villa savoye funcion technology
technology | weather and art by jordan ellis
beauty shelter
I have no doubt that Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye stands among the greats of modernist architecture. Since I have not visited, I have no argument to make against the endless critical support to which I have been subjected over my architectural years; however, the flat roof – a trend in residential modernism – leaked. The dampness gave the owners’ child pneumonia. 2 Is great architecture to be forgiven for failing to keep out the weather, simply because it is beautiful? Denis Hollier refers to architecture as symbolic art’s ‘privileged form’. 3 Might such an association serve to dissolve architecture’s symbiosis with its (more quantifiably responsible) engineering? As history progressed from the Gothic cathedral to the industrial train station, buildings more and more wore their architecture in the open, hiding the engineering like an ace up the sleeve. Less were the walls used to hold up the building; rather, the building was used to hold the walls. Nevertheless, architecture as a constructing form has maintained what Gaston Bachelard may refer to as the dialectics of outside and inside. While his language is poetic, this described dichotomy provided shelter from all weather outside, both climatic and social. Since humans began to construct shelters, the primary concern has been to ‘provide a predictable environment’. 4 If this is the primary purpose of architecture, how can we allow it to be ignored? Perhaps things have become too simple. Simply place the appropriate weather barrier, and all will be fine: a kind of stimulus/response methodology; another instance of the conveniences in the modern and technological world serving to extract archi- from the consciousness of tektum ? ‘Compared to other living creatures, we are the only ones who direct our energies toward refining shelter into abodes that might be called works of art’ 5 , writes Norman Crowe, describing a human condition that moves us to focus on the design of space, form and more recently an affection toward surface. In theory, this artistic-lean in design suggests that the practicality of building – that which serves as a barrier from external weathers – has been accomplished. In design practice, however, it has become accepted (more by the architectural community than the litigious law culture) that all great architecture leaks, from Frank Lloyd Wright’s opinion that if a building does not leak then the designer has not exercised enough creativity, to more recent lawsuits involving famous architects and their beautifully leaky creations. Why does avant- garde Architecture appear to be disinterested in function when confronted with beauty? To be more general, at what point is a the great leak unhealthy modernity ... the house turns out to be so beautiful, so deeply beautiful, that it would be a sacrilege even to dream about living in it. —Gaston Bachelard, Poetics of Space 1
work of architecture beautiful enough that its engineering can be relaxed? The position here is not that there exists no correlation between æsthetics and function, but rather that when one is given precedent over the other, a balance between function and form is neglected. A building that performs well but is mundanely designed is boring, while a beautiful building that fails to protect is frustrating. Until recently, this imbalance was hardly a prime concern. In older buildings, walls were very leaky and porous, the concept being that in a cold climate, one would over-heat the inside and the leaking air would help to keep dampness from the walls. This required an extremely large amount of fuel. For the Villa Savoye, restoration came after the Second World War, but with a more advanced building technology. In both strategies, vast amounts of energy were used in order to make the architecture maintain or increase its functionality. In the 21st century, however, being so wasteful is hardly an option. ‘The environmental crisis stemmed from our success in using nature’s resources to proliferate our numbers and expand our material wealth’ 6 , but in the new century, wealth may be seen more in an efficiency of materials and numbers. While before, ‘interest was concentrated on the way forms grow, rather than the way they work’ 7 , the current concern for sustainability and efficiency with the systems of LEED, biomimicry and others attempts to learn more from nature, rather than about nature. It is not that I wish to propose here any manifesto, I would like to stay away from any stimulus/response how-to guide. My question is whether we will get to keep our beautiful architecture in the face of environmental responsibility. The roles have reversed: rather than keeping the weather out of our architecture, must we now keep our architecture out of the weather?
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On Site review 21: stormy weather
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