Structuralism in Architecture - the Structuralist Diagram

The Arrival of Structuralism in Architecture

With the third and final stage of CIAM liberal idealism triumphed completely over the
materialism of the early period. In 1947, at CIAM 6 held at Bridgwater in England,
CIAM attempted to transcend the abstract sterility of the 'functional' city by affirming
that ' the aim of CIAM is to work for the creation of a physical environment that will
satisfy man's emotional and material needs. ' This theme was developed further
under the auspices of the English MARS group which prepared the topic 'The
Core'[meaning the urban core - presumed to be the source of identity and
community] for CIAM 8 held at Hoddeson, England in 1951. In choosing the theme
'The Heart of the City', MARS caused the congress to address itself to a topic that
had already been broached by Siegfried Giedion, Jos Luis Sert and Fernand Lger
in their manifesto of 1943, where they wrote: ' The people want buildings that
represent their social and community life to give more functional fulfilment. they want
their aspiration to monumentality, joy, pride and excitement to be satisfied. ' However '
the old guard of CIAM gave no indication that they were capable of realistically
appraising the complexities of the post-war urban predicament; with the result that
new affiliates drawn from the younger generation became increasingly disillusioned
and restless.
At CIAM 8 Giedion praised the playground designs of the young Dutch architect Aldo
van Eyck. about whom I will say more later. The decisive split between the old-guard
and the young 'turks', came with CIAM 9 held at Aix-en-Provence in 1953 when this
generation led by Alison and Peter Smithson and Aldo van Eyck, challenged the four
Functionalist categories of the Athens Charter. Dwelling, Work, Recreation and
Transportation. Instead of proffering an alternative set of abstractions, the Smithson's,
van Eyck, Jacob Bakema, Georges Candilis, Shadrach Woods, John Voelcker and
William and Jill Howell searched for the structural principles of urban growth and for
the next significant unit above the family cell. their dissatisfaction with the modified
functionalism of the old guard - with the idealism of le Corbusier, van Eesteren, Sert,
Ernesto Rogers, Alfred Roth, Kunio Mayekawa and Gropius - is refelcted in their
critical reaction to the CIAM 8 report. They wrote : ' Man may readily identify himself
with his own hearth, but not easily with the town within which it is placed. 'Belonging'
is a basic emotional need - its associations are of the simplest order. From
'belonging' - identity - comes the enriched sense of neighborliness. The short narrow
street of the slum succeeds where spacious redevelopment frequently fails. ' With this
they dismissed both what Frampton described as the 'Sittesque sentimentality' of the

old guard and the rationalism of the 'functional city'. In short they established a clear
position for themselves within the field based on the re-assertion of the importance of
both the social and symbolic aspects of the built environment.
The position was based on the assertion of the importance of vernacular values and
building form whether in the form of Nigel Henderson's photos of London street life
[exhibited at Aix-en-Provence by the Smithson's] or the Algerian housing scheme
presented by Georges Candilis [based on vernacular housing types]. At CIAM 9 the
Smithson's and John Voelcker presented designs for a range of housing types
intended to address issues of community. Candilis presented his Algerian masshousing scheme. These concerns struck an instant chord with van Eyck, who in the
company of wife Hannie and friends had undertaken two trips to the Sahara and
published his photographs of the vernacular settlements he encountered there. This
group of young tearaways was to become the core of Team X the successor to CIAM
which dissolved itself after the next and last Congress, number 11 at Otterloo in
Belgium.
Without persuing unnecessarily the history of the development of Team X it is
apparent that the intitial unity of purpose within the group was shortlived and while
they were still in the process of disposing of the old-guard of CIAM their disparate
interests caused an ideological split between the Smithson's and Bakema on the one
hand whose interest in mediating the alienating effects of universal mobility via the
creation of 'place' ironically [initially at least] through the use of megastructural
housing blocks and elevated pedestrian decks - and van Eyck who addressed himself
to issues which the majority of Team X would hve preferred to have left unformulated.
No other Team X member seems to have been prepared to attack the alienating
abstraction of modern architecture.
In the 1950's and 1960's in both the United States and Europe the influence of
structuralist thought already prevalent in linguistics and anthropology began to inflect
the most adventurous architecture of the period. The work of De Saussure in
Linguistics and Levi-Strauss in anthropology led to the idea of the existence of 'deep
structures' in their respective fields of study. In general, as I have noted, structuralism
was characterised by the attempt to study the relationships linking phenomena rather
than the phenomena themselves in isolation. This led to a realisation that individual
phenomena are both part-cause and effect of a larger mutually interactive web or
matrix of phenomena rather than the outcome of a linear chain of cause and effect.
Levi-Strauss' studies of traditional cultures drew attention to the built form of these
cultures and drew attention to their additive nature. A limited range of related
components arranged in a limited range of variations according to a particular set of
rules.

Just as there seemed to be deep structures shaping the social patterns of these
cultures there seemed to be 'deep structures' defining the organisation of their
traditional built environment. This realisation made a deep impact on important
European and north American, architects of the time and one or two of them at least
began to speculate on the possible existence of deep structures linking late twentieth
century western society and its built environment with those of 'traditional' African and
Asian cultures.
This interest in deep structures manifested itself in architecture in two main ways.
Firstly, the observation of deep structures in language led to the establishment of a
methodology for studying them. This new science of semiology, later known as
semiotics, was first proposed by De Saussure early in the twentieth century. By the
1960's the speculation that there might also exist a corresponding language of
architecture, the structure of which might be uncovered and analysed, led to a
semiotic analysis of the built environment.
The leading figure in this research was perhaps the English architectural academic
Geoffrey Broadbent and its most notable outcome was the development of a 'pattern
Language' approach to architectural form by the English mathematician turned
architectural theoretician Christopher Alexander whose group working from the
University of California at Berkeley produced a number of publications of a variety of
Pattern Languages for a range of urban configurations and architectural types.
Notable were the Group's entry for the PREVI Lima housing competition [1967?],
their Pattern Language for 'Multi Service Centres' and the three volumes simply titled
a Pattern Language which attempted to set out a range of general guidelines for
urban form from the broadest to the finest scale. This work produced a predictable
backlash from architects and theoreticians who perhaps unreasonably, resented what
they saw as the prescriptive dimension to this work and correctly [and more
reasonably] noted the covert aesthetic dimension to the work. This might be
characterised as a combination of medieval village and the hippy wood-butcher
reaction to the rampant materialism of late modernist society. This research petered
out by the mid-seventies and resulted in few built projects to permit the evaluation of
its effectiveness.
The more obvious result of structuralism in architecture came from the interest of a
number of architects who simply grafted onto the traditional architectural project a set
of formal gestures which simply symbolised the broader shift in thought in western
society which structuralism represented. In the broadest formal sense, the upshot of
this was architecture organised as more or less flexible arrangements of
interchangeable but generally clearly defined modules. Space was categorised and
divided according to use patterns and combined according to devised sets of rules.
3

The component of architectural form were generally clearly articulated - one could
always tell, for example, where column became beam and load bearing became nonload bearing.
The Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck who, for a while edited the influential magazine
Forum vigorously pursued his interest in the relationship between the social
structures and the built form of traditional cultures, making several field trips to the
Dogon people of north West Africa to study their indigenous shelter. He published
and lectured very widely on what he saw as the lessons for western architects and
urban planners to learn from the Dogon. I heard him lecture on this as an architecture
student in Perth in 1966.
Van Eyck was interested in the dwelling as a microcosmic analogy for the city and the
city as a macrocosmic analogy for the dwelling; so passage ways in dwellings were
analogous to streets and public squares in cities analogous to living rooms. Here I
might say a little about van Eyck and his work to set the scene. He was also
interested in the psychological importance of archaic aspects of built form such as the
hearth and the thresh-hold.
Aldo van Eyck was born in Driebergen, Holland in 1918. He lived with his family in
Golders Green in London from October 1919 to July 1935. Educated in England at
Prince Alfred Primary School in Hampstead, London from 1924-32 and at Sidcot
School in Winscombe near Wells from 1932-35. He returned to Holland to study at
the Royal Academy of Visual Arts in the Hague 1935-38 He studied architecture at
the Eidgennssische Technische Hochschule Zurich from 1938-42. He remained in
Zurich until the end of the war where he married his fellow ex-student Hannie van
Roojen in 1943. Children Tess [1945] and Quinten [1948]. While living in Zurich they
met Carola Giedion-Welcker who introduced them to the twentieth century art avantgarde.
The Van Eyck's moved to Amsterdam in 1946 where Aldo worked as an architectural
designer in the Town Planning section of the Amsterdam Public Works Department
from 1946-51. He participated in the COBRA movement 1948-51. From 1951-54 he
lectured in Art History at the Academy of Art and Industry in Enschede. From 1947
he was a member of the Dutch CIAM group 'de 8 en opbouw', a participant in the
Nagele project [1948-58] and Dutch delegate at a string of international congresses
from 1947-59. He commenced private practice in partnership in 1951, in association
with Theo Bosch 1971-2 and in association with his wife Hannie from 1983 to his
death in 1999.

From 1951-66 he tutored in Interior Design at the Institute for Applied Art Education in
Amstredam and from 1954-59 he tutored in architectural design at the Academy of
Architecture in Amsterdam. Aldo Van Eyck co-founded "Team 10" with J. Bakema, G.
Candilis, A. & P. Smithson and J. Voelcker in 1954. Van Eyck lectured throughout
Europe and northern America stressing the need to reject Functionalism and
attacking the lack of originality in most post-war Modernism.
Van Eyck's position as co-editor of the Dutch magazine Forum helped publicize the
"Team 10" call for a return to humanism within architectural design. He co-edited
Forum with Apon, Bakema, Boon, Hardy, Hertzberger and Schrofer 1959-63 and
1967. He joined the Delft Technical College as a professor in 1966 retiring in 1984.
He lectured ceaselessly at universities and congresses, twice visiting Australia; first
for the Perth Architecture Students Convention in May 1966 where he lectured
together with Jacob Bakema, John Voelcker and Buckminster-Fuller and in 1984 in
Sydney and Melbourne for the Architects' International Series. Although van Eyck
demanded an empirical search for original solutions in most of his written works, he
showed a distinct preference for Structuralist values within his completed projects. He
received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1990 and died in 1998.
Among
van
Eycks
important
buildings
from
the
period
were:
Amsterdam Orphanage, at Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1955 to 1960.
Temporary Sculpture Pavilion, at Sonsbeek, Netherlands, 1965 to 1966.
Wheels
of
Heaven
Church,
project,
1966.
Catholic Church for Pastor van Ars, at the Hague, Netherlands, 1963 to 1969.
PREVI
Housing,
at
Lima,
Peru,
1969
to
1972.
I will illustrate just three of these to give a feel for the look of this important re-working
of the modernist project.
Amsterdam Orphanage, at Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1955 to 1960.
Discussion
This building made Van Eyck's reputation world wide. It became the icon of the
structuralist - Team 10 revision of modernism. It was however not universally admired
with some people finding it more expressive of the idea of humanism than its
actuality. Sharp described it thus " A cult building in the 1960s, Van Eyck's orphanage
brought to the surface an idiosyncratic interpretation of modern architectural ideas
enriched by pattern and forms and by balancing repetitive pavilions. Constructed in
reinforced concrete panels and glass bricks, it has undoubtedly worn badly. It now
houses the Berlage Institute. "-Sharp, D.,. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual
History. p240. Norwich was kinder: " Van Eyck's reputation as an original designer
was enhanced by the low-profile brick-built orphanage on a site in the Amsterdam
suburbs. It has had an influence on school buildings throughout the world. " Norwich,
5

J. J., [ed]. Great Architecture of the World. p235. Kultermann kinder still: " The most
important personality in Holland is Aldo van Eyck...whose orphanage in Amsterdam
(1958-1960) became known all over the world, due to the exemplary concept of this
building. A home for 125 children of all ages was created here, articulating a
revolutionary synthesis in the consideration of the individual and the group, inner and
outer space, extended and small areas...Aldo van Eyck re-adopted a previously
formulated concept of L. B. Alberti, when realizing the house for children in
Amsterdam...the analogy of city and house: a small world within a large , a large
world within a small one, a house as a city, a city as a house, a home for children-to
create that was my goal. " -Udo Kultermann. Architecture in the 20th Century. p138.
The architect had this to say: " The building was conceived as a configuration of
intermediary places clearly defined. This does not imply continual transition or
endless postponement with respect to place and occasion. On the contrary, it implies
a break away from the contemporary concept (call it sickness) of spatial continuity
and the tendency to erase every articulation between spaces, i.e., between outside
and inside, between one space and another. Instead, I tried to articulate the transition
by means of defined in-between places which induce simultaneous awareness of
what is signified on either ." Kultermann, U., Architecture in the 20th Century. p138.

Wheels
of
Heaven
Church,
[project],
1966.
The church was described by Joseph Rykwert who published it in Domus as a design
which " exemplified an architecture that expressed itself with an eloquence which
moves the spectator by the clarity of a formal statement and through the shock of
recognition, a shock which ocurred 'when he has read an order in the building
through which he has walked and he has recognised this order as the plan of his
being. " [Strauven, F., 'Aldo Van Eyck the Shape of Relativity', Architectura & Natura,
1998]
Catholic Church for Pastor van Ars
images only
Van Eyck taught at Penn State for several years during this period along with Louis
Kahn whose tartan gridded plans and ideas of servant and served space paralleled
the development of Van Eyck's own architecture during his Team X days. Kahn who
shared much with van Eyck [but also differed in important ways, is important so it is
necessary to say something about him and his work before continuing.

Louis I. Kahn
Louis Kahn was born in Saarama, Estonia in 1901. His family emigrated to the U.S. in
1905. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a thorough grounding
the the Beaux Art school of architecture. During the 1920s and 1930s he worked as a
draughtsman and, later, as a head designer for several Philadelphia-based firms.
In 1925-26 Kahn acted as the Chief of Design for the Sesquicentennial Exhibition.
During the Depression, he was active in the design of public assisted housing.
Beginning in 1935 Kahn worked with a series of partners, but from 1948 until his
death in 1974, Kahn worked alone. From 1947 to 1957 he was Design Critic and
Professor of Architecture at Yale University, after which he was Dean at the University
of
Pennsylvania.
Kahn's architecture is notable for its simple, platonic forms and compositions.
Through the use of brick and poured-in place concrete masonry, he developed a
contemporary and monumental architecture that maintained a sympathy for the site.
While rooted in the International Style, Kahn's architecture was an amalgam of his
Beaux Arts education and a personal aesthetic impulse to develop his own
architectural
forms.
Considered one of the foremost architects of the late twentieth century, Kahn
received the AIA Gold Medal in 1971 and the RIBA Gold Medal in 1972. He was
elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1971. He died in
New
York,
in
1974.
Kahn's
many
important
buildings
included:
Esherick House, at Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, 1959 to 1961.
Erdman Hall Dormitories, at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 1960 to 1965.
Exeter
Library,
at
Exeter,
New
Hampshire,
1967
to
1972.
First Unitarian Church, at Rochester, New York, 1959 to 1967.
Institute
of
Public
Administration,
at
Ahmedabad,
India,
1963.
Kimbell
Museum,
at
Fort
Worth,
Texas,
1967
to
1972.
National Assembly in Dacca, at Dacca, Bangladesh, 1962 to 1974.
Norman
Fisher
House,
at
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania,
1960.
Richards Medical Center, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1957 to 1961.
Salk
Institute,
at
La
Jolla,
California,
1959
to
1966.
Trenton
Bath
House,
at
Trenton,
New
Jersey,
1954
to
1959.
University Art Center, at New Haven, Connecticut, 1951 to 1954.
Yale Center for British Art, at New Haven, Connecticut, 1969 to 1974.
Kimbell
Museum,
at
Fort
Worth,
Texas,
1967
to
1972.
Commentary
" The Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn is also a disciplined, coherent, and visually
clear statement, but here the aesthetics derive from the more classically oriented
7

sensiblity of its architect. It has an austere yet rich simplicity that comes from the
repetition of a vaultlike form, given a dull sheen from its lead-covered exterior, and a
beautifully articulated concrete structural frame with infill paneled walls of travertine.
Its classic sense of timelessness is ennobled by a reverence for material and detail.
Its interior form, bathed in a diffused natural light that enters the space via continuous
interior suspended screen and reflected downward off the curve of the vault. " Paul
Heyer. American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth Century.
p278-279.
"...Louis Kahn...was perhaps the best among the architects of this century to illustrate
expressive honesty and integrity with regard to the coordination of materials with a
total
architectural
vision.
"
" Louis Kahn's Kimbell Art museum in Fort Worth is a masterpiece in this respect. A
survey of the numerous studies of the building demonstrate a care for 'fit' that can
only be compared to the perfection of the classics, especially the Greek classics.
Kahn put the use of tools and machines to the ultimate architectonic end; with them
he produced buildings that were composites of parts working in total harmony among
themselves and with the whole. There is no Kahn building that does not give
evidence of his genius in the use of materials. He has achieved perfection in
buildings with all sorts of budgetary constraints, from the most modest to the
monumental.
"
-Anthony C. Antoniades. Poetics of Architecture: Theory of Design. p220.
Details American Institute of Architects 25 Year Award, 1990
Salk
Institute,
La
Jolla,
California,
1959
to
1966
Commentary
" In the laboratories the vertical ducts of the Richards Building have been turned on
their sides, housed in the hollows of spanning box girders and vented from huge
hoods at the flanks of the building. The pre-cast units of structure have thus
continued to become larger as the crane can lift them. Order, once an affair of
repetitive crystals for Kahn, is now felt in grand components, space-making
themselves.... All utilities are now directly channeled through the structure,...(the
result being that) 'served' spaces, and 'servant' spaces are entirely integrated,...this
'meaningful order' was almost instantly arrived at in Kahn's design. "
-Vincent
Scully,
Jr..
Louis
I.
Kahn.
p36-37.
" Materials used are concrete, wood, marble and water. Concrete is left with exposed
joints and formwork markings. Teak and glass infill in the office and common room
walls....The laboratories may be characterized as the architecture of air cleanliness
and area adjustability. The architecture of the oak table and the rug is that of the
studies.
"
-Louis I. Kahn. from Heinz Ronner, with Sharad Jhaveri and Alessandro Vasella Louis
I.
Kahn:
Complete
Works
1935-74.
p164.165.
8

" Louis Kahn's Salk Institute for Biological Studies on the Pacific coast near La Jolla
aspires within its own spirit to an order achieved through clarity, definition, and
consistency of application. It stands as a testament to Kahn's word, 'Order is. ' Two
parallel laboratories, each an uninterrupted 65- foot wide and 245-feet long and
encircled by a perimeter corridor, flank a central court. The support elements to these
totally flexible spaces are placed in a peripheral relationship to this corridor. They are
the studies and offices for scientist, fractured in profile and vertical in rhythm, which
line this central court, connected by bridges to the perimeter corridor and receiving
views of the ocean by virtue of exterior walls angles toward it. The idea of simple and
strong; the served space of laboratories where research is performed, the serving
space of offices where thought initiates....Clearly, in the institute at La Jolla, a new
level of realization and accomplishment is evident for this ides....The institute
manifests beauty of mind and act; of the resolution and articulation of the major
elements of the building...being what it wants to and needs to be, to the precise detail
and execution of beautiful concrete surfaces. Even the component of structure
derives from the need to enclose specific spaces, specifically and pertinently, rather
than offer a general envelope within which specific space might then be designated.
The central court, as a typical Kahn-like space of shimmering blue water, a band
pointing toward the ocean epitomizing what human endeavor can accomplish at one
scale with geometric clarity and authoritative but modest deliberation, to give to the
scaleless sweep of the ocean, here the Pacific, a poignant gesture. "
-Paul Heyer. American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies in the Late Twentieth
Century. p195.
Perhaps most important of Kahn's works in the context of this lecture is the less well
known Trenton Bath House 1955-7. This design for a ritual cleansing facility for a
Jewish community in Trenton New Jersey, based on the earlier unbuilt Adler House
(1954-5) was seminal for Kahn, marking his break with the modernist framework
exemplified by Mies which had defined his earlier work. At the time Kahn commented
that " If the world discovered me after I designed the Richards tower building, I
discovered myself after designing that little concrete block bath-house in Trenton. "At
the time of the design of the Trenton bath-house Kahn commented in a section of his
notebooks entitled 'Compartmented Spaces' " Space made by a dome then divided
by walls is not the same space. A room should bea constructed entity or an ordered
segment of a construction system. Mies' sensitivities with creation of space reacts to
impose structural order with little inspiration drawn from what a building 'wants to be'.
Corbusier feels what a space wants to be, passes through order impatiently and
huries to form ;" Kahn's intent was clearly to give equal weight to order and form in
his work. The resonances between the thinking and buildings of Kahn and van Eyck
are striking.

This impact of Kahn's approach in general and the Trenton bath-house in particular,
on later architecture in Australia were profound.
Of similar persuasion was Van Eyck's country-man Hermann Hertzberger, and their
contemporary, the Dane Jrn Utzon who developed an architectural language based
on the careful articulation of each constituent element. Hertzberger was central as a
younger collaborator with van Eyck on the editorial team of the critical issues of
FORUM magazine between 1959 and 1961? Perhaps most important of
Hertzberger's many buildings in this context is the famous Central Beheer Office
block in Apeldoorn in Holland constructed between 1967 and 1972.
Central
Beheer
Apeldoorn
Holland
1967
72
Commentary
" The idea...is that of a building as a sort of settlement, consisting of a larger number of equal
spatial units, like so many islands strung together. These spatial units constitute the basic
building blocks; they are comparatively small and can accommodate the different programme
components (or 'functions'), because their dimensions as well as their form and spatial
organization are geared to that purpose. They are therefore polyvalent...
The basic requirements of an office building may well be simple enough in principle, but it
was this need for adaptability that led to the complexity of the commission. Constant changes
occur within the organization, thereby requiring frequent adjustments to the size of the
different departments. The building must be capable of accommodating these internal forces,
while the building as a whole must continue to function in every respect and at all times. " Arnulf Lchinger. Herman Hertzberger Buildings and Projects. p87.

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