Posted by  Paul Malo on September 03, 2002 at 06:30:08:

In Reply to:  Re: Steiner vs Gaudi ,any possible link? posted by John DeFazio on September 01, 2002 at 11:51:37:

Thanks for the excellent critique, John. You point out Gaudí's rationalist as well as surrealist aspects. Corb, of course, likewise conveyed this sort of tension, accounting for much of the dynamic drama of his work. I suppose all architects are to varying degrees drawn towards logical and expressive ideals.

I don't see so much distinction between symmetry and asymmetry as you--certainly not a difference in kind. After all, the Einstein Tower was symmetrical, as were most of Sant' Elia's projects--and Kahn's Salk Institute (which is certainly "expressive"). The polarized opposition between Beaux Arts symmetrical and Modern assymetrical partis seems to be a vestige of a Giedionesque polemic. Mies, of course, returned to symmetry after his Wrightian, de Stijl period.

Moneo's newly completed cathedral in Los Angeles affords an interesting parallel, considered as "expressionist" architecture.
I don't find it immediately appealing (although I have only seen the images available on the web). It suffers some of the failings of Ronchamp without, I fear, the magic. Ronchamp is episodic and disjointed--you are right to see it as "processional" or sequential as a theatrical event. The Goetheanum holds together more obviously, perhaps--but dispite the evident organizational device, the building conveys (to me) a power and disturbing surrealism missing at Ronchamp, which is more charming and perceptually seductive, but less mysterious in a mystical, cosmological sense. The Goetheanum is a truly alien occurance in the domesticated countryside of suburban Basle.

What about the Los Angeles Cathedral alongside the automobile freeway? It's not the arresting, alien Autostrada church of Michelucci--THAT'S surreal. The Moneo work seems merely clunky--sort of polished Brutalism. But the Goetheanum is brutal--likewise massivly solid concrete. Moneo gives us domesticated brutalism. I don't think it works.

The idiosyncratic aspect of expressionist design can either make the work seem mysterious, like Ronchamp or the Goethanum--or merely odd and arbitrary (which I find the Los Angeles building to be). The bottom line: Moneo at Los Angeles is not (for me) persuasive or compelling. What's your take on this?

I expect the decision to build a massive, solid building of concrete may have had something to do with the location, given the noise of vehicular Los Angeles. But even if this could not have been a crystaline, glass cathedral, another surreal model might have suggested itself: Terragni's Danteum. The forms liewise might have been more plastically modeled and the interface between inside and outside more spatially complex and elusive.

• Danteum (Tom Schumacher's Book)

Responses:

Post a Response -