of the fact

that 'deduction unlike intuition,' depends to some extent on the compleæ

enumeration of all possibilities."s0

It was inevitable that the episæmological paradigm which grew out of the

subsequent alliance between science, technology and Caræsian method would

eventually influence the production of archiæcture. Caræsian dualism, which

enshrines reason and the quantifiable at the expense of the unquantifiable and

romantic, established the means by which architecture eventually became

vulnerable to æchnologists and building scientists who effecúvely rouæd almost all

opposition. Even today, as Pérez-Gómez says, while "Cartesian dualism is no

longer a viable philosophical model, faith in mathematics and logic as the only

legitimate way of thinking is still commonplace. . . this inversion of priorities

which originated in the seventeenth century has never at a popular level, been

corrected."sl The appropriation by architects of Cartesian scientific method as a

design model cemented in place the notion of archiæctural design as a rational and

logical process.

In many senses the notion of dualism., of conceptual divisioris being of only two

kinds, is simplistic but it does point to a certain polarity, the development of

49 Marc M. Angelil, "Technique and the Metaphysics of Science: The Rational-Irrational Element

Of Science-Technology within the Making of A¡chitecture," Harvard Architecture Review 7(1989): 70.solbid.5 1 Alberto Pérez-Góme z, Ar chit e ct ur e an d the Cr i s is of M o de m S c ie nc e, 22.

36

opposites, which began to pervade Westem culture generally and archiæctural

culture in particular. In his paper, "Inconspicuous Architecture," Richard Coyne

says that the polarity

can be traced to the Enlighænment. The burgeoning of science and objectivity,

the notion of the world of nature out there able to be known and understood, did

nor serve primarily to raúonalise the world but to divide it. Science was allowed

its domain, but the rest of human experience left out of this endeavour

(emotions, feelings and the poetic) was appropriated by the culture of the

Romantic . . . In architecture the two cultures are commonly manifested as two

schools of thought, education and even practice.52

This polarity of culture which currently dominates and divides architecn¡ral

production rose inexorably and obviously to the surface during the heyday of the

Modern Movement. What had essentially been a cultural practice became

thoroughly pervaded and divided by the "domain of science" and the "culture of the

Romantic."

Durand

One of the first clearly identifiable and influential exponents of the new method was

the French architect Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand. In 1801 Durand (1760-1834)

pubtished his Recueil et Parall.èIe des Edifices de Tout Genre, Anciens et Modernes

("Referee and Rules for Buildings of All Types, Old and New") (fig. 17), and in

1819-21 the Précis des Leçons d'Architecture ("AConcise Course in

Architecture") (hgs. 18-20). The Recu.eil was an attempt to depict the history of

architecture as a linear progression, from which it was possible to derive fixed data

and principles.53 This was achieved primarily by depicting a collection of existing

and invented buildings at the same scale without differentiating between cultures or

historical periods, propagating the "conception of history as an objective

science."54 The rules or principles synthesised from this historical analysis were

52 Ricnarcl Coyne, "Inconspicuous A¡chitecture'(Paper delivered at the Gadamec Action &Reason Conference, Sydney University, 30 September 1991), 65.53 The outline of Durancl's contribution here follows closely that given by Marc Angelil in"Technique and the Metaphysics of Science."54 Marc Angelit, "Technique and the Metaphysics of Science," 71.

37

presented in the Précis which also acæd as an outline of Durand's course at the

École Polyæchnique. The first part of the Précis, Éleménts des ndt¡ces, consisted

of a list of building elements such as columns, walls, openings, footings, vaults,

trusses and so on. The second part of the treatise, entitled De Ia Composition,

provided rules concerning the composition of these elements which are, Durand

explained, "like words in language or notes in music." The combination of these

elements, "formed the essential aspect of an architect's work."55 Central to this

method was use of a grid onto which elements were placed in accordance with strict

rules; Angelil claims that for Durand the grid was "an instrument of æchnical

value." It was also clearly symbolic of a raúonal, mathematical method.

Compositions derived in this way were fundamentally different from those of the

Renaissa¡ce or Baroque, the meanings of which were construed from their

embodiment of geometric and proportional otder, rather than by the "explicit

histories" of their elements.56

Durand's classification of "the orders in an inventory of the simple elements as

conventionally motivated signs, ready for use in the archiæctural equation,"s7

represents the introduction of Cartesian rationalism into architectural production.

The nvo-part formula required to "make this conception of architecture work," was

devised by Durand and consisted of: (i) the resolving of the building programs into

their elements, so the knowledge of the classified repertory of the orders would

suffice, and (ii) the composition of the relevant elements around the primary and

secondary æ<is on a grid system. "Such a procedural conception of a¡chitecture

makes the orders of architecture mere construction details. Once the metaphoric

values are removed from the orders in theory, there remains hardly any justification

for their use in practice."ss Pérez-Gómez makes the observation that from then

onward, "architects have opted for the extreme expressions of rationalism or

55 bio.56 Alberto Pérez-G6mez, Arch,itecture and the Crisís of Modern Science, 313.57 Manouchehr Eslami, "Architecture as Discourse: The Modem Idea of Method; Theory andpractice in Le Corbusier's Purist Period" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvani4 1985), 50.

58 rbid., 5o-51.

38

romanticism, formulating design decisions from either positivistic reason or

intuition."59

59 Alberto Pérez-G6mez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science,3l4

39

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Fig. 17. J. N. L. Durand, frontispiece of fhe Recueil et ParaIIèIe des êdifices

de tout genre, and a þage of churches from the Recueil, Nlllari, plates 82, 83).

40

¿LEÑENTS D¿S TItrfíII:¡

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Fig. 18. J. L. N. Durand, Top: Elemens of Buildings, from Partie graphique

des cours d'architecture, this part wa^s added to the 1821 ediúon of the Précis dcs legons

d'architecture. Bottom: Pattems for paving, walls and ceilings fromthe Précis (Eléments des

édifices), (J. N. L. Durand).

n

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Fig. 19. J. L. N. Durand, Top: Deøils of the orders from the Précis'Bottom: Vertical combinations (a¡cades) from the Précis, (J. N' L. Durand).

42

f NSEM!Lúß DiÐrrrcss

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Fig.20. J. L. N. Durand, Top: Whole Buildings, from the Précis, Bottom:

Combinations of Roof Peaks, from the Précis, (J. N. L. Durand).

43

The Bauhaus and the Logical Positivists

Probably the most comprehensively theoretical and philosophical attempt to

"scientif,rcise" architectural producúon was undert¿ken during the late 1920s and the

early 1930s as the result of a liaison between the Logical Positivists of the Vienna

Circle and the inhabitants of Germany's citadel of high Modemism, the Bauhaus.

In an a¡ticle enútled "Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural

Modernism," Peter Galison traces this relationship by examining correspondence

between key figures of the Vienna Circle and the "Bauhäusler."60

During this period the connecting links between art and philosophy were real,

not metaphorical, as artists and philosophers were bound by shared political,

scientific, and programmatic concerns . . . [I]t is in the later interwar years

that the modernism of the Bauhaus and the Vienna Circle self-consciously

reinforced each other, and in so doing began to articulate a common vision of

what both called a modern "form of life."6l

Central to this "common vision" was the notion of the neutrality and universality of

science and æchnology. Both parties were interested in reducing knowledge to its

constituent, indisputable and neutral elements, and from these generaúng a

reconstructed epistemology. Galison says that, "Both enterprises sought to

instantiate a modernism emphasising what I will call 'transparent construction,' a

manifest building up from simple elements to all higher forms that would, by virtue

of the systematic constructional program itself guaranæe the exclusion of the

decorative, mystical, or metaphysical."62 The Logical Positivists wanted a

scientif,rc "antiphilosophical philosophy," and the "Bauhäusler hoped to use

scientific principles to combine primitive color relations and basic geometrical

forms to eliminate the decorative and create a new antiaesthetic aesthetic that would

prize functionality."cl

60 Peter Galison, "AufbaulBauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism," CriticalInquiry 1ó (Summer 1990):709-752.6lmi¿., ztt.62ni¿., zto.63lbid., 7n.

4

White the motivation for this kind of epistemological upheaval may seem obscure,

despite our knowledge of its history, some understanding may be forthcoming if

we consider the political imperative. Philosophical and architectural debaæs

became directly enmeshed in the politics of the time, as Galison says:

The notion that technical innovation could alter the form of life lay deep in the

political ideotogy of lefçliberal modernism, especially in architecture. . .

Gropius contended that the new modem architecture would actually produce

'a complete spiritual revolution in the individual' and a 'new style of life' . . .

the claims for a reformation of life based on modern principles of science

became a common slogan of the leftleaning architects in post-World Wa¡ IGermany-an initant to those on the right, who were determined to preserve

avöIkischlife form, imbued with history, nationalism, and racial identity.64

The ideological battle ground was thus drawn and the fate of the Bauhaus sealed.

The intensity of the debaæ reflected the passionaæly held political views of both

sides and offers some basis for understanding the energy and consequently huge

effect this debate had on architecture.

The essentially Cartesian analysis-synthesis design models developed with such

evangelical fervour during this period, although diluæd in many different ways,

were widely accepted in the architectural culture of the 1940s and 50s, and although

few take them seriously any longer their effects are still with us. Fundamental to

this kind of thinking is the belief that the design for a building or object, or a higher

form of knowledge (a theory, axiom, scientific law etc.), can be created by the

application of a logical or a mathematical process to its constituent parts- The

neutral (value- and meaning-free) nature of these constituent parß is implicif

Galison quotes Hannes Meyer, who direcæd the archiæcture depar[nent at the

Bauhaus:

"Building is not an aesthetic process. . . . Architecture which 'continues a

tradition' is historicist. . . the new house is. . . a product of industry and as

such is the work of specialisü economists, statisticians, hygienicists,

climatologists, experts in . . . nonns, heating techniques . . - [T]he architect?

64bi¿., zt6.

45

He was an artist and is becoming a specialist in organization . . . building is only

organization: social, technical, economic, ment¿l organization."65

And he says of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the virtual bible of

the Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle, that "it is after an image of language,

logic, and the world that starts at the basics and works up from there using logic

alone. When complete, the structure would be without superfluity."66 Galison

points out that theTractatus is full of a¡chiæctural metaphor and Wittgenstein was

apparently very enthusiastic to help design a building which would physically

embody his philosophy. His chance to build came as the result of a partnership

with one of Adolf Loos' students, Paul Engelmann, who had been commissioned

by V/ittgenstein's sister, Margarethe Stonborough, to design a large house on the

Kundmanngasse in Vienna (f,rg. 21). Wittgenstein and Loos already had a close

ideological and personal relationship, Loos once exclaiming to Wittgenstein that

"You are me!"67 Galison claims that LooS' "prewat volume Orumment and Crim¿,

had laid the ground work for his economic, moral, and aesthetic crusade against the

decorative . . . After the war Engelmann found Loos' buildings and'Wittgenstein's

Tractatus opposing parallel targets: Loos aimed at the arts-and-crafts movement

with its claims to higher spirituality while Wittgenstein laid his sigha on the

metaphysical system-builders of Philosophy."6s The ¡esult of the collaboration

between Wittgensæin and Engelmann was a stark whiæ composition of cubic forms

topped with a flat roof and punctured by windows at regular intervals (ftg.22).

Another of Wittgenstein's sisters, Hermine Wittgenstein, who was apparently

shocked by the "cold fotmality of the building, its absence of omament and

comforting decoration . . . dubbed it 'hausgewordene Logik' ['logic become

house'l-an entirely appropriaæ appellation capturing the spirit of construction

from simples that characterised both sides of the equation."69 In an essay entitled

65Ibirl.,66Ibid.,67Ibi¿.,68lbio.,6eIui¿.,

7L7.726.725.726.727.

46

"Rationalism: A philosophical Concept in Architecture," Alan Colquhoun points out

that "in this house all the elements are redefined in ærms of elementary functions

and seem to reflect Wittgenstein's picture theory of language , . . . according to

which there is a one-to-one relationship benveen sentences and things."

Colquhoun goes on to say:

This house belongs equally to the spirit of the 1920's avant-garde and to

V/ittgenstein's own philosophical preoccupations; nothing could express this

more clearly than his dictum "The meaning is the use." The insistence on "use

value" in the archiæcture of Loos and Wingenstein links ttre idea of logical

atomism to the notion of "function."70

Fig. 21. Paul Engelmann, sketch for the Stonborough House atKundmanngasse (Galison, 728).

70 AIan Colquhoun, "Rationalism: A Philosophical Concept in Architecture," iîModernity anlthe Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,

1989),74.

47

Fig.22. Stonborough House, exterior, 1928 (Galison, 730).

The architectural high modernism of the 1920s and 1930s was so influential,

stylistically strfüng, and at first seemingly without precedent, that it was bound to

spark ttre curiosity of those interested in underlying causes and historical context.

Its proponents never tired of defending the claim that it was not a style, but despite

this and perhaps because of its worldwide stylistic propagation we ænd to

remember it as just that. Upon closer examination, however, both of the buildings

themselves (or at least representations of them), and of the writings of its influential

figures, any simple stylistic explanation must be rejected. Likewise, any superficial

machine analogies are unhelpful. The religiosity of Modernism in architecture, its

extreme archiæctural products and the longevity of its influence can best be

explained by tracing the genealogy of its constituent ideas and atæmpting to place

them in the political and cultural sening of the time. Since this project has been

developed by contemporary architectural theorists, my purpose in this chapter has

been to extract some examples which are imporønt to developing an undersønding

48

of the Moderns' insisænt attempts to install the "industrial" and "technological" as

the correct and only mode of architectural production.

49

Chapter Three

Use-Meaning

The modern movement of the 1920s was marked by an evangelical fervor

which lent it all the attributes of a religious movement. As in all religious

movements, its adherents had to pass through a conversion to a state of mind

in which the smallest and most mundane aspects of life were transf,rgured.TlAlan Colquhoun, 1987

Nineteenth-Century Prefabrication

It would be misleading to propose that the industrialisaúon of the building process

was began in the early 2Oth-century. The industrial process as an identifiable

programme for archiæcture may well be conhned to the twentieth century but the

actual making of buildings by industrialists had a well established nineteenth-

century precedent. In Victorian England, the production of prefabricated wooden

and iron buildings to supply the huge colonial markets was big business. This was

not confined to England. It occurred also in Europe, and in particular in Belgium,

France and Germany. The correlation beween imperialism and industrialisation of

the building process is not diffrcult to find. The concerns of l9th-century

prefabricators were not necessarily to revolutionise the building industry, to be

instrumental in instituting any kind of social policy, or tampering with a¡chitectural

meaning. Their interests were primarily commercial.

IVhite capitalism and exploitaúon, and in Ausfialia's case transportation, may have

been forces driving the industrialisation of the building process, the way that it

occurred physicalty and stylistically is noteworthy. With a few well-known

exceptions, l9th-century prefabrication techniques were generally subordinaæ to

the particular style of the building. Naturally, there was some stylistic spin-off

from new industrial æchniques such as Victorian cast-iron columns, brackets,

lacework, and other extremely rich and delicate ornament that could not otherwise

have been produced on a large scale nor transported all over the world (ñ9.23).

7lAlan Cotquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT kess, 1989),7 9.

50

I

ffiilllus

w/tutiuji ir/ì fl/ìuttattl

Y'

¡._fi:\

Ii0lt5

Fig. 23. Range of cast-iron structural and decorative elements produced byAndrew Handyside at the Britannia Iron Works of Derby between 1860 and 1880 (Herbert, 174,

t7s).

In addition, many so-called functional or utilitarian buildings, which were

designed, if not to display their prefabricaæd nature at least not to hide it, were

prefabricated and shipped to the colonies @g2Ð. Generally, however,

nineteenth-century prefabrication represenæd a great carving-up and dishing-out of

architectural styles. It was the era of the pattern book, of mix-and-match.

Fig.24. Iron cottage for emigrants, 1851, manufactured by Edward T.Bellhouse. This house was displayed in model form in the Great Exhibition of All Nations in theCrystal Palace (Herbert 1978, 53).

The question of the architectural meanings of these buildings is complex. There is

no doubt, however, given the huge output of the industry and the consequént

erection of many prefabricated buildings, that they were generally well received.

There is also little doubt that they were understood, within the context of

imperialism, to be objects of exceptional cultural significance. In addition, they

spoke adequaæly of the power of the imperial system to facilitaæ subjugation (in

particular because the military often used prefabricated buildings in the field), and

of the immense, complicaæd and "advanced" manufacturing and distribution

systems that allowed them to colonise the globe. However, even in its most far

flung corners (Australia for example), their temporariness wÍts always

acknowledged and the view ofæn expressed that they would "do" until the real

thing could be constructed. In Píoneers of Prefabrication, Gilbert Herbert claims

rhat the iron churches which were distributed widely throughout the British empire

"were regarded as the products of industry, not as works of archiæcture that were

liltìill

52

subject to the normal canons of criticism."72 This began to change after several

iron churches were erected in England and the appropriateness of iron as a material

for the const¡uction of churches and their often primitive form was widely debaæd.

The erection of an iron church designed by the a¡chiæct Matthew Digby Wyatt for

the Archiæctural Exhibition of 1857-58 provoked a colrespondent for the Building

News to comment that "Mr. Wyatt's 'comrgated iron church' was doubtless a stern

necessity for exportation to Rangoon."73 Herbert later quoûes from the 1873

catalogue of Francis Morton & Co. of Liverpool, manufacturers of, among other

things, iron churches and chapels:

This company has laæly turned its special attention to the improvement and

developmentof lron Church and Chapel Buildings, being anxious to show

that this material, in practical and tasæful hands, may be utilised in producing

structures at one economical, as comfortable as stone-buildings, pleasing in

their architectural appearance, and meeting a great desideratum for additional

church accommodation throughout the country.7a

Nineteenth-century industrialisation differs from that of the early twentieth-century

in several important ways: it was driven by entrepreneurs rather than architects,

stylistically it was largely mimetic, and its perpetrators never claimed adherence to a

social programme other than that of imperialism itself. Despite these differences it

is not difficult to find signif,rcant simila¡ities and to place these within the context of

modemity.

An operation fundamental to almost all prefabricated buildings (only those which

are transporæd complste are exempt from this) is the on-site assembly of pre-made

elemenrs to form the finished building. The ability to think of a building as an

assembly of elements, using often interchangeable parts, is a "modern"

phenomenon and seems to have originated with, among others, Desca¡tes and

Durand. The belief that the cultural meanings of these forms would transcend their

72cil¡ert Herbert. Pioneers of Pre.fabrication: The British Contribution in tlß Nineteenth Century(London:73lbid.

John Hopkins University Press, 1978), 110

Tarai¡., ttz.

53

prefabricated transfigurement seems to have been to some extent justifred. The

success of the nineteenth-century prefabricating business, however, was based to a

large extent on the destruction of ancient ways of understanding the significance of

a building as part of a complicated metaphysical meaning system, which did not

survive beyond the end of the eighteenth century. This allowed industrialists the

freedom to institute a new way of making buildings which fused together uaditional

forms, new and traditional industrialised omament, and an elemental prefabricaæd

production, transportation and erection process. Such a system could only survive

in a world where Cartesian epistemology already flourished.

The "Enlightenment drive to seize and systematize the world"Ts could hardly be

better exemplified than by the architectural pattem book. From Durand on through

the nineteenth century this vast elemental tåxonomy, so perfectly suiæd to the

entrepreneurial mode of architectural production, flourished. The notion of choice,

implicit within this production system, of Descartes' distant and critical "isolated

ego," making choices concerning the elemental composition of a building from

parts directly referenced to ancient buildings, is central. Any such choice is

necessarily arbitrary, since the dismembered elements represent only an often

poorly understood historical reference. The complicaæd Ancient or Medieval

cultural meaning systems to which they once belonged having long since vanished.

The resultant wild and exotic eclecticism, so lamented by people like Ruskin, seems

to have been driven largely by caprice and "good taste." The geographically

indiscriminate natwe of nineteenth-century prefabrication, and the direct bonowing

of historical references can be compared in some ways to the stylistic post-

modernism of the late twentieth century.

Prefabrication in the Early Twentieth Century

The principle of industrialisation requires that production be transfened from

the building site and the work bench to the factory. The demand for

T5David Kolb, The Critique of Pure Moderniry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986),19.

Kolb is referring to Lean-François Lyotard's "chatacterization" of the modern world.

54

precision, quality and maximum performance under the most economical

conditions means prefabrication, in the sense of the fabrication of a compleæ

set of finished parts. This, in turn, implies the development of new

æchniques ofjoining individual elements on site. Building becomes

assembly, a process which is essentially different from all previous methods

of construction and is conditioned by industrialization alone.

But building, conceived merely in terms of structure, combining horizontal

and vertical surfaces to divide and envelop space, does not satisfy, even in

their material aspects, all the requirements of the age. The mounting and

justifiable demands for perfect environmental control can only be met by

simultaneously integrating all the complex mechanical and electrical services

and other equipment with the structure, the factory-made element and the

entire assembled building. For, in the technical sense, the modular, static,

dynamic and the mechanical problems have now become a universal whole.76

Konrad Wachsmann, 1961

Wachsmann could hardly have known how prophetic-the útle of his bookThe

Turning Point of Building was to become, even though by the time of its

publication in 1961 things must have already looked grim in relation to his central

aim of the tot¿l industrialization of building. The kind of zealotry and unrestrained

glorification of science and technology which produced the book and,

simultaneously, a rash of industrialized buildings all over the world, were pivotal to

the consequent analytical dismembering of Modernism itself. Buildings were

designed as metaphors for the production line, representing a concocted view of

efficiency and automation. This was achieved primarily by trying to represent the

process of the assembly of industrially produced parts or elements, rather than one

of architectural making in a more traditional sense. The accepûed notion of design

incorporating creativity, or at least erudition, was attacked; the architect was to

become simply an organiser of experts in various fields who would all get together,

with their scientifically determined requirements for human comfort" to synthesis

these requirements into a building.TT There were numerous "analysis-synthesis"

7óKonrad Wachsmann, The Turning Point of Building: Structure and Design (New York:Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1961),1 l.

55

design models available to confirm that this was both possible and higtrly

desirable.Ts Science and archiæcture were to blend together. The resultant hyper-

rational, technologically perfect buildings would go no small way towards solving

the social evils of our time. This view has become known as the "technology fx."

During their years in America,'Wachsmann and Gropius collaborated to develop a

scheme for producing system-built prefabricated houses. Like many other

prefabricated systems developed during this period, their scheme never went into

full-scale production. This st¿nds in sta¡k contr¿¡st to the situation in the nineteenth

century when vast numbers of prefabricated wooden and iron houses were

produced and sold, primarily to the British and European colonies. konically

Wachsmann refers to the large scale prefabrication enterprise of the nineteenth

century as "a great contradiction," and later as "a misundersønding without

parallel."7g We can assume, since he does not say, that he found the world-wide

popularity of prefabricated Victorian architecture (compleæ with falderals)

abhorrent since it failed to properly reflect the true nature of the new materials and,

in particular, the manufacturing processes developed during that period.8o In other

words, he objected to the application of ornament and the use of stylistic or

traditional forms which obscured the "technological," nature of the buildings.

Wachsmann manages to forgive this to some extent because he sees within it the

seeds of "true" prefabrication.

From the nineteenth century, so rich in creative forces, rwe can learn how

radically the future, foreseen and recognized, but still by no means accepted,

was realized in research, and even in buildings. It is in these buildings, as

we can now discern, that the real contributions to the development of

civilization were made. 8l

77Tnis was central to Bauhaus architectural teaching under Hannes Meyer as pointed out in the

previous chapær.TSGeoffrey Broadbent, Design in Architecture: Architecture and the Human Sciences (London:

John rWiley and Sons, 1973). Broadbent makes an exhaustive survey of these kinds of design

methods.T9Konracl Wachsmann, The Turning Point o.f Building: Structure anl Design ,10-

8lluio.

56

Wachsmann goes on to describe what contributions to civilization these structwes

(not all of them buildings) have made, but not before setting out what he considers

to be the true relationship between industry and building.

Industrialization now being afactwhich can no longer be explained away,

which has a direct or indirect influence on every activity, every function and

every object, it must stand at the center of all our considerations and,

accordingly, demands a corresponding, unambiguous definition of all the

concepts of building. Industrialization should not be misapplied as an

accessory to the realization of ideas independently conceived. It can only be

understood as a direct cause, shaping the development of every product,

which, as an element or component, determines the form of expression. 82

It was this idea in particular, that industrial products should be the direct cause of

formal expression, which seemed to drive Wachsmann. Their sacredness seemed

directly linked to the notion that the elemental products of industry reflected the

pure spirit of the scientific and rational modern world. Ironically his well known

disastrous attempt at prefabricated housing production (the Packaged House) was a

closed system (using a specif,rcally designed set of parts) which could not utilise

off-the-shelf stand ard p arts produced by m arket-driven industrialism.

82lbi¿.

57

Systems Building

The supreme example of reductionist, technology-driven architecture is that of

systems building. Now largely discredited, it had is heyday in Britain, Europe and

America during the period from the end of World War [I until the end of the

nineteen-sixties. At the supposed exclusion of all else, systems building is a

æchnologically derived system of building, usually based on combining a kit of

prefabricated parts, some of which a¡e interchangeable, according to a system of

modular coordination, often using exposed universal joints. This quinæssentially

Modemist enterprise fed directly off the æchnologically utopian, machine-adoring

manifestos and building designs of such archiæcts as Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies

van der Rohe and Hannes Meyer. In the somewhat religious atrnosphere of the late

1940s, 1950s and 60s, architects went to work to put into practice the Modern

gospel in the form of systems building. 'Wachsmann's vision of interdisciplinary

"super teams" of experts (including architects) searching for a "fundamental

equation revealing the true nature of building,"83 was realised during this period

and its influence around the world was vast. In a section of. The Turning Point

called On teamworl< Wachsmann explains how these teams might function.

The shaping and joining of materials to build with and the attendantconcept

of building no longer depend exclusively on the talent and skill of the master;

they have long since become the concern of æams of scientists and

technologists, working within the framework of the industrial process.

Thus, in order to determine what influences should be decisive,

developmental studies should consist of parallel analyses of all the individual

problems which together form the complex fabric of every building design.sa

Later he describes some seminars he conducted at the Institute of Design in

Chicago, where teams were formed to look at "some general problem." First this

problem should be selecæd, then "more important sub-problems defined." Sub-

problems should be chosen from the following caægories: "materials and methods

83 Konrad lüachsmann, The Art of ,Ioining. Transcribed from the audio tape which accompaniesthe slide set. London: Pigeon Audio Visual, 5 St Anne's Close, n.d.

84Kon¡ad Wachsmann, Thc Turning Point of Building: Structure and Design,2M.

58

of production, modular coordination, structure, joints, and connecúons, building

elements, components, installations, planning, material handling and erection,

economics, physiology and psychology, sociology and so on."85 In his essay

"Rationalism: A Philosophical Concept in Architecture," Alan Colquoun links this

kind of thinking to Bertrand Russell's theories of logical construction and logical

atomism. "Russel tried to show that all entities which were problematic from the

point of view of empirical experience and common sense could be reduced to (or

'constructed' out of ) simpler and nonproblematic entities."86

Another primary concern was that of universalism; if Wachsmann's "fundamental

equation" could be found then of course,like scientific law, it would be a universal

truth. In other words its meaning would be specifrc and understandable without

interpretation, transcending both cultural and geographic borders. The conception

of building as the combination of a series of ineducible, functional elements

(atoms), "whose meaning is immanent and self evident,"87 is central. Although the

work of both Russell (and Wittgenstein) pre-dates that of the serious systems

builders, the foundation of the latter's work is clearly evident. In particular,

Wittgenstein's dictum "the meaning is the use"88 can be seen as the basis of the

belief that the meaning of a building element comes not from what it "is" (in a

material or stylistic sense) but rather from what it "does" (its functional duty within

the building).

The means of joining prefabricaæd elements was similarly conceived as universal,

that is, not designed for a specific location but rather to perform structural and

weather-proofing functions in any location or orientation. The development of

technically perfect universal joints became something of an obsession amongst the

85lbio.86Ahn Colquhoun, "Rationalism: A Philosophical Concept in Architecture," in Modernity andtla CtassicalTradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987 (Cambridge: MITPress, 1989), pp 57-87.

Colquhoun's essay, explains the linkage between ttre philosophies of Russell and Wittgenstein and

the Modern Movement in some detail.87lbid., 73.88lbid., 74.

59

converted. The need to expose the joint, rather than covering it as was more

common in traditional archiæcture, seems related to the need to show off its

machine-like, and therefore truthful and moral nature. Wachsmann claims that,

The joint is not a necessary evil. Accordingly, it does not need to be

concealed with seal strips and so on, like an object of shame. It stands out ¿ts

a formative element, which has evolved with progress in technology. . . .

They ftoints] not only reflect processes of aesthetic importance but represent

the importance of technical functions and are to be understood as such. Their

place is determined by materials and methods, structural principles, standards

and modular order. In the perfect relationship of object, function and

separation the joint communicates a new visual attitude.

Whereas in residential building such approaches are still rare, in commercial

or public buildings, including schools, hospitals, and especially cultural

buildings such as museums and libraries, etc., dry construction methods, that

is the use of finished building elements connected by visible ìoints, have to a

large extent displaced continuous wet techniques.

A new cannon of rhythmical jointing is being developed in the linking of

identical surfaces, composed of noble materials and f,rnished with a high

degree of precision. These are the building elements, between which the

lines of the new age permit a glimpse of the imaginary face of the new age.8e

Although Wachsmann developed many prototype joints, perhaps those that most

strikingly illustrate his obsession with the universal, the machine-like and with

mass production, are his designs for space frame connectors (figs.24,25). His

"universal" approach meant designing a joint that could accept a multiplicity of

components. As such, the joint became a complicated nodal device rather than

simply a meeting and fixing of two or more maærials or elements. The production

line was supposed to offset the expensive business of making them universal rather

than simple and specific to a particular application. 'Wachsmann's conception of

universal joints and components, describing undifferentiated and unenclosed space,

correlates with his desire to render enclosed space universal as well.

S9Konrad Wachsmann, The Turning Point o.f Building: Structure an"d Design,76-

60

While the production of synthetic building maærials is already providing us

with insulation capable of smoothing out local climatic conditions so

effectively that it is equally useful in the face of both extreme heat and

extfeme cold, complex mechanical air conditioning equipment is making it

possible to ignore the degree of latin¡de, and the local climaæ in general, as a

direct influence on construction. Mechanical equipment of this kind helps to

create autonomous space that manufactures its own climate. Accordingly, no

design need necessarily be determined by regional climatic conditions. The

anonymous, universal room thus becomes a reality.90

Fig.24. Top: pipe elemenß from Wachsmann's Mobilar Structure, a space

frame system he developed for the Atla-s Aircraft Corporation. The caption reads "the uniform,

sønda¡clized, mass-produced product. The eye plates are exactly the same at both ends of the pþ."Bottom: Isometric view of the Mobilar joint (Wachsmann, 161).

ffi).

I

I

b

90Konrad Wachsmann, The Turning Point of Building: Structure and Design, ll0.

61

246 The poi'cus nalure of ihe "open" joint

247 The te¡ocn-iike conîectiorì belweetr memoer-c öÌ o joirì'l

248 lrrrer side cf ccrirection be1ween ii'ì.ls-c cf ord ûnrl dióí-1o*ôls

Fig. 25. The Mobilar joint (Wachsmann, 160)

62

In Britain, from directly after World War II until the end of the 1960s, Modernist

doctrine became absorbed not only by large numbers of the architectural profession

but also by many of their clients, and in particular by governments with money to

spend on a socialist reconstruction of the country. The setting aside of traditional

building forms and methods became politically palatable in the light of the German

and Italian Fascists' attempts to use traditional forms to their own ends. The

persecution of the Bauhau.sler by the Nazis as supposed left-leaning liberals, due to

their views concerning industrial production and non-traditional building forms,

would have been well understood. Ironically, but also understandably, the

"people's architecture" which arose from this situation was never understood by the

general public. Architects wrongly assumed that the meanings they constnred, in

line with Modern Movement doctrine, would be clear to others. Colquhoun claims

that the elemeta¡ization which characterises Modern architecture,

can be certainly thought of as an impoverishment of the meanings carried by

cultural convention. But it should be stressed that this was not the

inûerpretation given to it in avant-guarde artistic circles, where on the

contrary, it was construed as a means of attaining more profound-because

more primitive-meanings and of distancing the artist from a "degenerate"

conception of art.9l

The teams which developed systems building can be seen as the foot soldiers of

Modernism. They worked away quietly with the blessing of governments and local

councils immune from criticism by their commitment to the social progammes of re-

housing, education, health and so on. Their work was above petty debates about

style or appropriateness in any sense other than the purely æchnical, functional and

economic. Ezra Ehrenkrantz in his bookArchitectural Systems: A Needs,

Resources, and Desigrt Approach, regards the designer's role in the realisation of a

building as making the best possible use of five basic resources: "land, finance,

9lAlan Colquhoun, Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 19æ-1987,73

63

management, technology, and 1abor."92 The technologist's view of architecture is

invariably based on such simplistic and politically palaøble notions.

The success of industrialised building in political terms w¿rs so striking that "by

1965, there were224 industrialised building systems available in Britain from 163

developers, 138 of them specif,rcally recommended for housing."93 Of course

many of these schemes never progressed beyond the prototype stage, and many

more did not make it that far. Vast numbers of systems-built prefabricated,

elementarized buildings were constructed, however. On close scrutiny it becomes

evident that it was primarily mass-housing projects, instituúonal and commercial

buildings which succumbed to this industrialised onslaught, and individual houses

which to some extent resisted.

konically, while proponents of systems building advocated the industrialisation of

building they largely ignored the existing "opon" industrialised component system

in favour of "closed" building systems which required the design and manufacture

of a complicated, prescriptive and often expensive kit of parts. Russellea calls the

open industrialised component system "industrialised vernacular" and discusses the

work of several archiæcts in this context, Walter Segal and the Eamses for

example, all of whom worked within the constraints of 'tatalogue availability."

While both systems, open and closed, dealt with a profoundly technological and

industrial conception of architectural production, they differed in several ways that

are worth noting. Proponents of both systems claimed that one of their prima¡y

concerns was changing the building process from making and forming elements on

site, to factory production of elements which could then be assembled on site using

non-traditional joining æchniques. Russel quotes Banham quoting [æ Corbusier,

92$zraEh¡enlnantz, Architectural Systems: A Needs, Resources, And DesignApproach (NewYork McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1989), 13.93David Crawford" A Decade of British Housing 1963-73 (London: Architeco¡al Press, 1975), as

quoted by Barry Russell in Building Systems, htdustrializøtion, and Architecture (London: JohnWiley & Sons, 1981),415.9agarry Russell, Building Systems, Inlustrializa¡ion, and Architecture (London: John Wiley &Sons, 1981)

64

"houses must go up all of a piece, made by machine tools in a factory, assembled

as Ford motor cars, on moving conveyor belts."95 Closed systems more closely

adhered ro this piece of modem dogma than open systems which, while appropriate

for motor cars, drove the process of building away from true free market

industrialism towards a cumbersome production line model-

Walter Segal: An Open System

Assembly Not Building

The general concept, is that of meccano, in which mass-produced materials

are assembled in their market sizes. The framing which I used is a traditional

one: a so-called 'balloon frame'. In the whole context of this house the infill

parts of the structure are in no way fixed together. 'When I started I decided

to keep the resale value of the materials high in case the building was to þdemounted. Thus none of the basic wall and partition maærials have been

touched by bolt, nail or screw: they are simply held in position by friction. Islithered into the discovery, shamefully late, that a market of mass-produced

material does exist, that, by and large, there a¡e many materials that are

dimensionally co-ordinated, and that my job was to think of assembly

methods.96

Walter Segal, 1971

Segal,was no giant of the Modern Movement but as "an architect who grew up in

the centre of European Modernism between the World Wars,"97 it was inevitable

that he should become inculcaæd with its mythologies. He was born in Berlin in

1907 to Jewish Romanian parents who counted among their friends Klee,

Kandinsky, Mies van der Rohe, Gropius and Bruno Taut. He spent most of his

life in England afær fleeing from Berlin to Palma de Mallorca, until the Fascists

gained power in Spain, arriving in London in 1936. His near-perfect credentials

gave him immediate status to participate in the post-war Modemist reconstruction of

the British welfare state.

esmi¿., tzg.96John McKean, Learning.from Segal (Basel: Birkhãuser Verlage, 1989),132-eTmi¿., to.

65

Afær spending the major part of his career building conventional "modern"

buildings, ironically using traditional "wet''building æchniques, Segal seems to

have rediscovered one of his very early formative influences. As a student of Hans

Poelzig in the Technical High School at Charlotenburg-Berlin he discovered the

work of Konrad Wachsmann (one of Poelzig's former students), in the form of his

publication Holzhnubau. Drawing on traditional timber framed buildings

Wachsmann showed what he considered to be the:

revolution from the framing and joints of traditional wood building to those

of the mechanised age, of circula¡ saws and mass-produced nails. Itillustrated the American 'balloon frame', 'western frame' and 'braced frame'

construction, and then cunent German prefabricaæd systems. Illustrations

included Scharoun' s S-form prefabricated exhibition house, Wachsmann' s

fine country house for Albert Einstein, and, hidden away, a beautifully neat,

tiny 'sommerhaus' by Poelzig, a clear premonition of Segal's temporary

house of 1963.e8

Seemingly what followed Segal's introduction to this work, was the kind of

"conversion" described by Colquhoun, "to a ståte of mind in which the smallest

and most mundane aspects of tife were transfigured."gg He describes it "as a

rescue and a delight"loo and although he immediaæly entered a "small house"

competition, in which he gained aprize, using Wachsmann's design principles it

took over thirty years for these ideas to fully incubate. The resulting low cost,

lightweight, modular buildings which he developed as the result of needing to

temporarily house his family in their Highgate bacþard (frgs.27 ,29) while their

old house was demolished and rebuilt, launched a twenty-year career grand finale.

Segal's rationale was to use materials directly available on the market and to use

them without any second forming either on or off site. His choice of materials and

his deep commitment to the Modem Movement "style" resulæd in panellised,

modular, flat roofed buildings, a true "modern" "industrial vernacular."

98tui0.,32.99Alan Colquhoun, Moderniry and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987 ,79.l@John McKean, Izarning from Segal ,32.

66

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Fig.26. Walter Segal, framing diagram for the Casa Piccola, Ascona, 1932.Segat's frst building clearly shows the influence of Wachsmann' s Holzhaub¿¡r, which remainedobscured for nearly thirty years until the self-build projects of the 70's (McKean, 41).

The dimensional and modular basis of the system developed at Highgate and later

refined, is the common width of several off-the-shelf sheet materials; initially these

were wood wool slabs (a stiff insulating material) and 3mm hardboa¡d (as an

internal lining). Lator, an external cladding of "Glasal," a compressed fibre cement

panel with a coloured enamel fltnish, was used (fig. 30). The Highgate house had

only green mineral felt stuck to the face of the wood wool slabs with a slurry, as an

external cladding. The structure which contained these materials was a timber

braced post and beam frame, elevated off the ground and cross-braced below floor

level. The layout of the entire building was organised on a tafan grid which

deærmined the allowable position of structure and walls and thus also to some

degree the floor plan. Such grids are the hallmark of a truly "rational" building

system and place it squately within mainstream Modernism (frgs. 31, 32). This

67

entire system bears a remarkable similarity, in all but materials, to Le Corbusier's

Domino House doveloped in 1914 and hightights Segal's infatuation with one of

the Modern Movement's most powerful icons (frg. 33).

In line with the supposed egalitarian ideals of the Modern Movemenq Segal pushed

his ideas onto those at the bottom of the social welfa¡e state heap with the willing

participation of London's Lewisham Council. The confluence of Segal's ideas and

the "libertarian vision" of læwisham's Labour regime resulted in the Lewisham

self-build programme whereby people on the council's waiting or üansfer lists for

housing could become eligible to build their own "Segal" house.101 The sweetener

of flexibility and user participation in developing the plans was enacted just as I-e

Corbusier's iconic Domino sketch had suggested. John McKean suggests in

Leandng from Sega| that by planning the layout of the house using the tartan grid,

Segal "neatly reversed the plan líbre of Le Corbusier with a plan that really is

free-"tÙ2 The basis of this claim was that structural posts were contained within the

walls wherever they may be, rather than being in fixed locations. Since, however,

mæçimum clear spans were limited to 3.85m, or 5m adjacent to an external

cantilevered section, internal layouu were in any case severely limited (.:9.3Ð.

While it is difficult to criticise someone whose intentions were clearly admirable, it

is impossible notto see Segal's efforts within the context of Modernism, despite

their laæ appea.rance. Hannes Meyer's pronouncement that archiæcture is merely

"function x economics" seems, for example, to haunt every priced list of quantities

(shopping lisQ that Segal produced. The buildings themselves were cheap (60 -

707o the cost of convenúonal council housing) and the technology dominant.

Similarly locatable are his views on standa¡disation. lnTowards a New

Ar chite cture, LÊ Corbusier wrote,

The establishment of a standard involves exhausting every practical and

reasonable possibility, and extracúng from them a recognized type

101¡e¡¡ McKeån, karning from Se gal, 144.

68

conformable to its functions, with a maximum output and a minimum use of

means, workmanship and material, words, forms, colours, sounds.

The establishment of a standard is developed by organizing rational elements,

following a line of direction equaily rational. The form and appearance are in

no way preconceived, they are a result; they may have a strange look at first

sight'l03

Segal wrote: "standardisation in itself I have tried to do all my working life. But in

building it is only significant if you do not standardise but that you use standardised

things."lo4

It is Segal's work which perhaps illustrates most succinctly how perennial the ideal

of so-called rationalised, modularised, standardised, industrialised building really

is. That he was able to convince a local authority to build them a.s late as the 1980s,

after sysæms building had already started its slide into disrepute, shows how

pervasive and entrenched the ideal had become. Typically, proponents found

themselves unable to justify the value of the scheme in anything but functional and

economic terms but even these, especially the functional, were found wanting. In

relation to the "little house" in Highgate, John McKean writes that Moran Segal

"recalled the difficulty of dealing with growing children in such a tight space,

panicularly the strict rules about noise. 'Needless to say the sound problems were

horrific - almost like living in a tent.' During this period, John Segal was

working for 'A levels' with so little privacy that, many years later he would

remark, '- . . for the parents this was probably easier than for the children as the

rigorously enforced programme was their e1ry¡."105 Other disadvantages lisæd by

a student researching the houses at Lewisham for a BSc architecture degree include:

lightweight construction moving and squeaking, poor insulation value of the

external walls, intrinsically draughty windows, sagging roofs and cladding panels

103¡" çs¡busier, Towards a New Architecture. Tt.anslated from the thirteenth edition by Frederick

Etchells (London: John Rcxlker, 1931), 137-138.104¡o¡n McKean, Learning.from Se gal, 148.1O5lbrd.,136.

69

which shouldn't move but do.106 Interestingly, after living in the Highgate house,

Segal commented that, "it will be a wrench to leave the little house where we have

been happy for one year, and the question why we have to build a traditional house

at all arises, and can only be answered by those who are wiser and better than

we."107

Fig.27. Walter Segal, the Little House ftame under construction in theHighgaæ backyard (I\4cKean, 133).

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72

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Bottom: Set-out of pad footings (McKean, 122).

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Fig. 32. Walær Segal, typical set of working drawings for a house (HollandHouse 1971). Top: floor framing plan showing layout of floor joists and bea¡ers. Bottom: roofframing plan (McKean, 123).

74

Fig. 33. Top: Le Corbusier's Domino sketch from 1914-15 (Curtis,43).Bottom: Walær Segal, two.storey self-build house before being clad (McKean, 47).

75

Fig. 34. Walter Segal (right) talking to a group of Lewisham "self-builders"in front of a Segal house (Ellis, 1186).

76

Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius: A Closed System

In the winter of I94l in Lincoln Mass., Walter Gropius and I decided to

design, in the most comprehensive tway, a system of construction which

would truly correspond to industrial requirements; our design later became

known as the 'General Panel System'. . . . The intention was not to build a

definiæ type of house but simply to design the most versatile possible

prefabricated building elemeng suit¿ble for easy a.ssembly on the siæ by

totally unskilled labor into any kind of one or two-story structure. It was

also part of the general concept that, windows, doors, glazing, fittings and

mechanical installations should be incorporated in the building elements in

advance.

After a series of preliminary investigations it was concluded that, assuming a

standard connection and a standard section, it would be necessary to design a

universal building system in which the individual element did not need to

occupy a predetermined position, in other words, one in which every panel

connection was the same vertically and horizontally.

The next step was to work out a system of modular coordination, into which

each dimension would f,rt. The initial modular limits were established from

the usual commercial raw material sizes. . .

In order to create a universal system, in which the function of individual

elements always blended with an over-all modular standard, it was necessary

to make a number of advance studies within the framework of the element

module. The object of these studies was again to determine what

proportional or dimensional demands could be made on a door, window,

floor, wall, ceiling or roof element.

. . . These investigations showed that it is possible to consider the

connecúons in a building system as the actual fxed points determined by the

modular order, representing that regular arrangement of constant distances so

important from the point of view of production technology, while the

building elements themselves can, within certain limits, be reduced, exûsnded

or otherwise modihed about these fixed points.l08

Konrad Wachsmann, 1961

lo8Konrad Wachsmann, The Turning Poifi of Building: Structure and Design, 140.

77

InThe Dream of the Facnry-Made House,Gilbert Herbertlæ explains in some

detait the atæmpt by Walter Gropius and Konrad Vy'achsmann to design, develop,

market and put into production the "Packaged House." Wachsmann arrived in

America as a refugee in 1941 after a trying time in Europe, first in Italy after

voluntary exile from Germany, and later, internment in France. Gropius had

escaped earlier, via London to America and was teaching at Harva¡d. Both men

had several things in common: their persecution by the Nazis (one for his supposed

left-leaning bolshevism and the other for being Jewish); and a deep conviction that

"modem" building, in particular houses, should be prefabricated in highly

mechanised factories. Gropius' pedigree in this regard could not have been more

comprehensive. As early as 1910, nine years before the Bauhaus, he set out in a

memo to AEG (the Allgetneine Electricitöts Gesellschaft), entitled "Programme for

the Establishment of a Company for the Provision of Housing on Aesthetically

Consistent Principles," his views on mass-producing houses. Russell quotes a

section of this memo:

Methods based on craftsmanship are antiquated and must be replaced by the

acceptance of a modern concept of industry. The search for the odd, the

wish to be different from one's neighbour, makes unity of style impossible. .

. Our age, afær a sad intenegnum is approachingZnitslil which will honour

traditions but frght false romanúcism. Objectivity and reliabitty are once

more gaining ground.

The new company intends to offer its clients not only inexpensive, well built

and practical houses and in addition to guarantee good taste, but also takes

into consideration individual wishes without sacrificing to them the principle

of industrial consistency.l 10

During the Bauhaus years Gropius encouraged and was involved in many projects

which sought to investigate the industrialization of house production. The Bauhaus

"flavour" of meticulous detail, a kind of machine craft, never left his work. Post-

Bauhaus, during the early 1930s, he became directly involved with developing the

lO9clbert Herberr. Thz Dream of the Factory-Made House: Walter Gropius and KonradWachsmann (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).I I 03 ¡ry Russell, Buitding Sy stems, I ndu stilalization, and Archite cture, 146.

78

prefabricated Hirsch Copper House.lll Herbert claims this project collapsed due

to political and financial problems but it almost certainly had something to do with

Gropius' insistence on introducing a Modern "style" which was unpopular with the

directors of Hirsch Copper (figs. 35, 36).

Fig,lÞ93

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Fig. 35. Top: universal U-section connector designed by Förster and Kraftand used by the Hirsch Copper anrJ Brass Works in their experimental copper houses of 1931.

Bottom: Pre-Gropius copper house on display in the German building exhibition, Berlin in 1931.

The editor of Bauwelt magazine claimed that the picturesque style of the house set the cause ofmodem a¡chitecture back thirty years (Herbert, 109,110).

I l lHerbert explains this project in cletail, setting it within poliúcal events of the time.

79

Lt4crgæ.

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Fig. 36. Top: Copper house panel jointing method proposed by Gropius as

an improvement on the U-section connectors which was rejected by the company primarilybecause of retooling costs. Bottom: Copper house as designed by Gropius for the GrowingHouse exhibition in Berlin, 1932 (Herbert,122,148).

80

Wachsmann's experiences had been varied and haphazard, but at an early and

formative stage he had obtained, through Hans Poelzig (a director), work at the

factory of Christoph and Unmack, one of the oldest and largest makers of

prefabricated timber buildings in Europe. He describes his "conversion" thus:

'In the large factory halls I saw for the first time, like a miracle, production

machines producing . . . prefabricated panel systems for housing, hospitals

and schools, manufactured there . . . and then shipped all over the world. In

a split second I understood that mass production was more than a

technological event. In fact, I suddenly sensed that industrialization was the

answer to building, and terribly importanL' Wachsmann who considered

himself then, wryly to be 'only a carpenter,' realized not only the limitations

of the individual but the tremendous potential of working through the

reproductive capacity of the machine. 'This,' he proclaimed, 'was my

¡sygl¿¡isn'112

Wachsmann's "machine love" permeates all his writing and "architecture" and it

blinded him to the inherent possibilities of market-driven industrialization. It was

not good enough that an entire industry was already eff,rciently churning out

building materials and elements. His vision of mass producing houses was

"Corbusian" in scale and nothing less than "straight line" factory production would

saúsfy him.

During his stay in an internment camp and other equally inhospitable places in

France, Wachsmann had designed a¡d documented a "modular universal building

system," and a "tubular steel structural system," (laær to become known as the

"Mobilar Hangar").113 The building system consisæd "of load-bearing panels,

weatherbo ard externally, fl ush-paneled inærnally, therm ally insulaæd, and

combining freely (as indicaæd by the plans, secúons, elevaúons, and details) to

generate a house plan adhering to a rectilinear three-dimensional modula¡ grid (ftg.

37)- Ttre edges of the wall panels were bevelled at 45 degrees, and were secured to

each other by elaborate Y-shaped metal connectors."ll4 On his arrival in America,

1 lZcilUert tterbert. The Dream of the Factory-M ade House, 94rL3Ibid.,Z43.1146¡¿.

81

Wachsmann took up residence with lValter and Ise Gropius and jointly they

undenook to develop the universal building system, which ultimaæly, after several

refinements (primarily of the metal connectors) and conversion to imperial

dimensions, became the General Panel Packaged House.

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builcling system designed while interned in France, c. 1939. Bottom: details of the system's y-shaped metal connectors used to connect the panels (Herbert, 24,245).

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The end point of Gropius and Wachsmann's building system was a kind of

Euclidean universality, the rendering neutral and interchangeable of floor, wall and

ceiling elements; universal panels and connectors in geometric ¿urangements

defrning neutral, universal anöideal space (fig. 38). The timber panels were

relatively easy to design (for a carpenter like Wachsmann), despiæ the limiting

nature (exclusiveness) of his "rational" approach or perhaps because of it. It was

the "universal" joints which provided the challenge, a challenge which he took up

with enthusiasm. The original "French" Y-connector, which already had a long

genealogy,lls was first revised then replaced with a metal wedge connector during

the system's initial Americanisation in l94l-42- For several years during the

development of the scheme as a whole Wachsmann was developing a new metal

connector which was finalised just as the first one was patented in l9M. In August

1945 a patent application was submitted for the final connector (frgs. 39,40).

Herbert quotes part of this application:

'This invention aims to improve the wedge connector. . . in such a manner

that all these connected elements can be installed in the panels, or other

building units, at the factory, thus simplifying the assembly operation at the

site of the building and reducing the labor of assembly.' Moreover the old

system necessitated a cover strip, matched to the siding, to mask the

connections; the new one did away with this, making it possible to use a

virtually jointless flush wall, employing plywood.l16

It would be easy to dismiss Wachsmann's fascination with the universal joint as

that of a tradesman who fails to see the bigger picture if it were not for the fact that

he always placed his work within the context of universality, machine production,

industrialization, elementarization and so on. Such claims locate him at the extreme

end of "techno-rational" Modemism.

115¡¡s¡5srt gives several examples of metal connectors for building panel systems which predate'Wachsmann's attempt. The frst, designed and paænæd by Friedrich Förster inl924 and laterrevised and repaænted by Förster and Krafft in 1930 was probably one of the earliest examples.This system was used by Hirsch Cop¡ær (pre-Crropius) in their prefabricaæd "copper house" whichwas publicised widely. In addition, it won a Grand Prix at the Paris Internationâl ColonialExhibition of 1931. Afær Gropius became involved with Hinch in 1931 he "modernised" tlteappearanc€ of the copper houses which previously had been stylistically "traditional" and attemptedto eliminate the original Fönter and Krafft U-shaped connectors in favour of a spring-loaded boltconnector which eliminated the need for "unsightly" cover strips.LL6Ibid..,Z'15.

83

I

II

/lri

II

I

'1

"ta',.r1"z'./,/(ì

I

ti.t

V2t"t?' li

@ @ @ @

@ @ o

Fig. 38. Top: Konrad'Wachsmann, diagrammatic representâtion of a cube

made of General Panel System panels. The caption, top left, reads: 'Modular three-dimensionalarangement of metal connectors in a cube structur€ composed of the frames of 18 standardelements that can be used in any direction, horizontally or vertically. The standard elements,measuring 10'-0" by 33'4", enclose a space of 1,000 cu. ft." The caption, top right, reads: "Thebroken lines, representing the di¡ect ransfer of forces from one point of connection to another,indicaæ that the corners of such a structure, if it consists of frames and membrane panels, are ofsecondary importance compared with the joint lines between connections. The relief of stresses atthe corners of the panel consiclerably simplifies the production process in relation both to the

structural design an<l the choice of a method of manufacturing it." Bottom: stages in the

assembly of the cube. Wachsmann urges that the "direction of movement of each individual partmust be carefully taken into account just as in time studies," (Wachsmann, 1{.{', 145)-

@

iri

84

nA ./4 .at ./l

MMWW+

Stdndôrd ports of lhe metol connectors ðnd tlìe wcdge5used lo secLtre lhem ¡n slols in lhe woocjen frome ol the preslrcs-sed pdnel

Position of the meldl pdrts in reldlion lo Lhe sldnddrd sfots,shown al tlìc rnomenI wher] llìc joinl ¡s dl)out lo be lockod by theparl lleing ¡nserled from ôl)ove

.tI

Posit¡on ol lhe melal parts in llìe slolted woodeil fr.rrnes Hook conneclór in locked position

Fig. 39. Details of the wedge connectors (Wachsmann, 142).

85

r¡,

Fig.40. Sømped, universal metal hook connector (Wachsmann,l43).

"straight-1ine" factory production was central to the "total industrialization" of

building promoted by both Gropius and Wachsmann. It was Wachsmann more

than Gropius, however, who drove the development of such a production method

for General Panel. The packaged house proiect eventually allowed him the scope to

put his ideas into practice and he spent several years "wheeling and dealing" to this

end. Finally by July 1947,in a former Lockheed factory at Burbank, California,

General Panel were ready to go into production. The factory layout and plant had

been painstakingly designed by'Wachsmann and seemed almost as important to him

as the system it was to produce (fig. a3). In an article in Architectural Forum in

February 1947 (clearly the publicity machine had been at work) Esra Stolla

describes the factory process,

. . . The entire house fabrication process is mechanized. From the moment

the kiln-dried raw materials enter the air conditioned assembly area to the time

when the hermetically-sealed panel emerges at the other end, it is Qike

Borden's milk) scarcely touched by human hands. Skilled labor has been

eliminated and all hand work greatly reduced by special Wachsmann-

86

designed machinery; jig tables are mechanized, electronic gluers tack all

elements together in 5-second operations while a still secret electronic press

glues the hnal panel together in one operation.llT

The overwhelming impression one gains from accounts like this and from

Wachsmann's own account inThe Turning Point is of a man obsessed with

attaining an ideal. It would not have satisfied him to see his modern universal

buitding system produced under conditions even remotely resembling those of the

nineæenth century. Both the product and its mode of production had to rcsonate

with hard line, hyper-rational Modernism; they were to be tangible technological

signs of scientific rationalism

-::-t-

=iF-I

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=

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rll;T--=-:-r!r I@l Ht-] '=-T

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.t o a.) I i-Tä'¡rl:_. l @

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Fig.41. Layout of the General Panel factory (Wachsmann,152,153).1 Automatic plywood panel cutter 14 Automatic spraying installation and electric2 Rip and pendulum saws drying channels3 High-speed matchers and moulders 15 The finished products pass through 8 small wall4 Plywood cutters for special sizes openings into the storage area

5 High-frequency gluing of frame sections 16 Small temporary storage a¡ea for floor, wall,6 Router for elect¡ical receptacles and other ceiling and roof panels and accessory elements

openings in plywood Li Søff ofñce7 Automatic chain cutter slotting machine l8 Assembly of aluminium windows and doors

8 End profiler I 9 Store for built-in units9 Automatic machines for inserting metal connector 20 Store for raw materials; insulation

parts into slots 2l Production of standa¡d installation units9a Store for metal parts 22 Assembly of builrin units10 Micrometic, double-action coating machines for 23 Fabrication of built-in units

applying synthetic adhesive 24 Store for raw materials; lumber10a Preparation of synthetic adhesive 25 Store for raw materials; plywood11 Jig tables with mechanical conveyor system 26 Packing materials12 Central control station for the whole of the 27 Repair shop and tool sbop

automatic plant 28 First aid1 3 High-frequency p¡esses with generators 29 Track of loading crane

30 Loading platforms and siding

1179r¡¿ Stoller, "The industrialized House," The Architectural Forum 8ó(Feb. 1947):115-120.

87

Fig. 42. Top: View of the Burbank factory with the "inserter machine" in the

foreground. Bottom: Wachsmann found it necessary to show even the underside of a pneumaticjig in The Turning Poinf , ß illustrate the fully automated nature of the production process(Wachsmann, 149, 150).

88

Pôrts ot the building set out on the site reôdy for ôssemÞly

Cröwl spdce under lhe lloor for connecling lhe eleclricôinstôllötions

The floor hôs been löid The ends of electricôl conduÌts,pre-installed in the lôctorY, projecl from the wôll pônels öt the lelt

It is poss¡ble to stôrt erect¡ng the house ô1 öny number ofpoints ôt the sôme time

lhe ouilding site dur'ng the ereclion ol the Prelöbr¡côte-delements. No din, no surplu-s or wôste möletiô1, no medsurÌng'since ðll the pôÍls òre self-ôdjusting, no lools except ö hömmeL

no skilled workers

Fig. 43. The notion of assembly of standard parts was critical toWachsmann. Here he illusraæs this by showing the panels of a house laid out ready forassembly, and several stages of the process up to roof level (Wachsmann, 156).

89

Fig.44. "A one-family Califomian home erected from a small number ofstândard elements. Constn¡ction time 8 hours, built by f,rve unskilled workers, including doon,windows, glazing, fittings, all built-in unils, cabinets, kitchen, bathroom, heating and plumbing.General Panel System," (Wachsmann, 159).

Entrepreneurial industrialists and building prefabricators of the nineteenth century

would have been shocked at Wachsmann's lack of business sense. In every way

he "missed the boat" with General Panel, resulting in the eventual bankruptcy and

dismembering of the company. The combination of losing the war-time market and

post-war market resistance eventually killed off General Panel. This was despite

the initial collaboration between Gropius and Wachsmann coinciding with war-time

and post-war subsidised housing schemes of all kinds, with cheap loans for

prefabricators and, one assumes, a market crying out for housing. A continual

striving for perfection and the inability to compromise meant that only about 200

General Panel houses were sold. Initial (conservative) estimates of annual sales

were around 10,000 packaged houses.

90

Chapter FourThe Essence of Technology

Symbolic Value and Cultural Meaning

Rational production for gain is in one and the same motion the production of

symbols.lls

. . . capitalist production is as much as any other economic system a cultural

specification and not merely a natural-material activity; for as it is the means

of a total mode of life it is necessarily the production of symbolic

significance. Nevertheless, because it appears to the producer as a quest for

pecuniary gain, and to the consumer as an acquisition of "useful" goods, the

ba.sic symbolic characær of the process goes on enúrely behind the backs of

the paficipants-and usually of economists as well, insofar as the

meaningful structure of demand is an exogenous "given" of their analyses.

The differentiation of symbolic value is mystified as the appropriation of

exchange-value. But it is not enough to demystify: the anthropological point

is that in the bourgeois system there is indeed no difference between the two,

because the logic of production is a differential logic of cultural meanings.llg

. . . The accumulation of exchange-value is always the creation of use-value.

The goods must sell, which is to say that they must have a preferred "utility,"

real or imagined-but always imaginable-for someone.I2o

Marshall Sahlins, 1975

We must assume, in the case of both the nineteenth and ¡ventieth-century

industrialisation of domestic archiæcture, that the "basic symbolic nature of the

process" did, at least partially, "go on behind the backs of the participants." There

are, however, some fundamental differences between the two. Nineæenth-century

prefabricators generally tried to deal directly wittr the symbolic content of their

buildings even if this meant simply copying or adapúng ornamental and decorative

r18¡4¿tr¡¿11 Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976),215.11e6¡¿.,213.t2ofUi¿. It is inæresting to note the fundamental difference between Wittgenstein's and Sahlin'suse of the terrr "use-value". While both relaæ to meaning, for Wittgenstein meaning followsfrom the use of the element or atomic part whereas for Sahlins "use-value" derives from the

object's "exchange-value" based on ils cultural value which is arbitrarily concocted.

9T

motifs. Since most were not architects and did not employ architects to design their

buildings we can assume that they simply tried to "plug into" current stylistic trends

without analysing the consequent symbolic meaning. Early twentieth-century

industrialised architecture, by comparison, symbolised a rejection of "styles" and

became instead a means of investigating Modern "technological" possibilities.

Many a¡chitects were involved in this process. In fact nearly all the influential

figures of the Modern Movement promoted factory-made buildings as the rational,

neutral (value/meaning free), and scientific alæmaúve to traditionally constructed

buildings. honically, while claiming the neutrality of their products they were

drawn to the industrialised factory, the place where capitalism's symbolic

(meaningful) production takes place. Perhaps these architects, because they

believed passionaæly in industry and the machine, wanted to promote a machine

aesthetic in architecture (modula¡isation, exposed joints, hard shiny surfaces and so

on), but knowing that this would not sell (have no exchange-value) masked this

deception by promoting its so-called "scientifrc" design, æchnological superiority

(including its industrialised production methods), neutrality, universality and

economy, fully believing that this would make industrialised buildings into

meaningful places for people to carry on their lives.

In relation to demand, "the exogenous 'given,"'121 which in the case of most

factory-made houses never materialised, it is clear that these archiæcts got it wrong

They allowed themselves to be drawn into the trap of believing that technology has

its own purpose, a purpose which is somehow independent of cultural forces. The

fact that buildings constitute a significant part of our material culture and as such

must cont¿in meaningful symbolic content seems to have temporarily been

forgotten. Referring to market researchers, advertising agents and fashion

designers, Sahlins makes the observation that these "hucksters of the symbol do

not create de novo. In the nervous system of the American economy, theirs is the

12ry6i6.,213

92

synapúc function. It is their role to be sensitive to the latent correspondences in the

cultural order whose conjunction in a product-slmrbol may spell mercantile

success."l22 Architects must equally be concerned with this "synaptic function,"

since they must operate in a culture in which capitalism and economics have

"become the dominant institutional locus" and have thus thrown a "classification

across the entire cultural superstructu re."r23

Generally, symbolic value was not created as the Moderns expected by "use

meaning" (meaning derived from the element's functional duty rather than from its

material or style), nor was the machine aesthetic widely accepted in housing as a

substitute for traditional symbolic value. Such meanings only existed for those

inducted into Modernism's inner circle. It does seem ironic, since Western cultures

seem so thoroughly pervaded by scientific and technological thinking, that the

arguments of the technologist builders in relation to factory production,

prefabrication, modularisation, standardisation and a modern "style," should fail to

encourage the latent demand for these buildings that they were convinced was "out

there" in the housing market. In relaúon to a¡chiæcture, and in particular to

housing, the question of technology and cultural meaning is more complex than the

Modernists imagined and not so easily tampered with, for instead of a latent public

desire to embrace their new technological mode of production, they discovered an

inherent conservatism.

The Human-Technology Relation

There seems no doubt that those of us who live in industrialised Western cultures

have become "technological" beings, and that most people in so-called developing

countries with "traditional" cultures are struggling to become so. The will to

become æchnologically "advanced" seems to consume developing countries at the

expense of their environments and traditional ways of life, and to be maintained and

ruthlessly pushed "forward" in developed countries despiæ dire warnings

t22¡61¿., 217.L23lbid-,216

93

concerning environmental damage and plaintive cries that technology is out of

control and running amok. But what is the nature of the relationship between

humans and technology? How, and of what, is it constituted? Are there any

fundamental philosophical differences or similarities between the traditional and ttre

Western human-technology relationship? And, importrntly for this study, where

does the production of architecture, in particular industrialised (factory-made)

architecture, figure within this relationship? Questioning in this way begins to

reveal how archiæcture may be constitr¡ted within the context of meaningful

material culture and how it might be thus situated in relation to debate conceming

the human-technology relation.

Fundament¿l to this quesúoning is the realisaúon that symbolic meaning can only

exist within a cultural context, and that there is no such thing as neutra-l (meaning

free) technology. Technology, therefore, is only meaningful when embedded

within or arising out of a cultural context. If this is not the case it will not survive

since it will have no "exchange-value." This is especially so of architectural

technologies, the symbolic meanings of which have accumulated over thousands of

years and can never, as the Modernists attempted, be reduced to the simplistic

effects of "material forces." The "culture" of a¡chitecture, however originally

arbitrarily derived and currently suffering from "use-value" capitalist dominance

and the leaching out of its metaphysical and spiritual meanings, has a vast history

which cannot simply be ignored. As Sahlins says, in relaúon to the current

sltuatron:

The unity of the cultural order is constituted by . . . meaning. And it is this

meaningful system that defines all functionality; that is, according to the

particular structure and finalities of the cultural order. It follows that no

functional explanation is ever sufficient by itself; for the functional value is

always relative to the given cultural scheme.

As a specif,rc corollary: no cultural form can ever be read from a set of

"material forces," as if the cultural were the dependent variable of an

inescapable practical logic. The positivist explanation of given cultural

94

practices as necessary effects of some material circumstance - such as a

particulnr technique of production, adegree of productivity or productive

diversity, an insufficiency of protein or a scarcity of manure - all such

scientist propositions are false. This does not imply that we are forced to

adopt an idealist alternative, conceiving culture as walking around on the thin

air of symbols. It is not that the material forces and consraints are left out of

account, or that they have no real effects on cultural order. It is that the

nature of the effects cannot be read from the nature of the forces, for the

material effects depend on their culn¡ral encompassment. The very form of

social existence of material force is determined by its integration in the

cultural system. The force may then be signihcant- but significance,

precisely, is a symbolic quality. At the same time, this symbolic scheme is

not itself the mode of expression of an instrumental logic, for in fact there is

no other logic in the sense of a meaningful order save that imposed by culture

on the instrumental process.l24

The key points of this passage: that cultural systems define all functionality, and as

a corollary that cultural form cannot be read from a set of material forces,

effectively dispose of the arguments put forward by the Modernists concerning

universal building solutions. It is not, as Sahlins says, "that material forces and

constraints are left out of account, or that they have no real effects on cultural order.

It is that the nature of the effects cannot be read from the nature of the forces, for

the material effæts depend on their cultural encompass¡¡s¡¡-"l2s It is this point, in

particular, which highlights inconsistencies in the arguments of the systems

builders. They went to great lengths to point out that modern buildings and

techniques were universal and meaning-free, the result of inærpreting fundamental,

universal, material and functional requirements which did not conform to

geographic or cultural borders. To be meaningful however, all technologies,

including a¡chiæctural terhnologies, must either be embedded or become embedded

within a cultural framework.

In Technology and the Lifeworld,Don Ihde uses the cross-cultural exchange of

objects to demonstrate the different meaning the same object will have in two

l2aJ6¡¿., 206. My italics12s6i¿.

95

different cultural settings. In other words, he demonstrates that æchnology is a

cultural rather than a neutral instrument The classic case is that of empty sardine

cans discarded by Australian prospectors in New Guinea being retieved by the

locals and becoming part of elaboraæ head gear wom on ceremonial occasions;

garbage in one culture became treasure in another. More complex inær-cultural

exchanges are also cited. For example, the rifle and the sæel a>ce followed the same

route from Australia to New Guinea- In terms of its immediaæ use the steel axe

slotted into the location created by the "extant præris"126 of stone axes. The rifle

had to be explained and demonstrated, especially its ability to kill at a gfeat

distance, which was unknown to the New Guineans. Both technologies were

similar, however, in other ways: they carried with them a set of "cultural

relations-in this case, relations that will create a situation of dependency upon the

incoming culture. ('Beware Australians bearing gifts'?¡."tn Since, in addition,

the complex technological and industrial system used to create these objects w¿¡s not

available to the New Guineans, their great use-value and therefore inflated

exchange-value not only distorted existing barter systems but ultimately put

pressure on them to import the industriaVculn¡ral system to which these objects

originally belonged. The displacement of existing technologies and subsequent

loss of the skills, rituals and beliefs that accompanied them is well documented by

Ihde and others.

Ihde points out that "the adaptation of a transferred æchnology-at least at first-

depends on its being able to fit into an extant praxis. But even when it is adapted,

the context of significations may differ quiæ radically relative to the s"dirnenæd

type of præcis in the recipient çul¡g¡s."128 In other words, a technology taken from

one culture and grafted onto another can never be exactly the same nor have exactly

the same meaning-l29 Ihde uses technology transfer during the medieval period,

1 26pe¡ lhde, T e chno lo gy and the Lifew or ld, 126.127J6¡¿.

t28¡6i¿., 127.129tate the simple example of a manufactured product like the automatic washing machine. The

differences between the German, American, Japanese, Australian, Swedish and lølian models is

96

especially between East and West, to further describe cross-cultural æchnological

mutation and development. Referring to Lynn White's work "Cultural Climates

and Technological Advance in the Middle Ages,"l3o Ihde uses the adaptation of the

Indian prayer wheel into the Western European and English windmill to illustrate

"two different cultural embeddings."l3l The contemplative Eastern culn¡re did not

develop a windmill from the prayer wheel while power-hungry pragmatists in the

West, perhaps already seeing "nature as a resources we11,"132 keenly exploited its

potential to pump water, grind flour, saw timber and so on.

Both of these examples may be used to illustrate the way æchnologies ænd to alter

our experience and perceptions of the world. In the rifle's case this works in

several ways. Hunters armed with a rifle rather than more traditional weapons such

as spears and traps, would see those animals which form their diet as more easily

killed and as a consequence may tend to see the environment generally as more

exploitable. This is reinforced in the case of the rifle since the hunter actually sights

along its length to uke aim. If fitæd with a telescopic sight the view of the

environment (prey) also becomes technologically mediaæd and must to some extent

be interpreted by the hunær (what am I actually looking at?). The act of inæ¡preting

the natural world through such technological means immediately changes our

percepúons of it. Ihde refers to this interpretive act as hermeneutic, "a special

interpretive action within the æchnological context."l33 The windmill example is

perhaps slightly less obvious but once it had been developed as a power source for

irmediately obvious in terms of style, durability, economy, environmental friendliness, noise,vibration and so on. Vy'e can assume that the automatic wa.shing machine did not spontaneously

develop in all these countries at the same time but that the technology circulaæd amongst them

and was adapted and developed by each according to cultural constrâints. Maærial or envi¡onmentalfactors must to a certain extent be discounted since most models seem to function in any countrythat produces one. Taking such a machine to a developing counfy, howeveç must be fraughtwith difficulties, maintenance, water pressure, availability of conect soap powders, connections totâps, and so on.l3Q-ynn White, Jr., "Cultural Climaæs ancl Technological Advance in the Middle Ages," Viator2(1971). 176.131pon Ihde, Technotogy and the Lifeworld, 127 .

1326¡¿.1336¡¿., 80. Another hermeneutic act in which the natural world is technologically mediated (and

consequently partiatly hidden), is that of time perception through clocks, which is described inchapter one.

97

pumping water, for instance, anyone understanding its potential and having an

interest in such things would automatically begin to see the natural world as

exploitable in those terms. The windmill is inæresting not only because of its long

history and still extant use but because it stands somewhere between ancient

(primitive) technologies and those of the modern world.

Technology as a Measure of Modernity

Modernity and "modem" technology seem to be inextricably linked. The

possibility of being considered a "modern" culture without being technologically

"advanced" Seems remote; æchnology iS a meaSure Of modernity. But we can See

from the work of Lynn Whiæ Jr. that there have been premodern historical periods

where technology has been a vital ingredient of daily life and had enormous impact

on agricultural production, warfare and So on. In addition, Don Ihde points out

that there are "no known peoples, now or in historic or even prehistoric times, who

have not possessed æchnologies in some minimal sense."134 There exists,

however, the widespread belief that there is a fundamental difference between

"modern" technologies and those of the premodern world. The basis of this belief

seems to be the relationship between modern science and modern technology.

Nowadays æchnology is often seen to be scientifically derived, sometimes almost

encapsulated science, and this forms the basis of the distinction between modern

and premodern technology. Without this belief the distinction is eroded.

Such a belief presupposes that science is prior to modem technology, and this in

turn is propped up by what Ihde calls the "standa¡d theory"l3s of the development

of modern technology. In outline, this theory posits that the Renaissance was a

"revival of the Greek scientific spirit." Early modem science developed from this

"revival," becoming "dramatic and fulf,rlled in such figures as Galileo, Kepler and

l3a6¡¿., 11.135p6¡ lhde, "The Historical-Ontological Priority of Technology over Science," in Philosophy

and Technolog¡ eds. Paul T. Duröin and Friedrich Rapp, Boston Studies in the Philosophy ofScience, vol. 80, @ordrechr D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983),236-

98

Copernicus." It was eventually to become "fully systematized with [s1ry¡9¡."136

Ihde calls this view idealisr Science is seen as a conceptual system of knowledge

at "the formal and abstract level," which must be applied to create a "modern"

technology. This theory does not bear close inspection. It was, after all, technical

instrumentation which allowed some of the early "scientifiC' insights to be made,

most notably Galileo's adaptation of existing optical æchnologies to make the first

crude telescope. Ihde refers to Galileo's discovery of the distant world of the

moon's surface a.s a "dramatic" exit from the garden (an imaginary Eden, without

technologies). "It took the shape of a technologically embodied science in contrast

to and far beyond the reaches of ancient Greek science."l37 His technologically

mediaæd perception of the lunar landscape, in particular that instead of being a face

or green cheese it was covered with mountains of similar size to those on earth,

was a momentous realisation not attributable to "scientiflc" calculation or

theorising. Ihde proposes that the standard view of scientific priority over

technology concludes that:

The rise of Modern Science is a development which includes (a) the

discoveries of more sophisticaæd mathematics; (b) a gradual move away from

religious and theological notions and a move towards a more mechanistic and

materialistic metaphysics; (c) a method which diverges from the more

speculative ancient roots and moves in a more experimental and verificational

direction; and (d) a movement which results in the rise of physics as the

primary science or at least the science which is hrst among equals.

Only after this historical development of science does there arise technology

in the modern sense. The industrial revolution of the past century and a half

and the explosion of the current "high æchnology" are plausibly dependent

upon the precondition of scientific theory. Technology in the contemporary

sense seems to spin forth almost directly from science itself.l38

This was certainly the line pushed by the "Moderns," that a¡chitecture should "spin

forth almost directly from science." Jean Prouvé, a contemporary of Le Corbusier

1366i¿.137¡on lhde, Technology and the Li.fewortd, 54.138¡on Ihde, "The Historicâl-Ontological Priority of Technology over Science," 237

99

and equally as passionate about the industrialisation of mass housing, contended

that it was only scientific progress embodied in technology which interested people.

He lamented that architecture had been left behind by the "industrial miracle," and

consequently had become boring and out of step with the Modern age. The

children of Paris, Prouvé claimed, "spend their spare time at Orly airport seeing the

jets" but "they never gO to See a new ¡6ç'¡¡."139 The image of Science and

technology in 1961 was still relatively untarnished, even glamorous, and he wanted

some of the action. As others had done, Prouvé claimed that building had been left

out of the "industrial miracle" of our age and that "we do not work in harmony with

our scientific processes."l40 He wrote: "Let us recognize that the architecture of

our time should represent the authoritative product of factory-made designs which

will bring it back into step with the achievements of science."l4l

Prouvé's building designs exemplify the quest for a machine image in architecture,

and for this image to flow directly from industrial processes. He worked

extensively with standardised prefabricaæd folded steel panels, with extn¡ded

aluminium sections, prefabricaæd wood panels and so on. Prouvé was

uncompromising, and his drawing, writing and building precisely exemplify

Sahlin's contention ciæd earlier that "the positivist explanation of given cultural

practices as necessa-ry effects of some material circumstance - such as apanicul.ar

technique of production, a degren of productivity or productive diversity, an

insuff,rciency of protein or a scarcity of manure - all such scientist propositions are

falSe."142

139¡san Prouvé, Pre.fabrication: Structures and Elem¿nts, ed. Benedikt Huber and Jean-Claude

Steinegger (London: Pall Mall Press, 1961), 15.ta0¡6¡¿., 23.L4rrbid., 26.142¡4¡'.¡u11 Sahlins, Culture and Practicol Reason,206.

100

Being Technological

Both Ihde and Sahlins examine the relationship betlveen technology and culture,

highlighting technology's embeddedness in meaningful cultural systems. The

philosopher Martin Heidegger takes a quite different approach, choosing instead to

question technology in relation to being. Heidegger contends that Modern

æchnological contrivances are the manifestation of a particular mode of being which

has developed over time and which encourages us to think in a technological

fashion. Heidegger is considered to be one of the first to provide deep insights into

our "technologicat way of doing or seeing."l43 His essay, "The Question

Concerning Technology" written in 1954, is a central statement of his thinking and

is used here to investigate underlying causes for the emergence of æchnologised

architecture.

Heidegger aims to discover the "essence" of technology and in so doing to "prepare

afree relation to it," that is to open "Our human existence tO the essence of

technology."l44 The "essence of technology," Heidegger claims, "is by no means

anything technological."l4s In other words we will never understand the human-

technology relation if we consider only technology itself, 'we must look beyond this

to discover its essence (what it actually is).

. . . we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology

so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up

with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to

æchnology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But rù/e are delivered

over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral;

for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage,

makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.146

l43pon Ibde, Philosophy of Technology,3g.144¡4r1in Heidegger, "The Question Conceming Technology," 3.1as6¡¿.,4.1466¡¿. Heidegger's use of the term neutral in this passage differs from it previous use in thischapter which was simply to indicate a lack of meaning, meaninglessness. Heidegger isdeveloping the notion that the essence of technology is a mission of being, a mission that covefsover other more meaningful and primal modes of human truth. If this is the case then technologycan be considered neither neutral nor instrumentâI, but rafher exprcsses a distorted and dangerous

mode of (human) being.

101

Heidegger wrote this in period which was critical for the industrialisation of

housing (General Panel went into production briefly in 1947). The essay's quest"

to discover the essence of technology, constitutes a powerful insight for unravelling

the common threads which are to be found in the push towards factory-made

housing and systems building. This first passage, fôr example, raises the question

of how we are delivered over to technology in "the worst possible way" when we

consider it to be neutral. The neutrality of technology, technology as mere

instrument (a means to an end) without meaning is a recurrent theme of the

Modems. L,e Corbusisr wrote: "mass-production is based on analysis and

experiment."t4T Clearly, for him "analysis and experiment" were scientific tools to

be used in the search for universal truth in the natural world and also in

architecture. One of his aims was to make architecture itself more scientific and

technological. Modernist architects almost invariably believed that technology, as

the embodiment of science, would be the "instrument" of our salvation. In other

words they believed that "science-technology, rightly applied and developed . . .

would eventually solve most, if not all, human social and personal problems-"l48

This utopian view always assumes a degree of neutrality, that technologies can

simply be brought to bear to fix up social problems, housing the poor, for example.

Such an instrumentål view is evident in mass housing schemes all around the

world, the occupants of which often attach extremely negative meanings to their

buildings.

Heidegger proposes that "the current conception of technologY," Íls either

inst¡umental (a means to an end) or anthropological (a human activity), are both

"correct" but do nothing tO uncover the "thing in question in itS eSSence." The

"merely correct is not yet the 6ss."149 A distinction is drawn by Heidegger in this

search benveen technology of the ancient world and "modern" technology. He

[47Le Corbu sier, Towards a New Architecture. Tr¿nslated from the thirteenth edition by FrederickEtchells (London: John Roclker, 1931), 6.l48pç,n Ihde, Technology and the LiÍeworld,7.l4gHeiclegger, "The Question Conceming Technology," 6.

r02

bases this distinction, as others have done, on the relationship between modern

science and æchnology. Heidegger, however, inverts the standard modernist

theory that technology is derived from science, instead claiming that:

. . . we have come to understand more clearly that the reverse holds true as

well: Modern physics as experimental, is dependent upon technical apparatus

and upon progress in the building of apparatus. The establishing of this

mutual relationship between technology and physics is correcl But it

remains a merely historiographical establishing of facts and says nothing

about that in which this mutual relationship is grounded. The decisive

question still remains: Of what essence is modern technology that it happens

to think of putting exact science to use.l5o

In relation to technologised factory-made architecture, this question is especially

important. Of what essence was modern architecture that it happened to think of

putting "exact science" to use?

Technology, Heidegger claims, "is a mode of revealing."lsl To explain this he

traces the etymology of ttre word "technology," in particular the original meaning of

the Greek wotd techná. This has two pafts. Firstly, "\ech.né is the name not only

for the activities and skills of the craftsman, but also for the ars of the mind and the

fine arts. Techné belongs to bringing-forth, to poiésis; it is something poietic."

Secondly, and Heidegger claims more importantly, "from earliest times until Plato,

the word techné is linked with the word epistémé. Both words are names for

knowing in the widest sense. They mean to be entirely at home in something, to

understand and be expert in it. Such knowing provides an opening up. As an

opening up it is a revealing."l52 Techné brings that which does not exist into

existence but in the mode of unconcealing, of revealing and therefore of tn¡th.

Whoever builds a house or a ship or forges a sacrificial chalice reveals what

is to be brought forth, according to the perspectives of the four modes of

occasioning.ls3 This revealing gathers together in advance the aspect and the

1s0¡6¡¿., 14.151J6¡¿., 13.152¡5¡6..1531¡s "four modes of occa.sioning" Heidegger refers to here relate to his analysis of the accepted

view of causality and instrumentality which occurs ea¡lier in the essay (pg. 6). According toestablished philosophy there are four causes. Heidegger uses the example of the production of a

103

matter of the ship or house, with a view to the finished thing envisioned as

completed, and from this gathering determines the manner of its construction.

Thus what is decisive in techné does not lie at all in making and manipulating

nor in the using of means, but rather in the aforementioned revealing. It is as

revealing, and not as manufacturing thattechné is a bringing-fofth.154

It is this mode of poetic making (techné ), Heidegger claims, which characterises

premodern æchnology: making which is not separated from the arts or other human

activity, making which is not "manufacturing" but "bringing forth."

Modern technology also is a revealing, but of a fundamentally different kind. It is

not an unfolding or "a bringing-forth in the sense of poiésis. The revealing that

rules in modem technology is a challenginglHerausþrdernf, which puts to nature

the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as

such."lss Heidegger contends that it is this "setting-upon" that "challenges forth"

nature to reveal itself which characærises modem technology rather than its

association with science. Examples other than energy are given:

The forester who, in the wood, measures the felled timber and to all

appearances walks the same forest path in the same way as did his

grandfather is today commanded by profit-making in the lumber industry,

whether he lnows it or not. He is made subordinate to the orderability of

cellulose, which for its part is challenged forth by the need for paper, which

is then delivered to newspapers and illustrated magazines. The latter, in their

turn, set public opinion to swallowing what is printed, so that a set

configuration of opinion becomes available on demand.ls6

In fact Heidegger goes much further than this: Ihde says that after effectively

inverting the science/technology relation to the Technology/science relation

"Heidegger ¿Ìrgues that the very use of mathematics, experimental method, and the

scientific abstraction-theory itself-must be seen as a kind of 'tool' of the

silver chalice to explain what they are: (1) the causa materialis, the silver; (2) the causaform.alis,the final shape of the chalice; (3) the causafinalis, the sacrificial rite for which it will be used; (4)lhe causø fficiens, the silversmith. This part of the essay is deveþing the notion of poeticrevealing, of techné, and as such is atæmpting to place within this concept the four rnodes ofoccasioning (causality). Heidegger is making the point that a poetic revealing (bringing-forth)gathers within it the four modes of occasioning and thus is no "mere means."15a6i¿.lssHeidegger, "The Question Conceming Technology," 14.l56bid., 18.

104

Technological way of seeing."lsT J¡ is this technological "seeing" (things being

revealed to us) which challenges everything to stand ready for use which Heidegger

calls the standing-reserve (Bestand).

Technology with a."T' became a systematic way of seeing the world. That

way of seeing a whole world was charactenzed by Heidegger as a

framework, within which the totality of the world could be seen as a kind of

resource well (the usual translation of Bestand is "standing reserve") in which

all of nature becomes an energy resource for human instrumental use. It is

this technological way of seeing the world which characterizes the whole

Modern Age.lss

This technological way of seeing Heidegger calls "Enframing," which should be

thought of as more than simply "putting a frame around" or some kind of

"framework." Heidegger initially proposes that a technologically Enframed view of

nature is that of an energy resource, but later he says, the "essence of modern

technology starts man upon the way of that revealing through which the real

everywhere, more or less distinctly, becomes standing-re.atua."159 In other words

the essence of æchnology not only enframes nature as potential energy reserves but

challenges all things ("the real every where") to stand ready for use, to become

"standing-reserve."

The Enframing of architecture in such a manner was well established by the end of

the eighæenth century: Durand's catalogue of building parts "standing ready" for

use is a prime example of this. ln Arch.itecrure and the Crisis of Modem Science,

Pérez-Gómez places Durand at the apex of the scientific and technological trajectory

of archiæcn¡re from Galileo to the Modem Movement.

In Durand's theory, number and geometry finally discard their symbolic

connotations. From now on, proportional systems would have the character

of æchnical instruments, and geometry applied to design would act merely as

a vehicle to ensuring its efficiency. Geometrical forms lost their cosmological

reverberations; they were uprooted from the l¿benswelt and their traditional

l57pon Ihde, Philosophy oÍ Technnlogy: An Introduction (New York: Paragon House Publisbers.t993),47.158J6i¿.

lsgHeidegger, "The Question Conceming Technology," 24.

r05

symbolic horizon, and they became instead signs of technical values. This in

turn lead to the geomeûy of the Bauhaus, the Intemational Style, and the

Modern Movement, which was essentially the undifferentiaæd product of a

technological world view. As part of a theory that cast off metaphysical

speculation, the simple and anonymous geometry of most contemporary

a-rchitecture speaks only to a technological process, not to the world of

man.160

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the industrialised building systems

developed during the early part of this century. They represent the most pure form

of its expression, the bare bones of technological thinking: buildings designed to

represent little more than the industrial production process.

Assembly

Central to a technologically enframed view of architecture is the notion of

assembly. In Durand's case this meant the assembly or composition of historically

referenced elements from a catalogue, which illustrates Heidegger's contention that

the essence of æchnology is "by no means anything æchnological." The

architectural æchnologies in this case are quiæ tradiúonal (stone, timber etc.) but a

building perceived in this way, as a set of parts "standing ready" to be composed in

different ways, indicates that it is "responding to the challenge of Enframing."l61

Within such a conception of architecture it is not difficult to imagine that after the

Modem Movement's style purge (in particular of the orders) and the rapid progress

of industrialisation, a point would be reached where composition, assembly and

jointing would be some of the few meaningful programmatic and symbolic themes

left for architects; formal virtuosity, making buildings shinier, taller, thinner and so

on, was another. It was assumed that the process of assembly and its associated

methods of jointing would form a significant proportion of the meaningful content

of a¡chiæcture. The "essence of technology" as "standing reserve" thus ruled the

production of mass-produced buildings, in particular, housing. This applied

l60Alberto Pérez-G6mez, Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (Cambridge: MIT Press,

1983),311.1 6 1 Heideg ger, "The Ques tion Concemin g Technology," 20'zl.

106

whether buildings were conceived as assemblies of either off-the-shelf industrially

manufactured products (open systems) or specially designed and manufactured

elements (closed systems). Walær Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann both

proposed that houses should become the latter. Gropius wrote:

. . . organisation must therefore aim first of all at standa¡dising and mass-

producing not entire houses, but only their component parts which can then

be assembled into va¡ious types of houses, in the s¿rme way as in modern

machine design certain internationally standardised parts a¡e interchangeably

used for different machines. The production policy would provide for

carrying in stock all individual parts necessarT for the construction of houses

of various types and sizes, to be ordered to the building sits as required from

va¡ious specialised factories. At the same time field-tesæd assembly plans for

houses of different layout and appearance will be available to the public.

Since all the standardised machine-made parts will fit together accurately,

house erection at the siæ on the basis of precise assembly plans can be

performed rapidly and with a minimum of labour, partly with unskilled

workers, and under any conditions of weather or season. 162

Walter Segal's low cost housing at Lewisham probably best exemplifies both the

"o¡)en" system of industrial house building and Pérez-Gómez's contention that

modern architecture is the "undifferentiaæd product of a technological world view."

For this project Segal used only off-the-shelf industrially produced materials with

almost no modifying or cutting on or off site.

My main idea has been to use materials in their markets sizes, fitted into a

framework. I found that materials can be obtained on the lightweight market,

which are dimensionally co-ordinated in such a way that it will be possible to

use them for all purposes of building. Materials of that kind used in their

market sizes simply mean that you will be arranging them on the basis of a

grid which is determined in its sizes by these maærials, and which then

means that buildings become assemblies, and no longer in the traditional

sense, structures.l63

162y¿¿11s¡ Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956),146.1631ry4¡e¡ Segal,Izarningfromthe Self-builders, transcribed from the audio øpe whichaccompanies the slicle set. Lon<lon: Pigeon Audio Visual, 5 St Anne's Close, [1983].

t07

It is important to remember that these buildings, like other æchnological

assemblies, do not themselves constitute the technologically Enframed view but

rather, in Heidegger's words, "respond to the challenge of Enframing."

. . . all those things that are so familiar to us and are standard parts of an

assembly, such as rods, pistons, and chassis, belong to the technological.

The assembly itsell however, together with the aforementioned stockparts,

falls within the sphere of technological activity; and this activity always

merely responds to the challenge of Enframing, but it never comprises

Enframing itself or brings it aboul164

In other words, if we are not to be "delivered over to it in the worst possible wa],"

we must continually look beyond the merely technological to the essence of

technology which governs our response to all "real things."

The Destining of Revealing

But we might well ask, as Heidegger does, where Enframing comes from? What it

actually is? If it ís the "real" eveqrwhere revealing itself as standing-reserve, then

"does this revealing happen somewhere beyond all human doing?" And he

answers, "No. But neither does it happen exclusively in man, or decisively

through m4n."165 Earlier he claims that:

. . . man does not have control over un-concealment itself, in which at any

given time the real shows itself or withdraws. . . .

Only to the extent that man for his part is already challenged to exploit the

energies of nature can this ordering revealing happen. If man is challenged,

ordered, to do this, then does not man himself belong even more originally

than nature within the standing-reserve?"1ó6

The position of man in relation to the standing-reserve is thus ambiguously defined;

man dOeS not control "un-concealment" (revealing) but "ordering revealing" can

only happen through man even though "he" is "challenged" to do this and so

challenged belongs within the "standing-reserve." The essence of æchnology

1 64Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," 20-21r6516i6.,24.166¡6¡¿., 19.

108

"starts man upon the way of that revealing through which the real everywhere,

more or less distinctly, becomes standing-resefve."167 That which "st¿rts man

upon the way" Heidegger calls "destining."l68

Always the unconcealment of that which is goes upon a way of revealing.

Always the destining of revealing holds compleæ sway over man. But that

destining is never a fate that compels. For man becomes truly free only

insofar as he belongs to the realm of destining and so becomes one who

lisæns and hea¡s lHörenderl, and not one who is simply constrained to obey

lHörigerl.r6e

Simply the consideraúon of destining for example, allows one the freedom of

"sojourning" within its open space, and provides us with the option of rejecting the

"stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the

same rhing, to rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil. Quite

the contrary, when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of technology,

we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing çl¿i¡n.'?170

The Danger and the Saving Power

Heidegger's essay concludes by proposing that while Enframing is the "highest

danger" tO man, a "saving power" grows within the same destining. He refers to

the "danget'' and the "saving power" as two stars.

The irresistibility of ordering and the restraint of the saving power draw past

each other like the paths of two stars in the course of the heavens. But

precisely this, their passing by, is the hidden side of their nearness.l7l

Enframing the world in technological terms is the'highest dangef'because it

excludes all other modes of being. Snodgrass claims that:

This enframing of thought and praxis by techno-rationalitylzz has become

totalitarian, exercising an hegemony over all areas of human contact and

L67rbid., 24.l6SHeidegger uses the word destining to describe a predestined framework for thought and action(Gestell), "that which starls man upon the way". Destining implias only a beginning, it does notmean that our fate is sealed by technological thinking as would use of the word destiny.1696¡¿., 25.170J6¡¿., 25-26.1716¡6., 33.1725¡6¿o¡¿5s uses the expression "technGrationality" to describe the confluence of Leibniz'sprinciple of "sufficient rea^son" ("that everything must have a reason or cause for its existence, orelse it is not real"), and Heidegger's notion of technological control of all "real" things,

@nframing).

109

agency, to the exclusion of all other possibilities. It is an all-pervasive

presence in the modern world, and is the defining characteristic of

modernity.lT3

InThe Song of the Earth,Michel Haar explains how for Heidegger the danger is

that "today Technology goverrß the being of all beings; that it gathers into itself all

the real, soon after that, all the possible and all the true, and soon after that, all the

thinkable. If it is the threat par excellence, if it places being itself in danger, it is

because it threatens the relation of man to being insofar as the Gestell tends to

impose itself as the "'presumed unique mode of disclosuÍe."'r74 Haar says that "a

human being fully adapted to the technological world would no longer be human,

for being would no longer be for him worthy of questioning (fragwürdig)."r7s In

other words, the questioning of being which animates us as humans would be

reduced to calculative questioning; thought itself would effectively be dead. This

view contrasts with those "dystopian" environmentalists who tend to focus only on

the detrimental physical effects of technology, without considering their "tme

cause." But, to quote Haar, "the danger concerns the essence and not the

phenomeng¡."17ó

Heidegger is concerned that the ultimate and most dangerous outcome of enframing

will be "the death of the human essence."l77 This "essence of man is not given to

him as a nature. He has it by being. He can gain it or lose i¡."178 Again this

stands in contrast to the view of mainstream environmentalists who claim that the

true danger from æchnology is technology itself: hydrogen bombs, oil tankers,

1734¿ti- Snodgrass, "Hermeneutics, Universities, and the Letting-be of Technology,"proceedings of the "Universities a^s Interpretive Communities" Conference, University of Sydney,

19e3. 4174¡4¡ç¡s¡ Haar, The'iong o.f the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History of Being, tans.Reginald Lilly, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 86. Thequotation at the end of this passage is from Martin Heidegger, Vortrdge unl Aufstltse, 3rd edn.,(Pfullingen: Neske, 1962), 24.175lbid., 87.l7óJ6i¿.17716i¡.178J6¡¿.

110

motor cars and so on. For Heidegger the true cause of environmental destruction is

the prior death of human essence, which results from technological thinking.

The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially

lethat machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already

affecæd man in his essence. The rule of Enframing threatens man with the

possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing

and hence to experience the call of a more primal ¡¡¡1þ-179

Heidegger clearly prioritises thought over action in the quest for salvation from

enframing. Human activity can never counter the possibility that "all t€vealing will

be consumed in ordering" but "human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving

power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same

time kindrei 16 i1."180 The actions of environmentalists, for example, can never

counter the danger of environmsntal catastrophe because all action is

technologically enframed. Technology and therefore environmental damage exist

within a tightly enframed view of the world within which environmentalists must

also work or risk not being heard; they are therefore powerless to install a view of

the world which is other than as a resources well. As Haar says:

. . . it is not the efforts to humanize or "pacify" the goals of æchnologY, ðMarcuse said, that can avoid the threat of death which weighs on the human

essence. For in order to act effecúvely it is necessary to enter into the play of

Gestell, [Enframing] to accept its rules. For action to be able to provide

salvation it would have to be possible and necessary for man to examine the

essence of Technology and impose his will on it" but the reverse is in fact

true. Hence, more profoundly, action cannot change being.l8t

The techno-rational mode of being is simultaneously a forgetting or concealing of

all other (less destructive) modes. It is not possible to say why this has happened.

The disclosure of being is not "ascribable to human causes," nor does it "result

from human thought."182 "On the contrary, indeed, essential thinking is an event

l7gHeidegger, "The Question Conceming Technology," 28.180¡6¡¿., 34.18l¡¡r"t, The song of the Earth,88.l82Snodgrass, "Hermeneutics, Universities, and the Letting-be of Technology," 79

111

(Ereignis) of Being."l83 The situation thus seems hopeless. We are trapped in a

mode of disclosure which threatens our very being but we can neither act nor think

our way out of it since all acting and thinking are enframed within techno-

rationality. But in tþe depths of despair we come face to face with the event

(Ereignis)) of being. If we think beyond the "instruments and calculations" of

technology we come to see its essence, and to recognise that this essence is a

reflection of our being. Thus in the depths we come to see ourselves, we afe

appropriated to being and this is what saves. "Heidegger says Gestell lets the

fundamentally simple link of the belonging together of man and being be glimpsed

'as in a flash': namely, that man is the property (eigen) of being and being is the

property of man."184 The sense of hopelessness that Heidegger has led us to lifts

and we can see the saving power when we see this act of "reciprocal

appropriat¡or."L8' ". . . Through Technology man is appropriated to being,

reunited with a unique and total destiny. Through Technology man is reconnected

and once more linked with the whole History of being since the Greeks-"186 It is

in this sense that thinking has priority over action, not in thinking out a way of

escape from techno-rationality but by drawing us back to face the essence of our

being which is technological.

Haar describes the event of reciprocal appropriaion (Ereignís) as a "lighuring flash

. . . which tears open the night of the technological world."187 This does not occur

so much as an act of our willing, since to will it would mean having control of

being itself, but rather because we become open to our own essence. "How could

we see the essence if we were not seized by its light? . . . Essence is not what we

grasp, but what grasps us. 'We must not only think essence as what gives itself to

183¡4¡1¡n Heidegger, "What is Metåphysics?" trans.'W.F.C. Hull and A. Crick, Werner Brock,

ed., Existence anl Being(Chicago: Regnery Co., 1949), pp325-61(p.356). As quoted bySnodgrass in "Hermeneutics, Universities, and the Letting-tre of Technology," 79. Snodgrass

gives an extensive list of references dealing with the "mission" of Being in footrote no.30.184¡¡¿2r, The song oÍthe Earlh,89.185¡6¡¿., 99.1866¡¿.187¡6¡¿.99.

r12

our gaze, but as the gaze i¡ss1f."188 Thus, in the simple openness to the Eaze of

technology we are revealed to ourselves. The forgetting of (human) being and the

covering of its truth which have escalated throughout the unfolding of Western

techno-rational thought are revealed to us when the essence of æchnology and the

essence of being are appropriated to each other.l8e The proximity of the danger

and the saving power, Heidegger's "two stars in the course of the heavens," is thus

explained.

The primary aim of this chapær has been to critique the phenomenon of the factory-

made house by referring to Heidegger's essay "The Question Concerning

Technology." This has been achieved by aligning the assembly mode of making

with Bestan4 (the standing-reserve), and placing the appearance of the

phenomenon generally within the framework of the Enframing, Gestell. T}lre

secondary aim was to establish, via Ihde and Sahlins, that technology generally,

and a¡chitecture in particular, is a cultural instrument and cannot be considered

neutral or meaningless. By considering technology in its "essence" it was possible

to look beyond the factory-made buildings themselves and to consider the "true

cause" of their appearance, which may be described as responding 'to the challenge

of Enframing."lg0 The body of the chapter concludes by exploring the "saving

power," which is only hinted at in the closing stages of "The Question Concerning

Technology." Drawing on Haar and Snodgrass leads to the concept of Ereignß,

the event of the appropriaúon of being to technology and technology to being. This

is posited as the "saving power," the recognition that technology does not stand

over against us but is a reflection of our human essence, of our being.

In "The Question concerning Technology," Heidegger goes only as far as

proposing that the saving power ís techné, in the ancient sense of poetic revealing

or making (poiésis) mentioned ea¡lier. Although it is æmpting to imagine the retum

1886i¿.tS9Snodgrass, "Hermeneutics, Universities, and the Letting-be of Technology," 79lgoHeidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," 20-21.

113

to a premodern mode of making, it is a deeply nostalgic view. David Kolb, in

Postmodern Sophisticatior?s says in relation to Heidegger's views on technology,

that "there is an ambiguity about his essays on art and archiæcture that encourage

the romantic hope that we might pierce the technological skin of our world and

discover a rich dwelling still available to us."l91 It is, however misleading, Kolb

claims, to interpret Heidegger as proposing a course of action which will regain for

us "the primal world of dwelling."lg2 While Heidegger hints at the "saving powef'

of poetic revealing (techné), being restored to art and thus offering a way out of the

danger of Enframing, he actually "believes that in the modern world art has lost

whatever power it once had. It has been reduced to the business of supplying

stimuli on demand, and machines for living."l9l Thus art can not offer an escape

but merely an awakening that changes "our relation to the world. . . It remains an

ambivalent mixture of complicity and understanding."l94

l9lpuu¡¿ Kolb, Postmodern Sophistications: Philosophy, Architecture, and Tradition (Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 99.192lbid., 98.1936i¿., 99.194¡5¡¿.

T14

Conclusion

Heidegger draws us inexorably towards the realisation that even though making

(things) is an essential or defining quality of human beings, and nowadays almost

invariably found to be a praiseworthy activity (especially if perceived as pushing

forward technological achievement) some modes of making actually threaten what it

is to be human. Heidegger is not judging the instruments or contrivances of

technology to be either dangerous, beneficial or neuEal, but rather contends that

they represent our mode of being which has become æchnologised at the expense

of other more truthful and meaningful modes. It is thus misguided to criticise the

technologisation of our towns and cities in terms of buildings being either good or

bad. Debates concerning building (technological) control could more fruifully be

situated by questioning the nature of the relationship we have with our technologies

perceived as extensions of our own nature.

The contention that modern technology represents a covering over or obscuring of

other modes of being seems particularly relevant in relation to the phenomenon of

the factory-made house. It is interesting to speculaæ whether what is obscured is a

primal mode concerning shelter, defence, protection and so on, or a cultural one

based on the evolution of meaningful cultural symbols over several thousand years.

Such speculation can of course never be resolved. Factory-built houses represent,

¿rmong other things, an attempt to negate the symbolic, culturally specific,

architecrural knowledge traditionally embodied in dwellings. By responding to the

"challenge of Enframing" it blots out other more meaningful modes of building:

every revealing is simultaneously a concealing. If, as Heidegger claims, the

essence of technology and the essence of being are coincident, then the appearance

of buildings based on universal jointing techniques, standardised panel elements,

weight, hygiene, the universalisation of space, machine metaphors and so on,

indicates an alarming technologisation of being.

115

The consideration ofarchitecture as ontological is ofcourse open to challenge. It

may, for example, act to obscure other modes of revealing and of operating in the

world as do the instrumental and pragmatic. What it offers primarily is a means of

breaking the impasse created by techno-rational thinking which challenges all things

to give reasons for their existence, thus attempting to excise from architecture the

spiritual, cosmic or symbolic. Such thinking represents the dual impoverishment

of being and of architecture; an abandonment of the 'þrofound, 'interdisciplinary'

form of knowledge, allowing humanity to dwell on the earth,"195 and its

replacement with a shallow æchnological world-view. Pêrez-Gómez claims that

this knowledge:

Is the very wisdom that humanity needs to survive, not in ærms of its

maærial needs, but primarily in order for it to remain open to Being and attain

authentic well-being, the fullness of human potential which characterizes

dwelling and differentiates it from other orders of existence on eafih.l96

There is no doubt that the buildings outlined in this study would cater for maærial

needs. They would keep the rain off, but they do not respond to the other more

important requirements of humanity and that is to embody recognisable and

available meaning.

The resistance by "ordinary" people to the æchno-fantasies of early twentieth-

century a¡chitects is reflected in the decline of the factory-built house as a feature of

the contemporary house building scene. Archiæcts still ofæn lament the

"unsophisticated" tastes of the general public, claiming that we should educate

people to see things our way. In this case however, it is arguable that the so-called

conservative value system operating in the ma¡ket place restrained some of the

worst excesses of architectural high modernism. Exhibitions of prototypical

houses and attacks by archiæcts on traditional building did not, by-and-large,

change the buying habic of the "masses." Taking an ontological view, we might

also claim that ttre æchnologisation of being, so feared by Heidegger, was much

195¡¡6"no Pérez-G6mez. *A¡chitecture as Embodied Knowledge," Journal of ArchitecturalEducation 40,no.2 (Jubilee 1987): 57.1966¡¿.

116

more advanced in the case of modern movement archite¡ts than it wa.s for the

unwilling recipients of their attenúons, the house-buying public.

It is still not uncommon, in architectural circles, to hear mouthed the rhetoric of

high Modernism. Even after so-called post-modernism and deconstruction much

"modern" (Cartesian) thinking is still with us. We still talk of the function of a

building, for example, as though it were scientifically verifiable (rather than

culturally defined); science and technology are still rigorously enculnrrated and set

in opposition to the romantic and inational; building technologies are considered as

rational, instrumental, controllable and separable from issues of architectural

meaning; and so on. It would be as difficult to have a conversation with most

practising architects about buildings as the æchnological embodiment of

metaphysics or meaning, as it would be to debaæ the coincidence of being and

technology.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the phenomenon of the factory-built house it

is that as archiæcts we must always be mindful of the fact ttrat even though building

is a fundamentålly defining characteristic of human-kind, some modes of building

actually diminish our humanity. Making(techné ), properly conceived as the

embodiment of knowledge, is central to the business of archiæcture, and may yet

lead us away from the "frenziedness" of technology which currently rules the

production of most buildings. This at least provides a means of reconceiving

architectural production as meaningful material culture and of holding always

before our eyes the extreme danger of Enframing.

Il6a

Addendum

This thesis is intended to be critical of architectural modernism. By focusing on

attempts to industrialise the production of houses, a particular strand of

modernism is revealed which serves to expose a more general mode of modern,

technological thinking. The phenomenon of the factory-made house is therefore

employed to describe this paradigmatic mode of thinking, or more profoundly of

being. It does not matter to this enterprise that the proliferation of factory-made

houses envisioned by the moderns did not occur. The power of an ontological

and cultural reading of technology, and therefore of architecture, is still apparent.

Rejecting the instrumental critique of technology, which concerns itself primarily

with so-called neutral and objective evaluations, allows architectural making to be

reconceived as an openness or connection to being. Modes of being previously

obscured or covered over by techno-rationality may thus be revealed.

Heidegger does not claim that it is dangerous to turn from technology, only that it

is pointless to try; attempting to do so assumes a degree of technological control

which we do not have since to control technology is similarly to control being. A

similar point is made by Ihde who claims that technology is a cultural instrument

and as such evades external control along with other cultural forces. Simply put,

the "saving power" to which Heidegger refers does not relate to control but to the

revelation that technology's essence is a reflection of the essence of our being.

To be appropriated to being in this way saves us from simple, instrumental and

dangerously misguided understandings of technology. It connects us to the

history of being since the Greeks.

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