only unifying style since the days of classicism. It has developed out of both the organic
as well as rationalistic origins of a Frank Lloyd Wright and an Adolf Loos, and flourished
in the most successful work of a Gropius and a Mies van der Rohe, a Le Corbusier and an
Alvar Aalto. It is the only architectural movement to originate from the avant-garde
spirit: it is equivalent to avant-garde painting, music and literature of our century. It
continued along the traditional line of occidental rationalism and was powerful enough to
create its own models; in other words, it became classic itself and set the foundations of a
tradition that from the very beginning crossed national boundaries. How are such hardly
disputable facts reconcilable with the fact that in the very name of this International Style
those unanimously condemned deformations which followed the Second World War,
could have come about? Might it be that the real face of Modern Architecture is revealed
in these atrocities, or are they misrepresentations of its true spirit?
THE CHALLENGE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO
ARCHITECTURE
I should like to attempt a provisional answer by:
1 Listing the problems which faced architecture in the nineteenth century.
2 Giving an account of the programmatic answers which the Modern Movement offered
in response to the problems.
3 Pointing out the kind of problems which could not be solved by this programme.
Finally,
4 These considerations should help to make a judgement on the suggestion, which this
exhibition attempts to make (presuming its intentions have been correctly understood).
How good is the recommendation to adopt the modern tradition unerringly and to
continue it critically instead of following ‘the escapist movements’ which are currently
dominant: be it tradition-conscious ‘neo-historicism’, the ultra-modern ‘stage-set’
architecture that was presented at the Venice Biennale in 1980, or the ‘vitalism’ of
simplified life in anonymous, de-professionalized, vernacular architecture? The Industrial
Revolution and the accelerated social modernization that followed introduced a new
situation to nineteenth-century architecture and town planning. I would like to mention
the three best-known challenges:
- the qualitatively new requirements in architectural design;
- the new materials and construction techniques; and finally
- the subjugation of architecture to new functional, above all economic, imperatives.
Industrial capitalism created new interest spheres that evaded both courtly-ecclesiastical
architecture, as well as the old European urban and rural architectural culture. The
diffusion of culture and the formation of a wider, educated public, interested in the arts,
called for new libraries and schools, opera houses and theatres. However, these were
conventional tasks. Entirely different is the challenge presented by the transport network
which was revolutionized by the railway; not only did it give to the already familiar
transport structures, the bridges and tunnels, a different meaning, but it introduced a new
task: the construction of railway stations. Railway stations are characteristic places for
dense and varied as well as anonymous and fleeting encounters, in other words, for the
Rethinking Architecture 216