The Century’s Architectural Splendours
By Rajnish Wattas

AS the sun sets on the 20th century’s architectural skyline, a few buildings more than others will stand out in the fading silhouette. Which architectural realisations can be considered inspired conceptions, epoch-making trendsetters? To count just a few would be both a hazardous and a subjective assessment, but, nevertheless, an essential one to illuminate the road ahead of architectural creativity.

In fact, the 20th century dawned carrying with it a "rag-bag" paraphernalia of historical styles and classical revivalism. As such there was shared concern for ushering in ‘modern architecture’ based directly on the new means of construction, function and its elements manifesting contemporary realities. The impact of ‘machine’ on human life and culture was to be translated into the brave new world of architecture; meant to be timeless, universal and valid in the encounter between purpose and material.

Most of the buildings which one could rate as icons of the century are outstanding works of art defying any simplistic classification. "They are neither bill boards for political beliefs, nor mere stylised containers for functions; but rich compounds of ideas and forms," observed William Curtis.

One of the pioneering buildings expressing this ethos was the Fagus Shoelace factory designed by one of the four recognised masters of 20th century architecture, Walter Gropius, in 1911. It is a three-storey structure, whose distinction lies in the fact that steel frames support the floors and the walls merely became glass screens. The light, airy structure of the ‘new architecture’ was marked by the absence of the conventional vertical supports at the corners and became the forerunner of the steel and glass construction.

As such, the two main streams of modern architecture that delineate the 20th century are the popular adoption of steel and glass construction, on one hand, and concrete, on the other. The architects of the twenties had a predilection for "adorned, precise technological shapes". Their buildings opened up to nature; and the building parts reached out to the open air, inviting landscape to come in through the use of glass primarily. But there was also an in-built contrast of geometry in this. The clean, taut and precise lines and pure homogenous surfaces of the facades were in contrast to the organic informality of nature.

Foremost of these protagonists was another ‘master architect’, Frank Llyod Wright, considered as the greatest American architect of the century. Wright initiated the trend of ‘organic architecture’ — building in the modern idiom, but in harmony with landscape and nature. The most outstanding example of this ideology is his project, "Falling Waters". Considered widely an individual voice that broke away from the prevalent trend of "geometrical exactitude" and turned towards nature, flexibility and adaptability to environment, "Falling Waters" is a country house built in 1936. It is placed over a waterfall in a deep gorge.

The architecture consists of sweeping cantilevered terraces, resting on stone walls, supporting them over the cascading water. "The effect of dappled light, surrounding foliage and tumbling water ... and the feeling of horizontal expansion on all sides", speak of his poetic rendering of organic architecture.

Another follower of Wright’s organic architecture was Alvar Aalto to Finland, who developed a style distinctly away from the ‘cube-block’ of the prevalent era, contrasting so starkly with the landscape. One of his foremost projects was the Finnish Pavilion at the New York Expo in 1939. The wall of this pavilion was a curved surface — expressing his concept of "flowing space". The curved surface of the pavilion not only allowed for more display surface, but the inner slope enabled easier display. At the same time, a spatial pattern emerged; a structure defined in a flowing, organic movement.

Another significant architectural development going on concurrently was the further refinement of the ‘steel and glass box’ concept initiated by Walter Gropious. A German follower of his, Mies Van de Rohe, on arrival in the USA, created a seminal building with its ‘glass slab’ imagery and associations of efficiency, intellectual clarity, sobriety and symmetry. The office block known as Seagram Building located at Park Avenue in New York, was built by Mies in association with Philip Johnson in 1957, and heralded the corporate imagery of big-business America. No wonder this sprouted many crude and pseudo imitations all over the world. The Seagram Building was an expression of Mies’s famous dictum: "Less is more". But his elegant simplicity was not a ‘blind simplicity’ of creative bankruptcy, "but a simplicity born out of knowledge and of having solved the problem."

If the Seagram Building was a refined culmination of the steel and glass skyscraper on the North American skyline, the race for being the world’s tallest building had started even much earlier. In fact, its genesis lay in the advent of steel structures and elevators that enabled the construction of high-rise buildings.

A visit to Manhattan in New York makes this phenomenon pointedly clear. It is the biggest playground of high-rise buildings and its skies have been constantly pierced in quest for the tallest building in the world. The real ‘sky wars’ between tall buildings started in the early 20th century when the 1120-feet high Chrysler Tower was built. Besides becoming the most conspicuous advertising symbol for the Chrysler Corporation, the tower had an ‘ego-high’ aspect for its owner. When Mr Chrysler was asked the reason for spending so much money on making the tower, his answer was: "So that my sons would have something to be responsible for."

But the tower lost its crown for being the tallest building in the world when, in 1931, the Empire State Building, standing 1250 feet high designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, was built. It kept its world title till 1960 to be beaten by the construction of the World Trade Centre standing just a 100 feet higher! At present, the tallest building in world is the Sears Tower in Chicago standing 1450 feet high.

To top it all is the famous CN Tower at Toronto, which is not a building in the strict sense of the word. It is nevertheless, the world’s highest structure. Standing more than half- a- kilometre high, this TV tower has a viewing gallery at the top. And what a panoramic view of the city skyscrapers it provides set against the azure-blue waters of Lake Ontario!

Any chronicle of 20th century’s architectural realisations would be superficial without its titan figure, Le Corbusier, considered by many as its greatest architect. Even if Wright was more prolific, Corbusier was the more talented one. Born as Edouard Jeanneret in Switzerland, he adopted the pseudonym of Le Corbusier on shifting to France and soon became a visionary thinker and a revolutionary architect-planner. Corbusier maintained that the industrial age required a brand new architecture. "A house is a machine for living," he said. And he admired ocean liners and aeroplanes as the aesthetics of the machine age. By 1950, he had begun to deviate from purism in architecture to more sculptural and robust play of forms. His discovery of reinforced concrete as "the molten rock of 20th century" became a turning point in his creations, enabling him to explore plasticity of forms.

Perhaps his most symbolic project of such possibilities is the Ronchamp Chapel in France, completed in 1955. The angular position of the Chapel on the tip of a hill, enabled him to site the building aesthetically in relation to the landscape. Small, deep set windows and slits light up the interior dramatically. And the most sculptural element — the roof, supported only at a few points —appears to be detached from the building and has a ‘floating effect’.

Though Corbusier had already completed his famous huge monotholic apartment building called Unite de Habitation at Marseilles by then, it is this, even though much smaller project in size, Ronchamp Chapel, that is considered his poetic best in architecture.

Interestingly, both of these above-mentioned buildings almost appear to be precursors of what he later built on our home turf: Chandigarh. The hyperbolic paraboloid, sculptural dome of the Assembly and the massive leviathan-like, linear slab building of the Secretariat at the Capitol Complex here, are a fruition of his earlier forays and experimentation with exploiting the plastic attributes of concrete as a building material.

Significantly, another close parallel to architects endeavouring to employ the plastic potential of concrete is the work of a Danish architect called Jorn Utzon. His world famous project, the Sydney Opera House completed in 1957, signifies a major statement in using concrete shells as structural innovation. Partly influenced by Alvar Aalto’s ‘flow of forms’ — Utzon’s Opera House symbolised one of the most beautiful "subtle abstractions of the sails of the Sydney harbour", on whose shores the building is located. "It’s also expressive and analogous to the rhythm and flow of music-basis function of the building".

It wouldn’t be unnatural to notice in this masterpiece of architectural form, a latent inspiration for the Bahai temple built at New Delhi many years later.

Any appraisal of the 20th century’s architectural saga, without talking about the monumental edifices built by Oscar Niemeyer at Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil (a project started concurrently to Chandigarh), would be incomplete. Niemeyer, a disciple of Corbusier, too, shaped his architectural concept for the state buildings, including the Senate, Secretariat and Congress building and the President’s palace, by exploiting the inherent plasticity of reinforced concrete. The rhythmic colonnades of the palace and sculptural forms of the Senate, Secretariat and Congress building achieve a poetic flight of fancy with rigorous discipline.

Another Corbusier disciple, who carved out a name of his own on the architectural horizons of the 20th century, is the Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. His aim has always been to integrate Japan’s architectural traditions with the needs of the modern life. He planned a series of buildings for local communities in quest for finding the appropriate vocabulary of architectural expression. His most impactful work is the Tokyo Olympic Stadium of 1964. This is a work of monumental expressionism, employing tensile steel roofs to create exhilarating interwoven curves, modernistic in technology but evocative of traditional Japanese upturned roofs.

It would be important to bring down the curtain on the century’s critical architectural realisations by mentioning some other buildings too — even though not designed by the ‘masters’ or their famous disciples,but, nevertheless, of great influence.

The works of Louis.I.Khan, including Richardson Medical Research at University of Pennyslavania and IIM building at Ahemedabad, Hasan Fathy’s housing projects in Egypt, James Sterling’s Engineering building at Leicester University in UK, and those of Charles Correa, B.V. Doshi and Raj Rewal in India, are harbingers of the new path-breaking concepts in the realm of architecture for the next century.

But the most provocative twist at the fag-end of the 20th century came with the philosophy and work of an iconoclast, Robert Venturi. His legendary book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture held out a fascinating thesis that modern architecture with its no frills functional expression was monotonous and dull. The social turmoil of the 1960s was emphatically reflected in architecture; and a revolt against the ubiqituous "glass box architecture". His works, including the famous Chestnut Hill house, deliberately celebrates the internal complexities and contradictions of the plan, with a deliberate dead-pan exterior. Venturi praised the lively razzmatazz of the populist ‘Las Vegas architecture’ and coined the famous expression, "Less is bore", contemptuously to debunk the sterility of modern architecture.

Is it surprising then that even in Chandigarh such echoes are often heard?