The New Eco-Architecture: Alternatives from the Modern Movement

Colin Porteous

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136408564
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The New Eco-Architecture builds a historical bridge between architectural science and design. It seeks to address neglected aspects of the Modern Movement as a prelude to supporting a diversity of architectural insight and experimentation aimed at twenty-first century environmental needs and priorities. The attitudes and influences of renowned figures are re-examined in relation to current issues of architectural sustainability.
By setting today's green architectural quest within a twentieth century context, and evaluating the main protagonists with regard to a modern eco-sensitive lineage, the book will be of primary interest to architectural students, academics and practitioners. However, it should also intrigue historians, theoreticians and critics, who tend to gloss over such issues, as well as other disciplines engaged with the built environment.

PART ONE

The multi-layer phenomenon

CHAPTER 1

1927 – a chronological milestone

In order to begin a fresh historical investigation, it is sometimes useful to identify a chronological milestone, a particular year that is significant to the topic in hand. In this context 1927 was such a year. It was the year of the first English publication of Towards a new Architecture by Le Corbusier,¹ as well as building the Stein house at Garches.²It was also the year of the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, with notable contributions by Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius³ and other leading figures. Although the new Bauhaus building in Dessau was officially opened in December 1926, its department of architecture was not occupied until April 1927⁴ with Hannes Meyer at the helm. It was the year Jan Duiker (with Bijvoet) completed plans for an open-air school in Amsterdam,⁵ and a year when Eileen Gray’s ‘maison en bord de mer’ at Roquebrune⁶ was under construction. It was the year marking the completion of Karl Marx Hof in Vienna by Karl Ehn,⁷ and the Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam by Brinkman and van der Vlugt.⁸ Moreover, with specific relevance to the multi-layer phenomenon, it was the year when van Doesburg,⁹ in appraising Weissenhofsiedlung said: ‘Every material has its own energy force, and the challenge is to enhance this energy force to its maximum by proper application.’ Expanding on materiality and extolling the decisiveness of ultimate surface, he said: ‘The ultimate surface is in itself the result of construction. The latter expresses itself in ultimate surface. Bad construction leads to bad surface. Good construction produces a sound surface with tension.’ Finally, later in the same critique he said: ‘the correct, logical use of the modern materials will cause the new form of architecture to emerge quite involuntarily’.

In the USA it was a year of continuing financial crisis for Frank Lloyd Wright,¹⁰ the year he set up Camp Ocatillo in Arizona, and marks the beginning of the period when he wrote his autobiography. It was the year that Richard Neutra’s Health House for Dr Lovell¹¹ started on site, and the year after completion of Rudolph Schindler’s Beach House¹² for the same client (not to mention the year of formal separation of Rudolph and Pauline Schindler). The year of 1927 marked a nadir for Buckminster Fuller¹³ with the collapse of the Stockade Building System company, whose application for patent had just been filed that year. But it was also the year of Fuller’s initial sketches of the 4-D tower, heralding the Dymaxion House,¹⁴ which was thereafter first exhibited in 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash.

In the UK, 1927 was the year after the General Strike, and heroic modernist landmarks are difficult to find. However, it does coincide with the publication of three hefty and very orthodox volumes¹⁵ describing the state of building technology. The significance of this set lies more in its omissions than its content. ‘Insulation’ is not indexed and lightweight materials are only included under ‘fire-resisting construction’. The worthy tomes serve to emphasise the extent of bold constructional experimentation embarked on by leading modernists, and it is partly this boldness that will be metaphorically ploughed and rotovated.

The fundamental difference between what van Doesburg wanted in terms of ‘sound surface with tension’ and traditional methods of construction was the stripping away of external projections. The paradox is that many decorative features of then and now, such as cornices or dripstones above lintels, have a practical function — shedding water away from a facade. So also do more purely functional features such as copings and cills. Thus it tended to be the terminating or joining horizontal edges that made van Doesburg’s ‘sound surfaces’ particularly vulnerable.

However, setting aside wall-heads, cills and so forth, the other area of vulnerability was associated with the layering of different materials between inside and outside. In spite of the acknowledgement that ‘bad construction leads to bad surface’, the preoccupation of van Doesburg and other modernists in 1927 actually lay with what was visible, endorsing a new aesthetic parity of external and internal surfaces. Patterned wallpaper gave way to painted plaster inside, and smooth stucco was used outside rather than stone, brick, timber, tiling, etc. However, as soon as more than one material lay between inner and outer finishes, dif-ferences between their respective thermal properties could become critical. For example, if in the plane immediately behind the stucco, we had a reinforced concrete frame with an infill of breeze-blocks, the differential thermal movement could rapidly cause the finishing layer to crack. The usual way to overcome this was to cover all joints with some form of lath, but if this in turn suffered any form of corrosion, it could then part company with its covering. Similarly, if a continuous layer of insulation is introduced next to a dense structural material, differences in respective thermal and vapour resistances could cause interstitial condensation. This could in turn lead to the deterioration of some part of the construction. The control of quality on site also then becomes critical. For example, if reinforcement is too close to the surface of concrete in a zone vulnerable to interstitial condensation. Alternatively, in a zone subject to intermittent saturation from rain, the external coating will again break down.

Moreover, the mix of materials was to a large extent driven by a desire for slimness on the part of the modernists. Slimness was associated with lightness and efficiency. Thin reinforced concrete walls, with steel bars inevitably not far below the surface, could also function as beams spanning large openings. A thin backing of a material such as cork could serve as shuttering during construction, and give the wall the same thermal efficiency as a much thicker traditional one of stone or brick. However, in practice there were significant variations in both thermal performance and constructional vulnerability, and this was not always associated with climatic characteristics.

The act of concealment of structure was not in itself new or an issue for most architects, but it did open the door to variable specifications and, of course, variable costs. Even without economic constraints, and assuming appropriate specification relative to differing climatic stresses and strains, and while taking into account all the other aspects cited above, there is no escaping the fact that the ‘international style’ of 1927 was intrinsically more risky than traditional practice. Risk is an inherent part of the modus operandi of any entrepreneur who drives through radical changes. However, the problem was, and still is, that the financing of buildings often tends to be underwritten by very conservative institutions. Accordingly, individual wealthy clients have been recognised as invaluable in fostering the pioneering experiments of the Modern Movement.

Notwithstanding financial barriers, ideologically driven movements tend to meet equally ideological opposition. Openly confronting the ethos of an ‘international style’ and taking other kinds of risks, was the man who saw himself as a genius as well as the best modern architect around. Frank Lloyd Wright was given to flowery, but also scathing, oratory which would forcefully ‘set out his stall’. Projections were an essential part of his vocabulary, as were the visible textures of stone, brick and timber. Furthermore, even though he often resorted to hiding components such as steel beams to enable large cantilevers in his roofs, the smooth, enigmatic and minimalist aesthetic of the ‘international style’ was an anathema to him.

Partly in recognition of the constructional fragility of smooth surfaces, it wasn’t long before the European stars such as Le Corbusier also began to re-embrace explicit materiality and texture. Thus the comparison in 1927 between the positions of various protagonists is not about smooth versus rough, or modernism versus regionalism, or van Does-burg’s de stijl versus Wright’s organic simplicity. It is about interfaces from air to surface and surface to surface, and the role played by the respective thermal properties of materials, particularly at these boundaries. It recognises that the two constructional cultures, one essentially mono-material and the other multi-material, continued to maintain distinct presences. The latter may have become increasingly dominant, but, in today’s more ecologically conscious architectural scene, the former is starting to reassert itself. One example is that of rammed earth walls. Nevertheless, relatively slim multi-layer, multi-material construction will always have a strong pla...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part One The multi-layer phenomenon
• Part Two The glass is greener ...
• Part Three Adventitious propagation?
• Personal post-script
• Picture credits
• Index of projects and propositions
• Index of people