by Haussmann, under Napoleon III. The architects played no noteworthy part in these
plans.
FAILURE OF HISTORICISM, MODERNISM’S ANSWER
In order to understand the impulse from which modern architecture developed, one has to
bear in mind that the architecture of the second part of the nineteenth century was not
only overwhelmed by this third requirement of industrial capitalism, but, although the
other two challenges were recognized, it has still not mastered them. The arbitrary
disposition of scientifically objectified styles, having been torn from their formative
context, enabled historicism to side-step into an idealism which had become impotent,
and to separate the field of architecture from the banalities of everyday bourgeois life. By
setting utilitarian architecture free from artistic demands, a virtue was made of the
necessity of the new domains of human concerns which had been alienated from
architectural design. The opportunities offered by the new possibilities of technical
design were only grasped in order to divide the world between architects and engineers,
style and function, impressive facades on the exterior and autonomous spatial disposition
in the interior. Thus historical architecture did not have much more to set against the
immanent dynamic of economic growth, to the mobilization of urban living conditions, to
the social plight of the masses, than the escape into the triumph of spirit and culture over
the (disguised) material bases.
In the reformist tendencies of the Jugendstil, from which modern architecture
emerged, the protest was already raised against this falsity, against an architecture of
repression and symptom formation. It was no coincidence that, in the same period,
Sigmund Freud developed the foundations of his theory of neurosis.
The Modern Movement took on the challenges for which the nineteenth-century
architecture was no match. It overcame the stylistic pluralism and such differentiations
and subdivisions with which architecture had come to terms. It gave an answer to the
alienation from culture and industrial capitalism domains with the claim for a style that
would not only make a mark on prestige buildings, but would also penetrate everyday
practice. The spirit of modernism was to participate in the totality of social
manifestations. Industrial design was able to take up the reform of the applied arts: the
functional design of utility buildings was able to take up the engineering skills
demonstrated in transport and commercial buildings; the concept of commercial quarters
was able to take up the models of the Chicago School. Over and above that, the new
architectural language seized on the exclusive fields of monumental architecture, of
churches, theatres, law courts, ministries, townhalls, universities, spas, etc. On the other
hand it expanded into key areas of industrial production, into settlements, social housing
and factories.
WHAT DOES FUNCTIONALISM REALLY MEAN?
The New Style could certainly not have penetrated into all spheres of life had modern
architecture not assimilated the second challenge, that is, the immensely widened range
of technical design possibilities with a determined aesthetic approach. The term
‘functionalism’ incorporates certain key notions—principles for the construction of
Rethinking Architecture 218